Dark Empress (72 page)

Marshal Tythias and Commodore Jaral, standing to one side of the governor, bore unreadable expressions and Ghassan realised he was having a little difficulty meeting the gaze of his old captain, even in Jaral’s new exalted role as commander of the navy. The presence of a clearly very important Pelasian Satrap, dressed in his elegant black robes, and sporting numerous marks of rank and decorations, was more of a surprise. Ghassan recognised some of the markings that identified the officer as the commander of the Pelasian royal fleet.

“All five of you?” the governor asked in surprise. “I thought I saw one of your ships disappear in a fireball. I was expecting only four.”

Samir nodded wearily, wincing at the pain in his head.

“I beg a slight change in the contract, governor.”

The man frowned suspiciously.

“One does not usually change the conditions of a deal after it is done, captain Samir.”

“I’m aware of that, Excellency, but there are… circumstances.”

He glanced along the line.

“Captain Orin, as you astutely noted, is no longer with us, having given his life for the cause. However, we were very fortunate to have, as a last-minute ally, master Culin of the Lassos council.”

“Culin?” the governor snapped. “The man is wanted on a hundred different charges! Piracy is merely somewhere on the list. This is hardly what I agreed to!”

The target of his bile stepped out from the line and bowed slightly to the governor.

“With respect, your Excellency, you will find upon investigation, that more than half of those charges are erroneous or at least inflated.”

As the governor glared at him, he cast a mischievous smile back.

“Indeed, if you give me a couple of days, I think you’ll find that my charge sheet is almost clear!”

“What?”

Culin grinned.

“Come now, governor. You must be aware of just how many people I have among your people. If I’d wished, I could have cleared my name years ago. But I would rather it were done in a legitimate manner.”

The governor glared at him and then turned the look on Samir.

“You could do far worse, governor. Master Culin truly is a master, of many things. I think you would find him a serious asset in the admiralty. Certainly I’d rather have him working for me than against me…”

The governor’s glare refused to shift and Samir sighed and withdrew a folded and worn sheet of parchment from his tunic.

“And this particular item was not part of our agreement, but I will proffer it as an extra incentive to accept the change in terms.”

The governor reached out and accepted the parchment, his scowl remaining deep as he unfolded it and read the neat script on the inner surface.

“What is this? A list of names? Who are these people?”

Samir’s grin became darkly mischievous.

“Those are all the people I slipped aboard your ships over the last few years. You may want to honourably discharge them all, since they’ve done you no harm and served as well as any other sailor.”

Next to him, Ghassan blinked.

“You really did have men on board their ships? I assumed that was a lie to goad the council into action?” he asked, his voice hovering somewhere between astonishment and anger. “Not sure I’d have gone along with this if I’d known that.”

Samir laughed quietly.

“I like to have a cushion to fall back on, Ghassan. You know that. There was always the possibility that the governor would not accept my offer, and I had to be prepared.”

Ghassan stared at his brother helplessly as Samir turned back to the governor.

“Straight deal time, governor. You accept the five of us with amnesty into your service and I give you a guaranteed end to the pirate island.”

The governor turned and whispered something into the ear of Marshal Tythias. The two men, along with Commodore Jaral retreated a few paces and then fell into a brief whispered discussion while the Pelasian admiral watched them, an unreadable expression on his face. After a long minute, the three officers turned and strode back across to them.

“Very well. The deal is this: Samir, Ghassan, Saja and Faerus will be pardoned entirely and accepted into the Imperial navy at the rank of Captain, with their own commands, as per your original request. Our offer with respect to master Culin is on different terms, however. We offer an amnesty for all his crimes to date, but without Imperial naval enlistment and on the understanding that he ‘disappears’ as far as we are concerned.”

Samir shook his head.

“That’s…”

He was cut off mid-sentence as the Pelasian admiral gestured at Culin.

“In that case, I would like to offer a position to this man. The Pelasian navy is more than aware of Culin’s accomplishments. I think we can use you?”

Culin shrugged.

“How’s the weather in Pelasia.”

“Hot” the man replied with a tight smile. “Always hot.”

Samir looked back and forth between the two until Culin gave a small nod.

“Looks like you have a deal, governor, though I think you’ve let a major asset slip your fingers there. Be very wary of the Pelasian navy now.”

The governor nodded.

“Then only one thing remains.”

His eyes rose to the mist on the horizon and the black rock of Lassos’ peak rising from the centre. Samir nodded and turned to his brother.

“Ghassan?”

Fishing in his tunic, the taller brother retrieved the bronze disk with its grizzly needle and displayed it openly to the men before them.

“And I have your word this is what you said it was?”

Samir nodded.

“The dead man’s compass. Since the Hart’s Heart took the other one to the bottom of the sea a few hours ago, this is the last. Moreover, I have taken extra steps to cutting off any future hope of navigating the reefs. You need have no more fear of the pirate island, governor. This is an end of it.”

He turned and nodded at Ghassan and the tall captain strode across to the rail nearby. With a curious smile, he changed his grip on the bronze compass and, nestling it in an underarm position, cast it with all his might out into the sea, where it hit the surface, skimmed three times and then disappeared with a plop, sinking to a watery grave.

The governor nodded as Ghassan returned to the group.

“Then our business is complete, captain Samir. Welcome to the Imperial navy. I believe Commodore Jaral has had rather a large cask of some corrosive liquid stored below deck in order to celebrate… I have it on authority that there are rites of passage to endure that defy official terms. I presume you are in no rush to return to your ships?”

Samir glanced back and forth between his friends and noted their grins.

“I think we can spare some time to carouse with our fellow officers, Excellency.”

Epilogue

The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon as Ghassan and Samir rested on the side rail of the Imperial flagship and stared out across the glittering sea. Ghassan had been careful with the drink below, aware at all times of the gaze of Commodore Jaral, and not entirely sure of where he now stood with his former captain, Still, he was back in a position of command and, even if Jaral still held misgivings, Ghassan would soon put them to one side and make his name a noble one again.

Life was suddenly a sea of possibilities. He smiled at the smaller captain by his side. Samir also had partaken only of a couple of drinks, the thumping of the blood in his wounded skull making him light-headed and fuzzy after only a few mouthfuls.

“You did it, Samir. You redeemed both of us.”

Samir nodded, wincing.

“More than that, Ghassan, I think, but it wasn’t just me. I may have been the central peg that held things together, but this was the work of several of us, including the governor and Culin and Saja… but most of all, I agree, it was the sons of Nadia.”

Smiling, he raised his cup to the darkening sky.

“Mother and uncle Faraj wherever you may be. Your boys have made you proud at last.”

Ghassan raised his own cup and took a quick sip.

“It seems like a thousand years since mother died and I lost all hope. And it was you. It was always you, with your ‘things will be better’, that kept me going. Through everything. Everything we lost and so many times we met as enemies, but you never lost sight of that, did you? Everything ‘being better’ was always your goal.”

Samir smiled.

“After what we went through, I think we deserve a little of everything being better, don’t you?”

Ghassan laughed quietly.

“It’s to be hoped we never go to war against Pelasia again. I’d hate to come up against a navy with Culin behind it!”

Samir laughed a genuine laugh and the two fell silent, watching the light fade in the west, taking with it the old world and bringing the possibility of the new.

The desert nomads have a saying.

“When something is broken it should never be discarded. So long as the pieces remain, the whole can be remade.“

* * *

Karo was, and he’d be the first to admit it, not a nice man. He’d never been one and piracy had been a natural course for him. After years of fighting in the pits in Calphoris to harden himself, he’d turned to mugging folk as a way to make ends meet. He’d discovered how much he liked to kill that very way, when a mugging went wrong and he’d been forced to dispatch the target. It had been messy and gratuitous. And he’d enjoyed it so much that he’d repeated it the next time; and the next.

Only when the heat from the authorities had become just too much had he had to flee the streets and make for the port where he began the long journey that would lead to him, more than a decade later, being the commander of a boarding party aboard the pirate vessel Diamond Devil. He’d had an illustrious career serving under captain Corun and everything had been rosy until the last couple of days. Then that damned Samir and his treacherous friends had come back and brought disaster with them.

Corun had dithered when the fleet suddenly started attacking itself and it had taken the first officer’s presence of mind to persuade him to turn and chase down the Hart’s Heart and the Dark Princess in the hope of killing Samir and getting back to Lassos. And then everything had gone wrong. Somehow, despite being in the favourable position, things had gone so damn badly wrong that he’d had to stop in the middle of scalping some bastard from the Empress and jump into the sea to avoid capture and death following the sudden and surprise arrival of the Sea Witch and Faerus’ damn ship.

He’d seen a few dozen others hit the water around him. Some had been crushed between the hulls. Others had probably drowned, but he paid them no mind. Now they were no longer on the ship, it was every man for himself. A question of survival. And so he’d struck out for the rocks.

Of course, people said things about the reefs, and he’d seen the ghosts himself, but they were there to stop ships getting through, not individuals. It would take a long time for a man to get from rock to rock all the way to the island, but he knew he could do it.

The first rock felt cold and slimy. He slid his hands up the clammy surface until he could peer over the top. There they were in the mist: figures in grey, robed and threatening. But, just as he’d thought, none directly around him. They were a deterrent. They always appeared nearby, not on the rock where you actually were. A deterrent, pure and simple. They must be some sort of magic, as they couldn’t really exist.

He grasped the top with his fingers and hauled himself up.

The next rock was clear too. He’d make it there and then decide where to head next. Hauling against the wet, cold stone, he pulled himself over the crest to a dip beyond and found himself staring up at a grey figure.

His eyes widened as the phantom smiled and the effect, as that wet and rubbery grey face stretched and contorted to show a hundred needle teeth, was truly terrifying.

“Gharic?”

His heart stopped in shock, but not before the cold, dead, grey hands of the former captain of the pirate ship Hart’s Heart closed on his cheeks and the wraith fed.

* * *

Asima awoke to silence. She was clearly in some sort of hold. The bulkhead timbers and barrels reminded her of the room that Samir had last kept her held in. Well this time there would be no sweetness and complicity… Samir would just have to die. She’d like to do it slowly; to peel the flesh from his limbs while lightly salting him, but she might just have to go for a knife in the back. That hadn’t done for Ghassan, though. Maybe the neck. A blade straight through the side and then ripped out of the front; that would do it. Everything vital in one go… messy, but quick and sure. Ghassan may be deformed, but nobody could claim their throat was in a different place.

She moved and groaned.

How long had she been unconscious here? She could hear the lapping of waves but no voices. She moved again and realised that some of her discomfort came from the piece of wreckage under her head.

She squinted, her eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the dimness in here, a boarded up window letting in only minimal light. There was a shattered lump of wood she’d been using as a pillow; several broken boards torn from the wall of a building or some such. Her head tilted to one side as she examined the boards and sudden anger flashed deep in her eyes as she realised where they had come from, their origin betrayed by the elegantly painted slogan: Dark Empress.