Treason's Shore (81 page)

Barend raised his brows to find Fox staring at him, eyes wide. Fox let out a low whistle.

Inda flicked his gaze from one to the other. “What?”

Jeje looked mutinous, distrusting Fox’s grin. Except Barend was grinning, too.

“What would you say,” Fox drawled, “if I could give you a ship with all kinds of magic all over it? A Venn ship? An old Venn ship, belonging to one of their kings?”

Inda sat up on his bench. “Venn?”

Barend grinned. “Here’s a hint. Black sails?”

“You got Ramis’
Knife?
” Inda asked in disbelief.

“On the south side of Ghost Island. While we were loading the treasure ships, I took Barend over in a boat to see it, just to make certain I wasn’t dreaming. Or crazy.”

Barend shook his head slowly. “It’s there, all right. And it feels . . . strange. Magic all over it.”

“You saw Ramis?” Inda asked, distracted. “I thought he was dead!”

“I don’t really know what dead means in Norsunder.” Fox lifted a hand. “If anything. But he gave me that ship. Said we might find it useful.”

Inda rocked back and forth, eyes half closed.

“It’s probably got more of those magic things than anything Erkric has,” Barend offered. “Weird. How do you think Ramis knew Inda would use it?”

Inda snorted and opened his eyes. “He didn’t. Because I won’t.”

“What?” the other three said together.

“First of all, I wouldn’t trust anything a Norsundrian ‘gave’ us,” Inda said. “Second, think about it. Pretend the magic wasn’t in question. Try to see me sailing a black-sailed Venn ship toward their world armada. Even if there’s magic protecting it somehow—and I don’t trust that at all—wouldn’t that be like painting a target on my chest?”

Fox grimaced ruefully. “Yes.”

Inda dug his fingers into his right shoulder, craning his neck. “Well, maybe my plan is just as obvious. Still, if they
think
I’m on that thing . . . well, if my plan is to work, I need to be on the sneak. But, say we split off a feint attack and put the
Knife
at the lead?”

Barend wheezed with laughter. Fox frowned.

Inda snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Use their expectations against ’em.” He carefully opened Signi’s mirror chart and knelt on the deck to spread it, one knee and one palm holding it down. Barend crouched down to put his hand on a third corner and set an empty mug on the fourth.

“So my feint is lined along the south coast, west of the Fangs. Right here, just east of Danai, the headquarters at that old pirate lair we cleaned out after we smashed Boruin. And the rest in line at The Fangs, just as they’ll probably expect. If we could just flank the Venn as they attack our main force, and I’m in something unknown, small, unwatched—”

Fox leaned back. “I see what you’re thinking. Good plan if we had enough ships to mount two attacks. But we don’t.”

“Then we’ll just have to make it look like two attacks. We’ll put Ramis’
Knife
at the front of a feint. Durasnir’ll take one look at that thing, straight from their ancestors, and he’s got to think I’m on it, at the head of us all.”

Jeje waved at Inda. “So you’re really on the
Vixen?
If you want us to be an unknown fisher, I kept that terrible old sail.”

“Good.” Inda moved his knee and the mug, and the chart rustled back into its roll. “Barend, will you take
Skimit
and while the east wind is strong, go fetch the
Knife?
If you lay on every stitch of sail, you might possibly get there before the winds change.”

“Then every stitch of sail coming back. Got it,” Barend said. “Well, I’ve always wanted to see how fast I could race the strait, and
Skimit
’s the one to do it. We’ve rebuilt it twice to make it faster.”

“Fox, you give him your gold case so he stays in touch.”

Barend rubbed his hands and got to his feet. “Can I pick my crew?” Inda and Fox both turned up their hands, noted the other doing it, and Fox looked sardonic.

Barend eyed them, then said, “Be gone by next watch.”

As he left, the halloo, “Boat ho!” came through the open door.

“Captains are here.” Inda rapped the table with his knuckles. “Remember, no one knows about my
Vixen
plan or about the Danai feint or the
Knife
. If there are spies in the fleet, as we suspect, then it’s best to have everyone think we’re all going to be at The Fangs, inverted arrowheads as our tactical innovation. We can pick our feint right before the attack and have them get into position at the last moment.”

When Jeje signified agreement, Fox opened the cabin door.

Gillor, Tcholan, and Eflis were delighted to see Inda again. Tough, lean Mutt colored with intense pleasure, looking like a boy again when Inda clapped him on the back so hard his eyes watered. “Good to see you with your own ship,” Inda said. “Sorry it’s Dasta’s, but Dasta must be glad it’s you.”

Mutt did not try to untangle that anymore than the others did, just nodded emphatically as they settled around the big table, which Fox had some of the rats bring back in.

Lorm made up special a jug of the delicious cranberry drink Barend had introduced, which was a mixture of water conditioned with yeast and sugar stirred into the juices of cranberries and lime. Add to that a dash of fiery distilled corn-whiskey, and the cold vanished at the first sip.

The Fox Banner Fleet captains drank with appreciation. Inda, as usual, could have been drinking marsh water for all he seemed to notice as he indicated Signi’s chart.

“Here’s what I heard.” Inda leaned forward, gathering their attention with his earnest gaze. “The Venn promised to come thundering down on Bren by midsummer if they don’t agree to terms.”

“Same with Nelsaiam,” Fox put in. “We got that from several sources.”

“So here’s my question. What have you heard? Why so slow? Why not sweep the entire strait last year?”

“They couldn’t rebuild the damaged ships with what they’d get at Llyenthur.” Tcholan’s white teeth flashed in his dark face as he laughed. “My new carpenter comes from there. Said Llyenthur’s like everyone else, pledged years ahead in trying to rebuild their navy, soon as the Venn disappeared a few years ago. There won’t have been an extra stick or spar by the time the Venn got in there, even before the typhoon swept the harbor clean out to sea.”

Inda tapped a rhythm on his thigh. “Then the Venn warships might be fished and frapped. That would explain why you slipped their blockade so easily.”

“Maybe. But even if their ships are bundles of twigs, they’ll be disciplined and drilled.”

“So here’s what I want to do. Jeje, you’ve got to run ahead. Slip through the blockade and stop at Bren. Tell Chim what’s been decided. If they want to fight, it’s up to them to run a land battle on their own, or else they can slip the rest of their navy out after you. Send ’em to The Fangs to reinforce the allies.”

Jeje rubbed her jaw. “That means they’re leaving the harbor to the Venn.”

“The Venn are going to take it anyway, right? So Bren’s harbor will be occupied for a time, but we hope no more than a month or two. Supposedly, if they surrender the harbor, the Venn won’t wreck it.”

Jeje shrugged. She’d been deeply unhappy about Bren being left to its own devices ever since she learned that no one from the east coast was going to risk entering the strait on Bren’s behalf.

“I’ve got to take my stand at The Fangs if I’m to make it all work.”

Gillor frowned at the map. “They have to know how many ships everyone’s got since they lost control before.”

“Yes,” Inda said. “And also, every harbor’s got to be full of their spies. Can’t be helped.”

“How we gonna avoid the Venn blockade when we go down the strait?” Mutt asked.

Inda spread the chart open. He whispered the spell Signi had taught him, and the captains bent in to gaze avidly at the glowing lights on the chart still clustered in orderly manner around Llyenthur Harbor and westward of there in precise triangles. “What you see is where all the Venn ships are right now. Since we’ll never use it to ting them—never mind what that means—they’ll never see us. But you cannot mention this thing to anyone outside this cabin, not even to one another. Are we agreed?” He picked up the mug, tasted it, and whistled. “Hoo, that’s good. Have I had that before?”

After Evred wrote to Inda, he wrote to Tau with the addition:

Tau frowned, wishing that he had not helped himself quite so generously to Princess Kliessin’s famed Flower Day Wine Cup.

Squaring himself at his desk, he read more slowly. Inda-Harskialdna was ordered to build the fleet he’d been asked by outlanders to build, defeat the Venn, and then take control of the strait in the name of justice and peace.

Tau got up and moved restlessly around his study. Sounded fine, but what was the truth he sensed underlying these words? The problem was “truth” was not a single discrete item, like a desk. Truth and love, two of the most important words to human beings, and among the most difficult to define. He’d never been able to define love in words, and hadn’t needed to. Jeje was always first to mind, but close behind was Inda—without any component of sexual desire—and Evred with a large component of desire, but friendship tentative at best due to Evred’s profound difficulties with trust. And there they came full circle: Evred trusted Inda to establish peace and wanted Tau to aid him.

But what did that really mean?

He knew he should wait, but he also knew he would not sleep until he’d written. So he dipped his pen, and pulled a cut square of scroll-case paper from the little case.

As always, it took a day or two for a reply. Evred was far too reserved to write spontaneously, at least to Tau.

Tau sat back, stunned. “Under the same laws?”

He’s ordering Inda to take control of the strait in the name of Iasca Leror
.

Tau dashed out and nearly ran into one of Queen Wisthia’s house runners. “Two messengers from the harbor, my lord,” the girl said to Tau.

He forced himself to stop and even to smile. On Tau’s arrival, Wisthia had said,
I have instructed the servants to address you as Lord Taumad Dei and to introduce you as the same
.

Lord of what?
he’d exclaimed, imagining what Jeje would say.
I’m not lord of anything.

If you were ten years younger, I would send you to the archive to write down just how many overlapping grants-for-heirs-in-perpetuity your family, in all branches, has had of courtesy titles. Just because you don’t place value on a social advantage, I trust you will not throw one away if people insist on granting it to you. Not if you expect to succeed in the world of diplomacy, which is one layered in symbol and hidden meaning
.

Wisthia appeared right behind the servant and dismissed the girl with a touch and a soft word. “Taumad? You appear to be in a trance.” And when Tau’s gaze snapped upward, “When you look like that, you had better speak to me before going anywhere.”

“It’s Evred.” Tau handed her the letter.

When she’d read it through, she tapped it against her palm, her compressed mouth and wide, intense gaze sharpening her resemblance to Evred.

“He means for Inda to take control of the strait,” Tau said in Sartoran, testing the words. “Doesn’t he?”

In answer, Wisthia thrust him inside her chamber and shut the door with her own hands. “The timing is ill,” she said. Then added under her breath, more to herself than to Tau, “I’m afraid it was inevitable.”

“The timing is ill with half the city evacuating?” Tau tipped his head toward the window.

“No, I consider that a removal of problems, but I don’t have to concern myself with Bren’s interrupted trade and revenue. I mean the tension between the princess and the prince is already considerable. How much will it worsen and threaten our own trade?”

Tau made a polite gesture of regret. Despite the social attempts to maintain civilized flow of discourse, all winter long everyone felt the pressure of negotiations going on far away. Bren wanted its supposed allies to come to its defense; the supposed allies did not want to risk their navies in the strait so far from home; Prince Kavna had championed the maritime alliance as Bren’s only hope, and Princess Kliessin did not trust any of them to come to Bren’s defense.