“Don’t get your hopes up,” she replied. “He’s in no fit state to shift that beast on his shoulders.”
Strykar stood up, slowly, knees cracking. “Try me, huntress.”
THEY GAVE HIM back his sword, and the march nearly killed him. Or at least the last part of it. Climbing the cliffs that surrounded the east portion of Livorna proved more than he had bargained for, especially since they held him to his word to help bear the dead stag. By the time they had reached the red sandstone pass his knees were bruised black and blue. Jagged outcrops rose all around them but Demerise and her men knew the trail well. They tromped along, the ground breaking downwards, the path strewn with gravel and sand. Boulders and grassy slopes followed, the rooftops and towers of Livorna finally coming into view as they began their descent.
The clanging of bells reached their ears soon afterwards. Those from the low town were echoed by those from the Great Temple higher up on the Ara at the west end of Livorna. Strykar had handed off his end of the pole to another of the huntsmen and had been given a nod of thanks by the others for pitching in to carry the burden of the prize. He stopped at the upper terraces of the city, listening to the bells and the cries below. It seemed he would not be the bringer of the news after all. The Blue Boar had beaten them to Livorna.
Demerise sidled next to him. “You’re stronger than you look, Strykar.” She nodded towards the great grey turreted palace that rose up just below where they stood. “We go to the palazzo to deliver what was asked to get our money. While we can.”
“And what about me? Am I your prisoner?”
She smiled, the good half of her mouth turning up and creasing her cheek. “I reckon you have enough problems as things stand. Besides, you weren’t a poacher as far as I can tell.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Strykar. “The count and the High Priest must be told that it is not an army of mercenaries alone that they face.”
Demerise tilted her head. “Your choice. I would not wish to be the one to bear tidings of monsters and dark magic.”
“So, once you have your silver you’ll be skulking out the way we came in? While you can.”
“I don’t relish eating cats during a siege. And it might come to that if we get stuck here. We’ll make our way east again, stay in the forest until... until it’s all over.”
Strykar shifted his sword belt on his hips. “They will be in sore need of your skills upon the wall. You and all your bowmen. Don’t you want to pay back the Blue Boar for what they did to you?”
She scowled. “Pay back? One man did this to me. A man I can’t remember and who may well be dead now. I would rather have the beauty of the greenwood than revenge.”
“Every Blue Boar soldier you put an arrow through is one less chance that another girl will suffer as you did.”
She looked at him. “Is that what drives you to fight? Regret that you were off killing somewhere else while Caglia burned?”
Strykar nodded slowly. “Fair enough, my lady, fair enough. But you swore your oath and warrant to Sempronius. If Ursino takes the throne, that royal seal you carry might as well be candlewax for all the good it will do you.”
“I’m going now to find that oily shit Voltera and get what’s owed me. And I expect Marsilius will want to hear what you have to tell him. Not that it will bring him any cheer. But at least he’ll have fresh venison to chew on while he’s thinking about it.”
Strykar extended his hand. “I owe you my thanks. For finding me... and letting me go.”
She took it in hers, scarred and rough. “You’re no enemy to me, Strykar, and by your tale you’ve had it hard enough this far. Besides,” and she gave him a wry, crooked smile, “we share Caglia, don’t we?” She shifted the bow upon her back and resumed her march down the slope.
Twenty
DANAMIS STARED AT the crumpled note as Citala’s long blue hand lay upon his wrist.
“No one knew him? And he wore no badge of service?”
Danamis shook his head. “Gregorvero asked around the tavern. He was a stranger to all, or at least no one wanted to own up to knowing the man. But it proves that Tetch was telling the truth. It wasn’t him who tried to have me killed. It was someone else.”
She gently ran her finger down his cheek. “You must be on guard now lest they try again.” They were alone in his cabin, the sounds of the crew above and below growing less as the hour drew late. “So, what do you do now? What is it the queen asks of you?”
He tossed the note across the trestle table and reached for his cup of wine. “I’m probably giving her more problems than I’m solving. I’ve told her to rally the other duchies to stand up to Ursino. Not wait until he is here at the gates of Perusia. Trouble is, Raganus and Polo are telling her to hold back. To depend on the Sineans for muscle if it comes to a direct challenge by Torinia. Muscle that would come with a steep price.”
“So, the queen is conflicted then?”
Danamis turned and looked at her. “Yes, she is. And I have offered a bodyguard for her and the prince.”
“Is she conflicted about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does she still have love for you?”
Danamis smiled and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Love?”
“Necalli has told me that you were once lovers, years ago, that the prince is a bastard is what is behind this war for the throne. It is said that you are the father.”
Danamis frowned. “Well... the rumours are certainly not helping.”
He felt her tense. “Are you saying it is true, Danamis?”
“No. No it is not so. The queen has told me herself.”
“But she still has feelings for you.”
Danamis sat back slightly. “I do not believe that. We were lovers, I will not lie to you, but that was more than ten years ago. Put a stop to before it had barely begun. Since when did you share such things with Necalli? I thought you did not trust him.”
“He is different than we. Perhaps I underestimated him. But he listens, to everyone. That is how he learns things.”
Danamis grunted in reply.
“But why has the queen sought your help?” continued Citala. “You have no armies to offer her.”
“Because she trusts me and not the counsel around her.”
Citala nodded, knowingly. “That is because she loves you still.”
He could not deny it. Nor was he sure that Cressida wasn’t teasing him for her own ends. “I would see it if that were true,” he lied. “She trusts me because she knows me, and knows that Palestro has no vested interest here other than a continuation of Sempronius’s seed.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “The boy isn’t mine. And all I need is here... in this cabin.”
She blinked slowly and returned his smile, her little teeth gleaming in the lamplight. “Maybe you don’t know women—or she-mer—as well as you think you do.” She grasped both of his hands. “I am here to stand by you. I have no other choice.”
“No other choice? You could return to Nod’s Rock whenever you wish. War would never follow you there.”
“No, I cannot. What I did not tell you, after the galley fight, was that my father has banished me.” She saw Danamis’s brow furrow and she nodded.
“What? But you brought him more myrra.”
“Not enough. And he has guessed that we are lovers. He says you have enslaved me and broken your word to bring the myrra as you did before, in great bundles. His warriors have told him tales of degradation of the merfolk in Palestro. He is furious.”
Danamis rubbed his temples and groaned. “What has he threatened?”
“To take the myrra from Palestro by force. Though he has not the means to do this. Or else it is the leaf talking, or his thirst for it. I do not think he will act for now. My people are doomed to die out there, I see that now. The colony in Valdur is what matters now. That is why you must stop Torinia and save the prince and his mother.”
Danamis put his arms around her. “Tomorrow
, I must face the queen’s council and also Captain Polo and the Sineans. If I’m right in thinking what is coming then we’ll have little time to act. They will want Cressida to put Perusia’s defence into the hands of the Sineans, and the prince in a gilded cage. If they defeat Ursino then the kingdom will be in thrall to the Silk Empire.”
She whispered into his ear. “No more of these things now. Let us to bed while there is still night. In the morning we begin anew.”
SHE SAW HIM off the Vendetta, he and two dozen of his men, as the strong morning sun climbed into a clear blue sky burnishing the walls of the Perusian citadel. She felt weak as she watched him move across the columned piazza, sun glinting off his harness and that of his chosen men. Not from worry, but from a body that was yearning to be in the sea again. She had already waited far too long but the noxious waters of the quayside had made her put off the necessary ablutions. Necalli, too, seemed slower—and crankier—than he had of late. She noticed that his race, these Xosians, seemed not to be as exposed on land as did her people.
The merman came up to her as she stood at the railing. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. Necalli had arranged for a small longboat, rigged with a sail, to take them down the bay a few miles to where the water was cleaner and deeper. But Gregorvero had insisted they were not to go alone and he placed on board a pilot and two soldiers to escort them. She wore the yellow silk robe that Danamis had given her months before and although a sailor held out a hand to assist her over the side and down, she had made the leap effortlessly, before he could protest. The single lateen of the fishing boat billowed out and, hand on tiller, the Palestrian sailor eased them out into the harbour and southwards.
Necalli was staring at her. He seemed to stare at everyone but more often at her it seemed. “You have been fading, Citala. These past two days.”
She took in a deep breath of the salty air as they sped through the water, the sail snapping. “I’ve dealt with worse. In Ivrea once.”
“The humans have told me the tale.” He spoke to her in the mer tongue but he was using more of her words of late, copying her dialect. “I admire you the more I hear.” He smiled, his wide mouth curling up. He wore his usual knee-length gown, a shortened version of the Valdurian cioppa but far simpler, tied at the waist with a black eel-skin belt.
She looked out over the bay, dotted with vessels large and small. “The prince is not his child. He has told me.”
“That would make matters easier, if others believe it. But that does not answer the problem of what this queen wants of him.”
Citala turned to face the Xosian again, the ropes of her snow white hair flying about her long neck. “I trust him. I trust what is in his heart. Do not seek to put doubt into mine, Necalli.”
The merman inclined his head. “That was not my intention, princess. Forgive me. I am here to aid the mission of Admiral Danamis, not to hinder it. I would that we trust each other more to make that possible, no?”
“Trust is earned, Master Necalli. Give me time.”
As they sailed Necalli told her of the land of Atlcali, the seas that surrounded it, the cities that prospered there. All mer. She found it hard to conceive of a place as large as Valdur that was wholly inhabited by merfolk; merfolk that built as humans did and sailed as they did. It was to her like some dream land only existing in the imagination but for the presence of Necalli—different yes, but also like her in so many ways.
“Mistress! Don’t want to sail clear to Telos!” The boat’s pilot called. “Haven’t we gone out far enough?”
She told him they had and as the sail dropped she and Necalli made ready for their swim. The two sailors grinned with more than a hint of lasciviousness as she threw off her robe and slid over the side. Necalli swiftly followed her.
“Well,” said the pilot to his comrades, “suppose we’ll just drift about getting sun-addled until they decide to come back, but I did manage to smuggle us some acqua vitalis!”
Citala kicked down and down into the pale blue water, so clear she could make out the bottom some twenty fathoms further: white sand studded with rocks and little forests of kelp in which grouper and dogfish prowled. She turned to see Necalli following, a stream of bubbles coursing upwards behind him. At once she felt invigorated, enlivened, the fatigue and burning skin vanishing. She rolled, again and again in her joy, as she went deeper. A green turtle came up to meet her, playful, and she let it pull her where it wished.
Better?
It was Necalli, probing her mind. She had been expecting this once they were under the waves. She decided to open herself, extending that trust.
I am whole again, Master Necalli!
It is good, Citala. Very good.
He caught her up, his smooth grey torso and loins sprinkled with tiny bubbles of air as he sped along, legs propelling him.
So you Xosians can hold your breath after all.
She instantly sensed his mirth in reply. Citala levelled out, releasing the turtle and rolled on her back to observe the light from above, rippling on the surface. She turned again and saw how the seabed fell away into darkness beyond them. She reached the edge of the chasm and halted her progress, head down and gently kicking to prevent her from rising. The light of the sun surrendered to inky gloom when she peered over the edge. She felt Necalli draw near and he placed a hand on her forearm.
Citala?
A large school of sardines, a pulsating ball of living silver, drifted past them and out over the chasm before spiralling up towards the surface. She turned towards Necalli, a small stream of air bubbles escaping her mouth. She could hear his voice inside her head but something else was there too.
Do you hear something, Necalli?
Necalli’s lack of response, his unchanging eyes, instantly made her wary. She felt something more than heard it, a probing presence. Something that was seeking contact, a primitive incoherent essence but something that was alive nonetheless.
Necalli’s thoughts came through to her, insistent.
We should return.
His long fingers gripped her forearm more tightly and she righted herself, brushing off his touch as she did so.
What is it? Something is searching. Seeking.
You hear the deep, came his reply. The voice of the sea. Let us go back up.
The presence seemed to be receding now, one last burst of nebulous thought—a sense of loneliness—and then nothing. She nodded to Necalli and gave a kick upwards, shooting into shallower, warmer water. He was close behind her and they rose rapidly together until they broke the surface. As his bald head popped up there was a smile on his face.
“What happened, Citala? Something gave you a fright?”
“Hahthlxi!” she cursed, seawater dribbling from her lips. “You felt it too. I know you did.”
“It was the voice of the deep. All the life in the sea... its life-force. We who are adept sometimes hear this. You must have before, if you can hear my thoughts.”
She shook her head. “Nay, Master Necalli. It was a single creature. One life.”
He smiled at her indulgently. “Perhaps your imagination.”
Why he refused to admit what she knew to be true she could not comprehend. For days she had been beginning to understand the Xosian, even to like him. Now, suddenly, doubt had crept back in again and her natural wariness was reasserting itself. Necalli was hiding something, that was clear to her. But he was also alone and thousands of miles from his home with not a single ship to call upon. What threat could this shipwrecked merman possibly pose? Treading water, she looked about and spotted the fishing boat bobbing in the swell some distance from them. “I think you are right. We should return now.”
DEEP IN THE royal palace, Danamis sat at the vast round table of the council chamber and contemplated the men around him. Though daylight shone through the narrow windows above, the chamber was north-facing and miserly. The lighted candles upon the table threw both shadows and sharp relief across the faces of the council. Fitti
ngly emblematic of the light and dark they each harboured in their souls, thought Danamis. Six of the men he hardly knew at all other than that they were the loyal rump of the royal council, all grey-haired and grey-skinned. Danamis wondered if the half that had fled Perusia might have been any better qualified than this lot: sleepy, doddering, and probably no more than a thimbleful of brains between them. Other faces he knew better. There was Messere Hieronimo, admiral of the galley fleet, a competent sailor and commander with short black hair, a wandering squint in his left eye, and a closely cropped salt-and-pepper beard. He had greeted Danamis with a bear hug upon entering the high-ceilinged chamber. Then there was Caluro, captain of the palace guard, a giant of a man who Queen Cressida swore by for loyalty to her house. He had come from Colonna as a youth, training for the guard that he eventually came to lead. No great friend of Danamis but neither was he an enemy. And any scheme that he might propose to save Cressida and her son would undoubtedly depend on the goodwill and support of Caluro.
Danamis looked across the table to the opposite side, the largest chair still empty; they were awaiting the queen. He scratched at his thin chinstrap of a beard and let his gaze settle on Captain Piero Polo, merchant adventurer and factotum for the Silk Empire in Valdur. He had known Polo his whole life, his father having sailed with the Colonnan explorer far to the east, across the vast inland sea, to open trade with Partha. But Valerian Danamis had not been on the voyage that had gone further, all the way east to the Sinean lands. Polo had returned with silk, spices, and as an agent of the emperor. His father, jealous, had sailed west to explore new lands. But he had come back empty-handed and just as bitter as before he had left Valdur.
Danamis watched Polo, smiling and grinning as he conversed with the Sinean ambassador seated next to him, the Bo Xiang Liu. The last man that Danamis had thought of as an uncle had tried to kill him. He wasn’t sure that this old friend of his father hadn’t tried to do the same despite the loud declamations of support. He still had no proof against him and the man who might have given it had ended up nailed to a post with a stiletto through the throat. Danamis was an admiral of Valdur and Piero Polo still was not. Perhaps that was motive enough.
The Witch of Torinia Page 24
