Storms of Destiny (57 page)

Fortunately the light in the cabin was dim, so the guard hadn’t noticed the slightly lighter color of the wood around the burl. Khith had been working for nearly a full day now, not pausing to sleep, eating only when Thia pushed food into its empty hand.

The groove around the potential knothole was nearly deep enough now to allow Khith to pry at it with the small tube.

The Hthras worked on, stopping only when the guard brought their dinner and emptied the slop pail.

Finally, late that night, Khith had dug a deep enough hole around the burl that it felt confident in trying to prise out the rounded chunk of wood.

On the third try, it gave, and the rounded burl tumbled into its hand.

It had been totally dark to human eyes in the cabin, but a faint light now shone through the new knothole. A dark lantern hung in the passageway where the guard was stationed. Khith crouched down and peered through the hole. It could see the guard standing across the narrow walkway.

The man was slumped against the wall, thumbs hooked into the front of his belt, plainly bored and nearly dozing.

Perfect,
Khith thought.

The Hthras had much better night-sight than any human.

Even in the dim light streaming through the little knothole, it could assemble its weapon.

The little tube was not quite as long as the blow-tubes the

Hthras used for defense in the jungle, but fortunately, the distance to be covered was not great. Khith took up the plug of wax it had fashioned from the stub of the candle. It was tipped with a splinter of sharp wood prised from the deck, and the Hthras slid the makeshift dart into the end of the tube. The doctor had coated the little splinter with its most powerful soporific, a powder concealed in one of the seemingly innocuous sealed scallop shells.

The main problem was that Khith could look to aim and could adjust the position of the tube, but not do both at the same time. The hole was too small. So the Hthras took its time, checking and rechecking the positioning of the tube in the knothole. It wanted the splinter to strike the guard on the back of his hand since the splinter wasn’t long or sturdy enough to pierce the guard’s leather breeches or tunic.

Finally, after many cramped, tense minutes, Khith was confident that the angle and position of the little tube were correct. Keeping its hand perfectly steady, it sucked in the biggest breath its slight body could contain, placed its thin, inhuman lips against the end of the tube, and blew.

The doctor felt the tiny dart leave the tube, hastily yanked it out of the hole, then looked for the results. The guard had opened his eyes and pulled his right hand free from his belt, as though to look at it. But before he could raise his hand, his knees buckled and then, gently, he slid down the wall and slumped there, his deep breathing rapidly growing louder, until he was snoring.

I did it!
Khith thought, feeling a surge of excitement. The Hthras took a pinch of its avundi-enhancing snuff, then stared at the door. Moments later there was a click as the latch unlatched itself.

Khith laid a hand on the door, ready to pull it open and tiptoe out, only to stop when it heard a soft whisper. “Master Khith? What’s happening?”

In one stride the Hthras was standing beside Thia’s narrow bunk. “Shhh …” it cautioned. “Eregard is sleeping.”

Her voice was a bare thread of sound. “I heard the latch click.”

“I opened the door. I must go out for a while, see to a few things. If we have to abandon ship, I want to be sure I have my physician’s bag.”

In the darkness, the Hthras could barely see her, but it heard her quick intake of breath. “Go
out
? The guard—”

“The guard is enjoying a well-deserved nap,” Khith said.

“He will awaken in an hour or so, none the worse for his slight dereliction of duty.”

“But if you can get out—” Khith heard the excitement in her voice. “We can escape!”

“And leave Jezzil?” Khith asked bleakly. The thought of never seeing Jezzil again was physical pain.

“
No
!” Thia’s voice scaled up.

“Shhhh!” Khith placed a hand gently over her mouth, and as Eregard stirred and muttered in his sleep, the Hthras slid into the narrow bunk beside her. “Don’t wake Eregard.”

“I’m sorry, Master,” she said. “But of course we can’t leave Jezzil. You can put his guard to sleep, too, can’t you?”

“Unlikely,” Khith said. “I overheard the guards talking outside—”

“You understood them?”

“Jezzil has taught me a bit of his language. The Chonao guards who watch his cell are changed every two hours. He is the prized prisoner—we are merely an afterthought. And besides, if we all crept out tonight, where could we go?”

“Steal one of the lifeboats?” she asked, plainly realizing how unlikely that scenario would be.

“We have been blown off course and are somewhere in the Narrow Sea. Who will navigate for us?”

She sighed, and her warm breath tickled the doctor’s ear.

“All right. You made your point. But why are you going out?”

“I need my bag. If I have my herbs, my potions, I can farsee tomorrow morning, try to discover where we are, how far from Pela. Doubtless the storm blew us off course, so where are we?”

“Farsee?”

“I will borrow the eyes of a seabird, Thia. I can do that. As soon as it is light enough to see.”

“Oh.” She was silent a moment, then her arms slid around the Hthras’s slight form and hugged the physician tightly.

“Be
careful
!”

As her young body pressed against its own, Khith was conscious of a rush of intense physical pleasure. “I will be,”

it assured her as it pulled away. “Shhh!”

Hastily, the doctor got up and tiptoed out of the room, passing the snoring guard. That rush of feeling it had experienced … it had never felt anything like that before, except … except during moments with Jezzil.

The Hthras gave itself a mental shake.
Pay attention to
what you’re doing! Now is not the time to obsess about either
Thia or Jezzil!

Khith could not “Cast” the illusion of invisibility as Jezzil could, but the Hthras had other ways of remaining unnoticed, using avundi to blur its image so the eye could not focus. The little physician tiptoed up ladders, then down the narrow corridors of the ship to the passenger quarters. Once inside, it retrieved its bag, stuffed with medicinal and al-chemical potions, and quickly went through it, keeping only the rare, the difficult to find and distill ingredients, those that were well-stoppered to protect them from the elements.

It removed only one of its surgical implements … its smallest scalpel went into the pocket of the Hthras’s gray robe, along with a vial of pale pink powder.

Carrying the bag, the Hthras went up into the chill night air. After taking a moment to locate its destination, it began to move, gliding along as silent and unnoticed as a shadow drifting across the
Pride
’s dark deck.

The
Pride
was still heaved-to, and even at night repairs were going on. Sailors were mending sails, splicing lines, and doing other work to repair the damage from the storm.

None of them noticed the faint haze of gray fog that passed outside the circles of light cast by their lanterns.

Khith was searching for the ship’s fishing gear. All the ships it had ever sailed on with its father had supplemented the dried ship’s provisions with fresh caught fish, and the
Pride
proved no exception. The fishing nets and rods were in a large, oilcloth-covered storage box not far from Falar’s pen.

It was the work of a moment for Khith to locate the cork fishing bobbers and detach them from the lines and nets. It stuffed the round pieces of cork into its bag, fastened the latch securely, then concealed the bag behind the fishing locker, pulling an edge of the oilcloth over it.

After securing its bag, the Hthras went down one deck to the gunnery. The gun ports were, of course, closed, but there was sufficient light for Khith’s excellent night vision. The
Pride
boasted four cannon, two for each side, each securely lashed to the deck atop their wheeled gun carriages.

The door to the tiny munitions compartment was locked, but it, too, yielded to Khith. A rack filled with pistols hung on one wall, and a rack with muskets on the other. One box held grapeshot, and another cannonballs. And there, in specially built wooden kegs that had no metal fittings, were the casks of black powder. Twelve of them.

Khith hefted a couple of them, experimentally, realizing that it would not be able to carry one for more than a few steps. And rolling the keg would be too noisy. For a moment it wished Jezzil were there; a human’s strength could have handled the casks easily.

Taking a deep breath, Khith picked up a keg and managed to stagger nearly to the door of the compartment before it was forced to put the black powder down gently. It carefully edged the keg out the door, then relocked it.

It took the doctor four tries to get the keg over to one of the starboard cannons. Panting, it gently lowered the cask.

Carefully, Khith prised off the lid and sprinkled the pink powder from the vial onto the top of the black powder. The pink powder was its own concoction, highly flammable, even more volatile than the black powder. An avundi-generated spark would set it off nicely.

Khith replaced the lid, tapping it down but not securing it too tightly. Then, moving with great care, it carefully positioned the powder cask beneath the cannon barrel. With a little grunting and straining, it managed to wedge the keg into the gun carriage beneath the cannon. Seeing the cannon secured in place with thick ropes, it took the scalpel and sawed a little more than halfway through each strand.

Finally, the Hthras left the gunnery deck and crept up the ladder to the main deck. It peered cautiously out. The eastern sky was visibly lighter, which meant their guard would be rousing soon.
Time for this captive to return to captivity …

Once more inside the cramped little cabin, Khith lay down on a blanket spread on the floor. Thia was asleep again. It could hear her gentle breathing intermixed with Eregard’s snores.

For a moment the need for sleep seemed overwhelming, but Khith fought it back, blinking hard and rubbing its eyes.

Time to farsee.

The spell and snuff worked just as well as it had back in the Sarsithe. Khith was able to see through the eyes of a gull, swooping amid the air currents high above the ship.

The seagull’s eyes showed the doctor that there was another ship approaching, almost within visible range of the
Pride
. Khith exerted its will, and the gull dove down for a closer look at the inhabitants. What it saw made it struggle to get free of the vision.

As soon as the drug fumes cleared away and it could stand without weaving, Khith was at Thia’s bedside, shaking her gently. “Wake, Thia,” it said softly. “Wake up.”

She stirred, muttered, then her eyes opened. “Master?

What … what …”

“We must awaken and plan,” Khith said. “The Redai’s ship will be here within the hour. And the first thing they will do—”

Now fully awake, she sat up. “The first thing they’ll do is execute Jezzil! Barus said so! We have to stop them.”

“Exactly,” Khith agreed. “So, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “How can we fight all of them?”

“We cannot
fight
them,” Khith said. “But there may be other ways. Wake Eregard. We must talk.”

After three days in the dim, windowless cabin, the Sun struck Thia’s eyes like a blow. She hesitated at the top of the ladder, squinting, shielding her eyes, until the guard behind her gave her a poke and a curt order to move along. She pulled herself up the last few steps, then stood on the deck.

Eregard was the next one up, followed by Khith. The Prince looked around the deck, blinking, then nudged Thia. “That must be Kerezau. The one in the middle, wearing the—”

“Silence!” one of the guards barked in Pelanese, giving the Prince a shove.

Thia could see the man Eregard referred to. He was not tall, but there was something about him that made him stand out. Physically, he was ordinary enough, with black hair, black eyes, a trimmed beard and moustache. His armor had plainly seen hard usage, but it was polished to a mirror sheen. Thia realized after a moment that he was literally set apart—no one stood too close to him. He was like a little island of command amidst the throng of Chonao warriors. She could see the ship that had brought him already moving away from the
Pride
.

In response to an order from the guards, she, Eregard, and Khith were brought up to the outskirts of the crowd. Thia lost sight of Kerezau until someone barked a command in the Chonao language. Within moments the troops had assembled into precise lines, standing at attention.

Kerezau and Barus stood together, with Barus barking orders. Thia caught the name “Jezzil” amid the unfamiliar words and knew that this was it. Her palms were sweaty, but she resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her skirt.
Do nothing to draw attention to yourself,
Khith had told her,
until
the time is right.