Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (25 page)

The wheels in Lasharia’s head turned.
She frowned. “There’s no chance your father could name the War Commander his
heir, is there?”

“No, Mother wouldn’t stand for it. She
likes Kelyn, but she’d see him banished first. You see? I’ve spoken to her
about this many times, and there’s nothing I can do.”

Lasharia propped her chin on her
knuckles. “You’ve told me so little about the War Commander. What’s he like?
You make him sound like an arrogant, unbearable man.”

“Then I give you false impressions. He’s
neither of those things. He just … he takes liberties. Because Father adores
him, he’s forgotten his place. One can’t win against him. Nothing, never. Not
chess, not swordplay, not political maneuvering. The man doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Oh, Valryk, every man makes mistakes.
It’s just a matter of catching him at the right time. What’s his weakness?”

“He doesn’t have one, Lasharia, I’m
telling you. Not women or wine or pride or rage.”

Lasharia drummed her fingers irritably.
“Did you ever think that loyalty could be a weakness? Or honor or obedience?
His mistake is not vying for the favor of the king who will follow your father.
Your father will not live forever, as we all know, and then where will Lord
Ilswythe be?”

She pushed herself out of the chair,
letting the implications hover around them as stifling as fog. At the table
near the fireplace she poured herself another brandy. “Has he taught you
tactics? His favorite maneuvers?” She perched lightly on the edge of the table
and swirled her glass.

Valryk was too rattled to answer. At
last he cleared his throat and replied, “No, I have tutors for that. All the
battles of the last umpteen wars against Fiera have been documented. Makes for
an ugly stack of books. He’s taught his son, though. Kethlyn gets excited about
all that, but it’s a bore. I’m sure he’ll be the next War Commander.”

“
Your
War Commander, Highness.”
Her smile was impish and delectable.

“Yes, but Father’s efforts have all but
ensured there won’t be a war in my lifetime, so why bother with it?”

“One can’t foretell the future,
Highness, unless one knows where all the pieces are.”

“What do you mean? You refer to the war
your people are fighting?”

She drained the glass in one long gulp.
“Your father doesn’t know everything. He can’t prepare for every possibility,
not even with his precious Kelyn’s help. Study those books, Highness, Lord
Ilswythe’s tactics especially, and keep his son close. They may come in handy
one day.” She set aside the glass and hurried toward the ornate screen where
she’d laid out her bloodstained underclothes.

Valryk surged from the chair. “Where are
you going? Don’t go.”

“I have to.” She tossed the robe over
the screen. Between the folding sections, Valryk glimpsed pale, luminous skin.
“You saw what was happening in the tunnels. It’s a wonder I had permission to
visit you at all. I have to see if my people made it out.” She appeared again
in a padded doublet, leather trousers, and tall black boots with the sword
buckled about her waist. She stooped for the chest plate.

Valryk touched her shoulder. “Come again
tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if I can.” Seeing his
disappointment, she raised a hand, touched his face. “I’ll try. But soldiers …”
The pressure of his lips on her palm stopped her.

“Stay,” he said.

Her eyes closed and she swallowed hard.
Her breath came short and fast, and she made a feeble attempt to free her hand.
She stood as unyielding as a post when he kissed her on the mouth, as if she
were suddenly afraid of him. A tiny whimper escaped her throat, and her fingers
clenched onto his sleeve. They let go, and she backed away. “You confuse me,
dwínovë.” She seized her armor from the floor and fled, slamming the door in
his face.

By the time Valryk entered the corridor,
Lasharia was gone, a dark portal sealing shut behind her.

H
e floated through the rest of the day. His
mother’s complaints about missing his teatime appointment and his father’s
tirade about treating soldiers with respect both faded to a dull drone. All
that mattered was the touch of Lasharia’s hand, the silken softness of her
lips. He had kissed her! Something he had longed to do for years. Had to have
been the liquor that dulled his fear. If only she had kissed him back, but he
had to remember that Lasharia wasn’t a swooning girl, no matter how young she
looked.

His cousins from Lunélion joined the
royal family at the high table that evening and kept a lively conversation.
They sought the king’s aid for something or other that Valryk wasn’t privy to.
He hoped it wasn’t a marriage proposal between him and Lady Genna’s daughter.
Were second cousins off limits or not? He couldn’t remember the details of that
bloody law. Cousin Carah was far more appealing, but she happened to be Kelyn’s
daughter, and that wouldn’t do. Lady Genna and her mother, the Princess Mazél,
invited him for drinks and music after supper; duty didn’t let him refuse, but
he didn’t linger long either, pleading the classic headache.

All he wanted to do was lay on his couch
and dream of Lasharia. He fell asleep before a crackling fire with her song
swirling in his head.

Someone whispered his name. When he
opened his eyes, he couldn’t tell if he was still dreaming or not. She stood
over him, and she wore not one stitch of clothing. The fire had died to embers;
red light turned her skin to rubies and moonlight. His breath caught in his
throat. Kneeling beside him, she pressed her fingers to his mouth. “You confuse
me,” she whispered, then kissed him hard and long and left not one of his
dreams unfulfilled.

~~~~

… and
the fay children disappeared in droves, like the
stars at dawn, and none could find them.

—
Tales
of the Millennial War

S
pring was the season to
gather the oysters off the shores of Rávalin. Rhian kicked against the vast,
rolling current, his lungs tight with the sea wind, his hand clutching a creel
basket woven from sturdy reeds. The deeper he dived, the dimmer the light, the
quieter the churning of the waves, the colder the weight of the ocean pressing
down on him. Rhian felt at home nowhere else.

He could dive deeper than the other
pearl fishers who worked for old Captain Sea Bones. Rhian’s father had been
able to do the same, though none could explain why their eardrums didn’t
explode or how they survived so long on a single gulp of air. Kin to seals and
crabs, Sea Bones said. Son of the sea, Rhian’s mother said.

Likely they were right, he decided.
What else accounted for it? The skill had made his father wealthy. Sea Bones,
too. But the debt collectors and gambling halls lining the back streets swept
all that wealth away. Rhian had never seen more than a handful of silver in his
life, none of it his. To him, riches were like a lighthouse in a distant cove,
impossible to reach unless one had the proper vessel. The boat he used every day
leaked.

His free hand gripped the jagged
rim of a sea-battered shelf and anchored himself against the pull of the tide.
Beyond a silver cloud of swirling fish stretched a sandy bed strewn with
clusters of oysters. With a powerful kick, Rhian propelled himself over the
shelf. His hands worked quickly, deftly, sweeping up the mollusks and tucking
them into the creel.

A long black eel slid out of the
depths. Rhian pulled his outstretched hand close to his chest to avoid a sting.
Though most eels were passive, preferring to hide among the rocks, black eels
had earned a nastier reputation. They swam deliberately into anything that
moved, testing whether their sting paralyzed something delicate and small
enough to eat.

Rhian watched the eel disappear
into the rocks before he resumed his task. Fishers sometimes panicked and
drowned when they allowed their minds to consider the dangers gliding in the
waters around them. Sharks hunted in the shallows, octopuses reached from holes
under the rocks, jellyfish swarmed in invisible clouds, and sea serpents ruled
the deeper waters, often rising to investigate the smallest hint of blood.
These were just the animal perils. Fishers had to consider tangling seaweed,
rip tides, squalls blowing in from nowhere, as well as their own misjudgment in
depth, breath, and skill.

Rhian preferred to imagine that any
but the latter had claimed his father. He’d been only ten years old when his
father promised Sea Bones he would bring up the greatest lode yet. He had
surfaced, but three days later, bobbing face down and bloated with brine.
Ryrden had been the best of the pearl fishers, but Rhian learned that not even
heroes are immortal.

Just as his lungs began to burn,
Rhian found the prize of the day. An oyster the width of his splayed fingers
hid in a deep crevice between boulders. If it had a pearl, it might be the size
of a bird’s egg. Bones would be happy. Rhian reached, but the oyster lay
another arm’s length past his fingers. He pulled a long-handled rake from his
belt, all he wore when he dived, and slid it into the crevice. The curled iron
tines would cradle the oyster and bring the prize to him.

A shadow glided past, blocking the
sunlight, and pulled the sea in a mighty rush around him. He cried out, vital
breath rushing skyward in fat bubbles. The rake slipped from his fingers. He
prepared to duck under the rocks when the shadow swam by again. A large, liquid
eye appraised him, and a flipper churned the water in his face. Rhian
recognized the sleek shape of a seal. He relaxed and looked for others, but
this female swam alone and seemed unafraid of the human in her realm. Rhian
stretched up a hand, and the seal slid past his fingers.

You temptress
, he thought,
smiling.
It’s to the bottom you’d take me if I let you.

The seal paused in her frolicking,
and the direct contact of her eyes became uncannily humanlike.

To the sunrise go,
Rhian
heard. Dizziness shook him as if a wave flipped him upside down, and he feared
he must be drowning. Forgetting the rake and the giant oyster, he gripped the
heavy basket under his arm and lunged for the dancing light of the surface.

Sunrise
, he heard again.
Deep blue spread beneath his toes and swallowed all sign of the seal.

He burst into the sunlight,
sputtering and coughing. Pressing brine from his eyes, he rolled onto his back gulping
air.

“I’s beginning to worry ‘bout ya,
lad,” Captain Sea Bones called. Oars struck the sea, whisking the skiff closer.
The old man lowered a brown, wizened hand and dragged Rhian into his boat.
Bones had spent all his adult life at sea, first aboard a pirate ship, sailing
to every corner of the continent; then aboard his own
Harlot’s Hand
. The
skiff was no ship, but she was aptly named, he said:  she provided a man days
of boating pleasure but consumed all his silver in the end. True, she was in
continual need of repairs.

Bones looked sturdier than his
boat. His limbs were as wiry and scrawny as knotted ropes, and despite the
amount of food he devoured, they never fleshed out. He had a healthy paunch
bulging under his jacket, however.

That jacket had once been a
thigh-length pea coat from his pirating days, but he’d long since cut it to his
waist and ripped off its sleeves. Ridiculous red-and-white striped hose banded
his calves under short canvas pantaloons. The only shoes he owned were boots so
old and ill-kept that the leather curled away from the soles. On his balding
head, he wore a red bandana and a wide brimmed hat to shield a hook nose and a
jutting chin. His sunned skin was as tough as old leather and as uncomely as
the battered sea rocks.

To be so ugly would be a relief, at
least in Rhian’s estimate. Eyes naturally gravitated to the fine symmetry of
his face. His olive skin kept its tan throughout winter, and despite being well
into his nineteenth year, his cheeks remained as smooth as a boy’s. He was
taller than anyone he knew, with broad swimmer’s shoulders and arms and legs
made powerful by his daily dives. His dark hair bleached to sandy brown every
summer, and he let it hang in his face to cover his eyes. Goddess’ mercy, he
hated his eyes. Everybody he knew had green or brown eyes, but his were
aquamarine. His father’s had been similar, but Rhian didn’t remember them being
quite so bright and electrifying and obvious. Bones said the only other time
he’d witnessed that color in nature was when he’d sailed to the Zephiryn
Islands in the Othial Sea, where tropical waters were the purest in the world.
Whenever Rhian met a stranger’s gaze, his eyes seemed to startle them. He’d
grown accustomed to the reaction long ago, but he still feared his eyes would
give him away: his grandmother Raysa, his father’s mother, had been avedra.

He laid in the bottom of the skiff
in six inches of rancid brine, rejoicing in the touch of the sun on his
eyelids.

“Give yourself a scare, did ya?”
Bones freed the creel from his diver’s hands.

“ ‘Twas just a seal,” he gasped,
not about to admit to hearing voices.

“A seal, eh? Where’s yer rake?”
Bones dumped the catch into the boat.

“Still down there. It’s marking my
place for tomorrow.”

“You lose it, it’s comin’ outta yer
pay, so it is.”

Rhian groaned and hefted himself
out of the standing water. “I know, I know. But I’ll pay for the rake and this
bloody boat entire, I will, with what I left down there.” The large oyster
might not have a pearl at all, but the bluff wiped the crabby scowl off Bones’s
face.

“Will it be another Squid’s Eye?”

Rhian reached for his clothes. The
pants and sleeveless shirt were sewn from discarded sails. “Let it go, will ya?
Sure there’s not another pearl that size in the whole of Galvalia.”

His father had found that singular
gem. Supposedly, the oyster was so massive that Ryrden had called for another
diver to help him heave it from the sea bottom. They’d used an axe to crack
open the shell, and folded inside the mound of muscle and flesh had been a blue
pearl of such extraordinary size that people throughout the Islands called it
the Squid’s Eye. Prince Naovhan himself purchased it, making wealthy men of
Bones and his highborn employer in Rystia. Triumphant, Bones planned to go into
business for himself or even retire from the fishery altogether, but he made a
fatal trip to the gambling halls on Wrack Street. His greatest shame was that
he hadn’t even made it into the gaming house before thugs beat him and robbed
him of every precious coin.

That was a decade ago, and Bones
now relied on Rhian to give him another chance at luxury. The old seaman
crouched among the oysters, muttering curses and plans of revenge. “Gonna sail
the
Harlot
to Sinnoch, so I am, and break into Naovhan’s bloody tomb and
take back my pearl.”

Rumor claimed that the prince had
mounted the Squid’s Eye atop an ornate silver scepter, and on his deathbed,
he’d ordered it buried with him. And so the greatest gem ever found now rested
atop a corpse’s moldering chest.

Rhian ignored Bones’s grumbling and
took up a prying knife to cut the ligament connecting the halves of the
mollusks. He worked off the thinner top halves and pushed aside the flesh to
look for gleaming gems. Rávalin pearls were dusky blue, a color found nowhere
else in the world. Only the wealthiest consumers could afford them.

They were rare enough that
discovering each one sent a thrill straight to Rhian’s toes. He uncovered two
that day, and Bones a third. They placed each in a bucket of clean water. Most
of the flesh from the oysters was cut from the shells and placed in a chest of
ice, to keep it fresh for markets and eating houses. Some of the meat, however,
was returned to the sea as an offering of thanks to the Mother-Father. She
consumed the offering, so said the sea-tale, by assuming the shape of shullas
and other gulls. The rest provided the fishers themselves with a quick meal
between dives.

The shells, too, were saved and
sold. The iridescent mother-of-pearl lining was made into jewelry, buttons,
amulets, and crushed into medicine. The rest of the shell, as well as the less
exalted shells of clams and scallops were burned to create lime for fields and
whitewash.

A pearl fisher’s job may be
dangerous, but it was also a necessary part of Island living. Rhian didn’t need
such incentive to keep diving, but he found it useful in convincing himself to wake
up every day before dawn and risk his life to line another man’s coffers.

His catch was so abundant that day
that by the time the oyster parts were divided and stored away, the sun drooped
low over the island. He swore bitterly, sounding as ill-tempered as his
employer. “I’m late. Again.”

“Let Shark wait. We have sun enough
for one more dive.”

“No.” Rhian raised the mast.

“Oi, loathsome to leave that bitch
of a beauty down there.”

“Tomorrow, Bones.”

“It’s lucky we’ll be if the weather
holds. My knuckles feel the sky droppin’.”

Rhian felt it, too, but that oyster
wasn’t going to race off anywhere. They raised the skiff’s sail, and the south
wind whisked them away from the pearl beds. Rávalin itself lay only half a
league away; rocky and green, the island’s hills filled the southern horizon. Behind
the skiff’s stern and far beyond the pearl beds rose the endless shelf of the
Dwinovian continent. A steady dot of light to the northwest marked the
lighthouse near Westport. Rhian had never traveled farther east than the pearl
beds. He’d never even visited the other isles of the archipelago. Rávalin was
his entire universe, and that universe was shrinking uncomfortably day by day.

Columns of inky smoke rising from
the kelp kilns provided the first glimpse of Sandy Cape. It was a dirty
business burning down the weed for soap and fertilizer, and Rhian rejoiced that
he earned his keep from diving.

 Once ashore, Rhian hauled the
Harlot
into its stone slip under a willowy thellnyth tree and helped Bones unload the
catch onto the nearest dock. Bones himself dropped each of the pearls into a
small lockbox and thrust it at Rhian. “I haven’t time for the factor! I have
to—”

“Then
you
stay here and sell
the meat,” Bones snarled. “It’s a favor I’m doing ya.”

Clutching the box, Rhian ran along
the wooden pier to the factor’s warehouse. Master Kurthy bought all the best
merchandise available in Sandy Cape and saw it shipped to Lord Rystia, who sold
it at the great markets in the cities. The pearls were no exception. Master
Kurthy unlocked the jewel box with powdered fingers and examined the contents.
“Half as many as yesterday,” he said. With all his imperious airs, one might
mistake him for Lord Rystia himself. “Sure you’re not lining your pockets with
a few of these, lad?”

Rhian glowered. “Bones knows how
many pearls are in that box. Pay him fair when he gets here.”

The factor dismissed him without a
word. Rhian was too late to care. He raced across town.

Everybody knew everybody in Sandy
Cape. People hailed him from the piers on his right and from the ramshackle
shops and work yards on his left. He dodged laborers pushing barrels and
venders fanning flies from the day’s catch of mackerel and cod. He snatched up
a bucket of clams from the same old woman on the same stretch of pier. She knew
to charge the purchase to Shark at the Castaway’s.

But for the crowd on the Quayside
Highway, Sandy Cape was a dying town. Few children played in the streets or on
the beaches, and most young men sailed to foreign ports, never to return. The
only new faces to frequent the taverns and gambling houses were merchants and
drifters and the occasional pirate crew, and these never sank roots in the sand
to settle. It was a slow, painless death, quiet and inevitable.