The Quartered Sea (51 page)

"It's a kigh," the older woman repeated. She swallowed to moisten her throat, then Sang the four notes to call their distant companion closer.

It didn't respond.

Each of the bards tried. Then in pairs. Then all together. Harmony. Unison. Nothing worked. They could hear sailors gathering behind them, beginning to mutter, as aware as the bards that they needed the kigh if they hoped to find Benedikt.

"It's just like when they hit the coast." Jurgis pushed hair back off his face with both hands. "Nothing we Sang made any difference."

The kigh rose up, higher, higher, until even those on board with no bardic ability at all realized this was more than just a wave. It lingered for a moment, water behaving the way water didn't—couldn't—behave then it dove toward the southwest, surfaced, and dove again. The ship surged forward along the same path. As one, all three bards looked over the side.

"Do you think we ought to tell the captain that we're not doing this?" Jurgis wondered. "That the kigh have decided to take us to Benedikt on their own?"

"If that's where they're taking us," Evicka said thoughtfully.

Lifting her gaze from the giant forms within the water, Karlene sighed. "I think I'd better go tell the captain not to fight the current."

"What should we do?"

"Sing your memories of Benedikt at it, at them, see if you can get them to respond. But be careful," she cautioned as she turned to go, "don't make them jealous."

"Jealous?"

Evicka grinned. "Karlene thinks Benedikt has a more
personal
relationship with the kigh than the rest of us."

"More personal?" Jurgis took another look over the side and whistled softly. "Okay. I'm impressed."

Captain Juzef wasn't happy about giving over control of his ship to the kigh, but since he'd known from the beginning it was likely to happen, he acquiesced with at least an outward show of good grace.

Karlene left him discussing the situation with the mate—as she didn't even know what a mizzen
was
, she saw no need to stay—and made her way amidships to the slender figure standing motionless by the rail. "Are you all right?"

It was a good thing she hadn't expected an answer because she didn't get one. Behind them, the crew fought to get the sails down, the canvas sheets having become more hindrance than help. "The kigh will take us right to him, Bannon. We'll be there in time."

"Don't be more of a slaughtering idiot than you have to be," Bannon snarled in Imperial. "You have no way of knowing that."

"I was trying to be comforting."

"Comforting?" He turned toward her, eyes narrowed. "If you hadn't got that first message wrong, we'd have saved him before… before…" Unable to voice what they'd both felt in the wave, he turned away again.

"We don't know that for sure. I'm not making excuses," she added hurriedly as he tensed. "Since that day on the wharf I've gone over and over the pieces a thousand times—in recall and out—and given what we knew about the kigh then…" One hand gestured toward the too large, too regular waves around the ship. "… not what we know now, I came to the only possible conclusion." Karlene closed her eyes and allowed the wind to brush a tear from the end of her lashes "But I am sorry."

"For what?"

She could hear the curl in his lip even if she couldn't see it. "For your pain. For his. For Her Majesty's. For mine."

They stood together, remembering, as the giant kigh carried the
Vixen
farther and farther from shore.

"You…" Bannon cleared his throat and tried again. "You mourned him, too."

It was forgiveness of a sort. Karlene leaned on the rail beside him, staring out at nothing, inside the circle of pain his kigh projected. Magda would have known what to say; all Karlene could do was be there, just in case.

"If he dies…" The ex-assassin's voice was so soft, only a bard could have picked it out from the sounds of another twenty lives on a small ship. "If they kill him before I get there, I will destroy them. I will destroy anyone with his blood on their hands."

Remembering Benedikt's pain, Karlene wanted to say she'd help. She didn't because she knew Bannon had spent too much time around bards to believe her and lying to an ex-assassin, even in kindness, was less than a good idea. But remembering Benedikt's pain, the muscles along her jaw tightened and she said instead, "Witnessed, and we won't try to stop you."

Bannon's hand covered hers for an instant, long enough for her to know he'd found at least a little of the only kind of comfort he'd take.

* * *

Xaantalicta would be reborn in two nights. Benedikt turned his pipes over and over in his hands, comforted by the familiar feel of the bound reeds. He was running out of time.

He knew how to defeat the Song of Sorquizic and unraveling such a complicated, intricate, powerful Song had taught him more about Singing the kigh than all his time in the Bardic College. Although nothing could be certain until he actually Sang, he was fairly sure he could Sing open a passage to allow the xaan's fleet through and then close the barrier again lest other ships follow. If not, he knew he could dismiss the barrier completely.

He hadn't yet told the xaan.

When she asked him, as she did nightly, if he'd be finished by the rebirth, he truthfully answered yes. Truth or lie, it didn't matter as that was the answer she wanted to hear. She'd discover which in three days.

Sighing deeply, Benedikt stopped turning the pipes and stared out at the curtain of rain. The rain was a necessary part of his plan. The rain had filled the cisterns to overflowing and, if chance left watchers in the garden, the rain would keep them from looking up. If he waited, and the sky cleared…

It's the rainy season. I could safely wait until tomorrow.

Behind the bandages, the empty socket throbbed.

Or even the day after.

He lifted the pipes to his face, laid his mouth against the familiar shapes, and set them aside again without even exhaling over the holes.

If I'm caught…

All the xaan needed was his voice. She could, and would, destroy the rest of him to ensure his service. It was easier to be defiant before the failure of defiance had been paid in blood.

I am a bard of Shkoder.

But was he? He'd given it up once. Could it be taken up again so easily? Had he managed to cobble together enough pieces to call himself a bard of anything? And if he had, would the shape hold against the sorts of pressures the xaan could bring to bear.

There was only one way to be sure.

Benedikt brought the pipes to his mouth again and closed his eye. He could feel the kigh confined in the cisterns, waiting for his attention, and as he blew the first four notes, he felt them respond. The guards had grown used to him playing bits of tunes over and over. With any luck, they'd think that was all he was doing now.

Of course, his luck hadn't been especially good of late.

His Song drove the kigh against the walls of their prisons, searching for weak points and, once found, slamming into those weaknesses again and again. Water cut riverbeds into mountainsides and wore those same mountains smooth. The floor quivered and a heartbeat later, the roar of blown masonry and rushing water combined to drown him out. He stopped playing, listened to the guards shouting in the hall, and waited.

"You! What are you doing?"

Benedikt turned toward the door and opened his eye. "Working on the Song for the xaan." He let his fear spill into his voice to help the lie. "What happened?"

"Never mind," the guard snarled. "Keep working,
karjo
."

Karjo. Roughly, no braid. It didn't apply to either children or priests of Tulpayotee and was, as near as Benedikt could determine, one of the most potent insults in the Petayn vocabulary. The xaan had ordered his head shaved, not to disturb him, a foreigner, but to evoke a reaction in those around him. Even guards who'd given him songs now treated him with heated disdain.

Bowing his head as the guard left, Benedikt waited until he heard the bells over the sound of the chaos beyond, then scrambled to his feet. Earlier, he'd gathered rainwater into a deep metal basin, pushing it into the far corner of the room, and now he stood over it, watching the kigh and praying to all the gods in the Circle that this would work.

Bards who Sang air strongly enough could echo Songs off distant objects so that the effects were felt long after the bard had left the area. It was mostly a party trick, amusing but not very useful. Benedikt planned on using a version of the trick to help him escape.

He piped the four notes to call the kigh, added a short sequence he'd been playing over and over for days, then asked the kigh for their help. In the basin, the water started to spin. The metal basin began to hum. Faster. Louder. Finally, the kigh recreated the short sequence of notes.

Benedikt started to breathe again. It wouldn't fool anyone up close, but from the chaos in the hall—those cisterns had held a lot of water—it should sound as if he continued to practice, too frightened to use a god-given opportunity.

Which was very nearly the truth.

Xaan Mijandra calculates everything to her benefit
, he reminded himself as he hesitated.
She
won't
take my voice
. He raised his hand to the place on his chest where the queen's medallion had rested. The xaan wore it now, reforged into a pair of earrings.
I won't let her take my honor
.

Singing softly to the rain, he paused on the raised threshold between room and balcony. When he was sure the kigh knew what he needed, he stepped outside, pulled himself up onto the railing, and swung around the dividing wall to the next balcony. The rain pressed him hard against the stone. The kigh couldn't hold him, but they could keep him from falling. Had he been able to see more than a hand's distance in front of his face, his lack of depth perception would have probably caused a misstep and sent him to his death on the multicolored paving stones of the courtyard below. As it was, he had to depend on his sense of touch, and that hadn't changed.

Hurrying across the next balcony, Benedikt heard his name spoken and froze in place, his heart nearly deafening him with its terrified pounding. Then he realized it came, not from the room itself, but from the hallway beyond. Someone, caught in the cascade of water from the cistern, was wondering why he couldn't sing this flood back as well.

Some members of the xaan's household might risk initiative, but not the Guard. The Guard followed orders. Although he hadn't appreciated it at the time, Benedikt thanked all the gods in the Circle that the xaan had seen fit to waste a guard on his door.

Wanting nothing more than to crawl into a corner and be sick, he forced himself to keep moving along the eight balconies to the wall over the kitchens. As he rested, sucking air through the rain, he could hear screams of outrage as the artiste who prepared the xaan's meals raged against the sudden flood in his domain. Although he couldn't maintain it, Benedikt found himself smiling briefly. The kitchen cisterns were as large as the bathing cisterns and had been just as full.

From the outside lip of the last balcony, he gripped the railing and managed to find toehold enough on the kitchen wall that all his weight didn't slam suddenly onto his outstretched arms. Dangling put him less than three feet from the ground. He was significantly taller than the people the house had been built to contain.