The Fox (89 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

HARVEST moon hung great and yellow above the horizon on the first of the month. A late-autumn burst of summer weather had scoured the sky. Evred-Harvaldar’s windows stood open to the soughing of the hot wind around the towers and down the stone canyons of the city. Hot, dry wind: good. His thought ranged eastward beyond the border mountains as he fingered the scrap of paper just arrived via the locket-magic.

Then he untwisted the paper.

Hadand’s square, neat writing, a faint trace of her favorite scent—distilled from aromatic herbs—all brought her oddly near, yet reinforced her distance. He missed Hadand. Longed to talk face-to-face. And yet he had not brought himself to tell her that his father had actually had a set of three lockets. The third had been loaned on occasion to Runners trusted by the king and Jened Sindan; Pavlan, Sindan’s cousin, had returned from the Land Bridge with it some weeks after Hadand left for the east. Evred pensioned the man off, sent him home, and hid the locket in the casket.

The reason he had said nothing stemmed from his ambivalence about the discovery of Ndara’s lockets: a thirty-year-old-secret brought by his own mother, not to his father, but to Ndara-Harandviar, a woman Queen Wisthia had not even met. Implicit was a worldwide conspiracy among women—denied by them all—because it never occurred to Evred that the lockets could have had another purpose besides military.

Together, last spring, he and Hadand had tested his father’s pair and Ndara’s. They found that they were not interchangeable. The spells for the two sets varied slightly, and the magic only worked with the lockets and not outside of them. They could send objects tiny enough to fit, but they could feel the corresponding cost in magic. They’d agreed if they ever had to part on kingdom affairs, they would use the lockets—and so it had come to pass.

He frowned, considering his ambivalence; he trusted individual women, and yet he felt they had enough secrets.

He held the paper closer to the lamp and read the message.

M.C.: Mage Council. Evred twisted the note into a wick and touched it to the flame in the lamp, watched it burn, and realized he’d gotten used to lamplight, the glowglobes now saved for emergency use such as a Venn attack, their clear light being more reliable than fire. When the paper twist had burned nearly to his fingers he stooped to lay the smoldering fragment in the cold fireplace, then walked back to the window to gaze toward the northwest.

He should be triumphant, or at least glad, about the prospective treaty, yet his emotions were distinct: relief and melancholy.

Why was human nature so absurd? There was no other term, except maybe foolishness, for the way his mind stubbornly reverted to that single glimpse of Inda he’d had that day—the day of murder and assassination—in Lindeth Harbor. One glimpse, no words spoken, even. He had told no one, not even Vedrid, whom he’d sent off within a day to Bren to try again to contact Inda.

Disgusted and impatient with himself, he acknowledged this much comfort: at least no one knew what a fool he’d been.

The bell tolled the changing of the watch, and rhythmic clanks and clatters of sentries trading places syncopated the susurrus of the wind. Evred stared out at the sky, wondering if Inda saw the same stars that he did.

Disgusted by such asinine sentiment, he turned away from the window, but the self-loathing moved right along with him.

He strode to the door, yanked it open. Felt relief that Nightingale was the Runner on duty. “Heat Street, House of Roses,” he said, without any preamble. “Dyalen. Request an interview.”

Nightingale saluted, palm against chest rather than fist, indicating he was well aware that this was a personal and not a kingly matter. He left and Evred prowled around his rooms until Nightingale returned, this time with a thin woman in riding dress, her hair short and curly. The few years since they’d seen one another last had aged her subtly in the way some women aged—she looked less like a boy and more like a girl, not in build, but in the softened contours of her face. She must be ten years older than he, at least.

She saluted. “Evred-Harvaldar.”

Dismissing Nightingale with a look, he said, “Never mind that. Sit down.”

She did, and waited with her customary patience. During their time together, though it had been sex for pay, she had treated him like a person, not an object of business. And she had taught him to use the same courtesy toward professionals, something he’d come to appreciate only later, with experience. So, though he had no interest in her personal life, he said, “How have you been?”

A brief smile, a gesture of her strong hands that was curiously masculine—and he felt the faintest spurt of attraction. It had been far too long. Half a year—not since the murder-assassination—and all his experiences had been up north.

She said, “I’m retiring this year. The sex business is for the young. Going east to Nelkereth to raise horses. You?”

As always, brief, empathetic—and direct.

And so he said, “I want sex but I do not want favorites. I don’t even want to know their names.”

She put her hands on her knees. Down to business. “Male or female?”

“Male.”

She asked some blunt questions which he answered as bluntly, then she stood up, saluted, and said, “Want someone today?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll set it all up.”

He thanked her, she left and returned by unobtrusive byways to the House of Roses, where she went straight to the proprietor, her great-uncle. Because it was so late at night, the place was busy; she entered by a back way, listening with experienced ears to the sounds of merrymakers in the public rooms as she made her way upstairs to the office. “King,” she said, when they were alone. “Discreet, no one with ambition,” and she went on to describe what he liked in sex—not just from his words, but her own experience during her time with him, and she was far more accurate than Evred. “Someone now,” she finished.

Her uncle tapped his fingers on the table, then said, “Who do you suggest we send as a trial?”

Dyalen said, “I considered that on the way over. There’s something missing, something he didn’t tell me, but I strongly suspect his heart is given. But no sign of to whom.”

“Too bad. He might want a look-alike.”

“No. Mistake. He’s too much like the old king in other ways. If there is a someone else, the king may well be heart-fixed. No matter. Whoever the someone else is, he’s not here. I think the king would hate a look-alike, so it’s as well we don’t know who.”

Her uncle opened a hand. “You know him best.”

“So try Fedran first, isn’t he on duty tonight? He’s not talky. Evred is quiet, though he has a sense of humor and Fedran’s quick-witted. Evred relaxes if you catch him with a joke.”

Her uncle summoned his Runner, sent the message. When he looked up, it was to see Dyalen at the window staring out at the moonlit sky, her expression not pleased so much as pensive.

He said, “Why the long face? We have the young queen’s custom, and if we are careful, we might now gain the king’s as well. The house will be made for this generation—and you will be getting your share, having set us up with the king.”

Dyalen shook her head. “I’ve always liked Hadand-Gunvaer. And I liked Evred-Harvaldar when he was only the second son nobody paid the least attention to. Now he’s king, and you know the first thing out of his mouth? It was to ask about me.”

“Good custom,” her uncle said. Smiling. “I wonder if there’s any chance we can find out who the secret desire is.”

Dyalen faced him, frowning. “You’re not going to get into politics.”

Uncle Kenrid laughed. “Politics! Anything having to do with human beings is politics. No, my ambitions have nothing to do with governments, wars, or lands. But if this mystery man shows up, everything will change. It would be as well to know who he is and plan for it.”

She sighed. “It’s not us I’m thinking of, but those two young hearts. Human nature being what it is, Evred-Harvaldar’s mystery man is probably an utter snake. I hate him already.”

Uncle Kenrid laughed. “Life will be interesting if the snake ever slithers in.”

Thunder rumbled overhead and the rain turned to sleet as smoke rolled over the water from the burning galleys in the Fire Islands’ main harbor. Dasta was, as usual, oblivious to the cold as he stood on the foreyard and watched intently. Far more galleys than he’d expected . . . boarding attempts repelled so far—too many, too many . . . Eflis, where are you?

In the west the sky was clear, the warm pale blue sky contrasting dramatically with the dark grayish-green thunder cell overhead. The distant sparkle of light on the sea made Dasta’s eye tear; he blinked, and, yes! From the northwest a slanted line bisected the horizon. He blinked, and the line resolved into a tall, rake-masted schooner, impossibly fast, throwing up a magnificent feather.

The galleys noticed moments later—individual captains on the galleys recoiled, yelled, plied sticks or whips with fear-driven vigor. But no matter how hard they flogged the hapless prisoners chained to the benches in the galleys, none of them were as fast as Eflis with a wind at her back.
Sable
’s crew was lined along the upper rail of the sharply slanted deck, making the schooner even stiffer. It was Eflis’ best maneuver; she judged the strength of those tall spars and the taut sails to a nicety.

Joy coursed through Dasta. He wanted to dance right there on the yardarm as the schooner slipped behind the galleys, cutting them off from the shore.

The
Sable
’s fire teams joined the steady and deadly stream of arrows: draw/shoot, shoot/draw. No falter, no flaw in aim. Pirates, never the galley crews.

And it was too much for the pirates.

A discordant horn blatted a signal, and the galleys began to retreat—or at least the captains ordered them to retreat, but by now the galley crews all knew what was about to happen, and despite the angry and desperate floggings, the screamed threats, most refused to lift an oar. Or they clashed the wood together, their rhythm so impossible the galleys did not move, only rocked in circles.

Everyone knew that Elgar the Fox freed the prisoners off all the galleys they took. So the horn signaling
Flee!
served instead as the signal for a general mutiny. More galleys crashed, bobbed, and drifted as the pirates abandoned the fight, and either leaped to other galleys that were moving, or dove overboard.

“Captains!” Dasta yelled—a command scarcely heard and not needed. Gillor was raising the signal flag herself.

And the fire crews shifted their aim to the individual pirate captains.

Joy thrilled along Dasta’s nerves. It worked!
His
plan, not Inda’s, had worked.

For weeks they’d used all Inda’s suggestions, and they almost always succeeded. Again and again they’d hammered the galley pirates, though many of the fights were close, especially at the beginning when they had to guess at numbers and hidden pirate reserves.

But since they’d begun to win, locals forced to work for the pirates—or hiding out from them on the thick forested islands—had come forward with information when “Elgar” used a scout to make reconnaissance.

This bay was the lair of the second largest pirate gang, allies of Bendal Bonebreaker, the most prominent pirate chief on the island. The pirates knew
Death
and
Cocodu
by now. To flush them out they’d needed a ruse, and this ruse—to dress the merchant caravel they’d recaptured up north as a fat Sarendan trade ship and one of Eflis’ schooners as its consort, both wounded badly after a big storm, limping to shore—had drawn out the pirates like bees to blossoms.
Death
and
Cocodu
had lain just over the horizon, as a mix of Eflis’ and Dasta’s and Tcholan’s best fighters boiled up from the trader and schooner to take on the swarms of fast galleys.

That had been the tightest of the timing, and at first it had looked bad. They hadn’t expected so many of them. But
Cocodu
and
Death
arrived in time to flank the galleys, and here Eflis came to cut them off from shore.
His
plan!

Inda had been right. The galleys counted on numbers, speed, and then savagery when they boarded. Fire team drills and maneuvering beat them every time.

Well, here was another win, but there was no time to gloat. Now for the long task of freeing the galley men and dealing with pirates and craft.

Below, Gillor signaled for the boat crews. And Dasta remembered where he was.
Who
he was. Nearly caught napping! Eflis was almost in range to identify individuals with a glass.

Dasta slid down a backstay—face away from Eflis’ ship—and felt his command of the battle evaporating with his disappearance. He ducked belowdecks, and when he reemerged from a different hatch, he was Dasta again, and Gillor transferred command of the
Cocodu
back to him as she dropped into the gig and set up the sail. When she sailed from the lee of the ship she had on the all-purpose black shirt and trousers and headband they kept packed in the gig. Her back was to
Sable
and
Sea-King
as she sped away.

By now everyone knew that was Elgar the Fox going off to investigate, and the agreement with Eflis had been amended to include leaving him alone. “He’ll come aboard when he’s ready,” was what she’d been told by all the deckhands on
Cocodu
and
Death
.

She’d stopped asking, but Dasta knew her interest hadn’t died away. So he was suspicious when she signaled for a parley.