Forcing the Spring (Book 9 of the Colplatschki Chronicles)

by Boykin, Alma

  He paced the length of the main audience hall as he recited to a pair of scribes what he wanted, humming between sections to help himself remember all the details. A new council, including Lord Tabor, came first, weather permitting. Recruiting for a new army, including required service from each family that had men of age and in proper physical condition. Acquiring ships and a navy capable of sailing the Eastern Sea came next, which meant he needed to hire shipmakers from the Sea Republics until his own people could learn how to make them. And women had to leave the homefolds, or could leave the homefolds if they wanted to. His guests would bring their wives, sisters, or daughters to banquets and worship.

  “I trust this is not to be done before the dinner hour, Imperial Majesty?” Geert called from behind him. Pjtor spun around and his friend bowed. “Your most gracious lady Strella left word that I was to be shown to your presence.”

  Pjtor wanted them all that afternoon, but knew better. Ships and armies cost money. “No. I am realistic even if I am young, Geert. By the next holy day eve will be soon enough.”

  “I am relieved to hear that, Imperial Majesty. Patience and a sense of proportion are treasures for any ruler.” Pjtor caught the suppressed laughter behind the formal words and smiled.

  “And I want, no I need, advice on a rather delicate matter.” Geert blinked and seemed to hesitate. “I need to reward Captain Anderson. The traditional reward for service such as his is a remission of all alcohol taxes for his household for the rest of his life. And you may use ‘my lord’ for now.” Pjtor stopped.

  Geert relaxed and smiled. “I can see the problem, my lord.” He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “My wife claims that Anderson is terribly fond of sweets, little cakes and hand pies. Perhaps lifting the sugar and spice taxes instead of alcohol?”

  “It is done.” Should he mention his other pressing desire? No, not yet. First they had to survive winter, although the supplies coming into the palace and the year’s bounty suggested that this winter might be a touch less deadly.

  Strella was listening to one of the pantry-servants reciting the latest inventory when Pjtor found her. Tamsin was asleep, exhausted after little Pjtor’s bad night with colic and baby-flux. One whiff of his son’s baby-rag basket as a service-slave carried it away for emptying and cleaning had warned Pjtor away. Nancy busied herself overseeing the inventory of Sara’s quarters. Pjtor heard, “Yes, and an additional two wagons of firewood, Imperial Mistress, but not until tomorrow. One of the cart-horses dropped dead and blocked the gate, and moving it took all afternoon. Blackwater, or so it is said. Servants brought it in from the farm two days ago, then left it stabled without exercise.”

  Strella sighed and rubbed the edge of the embroidered band securing her headdress. “Very well. Thank you, and you may go.” The woman curtsied very low and backed out the curtained doorway until the curtain fell over her and she disappeared. “What was she thinking, giving so much away?”

  “It seems she was desperate to secure her throne, or so I have heard from the son of former lord Dormand.” Two strokes with the five-tail whip and the man had revealed everything. “Lord Grigory had become too much of a threat, but she could not bear to get rid of him, so she wanted to court the other lords to back her claim as empress, then use that over Grigory to keep him in his place.” Pjtor snarled. “So she emptied the palace to gain their support. Fool.” Only strength kept the lords in their place, not charm or bribery. They had to see and know the armored fist that handed them their rewards, rewards earned, not scattered like leaves and chaff on the wind.

  Strella leaned forward and rubbed her forehead again. A servant eased a cup of tea onto the table beside her. “Thank you.” She drank without looking. “At least we won’t starve before the second month after the midwinter.”

  “I am going to increase the bounty on dardogs. It appears the former regent could not be bothered to have the lords renew it.”

  Strella made St. Annie’s sign. “An excellent idea, honored brother.”

  And I will take up the hunt if they get close to the walls again. He’d already decided to go out with the hunters if needed, but she did not need to know that. Despite what he’d been taught, killing people and animals did not seem to disturb him overmuch. Oh well, thus far everyone had attacked him or his people first, and he had been rendering justice. Torture brought no pleasure to him. He shrugged—he was as Godown made him, for Godown’s own reasons, praise to Godown. Which reminded him. “And I am going to see if the carpenters can make the doors larger, outside of the homefold, that is. The homefold must be defendable.”

  Strella smiled for the first time that day. “I’d wondered when you would get tired of ducking, honored brother. It has been a while since your last collision.”

  “I tired of it several years ago, but Godown has not miraculously raised the door frames overnight, alas.” He stopped, thinking. How hard would that be, cutting a hole in the wall and adding the framing pieces? Oh, they’d need taller doors, and in some places moving or re-doing paintings, but maybe he could learn how. He needed something to keep him busy this winter that did not involve governing or worship.

  And come spring . . . he had plans for the spring.

  Pjtor peered into the distance as the ship sped toward a line of white just now appearing on the southeastern horizon. The white sails overhead snapped and billowed, making the masts creak and ropes sing with the wind’s touch. The Golden Sun swept through the water with a good fresh westerly wind at her back. Pjtor loved the sound, the smell, the feeling of the living ship rolling and moving beneath his feet. When he died, he hoped Godown would give him a ship and crew to sail on the seas of paradise. Provided he earned them of course, and he glanced at the tiny shrine and statue of St. Issa, patron of sailors and shipwrights. The figure held a rope in one hand and a rolled-up paper in the other, traditionally assumed to be the plans for a new ship. He looked rather sturdy and Pjtor had no doubt the saint could hold his own in a fight or a storm. They’d only encountered one of those, thanks be, and that one “little” storm cured Pjtor of his interest in visiting the rafen’s nest, the mast-top look out position.

  “Another day to land, Pjtor Adamson,” Geert said from over Pjtor’s shoulder. “Godown willing and weather permitting.”

  “Sea cats!” The lookout called. “Three o’clock, coming our way.”

  The men on deck cheered and everyone rushed to the side. Pjtor peered out, trying to see something. “In the water, there” Geert pointed.

  Pjtor squinted and saw three, no, four long shapes in the water. First one than the others leaped up, then splashed back into the sea, graceful and strong. The sea cats drew closer and turned, swimming beside the ship. “A good sign,” one of the sailors called.

  “Good indeed,” Captain Thomas Sage agreed from Pjtor’s other side. He tossed something to the fish, and one jumped up and caught it. Pjtor saw a long snout with even longer whiskers, silvery-blue shining hide, and white spots along the fish’s back. “Here. Toss ahead of them,” and he offered Pjtor the cask.

  It held silvery fish, the smelly grease fish the sailors used instead of candles. Pjtor tossed and the sea cat grabbed it. They fed all four of the ship’s escort, and the sea cats stayed with the ship, swimming around it and jumping almost as high as the side-rail before swimming off. “They bring good luck. They’re not quite fish like these,” Sage pointed at the cask. “As smart as men, or so some claim. We do not hunt or eat them.” Several men made St. Issa’s rope, warding off the very idea.

  “Tomorrow we land?”

  “Aye.” On board ship, the captain ruled, and Pjtor saw no reason to try to pull rank. He’d spent most of the trip learning how the big sailing ship worked. Now he leaned back against the rail, watching the wind in the sails, and reciting their names in his head. Each sail and mast had a name and a function, and had to be used in different ways depending on the wind and the seas. Now the Golden Sun hummed along, pushed by the wind toward New Dalfa.

&
nbsp; They’d been at sea for just over three weeks, a time the others assured Pjtor was excellent. Some crossings took three months. Pjtor had brought some of his own people so they could learn what he wanted them to, but none of them had taken to the water like Pjtor did. “It’s a pity you are too old,” Capt. Sage had said one evening over beer and pipes. “You’d make a magnificent sailor. You already know to duck.”

  Pjtor had to smile at the memory. And he’d thought the doorways in the palace too short! He could not straighten up aboard ship unless on deck, or in the captain’s cabin, and then between the beams only. The men had been glad of his size and strength when it came to hauling the anchor and main sails, though.

  Pjtor liked being on the ship. Everything made sense. And for once he did not get distracted by things around him. The ship had more than enough to pay attention to, sails to adjust, navigation fixes to take from the sun, stars, and clock, ropes to haul, things to mend or to shift as they consumed their supplies . . . Pjtor wanted a ship more than ever, a good, big ship, a fighting ship.

  “The white are clouds. The land pulls the wind in during the day, then breaths it back out at night, in the warm months. You can see some of the spice islands two days before you spot land, because of the cloud towers.” Capt. Sage had been to the southern islands, and he smiled. “You can also smell some of them. The bird islands as well.”

  “I’d rather smell spices than bird dung,” Geert said.

  “You can smell fresh water, too, and foul, but not so well.”

  Geert nodded, confirming Sage’s words. Pjtor marveled, then looked back, watching screamer birds hovering on the wind behind the stern. Stern and bow, starboard and port, main sail, spinnaker, topgallant and mizzen, windlass and bowspirit (or bowsprit as the Dalfans said), all words that had come from the far-distant times before the Landers left the home world. Pjtor had trouble believing that ships had changed so little over hundreds and more of years.

  Geert had shrugged at Pjtor’s surprise. “Why not, my lord? They work. We can improve them, but the basic idea, basic problems? Never change. You have to balance the weight above and below, fore and aft, side to side. The wind blows the same no matter what happens, and boats have to be able to float. Why not use what works instead of repeating other peoples’ mistakes? You can only drown once.”

  Geert had a good point. Pjtor wondered what else of the Lander world survived in the Sea Republics. More than he could imagine, probably. Then he stopped thinking and just enjoyed the sun on his face, the smell of the ship, and the fabric and water sounds of the Golden Sun as she sped eastward.

  The port of New Dalfa appeared as a lumpy brown and white pile on the horizon by evening. Captain Sage dropped anchor just before the sun disappeared in the west. “There’s not a storm coming, so no point in trying to sail around the barriers in the dark.” The sailors had spent the afternoon cleaning and polishing anything that stayed motionless long enough, putting equipment into storage. Pjtor suspected that Sage wanted people to be able to see how good his ship looked, how tight and squared away she was, something not possible to observe in the dark.

  Pjtor, Geert, and Michael Looven spent the evening perfecting Pjtor’s story. He would be a traveling apprentice from Hämäln, the most northerly and eastern of the Sea Republic’s members. That explained his accent and slightly odd ways. Geert and Michael knew someone who might be willing to take Pjtor on and teach him the basics of ship craft. The plan was to stay for several months in New Dalfa, then move on to A’asterdee, where they built fighting ships. Pjtor would not be the emperor of NovRodi, but a man looking for more skills. “The wander year is common,” Geert reminded Pjtor. “Some trades require it, so young men can see how other masters in other areas work, or learn to work with new materials, like that white fluffy stuff people are making clothes out of.”

  “Plant wool. They wear it on the southern part of the Thumb, takes any dye you try, but once it gets wet, it is cold and miserable. Doesn’t wear well, either, at least not the fluffy kind.” Michael said. “My— ah, a woman I knew had a shimmy made of the stuff.”

  Pjtor tried to recall the word and failed. “What is a ‘shimmy?’ A garment?”

  “The dress women wear under their main dress,” Geert supplied. “They have a dozen different names for how long the shimmy is, or if it has a collar, or a high neck or low neck, sleeves or no sleeves. My wife could talk for hours about them. I just close my eyes when the bills from the dressmakers come.”

  The other men chuckled. That much Pjtor understood perfectly. Strella, for all her virtues, was still a woman, and she and Tamsin were forever sewing or re-making or talking about clothes. Pjtor wore what he wore, although now more of the eastern style. Even his winter coat, now knee-length, resembled those of Geert and Capt. Anderson more than the long style still worn by the rest of court. “Can you use the plant wool for sails?”

  Geert wagged one hand. “Not well, or so I hear. Someone will find a way, I suspect, although, you cannot use sheep or shahma wool for sails either because they stretch too much, so,” he shrugged. Pjtor sat back in his seat. The chair creaked a warning. Pjtor leaned forward again and looked forward to furniture he could sit in without fear of breaking it.

  He was up before dawn, listening to the sound of the ship, the slap of water against the hull, the quiet steps of men walking on the main deck, and the creaking of the anchor-lift as sailors walked around and around, singing a strange, very old tune as they raised the anchor off the bottom of the sea. Pjtor wondered once more who “Mingle-lay” and “Shenoon-do-ah” were, then rolled out of his bunk and got dressed. One of the sailors would finish packing the last of his things, since Boris had not come with Pjtor. The valet refused to cross salt water for some reason, and Pjtor did not care to beat the man for what the man claimed was a religious reason. Pjtor washed his face and hands, then went above decks.

  They’d already picked up a reasonable wind, tightening the sails and moving Golden Sun toward the lumpy eastern horizon. A mist covered the distance, hiding most detail, and a painfully bright gold and yellow sun erased the rest. Pjtor squinted, then looked away. He wanted the ship to be in harbor already, but that could not be. Only the Landers could cover such distances so fast, supposedly by flying over the water instead of sailing across it. Pjtor assumed that had been a poet’s imagining, probably after eating black-dot mushrooms and then drinking a little alcohol.

  The sun stood high in the sky, almost at the noon mark when they crossed the bar into New Dalfa’s port. Pjtor did not gape in wonder at the sight, but he certainly marveled. He wanted the forest of ships, the sprawl of white and brown buildings with red roofs, the tall, slender needles poking into the sky. He wanted them in NovRodi. “Ah, that’s St. Issa’s church there, at eleven of the clock, St. Gerald’s at twelve, and St. Donn-at-the-Rocks is almost in the water there at two. The Cathedral of Saints Mou and Alice is the blue and red spire in the middle, away from the main area.” Geert leaned against the rail, arms folded. “Its not the hour or you would hear the different bells. The spires are tall so you can steer by them to reach the main harbor entrance. If you try to sail in without a guide or knowing the port, you’ll ground on the rocks. The Landers did it deliberately, although who they were afraid of no one knows.”

  Pjtor grunted, acknowledging the information as he stared at the ships at the docks. He’d read about “a forest of masts and spars,” but the real thing did not match his imagination at all. Scores of ships of all sizes bobbed a little at anchor, ranging from little rowing boats to what had to be a warship with doors in her hull for guns. The doors all seemed closed. “What’s that?”

  Geert nodded. “Harbor rules: warships’ gunports must be closed and dogged while they are in port, unless the captain gets permission from the harbormaster to open them for some reason, like repairs.”

  “But the captain commands the ship, like Godown commands men.”

  Geert shook his head and Michael Looven, on Pjtor’s ot
her side, made a noise. “Nuh huh, not once they cross the bar. Inside the breakwater, the harbormaster is the boss. He says who can come and go, when, where you can tie up if you do not have a regular berth, which chandlers have permission to sell from the water, and he decides when to raise and lower the chain. You try to force your way in once the chain’s up and boom,” Looven nodded to the big guns on piles of rocks that faced into the main entrance. “You get to explain to Godown and St. Issa why you were so stupid. Frankonians tried it twice. We got a lot of firewood from them.”

  “Ja, and then we had to wait for the divers and cleaner ships to open the mouth of the port again. Typical. Laurence the Loony doesn’t pick up after himself when he breaks his toys.” Captain Sage snorted. The others chuckled. Pjtor just stared at the variety of ships and wondered how much one of each would cost.

  “Hail the ship!” Pjtor peered down at a rowing boat with two men on the oars and an old man in a green coat standing inside it.

  “Greetings to the portmaster!” Pjtor got out of the way as a rope ladder dropped. The old man climbed up, and Pjtor discovered that he wasn’t as old as he seemed, but had very white hair. The white hair gave off a fine dust, and Pjtor started to back away before Geert hissed, “It’s false hair, dusted with rock-white. I thought that fashion would have gone away already.”

  Pjtor did not like the dust and thought it stupid to wear fake hair when Godown had given you perfectly good hair. He stepped back farther as the harbormaster looked at the Golden Sun’s records and papers. “No foors this time, eh?” He asked Sage.

  “Nine, no foors. Just nooz, tree-gems, bee-spit, and tree-tar.” Sage’s accent grew stronger, matching the harbormaster’s.

  “What nooz? Another fire berk?”

  Geert whispered to Pjtor, “Berk is a really old word for mountain.”

  “Better, harbormaster. New government in NovRodi, one that wants to trade. Heard myself from one of the Emperor’s men. The Regent retired to a House of Godown.”