The Fox (64 page)

Inda waved in agreement. “I’ll leave a couple of people here to run drills. You’ll call it defensive practice. Fleet maneuvers can’t be taught inside a harbor anyway, so that training will wait until, if, and when we sail as a fleet.”

“Good. Defense, yes, everyone will believe that.”

“Second, I require my people to be decently housed and treated.”

The Fleet Master held up his hand. “I can make ’em me official assistants, so they can stay at Guild House, and draw pay, same as harbormaster’s clerks. We already worked all that out. If they act as clerks, the Venn won’t notice ’em.”

“My last demand, that the drills be done to my requirements, or they’re worthless.”

Fleet Master Chim fingered the braids in his beard, then cackled. “I like it.” He said to Mistress Perran, “Ye won’t get a fairer offer, not if ye live five hundred years.”

“I know,” she said, but she braced for the pirates to demand gold, grants of land, ships, and stores. Then she cleared her throat, glancing doubtfully up at the red-haired one whose expression was a masterpiece of provocative insolence. She asked in Sartoran, “Ah, who is going back to shore with us?”

Inda and Fox regarded one another, their faces equally guarded. No one knew what the conflict between them was, though they’d heard sharp voices in muffled Marlovan behind the shut cabin doors. Tau suspected the conflict related to that day in the treasure cave, even if it hadn’t begun then.

Inda lifted his hand toward Tau, who sighed inwardly, and with a rueful smile stepped away from his favorite observation post by the stern windows.

“Taumad will act as your liaison with captains and civil authorities. He can also teach our weapons drills,” Inda said.

Perran’s first thought had been intense gratitude that that redhead with the hateful smile was not one of those staying. But her thoughts flashed into flame and then ash when a golden-haired vision stepped forward, haloed by the lamplight. She scarcely noticed the short young woman who took up a stance with stolid resignation beside him.

“Jeje sa Jeje will teach weapons drills, and if we get that far, she can conduct the fire-team and defense drills. She can also work with you on the strategy we’ve been developing with smaller vessels.”

The Guild Mistress tried not to gawk at the golden-haired Taumad. Were his eyes really gold, too, or was that a trick of those swinging lamps? “Have you a family name?”

“The last one my mother favored was Darian. We’ve tried several.”

Tau waited expectantly.

Change the pronunciation to “Daraen” and it meant— “ ‘Friend’ in archaic Sartoran,” she exclaimed. And laughed, realizing that she was struggling against her own expectations, and not against real people. She said in a firm voice, “Welcome to Bren, Jeje sa Jeje and Taumad Darian. If our business is concluded, shall we use the remainder of the inward tidal flow and return to shore?”

Chim chuckled in glee as he followed Perran onto the deck. Fox sauntered after them, leaving Inda alone with Tau and Jeje in the captain’s cabin.

Inda studied their faces. “This Guild Mistress Perran obviously doesn’t trust us as far as a fart smells in the wind. You two really are the best we could have here. Here.” He reached into his battered chest, then withdrew a small bag that rattled slightly: gems.

Tau took it in silence as Inda said, “You know your orders, and they don’t change. But I have a request. Private. Just for me. Find out anything you can about Ramis of the
Knife
: where he was born, where he came from, where he trained. Where he is. Anything.”

Jeje swallowed hard. A whole year on land. Well, not completely on land, but it may as well be. Once she would have rejoiced to be with Tau, but now she only felt the prospect of separation and oh, how it hurt.

The faint wince around Inda’s eyes was familiar from when he was twelve. Regret? Sympathy? In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, “At least you can use your name again, when the Venn are not around.”

“No,” he said, so soft it was almost a whisper. “That paper means someday, if the Venn are defeated, I might be able to land anywhere else on the continent. Nothing is changed at home. I’ll see you in a year.” His right hand came up, flicking to his heart, then he paused, frowning down at his fingers as if they’d sprouted fangs. “Better get your dunnage over the side before they sail.”

He left.

“That went well,” Tau said.

Jeje couldn’t even laugh. Instead she leaned against a bulkhead. “I feel sick.”

“You didn’t make anything worse than it already was.” Tau dropped the irony. “We’ve known him all these years, and we have to accept that whatever happened to exile him is staying inside his head. He won’t let it out by talking. ” Because her expression did not ease, he thumped her lightly on the shoulder, a companionable thump that she appreciated because he so rarely touched anyone. “Let’s go. They won’t want to row against the flood tide.”

They shifted the gear already piled down to the barge, careful that their own people handled the booms. Nobody on the barge was to notice in the midst of their various bundles an old, stained barrel that was packed tight with treasure for the purchase of their own ships. Jeje saw to that.

They felt the turn of the tide. The Fleet Master gave the sign for the barge to strike for shore.

Tau and Jeje moved sternward out of the way, but while Jeje wistfully watched Inda’s fleet set sail, Tau turned his back.

In his mind, they were already gone. As he eyed the approaching harbor in the weak blue light of another day, his thoughts fingered their way into the future: they would land, get this damned barrel to their rooms and appropriately hidden in a jumble of old clothes and sail-making gear. Jeje would make friends with the Guild Fleet staff. Tau would go straight to the pleasure houses, where one could always begin finding out the very latest news.

And as summer slipped into winter, Jeje would train whomever they found to train, and maybe buy ships, and he would buy . . . information. Wherever and however he could find it. Then he’d sort it for word not just of the Venn, and of Ramis of the
Knife
as Inda wished, but also of a woman taken in the west by some pirate, a gold-haired, beautiful woman who might or might not go by the name of Saris Elend, or Elend Darian, or something similar, playing off the words
grace, butterfly,
or
queen
—but never, it seemed, the name she was born with.

Chapter Ten

MOUNTAIN terrain seldom traveled by humans made for particularly slow journeys, but Hadand never found it tedious. Her world had been confined to either end of the plains of Hesea until now, mountains being seen as a jagged line on the horizon. At times they looked down from cliffs so sheer and high that raptors riding currents between their narrow road and the distant ground below were mere dots. Sometimes they gazed over a soft cotton carpet of clouds hiding the world, while mountain peaks, smelling of pine, gleamed all around them in the bright sun, islands in a sea of slow-foaming white.

There was little talk of a private nature on that journey; it was not until they began descending toward the vast river-plains of Anaeran-Adrani that Queen Wisthia began to instruct them during their first night at an inn, where the plates and silver were like those she’d preferred in her own rooms.

“I said nothing to Evred because I cannot be certain, but the true story behind my brother’s not marrying Tlennen’s sister Tdiran may have affected more than the Yvana-Vayirs’ lives,” she said abruptly, after dismissing her women. “It might lie behind the unsuccessful treaty negotiations. ”

Hadand and Joret stared in surprise at the queen. Wisthia had been so withdrawn in Iasca Leror that one seldom thought about her when not in her presence; when you were away from her strangely decorated rooms, it was difficult to remember what she looked like. But the tall, thin woman who had been so plain, so unmemorable all those quiet years in Iasca Leror seemed to alter before their eyes each day they drew closer to the land of her birth.

Her thin brows arched, expressive of irony. “First you must get a sense of my brother’s character. He was always given his way, always, in everything, large or small, from the day of his birth. He was not sent as a page to Sartor, as is our custom, because he refused to go.”

“We were told he never saw Evred’s Aunt Tdiran, that he’d already formed another alliance,” Hadand said.

“He didn’t. That much is true. What your family did not know was that on one of the trade missions, my brother sent two of his personal friends disguised as servants, who reported back that Tdiran was plain and thin. My brother wanted a beautiful bride, one with an attractive shape, and refused the marriage. My father, who was dangerous and subtle in every other regard but in matters pertaining to my brother, gave in. The resultant trade treaty—requiring the Adranis, for Tlennen’s lifetime, to pay for sending mages over the mountains to Iasca Leror for spell renewal—was an expensive compromise, but no one wanted to risk war with Iasca Leror. Which was why my father broke his own rule and escorted me to the border to meet Tlennen and Anderle, when Tlennen and I wed.”

Hadand drew in a slow breath. “I see. So that might be why your brother has resisted renewing the trade treaty?”

Wisthia nodded. “Exactly. What we must contrive is to prevent my brother from finding out how desperate is the Iascan need. I sent two of my ladies-in-waiting ahead last winter, as soon as Evred promised I could return. They await us at a private house belonging to an old friend, who is expecting us. There we will find all the latest fashions. We will practice the newest customs of court. We will not arrive as a queen without a land, a barbarian queen, and a girl who should have been a princess, all dressed in the fashions of thirty years ago. We will arrive at court in glory, all to enhance Iasca Leror’s prestige.”

“Our prestige is her prestige,” Hadand said later to Joret, when they met in the tiny sitting room between their two equally small bedchambers.

Joret considered, then said, “Are you being critical?”

“No, because I believe in her goodwill. She wants Evred to succeed as king. Perhaps I should say it this way: my prestige is her prestige.”

Joret made a sign of agreement. “And since I have no rank, my part of the prestige is to be the decorative hand-maiden? ”

Hadand smiled. Then, “Is that unbearable?”

Joret laced her fingers around her knees and closed her eyes, for the first time not warding memory, but welcoming it.

Welcoming the cherished memory of almost stumbling over Cama’s long legs outstretched in front of the old reading chair in the archive the day after the Conspiracy, because she was looking up at the shelves of scrolls and books.

The laughing apologies, the tingling warmth that traced over skin and trickled through her veins for the very first time when she met his gaze.

How strange life is! That the same appreciation and warmth she had seen in others’ eyes most of her life, and had been offended, indifferent, and occasionally repelled by, could set her on fire when seen in a single dark eye.

She cherished the flurry of impressions that followed: his strong hands righting her, the puff of his breath on her ear; the laughing, breathless apologies. His husky voice as he admitted he was there not to read history so much as to look up the proper bugle call for a returning second son who was not heir but king, just so everything would go smoothly when—if—
when
Evred arrived. They would believe he lived until told differently: his voice deepened when he said that.

Cama’s masculine scent as she reached past him to set her book down; the angle of his head as he listened appreciatively when she explained she always read the oldest histories when she was upset over things in the now: how it steadied her to remember other people long ago had much the same problems and somehow survived.

He hadn’t shifted the talk to her eyes, or her hair, or her figure, though she felt as if each of her features was bathed in golden light, a light experienced only in his proximity . . .

She cherished the memory of taking him to her guest room. First encountering Hadand, who had taken a single look—her brown eyes shifting back and forth twice—then expertly fended off anyone else, just so they could be alone a little while.

Cama and Joret had so much to do, as Joret had to go between the Adaluin and the Guard and Hadand, and he had the prisoners to oversee and the Guard to reorganize, yet they found time for a first kiss. A first embrace. The cherished memory, impossibly dear, of him lying in her bed, a long strand of his hair caught in his eyelashes. Even the small heel-shaped scar around his ruined his eye had become impossibly dear . . .

And then—

And then—

And then the decision to part, as honor and duty required.

She opened her eyes, to find Hadand’s sympathetic brown eyes as steady as the candle flame.

Joret said, “No. It is not.”

Far to the northeast, the thunderstorm Inda had been waiting for boiled out of the west at last.

They’d spent nearly two weeks skulking in a inlet east of the Danai harbor. It was a difficult inlet known to smugglers on
Cocodu
, carved out of the desolate land of cliffs and treacherous coastal reefs and rock-strewn headlands between Chwahirsland and lands to the west. The Fangs lay eastward at the narrowest point of the strait and were guarded by Venn warships. It took no awareness of grand strategy to guess that the Venn would have set a trap for Inda’s fleet once they came down the strait; Inda’s lookouts, posted on the cliff tops, twice spotted Venn patrol fleets under sail.

But even the most watchful ship cannot see much farther than the waters directly ahead of it in the middle of a vast summer storm sweeping directly down the strait and out into the great seas beyond.

In the meantime his crew had not spent the hot, breathless days in idleness. The two schooners were transformed into aged fishing smacks by laboring sailors during the day. During the evenings they drilled.