Sasharia en Garde

  No help for it. I looked the way I looked.

  I grabbed up my wet clothes and marched out.

  The yacht currently had only four crew members besides Owl: the cook, his wife, and two men, one young, one older. Only one of those was in my line of sight, on watch at the helm. He gazed out to sea.

  Owl and Jehan stood near the smooth, elegantly curved stern rail. When the cabin door shut behind me they turned their heads and watched me walk up the half a dozen shallow steps to the deck, the lantern light from the binnacle shining on their faces.

  Is that stare universal among het males? Their gazes swept down my body, stopped twice—once north of the equator and once south—then dropped down to my feet and away. Both faces wearing inadvertent grins, a mix of appreciative and slightly embarrassed grins civilized guys show when they get caught staring.

  Here’s the girl part of that particular embarrassment. If one likes one of the guys, it’s not annoying, it makes one feel outlined in light. Well, I do, anyway.

  “The pants were too tight,” I said curtly, and as soon as the words were out I knew they made everything ten times worse.

  Owl turned away, one arm gripping the other arm. He was trying very hard not to laugh. I felt the riveted gaze of the fellow at the helm.

  “You look better in that tunic than I do,” Jehan said, assuming courtly manners, but his tone was genuine. Even enthusiastic. “Come into the cabin. Supper is ready.”

  It was a relief to follow him down the broad stairs into the stern cabin. As he stepped with his characteristic quick stride I couldn’t stop myself from sneaking a peek at him from behind, that long, slim line from shoulder to—Stop that!

  I turned my attention to the captain’s cabin.

  Wow, talk about a sybaritic delight. Whoever had designed this yacht didn’t have a rough sailor’s life in mind. There were two of everything in the fine wood carvings, shining rich gold in the light of leaded glass lanterns set in graceful golden holders. Two roses, the leaves suggestive of entwined bodies. Two lilies, same. Two dolphins leaping and sporting in repeated motif all round the bunk frame. And what a bunk. Built directly under the broad, slanting stern windows, it enabled one—or two—to lie there and look directly out at the wake glowing in the reflected golden light, foaming away and away under the glimmering stars. I leaned to look—

  And felt that neon sensation again.

  I whirled around, and crossed my arms when I caught Owl and Jehan staring. Not just staring but checking out my butt in that snug tunic.

  Owl looked up at the ceiling as though his future lay written there. Jehan grinned, a laugh barely suppressed in the slightly husky undertone to his voice as he said, “Please sit. Tell me about your day.”

  Since I’d been doing my own butt-checking a minute previous, I didn’t say anything. Just plunked down and thumped my elbows onto the carved table. The chairs were lyre backed, cushioned and comfortable.

  “Let me see,” I said cordially. “What part would that be? The nice long morning when Owl nearly suffocated me? Or would that be later, when I was still suffocating? Or, maybe after you left, when everyone was busy, the sun sinking. I thought, great time to dive overboard. Straight into an out-flowing tide. Oops.”

  “What did you plan if the tide had worked for you?” Jehan poured out some wine into three goblets. “I ask because I’ve made a couple of ship dives myself.”

  “Yours being successful, of course.”

  He grinned over his goblet at me. “I’ve had more experience with remembering the flow of tides.”

  “Well, I didn’t think I could make it all the way to shore. My idea was to reach another boat. Any boat. I could see them, or rather their running lights, or whatever they are called here. Pretend, if they pulled me out, that I’d fallen overboard on a pleasure cruise, no one noticed because of all the noise, and would someone set me ashore?”

  “Except those between us and the harbor are all Randart’s fleet.” Jehan swept his hand all around us. “Gathering to search for the wicked pirate Zathdar.”

  “Oh.” I sipped the wine, which was perfect, not too sweet, not too tart, a Shakespearean sonnet of subtle flavors. I took another sip, this time pausing long enough to savor it. “Wow, that’s good.” My annoyance melted away. “All right, so that concludes Sasharia’s stupidity for the day. What about you? How did the games go? Was it boring and predictable?”

  “No. It was neither.” Jehan began with meeting the mystery guys on the walk up to the castle. He ended his report when David and the others vanished through the back of the tent just as the searchers came through the front.

  “So I made my way straight to the boat and here I am.” He said to Owl, “That tall one. I know I’ve seen him before.”

  Owl hunched over his wine. “Really good with his hands? Lean? Eyes a strange shade of pale brown, almost orange in the right light?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Didn’t use a name, as I recall. Initials. MV? I think they were MV. Robin was the same age. She said she and the other sprats used to try to guess what they stood for. I remember him during that tangle with the Chwahir and those pirates out of Ghanthur, our very first cruise. Knew nothing about boats when he came aboard us, but he could fight. Don’t you remember?”

  Jehan leaned tiredly back in his chair, staring out at the sea. “We’ve had so many brushes with the Chwahir . . . Ghanthur . . . not to mention crew coming and going. That goes way back. Why, it must have been when I met you.”

  Owl grinned. “Just about. Yes.”

  They exchanged one of those looks people use when they are thinking of Past History, but before anyone could say anything the Colendi cook appeared, and with a flourish set out the dishes, delicate poached fish with fresh herbs and a dash of wine sauce, steamed carrots with a dash of another herb, and roasted little potatoes, so savory and tasty I could have eaten a plate of them.

  Kaelande served more wine. His style of serving was like what I’d been taught, I noticed idly, in the more hotsy-totsy dinner houses I’d worked at, back in L.A. The same even pouring, the flick of the wrist when bringing the bottle up so there were no splashes.

  I was beginning to feel a slight buzz, so I shook my head. I really did not know who was friend and who enemy, or how both could manage to be embodied in the same person. I didn’t need a wine-glow to further befuddle me.

  Jehan said, “That was splendid, Kaelande.” He sighed. “I ate well at the tent, but that rowing seems to have woken my appetite.”

  “You were a few meals behind,” Owl commented. “So, what now?”

  Good question, I thought. And that goes for me, too.

  Jehan frowned into his wine. “Those questions Randart asked me. I am trusting to the overwhelming number of tasks that launching a fleet entails to keep him from thinking much about what those boys saw from the barracks window. You had better vanish, all of you—”

  “Wait!” I slapped my hands flat on the table. “What exactly does that mean? I’m a prisoner?”

  Kaelande flicked me a look from under straight brows.

  Jehan pressed his thumbs into his eyelids under his brow ridge. “You are. Not. A prisoner. But—”

  Zel, Kaelande’s wife, appeared in the door, her short, wispy reddish curls flying. “Biski says the fleet’s getting signals.”

  Jehan was out of his chair fast, pausing only to pluck his spyglass from a holder. By the time I made it out the door behind Owl and Kaelande, Jehan’s white hair had already vanished behind the long, elegant curve of the main sail, what we on Earth would call a Bermuda sail. He reappeared in the top next to the younger of the two men whose names I hadn’t heard.

  They exchanged a few quick words, snapped their glasses out, training them west on the glimmering lights barely visible to us at sea level.

  Then Jehan slid down a backstay and landed lightly near us. “They’re flanking us. Boats. It’s got to be Randart, and he’s got some excuse.”

  “We
run?” Owl asked, but almost immediately he sniffed, looked into the direction of the breeze and shook his head.

  “We fight?” Kaelande asked, and Zel rubbed her knuckles against her lips. She was a bit older than I, small, weathered, the yacht’s bosun. Everyone worked the sails when needed, and obviously fought when needed as well.

  Jehan sighed. “I would rather avoid loss of life. He despises the first-blood rule. If he commences a fight, it’s going to be to the finish. He won’t want any witnesses to tell my father the truth.”

  Owl grimaced. “So you think he’s sprung us at last?”

  “Possible. Not for certain. If he’s suspicious, he will be looking for the mystery thief the boys will have described. That means the fisher’s hat and the forest green tunic. The cadets saw our encounter from the barracks window, and I said I’d tried to catch a thief. Randart brought that up at the games.”

  Attention zapped my way.

  Jehan said to me, “Well? If you want to fall into his hands, here is your chance.”

  “No. The only thing I am very sure of is this. I do not, and never will, trust Dannath Randart. Especially now that I know he caused Magister Glathan’s death.”

  Jehan let out his breath in relief. “Get out of those clothes. I have to be in livery.”

  “Hers are wet,” Owl said. “And the green will have to go over the side. If any of us wear it, we might be taken as the thief.”

  Zel measured me with her eyes, and slowly shook her head.

  “She’s a size one in the juniors, and I’m a size twelve in the Tall department.” I pointed to Zel, then myself. “I can’t borrow hers.”

  Kaelande dusted his fingers together. “But you are close to my size. Very close.”

  Jehan snapped his fingers. “I’ll have that Zhavalieshin banner on my own bed. I don’t care how wet it is, it won’t look wet. The rest of whatever it is you have in that bag is innocuous enough, right?”

  My heartbeat had gone into sprint mode. “Mementos collected when I was little.”

  Owl said to Jehan, “What’s the excuse for you being here?”

  “Too hot to sleep on land?”

  “Stupid,” two voices said at once, and Owl shook his head.

  Zel sighed dramatically. “Oh, come along, I always wanted to be the girl. Can’t I be the girl?”

  “When’s the last time there was a real girl?” Owl asked the sky.

  Jehan laughed. “It seems a thousand years ago. Zel, do whatever you can to become the girl. But you have to be a painter. I told him I was visiting a painter . . . something with Lasva Sky Child. I don’t know if he’ll remember that.”

  Zel turned to her husband and said cryptically, but in a triumphant voice, “Told you they’d some day be useful.”

  “They?” came from three directions.

  “Painted fans from Colend. How I met him.” She patted her husband on his shoulder, sped by, and vanished down the companionway to the lower deck.

  Jehan faced me. “Sasha. Do you mind being a cook?”

  I shrugged, feeling about five steps behind. I couldn’t find the words to say I knew zip about cooking.

  But he took my hapless shrug as agreement.

  “Let us get ready to be taken by surprise,” Jehan said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  War Commander Randart stood with one boot propped on the rail of the lead boat’s bow, elbow steadied on his knee, his glass trained on the lonely craft until its elegant lines emerged from the darkness and resolved into the familiar Dolphin.

  “That’s his yacht. Close in,” he said with the first evidence of satisfaction he’d shown since his arrival. His personal guard, kept on short sleep and shorter meal breaks, put their backs into their rowing, the outer boats circling outward to surround the yacht as ordered.

  Not that anyone expected anything like a good fight. Not on a yacht crewed by half a dozen, if that. And captained by a prince who chased rare butterflies—ones with good figures.

  The commander went back to watching through his glass. He would learn a lot by how they reacted when they discovered they were being . . . met.

  Mentally veering between suspicion and disbelief, he’d figured that a trained military scramble after the lookout spotted the boats would at least be cause for investigation. The Prince Jehan he knew—he assumed he knew—would never remember to give that kind of order.

  However, that possibility diminished with every silent lift of the oars. He could distinctly make out a couple of sailors standing at the helm, drinking from elegant goblets as they chatted. No one else in view, though there was a jerking at the single upper sail, no doubt deployed to keep the yacht pointed up into the wind instead of rolling. Randart applied his glass to the masthead. He saw starlight glinting on red hair, the silhouette a scrawny male. Sailor, nothing military. He certainly wasn’t alert.

  A movement below caught Randart’s attention and he brought down his glass. One of the two at the helm shook an empty wine bottle, and actually peered into it. Then he lurched drunkenly around, and started. Was that the lookout instead? Probably. The one up on the mast was apparently asleep.

  Randart smacked his glass against his thigh as the now-tiny figures ran about on the deck of the yacht in a manner no proper captain would ever tolerate, as, gradually, lights glowed to life in the open scuttles along the side, revealing a figure or two bobbing about to no apparent purpose.

  No white heads in view.

  His boat hooked onto the yacht, his guards not even touching their weapons. Damedran sat in the sternsheets scowling. Randart turned his way, gave him a sharp flick of the hand in command, and his nephew rose, wincing. He was probably sore, but mere physical discomfort did not matter in command. He was also tired, but so were they all.

  The important thing was, if Jehan turned out to be a traitor, it had to be Damedran to defeat him.

  Randart climbed up, followed by Damedran, whose breath wheezed with his effort. The war commander stepped over the rail just as the idiot emerged from the main cabin, his clothes awry, his arm around a petite red-haired woman whose clothes were also awry.

  Disgust wrung Randarts innards, followed by anger. He clamped down on a reminder of the orders he’d given this brainless fool not two watches ago. But then one couldn’t order a prince. Everyone here knew it.

  He must not misstep. He could not be in the wrong in the eyes of the men. The cost was not lives. All except Damedran were expendable. The cost was the kingdom.

  “Commander Randart?” the idiot said with his usual vagueness. “Did you want a fan, too?”

  Randart fought against the headache he had refused to acknowledge. The pang increased to a hammer. “Fan?” he repeated, striving to keep his voice even. “What are you blather—that is, I fear I do not understand. Honor me with an explanation, your highness?”

  Prince Jehan waved a hand around, then indicated the woman at his side. “Artist, paints fans. Needed one, it’s so hot. Decided to buy one for my stepmother. Aren’t we going back to Vadnais now that the games are done? I want to take a present to Queen Ananda.”

  There was Randart’s cue. “I am going to sea. The king wanted you to stay put. Remember, your highness? I did tell you the king’s wishes. Directly after the games.”

  “Of course. I remember. But we’re in the harbor. Not going anywhere. I thought I might pick out a nice fan, return to shore on the morning tide. Be ready for my father’s summons. Have a gift for Queen Ananda. Everything in order.”

  It actually indicated a thought process.

  Randart turned his head, summoned his personal aide with a glance, and flicked his gaze fore and aft. The man sketched a salute, beckoned to his handpicked searchers, and they began strolling the length of the yacht, not quite making their search obvious.

  Jehan lifted a hand. “Come! Have a drink. Hungry?”

  Randart remembered that he had not eaten since morning. And the Fool, for all his lack of brains, did supposedly have good taste in f
ood, wine, and comforts. “Yes. As it happens, I am. Damedran?” He turned to his nephew.

  Damedran stood there on the deck glowering. He ached from skull to heels. His gut was indeed empty because why? Because by the time he’d limped his way into the mess hall after the day’s disaster otherwise known as the games, there’d been the summons to come up to the command tower and repeat everything the seniors had said about Prince Jehan’s attempted arrest of the cutpurse the day before.

  He hadn’t remembered anything but the barest fact that it had happened, and so, by the time they’d sent someone to fetch Ban—being the most serious and trustworthy of the seniors in his group—and by the time he’d stood by while his uncle and father had asked Ban about a million stupid questions about what he’d seen (and from above! Why not ask people who’d actually been there?) it was already late. Then came the astonishing news that Wolfie, Red, and the other two were all in the lazaretto. Wolfie, the strongest boy in the entire academy, had a broken leg. Given to him when he’d tried to jump a nine-year-old.

  Damedran had been trying to reconcile those broken bones with his own experience when he became aware of his uncle ranting on about the fact that Prince Jehan was missing, as was the royal boat from the dock.

  Come on, his uncle had said. If it’s necessary to act, you are going to need to be there.

  Well, here they were. So what kind of “act” was expected of someone who probably couldn’t even grip a sword? Damedran tried to flex his stiff hands.

  For all his uncle complained about the sheep’s stupidity, Damedran had discovered during a private challenge a couple of years ago that the training the idiot had gotten out west was very effective even for idiots. Damedran knew he wasn’t going to win any duel, no matter what his uncle wanted. He could barely walk.