The Bloodforged (13 page)

“Your Highness. I trust you are enjoying the evening.” As Liam had suspected, he spoke Erromanian perfectly well. The translation at the Republicana had been pure posturing.

“Lovely,” Liam said. “I'm so grateful for the chance to meet you all.” And if he couldn't keep just a
hint
of sarcasm out of his voice, really, who could blame him?

Syril's expression didn't budge, but a glint of amusement touched his eyes. “The pleasure is ours, Your Highness. It is not often we have a chance to rub shoulders with royalty.”

“Better not rub too hard. Some of it might come off.”

Kar laughed. Rona flashed a tight smile. Speaker Syril tilted his head, as though examining a curious specimen. “So fragile, is it?”

“New coat of paint,” Liam said, holding Syril's gaze defiantly, like a too-firm clasping of arms.

The speaker's mouth quirked. “Indeed. One wonders what is underneath.”

“Will you listen to that!” Lyn appeared at Liam's side, resting her hand on his elbow. “This is positively my favourite piece of music this season.” She gave his arm a meaningful squeeze.

Oh, dear gods.
There was no way he could escape it this time, not unless he wanted to continue this delightful chat with Speaker Syril. What was that Onnani saying—
any port in a storm
? Swallowing a sigh, Liam said, “Would you care to dance, my lady?”

“I would be delighted, Your Highness.”

“Well then, Lady Brown,” said Kar, “shall we join them?”

Liam turned from Syril to the dancers. From the anvil to the forge.

It wasn't that he was a
bad
dancer, exactly. Physically, it wasn't so different from battle. Someone took the initiative, then it was move and countermove. Keep light on your feet. In battle, though, no one was
staring
at you. No one was
judging
. Dancing felt like a test, one he was bound to fail. Admittedly, a lot of things felt like that lately.

“I apologise if my intervention seemed abrupt,” Lyn said as Liam led her through the steps. “I sensed a certain . . . tension.”

“Speaker Syril and I seem to have got off on the wrong foot, and I'm not sure how to fix it.”

“Perhaps you cannot. Syril is a difficult man.” She smiled up at him, pivoting in time with the music. Seen this close, her cosmetics seemed thick and harsh, like someone trying much too hard. “But let us not talk politics. Both of us have had more than enough of that, I think.” They parted, came together, parted again, filtering through the other couples. When they rejoined each other, Lyn said, “Lady Brown seems lovely.”

“She's great.”

“A knight. How extraordinary. Is she a skilled fighter?”

“She holds her own,” Liam said, grateful for a topic he was
comfortable with. “Not as strong as some others, obviously, but she's canny. Knows where to hit you and when.”

“Yet she seems like such a sweet girl. Delicate and refined. Not classically beautiful, perhaps, but compelling, in her way.”

Liam glanced down at his dancing partner, puzzled by this turn of conversation. Then he saw how wooden Lyn's smile had become, how her gaze continued to follow Rona and her husband.

Ah.

He'd sensed Kar laying it on a little thick with Rona earlier, and apparently so had Lyn. Then again,
she'd
been the one to suggest dancing, so there was no point in getting jealous about it. “I think she's very beautiful,” he said, a little irritably. “She's a lot of great things, actually, and a huge help to me.” He really ought to tell her so sometime, in fact.

“How wonderful,” Lyn said.

Thankfully, the music stopped soon after, and Liam was free to regroup with Rona. “How was that?” she asked, raising her wine to her lips.

“Oh, fine. Except I think Lyn wants your braid for a trophy.”

Rona froze midsip. “Pardon?”

“Didn't like seeing you in her husband's arms, I think.”

She
tsk
ed quietly. “Ridiculous.”

“To be fair, he
is
a priest of Ardin.”

Rona's eyes widened, a frisson of disgust rippling through her.

“Excuse me, Your Highness.” A servant appeared bearing a small scroll. “This just came for you.”

“Came?” Liam frowned. “From whom?”

“I'm sorry, Your Highness, I don't know.” Bowing hurriedly, the servant withdrew.

Liam and Rona exchanged a glance. He broke the seal and unfurled the note.

“It's not another death threat, is it?” she asked in a low voice.

If you want to know the whole story, come to the Ship and Anchor. Come at noon, alone. Wait at a table in the back. I will find you.

“Not a threat,” Liam said. “It's an invitation.”

“An invitation to what?”

“A meeting of some kind, from the looks of it.”

She shook her head. “I don't understand. A meeting with whom? What for?”

“I don't know. I don't have any answers.” Judging from the note, though, he was about to get some at last.

“I
don't think this is a good idea, Commander,” Rona said.

Liam didn't think it was a particularly good idea either, but it wasn't as if he had much of a choice. He needed answers, badly, and the note had promised he'd get some. So here he was, strolling down the boardwalk with his officers, searching for a sign with a ship on it and trying to avoid eye contact with the locals.

“Thought you would've had your fill of anonymous notes, Commander,” Ide said.

“They do seem to be fond of them here, don't they? But I've got a feeling I know who this one came from.”

“I hope you're right,” Rona said.

Liam hoped so too.

“There it is.” Dain Cooper pointed.

Liam could see it now, a faded sign swinging on its hinges in the light breeze of the quay. “Here goes nothing. Now remember, stay out of sight unless I need you.”

“And how are we supposed to know that?” Rona asked irritably. She really wasn't happy about this.

“Not sure,” he admitted, “though my getting thrown through the front window is probably a sign.”

“You jest, Commander,” Dain said, “but from what I've
heard, that's a real possibility. The Ship is notorious for being the rankest, rowdiest tavern in the city.”

Which reputation was entirely deserved, Liam decided an hour later, after he'd had a chance to take the place in. He was no stranger to taverns; like most soldiers, he'd spent an evening or two in some of the rougher places in Erroman. That was where he'd first become acquainted with sailors—crusty, foul-mouthed men who left their vessels anchored at the mouth of the Sabri to pilot small craft upriver to Erroman. Those men liked nothing better than drinking, fighting, and whoring, and they preferred to do it in the sorts of places that had men crawling under the tables and vermin crawling under the men. Those places were bad. But this place had them all beat as far as Liam was concerned, claiming the title by virtue of its smell (vomit and fish guts), the taste of its ale (same), and the completely unidentifiable gruel they served, which looked suspiciously like . . . well, suffice it to say the place had a
theme
.

Thankfully, an hour was all he had to wait before his mysterious correspondent appeared at the door. They recognised each other immediately. They had, after all, met before.

“Hello, Chief,” Liam said, feeling a bit smug. He'd guessed right. It was nice to be one step ahead for a change. “Lovely spot you've picked here.”

Mallik, Chief Shipwright of the Onnani Republican Navy, dropped his broad frame onto the bench across from Liam. “Sorry, Your Highness, but I wanted to make sure no one would see us. You came alone?”

“No. My officers are loitering somewhere nearby.”

The chief's face darkened. “But we agreed—”

“We didn't
agree
anything. You sent me an anonymous letter. Not my preferred means of communication, incidentally.”

The barmaid appeared, but Mallik declined her offer of ale. (He'd obviously been here before.) “I didn't know who to trust. I could be dismissed just for speaking to you.”

“Why? What doesn't Kar want me to know?”

The chief regarded him with shrewd, dark eyes. “It's not just the first speaker. No one wants me to talk to you. They would all rather give you their own theories, recruit you to their cause. You are a powerful man, Your Highness.”

So powerful that people are threatening my life.
Liam kept the thought to himself. Like the chief, he didn't know whom to trust; so far, there weren't a lot of promising candidates. “What about you?” he asked. “You must have more than a theory. You're the one responsible for building for the fleet. What in the Nine Domains is going
on
?”

“I wish I knew. I'm the one responsible, as you say, so I'm the one who looks like an incompetent fool.”

“Your note said you had the whole story.”

“One whole story, anyway. But that is not the same as having all the answers.”

Liam suppressed a growl.
Even the shipwrights in this country talk like priests.
Aloud, he said, “Go on, then.”

The chief propped his elbows on the table, as though settling in for a long tale. “You have to understand, Your Highness, it started so gradually that none of us noticed at first. Myself, I've had my suspicions since last summer, but it must have started before then, maybe even before the Siege of Erroman. Back then, the Republicana was still debating whether to join the war. The mood on the docks was bad. People were divided. Some of us thought it was our duty to go to war. Others . . . well.” He shrugged. “I suppose it was the same in Alden after the invasion of Andithyri.”

Liam stared. Was the man trying to be clever, or did he genuinely not know that Prince Tomald had betrayed his own brother—had been sodding
executed
—over this very issue?
Maybe Erik doesn't want that part of the story getting around.
Belatedly, it occurred to him that he might need to be careful what he said, how much he divulged, about affairs in his brother's kingdom. As if he didn't have enough to worry about.

“Anyway,” the chief went on, “what I noticed first was the
Seaspear
.” He raised his eyebrows significantly.

“The . . . er . . . ?”

“The
Seaspear
!” The chief was visibly aghast at Liam's ignorance. “The flagship of the naval fleet! A more glorious ship never was! Until the new models, at least . . .”

“All right, so where is it now, this ship?”

The chief stabbed a finger at him. “Exactly.”

“Wait, you mean it's missing?”

“I mean it's gone. They're
all
gone. A dozen galleys, more than a thousand oars in all, just—” He spread his hands.

“But what . . .
How?
”

“Only two ways.” The chief counted them off on thick fingers. “One, they're taken out to sea. Not very likely, that; it would take too many men. Two, they're sunk. Dropped beneath the waves.” He looked mournful as he said it, like the idea pained him. “Could be a combination of the two. Take her off somewhere close by, somewhere you don't need a full crew to reach, then punch a few holes in her belly to take her down. Not easy, but it could be done.”

Liam knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't help it. “Wouldn't someone have seen? Heard?”

The chief shrugged. “Docks are pretty quiet at night.”

“You're telling me that the entire Onnani navy—”

“Keep your voice down.”

Liam darted a look around, dropped his voice. “That the entire Onnani navy was either
sunk
or
stolen
?”

“That's what I'm telling you. It happened over the course of a few days. People saw the number of ships dwindling, of course, but nobody thought anything of it. Figured it was manoeuvres, you know? Getting ready for war, supposing the vote would go that way. By the time we realised something was wrong, it was too late.”

“What about the commander general in charge?”

“Admiral. He was brought before the Republicana. Lectured and dismissed. He swore up and down he had nothing to do with it, and neither did his captains.” The chief shrugged again. “I believe him, but who knows? At the least, he let it happen right under his nose.”

Liam slumped back against the wall, stunned. “That's . . .” As it turned out, he didn't have a word for it. “No wonder First Speaker Kar didn't want me to hear this.”

“There's more.” The chief reached for Liam's jug of ale, took a swig, grimaced. He muttered a curse in Onnani and continued. “After I got the word to start building, in those final days just before the vote, things started happening straightaway. Strange things.”

“Such as?”

“Streak of bad luck as makes a man think it's no luck at all. It started with the timber. Burned up right in the shipyard. Lightning, they say. You tell me, Your Highness, what are the odds of lightning striking a pile of timber when it could have struck a mast not a hundred paces away?”

“Not good,” Liam said, since that seemed to be the expected answer.

“Then the dockies go on strike, leaving our supplies stranded. Took us weeks to gather enough men to replace them. And then, when we finally get the first of the new galleys done and take her out into the bay, she sinks.
Sinks.
” He pounded a fist on the table, sending Liam's jug two inches in the air. He lowered his voice to a growl. “No ship of mine
sinks
, Your Highness, not unless she's been sunk.”

“Meaning sabotage.”

The chief leaned back and folded his arms, looking well satisfied with this conclusion. “Meaning sabotage.”

“But who?”

“That, Your Highness, is the golden question. Add to that
when will he strike next
and
how do we stop him
, and you and I are riding the same wind.”

“The Oridians,” Liam said. “It has to be.”

“Possible, but they would have to be damned clever. Takes a dozen hands to move a warship even a few miles. That many pale-skinned folk running around the docks would get noticed. Me, my gold is on someone homegrown. Working with the Oridians, maybe, but a local, and with friends.”

Liam cursed under his breath. This was so much worse than he'd thought. “And you have no idea who it could be?”

“None.” The chief smiled, his leathery face crinkling. “I'm counting on you to find out, Your Highness.”

I'm counting on you, Liam.
Erik's words at the crossroads. It felt like a lifetime ago. Liam had promised to do his best, but he'd feared, even then, that his best wasn't going to be enough.

At least he'd been right about
something
.

*   *   *

Liam sat on
his balcony, letting the breeze ruffle his hair in what had become a nightly routine. In the distance, the sea sighed
rhythmically, like a lover sleeping peacefully at his side. It relaxed him. It washed over his mind, drowning out the voices that said he wasn't smart enough, wasn't subtle or experienced enough. The voices that reminded him that two people who were all of those things, his brother and his wife, were far away, over plains and mountains. Together.

Facing what, he wondered?

No. Don't do that.
He didn't want to think about Alix and Erik in danger. He didn't want to think about them
not
in danger, either. He didn't want to think about them at all. Just her. Alix. The love of his life. A woman so impulsive, so deeply passionate, that she didn't always make good choices. She was a Black, a true child of Ardin. He loved that about her, but he also feared it. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. He did. He trusted Erik too, maybe even more so. Somehow, though, it didn't help. Not after what had happened between them last winter, how close they'd come to . . .

He growled, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. This wasn't working. He needed a different distraction, something more active. He went inside and sat down at the writing desk. Grabbing a quill and unstopping the inkpot, he wrote,

Dear Allie . . .

When he was through, Liam folded the letter into a tiny envelope and sealed it. He'd give it to Shef in the morning, ask for it to be sent to Ost.

Feeling better, he stepped back out onto the balcony . . .

. . . and nearly died of heart failure.

A figure stood shadowed against the moonlight. Instinctively, Liam's hand went for his sword, but of course it wasn't there. He glanced over his shoulder, gauging the distance to the balcony door.

“Do not be alarmed, Your Highness.”

Liam didn't recognise the voice. On the other side of the door, Rudi barked.
Too late for that, you useless mutt.
Liam took a step back toward the door. “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“A friend of whose?”

Laughter in the dark. “A fair question.”

“Pleased you think so.” He took another step back.

“I am a friend of Saxon's, Your Highness, here at his request.”

Liam relaxed a little. Just a little, mind. Spies were not high on his list of favourite creatures.

“I have been keeping an eye on you from a distance,” said the voice, lightly accented. “From what I saw today, however, I thought it time to be a little more . . . direct.” The figure stepped forward, just enough that Liam could make out a sketch of his features in the soft glow of the bedchamber window. He was of middling height and build, with nothing much to distinguish him. Liam wondered if this was what Alix meant when she said it was impossible to describe Saxon.

“What did you see today?” Liam asked warily.

“You, at the docks. With the chief shipwright.” The man paused, presumably to let that sink in. “A productive meeting, was it?”

“I suppose so.” Liam wasn't about to start serving it up just yet, whoever this man claimed to be.

“You understand the situation, then?”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

The man hummed a low note. “I suppose not. Still, presumably you are convinced by now that whatever else might be happening, the delays with the fleet are not accidental. I have known that for a long time, but I have struggled to learn anything new. Your arrival has stirred the pot. I have heard more theories over the course of this week than in the past six months put together.”

“Glad I could help.”

“First Speaker Kar came to see you.” It was not a question. “And Chairman Irtok. The first will have told you that the opposition is to blame. The second will have denied it, naming it simple incompetence.” The man smiled. “How am I doing?”

Liam made himself shrug. “All pretty obvious so far.”