Red Tide (19 page)

“Run along and play, boy. This is men's work.”

It was a moment before Galantas could speak. His father was spoiling for a fight, but Galantas knew this was a contest he couldn't win. “Are you sure you won't need help with the big words?” he said at last.

Then, before Dresk could reply, he spun on his heel and walked away.

Near the guardhouse, Qinta was speaking to two of Krel Faloman Gorst's men. Galantas crossed to join them. He struggled to compose himself. Not for the first time, Dresk had tried to shame him in front of his kinsmen, but the fool probably thought he owed Galantas for the indignity of Galantas saving his life in that Raptor raid nine years ago. The irony wasn't lost on Galantas. As a child, he'd been warned not to dishonor the warlord—had been pushed into excelling with both sail and sword. Yet in the end it was Galantas's skill with a blade, rather than his lack of it, that had shamed Dresk.

Or shamed him in his own eyes, at least. To Galantas, his father had been immense that day, carving holes in the enemy ranks with each sweep of his broadsword. He'd saved Galantas's life a dozen times, so why should his son repaying the favor have caused such humiliation?

Pride. It was the only explanation.

And yet where is that pride now?
Galantas wondered, remembering his father's drunken gaze.

The shadows in the yard were deepening, making the points of light in the Augerans' skin glitter. Galantas heard two guards speculating in overloud voices about whether those points would be valuable if they were cut out. The stone-skins' response was a scornful silence. Galantas understood their contempt. On the Ribbon Sea, the coming of a Rubyholt ship was feared like the coming of Shroud himself. Yet here the Islanders looked like nothing more than a gaggle of beggars, sniggering at the man handing out the alms.

So much would change on Galantas's watch.

At that moment, he noticed Talet moving through the guardhouse gates. Late for the meeting with the stone-skins? So who was advising Dresk in there? The chamberlain shuffled across the bailey like a condemned man on his way to the gallows, his cane tap-tapping on the flagstones. As he passed Galantas, he kept his gaze on the ground. Galantas's eyes narrowed. Talet was the closest thing Dresk had to common sense among his followers, yet Galantas had never trusted the man. He was about to call him back when he heard voices from the Great Hall.

Approaching voices.

He frowned. Was the meeting with the Augerans over already? Had Dresk changed his mind and sent Eremo packing? No, the stone-skins sounded relaxed—good-humored, even—and above them Galantas heard the rumble of his father's laughter.

Understanding came to him.

Dresk had signed the damned treaty without even reading it.

*   *   *

Amerel watched Talet cross the bailey. Had the spy experienced a late change of heart? Or was he only now returning from making arrangements to protect his son? Whatever the reason for his tardiness, his arrival had drawn all eyes to him like a pair of tits. Galantas in particular was looking at him, and if he was suspicious now, how would he feel when Noon's crossbow bolt found its mark? Once the dust settled on this evening's proceedings, Amerel would have a few loose ends to tie up.

Now wasn't the time to worry about that, though, for with Talet on his way to the tower, the game was back on.

The spy entered the fortress.

And not a moment too soon. From inside the hall came footsteps, a babble of voices. The Augerans back already? Amerel's first instinct was that it must be the chest bearers returning. But the first person to emerge from the building was the man mountain with the golden tattoos.
And where the bodyguard goes …
Sure enough, the next figure to appear was Eremo, rubbing his hands together. Good bit of business he'd done inside, apparently, and it wasn't often you could say that when you were the one handing over twenty thousand talents. Scarface followed him out of the door.

So much for the negotiations.

Amerel silently cursed. Talet had only just entered the fortress. The Guardian had to slow the stone-skins down, but how? What could she do that wouldn't alert them to her presence?

She gathered her power, still no idea what her next move would be.

Galantas came to her rescue. He stepped in front of the man mountain. It was like stepping into the path of an avalanche, and for a heartbeat Amerel thought the Syn would roll right over him. Instead the Augeran drew up. The two men stared at each other. Galantas had to crane his neck to look into the giant's eyes, but he wasn't backing down. It took a placatory word from Eremo to separate them.

Amerel looked back at the tower. Through the first-floor window, she saw a shadow—Talet's?—glide across a wall, but it moved slowly, slowly.

Galantas was talking to Eremo. Complaining about the speed with which the treaty had been signed, no doubt. The commander was all smiles and nods, but there was no mistaking the strain in the exchange. The Matron alone knew what Galantas hoped to accomplish here. Perhaps he wanted to show his kinsmen he could stand up to the stone-skins, but if you wanted to look big in front of your friends, you didn't do it standing next to a bodyguard the size of a cliff.

Did Amerel really care what Galantas was doing, though? All this tension meant that Noon's crossbow bolt would land like a spark on dry kindling.

A shout came from her left. The gates had been closed to keep the crowds outside, and a handful of people had pressed their faces against the bars, looking as resentful as sinners at the gates to paradise. Amerel shot another look at the tower window. Still no Talet, but maybe he was keeping out of sight until the instant came to give Noon the signal.

Time for her last preparations.

Floating up to the height of the battlements, Amerel checked to ensure she remained aligned with the engraved flagstone and the brothel's window. Then she sank back into the yard. Eremo must have grown tired of stroking Galantas's ego, for he broke away from the other man and started making his way toward the guardhouse again. This time Galantas let him pass.

Here we go.

Scarface skipped ahead of his commander. Amerel couldn't shake the feeling she would have been better off making this freak her target rather than Eremo, but it was too late to change the plan now. A clank sounded as the guards opened the gates. Amerel focused on the section of wall where Noon's bolt would appear. The sky above the rampart was darkening to bronze. Hard to stare into that relative brightness after peering so long into the gloom, but she dared not look away.

Any moment now.

Eremo was an armspan from the engraved flagstone. Assuming Talet had signaled to Noon, the Breaker's bolt would already be on its way. Amerel felt a blink coming on, opened her eyes wider against it. But the harder she tried to fight it—

A flash of black above the battlements. Noon's crossbow bolt seemed to hang in the air before dipping as it passed over the parapet.

A heartbeat for Amerel to judge its speed and trajectory.

It was the shot she needed—a fraction high and behind Eremo's position, but nothing she couldn't rectify with a nudge of her Will. A nudge was all she could afford to give it, too, for anything heavy-handed would rob it of its momentum. The bolt plunged into the shadows of the bailey, and Amerel squinted to follow its flight. On the battlements, a female Rubyholt guard must have heard the whisper of its passage, for she flinched as if she thought the missile was meant for her. Perhaps Eremo glimpsed her from the corner of his eye, for he paused and turned toward her.

Making himself a bigger target for Amerel to hit.

A last feather-touch to alter the bolt's flight.

Got you.

With Eremo facing away from her, she didn't see precisely where the missile struck, but it was somewhere high on the chest. He stumbled back under the force of the impact, his hands reaching up to the wound.

Then his legs buckled, and he collapsed.

There was a collective intake of breath from the Rubyholters. For a moment, the stone-skins stared at their commander as if their minds were trying to catch up to what their eyes were telling them. Amerel felt the scales of history waver on their pivot. Then one of the Augerans reached for his sword.

The yard exploded into motion.

Amerel didn't see what happened next because her blood-dream was already upon her. As she killed, so her victim's pain was reflected on her through the Deliverer's visions. It wasn't just one bolt striking home, though, it was six, seven, eight, each thudding into her body with the force of a horse's kick. Blood bubbled in her spiritual throat. Her vision was a blur, her chest a knot of agony, but she smiled nevertheless.

Here was justice.

*   *   *

What the hell?

It took Galantas an instant to register what had happened. Eremo down, and there was no mistaking the cause with that crossbow bolt sticking from his chest. The nearest stone-skins closed around their commander to shield him with their bodies.

“Hold your fire!” Galantas shouted, turning toward the section of battlements where the missile had come from. The faces of the guards there mirrored his disbelief. One man was frozen in the act of raising a bottle to his lips. Two had half drawn their swords, but none were aiming a weapon into the yard. A woman with a crossbow at her feet held her hands up as if to deny responsibility. Then her eyes widened at something behind Galantas, and she crouched to pick up the weapon.

From over Galantas's shoulder, a wave of black sorcery flashed toward the battlements, crackling like a hundred tindersparks and darkening the air in its wake. A man on the walkway flung himself aside, but the woman who'd gone for the crossbow was engulfed. The blackness clung to her as she fell screaming into the yard. Her flesh dissolved, and by the time she hit the ground she was naught but a sack of meat and bones that landed on the flagstones with a wet crack. She disintegrated into dust that was picked up and carried about the yard on a wind whipped up by the sorcery's passage.

The battlements themselves suffered a similar fate. The white stones crumbled to powder and were shredded by the breeze. Within the space of a dozen heartbeats, a section of ramparts twenty paces long disappeared, and the gap grew larger as the stonework at either end continued to melt. A guard sitting with his legs hanging over the bailey tried to scramble up and away, only for the walkway to dissolve beneath him. He toppled into the yard. Another Islander half scrambled, half crawled toward the guardhouse before a second volley of sorcery hit him.

“Hold your fire!” Galantas shouted again, this time at the Augeran mage.

Swords clashed behind him, and it dawned on him suddenly how much trouble he was in. The Islanders in the fortress might outnumber the Augerans, but the bulk of the defenders were on the battlements, and most of
them
—on this section of wall, at least—had already been removed from the fight. Galantas spun round. The stone-skin warrior with the golden tattoos was leading a charge against the guards at the gate. Ostari, meanwhile, had moved to engage Qinta, while another of the Augerans was attacking Faloman's men.

Leaving the route to the Great Hall open. Tempting, but Galantas would not retreat. The legend he had created didn't step back in the face of the enemy. Not a single pace.

Even as he drew his sword, he was thinking about the bolt that had hit Eremo. Had his father been behind it? Could that be why Dresk had refused to let Galantas enter the Great Hall? Because he'd wanted him outside when the commander was shot, and thus on hand when the stone-skins retaliated? It wouldn't be the first time Dresk had tried to engineer Galantas's death. There was that incident when Galantas had been set on by “thieves” in a Karalatian alley, then that “intelligence” about a Londellian trader that had turned out to be a warship. Would Dresk have risked war with the Augerans, though, just to rid himself of Galantas? And before he'd had a chance to spend the twenty thousand talents he'd acquired?

Ostari drove Qinta back with a series of lightning cuts and thrusts. Galantas moved to flank his kinsman. It seemed unlikely Qinta would need help dispatching a lone opponent, but suddenly Ostari was stepping past the Second and bringing his elbow round to hammer into Qinta's temple.

He toppled wordlessly.

Galantas sprang forward and aimed a cut to Ostari's midsection, only for the stone-skin to dance out of range. Galantas thought the man would retreat to join his kinsmen around Eremo, but instead he pressed forward again with a smile that said he was keen to avenge the insult done to him over the Falcon boy. Galantas glanced at Eremo. Through a gap in the Augeran shields, Galantas saw the commander's back arch as he coughed up bloody froth. His wound might be a mortal one, but for the time being he lived, which meant the stone-skins' first concern would be to get him to safety. That being so, Galantas didn't need to defeat Ostari to survive. He only had to hold him off until the Augerans withdrew.

A fact he was quickly grateful for as the stone-skin attacked. Ostari's sword seemed to come at him from everywhere at once, and it took all Galantas's skill to keep the questing blade at bay. His foe's style of fighting was strangely stilted, his sword arm jerking this way and that while his body remained largely still. There should have been little power behind his swings, yet each blow landed on Galantas's blade with the weight of a headsman's stroke. He hadn't faced an opponent like this since a raid on a Corinian merchantman when he'd fought a Belliskan knight wielding a sword as tall as the warrior himself. A feint from Ostari brought Galantas's blade low, and he only just recovered in time to block the real thrust to his chest. Still his opponent's sword deflected off Galantas's weapon to score a nick to his arm.

Behind, Eremo was being lifted onto a shield and carried toward the guardhouse. Not much longer to hold on, for Ostari wouldn't let himself be left behind.