‘I have an off-shore rendezvous scheduled!’ That pealing, female voice swivelled heads. Pinned under the glare of four sets of grey eyes, Feylind advanced on the trestle. ‘Not for any fool’s errand up Rockbay Harbor will I run the Evenstar back to the west.’
Duke Bransian bristled; both feet thumped to the floor. ‘You think your mercantile Innish registry gives you the brass to dictate to me?’
‘I don’t give jackstraws for the foibles of men, who clash swords over slogans and banners.’ Feylind reached the trestle and matched the duke’s glare, hackled as any hazed lioness. ‘Just one question matters: are you Arithon’s friend, or his enemy?’
Mearn followed the match with keen fascination, fast fingers busied with snatching up cards. A natural gambler who relished high stakes, he shuffled the deck in a slip-stream cascade, pitched to see how his brothers would declaw a woman armed with both cutlass and boarding axe.
No fool, Parrien stole his cue from Keldmar, who had brangled with Feylind before, and whose doused cat expression suggested the moment was unsafe to cross her.
Fur was hell-bent to fly: Duke Bransian’s clenched jaw and thunderstruck frown forewarned of a hammering argument. ‘Well, we’ve kept his made double kennelled and safe. By now, he’ll be loaded in Evenstar’s hold, dragged aboard by the scruff of his neck. Since my men are relieved to be shut of his misery why are you not on your brig weighing anchor?’
Feylind braced her fists on the opposite rim of the trestle. ‘Why won’t you say where Prince Arithon’s gone? The silence on that score is deafening!’
Mearn’s shoulders twitched underneath the bronze studs of his tailored suede jerkin. Since he penned the duke’s missives in coded script, he happened to know that Fiark had been informed of the ill-starred foray through Kewar sometime ago. Since none of his brothers would find the right words fast enough to dissemble, he ruffled the cards with a hissing snap. ‘You’ll have to ask the Mad Prophet.’
The captain’s nailing regard swung his way. ‘I would,’ she said crisp, ‘if I knew where to find the weasel-faced parcel of rat bait.’
‘That’s easy’ Mearn smiled, teeth gleaming. A connoisseur at stirring fresh trouble, he jettisoned the cards and snatched up the offered diversion. ‘I’ll take you.’
Not fools, his two middle brothers kicked back their chairs. They joined ranks just in time. Bransian’s naked relief was eclipsed as, mail gleaming, they padded like wolves, the blonde captain shadowed as quarry before their swaggering tread.
‘We’re going where?’ Feylind queried, as her escort tripped the latch.
Mearn flipped open the door with a debonair flourish, kissed her caught wrist, and ushered her through. ‘The stews by the lower town barracks, of course. No one told you? Dakar has been pie-faced since the moment he got here. Twenty-eight of our greenhorn recruits have been hazed under officer’s orders to sober him.’
‘He came through that undamaged?’ Feylind said, amazed.
‘Sooner weep for the victims,’ Keldmar responded. ‘Not one of the wretches succeeded in keeping the leash on that wastrel for more than five minutes.’
Outflanked by rough humour, Feylind was intrigued. ‘You lot expect to fare any better?’
‘We’re not recruits,’ said Parrien with nasty hilarity, and charged into the press on the street.
For Dakar, the secure haven of Alestron’s walled citadel afforded the chance to make up for long years of privation. Flat on his back with his spinning head pillowed in the silken lap of a prostitute, the vacuous bliss that parted his lips could have rivalled the cream on a sated cat’s whiskers. A dusky-haired doxie was massaging his feet, while another sylph traced an exotic dance on his groin with her gilded nails and a feather.
Sunk into a haze of beatitude and wine fumes, the spellbinder grumbled a slurred retort to the nagging prick of his conscience. ‘May Dharkaron Avenger threaten me with a gelding if I so much as think to return to serve Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn.’
‘Best suck in your bollocks, you twice-useless diddler, since wishing on that score won’t spare you.’
The hussy who spoke was not from the brothel.
Dakar cracked open an offended eyelid as pandemonium arrived and disrupted the peace in his perfumed corner of paradise. The whore at his crotch dropped her feather and fled. Next, the melting, soft hands at his soles were replaced with the punishing bite of male fingers, clad in gauntlets.
Dakar lashed out, too late. The fists on his ankles hauled him like dressed meat from his nest of carnal distraction.
‘On your feet!’ cracked the harpy who had wrecked his bliss. This time, Dakar placed her memory.
‘Feylind!’ he howled. ‘You sexless, cold fish! Keep this up, I’ll see you and your dog pack of heavies marooned on a Stormwell iceberg!’
Laughter answered. ‘Try, my fat ram-dick. That predicament ought to be perishing fun, with you packed along for excitement!’ As more sword-hardened fingers clamped on his wrists, the ship’s captain finished with relish, ‘The duke’s men aren’t sailing, besides.’
Fully incensed, and stabbed by the early pangs of a hangover, Dakar hissed a venomous string of obscenities. A slow death by flaying would have seemed kindly, set against the prospect of being dragged on board Feylind’s blue-water brig. Riled enough to resist being shanghaied, the Mad Prophet refused to stand up.
A pail of cold water struck him in the face. Roaring with rage, now nakedly dripping, Dakar heaved at his captors. Although he fought like a goaded bull, the s’Brydion brothers contained him. With Keldmar behind, gripping both arms in a lock, and Parrien, unmoved rock, with a belt cinched over his ankles, no drunk had a chance. Not to be idle throughout their rude enterprise, Mearn tore up a sheet for the purpose of binding a gag on him.
‘Feylind, just listen once in your born life!’ Dakar ducked the fingers that groped for his mouth. ‘You’re making a dreadful mistake.’
‘Do you think so?’ Feylind chuckled with evil delight. ‘I don’t see your ladies shedding a tear or defending your dissolute character.’
Stripped to pink skin, and trussed hand and foot, Dakar was hauled from his joy in the pillows and into the open street. There, as captive bait for s’Brydion sport, he was dipped in the public horse-trough four times before Mearn drew a dagger and freed his lashed ankles. The reprieve was not done for humane decency. Parrien decided to place bets with some bystanders. The stake rested on how many wobbling steps he could take before measuring his length on the cobbles.
Dakar evaded that humiliation by sitting down, to the ruination of passing traffic. Pebbled with gooseflesh in the scouring wind, he swore incoherently into the muffling sheet, until Keldmar took umbrage, and winched his shivering carcass down to the sea-gate, crammed like a bale in the cargo sling.
There, wretchedly chilled and sick from the swamp taste of slobber wicked through by the dripping gag, he was dumped in the bilge of a rolling tender. Four amused deck-hands jumped at Feylind’s order. They scrambled aboard and threaded their looms to row out to the Evenstar’s mooring. While Mearn’s busy knife sawed the knot off the painter, Keldmar shouted over the racketing noise crowding the docks at the water-front. ‘You can weigh anchor and sail with the tide. Vhan and Talvish are already on board.’
Feylind turned her head, fast, her braid whipped in the breeze that ruffled the harbour to whitecaps. ‘What! Instructions were clear! Those two swordsmen were meant to resume their old posts, and stay in Alestron’s service.’
‘Well, the duke sent them back.’ Parrien set his boot on the thwart and launched the tender away from the wharf. ‘Don’t argue, woman! You’re going to need them. Somebody sharp had better stand guard, or that botched-up work of Koriani witchery will be sticking a dagger into your back.’
‘The made double?’ snapped Feylind, incredulous where she stood, fists braced on hips, and one toe jammed on the stern seat to balance against the jerk as the drifting boat caught the rip tide. ‘Damn your scampish family!
What unsavoury fact has his lordship kept from me?’
Since Dakar was rendered unable to speak, the reply carried across the widening span of roiled water. ‘Fionn Areth’s determined to help Lysaer’s Alliance spit your prince on a sword, then light up the pyre to burn him.’
Purple with chill by the time the Evenstar’s sailhands had hauled him on board at the end of a halyard, Dakar was dragged, stumbling, into the stern cabin. He dared expect no comforts. The cramped space was furnished with the spare practicality common to sea-going ships. As straightforward in her lack of apology, Feylind unsheathed her cutlass. She snipped off his bonds, then tossed him a blanket and shoved him arse down on a locker.
‘Was that the truth?’ she demanded, annoyed. ‘Fionn Areth’s a canting sunwheel fanatic?’
Dakar chafed numbed fingers, then caved in to necessity and cradled his pounding head. ‘How should I know? The poor wretch spent five months locked in Bransian’s dungeon, and—’
‘No, butty!’ Feylind slammed her bared steel back home in the scabbard. ‘Stow the lame-brained excuses. Your jiggling paunch tells me you kept yourself drunk, and lazed about whoring the whole time.’ A clipped stride carried her under the hatch grating, where she bellowed for the mate to cast off and set Evenstar under way.
‘Feylind, no.’ Dakar had to fight to make himself heard through the raced footfalls of the deck-crew and the clanking pawls of the capstan. ‘I had my sound reasons. You’ll just have to trust. We need to exchange some serious talk before you depart from this anchorage.’
‘And let Alestron’s duke heap the pressure back on to haul about and sail west?’ Feylind spun, furious. ‘Not on your life, Dakar! I am not sheltering Lysaer’s errant wife back downcoast, or on any-one’s roundabout jaunt into Spire!’
Itched by stiff wool after months in silk sheets, and fighting turned senses that would shortly render him prostrate with nausea, Dakar shouted, ‘This has nothing to do with the safety of Avenor’s runaway princess!’
‘Damned straight it doesn’t!’ Feylind stalked to the locker behind the companionway and snatched her oilskins down from their peg. ‘Are you so certain of s’Brydion loyalty? Kalesh and Adruin fly the sunwheel’s standard, did you know that? When we ran the strait to get in here, we all but had to dip flags and declare for the Light. How long can the duke’s service to Arithon last, if he can’t pass his ships through Lysaer’s allies to reach open water?’
‘My concern’s not for politics,’ Dakar forced out, hitched short by his roiling belly. ‘I beg you to stay inside the citadel’s defences for other reasons entirely’
‘Huh.’ Feylind peered down at his green, sweating face. ‘I’ll believe you that far. At sea, you can’t drown your wits in a bottle or slink off and hide when I pitch the unpleasant question. Where’s the Master of Shadow? Why didn’t he stay in your company, beyond Jaelot, and what in the name of Sithaer’s fell fires made you miss your scheduled rendezvous last spring?’
Too wretched to shoulder the touchy diplomacy to broach that round of ill news, Dakar shut his eyes and hunched under the blanket. His head spun like sloshed froth. The vertigo seemed much too virulent, despite the swirling kick of the tide that hissed under Evenstar’s keel. About to heave, he could do little else but clamp his teeth and look miserable.
‘Too skin-tight to speak?’ Feylind slung on her foul weather gear, jerked open the companionway, and stamped out.
Dakar recovered his voice too late, as the door slammed. ‘Feylind, damn you, come back! I’ll explain.’
His shout availed nothing. Once on deck, the brig’s captain yelled to summon the thug who served as her quartermaster. ‘Here, straightaway! Haul that drunk to the sail hold. Lock him in with a bucket and leave him. Oh, he’ll howl and threaten red murder all right. There he stays, by my order, until he’s come sober.’
Denied his last chance to lodge urgent protest, Dakar cursed the rough handling that bundled him belowdecks. Worse, his sensible choice to hide Arithon’s activity was wasted. The brig’s cross-grained captain could not be deferred. She would hear all the rancourous news soon enough from the lips of Fionn Areth.
Evenstar, meantime, would stay under way. Practised at enduring the disastrous mix of strong drink and the miseries of sailing, Dakar hunkered down with his head in his hands and sought the oblivious solace of sleep.
That respite escaped him. His dream of lush women and soft, scented sheets broke apart as the door to the sail hold scraped open. Dissident voices shouted outside. Then something banged. A struggling, bound body crashed in and landed with bad-tempered curses across him.
Dakar choked, gagging on the fust of mildew puffed out of his nest of spare canvas. Slammed by an elbow, then punched by a knee in the gut, he curled on his side, dumbly retching.
Fionn Areth stopped yelling. Aware he had landed on some wretch’s body, he wormed to one side, then said, ‘Light scorch the black bastards, they’ve locked me in, too!’
Dakar hugged his griped belly, too ill to swear back. ‘Just keep on invoking Lysaer’s false religion, you’ll find yourself chucked off for shark-bait.’
‘The brig’s captain’s a maniac!’ To judge by the random rustles and thumps that jerked through the rumple of sailcloth, the yokel was struggling to loosen the wrists just lashed up by Feylind’s sailhands.
‘She’s Arithon’s passionate ally, you dimwit.’ Since Dakar was too damaged to call up his mage-sight, he settled for shutting his eyes. ‘What did you expect? I’d have thought, after five wretched months in a dungeon, you’d have more brains than to spew your fanatical opinions in public’
‘I didn’t speak to her.’ Fionn Areth lashed an ineffectual kick that billowed more dust from the canvas. ‘Not one word. The uppity bitch wouldn’t grant me the time of day for a hearing.’
Feet thumped overhead. Lines squealed through the blocks. Feylind’s cried orders were obscured by the whump as more sail was unfurled aloft. Dakar lurched to the kick as the hull slammed the waves, smoking up spray as she gathered way in her trampling run down the estuary.
‘What landed you here, then?’ he asked point-blank. ‘We aren’t unbrailing topsails for drill on this vessel. Don’t claim you didn’t spill all the news of Prince Arithon’s flight into Kewar.’
‘I wasn’t asked,’ Fionn Areth said, injured. ‘The captain was collared and given the worst by Vhandon and Talvish already’
Dakar’s bursting laugh was choked short by a wince, as pain lanced his tender head. ‘No kind reference to vouchsafe your character, I see. Get used to confinement. Feylind’s got the mind and long memory of a first-rate off-shore navigator, which is a boon, except when it comes to offenders who ruffle her loyalties.’
‘She holds a mean grudge?’
‘Like a jilted shrew,’ Dakar stated, morose. ‘Even so, you should hear my advice, and try not to judge her too harshly’
‘Why not?’ Fionn Areth stopped his useless chafing at bonds that were not going to yield to necessity. ‘She behaves like a pirate who connives hand in glove with Arithon’s marauding clansmen.’
‘That’s part of the problem,’ Dakar admitted. ‘How sorely she wishes to run interference on Lysaer’s Alliance and their filthy practice of manning their galleys under chained slavery’
As his comment provoked scathing disbelief, the spellbinder turned his head, beaten weary. ‘Yes, Avenor puts captives for sale at the block. And that last is pure nonsense! Evenstar’s registry’s kept above-board and clean by Arithon’s adamant order.’
‘What for?’ snapped Fionn. ‘His Grace needs the sanctioned front to move his henchmen’s lifted trade goods?’
‘No!’ Dakar sighed, too sore to stay sharp. ‘Arithon’s stood in for Feylind’s dead father since she and her brother were children. He’s kept Evenstar honest for the sake of an oath he once swore to their widowed mother.’
‘What did he promise?’ Fionn Areth shot back, aflame with salacious speculation.
‘A binding of ho
nour to hold them both safe from the perils attached to his name. Which is why you’ll stop claiming their patron’s a criminal. I don’t care if you fake a contrite change of heart. You will smile and apologize until Feylind’s convinced to unlock the bolt holding us prisoner.’
Tackle creaked. The brig hauled her wind, then slammed, bucking against the tidal race in the channel. Dakar gasped, clinched tight as a clam as nausea clawed at his vitals. Every natural instinct insisted that the Evenstar should have bided inside of Alestron’s snug harbour. While Fionn Areth discovered the horrid discomfort that attended blue-water sailing, Dakar endured, sunk in silence.
He misliked the crawling itch in his bones. With time, the nagging sensation grew worse. Some unseen force seemed at work on the brig, an insidious wrongness he could not pin down in his undone state of distress. Days might pass before he could scry, wracked as he was with sea-sickness and the price of dissolute indulgence.
Late Autumn 5670
Transits
‘It’s all settled, my dear,’ said Dame Dawr s’Brydion, tea-cup laid aside as she arranged disposition for Lysaer’s unsettled princess, ‘the duke’s escort will deliver you to Methisle Fortress, into the care of the Fellowship’s master spellbinder. From that safe haven, when need permits, a Sorcerer will see you the rest of the way to Ath’s hostel in the city of Spire…’
Stinging yet from the cut lately made to reframe his oath by the rite of the Fellowship’s auspices, Sulfin Evend arrives in a blaze of raw light at the focus circle in Avenor; and Asandir’s swift instructions remain in his mind, as the lane forces fade and release him: ‘I have business elsewhere, you must fare on alone. Ride straight through to Hanshire, speak to none that you meet, and your face will stay masked by my warding…’
As Asandir refires the lane flux to speed his urgent journey to remedy the damaged grimward in Scarpdale, far east and south, at the hostel in Forthmark, Prime Selidie calls in the attendance of twelve seniors, her purpose to snatch the opportune opening to launch her bid to seize the merchant brig, Evenstar…