Thraxas - The Complete Series (82 page)

My lungs are bursting. I can’t stay under any longer. I keep swimming. Finally I see Makri rising slowly in front of me. I kick towards her, grab her arm and head for the surface. We arrive there spluttering, coughing up water, but still alive. Makri seems in a bad way.

“Thraxas,” she mutters.

I start swimming for the boat, dragging her along behind me. Vas rows towards us and soon he is helping us on board. I think I hear some cheering from the Elves’ ship, and maybe some howls of anger from the dockside.

Makri retches over the side of the boat, and suddenly looks more alive.

“Nice escape,” I say to her. “But it would have been better if you’d actually swum somewhere. Sinking like a stone was never going to work.”

“I can’t swim,” says Makri.

“What?”

“I can’t swim. You think I’d have hung around on the pier so long if I knew how to swim?”

“Well, maybe. You like fighting. I figured you were just enjoying yourself.”

Vas brings us alongside the ship and we are helped aboard.

The Elves are full of congratulations for me at my fine rescue and there are words of admiration too for Makri for the fighting spirit she showed on the pier. Their praise dries up as the Elves suddenly notice that Makri is not the standard-issue woman they took her for.

“Orc blood!” whispers one young member of the crew, quite distinctly.

Deputy Consul Cicerius, resplendent in his best gold-rimmed toga, strides over to us.

“Investigator Thraxas!” he rasps. “What are you doing here?”

“My guest,” explains Vas-ar-Methet, which surprises the Deputy Consul but doesn’t prevent him from rounding on Makri.

“You cannot remain on this ship.”

“Well, I can’t go back there,” points out Makri, quite reasonably. The dock, now receding into the distance, is still lined with armed men.

“Lord Kalith,” says Cicerius, as the Elvish Captain strides along the deck towards us. “You must turn this ship around.”

At this moment the wind blowing us from the harbour suddenly strengthens and the sails bulge as the ship spurts forward. Lord Kalith frowns.

“Impossible. We cannot miss this tide. To do so would make us lose a day’s voyage and quite probably run into the first winter storm.”

He stares at Makri. For him this is something of a dilemma. He doesn’t want to turn the ship around, but there is no inhabited land between us and Avula. If he lets her stay he’s going to be the first Elf Lord to arrive back home with an Orc in tow. He doesn’t look thrilled at the prospect.

I’m none too pleased myself. I didn’t want Makri to drown but that doesn’t mean I want her along spoiling things for my visit to Avula. No Elf is going to want to talk to a man who’s brought his mixed-blood friend along for a visit. The Deputy Consul is all for sending Makri back in the boat but the shore is already fading in the distance and it is just not practical.

“We’ll decide what to do with you later,” Kalith tells Makri. “Meanwhile, stay out of sight.”

“Fantastic,” says Makri, brightly. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Elvish Isles. How long till we get there?”

Lord Kalith doesn’t reply. As he departs to the bridge he’s not looking pleased at this turn of events. He orders his crew back to their posts, and his voice is harsh.

I scowl at Makri. “Is there no end to these outrages? First you ruin my card game and now you’ve muscled your way on board my ship.”

“Well, thanks for saving my life,” says Makri. “I forgive you for the insults you heaped on my head. Could you get me something dry to wear?”

Makri tugs at the man’s tunic she’s wearing. In common with all of Makri’s clothes, it fails to cover nearly enough of her. I hurry her off in case she commits some further outrage, such as taking it off in front of the crew. I notice that the young sailor who first commented on Makri’s Orc blood has not actually departed back to his post but stands staring at Makri with some fascination. I scowl at him, then notice it isn’t a him but a her, a young Elvish maid, along on the voyage for some reason. A fairly scrawny-looking specimen, not blooming with health like your standard Elvish female.

We make for my cabin. Small though it is, I will now have to share it with Makri for the voyage. I continue to complain.

“Couldn’t you just let me sail in peace? What the hell were you doing fighting the Brotherhood anyway? Did you arrange the whole thing just so you could come to the festival?”

“Certainly not,” replies Makri. “Although now I think about it, how come you didn’t invite me?”

Makri is suspiciously cheerful about all this. For a woman who’s suffering from several nasty sword cuts and nearly drowned, she’s in a surprisingly good mood. I ask her what the fight was about.

“I was just trying to get your money back.”

“What?”

“The money Casax took back from the pot. After all, you said yourself it wasn’t fair. Once you make your bet you can’t take your money back, no matter what outrage may make you wish to leave the tavern. So I went to get it back for you.”

“Really? And what brought on this display of public-spiritedness?”

According to Makri it was Vas-ar-Methet. After talking for a while about the beautiful epic poem of Queen Leeuven, they came round to discussing the reason behind her wishing to kill me with an axe.

“Of course, he quite understood why I was so annoyed at you, insulting me in such a crass manner when really I was not responsible at all for anything. It’s not like anyone ever mentioned to me that menstruation is strictly taboo in Turai. But after we talked for a while I did see that you were probably too upset to think clearly. Any gambler would be, and you of course do have a problem with your gambling. And you’d been drinking heavily, which always clouds your judgement. I expect you were addled with thazis as well. I’ve noticed it always has a bad effect on you when you smoke too much. So with the gambling, the drink and the drugs all making you crazy, I figured it wasn’t really fair of me to hold a grudge, though your behaviour was bad, even by your standards. In the spirit of friendship I thought I’d get your money back for you.”

I inform Makri stiffly that I was far from addled, and was certainly not crazy. “It was merely the rational response of a man who has been pushed past the limit by the ludicrous behaviour of a woman who has no idea of how to behave in polite society. What happened when you saw Casax? I take it he wasn’t too keen to return the money?”

Makri shakes her head. “Afraid not. He wasn’t keen to see me in the first place and I had to do a fair bit of fighting just to get to him. I grabbed his purse, but there’s only a hundred or so gurans in it. And after that a battle just seemed to develop between me and his men. I didn’t realise there were so many of them.”

Makri grins happily, hands me the purse, and squeezes past me to peer out of our porthole.

“The Elvish Isles. Avula, birthplace of Queen Leeuven. And the festival! I can’t wait. Remind me why we’re going there?”

“You’re not going there for anything. I’m going to get my friend Vas’s daughter out of jail. She’s accused of attacking a tree.”

“Attacking a tree? And they threw her in prison? These Elves certainly love their vegetation.”

“It was a special tree. The Hesuni Tree in fact. No doubt you have learned all about Hesuni Trees at the Guild College.”

“Heart and soul of the tribe,” pronounces Makri.

“Exactly. I don’t have all the details yet, but Vas’s daughter is in bad trouble. So kindly try not to ruin everything for me. Vas is an old friend and I want to help him. Also I can’t afford to look bad in front of Cicerius and Prince Dees-Akan.”

“Is he the dwa-ridden drunken Prince or the sober responsible one?”

“The sober responsible one. Well, sober and responsible as far as Turanian Princes go.”

“You mean he’s a lush?”

“He’s not quite as bad as his older brother. And don’t insult the Royal Family.”

My cheerful mood has vanished. I can see this is going to be a tough journey.

“When we get to Avula I doubt you’ll be allowed to go ashore, but if by some miracle you are, for God’s sake don’t mention your—your—well you know what I’m talking about. You’ll panic the Elves.”

O
n the second day of the voyage Vas-ar-Methet manages to escape from his official duties for long enough to fill me in on the details of the case.

“My daughter’s accuser is Lasas-ar-Thetos, Chief Attendant to the Tree. He is the brother of Gulas-ar-Thetos, the Chief Tree Priest. According to Lasas, he caught her in the act of chopping into the tree with an axe, after she had previously tried to set it on fire.”

“What does your daughter have to say about this?”

“She remembers nothing of the incident.”

I raise my eyebrows. I don’t expect all my clients to be innocent, but the least they can do is think of a good excuse. “She remembers nothing at all?”

“No. But she does not deny that she was there. Unfortunately her memory of events appears to be completely empty. She cannot remember a thing from the time she left our house till the moment she found herself in custody.”

“You know that doesn’t look good, Vas. Doesn’t she even remember why she went to the Tree?”

Vas shakes his head. I ask him if he believes her and he is quite emphatic that he does.

“I am aware that it looks bad for her. She has no defence to present to the Council of Elders who will try her. But I do not believe that my daughter, as fine an Elf as there is on the entire island, would ever commit such a sacrilegious act. It is completely against her character, and besides, she had no reason to do it.”

Despite Vas-ar-Methet’s strong desire to see his daughter cleared, I can’t learn nearly enough from him. He has no idea of what she might have been doing near the Tree, no idea when she ever visited it in the course of her normal life, and no idea of who else might have wished to damage it.

“Do you think her memory was sorcerously affected? Has anyone checked?”

“Yes. The case has been investigated by Lord Kalith’s officials, and that includes Jir-ar-Eth, his Chief Sorcerer. I understand that he found no trace of sorcery being used in the area, although everyone knows that that would be hard to establish anyway. The Hesuni Tree creates a powerful mystical field around it. All sorcery would be affected, and it is impossible to look back in time at anything that happened there.”

I nod. I’m used to sorcery not working out too well when it comes to investigating. The idea of a Sorcerer having a look at events, sorting out some clues and producing a neat answer is fine in theory—and it works occasionally in practice—but generally there are too many variables to make it reliable, or even feasible. That’s why I’m still in a job. You always need a man who’s prepared to pound the streets looking for answers. Or, in this case, pound the trees. The Avulans live mainly above the ground, on villages suspended in the tree tops, with walkways connecting them. Last time I visited the Elvish Isles I remember travelling briskly over these walkways, admiring the ground below, but I was a lot younger then, and a lot thinner.

As Vas leaves the scrawny little Elvish girl arrives and tells me that Lord Kalith wants to see me in his cabin. I make my way there, shielding my face against the heavy rain that pounds down on to the deck. Despite the poor weather the wind is in our favour and we’re making good progress. The ship rolls gently beneath my feet and the motion brings back many memories. It’s some time since I’ve been on a voyage, but I haven’t lost my sea legs.

Lord Kalith’s cabin, while comfortable, is not ostentatious. There’s little by way of decoration to show that Kalith is the head of his tribe, though I cast a jealous eye at the fine furniture. All I have in my cabin is a bunk, and it makes for a very poor seat, particularly when the ship pitches into a trough.

Lord Kalith himself wears few emblems of his rank, as is common among the Elves. An Elvish Lord would regard anything more than a small circle of silver in his hair to be bad taste. His cloak, while slightly more sumptuously cut than those of the other Elves, is the same shade of green, and untrammelled by any decoration.

“I understand you have been questioning my crew.”

I nod. There’s no denying it, though really I have been doing little more than acquainting myself with the background of the case.

“I wish you to stop,” says Lord Kalith.

“Stop? Why?”

“As master of this ship and Lord of my island, I do not have to give you a reason. I merely wish you to stop. My sailors should not be disturbed in their duties.”

I shrug noncommittally. I would have no qualms whatsoever about outraging Kalith and every other Elf Lord while carrying out an investigation, but I figure there’s no point in annoying him yet. If things go badly for me on Avula, I’ll annoy him plenty there.

I do take the time to point out to Kalith that I am here at the bidding of Vas-ar-Methet, and was given to understand that he had his Lord’s approval. Kalith concedes that this is true, but makes it clear that he never thought it was such a great idea.

“Vas-ar-Methet is of great value to me. I could not refuse his request for help in the matter of his daughter. But I am quite certain that, sad as it may be, his daughter did actually do what she is accused of. On Avula, you have my permission to ask questions, within reason. Here on my ship, I expect you to behave with decorum, and refrain from distracting my crew.”