Treason's Shore (80 page)

Fox shook with silent laughter. “Is this an abrogation of your position as hero?”

“It’s me telling you I have
a
plan, and unless you have anything better, you’re going to help me convince whoever we get as allies that it’s
the
plan. Because here’s what I’ve been finding in my reading. The other half of leadership is believing their leader is so good they make it true.” He finished unwrapping his rolled chart and looked around. His vague expression turned to a frown of perplexity as he indicated the handsome carved desk built into the bulkhead. “This thing is fine, but where’s the old chart table?”

“Forward wardroom. So what you’re telling me is that you have more than one plan?”

“Yes. One’s got to stay secret. Only you and me and Barend’ll know. Jeje, if she’s here.”

“You don’t trust your former mates?” Fox’s brows slanted upward.

“I don’t trust anyone who might be listening in on ’em,” Inda retorted. “In the old days, I knew every face. Now I won’t. And like you said, there are spies all around. Probably in every single one of the allied fleets waiting for us.”

“Except maybe the Chwahir. I can’t imagine Thog being that remiss.”

“Thog? You saw her again?”

“Yes. She’s got a sizable force for us to use at The Fangs.”

“Thog.” Inda shook his head. “I guess I’ll think about that later. Back to my plan. It’s the easiest way. One’s public, the other secret.”

“Very well. What is that?”

“Signi made a chart showing Venn navigation.” Inda leaned against Fox’s fine desk and carefully unrolled Signi’s mirror chart.

Fox studied the lines propagating out in spokes from certain harbor cities, crossing the axes from other cities in a bewildering grid of diamond shapes. He set aside his empty cup then placed a finger on The Narrows, midway between the land bridge that almost connected the Toaran continent to the Halian. He put another finger on the Nob, and slowly brought the fingers up the drawn lines bisecting each location until they reached a city he’d never heard of, halfway up the west coast of Drael.

Inda pointed at the map. “We can’t use it to navigate. If we use their ‘ting’ as they call it, it bounces back to all the other dags, making us appear as a dot on their maps and charts.”

Fox whistled softly. “We don’t need it to navigate, we just need to see them. This chart will get us back through the Venn blockade. We had to wait for a storm to come this way.” He looked up. “But how do we judge where we are in reference to these dots of light?”

“Like always. Line of sight with one another and with landmarks. But once we know where they are in reference to our landmarks, we’ll be able to avoid them.” Inda plopped down on a bench, looked around, and whistled. “You raided some castles?”

“All legitimate pirate loot.” Fox’s smile was twisted. “By the way, you are ruining Captain Finna’s bench. Get out of those clothes.”

Inda got up, peered down at the bench inlaid with light wood carved in the form of stylized cranes, and bordered by old runes. “You attacked a Venn?”

“Venn pirate. Just setting up his empire over in Fire Islands, as his countrymen have abandoned that part of the world. I believe he was demoted, or cast ashore, or whatever it is the Venn call it. So he was helping himself to their leavings.”

Inda had begun to shiver, his right shoulder sending shards of white lightning up into his skull.

“Hot water in the bath through there,” Fox said, recognizing that old look of pain in Inda’s tightened jaw and thinned lips. “I got a duplicate of Walic’s pool given to me in gratitude when we took care of a pirate problem off the tip of Toar a couple years back.” He extended his hand toward the bulkhead behind Inda.

“I thought the cabin was smaller.” Inda’s teeth chattered as he shed his clothes.

He grabbed dry drawers and trousers from his bag and soon settled into the bath kept hot and clean by magic. The aches and pain receded, leaving him able to breathe deeply. Fox bent over the navigation chart, trying to comprehend the logic behind its design, as they conversed through the open door and he brought Inda up on who was where. Inda gave a deep sigh at the news about Dasta.

When Fox was done catching him up, Inda forced himself out of the warm bath. He dried off fast, and pulled on the clothes he’d brought into the bath chamber. “Listen. I’m to tell you that Evred offers to make the fleet a Marlovan navy.”

“Does he, now?” Fox said. “Putting me under whose orders?”

Inda had expected derision. “Mine.” He rapidly fingered his hair into his sailor braid.

Fox snorted. “And you are his military Herskalt. What does the King command, O Voice?”

“Establish order in the strait.” Inda rummaged in his sea bag for a shirt.

Fox laughed at the locket swinging against Inda’s chest. “So your keeper has you on a short chain, eh?”

Inda shrugged. “Reminds me. Better let him know I’m here.”

Chapter Thirteen

E
VRED Montrei-Vayir hated change, but had come to terms with the fact that he could not always control it. He also hated war, though he accepted all the talk of glory and bravery. Bravery was necessary to face the brutality of war, and glory was the reward the survivors gained for their risk. So the flags and the songs and the precedence bound the people together with pride into kinship.

His reluctant conclusion was that war brought out the best in some people. But that was no reason to seek war. All winter long, whenever he could get a few moments free, he delved into the archives for the reasons people chose to go to war when there was no imminent attack. Most of what he found was self-serving, but here and there he discovered reluctance, regret for possible loss, and most of all, overriding need.

He wrote back and forth to Tau, asking questions about the various kings and their policies, particularly those on the strait. Everyone, it seemed, wanted precedence—just to make certain no one else got it, if for other reason. Ymar wanted it because they saw themselves as first among victims, deserving the highest reward. And the Chwahir just always wanted land.

Everyone wanted precedence, but no one was willing to sail to Bren because they didn’t trust one another.

Everyone wanted Inda to reappear in his Elgar the Fox guise and fix the problem. After all his reading and writing and meditation, Evred began to comprehend that the “problem” transcended the Venn threat.

What they really wanted was someone strong enough to re-establish order.

And Inda was the one to do it.

The rightness of this vision—the Marlovans guaranteeing order—seized Evred so viscerally that his emotions swooped all winter between the heights of a moral conviction, at last, at long last, and the abyssal fear that Inda would die trying to save the wayward, indifferent kingdoms of the Sartoran continent from the evil Dag of the Venn. Every reminder of Erkric’s thwarted plan to capture and ensorcel Evred’s own mind, to force him to betray his people in service of the Venn, infuriated him all over again.

Inda
must
prevail. For the sake not just of Evred, but every man in the army, every woman and child and horse and dog in Iasca Leror, Inda must bring peace to the southern world. It was no mere military goal, but a moral imperative.

And so, when Inda wrote at last, just before spring, saying that he was now onboard his old flagship—and corroborating everything Tau had said—Evred neatly wrote out the orders he’d thought about so carefully.

Fox left Inda to make a tour of the deck. Barend appeared, having just finished his watch. “Come into the wardroom. I’ve got some eats waiting there.”

They dropped down a deck and entered the wardroom to find two trays of steaming food that smelled wonderful.

They’d just finished when Inda sat up abruptly. “Ho. There’s the locket. I wish Evred trusted the scroll-cases. It’s not just you can use a bigger paper, but these things, it’s like someone’s poking me in the ribs from inside.”

“Hated that,” Barend commented, as a couple of shipmates wandered in to begin their recreation watch, one pulling cards and markers from a worn little bag.

Inda thumbed the locket open and retrieved the neatly trimmed strip of paper. A few moments after, “Read it.” He extended Evred’s note.

Barend sighed. “How about you read it to me? Truth is, I don’t do so well with letters that small. Though Evred writes much clearer than most.”

“What about them?” Inda tipped his head toward the three at the other end of the wardroom.

“Don’t speak Marlovan.”

“Right,” Inda said after a moment—the three were bent in low-voiced conversation punctuated by the clatter of markers.

He lowered his own voice. “ ‘When you have cleared the strait, you will clear the harbors of the strait and establish peace through regular patrols. Give all safe passage, fair trade. No favorites, no secret alliances, no double deals.’ And on the back, he put, ‘If the kingdoms want to fight each other, let them do it at their borders on land.’ ” Inda looked up expectantly.

Barend shrugged. “Sounds clear enough. If what you say about us being a navy is right, well, it gives us something to do after the Venn are gone.”

Inda rubbed his scar hard, the way he always did when he wanted his brain to work better. Only rubbing his scar didn’t help him understand his hesitation. So he turned out his hands. “First thing is clearing the strait.”

Barend’s laugh sounded like a rusty hinge. “I’d call that a big enough first thing.”

“I’ll tell Fox about the orders afterward. Maybe by then he’ll be more used to the idea of being a Marlovan again.”

“He’s always been a Marlovan.” Barend lifted a bony shoulder. “But an exiled one. I don’t know that he’d make an oath to Evred.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

More shipmates clumped in then, and the galley crew started bringing in trays of food.

A day and a half later, they’d caught up with the rest of the ships Fox had chosen to sweep the coast in search of Inda’s brig.

The
Vixen
reached them first. Jeje scrambled up the sides of
Death
and charged up the companionway, a short, solid figure before whom all gave way.

She grabbed Inda in a crushing hug and lifted him clear off the deck.

“Augh,” Inda squawked. “Can’t breathe!” He gave Jeje a smacking kiss, which made her blush deep red as several of the younger crew hooted with laughter.

“When you’ve finished your touching reunion,” Fox drawled, “you might join me before the rest show up to pull Inda into five equal pieces.”

“Huh.” Jeje flipped up the back of her hand at Fox, but followed him into the cabin, as did Inda, still rubbing his chest. Barend, grinning, shut the door behind them and quietly moved around the cabin closing the scuttles.

Inda sat on Finna’s bench, elbows on knees. Fox moved to the desk so he could view everyone.

“This is just for us four. Here’s the real plan,” Inda said, leaning forward. “I am going to go after Erkric and Rajnir myself. Jeje, that’s where you come in. I’m going to strut around in the
Death
and practice maneuvers soon’s we find the allies. When it comes time for actual battle, I sneak onto some ship no one knows—”