The Fox
And saw the corresponding tightening of desire all through his body. Her threat was a horrible mistake, his reaction made that clear. And it was too late to take it back. She saw her error now, how her steadfast denial had made her more desirable. His hunt had made her into a prize he would do anything to win. So either she dishonored the Algara-Vayirs by obligating them to fight over her, or she dishonored herself by surrender.
She could not fix her error, but at least she could save lives. She shifted her gaze: surrender.
He took hold of her shoulders, and she forced herself to stand unmoving under his touch, while the sweetness of desire, the anticipation of fulfillment rushed through him. “Agreed? Say it.”
She clenched her fists at her sides. “Yes.”
While Joret wept silent tears of fury in her bedroll and Carleas sat beside her stroking her head in wordless sympathy, far to the south, Jeje sa Jeje reduced sail on Vixen as they slid into Parayid Harbor. As Mutt and Viac brought the scout craft to, Jeje grimaced at the destruction that was plain even under starlight.
She docked where the capital ships used to, back when trade was permitted, then helped Mutt secure the cable fore as Viac and Barend secured aft. The harbor was nearly empty, a strange sight.
Torches bobbed at the far end of the dock. A crowd coming as fast as they could.
“Well that looks bad,” Barend said, his breath clouding.
“If they’re pirates, we can lie,” Jeje said. “Tide’s about to turn—we can get away. Nothing around that can chase us.”
Tired as she was, she’d forgotten until now about the possibility that remnants of the Brotherhood might still hold various ports.
Someone in the approaching crowd shouted in a masthead bellow, “What news?”
Not a lynch mob, then, or pirates. So, what news to tell them?
Jeje and Barend stood wearily, lost in memory. The unhurt Fisher brother sat by Vixen’s tiller, tired and despondent.
They’d spent a long, tense day in the lee of Cocodu, repairing her after sending up their wounded and getting in some supplies. Dasta had called down that Loos breathed, though he had not woken, had not even stirred. Then the scout ship from Silverdog arrived with Tau and half of his band, the rest either lost, wounded, or dead.
Nugget was in that second group, having launched herself into a fight armed only with a knife.
Tau says he saw her last curled in a ball, the side of her clothes dark with blood, but still alive. Despite hot fighting around them he’d handed her down into a pinnace with the other injured and told them to go ashore, Dasta reported, his voice cracking on the last word.
Inda sent Tau to the shore to find out where that pinnace had landed. He was turned away. Treated with distrust and fear by an armed mob guarding the beach. To them, Elgar the Fox and his crew were Marlovan pirates, scarcely less sinister than Marshig the Murderer: what would they do in their triumph, and who could stop them?
And so Tau had thrown to the beach the gold Inda had sent and begged that it be used to take care of the wounded; then he’d rowed back to sea, watched from the shoreline by tight-faced villagers gripping weapons.
The rest of the day had been even more bleak as they tried to find out who lived, who died, who was badly hurt. Watching Inda try to comfort the sobbing Pilvig, and poor Mutt, hunched into a knotted ball of grief as he summoned together the remains of the fleet, lit a bonfire for their dead—a bonfire that glowed to life from ship to ship, all except the Chwahir.
Finally, as the tide shifted, the remaining Chwahir ships drew together, diminished crews already busy repairing the terrible damage, as they risked the Narrows to sail back to their homeland. Jeje’s eyes stung when she remembered her last glimpse of Thog and Uslar at the stern of the flagship, standing there so still.
“Did you see the battle?”
The crowd had reached them without either realizing it. Jeje’s neck twinged as she straightened up, eyes blurry and body aching with exhaustion.
“What happened? Who won, the red sails?”
Iascan! After all this time, to hear Iascan again spoken by someone besides themselves! Barend and Jeje turned to each other for clues, each overwhelmed with emotional reaction as the crowd closed the distance, their faces curious, intent, wary—but not threatening.
“We won.” Jeje’s voice cracked. “Red sails lost.”
“Elgar the Fox, it was Elgar the Fox?” someone cried.
“Yes—”
“Did he duel Marshig?”
“What happened?”
“How many did ye sink?”
“Did the red sails get any of you?”
Pressed on all sides, she began to talk about the battle, warming to the subject when she saw the eagerness, the delight, even admiration in the surrounding torchlit eyes. Admiration! From Iascans! She permitted herself to be swept along, her tired body briefly refreshed by the tide of goodwill. Viac and Mutt stayed behind, each too exhausted, too grief-stricken even for bragging—or eating. All they craved was the oblivion of sleep.
The Parayid Harbor folk took Jeje to one of the few standing inns, plying her with food and drink as the growing crowd competed against each other demanding battle details and trying to impress upon her how terrible it had been there. Burnings, stealing, no trade, sudden attacks, and the Marlovan king’s men always at least a week away—evil Marlovans—no, at least they did send warriors as promised, but just to the harbors, angering the fisher folk along the shores—“Is Elgar the Fox really a Marlovan?”
She vaguely noticed Barend stiffening at the sight of a tall man on the periphery, an ordinary man with short, pale hair and tradesman clothing.
Jeje shrugged them away. She was trying to explain that Elgar the Fox was not a real pirate—though, yes, a Marlovan—when Barend drifted back a step or two out of her sight, then wove through the crowd to confront his cousin’s man. “Vedrid. Why are you here, and dressed civ? If the Sierlaef sent you—”
Vedrid looked both ways, then said in Marlovan, “I am Evred-Varlaef’s man now. And I came south in a fishing smack when I heard of the impending battle. You were there?”
Astonishment silenced Barend. He opened his hand. Vedrid paused, uncertain. Then: “Is Indevan-Laef with you?” He indicated the sea.
“Laef?”
“His brother is dead and he is now the heir.”
“Oh.” Barend did not know what to make of that, so he just went on. “Yes. That is, he’s with the fleet, trying to— well, never mind that. Why?” Barend’s voice hardened with threat.
“Because Evred-Varlaef sent me to locate him,” Vedrid said. “It is his command that I find him. Take him to Evred-Varlaef, who will himself bring him back to the king.”
“Inda is on his way north,” Barend said in a low voice. “You can’t possibly catch him—no one around here will dare set sail, not after what happened. What we saw. Inda is going north to Lindeth Harbor to refit, and then back out to sea.”
Vedrid hesitated. When last he’d seen Barend Montrei-Vayir, he’d been a skinny little rat of a boy watching the summer academy games from the castle windows and covering expensive paper with drawings of horses. Now he was tall, thin, and hard as a beech, his bony triangular face scarred above one eye and along his jaw, his hair tied in a sailor’s queue. He wore pirate gold at his ear—a bloodred ruby dangling from it—and his clothing under his open coat was covered by the loose, embroidered, and exotic long vest of the east, only he bore at least as many weapons as a warrior of the plains riding to battle. “Do you go northeast?” Vedrid asked.
“Yes. But not to the royal city. I ride on a matter of honor to Tenthen, castle of the Algara-Vayirs,” Barend said formally, and Vedrid saw starlight flicker in an emerald on Barend’s gloved left hand: a silver signet ring. A prince’s ring.
Shock, instantly suppressed. Vedrid said, “I’ll have to ride up the coast after Indevan-Laef, then, and try to catch him at Lindeth. Will you ride with me until our roads part? I can a
rrange mounts for us both. We had better exchange news, I believe, Barend-Dal.”
Barend agreed, and so Vedrid led the way to one of the hastily built travel houses where he had left his gear.
He was not at all a stupid man, but he was so straightforward he was unaware of Nallan watching from an adjacent building, shielded from view.
Nallan had been shadowing Vedrid for two days, ever since he saw the Runner he’d always hated arrive in one of those rickety old boats that had scudded south in the wake of the pirate fleet. He recognized Vedrid instantly despite the short hair and civilian dress. Vedrid, supposedly dead on the road to the Marlo-Vayirs! He’d seen the bloody coat himself. And what was the truth behind that?
Something treasonous—with Vedrid at the center.
Nallan had spent the two days wavering between planning to kill Vedrid and hoping he could be caught in some capital crime, which would lead to his bleeding his cursed life out at the flogging post, Nallan rejoicing in every lash.
He cursed under his breath when a passing torch in the hands of a young girl briefly lit their faces: Vedrid was not consorting with pirates or Venn—he had found the long-missing Barend Montrei-Vayir.
Nallan could not hear their talk—the low voices of conspiracy—but in a sense it didn’t matter. He could not raise a hand against Vedrid now, not with Barend-Dal at his side. So he was left perforce with his original orders. He would ascertain the true name of this Elgar the Fox, and then he would carry that plus the news of Vedrid’s (and surely the Marlo-Vayirs’) betrayal back to the Sierlaef, who would decide what to do.
A week later, Whipstick Noth stood beside Jarend-Adaluin in Tenthen’s hall, and watched the range of reactions from Inda’s family and liege people. Barend stood beside Whipstick, also watching.
The old prince held up the Algara-Vayir war banner, tattered and ancient and sun-faded as it was, saying, “In one week’s time we shall ride to the royal city, and there I shall demand the blood price of Anderle-Harskialdna Montrei-Vayir, to be given in justice or taken in justice.”
Silence, except for the scraping of feet. Some, mostly the old folks, were angry; the tall, brawny cousin (what was his name? Branid?) looked sullen; everyone else looked somewhere between stunned and fearful.
Jarend-Adaluin held up the ring and the map. “Here is my proof of Anderle Montrei-Vayir’s treachery against us.”
Cousin Branid kept licking his lips and watching the faces around him, uncertain how to respond, wondering if he would be left in charge or if he should ride with the warriors. He wanted both, badly. Maybe he should challenge that Montrei-Vayir rat-face to a duel? He was such a skinny runt. If he slayed the rat-face, maybe people would follow him at last.
“We will make ready, and in a week we will gather here to ride to war.” The Adaluin thrust the banner into a holder in front of his judgment seat, where it would stay until he picked it up for the ride. Then he walked out, one gnarled old hand gripping his evidence, the other leaning on his wife.
With three exceptions the people in the hall were busy striving to be heard and listening to no one else, and so did not see the prince and princess sidestep into a short chamber where the Adaluin sank wearily into a chair, staring beyond the walls as he murmured, “I will have justice for the dead.”
Whipstick was the first exception. He stationed himself outside the door to the little chamber, guaranteeing them privacy as he winced inwardly. I’m afraid you will not last out the journey, my poor liege. He hated to remember how Jarend had wept soundlessly when Barend Montrei-Vayir stuttered and stumbled through his news after his arrival. After which the Adaluin sat up straight, his lined, weatherworn face reddening with hope as he said, “Inda is coming home?”
It was right after Barend replied, “No. He sailed for the north,” that the Adaluin seemed to age past his nearly eighty years as he whispered, “My sons are gone.” And then, after they gave him something to drink, even lower, over and over, “My Joret, my Joret”—his long-dead beloved first wife, aunt to the Joret he’d brought up to marry his son.
It was Fareas-Iofre, Whipstick knew, who had gently roused him, reminding him that only at his hands could there be justice. The word appeared to have infused him with life again—but for how long?
Barend Montrei-Vayir was the second exception. He steered between the shouted questions from Algara-Vayirs he did not know, ducked into the hallway where he’d spotted Whipstick, and joined him. “Well, that’s done.” And, when Whipstick made a sign of assent, Barend added wryly, “Now I don’t know what my part is: to go home and fight for my father, or against him. The king will have to decide.”
Whipstick shook his head, grimacing in sympathy.
Cousin Branid was the third exception. He lurked behind a knot of arguing relatives (his grandmother was the loudest) as he noted all the knife hilts in the rat-face’s clothing, the scars, the stance. The way he stood reminded him of Tanrid, like he was ready for a fight. Maybe it was strut—like the pirate clothes. Well, if this rat-face Barend Montrei-Vayir offered any insult, that’s when he’d challenge him to a duel. That was the plan. If he dishonored the Algara-Vayirs in any way. Otherwise, ignore him. That’s the way to treat a strutting pirate.
Barend never even noticed him.
He left Whipstick on guard and wandered the length of the hall where Inda had lived as a boy. He was wondering how he was going to tell Inda that his brother was dead, and if he should describe how his mother, after hearing about the battle, had said only, “Is Inda coming home?” And when Barend had to tell her that he was sailing for Lindeth and then the Ghost Isles, she had not responded, just looked as if someone had struck her.
A little later Whipstick met with Tdor and Fareas-Iofre, who said, “I don’t know what will happen, but this I do know: Hadand and Ndara have to be told the news. First that Barend is indeed alive. Second that the Adaluin is coming for blood. They can warn the king and the Harskialdna if they feel it’s right. Chelis, you shall ride now, and go like the wind.”
Tdor said, “As for me, I think I’d better ride for Darchelde with the news that Savarend is alive. We can’t write it in a letter, we don’t have any codes to say it right. It’s better spoken.” She paused.
Fareas-Iofre murmured agreement, knowing that toilsome as the journey would be for Tdor, news of a son’s being alive was too priceless a gift not to give to another mother.
Tdor added, “I can also warn Joret. She might want to come home.”
Everyone knows the Sierlaef is going to come here looking for Joret—or trouble, Whipstick thought. We’ll need allies . But there was no time to send anyone to Fera-Vayir Harbor to ask his father, who was in command of the defense there, for advice. He had to act on his own, and now. So he ordered his personal Runner—his cousin Flatfoot Noth—to ride north to Cherry-Stripe Marlo-Vayir, who would know where Evred was and could be trusted to send someone to report to him.
Fareas-Iofre stood at her window watching Tdor’s departure, but her mind ranged far ahead as she pondered. In the next room her husband lay on his bed, falling by consent under the mind-numbing peace of sleep-weed. A whole night of reawakened grief and old rage had left him exhausted, barely able to walk.
She remembered how Barend Montrei-Vayir had stumbled and stuttered to answer her question “Is Inda coming home?” How like his mother Ndara he was, not just in looks—he had taken after the Cassad side, not the Montrei-Vayir—but his immediate and obvious wish to make things easier, even for an older woman he did not know.
But Barend’s well-intentioned, fumbling words about honor and the mysterious Ramis’ equally mysterious demands and the needs of ship repair had flowed past her. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe them, she did—insofar as Barend obviously believed them.
No, to her Inda’s actions were a kind of communication, cast in a code perhaps only mothers could decipher. He had been sent away alone, except for a guard he probably never knew about—a kindness from the king—and had returned y
ears later at the head of a fleet to fight the pirates who had been tormenting his homeland.
So Inda sails north to Lindeth, Fareas thought, struggling against sorrow. She must not grieve. She’d raised her son to one day bring knowledge and enlightenment to his father’s principality, but events had overrun her benign plans. Yet some lingering sense of the great works she had given him to read must have remained, because she perceived honor shining behind his actions, like the moon’s silhouette crowned by fire when it crossed the sun.
Of course he had honor. Not just the false sense that was so often in the mouths of those who meant merely precedence, or preference, or vanity, or demands. It was true honor, which was just another word for trust.
He will be back, she thought. I will believe he will be back when he perceives a need greater than whatever order they gave to keep him away.
Chapter Twenty-five
WHAT later became known as the Conspiracy of Hesea Spring was really a latticework of accidental encounters and impulsive decisions.
A great winter storm smashed down a glittering ice shroud over the plains, day after blinding day, as messengers crossed in all directions, unseen under the gray-white sky.
Flatfoot Noth reached the Marlo-Vayirs’ castle first to discover that the Marlo-Vayirs were not yet back from Convocation. Unfortunately Cherry-Stripe, though future Randael and thus traditionally left at home, had gone with the Jarl of Marlo-Vayir and Buck.
Disappointed but not surprised that his dreary trip was to be prolonged, Flatfoot downed a meal, then set out again. He followed the king’s road toward the oldest known Marlovan town, Hesea Spring, where three great roads met: the east-west, north-south, and the older Iascan road that cut from the royal city northwest to Ala Larkadhe through the plains. When the snows were bad, the old granite markers along these roads were about all the guidance you would get.
The great stone posting house at Hesea Spring was nearly as large as a castle, but single storied except over the stable, the older part of the house built in the days when Marlovans sat on mats and ate with knives off shallow wooden dishes. The most common meeting place for travelers in winter, it was built around a hot spring: this year, in fact, the Marlo-Vayir brothers had appointed it the place to meet Cama Tya-Vayir after his stay with the Yvana-Vayirs for Hawkeye’s wedding. (Cama was also a future Randael, but he was home as seldom as possible—and no one who knew his brother Horsebutt, or his equally horrible future wife Starand, questioned why.)