The Sigil Blade (27 page)

“Now I understand,” Herja said. “You were the one talking with Thovin. He thinks very fondly of you. I suppose maybe you already knew that.”

Herja’s halting guttural voice had an unsettling quality, and it made her description of Thovin’s affections even more terrifying than the confirmation of how intimately she was linked to her thrall’s mind. Irial was too frightened to do anything but remain where she was, frozen in place.

“If you have satisfied your curiosity,” said Herja, becoming annoyed with Irial’s frightened stare, “you are not needed.”

“I’m sorry,” Irial apologized. “I was curious. I wanted to see you because I have never seen a female of your kind.” It was the truth, or at least as much of the truth as Irial could safely disclose. “You are very beautiful,” Irial added. That was a lie, but it was a polite one.

“You are kind,” Herja said accepting the compliment and reacting with pleasure. “You are a beautiful woman in your own right, for a human. I can see why Thovin admires you.”

“It is time you excused yourself,” Seoras interrupted, giving Irial a look filled with irritation.

“Don’t be so inconsiderate, Lord Seoras,” Herja protested. “She can bring some refreshment.”

Seoras gave Herja a quizzical look which prompted the draugr to respond. “Well of course I won’t be having any, but you could eat, and I might enjoy watching your woman eat too. It would help me remember what it was like.”

Irial excused herself and tried to walk calmly as she left the room. Once clear, she hurried away as fast as she could go without breaking into a full run. This has to be the dumbest thing I have ever done in all my life she thought as she fled.

After preparing some tea and a plate of buttered bread, Irial took a moment to calm down so that she could begin building up her courage as she made her way back to the study. Again, her preparations did not suffice. When Irial entered the room for the second time, it was every bit as shocking to see Herja as it had been the first.

“He is less than a nuisance,” Seoras said, growing irritated with Herja. “I can think of nothing that would make me want to spare the effort.”

“To you perhaps, he might not matter,” Herja disagreed, “but do you think our master will be pleased if you allow this man to overthrow the rulers of An Innis?”

“Our master does not care, so long as whoever holds power is under our control,” Seoras countered.

“But would this Logaeir be amenable to taking orders from us?”

“No,” Seoras admitted. “But that isn’t the present problem.”

“The problem is that he claims to be the Blood Prince.”

“But he isn’t,” Seoras pointed out. “He is an opportunist, taking advantage of Aisen’s disappearance, nothing more.”

“I believe you,” Herja replied, “but what if he knows something about the Blood Prince? Aisen might be our only hope against Irminsul. We must follow every lead we have. Even if I find that he knows nothing, and can offer nothing, I am not inclined to allow this Logaeir to be left alone.”

Seoras paused, trying to formulate a new approach. “I am hopeful that we can gain control of the Ascomanni,” he began. “Without Logaeir, the Ascomanni will fragment into a useless band of criminals.”

“And would that not make Esivh Rhol beholden to you?” Herja pointed out.

“The only thing that makes Esivh Rhol listen is his fear that the Ascomanni will someday kill him,” Seoras disagreed. “Remove that threat by collapsing the Ascomanni, and the Ard Ri will grow bold once more. This needs more time. I don’t want Logaeir killed, not yet at least.”

“Esivh Rhol should be made to fear us, not these Ascomanni,” Herja complained. “But I can see your point. If we control these raiders, we also control Esivh Rhol and all of An Innis.”

Irial set the tray down on the table between the two of them. Herja indicated with a gesture that she should take a seat beside her, and Irial did, almost falling into it as her legs lost their strength and gave out. Irial could not believe what she was hearing. Seoras was trying to save Logaeir’s life. She could understand that Seoras didn’t feel threatened by Logaeir, but that did not explain why he was trying to persuade Herja to spare him. Perhaps Seoras really did want to take control of the Ascomanni.

Much to Irial’s relief, Herja did not follow through on her threat to vicariously enjoy the food that Irial ate. The grey skinned woman ignored Irial altogether, focusing instead on Seoras, who was discussing a way to arrange a meeting with the man who was posing as the Blood Prince. Irial listened closely to everything, knowing that Logaeir and his Ascomanni allies would need to know as much as possible. A simple mistake here could guarantee that any meeting would end in certain disaster.

***

Logaeir waited in the cabin of his ship, anchored off an inlet south of Ann Innis. The Red sails of the
Retribution
were raised part of the way, meant as an aid to identification, openly broadcasting the presence of the Blood Prince, but also in preparation to leave in a hurry if need arose. Logaeir’s misgivings about this plan grew as he continued to wait, but he did not dare back out now.

A second ship had sailed from An Innis a few hours ago and was now anchored less than half a mile away. That ship, Logaeir knew, carried Herja, the draugr woman who sought this audience. The arrangements had been proposed under the pretense of a request for an alliance. It was supposed to be a meeting with an envoy for Kedwyn Saivelle, but he could trust that Irial’s information was surely correct, and so he knew it for the lie that it was. Having spent the past two nights worrying about this dangerous encounter, Logaeir was anxious to get past it.

Rowing ashore with a small party of four others as night fell, Logaeir hoped that he and his men would live to see the sun rise again in the morning. Together they walked down the rock covered coastline towards two shadowed figures from the other ship. The first was tall and completely shrouded in a cloak. The other stood back a few feet with a hand near the sword hung at his side, staring with an unbalanced look in his eyes at something no one else could see out in the sea. This had to be Herja and one of her Thralls.

The shrouded figure spoke.

“Lord Seoras demands your obedience.”

It was a man’s voice. This wasn’t Herja. It was one, or maybe both of her thralls, but she was not present. Logaeir scanned the tree line. She might not be present, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t somewhere close.

“In what way could I possibly help the great shaper of the dark?” Logaeir asked, feeling confused and lapsing into sarcasm.

“Lord Seoras means to move against Esivh Rhol and the four harbormasters,” the voice explained.

“If Lord Seoras wished to, I have no doubt he could kill them on his own,” Logaeir said. His mind was scrambling to try to understand what was happening. This was not what Irial had told him to expect. Plans must have changed, and changed recently.

“Lord Seoras doesn’t need help removing Esivh Rhol,” the shrouded figure agreed. “He is in need of Lord Aisen to take Esivh Rhol’s place, and he wants the Ascomanni kept under control.”

“The Ascomanni are under control, and I will be taking down Esivh Rhol soon enough,” Logaeir replied. “If Seoras is smart, he stays out of the way. Tell him the Blood Prince says that if he wants to negotiate his place in things to come that he must come speak with me himself.”

Logaeir might have been overselling things, but he didn’t mean for it to hold up, and he was performing for an audience that he wasn’t sure had shown up.

The shrouded figure lowered the hood of his cloak, revealing short dark hair and a carefully trimmed beard. He matched the description Irial had given for Thovin. That meant the man still staring out at the sea would be Herja’s other Thrall, Hilek.

“Is that really what you want me to tell him?” Thovin said.

Logaeir stumbled a little. None of this had been any part of any plan.

“Tell him that so long as he does not interfere, I will leave him alone,” Logaeir said with finality.

Hilek laughed in a disturbed way that inspired a chill in Logaeir’s veins. The man’s sanity appeared fragile at best, and he was no doubt all the more dangerous because of it. “Time to go,” Hilek said to Thovin.

Thovin took a few steps forward so that he was right next to Logaeir. “This opportunity will not come again if you pass it by, Logaeir,” he whispered.

That Thovin had known who it was he was speaking to was no surprise, that had been a given from the outset. But the man was earnestly trying to persuade him, and seemed to being doing so out of honest sympathy, and this gave Logaeir reason for pause before he responded. “You can tell him that so long as our goals coincide, I am sure we can work something out,” Logaeir whispered back.

Hilek was still laughing softly to himself as they parted company. Logaeir couldn’t imagine what was so amusing, but he knew he wasn’t going to like whatever it was. His head was spinning as they made their way back aboard the
Retribution
, failing in all his efforts to understand what had happened. He was supposed to pretend to be Lord Aisen the Blood Prince, convince Herja that he was nothing more than a simple criminal with vain ambitions, and hope that she didn’t decide to kill him.

Instead he had made some sort of tentative bargain with Seoras and had not seen Herja at all. He might have taken it as a positive outcome, after all he didn’t want to go anywhere near Herja, but Logaeir knew that this couldn’t be over, and as such he felt no relief. There was something else at work here and he needed to understand it before he could move forward.

He was puzzling over these concerns when he closed the door to his cabin and noticed a strong sweet smell. It was the balsam resin that protected Herja’s skin. Now he had some understanding of what it was Hilek had been looking at when he was staring out towards the ocean, but Logaeir couldn’t guess how Herja had gotten onto the ship and then entered his cabin without ever being noticed by any of his men.

“You are not him,” she declared from where she stood in a dark corner of the cabin. Her deep voice sputtered as if obstructed by fluid in her throat.

“Not… who?” Logaeir fumbled unnecessarily, caught completely off guard. He flattened his back against the door and began reaching for the handle. How is that going to go? he wondered silently to himself. Images of Herja chasing him down as he tried to flee his own ship convinced him that it would be a bad idea.

“You are not Aisen,” she clarified. “Maybe the same height, but your build is wrong and your eyes are the wrong color. He doesn’t carry himself like a mouse hiding from a snake either.”

Logaeir expected he probably did look something like a trembling mouse just at the moment, and Herja seemed to detest him for it. Herja could certainly play the part of the snake in the analogy that she had given, and Logaeir found it illuminating that she saw herself that way. Invoking what composure he could manage, Logaeir stepped forward towards a table that was bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Logaeir surreptitiously drew his knife while taking a seat, keeping it hidden from view beneath the table, gripped firmly in his hand and ready for use.

Herja left the corner and took a seat as well, her chair protesting under the weight as she settled in beside Logaeir. The sheen from the coating on her dark grey skin glistened under the light of the oil lamp that hung from the ceiling.

“Now there’s a brave man,” she said with approval. “What did you think of Thovin and Hilek?”

“Hilek, he was the short one, had an unbalanced look in his eyes?” Logaeir asked. “He wasn’t what I would consider the best of company.”

“Nearing the end of his usefulness I fear,” Herja admitted. “But you don’t throw a thing away just because it’s broken and can’t be fixed. Not until you can replace it.” Suddenly her face brightened. “How would you like to be bound?” she asked.

It was an impossible thing to do, but as best he could, Logaeir tried to contain the revulsion he felt at this vague proposition. “I don’t think it agreed with Hilek all that well,” he said, “and I’m not sure I would like it much either.”

“No, you probably wouldn’t,” she said, almost rueful as she reluctantly rejected the idea as well. “But that doesn’t leave me with a reason to let you live.”

Logaeir decided to employ his contingency plan, which even after all the time he’d had in which to consider it, still struck him as pure stupidity. In one quick motion Logaeir drove the dagger he had been hiding into Herja’s midsection, just above the armor around her waist. It stopped, striking something hard less than an inch beneath her skin. Logaeir pulled the weapon free. There was no blood, but the knife was sticky with resin, and the point of the blade was chipped from the impact.

“Why!” she demanded. “Why in the three realms would you do something so stupid? Just because I can’t be killed doesn’t mean I enjoy having my stomach cut open.”

Herja was angry and annoyed, but she had made no move to respond. Logaeir knew that if she decided to kill him, there would nothing he could do. He had been assured that he could not hurt her and told to expect this exact sort of reaction, which in the context of the circumstances was unbelievably muted, but as he watched Herja, Logaeir still wasn’t convinced that he was going to survive.