Jieret shut his teeth in a silent snarl. Spoiling for a fight, he strode off the grassy hillock and into the shadow of the defile where his company had slept on small stones through three long and fireless nights. If no man had seen a Paravian ghost, the site held a presence that somehow pierced the heart and left a man maudlin and sorrowful.
The horse just ridden in stood apart from the others. Through a lattice of drought-stunted alders, Jieret could see it, bridle fixed to a leading rein, and bearing a rider too narrow in the shoulders to be Caolle.
'Fiends plague us all, I thought so!' he cried, and exploded a finch to arrowed flight. Aware trouble would compound if he lingered, he threaded apace through the saplings, not snapping sticks despite his rage.
His war captain heard his approach anyway. Tired enough that his shoulders hunched, Caolle sucked a mouthful from his waterskin and spat in a hurry to free his tongue. 'She has two brats.'
Jieret stopped, knee-deep in blighted grass, and surrounded by a disgorged flurry of leafhoppers.
One look at Caolle's tortured stiffness, and the last of his anger drained away. 'I thought only males drove that caravan.'
The war captain grunted, lifted the waterskin and slopped the dregs over his head. A spill of droplets darkened hair the colour of filed iron, and channelled through seams that just now looked quarried into the crags of his face.
His eyes, bleak as charcoal, locked with Jieret's. Through the years since the tragedy at Strakewood, no Companion had ever confronted him over the past, when his insistence had overruled Arithon's plea to withhold the clan's children from the battle on Tal Quorin's fateful banks. Since the slaughter that had drenched summer moss in the next generation's young blood, Caolle was least likely to forget the cost of his personal misjudgement. 'These were hidden in the carpet rolls. Don't worry. I got them out before they saw the bodies.'
Jieret shut his eyes and somehow found the grace to hold his tongue, while more insects disturbed by Caolle's ablutions blundered in flight over his leathers and boots.
'Some things I can do well enough,' Caolle finished in a tone stripped bare of any insolence. 'But not even for the life of my liege could I draw steel on a woman or a child.'
The Earl of the North allowed himself an exasperated look at the unwanted prisoner who sat, bound astride the tired gelding. She was brown-haired, neatly made, and no doubt comely when she was not dirty and shaking tired. The reddened eyes that glared above the twist of rag which silenced her were frightened and fierce with defiance. She clutched a child of perhaps three years against her shoulder; a second infant slept in a saddlebag, a filthy thumb tucked in his mouth.
'Don't tell me,' Jieret prodded, antagonized by the prick of her regard. 'She screams if you take off the gag, and she's tried to knife you in the back?'
'Well, I did kill her brother,' Caolle allowed. He shook out his hair, drops flying off him like an ill-mannered dog after a swim. 'Our cause was sound enough. Every drover in that caravan knew about Jaelot. The news can't be kept close for long.'
But Jieret had expected that much. To the woman, he said, 'You'll go free, but only if you don't disrupt my men.'
She tossed her chin and looked daggers, most likely convinced she would be forced regardless, or abandoned in the wilds unprotected. Both prospects were tempting enough to a company who had seen every woman in Strakewood cut down without mercy by townsmen. Clan numbers were pared back to the point at which children would be a blessing to foster, whether stolen or begotten by violence. Only the helpless anguish of knowing the brutalities suffered by his mother and sisters kept Jieret on the side of moral decency. He reached out, caught Caolle's soggy sleeve, and drew him away down the defile.
Once out of the prisoner's earshot, he said, 'One of us needs to find Arithon.'
'Just how do you plan to do that?' Caolle rubbed a trickle of moisture off his chin and winced at the sting of small scabs. To judge by the state of his wrist, the woman not only scratched, but could land a bite like a champion. Seldom caught out in embarrassment, Caolle hunched like a bear with a thorn and gruffly pursued his objection. 'After the disaster our liege unleashed in Jaelot, the mayor's guard sent out a sweep of armed patrols. Neither they nor their packs of headhunters with beaters and twenty-three couples of hounds could track a royal hair of him.'
Too hardened not to guess the vivid means by which Caolle had extracted this information, Jieret bypassed the point without questions. 'Lady Maenalle, Steward of Tysan, asked for a rendezvous in a cove in the Gulf of Stormwell. Since Sethvir of Althain saw fit to pass on her request, we can presume that someone sent by Arithon will answer.'
'Well let me go,' Caolle said, much too eager for a man just in from hard travel.
Jieret returned an evil grin. 'Not a chance. Since you've brought us three extra mouths to feed, you can stay here and suffer the consequences. That poor chit's virtue is yours to guard as of now. I'll have to travel fast and light. Even with luck and good weather, I'll scarcely reach the north coast before winter.'
'Ath, boy,' protested Caolle. 'I'm your more expendable resource.'
'No.' Every inch as forceful as his father, Jieret would not be swayed. 'Arithon's life is worth both of ours. He is all the clans' hope for the future. You'll stay, and raid the roads, and hold that woman captive until what facts she knows become common knowledge. If fortune runs against us, the wait will be short. Too soon, my captain, you'll have that chance you burn for, to balance our feud with Etarra.'
Duplicity
When notice was served from Althain Tower appointing Dakar to search Alestron's guarded armoury for the presence of black powder weaponry, Sethvir's contact caught him in his usual shipboard posture, folded double over Black Drake's lee rail. Even half-paralysed by nausea, the Mad Prophet cursed the wretched complications the assignment was bound to entail.
The ruling Teir's'Brydion had a temper like a viper, and three younger brothers whose manner toward strangers ran to bloodletting distrust. Any fool who approached their citadel with intent to meddle in their weapon stores was likely to find himself spitted before he could pick the first lock. Denied breath to denounce his fate by the piteous heave of his stomach, Dakar wished a pox on the Warden of Althain, until opportunity dawned like an epiphany, that every one of his miserable predicaments might be solved at a single stroke.
The Mad Prophet coughed, his beard split in crocodilian malice. 'Oh, perfect,' he confided to the lisping slap of Black Drake's foamy wake. How convenient, if the Master of Shadow should suffer mishap in the course of the Fellowship's benighted service. Asandir could scarcely hold anyone to blame if the brothers sBrgdion came to slice Rathain's prince into mincemeat; and since Sethvir's gift of charts and navigational tools, Arithon, with his tender s'Ffalenn conscience, would be hard pressed to refuse any favour in return.
Dakar habitually sang while he plotted. Hoarse from days of gut-heaving sickness, light-headed in euphoric anticipation, he hummed off-key ditties in tones like ground gravel, until the cook set Lad to shy peas at him to drive him away from the galley.
The Black Drake bowled on through her offshore passage to Farsee with Arithon fastened to the spooled posts of her stern rail. Since the cook's flat refusal to hand-feed a prisoner, the captain had grudgingly allowed him the use of his hands. Where another man's pride should have rankled when twine lashings were replaced with the leg shackle kept to restrain malcontents, Azithon's humour stayed intact. His patience seemed unforced, even through Dhirken's irritable progress in learning the arts of navigation.
On calm days, he made copies of the nautical charts sent for his use by Sethvir. Sail-hands who lounged between duties cheerfully called jibes and stared, while the nervous, hamfisted purser passed him charcoal and inks, and badgered him with endless questions. Arithon's amiable answers needled Dakar to fits of suspicion.
'Trust me, he wants something badly,' the Mad Prophet insisted to anyone he could snag into listening. When cornered on the subject, Dhirken pi
cked her teeth with a shim of carved ivory, her thoughts veiled behind watchful eyes.
The focus of wagers and conjecture in the forecastle, Arithon stayed unperturbed, except once, when constant exposure to spray threatened him with saltwater sores. He had no choice then but to yield before need and shed his tattered shirt. The rope burns on his limbs had already faded, leaving an older, uglier set of scars he deeply preferred to keep hidden. As the speculative comments of the crewmen turned goading, he met them, word for word, in a striking, vicious satire that forced their grudging respect.
Days passed. Sun bronzed the prince's torso like a Shandian fisherman's, and since his lady captor withheld the kindness of comb or razor, he gained a piratical growth of stubble. The constant draw of wind off the spanker snagged his black hair into elf-locks. The fact he was clean the favour of a squall that had drenched him in passing that morning, he sat engrossed over a contrivance of wood being fashioned by the ship's laconic joiner.
His absorption proved deceptive; or else confinement served to sharpen his mage-taught, cantankerous alertness, since his head snapped around at the barest scrape of a boot-heel behind his back. Met by a slim-hipped outline against the morning's acid glare, his frown smoothed over at once. 'You seem just a touch impatient. Don't be. The channel to Farsee's harbour shall hale into view before sundown.'
Clad with the dash and flair expected of captains who ran contraband, Dhirken hooked her thumbs through the bronze-studded crossbelts slung over her calfskin doublet. 'We do, or you die. The stakes haven't eased in the slightest.'
The joiner cast a doubtful glance at the unbroken swells that bounded the forward horizon. Then he sighed, licked a scuffed knuckle, and resumed his nasal carping. 'I'm nobody's jeweller, to do brass with those bitty fine marks of engraving.'
Arithon turned over the half-complete copy of Leinthal Anithael's cross staff. 'There has to be a hand in the forecastle with some sort of talent for scrimshaw. The scale could be notched on the shinbone of a cow, then blackened in with ink.'
'Didn't think,' the joiner admitted in mournful respect. He reclaimed the original tool and tucked its superlative craftsmanship into his pitch-stained apron. 'I'm off to try, then.' Still shaking his head over imagined inadequacies, he sauntered off the quarterdeck, grousing. 'But mind you don't blather to me if the marks, when they're done, don't match yon beauty for perfection.'
Inimical silence remained like welded air between the Drake's master and her captive. Uneasy to be trapped between them, the helmsman looked everywhere else but at his captain, while the thrum of taut rigging and the work of the steerage tackle pitched the tension ever higher. Dhirken did not worry her cutlass hilt. Controlled to the tips of her newly-pared nails, her very stillness crackled with brazen intent to pick a fight. Deferent to her mood, or else inspired by insolence, Arithon lounged at ease against the quarterdeck rail. His eyes stayed closed, as if he might snatch a nap in the sun; only his lips showed a faint, ironic smile until the lookout cried from the masthead.
'Land! Land sighted off our bow and three points to starboard!'
The shout brought every hand abovedecks to share in a gush of fast talk.
Unmoved to stir more than an eyelash, the Shadow Master ventured, 'The key to the shackle would be a kindness.'
Dhirken laughed. 'You speak too soon. No key and no freedom until we've sighted the beacon fires to tell where we've made landfall. How do I know you've not set us off course to Varens?' But her voice betrayed wild excitement.
'As you wish, lady.' Arithon looked up, guileless, the grate of steel damped between his palms as he tucked his bound ankle beneath his thigh. 'But we're not set downcoast. You know it, since you made today's sightings and corrected Drake's course for yourself. Shall we deal? You must decide very soon. Our further relationship depends on how well you keep your word, because my own plans have undergone a change.'
'Have they now?' Dhirken's hostility gave way to sarcasm. 'I'm defeated by curiosity. Do you always get your way through glib bargaining?' The key had been palmed in her hand all along. She tossed it hard, intrigued to test whether his reflexes were sharp enough to intercept its arc toward the sea.
Forced to snatch like a starved wolf, Arithon just managed the catch. 'This was easy?' He settled back, released the lock, and in studied offence rubbed the ankle the shackle had chafed raw. 'Ath forfend, don't let me hear about hard. Particularly since I need the Drake to sail north to recover my treasure without me.'
Dhirken flushed. Caught speechless before her gawking crew, she clapped both palms to her cheeks. When Arithon had the grace not to laugh, she spun on her heel to hide uncertainties she would have died before sharing. 'That's trust. Far more than I merit, maybe.'
Arithon arose to his feet. 'I'll be the judge of that.' The awareness of his freedom vivid as a brand against her back, Dhirken kept her face turned away. Only locked limbs and will masked her trembling as he stepped close, trapped her hand in light fingers, and slipped the key back in her palm. The fact she was ice-cold and sweating in the heat could not possibly escape him. Cornered by old fears he must never gain leverage to pry at, she strove to regain her frosty distance. 'You could lose everything.'
'I've lost everything twice over already,' Arithon said. His past recklessness stood as living proof.
The deck seemed abruptly too small; or his presence beside her loomed too large. She whirled to go, the fist with the key clenched in white-knuckled tension, and her other arm raised to fend off inquiries.
Arithon's touch checked her rush, a feathery brush against her cheek made in thoughtless response to blind sympathy.
She recoiled an involuntary half-step, and the wakened understanding behind his close glance shocked them both. 'Ah, fiends take your damned bardic gifts,' Dhirken snapped, her fear of his sex, molten fire in her blood, and her words a strained, metallic whisper.
Rumour named her a killer who had gutted the rogue who tried to steal her legacy in the Black Drake; but the sordid truth was more desperate. As a victim dealt an annihilating lesson in survival, she had use for no man's pity.
If the secret shame now threatened by clean empathy held pain enough to shatter her, neither was Arithon scatheless. Blindsided by a masterbard's power too freshly gained to be governed, he lost grip on his careful layers of subterfuge. For just a split-second, she saw through to his core, and recognized more than he wished.
Whatever his part in the massacre at Strakewood, he bore the scars of a loss more crippling. He had survived what could not be reconciled. For that, he would not belittle her weakness; he had too great a heart to seize advantage.
Eyes too bright, her throat closed against the invective she needed to drive off her avid crewmen, Dhirken cursed his selfless silence, that left her independence unbreached. Undone by the depth of his sympathy, she could not do less than his bidding. Before he ever asked, she accepted: Drake would sail north and recover his contraband, and deliver every coin-weight and bale anywhere on the continent he desired.
'I leave you Leinthal Anithael's dividers and cross staff, and with them, all the broad leagues of the ocean. The bounds of your command shall be limitless.' Arithon's fleeting smile masked regret, that for him, simple flight held no refuge. 'My gift will grant you freedom from the shoreline and the space to seek your release.'
Dhirken jerked her chin up, stunned to an embarrassment perilously close to tears. But the quarterdeck was empty except for the staid presence of her quartermaster; in an uncanny turn of sensitivity, the slit-eared first mate had rousted every sailor back to duty.
* * *
Gloating over how easily Arithon had been inveigled to share the Fellowship's emergency appeal to investigate Alestron's armoury, Dakar raised no objection to crossing the East Halla peninsula. The route was heavily travelled, with hospices, inns and posthouses built between towns along the way. If they begged rides in merchants' wagons, or rented the use of a hack, the journey could be made inside a fortnight.
Dakar chewed on a corner of his beard to forestall his satisfied smile. While fishermen in cod-stained oilskins cursed the Drake's gig for obstructing the landing, he scrambled onto the rickety wharves o£ Farsee at the heels of the prince he swore to ruin.
Arithon took his leave of Dhirken's sail-hands, unwarrantedly cheerful for a man who had not seen a bed for five days. If the dockside miasma of tide wrack and fish, and the shuttling flight of screaming gulls wakened memories of his native shores, where he had been mage and heir to a pirate king, he displayed no trace of sentiment. In need of a bath and a grooming as any penniless seafarer, he possessed only the rolled bundle of Sethvir's charts, slung with his lyranthe across his shoulder. His scarred wrists were masked under sailor's bracelets braided from the rags of his shirt, and the fingers of both hands were swollen from overexposure to saltwater.
To Dakar's dubious glance, he replied in pained honesty, 'No, I can't play for our keep just yet. But there's no damage done that won't mend in three days. While we wait, I'll find a tailor with an eye for quality linen.' Backed by a citrine dawn sky, forced to duck the sliding mesh of fishnets that a sloop's crew hauled down the docks, Dakar planted his fists on his hips and balked. 'That's a grand idea. Except you don't have any coin.'
Arithon flashed a sly grin. 'Well, your pockets jingle enough to tell me Dhirken's deckhands had rotten luck at dice. Since you've sworn off beer, why not stake me to a new shirt? The silver points cut off my old one will pay for modest lodging as long as you don't start any bar riots.'
Careful not to seem too agreeable, Dakar expelled an epithet. The journey to Alestron would be made in close quarters. Although Arithon had blinded his mage-sight, his unflagging penchant for observation must not be given cause for suspicion.