Sasharia En Garde (45 page)

“You’d best thump me.” Samdan turned his back.
And if you kill me, well, it’s only just.

The pirate nodded once, and didn’t make the man wait.
Tossing his knife up, he caught it by the blade, and brought the handle down
behind Samdan’s ear.

Samdan dropped to the deck, his weapon clattering out of his
hands. Zathdar stared at Samdan’s knee, remembering where he’d seen the man
last—lying wounded in the transfer-tower courtyard. Bending, he lightly nicked
Samdan where it would hurt least but bleed most, the better to make it seem
he’d put up a good fight, and cut the rest of Elva’s bonds.

“Can’t use hands,” she murmured, in the slurry voice of someone
who was under the influence of kinthus.

“Stop talking.” The kinthus would make her obey, and thus
she would also be able to halt the weird chatter.

He slid his arm under hers and supported her up one
ladder—propping her against a bulkhead to step out and look round. There was
only one sailor, with the galley and the officers’ wardroom blocked off by
barrels. The man looked at them, turned his back, and dropped another barrel
onto its side.

“I’m trying to get you out, but someone upset all the food
stores,” he bellowed to the officers shouting and trying to batter the blocked
wardroom cabin door.

Zathdar helped Elva up the last ladder, where they found the
deck in chaos, sails hanging loose or dropped altogether, fires being busily
put out with water splashing everywhere. And what were these impossible tangles
of ropes?

A rush of warriors toward them turned into a mass skid as
someone fell over a barrel of oil that had gotten spilled all over the deck.

There were Gray, Tham, and Vestar, bloody but alive.

They closed around him, Gray pressing up on Elva’s other
side. Together they lifted her as they mounted to the captain’s deck, where the
first mate was busy yelling at a disaster with the mizzen topsails. A web of
tangle rope jerked upward, blocking off the scrambling warriors who’d managed
to get past the oil.

A boom swung out from the other direction, lifting the rest
of the pursuit off their feet, to crash onto the mizzen sail still being
trampled and splashed with buckets of water.

Zathdar thought he heard Randart’s voice adding to the noise
somewhere around that mizzen sail, and laughed as they passed Elva down to
Gliss.

Then they were in the boat, whooping for breath, weapons
dropping from hands, minds trying to grapple with the amazing fact that they were
alive after all.

Elva struggled up, her bruised, blood-smeared face lit by
the ship fires.

They rowed out, and Gliss ran up the sail, sheeting it home.

On the journey back through the smoky ruin in the fleet, the
kinthus wore off, and with it the numbing effect of all those bruises. But Elva
didn’t care. She had survived. She was alive.

She said nothing, unsure who knew what, until they reached
the
Zathdar
. It was the pirate
himself who offered his shoulder for her to lean on. She couldn’t resist one more
test, murmuring into his bandana-covered ear, “Didn’t want me talking, huh?”

His quick look of surprise was revealing, but all he said
was, “And ruin my reputation as the best-dressed prince on the east coast?” The
smile Zathdar gave her was his rare, sudden one, a real smile full of fun.

She contemplated that surprise. He thought she’d talked, but
came after her anyway. And though her heart was not fashioned to respond to
him, or to any man, what she did feel budding under the miasma of weariness,
shock, pain, and unhoped-for reprieve was the green shoot of insight: this was
what loyalty was all about. Prince Jehan had no reason to like her, he didn’t
even know her, but he’d obviously found her worthy of rescue. A prince who
could be loyal to people was worth allegiance.

o0o

Randart rubbed his throbbing forehead, but that didn’t
even begin to assuage the merciless slam of his headache. The day had begun so
well, emphasizing all the more strongly the catastrophic results.

He faced the captain of the ship, and his own officers, and
the mage, who all waited, eyes steady, some weary, some afraid, most of them
with the closed faces of unexpressed anger.

Nothing he could ask was going to reveal the true cause of
that sullen fury he saw all around him. How was he to determine if the
catastrophe was due to incompetence or to treachery? At home, on land, with the
king at his side and the circumstances of well-understood military action at
his back, he could probably force out the truth.

The king
. He was
finally answerable to the king.

He drew a deep breath of the stale air, for the cabin was
closed tight against listening ears and the rattle and thud of cleanup. “It is
very apparent to me, and I am sure it is to you as well, that this pirate
attack and the rescue of the Eban girl are not coincidence.”

His words were met with profound silence, except for the
shifting of one officer easing a broken arm, and the captain twisting slightly
as he cocked his ear upward at some incomprehensible shout up on deck.

“Someone,” Randart enunciated clearly, “sent the pirate a
message. It has to have been by magic, and it has to have been someone on this
ship. Maybe in this room.”

The captain cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, War
Commander. But there were more witnesses seeing that girl brought over than
just your people. Supply boats were coming and going. Any of them would be
carrying word of what they saw. It’s the way of the sea, everyone will tell you
that. Even your captains, if they are honest.” He indicated the Fleet Captain,
a thin, morose man sitting opposite Randart, whose ships had accidentally
attacked merches, what with the smoke and noise and general chaos.
That
disaster had enabled the three
pirates to slip between the ragged, uncontrolled line of merches and sail
downwind, hidden by the smoke and the embrace of night.

Everyone turned attention to the unhappy Fleet Captain, who
lifted a hand. “It’s notoriously hard to keep ears from hearing things on a
ship, yes,” he said heavily.

Randart knew his Fleet Captain was loyal. That crash had
occurred in the smoke and chaos that Randart himself had made no sense of,
though he’d tried, once he got free of that cursed sail that had fallen on top
of him.

The sail, yes.

He turned on the merchant captain. “Very well. Then the way
of the sea will work
for
us.” Randart
breathed deeply, feeling the slight ease of decision. “
You
will discover who betrayed us. And when that happens—only when
that happens, I emphasize—you will be paid for repairs and the month’s wages.
But until then, you are on your own.” Lifting a hand, he added sardonically,
“Let that word get out according to the ways of the sea.”

He rose. Thus released, the ship captain opened the cabin
door and sweet, cool air rushed in as they filed out, defeat and tiredness shaping
everyone’s countenance, lagging their steps.

Randart caught the mage’s eye and raised a hand to halt her.

When the others were gone, he said, “Prepare to transfer
back with me to Ellir. We can leave whenever you are ready.”

She nodded and left.

He walked up onto the deck, staring at the snarl of ropes
and wooden implements whose use he could only guess at, but which probably had
something to do with sails. The big sail that had landed on him still lay where
it had been kicked, with the jagged cut he’d made by his knife in releasing
himself. Bloodstains on it where his knife had caught someone or other who,
either accidentally or on purpose, had been trampling the sail while doing
something or other to the upper reaches of the ship. He could not know if that
had been deliberate or another consequence of the chaos of sea battles. Fleet
action, he had learned to his cost, lay too far outside his realm of
experience.

Undeniably the sailors were hacked up, several, like his own
warriors, with broken limbs, cuts rudely bound. When he asked, they all seemed
not to know if pirates or his own men had caused the wounds. Yet the fact was,
no more than four pirates had boarded the ship, made it down to the hold,
released the prisoner, and retreated again.

Samdan was yet unconscious, but Randart was not going to
wait for him to waken. He probably didn’t know anything. From the look of him
he’d fought his best, hampered by the bad knee and having only a single lamp to
see by in the dark hold.

None of them seemed to know anything useful, except that one
of the pirates wore garish clothing like Zathdar was reputed to favor. That
would mean the pirate captain himself had been here, and Randart flat on his
back under a sail as heavy as a horse.

There was no evidence of collusion, but he sensed it
everywhere he looked. The sailors were too somber, too weary for the obvious
signs of collusion. But the quality of the silence formed a wall between him
and these mariners.

Randart let out his breath. Defeat, on unfamiliar territory.
But he’d learned something. The pirate had spies everywhere. And he had land
ties. Therefore he’d inevitably return to land, and that was Randart’s
territory. There would be no defeat next time.

But first Randart had to get back, and they were at least a
week, probably more, from land. It was time for magic transfer, something he
not only detested but distrusted. What was to stop the mages from making him
vanish conveniently? He didn’t trust Zhavic or Perran for a heartbeat. So he
would force the mage to transfer with him. He would never use a magic token
himself, though he kept them to expedite those under his orders.

Magister Lorat presented herself with her bag of belongings,
and he wondered if she could have been the traitor. No, that was ridiculous.
She probably was reporting to Zhavic, but she’d come with a solid reputation,
he’d checked that out first thing. She was a wood mage, which meant she would
not be a brilliant thinker in the chaos of battle. She’d done what she was told
with the stolidity of the wood she worked with.

So he braced himself for the wrench which was no easier to
endure than it ever was. He’d avoided eating dinner once he’d made his
decision, so the nausea, at least, was easier to fend off if his stomach was
not full.

When he recovered, the mage was already gone. He looked
about him at the comforting familiarity of stone in the Destination room of
Ellir Castle. As soon as he could get his legs to carry him, he forced himself
to climb up to Orthan’s tower, which was empty.

The entire academy was pretty much empty against the war
game soon to commence. Randart clapped on the glowglobe and sat down at his
brother’s desk to look through the reports stacked there, some annotated in
Orthan’s neat hand.

Everything looked as it should. Randart was having trouble
forcing his increasingly aching head to concentrate. That defeat rankled, the
more because he knew, he
knew
, there
was deliberate treachery behind it. So he forced himself to be thorough.

He read one report three times without comprehension before
he finally found the sense. Zathdar’s sometime ally, Tharlif, had swooped down
onto his secret shipment of weapons meant for spring, and captured them all.

Fury blinded Randart, leaving him gasping, until he
remembered he’d protected himself with a double order, one overland, one by
sea. He had planned for this possibility.

His focus sharpened again. There was no report about the
overland wagons being molested. All was well. All was well. He would stay on
land in future.

He forced himself to get through the rest of the reports,
then set the pile down. It was time to eat. Sleep. Forget asking Magister
Zhavic for news. The mage would just lie or leave out crucial details. No more
magic. Randart would take the extra day or so to ride back to the king, and
compose his report on the way—that and his strategy for dealing with kingdom
matters as they stood.

But that plan vanished like the sky after the sail dropped
on him when he saw the neatly tied pile at the bottom of the reports, a scrap
of paper on top written in his brother’s hand:
Save for Dannath
.

He pulled up that pile and leafed through it. Most of these
would take concentration for it seemed there were some anomalies in supply
reports, people where they should not be or missing where they should be. All
of that promised painstaking checking, and by trusted aides.

But that third one down, beginning with the note in Orthan’s
hand:
I don’t know if this is important.
Looked strange.

Randart glanced at the heading. It was a weekly report from
one of the more remote outposts along the northern river.

He scanned rapidly down to where his brother had made a neat
question mark.

Civilian sailor
strayed off the civilian road during storm, female, tall, blond, hazel eyes,
name Lasva, from Tser Mearsies. Carrying only personal gear plus a letter from
one inn to another, the only item of interest a silken banner in the old
Zhavalieshin style.

It could be any woman, on the most innocuous of journeys.
Except why did the mind immediately leap to the missing daughter of Atanial
Zhavalieshin? It was the banner. Randart was willing to swear an oath he had
seen it or one just like it, in Prince Mathias’s rooms during the old days when
he was royal castle commander. The banner had been stitched by Math’s grandmother
and her ladies for the prince’s birth: queensblossom vines around rising
firebirds, all in gold and scarlet.

He’d seen it recently, hadn’t he? If only his head did not
ache so. Banner . . . and he had it. A silken banner, covered
with queensblossom vines all around rising firebirds.

It had lain over the bed on the
Dolphin
, the prince’s yacht. Were there two of those banners?
Because if not,
Jehan had had her after
all.
And lied? No. Randart had not told him why he was searching, or for
what. The Fool could have been keeping her in order to bring her to his father
himself, for badly needed prestige . . . and, being the fool he
was, had lost her.