“536,” Damien supplied.
“Might, then. I think it was all regulated by then. And, of course, Jansen’s expedition—”
Her words were drowned out in the roar of an explosion. Damien tensed instinctively, felt himself reach for his sword—and then cursed himself for a damned fool, and a senseless one at that. What the hell was he going to fight? They couldn’t even run for cover here, much less fend off cannonballs with their swords. That foreign ship could chew them up and spit them out without pausing to reset its sails. But he saw Rasya tense and glance back, as if wondering how quickly her own sails might be let down again. Not quick enough, he thought grimly. He braced himself for impact—and possibly death—as yet another explosion pounded from the foreign vessel. Never had he felt so utterly helpless.
A third, then. A fourth. A fifth. All perfectly timed, flawlessly executed. It reminded Damien of a nightmare Tarrant had once designed for him, of a world on which the fae didn’t function. There, firearms were reliable. There they might be timed, and fired, with just such terrible precision....
Silence lay heavy in the air, thick with the smell of fear. Smoke curled upward from the holes in the foreign ship’s side, wrapping about the masts like a pennant. Damien waited, tense, for the impact that was sure to come. Iron on water, or—God forbid—iron on wood, the splintering sound of the hull giving way as all their plans were nullified in an instant ... but there was nothing. Nothing. He waited, breath held, praying silently. Nothing happened. The distant smoke coiled like serpents, then dispersed. There was no other sign. No other sound.
He looked at the captain—and saw a visage so transformed by fear that he hardly recognized it. Was this the man he’d met in Faraday, whose record bore witness to a fierce, indestructible courage? Was this the indomitable master of the wild seas, who had saved two ships from a smasher and killed a dockwraith barehanded, and God only knew what other exploits? Afraid?
And then he looked deep into the captain’s eyes and saw something else there, too. Something more unnerving than mere fear. Something more powerful than terror.
Awe.
“Not a beat missed,” he whispered. “Gods, can you imagine? If we tried to set off half a dozen guns like that—half a dozen anything— can you imagine?” He shook his head slowly. “All five gone off right, and in perfect time....” His voice was trembling. “Is it possible, Reverend? That men could do a thing like that?”
“We believe so,” he said. Choosing his words with care. He glanced back at Rasya, who seemed equally stunned. In the distance he could hear other sounds, coming from where the passengers stood. Whispers. Moans. Prayers. They knew enough of how Erna worked to recognize those five shots for what they were: a statement of utter control, indisputable power. If cannonballs had struck the deck, it could not have inspired more fear than this. “The Church believes that such things would become possible, if enough souls devoted themselves to our cause.” Had that happened here? Had enough prayers, enough religious devotions, finally fulfilled the Prophet’s vision? Was the fae and its constructs no threat to these people? It was almost too much to hope for. The mere thought made his head spin.
Careful, Damien, careful. You don’t know anything yet.
“Talk to them,” the captain told Rasya. “Tell them we come in peace.” She slipped away to see it. After a moment, high overhead, signal flags blazed from the top of the mizzenmast. Red and black, precisely wielded. Damien watched the configurations for a moment, then—when they began to repeat—fixed his eyes on the distant ship once more. And held his breath, waiting for a response.
There was none.
“Someone’s going to have to go over there,” the captain said at last. “Face-to-face. It’s the only way.”
“Dangerous as hell,” Damien muttered.
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Silence. Then: “All right,” Damien said. “I stand the best chance of speaking their language. Signal them I’m coming over.”
“They probably don’t understand—”
“Or they do, and they’re keeping their silence. Tell them anyway.” He looked down at his clothes, which seemed ten times as dirty as when he’d put them on. “I’ll need a few minutes to change, and ... to prepare.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Hell you are.”
“It’s my ship, dammit.”
“Which is why you need to stay. If anything happens to me—”
“Then we’re all dead men anyway, Reverend, and it might as well be there as here. Now the way I figure it, I’ve got nothing to lose by going, right? And maybe—just maybe—these paranoid bastards’ll soften up a bit when they see that we’ve put ourselves wholly in their power.—As if we aren’t anyway, no matter what we do.” When Damien said nothing, he pressed, “Make sense?”
“Yeah,” he said at last. And something cold deep inside him loosened its stranglehold on his heart at the thought that the captain would be coming. “Rasya and Tor won’t like it, you know.”
“That’s why they take orders and I give ‘em.”
He nodded meaningfully toward the distant ship. “There are worse things than death, you know.”
“Trying to scare me won’t work, Reverend.” A faint smile creased the sun-dried lips. “I’m already as scared as I’m going to get today. Anything else?”
He looked at the man’s scarred face, and wondered if all those marks were from simple barroom fights. Rumor said no. “All right,” he said at last. “You’ve got guts, Captain. I’ll give you that.”
“Men with guts live hard and die young.” He managed a smile, not totally without humor. “Let’s hope it’s the former in this case, eh, Reverend? I’ll see to the ship. You go get dressed for company.”
Damien nodded and turned to leave. Then he hesitated. “You might want to remind the crew—”
“That we’re all Church faithful, from now until the day we leave this place? Don’t worry, Reverend.” His dark eyes sparkled. “I’ll see that all the nasty pagans behave.” Including myself, his expression promised.
“Good enough,” Damien whispered. He hoped it was. The merchants were all of his faith, more or less, but it had been impossible to sign on a crew to match. He just hoped that they understood how much might be at stake if religious prejudice held sway here. Erna had been host to enough religious slaughters in her brief history that he didn’t feel like adding another one to the list.
He started to leave, but the captain’s voice stopped him. “Father Vryce.”
Startled by his use of the more familiar title, Damien turned back. The captain had closed his telescope, and was now studying Damien in much the same manner that he had the foreign ship.
“I didn’t ask your real business before we left,” he reminded the priest. “Not in detail, anyway. I figured it suited me fine to sign on for the reasons you gave, and if you had some kind of personal crusade in mind once we landed, that wasn’t my business. Right? And it still isn’t. So I’m not going to ask. But it’s clear to me that there’s a lot not being said here, and as we head on over there,” he nodded toward the warship, “I think you should mull over the fact that we’d all be a good bit safer here if I knew what the vulk was going on. It’s hard to play the game right when you haven’t been told the rules, Reverend. Think about that, will you?”
His robe was where he had packed it, underneath all his possessions in the bottom of a small steel-bound trunk. He uncovered it gently, reverently, not out of concern for its material substance—he had commissioned it out of wool, not silk, so that it would travel better—but in humble regard for its spiritual value. Carefully he unfolded it, laying it out across his bunk. Fine worsted, singed and polished, bleached to a creamy white: it caught the sunlight and held it, adding the blue glow of morning to its substance. About the neck-line a wide band of embroidery proclaimed his rank with a pattern of overlapping flames, the mark of his Order. It wasn’t the best workmanship, that was true, but it was
the best that he’d been able to afford back in Faraday, when he’d paid for the thing out of his own pocket. He could hardly have sent to Jaggonath for his good robes without having to confront the Patriarch, and that had been out of the question. The gold was slightly tarnished now and a few of the threads had become unwrapped, betraying their yellow silk core, but the whole of it sparkled golden in the sunlight and it was doubtful that any onlooker would notice such details in the midst of formal ceremony.
He slid the robe on over his head; wool so fine it might have been silk whispered down over his hair, his shoulders, his linen shirt, his leggings. Its hem fell just short of his ankles, revealing soft kid boots. Too long, he thought, picturing the journey ahead of him, but he was hardly about to cut it. He took his harness down from the wall, sword and all, and considered it. It was traditional for members of his Order to be armed at all times—even when armaments would normally be forbidden—but they might not know that on board the other ship, and he didn’t dare make a gesture that might be perceived as hostile. Finally he unlinked the baldrick from its anchoring belt and donned only the latter, folding the robe underneath it at his waist so that the hem fell no lower than his knees. Much better.
He drew out the Fire then, sliding it free of its worn leather sheath, closing his palm about it so that he might feel its heat. It was a precious talisman, a symbol of his Patriarch’s trust ... but no more than that, now. The crystal vial which contained the Worked fluid had cracked while he was in the rakhlands, and by the time he’d discovered the hairline flaw the few drops that remained had all but evaporated. He’d varnished the glass then, several times over, hoping to preserve what little was left—but all that he’d saved was a faint glow, a fleeting warmth, a mere ghost of the Church’s most powerful Working. He held it for a moment, drawing strength from the memories it conjured—then put it away carefully, reverently, deep within the folds of clothing inside his trunk.
Then: clean hair, neatly brushed. Spotless fingernails. Fresh shave. He ran down the checklist in his mind, the do’s and don‘t’s that a man must observe when going from the field to the court. Damien had done it so many times now that he could no longer remember whether the list had been one of his own devising, or the parting gift of a well-meaning tutor.
At last he was finished. There was a crude mirror among his possessions, a polished flat of tin twice the length of his hand; he held it so that it reflected his face, then moved it slowly so that he might observe the whole length of his person. Which was as it should be: the person of a priest, not a warrior. He stood transformed.
Now, he thought, Now I’m ready.
With a prayer on his lips, he went to join the captain.
The ship was even larger than it had seemed from a distance, with a span that dwarfed the Golden Glory and made its small rowboat seem like a minnow flitting about its prow. If they meant for it to impress us, Damien thought, it’s working. The graceful curve of the hull as it swept clear of the water hinted at structural dynamics more complex than anything the Glory’s designers had been familiar with; when Damien looked at the captain he saw stark envy in the man’s eyes, and a cold calculation that said if they survived, if they were permitted to make contact with the natives, he was damned well going to get a look at the schematics for the thing.
A ladder was dropped from the starboard side, along with grappling lines of braided steel. The sailor who had rowed them across brought them in with such precision that it was no trial to catch the lowest rung, and no great challenge to affix the great hooks—foreign in form though they were—to the iron rings provided for that purpose.
“You first,” the captain said, holding the ladder taut.
“Don’t you think—”
“I’ve done this more times than you have, Reverend. Go up while I’m bracing it and count your blessings.”
He did so, not mentioning that if he had climbed ice-clad ropes with his bare hands over Death’s Gorge in Atria he could certainly handle this. It didn’t seem a good time to argue.
They were waiting on the deck, a crowd of people as still and silent as the wood they stood upon. As Damien gave the captain and his crewmen a hand up, he studied them, trying to do it as unobtrusively as possible. Twelve guards, in meticulously tailored uniforms ill-suited to naval service; that meant Someone Important was probably on board, who had brought his soldiers with him. They were all armed, and ready for trouble. Four men and a woman, in uniforms not unlike that of the Glory’s crew: officers of this ship, perhaps? Three men and two women who could not be identified by their dress, save that it looked expensive; their stance proclaimed them to be civilians. Several figures moving in the background, swathed in dun robes that covered them from neck to wrist and ankle. And one man in the center of it all, whose bearing would have proclaimed his power even if his attire had not. Tall, proud, openly suspicious, he wore the robes of Damien’s Church as if he had been born to them. White silk split open down the front to reveal close-fitting civilian garments, a mixture of priest’s regalia and common attire that might have seemed blasphemous but for his attitude, which made it clear that everything he did and everything he wore was utterly correct. His skin was a rich brown, doubly dramatic against the white of his outer robe, and the sun picked out copper highlights along high cheekbones, a stern forehead, a strong jawline. His features were broad and well-formed and his black hair, closely cropped, did nothing to distract from them. Energy rippled from him in almost visible waves, and Damien guessed that he was the kind that was addicted to hard exercise—not for its own sake, or even to improve his flesh, so much as a need to give that energy an outlet, to channel it safely within a gym’s controlled confines so that it did not consume him elsewhere. He was the kind of man who became a leader or destroyed himself trying—and in the former he had clearly succeeded.
“My name is Andir Toshida,” he said. His accent was liquid, strangely at odds with the harshness of his tone. It did little to hinder comprehension, for which Damien was grateful; given a possible eight hundred years of isolation, there was no telling what English might have become here. “It is my duty to assess your origin and your intentions, and to render judgment accordingly. You will speak,” he commanded, and he looked first at Damien, then to the captain, “and you will explain yourselves.”
There was no question of who should begin, and Damien did not hesitate. “My name is Damien Kilcannon Vryce, Reverend Father twice knighted of the Eastern Autocracy of the One God.” He was watching the man for a reaction—any reaction—but the dark-skinned face was like stone. Utterly unreadable. “This is Lio Rozca, Captain-General of the Golden Glory, and Halen Orswath, of his crew.” We come in peace, he wanted to say, but words like that meant nothing; they were cheap, they were easy, the legions of Hell could have voiced them with impunity. This man had too much substance to be taken in by empty platitudes. “We came here from the west to determine if humans had settled here, to make contact with them if they had, and to establish trade with them when and where that was appropriate.”
One of the civilians whispered to another; a sharp look from Toshida cut the exchange short. “A mercantile expedition.”
“Some came for that purpose.”
“Verda? Not to colonize?”
The captain exhaled noisily. “We all have homes to go back to, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“We knew that five expeditions had already attempted the crossing,” Damien said. He saw neither surprise nor confirmation in Toshida’s eyes, nothing that might say or unsay whether he knew about all five or not. How many had landed? How many were lost? “We assumed at least one of them made it, and that therefore this land would be occupied. And since the most recent expedition was launched nearly four hundred years ago—” again, no hint of surprise in the man’s eyes, “—we believed it likely that by now mankind had settled here. We hoped that you would welcome contact with your kin, and permit us to learn from your trials.”
“The crossin
g was made, verda. And mankind has ... flourished.” A slight hesitation there, fleeting but eloquent. “As to whether we would welcome contact: ... His expression hardened. ”That has yet to be determined.“
He looked out toward the Golden Glory, now close enough to the other ship that some details were apparent to the naked eye. “You fly no flag,” he challenged.
“The ship’s mine,” the captain said, “and I’m an independent. The crew’s a mixed lot, from half a dozen cities at least. Likewise the passengers.” He paused. “I can run my initials up the mizzenmast if it’ll make you happy.”
If he heard the challenge in his tone, Toshida didn’t react to it. If anything he looked pleased, and nodded his head slightly as though in approval. The woman nearest him gestured for his attention; he leaned down so that she might whisper in his ear, then nodded again.
“My adviser says that you must be genuine. An enemy ship would have presented itself better.”
There were smiles at that, albeit minimal ones. Damien allowed himself the luxury of a long, deep breath, and wondered if it was his imagination or if the atmosphere had just lightened measurably. He decided to chance a question of his own.
“How many expeditions made it here?”
For a moment Toshida said nothing; he knew as well as Damien did that once this inquisition turned into an equal exchange its texture would have been altered permanently. At last he offered, “Of the five ships that set sail with Lopescu, one reached these shores. The Nyquist expedition arrived ten years later, entodo. Those were our ancestors.”
“And the others?”
“No other westerners settled here,” he said smoothly. And then, before Damien could question him anew, “This land belongs to the One God, as do all the people in it. Our land is governed by the Prophet’s Law; our politics are structured in accordance with our faith.—May I assume that was the quera verda, Reverend Vryce?”