The Fox

  “Just as well you and I are leaving then, isn’t it?” he retorted, light enough, as he hitched his gear back over his shoulder. A surprisingly thin bag, considering how many fabulous clothes she’d seen him in over recent months.

  They dodged around an oblivious vendor singing out about her berry tarts. Jeje almost collided with a couple of flushed sailors smelling of ale who rolled toward the Fleet House; Tau’s long steps lengthened and she scrambled after him. “Wait up.”

  He slowed. “Sorry.”

  She eyed him. He had on his golden coin smile, benign but about as human as metal. He was shutting out some emotion. She wished she had her blades in hand, and he his—they’d always talked more freely up there on the roof, while throwing one another around. “What’s the matter? Don’t like the idea of being a character in a play?” She grinned. “I think I’d like that.”

  “Would you really like to see some fatuous semblance of yourself, a distortion of your worst traits, because those are what people inevitably remember? Or think the most entertaining? ” he said over his shoulder, his voice, usually so mellow, almost sharp.

  Jeje exclaimed, “You do miss her!”

  “I do not.”

  He sidestepped swiftly as a pony cart trotted by, too fast for the crowded street. The aroma of hot pies wafted behind—a delivery. Jeje toiled behind him, then said, “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to pry.” And at a quick, inscrutable glance from him, she let out an exasperated breath and exclaimed, “Is everyone else ugly to you, is that it? You gorgeous people are on another plane, like a mountain, and all the rest of us are bugs who cannot look so high?”

  Tau’s angry flush made her regret the words, pent-up as they’d been. Pent-up, but still taking her by surprise.

  And he saw her bemusement, followed by regret, then embarrassment. Her smooth brown cheeks reddened, the long dimples that usually only deepened when she flashed her sudden wide and impish grin tightened in a wince.

  “Sorry,” she said again, in a reflective voice. “I don’t know where that came from. Usually I don’t think half a heartbeat about looks.” She dusted her summer tunic with its worn and serviceable sash. “As is obvious.”

  The turnoff down to the harbor was ten steps away, and not far beyond waited Jeje’s beloved Vixen to take them away from here, and back to Inda and the fleet. But Tau stopped, right there in the middle of the street—discommoding approaching traffic.

  She stopped as well, observing how people whose paths they’d just blocked looked into his face and then away, or mumbled something, or smiled that sheepish smile that seems reserved for extraordinary beauty. Jeje flushed again as she looked up uncertainly.

  Tau had not spoken because he’d been watching her, reading her expression as easily as he read a play. Her straight black brows quirked doubtfully, and he intuited she was wondering if he looked at her and saw only ugliness.

  So how to explain this curious ache behind his ribs? He said, “Jeje.” And then faltered, unsure how to go on. It was when the pucker of doubt altered into the lowered eyes of hurt that he forced himself to speak, trying for an easy tone. “There is a piece of gossip from Colend about King Lael Lirendi. They say that as soon as he inherited his throne he invited the most beautiful women in court to stay over the winter, after the season. And then, when spring came around, everyone came back and discovered that he was bored.”

  Jeje snorted. “Kings—”

  “Kings nothing. Maybe that was the wrong example. When I look in the mirror I see only me. When I look at Comet, I can appreciate the artfulness of her style, the grace of her movements, but I don’t want to possess them any more than you want to possess a chair you think well-carved. There is more to beauty than the appearance of it.”

  And you are beautiful, he thought, taking himself by surprise, but he did not say it. How sickening it would be to see her flush and become self-conscious, to misunderstand, worst of all to take more meaning than he meant.

  Jeje snorted. Tau was giving her the same lesson her grandmother had so long ago when she was small. But she’d asked for it. So she turned the stupid subject off with a joke. “Glad you don’t look at the rest of us and see hop-toads and barnacles. Well, Inda should be pleased with us. We did good work here. Everyone is promised a berth— the traders are glad to get ’em. And they’ll gain experience, and maybe win others to the cause, when the call comes.” She remembered Thess’ pride as they toasted one another at the Lower Deck. All the others. “Yes, my mighty force is ready.”

  “Then let us get on board the Vixen before they cast off without us,” he said, and they both left the subject—the true subject as well as the superficial one—behind them.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  "GOOD morning.”

  "Good morning.” Inda sat down on a stool to face his prisoner.

  She lay in his hammock, swinging with the ship’s rhythm. She looked, and was, uncomfortable with her hands tied behind her.

  “Do you feel any better?” he asked. “Is there anything we can get you?”

  “I can see out of my right eye again,” she replied.

  “Good.”

  She was surprised: he looked and sounded sincere.

  “If you want more lister-steep, Gillor said she has plenty.” They spoke in Sartoran. He liked her exotic accent.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Making slow progress,” he said. “The winds hauled ’round enough to send us south. We’ll sight land in a day or two. If your scout ships don’t spot us first.”

  “And then?” she asked, scrunching over to ease her arms, and wincing as her headache crashed.

  Inda grimaced. He loathed the situation, felt his own joints tweak in memory at the sight of her shifting and scrunching in a failed effort to find a more comfortable position.

  He lifted his hands. “And then we try to find out what we need to know.” He hesitated, then asked, watching her face, “There is a rumor that you cannot take kinthus.”

  “True.” She smiled, a crooked smile that brought a long dimple in one cheek. “I am told it is a painless death.”

  He sensed question underlying her words, one he couldn’t answer.

  During the past years he’d witnessed bloody interrogations and executions by Gaffer Walic. If Boruin and Majarian had lived, he would have presided over an execution, for he would not have set them adrift to perpetrate their evil again. He had been tortured himself, by someone who thought himself the hero and rescuer of a conquered kingdom. All those had been enemies in the personal sense as well as in the larger view. There was no hatred in this woman’s face, no rage, no cruelty, only a steady wariness, and, more subtly, the lines of private grief. People she knew had died in the mutiny aboard the Venn scout—whatever the cause—and more had died when he captured the scout.

  He needed the magic in her head, but he could not bring himself to do anything, or even threaten anything. Though she would not talk, he would not change his orders to Gillor and Fibi, who traded off as the dag’s jailers: “Keep her as comfortable as you can, but don’t let her loose or she’ll transfer.”

  He left and climbed up to sit on the yard, where the clean, cold winter wind smoothed away the tremors of memory.

  The next time he came back, he found her sitting up, looking scruffy and tired. Though Gillor and Fibi did their best, there wasn’t much of a chance to bathe with one’s hands tied.

  Fibi was feeding her; as he entered he interrupted a broken conversation in Dock Talk and Venn. They turned his way.

  He said to Fibi, “Did you ask her?”

  The Delf stuck out her lower lip. “Parole for why, says her.”

  The woman’s eyes were an unremarkable greenish-brown, the faint lines around them suggesting that she viewed the world through the sunlight of humor, though there was no trace of humor in her expression now. Just that steady, questioning gaze, the sad quirk at the corners of her mouth.

  “I do not betray my people,” the woman s
tated in Sartoran.

  “They are betraying us,” he retorted. “Or I wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here.”

  Her gaze lifted to the stern windows and beyond.

  Inda left.

  A week later, he came, as usual, early in the morning. This time they were alone.

  “We’re landing in a cove,” he said. “The Fleet Guild will want to talk to you.” She stared back at him, eyes steady, brows faintly puckered. Exasperation, anger, self-accusation forced words that he hadn’t meant to say: “That’s because the Brennish harbor is full of your damned soul-eating packs of invaders.”

  It was wrong, it wasn’t what he meant. He retreated to the weather deck, where cold wind failed to cool his hot face.

  Fibi appeared at his shoulder. “Talks the Iascan, that one.”

  Inda frowned down at her. “What?”

  “I say, her talks the Iascan from me. Wants to learn it.”

  A brief spark of laughter arced through Inda’s mind at the notion of the Venn woman speaking Delf-accented Iascan. But it was too soon gone. “Why?”

  Fibi grinned. “To you her will talk. When it is right. Her cried, at first. Pipple died in mutiny. I think—I think her maybe talk about that mutiny.” Fibi turned away.

  Inda caught her arm, though he knew that Delfs did not like being handled. The arm was thin, solid with stringy muscle; Fibi stilled but did not pull away. She gave him her blank blue gaze.

  “What has she said?”

  "Nossink to be used. Or I tell you.” Fibi frowned at his hand on her arm.

  Inda let her go. She swarmed up to the top, and moments later heard her raucous crow voice squawking at a pair of younger hands for slack lines.

  They eased into the appointed cove, whose single virtue was that the marshland beyond it was uninhabitable. This meeting place had been set by the Fleet Guild, via the Vixen, which followed the trysail in, carrying the Guild officials. Through gently drifting snow Inda could see them all on deck, looking stiff and ill-balanced against the rocking of the ship. He glanced impatiently past them, searching for Tau and Jeje, relaxing when he spotted golden hair gleaming in the pale sunlight and next to him, Jeje’s short, boyish form and narrow, brown face. Inda grinned, restraining the urge to wave to show how happy he was to see them.

  Fox anchored the Death, the captured Venn scout ship anchored on its lee, while Cocodu stayed farther out, its profile being far less distinctive; the schooners moved to take up their positions, standing off and on in the strait to watch for any Venn who might be searching for their missing scout.

  The Vixen drifted up on their lee, neat as a swan, Tau and Jeje crowding forward with the grinning Fisher brothers.

  When the bundled officials came aboard, Inda was surprised to see a new face, a tall, thin man with an acute gaze and serious demeanor. Old, grizzled Chim and tall, stout, unflappable Perran he already knew; he watched their closed, tight expressions when the new man spoke to them.

  Inda said, “The Venn scout is yours. I suggest you rebuild that prow and put it to work.”

  Chim said, “Prisoners on board?”

  “Prisoners? No. We put ’em over the side in the middle of the strait. Probably still making their way north. Only one we kept is the dag.”

  It had been Inda’s intention to turn the prisoner over to Chim, saying, in effect, “This is your war, too. I’m doing the fighting so you get the information.” But he said nothing as he followed the visitors into his cabin.

  Fibi had done her best by the prisoner, preserving her dignity as much as possible. Her hair had been sponged with water from the purified bucket and combed out and rebraided, and her robe brushed off and straightened to cover her toes.

  “She speaks Sartoran,” Inda said.

  Perran cleared her throat, her usual calm disturbed at the discovery of a small woman about her own age lying there with her hands tied behind her, and not some tall, muscular, ice-eyed, pale-haired Venn warrior. “What is your name?”

  The woman regarded them all, then said—to Inda—“I am Sea Dag Jazsha Signi Sofar.”

  She said the name carefully, at first with a tentative air; Inda heard fear, and then resolve.

  The serious man whispered to Chim, flicking a look Inda’s way that was a signal flag of danger.

  Chim rubbed his hands together and addressed Signi in careful Sartoran, very different from his usual haphazard speech patterns. “We need you to tell us how many ships your fleet has, and where they are. What’s Durasnir planning? ”

  “No talk,” she said. “I swore an oath. I must keep it.”

  Chim’s gaze shifted to Inda, then flicked toward the door. Inda was glad to get outside; he heard the new man speaking to the prisoner in the cabin, though he couldn’t make out the words.

  Chim still spoke in Sartoran. “They won’t get anywhere just talking. Not if you haven’t.”

  “No,” Inda said, watching Chim’s gaze go up to the furled sails, out to the rocky coast with its long, pale birds’ nests built into water-carved shelves, then to the quiet cove and its leaping fish. Anywhere but at Inda.

  Chim fingered the braids in his grizzled beard, then said, “They’ll expect you to do it.”

  “Do what?” Though Inda thought he knew; the situation was not without a weird kind of hilarity.

  “Get the information. Since everyone knows you can’t use white kinthus against Venn. We don’t know how to do it else,” Chim said, thumbing his chest and angling his head over his shoulder. “Perran and me. It stands to reason you Marlovans would be experts at that.”

  Torture. Rage spiked. Inda drew a breath—then remembered his own thoughts previous to Chim’s climbing on deck. He laughed instead, a strangled, helpless sort of laugh.

  The old captain squinted up at him in uneasy surprise.

  “I was going to say it was your responsibility,” Inda admitted. “Yes, Marlovans fight, but against worthy foes. Torture has no honor.” He rubbed his scar as memory wrenched his mind from the present to his sweat-sodden bunk in Wafri’s castle. Then he forced the memory away, as he’d gotten used to doing—as he suspected he would have to do his entire life. “Marlovans don’t take prisoners, as a rule. Kill outright, generally, or take hostages of high ranking people, with a lot of rules. Our old royal family are hostages on their own land—” He glanced Fox’s way, then closed his mouth.

  Chim sighed. “Then this spy here will take her to the king’s prison, and turn her over to those there.” He looked guilty. “We at Fleet knew we had spies, but we thought we’d identified ’em all. That long-nosed rodent down there, I thought he was only a chart maker. But when we set up this journey, he popped into Fleet and produced a svedorder today, quick as that. Saying he has to be part of any parley.” Chim made a spitting motion over his shoulder. “So the king and the crown princess know pretty much all our business—and don’t blame Prince Kavna. He’s been trying to protect us, but he has to obey his father, see? And if we refuse, we stand to lose our charter, maybe more.”

  Inda thought of the sad-eyed, patient woman spirited away to a hidden cell like Wafri’s—or worse—and what would inevitably happen there, where the scruples of those with merely a semblance of conscience could not be disturbed.

  And he said, “I won’t.”

  “What?” Chim squinted at him with an expression not unlike hope.

  “I won’t lose anything if I refuse to hand her over. I’m a pirate, aren’t I? And she’s my prisoner. Aboard my ship. So they issue another warrant against me. I’m leaving. Taking this Venn mage with me. There isn’t going to be any torture.”

  Chim narrowed his eyes. “We’ve got ’em, you know. Them gold things. We have ’em in a rucksack, on Vixen. We didn’t want Longnose to see and ask. That much stayed secret, seeing as Perran and me, well, we dealt with Angel ourselves. Your boy Angel knows what to do.”

  Inda uttered a soft laugh: no need to ask who “Angel” was. “Can you get me a fleet? Assuming your king doesn’t de
cide I’m an outlaw after all, over this torture business.”

  Chim fingered the braids in his beard, then said, “Half by next tidal flood, all the ones ’t Jeje trained. Rest, the ones ’t Perran and me been courting, and Prince Kavna on your behalf, if we send messengers. You could have a fleet by, say, next year. Might be longer, with the new rules about travel, and the vagaries of wind and weather.”

  Inda flicked his hands up in agreement. “Any word on what the Venn war fleet is doing? All we’ve seen are a few raiders on patrol.”

  Chim shrugged. “Nothing. Why we asked her. With us stuck in harbor, or hugging the coast, no fishing boats even get a glimpse of ’em. If anyone gets too close to the north shore I hear tell they take ’em, and no one knows what happens. Kavna says everyone thinks they went east to chase you, out Fire Islands’ way. But we don’t know.”

  Inda opened a hand. “We haven’t seen a single warship. I’ve been hugging the north coast, and you’d think we would have spotted one on patrol if nothing else, but we haven’t. All we’ve seen in months is a handful of scouts. Including hers, and we only got it because of a mutiny already in progress.” He indicated the cabin, where Sea Dag Signi lay tied up. “Maybe they’re sailing out in the middle waters, sending the raiders to either side?”

  Chim hesitated, then looked away again, at long-winged seabirds circling high in the air, almost obscured by the falling snow. Then he said in a low voice, returning to his accustomed dialect, “The Venn have begun raids against yer land. Idayago, mostly. Quick raids, fleets o’ three to six. Burning harbors, ships. Anything bigger than a smack.” He cleared his throat, then watched a pair of birds dive down toward one of the distant nests. “Angel has all the details— what little we know. He can also tell you what he learned from that spy about your homeland.”

  “Spy?”

  Chim’s low, raspy voice, his many glances over his shoulder, reminded Inda of the old childhood song about the piece of wool that was pulled from a tree that caused the tree to fall, which set off a flood, which wiped out a town—