King's Shield (22 page)

She caught the back of Falthum’s coat. “Just a moment. Maybe we can work something out, here. No use in spilling more blood.” The idea was to make it clear that two on one put her in the command position.

Elgar, the shit, smiled just wide enough for her to see the edges of white teeth. “I don’t mind spilling blood.”

Falthum looked back at his aunt: what do we do now?

She didn’t like showing her strength so early, but it didn’t seem this Fox was going to cooperate. So . . . “Maybe spilling some of your own will change your mind.”

She drew her sword.

Fox had glanced up only once when approaching the dock. He knew he was being watched, and while one sweep of the area for enemies was to be expected, another would make the pirates suspect he was looking for something specific.

Over to you, Dasta, Gillor,
he thought, flinging up one hand.

Scarf and Falthum charged him.

He had about a heartbeat to wonder if he was going to die stupidly with one arm in the air, then Dasta’s fight teams surged over the rooftops to take the pirates from behind, and Gillor led hers down from the back two streets just below the white chalk cliffs over which they’d spent two days trudging, out of sight of the pirates.

Scarf stared, as shocked as her crew. She had not expected anyone to come over the west side of the island, climbing mountains in the brunt of the storm.

That was her second mistake.

“Shoot!” Scarf yelled.

Fox whirled, sword blocking Falthum’s downward stroke. He grabbed Falthum’s thick wrist with his other hand, and pulled him round in front of him just as the hissing arrows struck.

Falthum cried out, stiffening. Fox dragged him backward the precious few steps he needed to vault behind the wagon he’d positioned himself near as another wave of arrows thudded into the old wood.

That would be the last wave of arrows from the rooftop pirates who were now busy fighting Dasta’s team.

Fox lunged out, knife and sword raised, as pirates came at him from all directions—Scarf, enraged past caring, in the lead.

Fox spared them a glance. The pirates still outnumbered his people. He whistled sharply. Those who’d reached the parade snapped into the threesomes he’d drilled into them and took on the overwhelming numbers, backs forming triangles.

That was when the locals stampeded from three of the side streets, waving either real or improvised weapons, and flung themselves at the pirates. The press intensified, sharpened steel cutting almost as much inadvertently as by directed blows, until Scarf and Fox emerged from the crowd and stood face-to-face.

Fox whipped up his sword’s point, then lowered it, stepped back, and smiled.

Scarf started a scornful question that was never asked because the consequences of her first mistake caught her squarely from behind: a hard wooden chair, swung with all her strength by Mistress Svanith.

 

 

 

The younger crew danced on the deck of the
Death,
surrounded by lamps and torches, as some clapped and sang. Mutt twirled on a barrelhead at the center, a bottle of wine in either hand as he kicked his legs up high to the tweetle of a flute and the shouts of his friends. Just below him Pil vig and Nugget sat side-by-side, Pilvig clapping and Nugget thumping a mug on the deck to mark out the beat.

Fox had snagged his own bottle of wine. His usual custom after an action was to get thoroughly drunk. It masked the pain of cuts and bruises he hadn’t been aware of getting, and it also masked the howling, wintry gusts of laughter through his skull, reminding him that no matter what he did, no matter how many fights he won, there would never be justice for him to go home to.

Or for Inda. He was probably dead. Inda certainly had not been at Parayid. The golden magical transfer case was empty.

And there it lay on the side table. Fox checked the impulse to fling it into the sea—as usual. Visual reminder of the stupidity of hope, wasn’t it? Or was there still some stubborn kernel of hope down inside him somewhere, bitter as aloe, dry as dust? Well, leave it.

He thrust open the stern windows to let out the cold stuffy air. Rain hissed on the sea just beyond, numbingly cold, but he smelled a difference in the air: spring was reaching the south at last.

He slammed the wine bottle down onto the table, dropped into his chair, and stared at the lamp. For a time after the fight he too had enjoyed the sweetness of successful command. But even at the height of enjoyment there had been moments of doubt, or something stronger than doubt. Moments too quick to identify during the swift flow of events.

He shut his eyes, trying to sort the images. Falthum, Scarf’s nephew—Mutt, dancing and singing in his triumph—Scarf lying dead on the stones.

Her cabin had surprised him. Not just the neatness, but it was full of old and expensive books, carefully preserved in glass-fronted shelves. The nephew—

That was it. He leaned over and fingered the books he’d taken from Scarf’s flagship, as Gillor (as the newest captain to earn her command) did not want them. There was not a book anywhere in his own fleet, that he’d swear.

The—call it anomaly—had begun during that parley, short as it was. The nephew and the aunt speaking so differently. Their accents—no, it wasn’t the accents. He knew smart people who spoke in dockside idiom. He knew stupid people who had been tutored to emulate the Colendi cadences of the upper ranks. Scarf had spoken like one tutored to the upper ranks, but she hadn’t taught her nephew to speak so. More to the point, she hadn’t taught him the
vocabulary
to speak well.

That was it. Had she deliberately kept him ignorant? Intent was now past question, thanks to Mistress Svanith’s summary justice. The fact remained the nephew had been ignorant. And . . .

Fox tipped his head back, listening to the rise and fall of young voices on deck. Mutt, the oldest of their young ones, celebrating his first command of one of the small schooners. He loved being a privateer. Fox wondered if he’d turn pirate if given a chance. What other life did he know? What was he, eleven or twelve when Inda first hired him, a hungry castaway off the docks at Freeport Harbor?

Fox took a long pull from the bottle, wrenched open the cabin door and yelled, “Mutt!”

The song on deck faltered for a moment, then resumed. Mutt’s bare feet slapped down the hatchway a moment later, and he dashed into the cabin, his strong-boned face emerging from the roundness of childhood, his gangly limbs beginning to take on the shape of the man he would be. If he weren’t killed. During the past two years they’d lost three of the young ones in battle (one recently returned); the others had cried fiercely at the time, but then recovered, eternally optimistic about the future and their place as future commanders.

“Do you know how to read?” Fox asked.

Mutt’s mouth dropped open. His eyes shifted to the bottle—

“No. I’m not drunk. Yet. Do you know how to read?”

Mutt looked affronted. “Inda never made us—”

Fox’s hand snapped out, quicker than a whip. He didn’t use a knife, or even much force, but the Marlovan women’s fighting style, called Odni, illegally taught to Fox by his own mother, enhanced Fox’s speed so he caught Mutt off balance. He fell on his butt.

“I thought you stopped that.” Mutt scrambled to his feet, rubbing one butt cheek. “Anytime anyone mentions Inda. It’s not like we’ll ever forget him—”

“If you want a life of violence,” Fox cut in, “you have to be ready at all times. Now answer my question.”

“A little,” Mutt said reluctantly, glowering through his tangled hair at the pile of books. Then away, as if they were more a threat than Fox’s ready fist.

A little.
Fox knew that Inda, at age twelve, had taught his fellow ship rats how to read the winter they were all imprisoned in Khanerenth when it was undergoing its political upheavals. But he had apparently stopped teaching when they lost the Pim ships, and any hope of a legal existence. After that, all his energy had gone into building his defense marines. Mutt had been hired during that time.

“From now on, your duties will include reading to me at night.”

“Me?
Why
?” Mutt glanced at Fox’s long hands lying there so lightly on the one knee he’d cocked over the other as he leaned back in his chair. Then his wary brown eyes turned upward to Fox’s ironic gaze.

“Quiet,” Fox said. “And before you continue whining questions about why you’re singled out for this torture, and what did you do, you may pass the word among the rest of the rats that you will be rotating this duty. You will all continue until you’ve all read these books. Even the ones in Sartoran.”

“But I don’t know any Sartoran!”

“You had better find the time to learn it, hadn’t you? Go away. Finish your dancing and drinking. I’m certainly going to finish mine.” Fox picked up his bottle. “Tomorrow, you start.”

Mutt ran out. His young honk was audible from the deck as he reported Fox’s newest outrage, his tone the distinctive teenage mix of belligerence and injury.

Fox turned back to the books, sliding them aside one by one until he reached one bound in finest blackweave edged with gold. His colors.

Over his life so far he had sustained many temptations, not the least of which was to kill Inda and take the secret treasure of the Brotherhood of Blood, now known to only five people in the world. Six, if you counted Ramis of the
Knife
—wherever he was.

And now a new temptation . . .

He dropped the black-and-gold bound book, uncorked the bottle, took a swig, stepped to the open windows. Then smashed the bottle against the stern timbers. And at the sudden silence abovedecks, he laughed.

Chapter Twenty-one

TAU and Jeje were given a tent to themselves. They set up next to Inda and Signi, who were next to the king in the center of camp.

Everyone rose before dawn for warm-up drills before they took to horse.

Evred asked Inda to run the morning drills for the warriors. After some talk with Tau and Jeje, Inda decided to stay with single knife drills. He would attempt to train them in Fox’s and his refinements on fighting techniques they knew. He would not attempt to train them in the two-knife style. The Venn would not wait for them to gain expertise.

So Inda did his double-knife drills on his own, then drilled the men while breakfast was made and packed up camp.

Tau and Jeje did not join the warriors out on the nearest grassy field, but worked between their tent and Inda’s. They were used to lack of space. They had trained on shipboard, and then, for almost two years, they had practiced on a narrow rooftop with no rail.

Early one morning a few days outside out of the royal city, Tau finished warm-ups with Jeje in the dim predawn light, then wandered toward the cook tent for something to drink to find Vedrid waiting for him.

Vedrid was outlined in the glow from the cook fires, fine pale hairs drifting down on either side of his face as they were not really long enough for even the back of the neck tuft that confined the rest of his hair.

Tau felt a pang of sympathy. He’d once cut off his hair on a whim he still could not entirely explain. Consequently he’d endured the tickle and annoyance of short hair for a couple of years until, at last, it was long enough to bind back again. It had surprised him at first that Vedrid, the only one of the Runners with this absurd tuft sticking out over his collar, endured no teasing. After several nights at the Runners’ camp, he recognized that Vedrid’s short hair was a badge of honor.

Vedrid extended an armload of cloth.

Tau held it up to the ruddy light and discovered a newly made Runner’s blue coat. “Thanks,” he said.

Inda popped out of the tent beyond Tau’s, his bare feet slapping through a rain puddle. Tau laughed inwardly at Inda’s obliviousness to the bemused looks that followed his rolling sailor’s walk as he crossed to the field where the men were gathering for morning drill, his sailor-braid flapping against the Marlovan coat Buck had given him.

“No bandages today,” Tau observed. “He must be getting used to being shod.”

The planes of Vedrid’s face shifted as he smiled. “We fixed the uppers of Landred-Randael’s boots with cotton-wool.”

Landred-Randael? Oh, yes. Cherry-Stripe.
Why don’t these Marlovans get rid of their titles entirely, and just use their academy names?

Tau signified agreement in the Marlovan manner—hand opening—which seemed to satisfy Vedrid, for he departed, vanishing in the gloom to go about his morning’s tasks.

Tau smoothed his hand down his new Runner’s coat. Someone had been stitching that by firelight every night since their departure. Of course he must wear it.

He had always believed that identity is mutable, at least group identity, if not individual. You dress like others, mimic their manner of speech and their interests and the way they move, and you become one of Us, and cease to be Them.

He’d played at roles ever since he was small, and been aware of himself playing at roles. Pulling on the long-skirted blue coat for the very first time changed the way he stood, the way he moved. It was tight through chest and shoulders, yet cut for a range of motion in using sword or bow; the high collars kept out wind as one rode, the long skirts warded the worst splashing from streams and puddles. For part of the day his spine seemed spiked, but by late afternoon, when they customarily halted, he felt as if he’d been wearing the coat all his life; only his muscles pulled from the alteration in his bearing, forcing shoulders back and down.

By sundown the Marlovans’ attitudes toward him had altered. He’d made the transformation from stranger to Runner.

The day they expected to cross the Eveneth River into the southeast corner of Marlo-Vayir land, where they would be resupplied, they rose to a thin, chill rain. To Tau’s surprise Jeje did not step between Inda’s tent and theirs to begin warm-up drill.