Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) (4 page)

“Will you be liking anything else?” Marielle asked coolly, once she'd settled the tray. She was a scant degree off, in the angle of her hips, from bodychecking the priestess, as if to deny her presence.

“No, thank you, Ms. Solandt.”

“Very good, sir,” she nodded, and finally spared a glance for the priestess, out of protocol. “Nistra's peace.” She bowed, and left, shutting the door behind her.

The priestess permitted herself a soft laugh once the door was safely closed.

“Something amuses you, Priestess?” Vidarian couldn't quite keep the frost out of his tone.

Her laughter stilled. “Just an odd expression, it strikes me,” she said, and leaned forward, folding her hands self–consciously. “It seems I've done something to offend you, Captain.”

“Only insofar as you've been playing tricks on my crew, Priestess,” Vidarian said. “Neither they, nor I, deserve such.”

The priestess's eyes widened; her etiquette training surely did not cover direct confrontation. Better, Vidarian thought, that she learn sea ways quickly—he reined in his anger to a cold implacability, but was startled, himself, to find that there was disappointment there as well.

When she didn't answer, Vidarian continued, “There was something on your hands. You added it to the powder.”

She stiffened. “I said that we had a remedy, not that it was supernatural.”

“But the chanting, the hand–waving, the glowing. The lamps. Trickery, yes?” As he spoke he heard his father's anger in his own voice, the rumble of distant thunder.

“They're not fairly ‘tricks,'” the priestess insisted hotly. “They do work.” Now her hands came together under the cuffs of the robe, vanishing.

“But it's nothing to do with elemental manipulation.”

“It's nothing to do with my elemental ability,” she corrected, but reluctantly, a deer brought to bay. “It
is
manipulation.”

“Why?” he asked simply.

She surprised him by sliding to her feet, rising gracefully as a courtier. She inspected her upturned palms ruefully, then brushed them against the velvet robe. A pang of uneasy guilt shot through him at the distressed curve of her shoulders, the set of her jaw. He'd meant to chasten her, to demand forthrightness, but not to wound her. “I've never been skilled with the necessary deceptions,” she sighed.

“Necessary?” His voice was sharp again, and he took a deep breath. “Why should deception be necessary?” he continued, willing his grandmother's civility, calling up arduous etiquette lessons from his childhood.

She turned, the robe swaying gracefully with her, but with more weight, his sharper eye concluded, than velvet should account for. “Your people have noticed the fading of your tools, you've said as much yourself—over decades.” He nodded, but rather than pursuing her case, the priestess bafflingly turned away again, and then back to him. She searched for something in his eyes, boring into him until he could feel his cheeks heating. “What I'm about to say would have me confined to Sher'azar for a decade, if Endera or anyone else found out,” she began, but now that she had committed this much did not hesitate. “The tools aren't simply fading. Our ability to manipulate the elements has also been dwindling—not merely for decades, but for the better part of a century.”

A cold fist of dread clenched in his stomach. “The sea wars—”

“—were the beginning of the unrest,” she agreed. “A great change is coming. We've seen this dwindling accelerate in the last decade, and now—”

“—the Vkortha,” he finished for her, and again she nodded.

Silence stretched between them. The kitten, according to the enigmatic internal logic of cats, had slept through their heated discussion, but now awakened and stretched. The priestess picked it up, coaxing a rattling purr out of its thin chest with a few strokes of its back, and settled herself on the chair it had just been occupying.

“Strange doings,” Vidarian said at last, folding his hands. “I can't begin to comprehend them. But I also have never seen willful deception come to a good end. I still do not now see why this cannot be explained to my crew.”

“Do you tell your crew every smallest detail of your charting decisions, your courses, which contracts you accept and which you do not?” she asked, scratching the kitten behind its ears. It purred louder, then rolled under her hand, kicking upward with its feet and attacking her playfully. She wrestled back for a moment, then released it onto the carpet.

“Not every detail,” he said, bound by his own honor to honesty, though unsure what he was admitting, exactly.

“Yet they follow you, because you are their captain,” she said, looking up at him again. “If you were to democratically decide every detail, the ship would never move.”

“I do not demand their deceived belief,” he said. “That's something else entirely.”

“But we do not truly deceive,” she insisted, and the intent sincerity in her wide eyes was more disarming than he'd have liked to admit. “The benefits that I have provided to your ship are genuine.” That he could not deny, and the fervor in her voice was not sternness but ardent conviction. “Captain, you must believe me, that what I have seen as a priestess of Sharli, again and again, is that the priestesshood is needed. The priestesshood alone retains the records of these fluctuations in elemental energy, and if we are to survive, we require the support of the common folk, which comes only when they believe that we are still capable of our foremothers’ deeds.”

“I will not argue against that cannon shot, and I am grateful,” he said. “But can you really be so sure that the priestesshood knows best?”

She smiled, asking with her eyes if
he
was so sure about baiting her. He smiled back. “I'm never sure of anything,” she said. “As the philosopher Veldaus said, ‘the sure mind is the closed one, capable only of repetition.'”

“You certainly seemed sure of him,” Vidarian said, nodding at the kitten, which was presently attacking a tasseled end of the table runner.

“Her,” Ariadel corrected absently. “I apologize for unsettling you,” she said, her head tilting in what Vidarian was sure was sincere puzzlement. “I don't know what came over me. It's against my training to hold with such impulsive superstition.”

He laughed before he could stop himself. “A fire priestess? Trained against superstition?”

She colored slightly, but her smile was gentle; the sudden thought of Endera even attempting such an expression surprised Vidarian with its absurdity. This Ariadel was obviously unlike any fire priestess Vidarian had known. “You must have little experience with priestesses,” she said, echoing his thought. “Although the common folk”—her eyes dropped to the tray Marielle had brought in, surely unconsciously—“permitted and, yes, even encouraged their superstitions, the priestesshood rigorously trains against such things.”

“Yet I must bear them in my crew.” He sighed, and at her worried glance, smiled again, wryly. “Fear not. I will not betray your secrets. But I will appreciate your honesty in private, at least.”

“That I can promise you,” she said, and he gave a little half–bow of thanks from his seat.

Beneath them, the ship was moving, turning on its course. Vidarian's stomach clenched again, for he knew their place on the chart. They angled southwest, the prevailing south wind dropping from belled sails; in such fashion did the
Empress Quest
enter the Outwater. And her lights blazed bright against the great dark sea of the night sky.

O

Since Endera's description of steel's “remembrance” he couldn't quite look at his ancestral blade the same way. The longsword, light and strong with the slightest arcing curve to the blade, was as old as the
Empress Quest—
five generations past, and Vidarian was the sixth. If what Endera said was right, some fraction of his grandfathers’ souls remained in the blade.

Sunlight filtered down through the blue and green stained glass set into the back portholes of the cabin, bathing him in gentle aquamarine light. It slid across glimmering steel like foam along a beach as he turned his arm, feeling the familiar weight of the three–quarter–tang blade and its mahogany covered hilt. As always it felt like an extension of his hand, the weight of his family settling like a protecting mantle about his shoulders.

The square of flattened steel just above the sword's silver–plated crossguard bore six names—and when Vidarian fathered a son, his name would be chiseled in below them at the boy's thirtieth birthday. Seven generations did not make for an ancient tradition, but theirs was sound, and its weight rested heavily in Vidarian's palm.

As was sometimes his habit, he sat contemplating the names for a time; having long since memorized every serif and curve, the letters were familiar, almost mesmerizing. He was still staring at them when the first shouts rang out abovedeck, pierced by the emergency cry of the boatswain's pipe—
ship sighted, ship closing.

Vidarian sprang to his feet and only just remembered to sheathe the blade before thundering out the door of the cabin.

High afternoon sunlight lanced his eyes as he ran out onto the deck. Men were boiling up the ladders at either end of the ship, and Calgrath, perched in his customary position in the crow's nest, was bellowing down.

“Captain! Ship sighted off th’ port bow! It's the
Starless
, sir, and she be closin’ swift!”

Spitting a curse, Vidarian began roaring commands. Fast as the
Empress Quest
was, she was no match for the
Starless Night
, a pirate vessel known for breaking speed records as a matter of annual sport. And she'd been lurking, to appear so suddenly. Off to port was a collection of tiny islands wreathed by perilous shoals, all but invisible in the dark waters; it was madness verging on suicide to plant a ship there, but that was a fair description of Vanderken's strategy.

Marielle met him at the wheel. She was already shouting orders to the rest of the crew, but paused to exchange a few low voiced words with Vidarian. “Captain, these're not
Starless
waters. She hasn't been seen in these parts for over two years! Mighty odd if you ask me.”

“Right now it's best not to ask, Ms. Solandt. Just get me every cannon aboard aimed at that loveless craft!” Taking a sighting from the compass at his right, Vidarian spun hard on the wheel, bringing the
Quest
about as hard as she would bear, swinging her slender bowsprit around to face the
Starless.
“Solandt!” he shouted, remembering something. Marielle answered with an “Aye?” from across the deck. “Get someone to the priestess—keep her below deck! Once she's secure, get back up here and unlock the fore starboard chest—I'll not have these men meet Vanderken with rusted weapons!”

“Aye, sir!”

The orders were rapidly carried out, and well for it, too, as the
Starless
was closing with disturbing swiftness. Within moments, it seemed, cannon-fire boomed on the distant waves, falling short of the
Quest
, but not nearly short enough.

The wind was against the opposing vessel but she plowed on unconcerned. The
Quest
's arc shortly brought her around nearly ninety degrees to her own wake, presenting her gallant and cannon-studded port bow to the rapidly closing
Starless.
“All cannons fire when ready!” came the distant shout from Marielle, and Vidarian held the wheel firmly on course.

A resounding
BOOM!
shook the deck as the
Quest
opened fire, the priestess's augmented powder performing superbly; the crew roared to hear such play. The
Starless
, steady on her approach and moving too swiftly to accurately gauge position, could not avoid the shot in time, and took a hit to her highest mast. Her answering forward salvo was equally ineffective, thrown off by the damage to the high sails, but it spat salten spray across the
Empress
and her crew.

“All cannons take aim on her stern! Those who haven't armed, do so—we won't be so lucky again!” A tense but full-volumed shout answered Vidarian's command as crewmembers scurried across the deck.

The
Starless
loomed still closer, weakened but not deterred by the hit to her high mast. Spinning the wheel to starboard, Vidarian turned the
Quest
rapidly on the water, taking advantage of her deep keel to bring her side out of range of the enemy's punishing cannon.

But the fire that he expected never came. Instead, a volley of grapeshot filled the air with a sickening hiss, and pelted in a vicious, stinging rain against the
Empress's
forward sails, caught not yet furled for battle. Vidarian's stomach sank as their forward momentum fell away.

A comparatively slow ship made slower, the
Quest
now had no chance at flight; Vanderken and his crew would board, it was just a matter of time. Rather than stall the inevitable, Vidarian called Marielle to the wheel and left her to steer. The Rulorat sword sang its freedom from the sheath, and with his free hand Vidarian took up rope from a braided ladder and began to climb the main mast.

When he was halfway up, Vidarian could make out the stalwart form of the enemy captain astride the deck of the
Starless Night.
Vanderken raised his own sword in a salute, and though his grin could not be ascertained with the eyes, it was evident in his voice.

“Ahoy, Captain Rulorat! It's been some time!”

“Not long enough, Vanderken! And ‘twill not be until your thrice-damned ship ceases to poison these waters!”

“Now, my boy, what manner of greeting is that for an old chum?” Vanderken's voice grew in volume as the
Starless
continued its inexorable approach.

“Do you see that pennant, Vanderken?” Vidarian shouted, pointing his sword at the banner of Sharli that now flew from the crow's nest. “Would you be so quick to challenge a goddess?”

“Flags and faerie dust, lad!” His laugh carried flat and sharp across the water. “This be Nistra's bosom! Now you just wait right there!”

Moments later, a sickening crash joined the two vessels at the bow, punctuated by musket-fire as the crews exchanged volleys. Enhanced powder or not, it would not be a good fight; by the numbers pouring out of Vanderken's ship, he had, as was his custom, overloaded his berths, and appeared to have roughly a three-to-two ratio on the
Empress's
crew: hardened murderers, all. Swinging down from the mast, Vidarian ran to the starboard bow, leaping up to the thick rail. Mercilessly he kicked an enemy sailor into the brine as he caught his bearings, and waited for Vanderken to approach.

The captain of the
Starless
styled himself a “real” pirate; he did not hang back behind his crew, but foraged up with them. Men fell on both sides as muskets took their toll on the ranks, but out of custom none touched the region around the two captains.

Finally Vanderken leapt across the brief gap between the two ships’ starboard bows, landing hard on the deck of the
Empress.
Vidarian raised his blade and waited, a snarl of disgust on his lips.

Vanderken's sword was a lighter one, and he was quick as a viper with it. Still, Vidarian's defense held, and throughout their first clashing exchanges, neither man gained ground. Vidarian came in high, Vanderken slid the blade away along his own; back and forth they went.

“Tell me, Vanderken-how does one sleep, with infamy like yours?” Though fatigue now warmed his chest, Vidarian paced his breathing so as to seem effortless, baiting Vanderken into expending his own on a tirade.

“In a world so twisted as this, give me infamy over honor,” Vanderken said, breathing with each thrust, unfazed by Vidarian's ploy. “Give me infamy,” he growled again, and a pulse of dread shot through Vidarian's heart at the pure hate in his voice, “over pandering to the land-maggots. I sleep like a babe—”

When a bass explosion rocked the deck of the
Empress
, Vidarian staggered backward in shock—but Ulweis Vanderken only laughed. “What madness is this?” Vidarian demanded, but the other captain's eyes were on the site of the explosion.

Vidarian had not yet turned away from his opponent, and so saw the look in his eyes when triumph metamorphosed to horror.

It would later be recalled that the burning Eyes of Sharli descended overhead from a bank of clouds that boiled up out of the red sea. A demoness, her eyes rimed with hellfire, had stormed up out of the belly of the
Empress
and unleashed the fury of ten worlds upon the crew of the
Starless Night
—a fury of myth, of universes filled with fire. Brilliant blue flames shot from the pair of golden eyes that seared themselves into the memory of every crewman, igniting the pirate vessel's sails and burning them to ash in seconds. Then the sea around the craft began to boil, and it seemed that the very air caught fire. Men, all who had crewed the
Starless
but none from the
Empress Quest
, found that their clothing combusted and their skin burned. They leapt from the ship, attempting to douse the flames in the sea, but found no mercy there in the bubbling depths. Vidarian remembered only that his sword began to incandesce, pulsing like a living thing, as the enemy captain staggered back from him.

Vanderken ran back to his ship, jaw slack with disbelief, to stand aboard the crumbling bow as the turgid waves rolled up in a burning frenzy and washed him from the world.

In the aftermath, only a single crewman remained from the
Starless
—a midshipman, by the knots on his sleeve. He only had three real teeth, but made up for it in muscle mass, and had survived the firestorm only by having enough sense to douse himself in one of the
Empress
's fire-fighting barrels rather than pitching himself into the boiling sea. Still, he had taken many burns, and was unconscious.

When Vidarian went to find Ilsut, the ship's healer, he found him carefully but quickly finishing the ties on a sling that bound Marielle's entire right arm, splinted at forearm and upper, to her chest. Vidarian stopped short at the infirmary threshold, stricken. When Ilsut rose, there was no note of accusation in his dark eyes, only purpose, but his hurried nod as he gathered his tools and made for the front of the ship released a wall of guilt to crash through Vidarian's shock.