Woof turned to the admiral, who stepped outside, waved in release to the two below, then returned. Woof ran down the stairs. The last thing he heard was Dhalshev saying, “Now, tell me about everyone I know. Who still lives?”
At the bottom of the steps, the two lieutenants waited for Woof, after having watched in fascination what looked like a lot of pirates dancing, singing, carousing.
“What goes, Woofie?” one asked.
“They’re settling in to reminisce.”
“Augh, if you get Mehayan started, he’ll be at it all night. You know what he’s like when he invites us to supper in the cabin.”
“And a lesson at the end of every boring story!” the second one added around his friend’s shoulder.
“Come on,” Woof said, not without sympathy; though he’d only been invited once to dine at the admiral’s table during their two weeks of travel, once had been enough. “I’ll introduce you around.”
The three started off, all still relieved at the unexpected outcome of a meeting they had dreaded for years. Woof clattered down the steps, thinking about the days he’d stood up there on the tower, remembering how inseparable they’d been as boys first sent to sea. How at first the three boys had ignored the revolution, believing it just a lot of adults ranting and raving until suddenly people started dying. Homes got taken away, people you knew went to prison. Or to execution.
Then Woof vanished with High Admiral Dhalshev after Lord Woltjen was put to death. The two middies had missed Woof, but what could they do, they’d asked him when they met up again. We figured we’d work hard and keep to duty. But we always wondered what happened to you, Woofie.
Yes said the other. We dreaded finding you on board some ship we had orders to stop and search for traitors.
Woof had retorted, Why d’you think I refused to sail all those years? I never wanted to find either of you at the other end of a sword.
Now the two stood where they had never imagined setting foot. They were actually in that den of alluring pirate iniquity, Freeport Harbor. The harbor was astonishingly old-fashioned, with the tall windows and curlicues of their great-grandparents’ day, but the pirates all looked like real pirates. Everywhere people wore an armory of weapons as they drank, sang bawdy songs, danced.
“Is Inda the Fox here?” one whispered, elbowing Woof.
“No. Other side of the continent. Fox is the one in black you saw at the Octagon.”
One lieutenant whistled, and the other said, “That fellow looked tough enough to chew steel.”
Woof wasn’t listening. “There’s my sister!” he exclaimed.
He pointed at a tall, slim girl dancing on a tabletop. She had Woof’s narrow jaw, a snub nose, a cloud of sun-lightened hair flying around. She wore tight deck trousers and something billowy, with a swirling fringed shawl worn tied baldric-style over her shoulder and at her trim waist.
The two lieutenants were bewitched by her laugh, which was nothing like the courtly, well-bred titter they were used to at home. They were drawn by her grace, the way she danced on her toes all airy and free, unlike any of the orderly court dances.
“Nugget?” Woof called. “Nugget!”
The girl stopped, her eyes going wide. “Woof?”
She leaped over the heads of her circle of friends, landed with a quick step, and flung herself into Woof’s arms. When they fell apart, breathless with laughter, she wiped her eyes with a slim, calloused palm and fingers. The dazzled lieutenants realized she didn’t have a second hand.
“Where did you come from?” She took in the two in uniform, and her eyes widened even more. Then she whirled around and took in the ghostly outline of the warship at the dock. “Trouble?” Her expression changed fast.
“No. Truce.”
Jeje had been sitting with Khajruat Swift, daughter of one-legged Captain Swift. Jeje was almost unfamiliar in that handsome silk robe—and hadn’t she taken teasing over possessing such a thing! She and Khajruat Swift exchanged glances, and each came up to one of the lieutenants, slid an arm through one of theirs, and said a variation of, “Come on and meet the rest of the crew. And tell us all about what’s going on in the outside world.”
Woof and Nugget were left alone, except for Mutt standing just within earshot, on the other side of some roistering forecastlemen. Woof said, “We can have our name back. Our land. You can be Lady Waki Woltjen again.”
Mutt turned away, bitterly thinking, Lady Waki. What would a Lady Waki ever want with a fellow named Mutt who didn’t learn how to read until he was old enough to grow a beard?
“How fun!” Nugget bounced on her toes in the old way, then paused, head tipped. “What happens to whoever’s got Dad’s land now?”
“No one lives at our house. Our land got awarded to this cousin for turning Dad in.”
“Is he evil?”
Woof rubbed his jaw. “I’d say not so much evil as greedy. He had a hand in Dad’s death, and he sure tried to get me killed, but then, as the king pointed out in my first interview, to him, I’m a traitor and shouldn’t be able to come back after being a pirate and take over land he’s been governing.”
Nugget crossed her arms. “Want a wager? They’ll want me to marry this cousin, or his son. Make it all family again.”
“Actually, they mentioned his daughter—the heir—for me. But all that can wait. It all depends on Dhalshev going back. Then he has to win against the Venn.”
“The Venn are tough,” she said, her smile vanishing. “We fought some of ’em in the strait. Remember Dasta? Nearly died. We lost a lot, Woof. More than we did at The Narrows, I think.” She eyed her brother. “Do you want to go back to Khanerenth, marry this cousin, and be a land lord?”
He sighed. “Tell you true? Not sure. I never thought about it before, but so much of how you have to live with people is, oh, what you think they say when you’re out of the room. How it’s different than what they say to you when you’re in it.”
Nugget’s face lifted. “Oh, yes. I always wanted to be famous,” she admitted. “I longed to be the most interesting girl in the room.” When Woof snorted, she grinned ruefully, relieved to be able to talk true. “When I was little, everybody here made me a pet. The rules for everybody else weren’t for me. I guess I thought that the rules in the world would not be for me either, that I’d be the world’s pet. Ended the day that pirate thought I was just another brat to kill. In a court kind of life, don’t they lie a lot?” she asked. “People acting like Tau. Remember him? He was so handsome, but nobody ever knew what he really thought.”
“That’s exactly it.” Woof looked around at the place he’d loved most, now including the people he loved most. “Heh. The fellows seem to be having a good time, so let’s sit down somewhere and you tell me about the pirate and everything else.”
Upstairs in the Octagon, the admiral, the envoy, and Dhalshev finished the reminiscences. The envoy was used to old fellows maundering about the past while waiting for others to come to the point, but he sensed it was not his place to call them to business. The two admirals were uneasy, the one knowing just how much trouble there would be back home if the king’s generosity were turned down, the other knowing he’d been asked for more than he could give.
Mehayan finally rose, said he’d return on the morrow, and left Dhalshev to peruse his royal invitation.
As soon as their footsteps had died away, Dhalshev turned to Fox, who had sat just outside the circle, never offering a word.
“Well? Sounds to me like desperation,” Dhalshev said, “if they want me, after twenty years out of command. What do you make of their news?”
“How reliable is this man?”
“Mehayan used to be a stickler for precision. Probably why he’s at the top now. Wasn’t for his flair for action. I’d say the news is pretty much whatever the king has, less their two weeks’ sailing to us.”
“A year to prepare.” Fox drummed his fingers soundlessly on the chair arm. “Then the Venn attack Bren, which is central to sea trade for us. A
nd on the other side Nelsaiam. Then, I suppose, a run down the strait. Secure it before winter. And the next year? This coast, right here.” He pointed in the direction of Khanerenth.
“What about Nelsaiam? I don’t know any more about it now than I did as admiral. I was never actually in the strait, except the very east end of the battle off Chwahirsland in ’03.” Dhalshev tipped his head toward the back wall, where he kept the chart of the strait. “Most of the northern side of the strait is still empty, as you can see. Inda promised me through Mutt that he would share what he learned, but that was before he vanished into the west.”
“Inda and I did some poking around,” Fox admitted. “But we didn’t chart much beyond a few inlets on uninhabited shores. We kept away from settlements, though we did a lot of cross-country observation.”
“What can you tell me?” Dhalshev asked neutrally. “You know Drael under Venn control has been hostile to us on the Sartoran side for time out of mind.”
“Still is, Inda and I discovered. Nelsaiam is a huge bay. Think of it in shape as a fish-mouth five times the size of Llyenthur. Filled with reefs, treacherous islands, rocks just below water level. As you probably know, its people are long-ago descendants of the Venn. They were given self governance generations ago. That bay is useless for sea trade—and Inda and I learned that the people there mostly trade over land, inside of Drael. My guess is, if the Venn want them back, it’s because they want wood. If Nelsaiam fights, they’ll be formidable.”
“Will they ally with us, do you think?”
“No idea. What do you think will comprise your ‘us’? I notice your admiral made no mention of the Chwahir, or Sarendan, for that matter, in his proposal of a grand alliance.”
“Of course not. Chwahirsland has never acknowledged the new king. And you know what the result has been.”
Fox grinned. Khanerenth’s revolution had caused many on both sides to turn to brigandage on the seas, and the coast of Chwahirsland had been a favorite target. He made a dismissive gesture. “As for the Venn, it surprises me they’d split their force. But then this entire venture surprises me.”
“What troubles me is those thousand ships Mehayan said the Venn have. Even if they took damage in the typhoon, and then Venn have trouble getting enough wood to replace their masts and rebuild their hulls, a navy that size? Nobody can stop them. Nobody.” Dhalshev stared down at his gnarled hands. He was closer to seventy than sixty, he knew he could not lead a fleet against even half the Venn. Was there such a dearth of commanders? No, that was not the question. Was there such a dearth of commanders that allies would accept?
He looked up. “What is Inda doing these days? Has he ever thought about going back to sea?”
Fox leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “Don’t think I can run a battle?”
Dhalshev was too deeply disturbed to hear Fox’s sarcasm. “None of us can, not the size of a fleet to face all the Venn in the world. I don’t see how anyone runs a battle that large, once you set it up. How could anyone possibly keep a thousand ships in sight?”
Fox lifted his chin. So my instinct to stay was right. But why didn’t I hear the news from you Inda first? “They have to believe someone can command, is that it?” His chair crashed forward. “Maybe it’s time to write to Inda again. Who knows? This time he might actually answer.”
Chapter Eight
THE day after Midsummer, while the academy boys were out practicing for the Summer Games, Inda walked over to the stable with Gand, Olin, and half a dozen others, to be there when one of the mares foaled. He exchanged smiles of satisfaction with Olin and Lennad. They had four more foals due this week, but none from Clover’s line, so far unmixed, all from the Nelkereth Plains to the east. The new one—they’d already picked her name, Wisp, for the puffball flowers that grew on the plains and blew apart in the wind—was handsome, long-legged, with intelligent eyes.
Wisp had just given voice to the distinctive chuckle of a newborn foal, a sound that made them all smile, when one of the castle girls appeared, panting. “Harskialdna-Dal.” She waved her hands. “You’re to come. The queen’s giving birth.”
Inda leaped over the foal struggling to her feet and took off for the residence.
In the queen’s rooms, Runners cleaned everything up, and Signi dressed the baby herself, as Noren and Hadand’s other personal Runners had no experience with babies. They watched, frightened and entranced, as Signi gently rubbed and patted the baby clean and dry, pulled on the waiting nightgown, and laid the babe in the lap of his mother, a towel beneath him. He would get his first diaper when the cord dropped off.
Now everything was ready for visitors.
Evred entered with quiet step as soon as Tesar opened the door. His son lay on Hadand’s lap. He bent to kiss Hadand, and then just touched his lips to the thin, veined skin over the babe’s fragile skull. “How are you?” he asked Hadand.
“Tired. Sore. But fine.” She smiled, still euphoric: even the soreness was bearable now, though the healer had warned her that that wouldn’t last and not to get up too fast.
She’d sent Evred a Runner just before dawn, and though he’d offered to be there if she wished, she’d chosen to keep only women at hand.
Hadand watched the new Sierlaef wriggle, his small mouth working, dark blue eyes looking about vaguely as they tried to find Mother’s face. Evred moved behind Hadand to the window, where he stood, hands behind his back, as he struggled with equal parts joy and apprehension.
The women forgot his presence, so absorbed were they. Hadand said to Tdor, “I so wanted him to be Tanrid. Evred said traditions and expectations being what they are, he’s got to be Hastred.”
“Hastred-Sierlaef,” Tdor said experimentally. She would have said more, but a surge of nausea dried her mouth.
“If we have a second boy, he can be either Tanrid or Tlennen.” Hadand turned her gaze back to her baby. “How odd, to look at his face, and see Tanrid in the shape of his forehead, but Evred in the shape of his chin.” And then, in a rush of words, “When we made our treaties, we always talked about a baby. Now, he’s this baby. He’s a person. With eyebrows like an uncle he’ll never meet. Will this black hair turn red? What will his life be like in the nursery? Will he be friends with his future wife? While he was inside I thought and thought. One thing I promised myself: If I have a girl, there’s nothing I can do about her being promised to Cama and Starand’s boy, but I’m going to raise her first. She can see the boy when he comes to the academy. But Starand is not going to get her claws on my daughter until she’s old enough to learn some defenses.”
Tdor shivered, overwhelmed by the strangeness of change, and love, and wonder. And the slow burn of nausea that had been steadily increasing for several days.
Even the nausea was forgotten when she imagined a daughter out of her own body going to Shendan at Darchelde, an idea once so alien.
“I have a question,” Signi said.
She so seldom spoke that Hadand and Tdor said instantly—their words colliding—“Ask!”
“Is Hastred not the same name as Fnor and Buck’s baby? Will that not be confusing if they are contemporaries in your training school?”
Hadand chuckled. “Likely they’ll lose their given names by the time they’re sheared. Fnor says already they’re calling their boy Hot Rock, though it might not last the year. If my boy doesn’t end up being ‘the Sierlaef’ like his uncle was, he might be Hasta, or he might end up with something like Wolfhound.”
Signi said, “Ah! I had forgotten these other names such as Noddy, and Rat. They did not seem to mind them.”
Tdor’s stomach ceased bubbling. She leaned forward and stroked a finger gently over the baby’s soft black fuzz. “Here’s what the academy means. The spring before you came, Inda was riding around up north all winter. He almost killed himself riding home from Olara, just so he would not miss the first day of the academy, or the second day’s shearing—when they cut the hair off the new boys.”
Signi
looked puzzled. Hadand sent her a brief smile, then went on contemplating the singular and exquisite beauty of her newborn son, already smarter and more handsome than any baby ever born.
“Let me try again.” Tdor’s nausea had definitely eased. She grinned. “If I have a son, I will pick his name very carefully, because names are important to families and alliances. Probably it will be Jarend, same as Inda’s father, since Inda’s now the oldest son. He might get a nickname at home. They usually do. But most nicknames don’t get past the academy. Inda did, and so did Noddy. And Whipstick. But that’s because the academy accepted those names. If they don’t—if they give the boy a new one—that’s what he’ll be known as for the rest of his life, even if he lives another sixty years beyond his horsetail days.”
“You changed my name from Sponge,” Evred said.
Hadand smiled up at him. “True. But I am convinced it only took because you were a prince.”
Tdor thought about the pleasure that stained Evred’s face when Inda or Cama or Cherry-Stripe slipped and called him Sponge, and wondered if she dared to speak, then the door banged open, and Inda stumbled inside, breathing hard. His eyes widened when he saw the baby lying there in Hadand’s lap. He pointed. “Boy?”
“Want to make sure?” Tdor asked, moving to lift the blanket, and all the women laughed at him as he blushed to the hairline.
“Well, they all look alike at that age,” he protested.
“Don’t tell me you never saw one at home,” Tdor asked, laughing.
At home. Evred felt a spurt of annoyance as Inda said, “Who cares about babies when you’re eight or ten? They don’t do anything but shit and spit.”
Evred’s irritation extended to Inda not noticing that “at home,” then snapped inward by habitual effort of will. “He’s got black hair!” Inda exclaimed, and the women found that funny.
No one was aware of Signi, who slipped out of the room without anyone noticing.
It took no skill for her to leave. She was not truly a part of their lives, though they accepted her presence, even the shuttered young king, Evred. Inda treated her as he always had, his face lifting in welcome when he saw her. She had even found a measure of peace in telling him what had happened to her after she felt question in his touch, question that reached his face and voice. He had always been empathetic. That quality had first drawn her to him.