The Fox (94 page)

That meant no raider pack out in the strait—so far. But there was no cause to gloat. Right now the missing raider had lost its scout no less thoroughly than Inda had.

Voices again!

Inda and Fox exchanged questioning glances. The voices could have been fisher folk or settlers. Disappointment wrung a soundless oath out of Fox, who flung himself aft, striking the taffrail noiselessly with his fist.

Inda, resigned to yet another false trail, winced, aware now of hunger, cold, dull throbbing on his temple where the most recent sword wound—earned on their last failed attempt to take a Venn ship—had not yet healed, all things he’d managed not to notice while they were on the chase. He drew in a breath to give the order to haul wind, well away from the dangers of unseen reefs, ice, and rocks—

And a loud scraping—the shearing of wood on stone— stilled them. Shock, fear, helplessness made their hearts thunder. They dreaded seeing stone punch up through the deck and freezing green water swirl after it, to suck them down to death.

The crash of a splintering impact that followed was even more shocking—until they realized that the
Death
had only scraped an unseen rock, but was floating free. The smash was someone else.

“Venn?” Fox mouthed the word, green eyes wide with incredulity.

“Has to be,” Inda mouthed back, jerking his thumb over the rail seaward, where they caught a brief glimpse of
Cocodu
’s topmast, on watch out in the strait; the
Vixen
was scouting forward,
Rippler
south of
Cocodu, Sable
and consorts strung out behind.

A violent gesture from Mutt brought Fox up the mast almost at a run. He slid down a backstay moments later and grabbed Inda by the neck, slinging him around.

“Venn. Reefed,” he said directly into his ear, his free hand pointing just off the lee bow.

Inda couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t matter. He waved his hands, then pointed fore and aft, the gesture gathering two boarding crews and dispatching them over the side.

That was the hard part. No use in attacking with arrows and cut booms—they had to board and take the scout before the mage vanished. So far all they had gotten for all their care were wounds and chases from raider packs that could sail out of sight of one another and communicate by magic—and no mages. In a good wind that left little time for any attacker—such as themselves. This formation had nearly been their downfall three times until they’d learned how the raider packs functioned.

Inda shook away memory. Gillor was put in charge of
Death
with a firm gesture—her shoulders sagged with disappointment—and Inda paused only long enough to arm himself before he dropped silently into Mutt’s boat. Fox was already away; he hadn’t even gone below to get his fighting scarf. The wintry light bleached his red hair of color as his boat launched soundlessly into the ice-green water.

Fox’s crew dipped their oars quietly, pulling with crimson-faced effort. They slid along the lee of the reefed ship, against which waves smashed, and above, voices shouted unintelligibly. And was that the clash of weapons? Fox’s fight team reached the beautiful arched prow as Mutt hooked on at the stern, and Inda led the way up.

Then over the rail, arms at the ready—

The jumble of images assembled into surprise: no struggle here to free the ship, but a mutiny!

Fox leaped to the deck at the prow, then someone shouted in Venn, and the mutineers turned and ran, weapons raised, to the attack.

Another voice repeated something three or four times, in a hoarse howl.

Fox yelled, “They’re going to kill the dag!”

A blue-robed figure lay on the deck near the mainmast.

Blue robe.

Sea dag.

Inda bounded over fallen bodies and the clutter of ruined lines as two yellow-haired warriors jumped down from the upper deck.

Inda leaped over the fallen dag, deflecting the first Venn’s downward stroke before it could cleave the woman’s head off.

The Venn attacked savagely to beat Inda back, and the other stood at his shoulder as shield. They fought like drilled warriors, feet planted, using only arms; Inda fought like a pirate, kicking one’s knee out, and as he staggered, trying to right himself, Inda slung a swinging block into the other, sending him stumbling to the ground.

Then he stood astride the mage, facing the attackers. A knife, thrown by Fox from the upper deck, thunked into the taller assailant. The one with the smashed knee went down before Inda’s hard, fast back stroke.

Inda looked up. The fight was nearly over. He knelt to see if his long-sought prize lived.

Her chest rose and fell beneath the heavy blue robe. Inda looked at the woman’s face. Faint lines indicated someone not young, but she wasn’t old, either—her skin was too firm for that. Wide mouth, pale now, wind-tousled sand-colored hair not hiding a rising bump behind one ear.

Overhead swung a block. Inda saw what had happened: it had been shaken loose by the ship running on the reef, hitting her on the head.

“We’re almost secure,” Fox said, and jerked his chin. “Better bind her hands, or she’ll be gone as soon as she wakes. Mages don’t even need transfer tokens, I was told, but they do make signs along with the words.”

“Yes.” Inda had experienced instant transfer himself. He felt his pockets, looked askance at the thick, scratchy lengths of leddas-laced hempen rope on the deck around him. He remembered too well what it was like being trussed up and helpless, so he pulled off his scarf. He used that to bind the woman’s hands securely behind her, but he ran his fingers around and around inside the binding to make certain it wasn’t too tight against the fragile bones of her wrists.

A last look at that face, in which there was no sign of intelligence, no hint of personality. So much at stake here, and the key to it all locked inside that head.

“We’ll keep her in my cabin,” Inda said. And, “Let’s summon
Vixen
and send it back to Bren. It’s time for Jeje and Tau to join us.”

Chapter Thirty

TAU and the Comet faced one another. How many contests of will had placed them just so, standing on opposite sides of the inlaid table in this beautifully decorated salon that belonged to neither of them?

It no longer mattered—he was leaving.

He was
leaving
. Joy suffused him.

And she saw it. “Just like that?” she said, crossing her arms. “Just like that, stealing out like a thief?”

“No.” He laughed. “I might have stolen out like a thief, leaving no word or sign. But I thought I owed you this much: Elgar sent a messenger. Jeje is waiting for me at the Fleet House. Probably impatiently. So I waited for you in order to say good-bye.”

The Comet daubed her eyes with the lace at her wrist. Her feelings surprised her. She knew she was not in love anymore than he was. They had been too guarded for that. But there was regret. And tenderness. “We shared so much,” she said. “And you dare to turn your back as if none of it mattered?”

“Everything matters,” Tau answered. His smile lingered at the corners of his eyes. “Yet my life is not here. You knew that.”

“Your life is where you live it.” She struggled with her emotions, fury at the sheer waste gaining control. “And so you dash away to your stupid ships and then what? Die under a Venn’s ax? You are on the verge of greatness here, Angel.”

Angel
. Not even his name, though she knew it. “No,” he retorted. “I am merely an adjunct to your greatness.”

She struggled again, and then grinned, however reluctantly.

“I’ve been the setting to your jewel,” he said. “And it’s been fun. I don’t regret a moment, even though, as it turned out, I learned little of use. I’ve even crossed the stage. Always wanted to try it. So I discovered that while I’m decorative, so are all the other players. Again, we serve as your setting.”

“You could be great,” she said slowly. “Not as a singer. But when you speak.”

“Maybe after years of training.” He opened his hands. “It’s possible. And maybe not. Inevitably there will come someone younger, with the training I need already mastered, and most of all with the determination I lack.”

“That might be in ten years. Twenty. Thirty! You will never not be beautiful, even in old age. What a stupid, purposeless waste!
Why?
” She heard her own voice rising toward shrillness, and choked off the word.

While she composed her breathing he gazed beyond her toward the sea. The view from the window was magnificent, though in the recent months he’d hardly glanced out of it. Once he’d spent time at this window, longing for the sea. Then, gradually, the people here absorbed him into their lives. Masked lives, all. It was a world of art and artifice, and he’d enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until Jeje’s messenger reached him that he discovered how much he’d been yearning for release.

He said, “I can’t answer your question. I may never be able to answer it.” He spoke not to her, but to that glistening blue sea on the horizon. “Once I killed a woman and enjoyed the killing. Another time I saved one who did not want to be saved. Both times I thought I was right. The one I saved set fire to a ship full of pirates so that they burned to death. Who knows? Maybe the one I killed might have changed and lived to make restitution.” He laughed softly. “Though I have my doubts. No, the problem there is not that I killed her so much as that I enjoyed the act.”

She stared. He had talked amusingly about some of his experiences, but nothing, ever, about his time with pirates. What little she had learned was through listening to gossip about the doings of the infamous Elgar the Fox. In truth, it was difficult to believe that her decorative Angel had sailed with so sinister a figure, and yet she knew he had.

“The third, I dreamed of killing every night, but in the end I let her go,” his dreamy voice went on. “I don’t know, might never know, if she lived or died.”

Abruptly he stopped. His expression was the acute one she distrusted: he had reached some inward decision, and once again he’d hidden away the moment of resolve, and its motivation. He said, “As for greatness, you’re in command of a very small kingdom here.” He lifted his hand, sweeping it over the house, and the stage down on the Riverside Road, where the people of rank disported themselves. “But if you truly want greatness, why do you not accept Lael of Colend’s invitation to perform in Alsayas? Are you afraid you will not measure up?”

She flushed but did not deny his accusation, because she knew it was true.

He said, “So you’ve used the old Colendi poets to reach your present place. In a sense you’ve mastered them. So either rule here and dread someone else coming along who knows the old greats or use the experience you’ve gained to make new ones. You’ve the wit and the brains. All you really need is the inspiration, and you might find it in the world’s most sophisticated court. Why not take the risk?” He grinned. “Think of me and my Venn ax when you make your bow to King Lael.”

She drew a deep breath. “Maybe. Maybe. But what about you? I cannot believe all your wit and will is going to be spent on brawling with the Venn in the strait.”

Tau thought of the fine clothes in his room, all left there to be given away. They were the snake skin he was now shedding. “No,” he said. “Inda Elgar needs me, and while I’m needed, I have purpose. I guess it’s as simple—and as profound—as that.”

She said, “I need you.”

“No, you want me.” His smile was rueful. “More, you want me to need you. I’m sorry, bright star, but though we can direct the will, it is impossible to govern the heart.”

He held out his hands. She laid hers in his. He bent to kiss her on both cheeks, and on her forehead; she flung her arms round his neck and claimed his lips with hers, a last, passionate, fiery kiss that left them breathless.

But then he let go.

Jeje almost missed him in the busy crowd along the main street outside the Fleet House, where she waited with her gear bag. Tau had dressed again in his sailing clothes—the black velvet and the ruffles and lace were gone. His hair was tied in the sailor’s queue again, no longer braided and set with gems. His expression was pensive, though when he saw her he smiled.

She knew he was twenty-five, two and a half years older than she. Why did he all of a sudden seem much older? There was no line in his face.

“Ready?” he asked. “Or rather, is your mighty force ready? I know you’ve been panting to get back on board since the day we first landed.”

Jeje dismissed this deflection with the ease of a year’s intimacy in daily conversation. “Hard to leave her?”

Tau said wryly, “Why would you think that?”

“Because she’s the Comet, because she’s the most beautiful thing to walk the ground, because all the gossip is about how the only person beautiful enough for her is you—and the only one beautiful enough for you is her, so of course you were together.” Her voice roughened. “And apparently at least two people are writing plays about you two.”

“Just as well you and I are leaving then, isn’t it?” he retorted, light enough, as he hitched his gear back over his shoulder. A surprisingly thin bag, considering how many fabulous clothes she’d seen him in over recent months.

They dodged around an oblivious vendor singing out about her berry tarts. Jeje almost collided with a couple of flushed sailors smelling of ale who rolled toward the Fleet House; Tau’s long steps lengthened and she scrambled after him. “Wait up.”

He slowed. “Sorry.”

She eyed him. He had on his golden coin smile, benign but about as human as metal. He was shutting out some emotion. She wished she had her blades in hand, and he his—they’d always talked more freely up there on the roof, while throwing one another around. “What’s the matter? Don’t like the idea of being a character in a play?” She grinned. “I think I’d like that.”

“Would you really like to see some fatuous semblance of yourself, a distortion of your worst traits, because those are what people inevitably remember? Or think the most entertaining? ” he said over his shoulder, his voice, usually so mellow, almost sharp.