Treason's Shore (100 page)

“All right, time for us to leave the fishers,” Inda said.

Jeje rammed the tiller over, Loos shifted the mainsail. The
Vixen
nosed away from the relative safety of the watching fishers and headed straight for the Venn.

Aboard the
Cormorant,
all hands stood at battle stations. Erkric prowled the windward rail of the captain’s deck, with Yatar and his nephew at either side. Erkric only waited for full dark, so he could transfer to the
Cliffdiver
and give the order for the dags to commence the magic attacks. He’d thought to wait for the height of battle, but he was already so confused that he knew he would not recognize the height, and Durasnir, watching the ting chart and receiving a constant stream of reports, was so detached Erkric could not call himself ignored. But Durasnir was making no effort whatsoever to translate the arcane military language into clarity.

Erkric watched the west, waiting for the stars to appear, and brooded about the
Knife
. He’d tried several spells against it, each warded. Who was on that thing?

Erkric gave a fleeting thought to the Yaga Krona below; Ulaffa and Byarin were sufficient to hold the
Cormorant
. Dull and slow both, but obedient.

Though Erkric dismissed the Yaga Krona from his attention, they were very aware of him.

As soon as the horns blew for the attack, Ulaffa and Byarin locked the cabin door, left a trusted young dag outside to give warning, and Ulaffa placed a transfer token on the deck.

Moments later Valda appeared. Anchan crept out of hiding, practiced by now. Valda staggered from transfer-reaction, to be caught up by Byarin’s powerful grip. He guided her to a chair.

“Never mind me. Go now, Byarin.”

Anchan turned from one to the other. “Is there—may I help? I—”

At the sudden bleakness in Byarin’s square, heavy face, she was taken aback. He opened a case, brought out a long knife with a dragon-head hilt, and then he took the token that Anchan had brought from Valda. And vanished in a faint glitter, sending a puff of air to ruffle overheated faces and damp hair.

Ulaffa said, “Not all of them?”

“All the ones who learned the Norsunder magic.”

Anchan turned from one to the other. “What is it?”

Valda and Ulaffa ignored her. Valda said, “They cannot be permitted to live with that knowledge. It must die. Now. Before it is used again. You saw how the temptation is impossible to resist.”

Everyone remembered what had happened to Nanni Balandir. Ulaffa bowed, hands together, fingertips down in grief mode.

Anchan thought,
He’s going to kill the dags with that dagger. Those were the special tokens I laid down—identifying ships’ dags who had been trained in the Norsunder magic.
Horror constricted her throat.

Valda turned to Anchan, looking old and sad. “Now, prepare to help me spell the wards in your tokens. It’s time for you to bring up the ward against Dag Erkric’s magics we’ve lain on my tokens.”

Anchan dared a question. “You do not want to do that?” It would seem the triumphant culmination of all their work.

Valda’s smile was rueful—pained. “I have a ship to find and to ward as invisible, if I am right.” She added in a low, tired voice, “And if I am wrong, I want the blame to be only mine.”

In the middle deck of the
Cliffdiver,
Halvir said, as he had a dozen times since the first horn, “Now?”

And Rajnir finally said, “Now.”

He rolled to the edge of the bunk. He was still dressed in his pure white silk and brocade garb, the kingly robes he’d worn to the coronation he did not remember. But no one had come for him: the people no longer expected him to appear, and the Yatars were apparently too busy to come and change him into more comfortable clothing.

They would be suitable to die in.

With an effort he sat, sustained the dizziness, and then he and the boy made their way to the door. He motioned to Halvir to check the Erama Krona with his wooden ball . . .

And they did not move or blink.

“This way to the deck,” Halvir whispered. “We’ll have to go slow.”

Rajnir almost laughed. “Slow indeed,” he breathed.

Gradually the
Vixen
drew closer and closer to the Venn ships.

“Douse our lights.”

Jeje gave Loos the tiller; Inda took the mainsail.

The scuttles below snapped shut. As Viac quietly snuffed the lanterns on deck, Loos guided by starlight.

Jeje returned, after having satisfied herself with a peek at the mirror map in the light of a shaded candle. Loos took the main sail and Inda shifted position to scan. His fighting shirt rippled in the breeze, which made the locket thump against his chest. Locket!

He set aside his glass to pull out the small roll of paper in his pocket, and the tiny steel quill that corked a little inkbottle. He tore off a piece and wrote,
It’s started
.

He crammed it into the locket, the ink still wet, and sent it. Then he dove into the cabin and dug out his gear. He’d just finished pulling his fighting shirt over his strapped-on weapons when the tap of the locket alerted him. He thumbed out Evred’s message, which was largely blank. Surprised, he looked at the tiny writing at the bottom:
I promised Tdor I would send this. She, Hadand, your mother, and the babies pressed kisses for you on this paper.

Inda tucked the paper back into the locket and finished his last task: strapping on his wrist guard. He flexed his hand. Already his wrist ached clear up into his shoulder, and he hadn’t even lifted a weapon yet. He shook his head then ran up on deck.

There he found his tiny crew gripping their weapons, silent and braced to fight to the death. Not one of them, including Inda, expected to survive this plan: Nugget wept silently on the masthead. Until this moment she’d been exhilarated, anticipating triumph, because now she was with Inda. She was following orders. But as she stared up at the looming ship, she thought for the very first time,
We can’t win against one of these
. And hard on that thought,
Inda knows it
.

Tears burned her eyes as she peered down at Inda on the deck, one hand digging hard into the muscles of his shoulder as he so often did.
He knows we can’t win
. Grief made her chest hurt, and she held her breath so she wouldn’t sob. Grief gave way to anger as she turned her eyes up to that ship. All right. So Inda wouldn’t win. She clutched her knife and her belaying pin under her armpit.
But they won’t get us easy
.

Jeje and the Fishers stood poised, ready to maneuver: they would have to be faster than the Venn to survive long enough to reach that flagship. What would happen then . . . the brothers whispered alternate plans, and Jeje gripped the tiller, sensing each minute change in water and wind.

The first
drakans
drew closer and closer . . . and no challenge. No horns. No one ran along the rails waving weapons, no one in the tops so much as looked down. Inda and his crew could see the Venn crouched there, longbows strung, arrows slack in fingers ready to tighten at a moment’s notice, as a massive
drakan
drew ever nearer, then the prow arched overhead and . . . past, followed by the towering sails of the foremast, the mainsails, and the mizzen . . . until they gazed in blank amazement at the stern, with the ship’s name spelled in runes and a stylized seabird painted below the name.

Inda did not want to say aloud the words they were all thinking. It was as if speaking would burst the peculiar bubble of invisibility that seemed to surround them.

But as they passed between two more
drakans,
and again between another pair, and the vigilant Venn did not so much as look down, it gradually became clear that somehow the
Vixen
really
had
become invisible.

There was no one to ask how. They had only to keep on, sailing past rank on rank, close-hauled as only the
Vixen
could sail, almost straight into the wind, Jeje brooding on the astonishment in Inda’s face.
He thought we’d be dead by now
.

Past more and more until there was a space between ships, too deliberate to be accident—open water between the Oneli and a ring of raiders on guard, so the raiders had clear sight and room to maneuver.

Inda swept his glass back and forth until he was sure. In the very center of the raiders he made out the taller masts of the command
drakans
. And central to those, a
drakan
slightly bigger than the others with a stylized cormorant painted on its stern. As the
Vixen
slanted toward that central formation, Inda and his crew gazed silently at the ships’ tops bristling with archers and at the rails, cut booms at the ready.

The fiery rim of the sun sank behind them, leaving a dense blue sky that brought Joret Dei’s eyes to Inda’s mind, and from Joret his thoughts snapped to Tdor, and Signi. High across that pure blue sky drifted downy wisps of a startling pink.

Peace above and war below. Inda swept the glass around the ocean, until he got dizzy; he looked more slowly, facing the fact that Rajnir’s navy was far more formidable than he had anticipated. Rich sunset color, gold and ruddy rose and deep blue, painted the two converging fleets with spectacular highlights.

“Loos. Where are your weapons?” Inda murmured without taking his eye from the glass.

“Right here. I’m sweatin’ so bad, don’t fit right. Figured I’d wait until they’re comin’ right at us.”

Inda checked his own wrist straps. Yep. Sweaty. But snug anyway. They’d have to replace Loos’ gear. “Viac?”

“Ready-o.”

“Nugget?”

“Ready.”

Inda didn’t ask Jeje. He could hear her readiness in her breathing; she was thinking,
You expected to die, or wanted to die, Inda?
Then she shrugged irritably as the signal passed down the Venn to light up. That kind of question was for Tau.

Swift darts of golden color winked across the horizon and gathered into patterns of golden running lights, a heart-lifting sight that reminded Inda of Signi saying sadly once,
Why is it we cherish as beautiful so many deadly things?

Behind them, the Delfs chewed into the
drakans
. Arrows arced back and forth, most of the high ones erupting in tongues of bright flame as each side tried to come at the others from the best angle for boarding and carrying. The light winds, intermittently strengthened by gusts from all directions—promising bad weather—rendered the pace of battle stately with deliberate cruelty. Over the water carried the groaning cracks of ships sliding alongside ships, the crashing topple of masts, and above all the shouts and cries of warriors swarming from ship to ship.

Inda leaned out, trying to see how the Delfs were doing to the southwest, when Jeje called, “Inda!”

A cold, wet gust of wind from the northeast ruffled their faces and belled the sail, sending the
Vixen
surging over the next wave.