Treason's Shore (5 page)

Evred flexed his fingers, watching the muted glint on the plain gold band as lightning flared in the window. He looked up to discover Hadand waiting, her gaze steady and unwavering. “The rings only convey direction, no words. And Inda’s Venn lover had nothing to do with the rings. Yes, I know she’s proved trustworthy, but what if her unknown, unseen friends interfere? How would we know? We do not see these mages—the Venn call them dags. We do not understand their powers. And it’s not just them. What if some Venn warrior had killed Noddy early on and taken his case? He had it—I found it after he died. Inside his pocket were Inda’s notes. The Venn could have got the plan right there. Sometimes I want to throw the lot of those gold things into the fire,” he said in a low, savage voice. “I may yet, if I detect the merest hint of tampering. But I admit they are useful, especially with the north so unsettled. Fast communication is essential. Cama insists that the one thing keeping the Idayagans quiet is the prospect of Inda returning.”

“Inda?” Hadand’s memory of Inda was the smiling little boy of childhood. “How so?”

Evred looked away, his expression even more remote. “You did not see him in battle. Both sides spread rumors that Inda fights like ten men, that he cannot be beaten.”

Evred paused at the sudden, unbidden memory. In the archive, he had read,
What you remember about someone teaches you more about yourself than it does about the other
.

When Inda performed his knife drills, his movements expressed humor as well as strength, grace as well as skill. Inda fighting to kill was an order of magnitude in difference, face purple and mouth a rictus, eyes cold as death, grunting like an animal as he unleashed that terrifying strength, and yet Evred had found that aspect of Inda as deeply stirring as all Inda’s myriad moods and voices. If not more. How could desire and death be so close?

But Hadand did not know that. He did not want her to know it, and so he shook his head. “Never mind.”

“At least we have peace.”

“No. Now we have a respite. It remains to be seen for how long.”

Hadand said baldly, to strip the moment of the possibility of sickening coquetry, “Since the word came that you had won and were alive, I have been drinking gerda leaf again.”

Evred thought of a son, and Inda raising that son, and smiled. That smile caused Hadand to smile, and her heart to beat fast.

And so he came to her room that night. Afterward, Hadand, longing for the unthinking affection of their childhood days in the nursery, waited for Evred to offer to stay, now that the threat of war was past. Would he sleep in her arms as he had when they were children? But he rose and with unfailing courtesy wished her a good rest, then left. She was far too proud to beg him to stay and so stared up at the ceiling, dry-eyed. She’d wept herself out at fourteen, she told herself. Fourteen was the time for tears. Now she was a woman, a queen, and tomorrow there was work to be done.

The Fox Banner Fleet was not at all surprised to be attacked by a swarm of galley pirates from the islands east of Dei Chael. Fox had told the captains as much, saying that an attack would give Fangras and the newcomers—former privateers from Sarendan—some practice.

And practice they got: they found themselves surrounded by a combination of three fleets led by a pair of brigantines. After a short but very fierce fight, the pirates veered off as usual to vanish among the many small islands.

Nugget crept up on the weather deck of the Fox Banner Fleet flagship
Death,
trying not to cough.

The smoke thinned in the sleeting rain. She welcomed the sleet. It not only scoured the last of the smoke from her lungs, but it made a solid gray curtain, blurring
Death
’s battle detritus, and the deckhands busy with repair.

Her cap and jacket were soon as wet as everyone else’s. She slunk around the mast and dashed for the binnacle. Her battle station was signals since with only one arm she could not pull a bow.

The
Death
plunged through low, pillowy fingers of smoke. Green waves slopped down the deck from a following sea. Barely visible a few ship lengths beyond the stern, the indistinct shapes of the rest of the fleet drifted in and out of the smoke, smears of red glowing between the cold gray-green seas and the low storm clouds. She sidled around the binnacle, peering over the stern rail—

The slap came out of nowhere, catching her between one step and another. She thumped onto her rear and let out a squawk.

Old training brought her in a roll to her knee, good arm up in a block. Annoyance and accusation died in her throat when she recognized the tall, lean red-haired figure dressed in black looming over her. Fox! He’d come up quiet as a cat.

“Where—” He snapped out the word in a way that chilled her right down to the toes. “—were you?”

“I—” She looked around wildly.

Smack!
He hit her again—the stinging hit of drill—and again she tumbled over.

“Stop that!” she cried, scrambling away. She looked around for support. There was Pilvig, her best friend. And right behind her, two of the newcomers they’d taken on from Fangras’ fleet. Mates Nugget’s and Pilvig’s age.

But did they protest? No.

Fox was standing right over her again. She recoiled, scrambling back, and bumped up against the binnacle.

“You abandoned your station in the heat of battle,” Fox stated. He looked terrible, his face smeared with soot and sweat, which emphasized the wintry ocean-green of his eyes, a bloody rag twisted around his right arm just above the elbow, another wrapping his palm. He smelled of smoke, sweat, and blood. The last time she’d seen him, he was leading the repel-boarder team when the pirate brigantines slid up on either side.

“You know what would happen to you in any navy, on any ship, abandoning your post in the heat of battle?”

“I can’t fight,” she wailed, turning to her friends for support.

But there wasn’t any. Not from Pilvig, nor from Mutt, who appeared from the other side of the mizzenmast. “Can’t you
see?
” She lifted her stump.

“Sock fights.” Fox tipped his head toward the skinny half-Chwahir who always wore a sock on his arm stump.

Nugget opened her mouth to protest that he was
old
—maybe as old as Fibi the Delf—but caught a squint-eyed look of cold contempt from Pilvig.

Pilvig! Her best friend! Nugget scowled down at her toes. She was seventeen, taller than Sock now, she’d grown plenty strong—she was just
afraid
.

“You left Pilvig to do both flags and whirtler signal,” Fox said. “That meant we were left to fight two ships before
Rapier
heard the whirtler. If anyone had died, that would have been your fault.”

“No, they were already boarding—”

“Your. Fault. Get up.”

“Why? What are you going to do? Don’t thrash me—I
promise
I won’t—”

“I’m going to smack you,” he stated, “until you defend yourself. Get. Up.”

Nugget was sobbing by now, a mixture of fear, shame, and betrayal. Out came his hand again, straight toward her face, and she snapped up her arm in a forearm block. Just like in morning drill. He hit her arm, nearly spinning her about.

His other hand came around for a side blow. She jumped back, her shoulder twitching—no hand!—but he brought his down anyway, just as if she had a hand there. She shifted her weight and her foot snapped up, almost instinctively, a move from the old days before her wound. She didn’t connect, so he smacked her ankle. It stung.

His hand came at her again. And again. And again. When she faltered or tried to argue he slapped her. After she howled, “Stop it! I’m sorry!” he gave her a knuckle rap on the bicep of her good arm. That
hurt!

He kept her working until she leaned against the binnacle panting, her good hand pressed protectively against her stump, muscles trembling with fatigue.

Fox said, “You’ve been out for drill every day, but you never scrap. That is going to change. From now on, you’re going to scrap with me.”

A soft whistle from the background and a snort.

“But—”

“And every time I hear ‘but’ I’m going to give you another watch on cleaning duty. Two watches if you start a sentence with ‘But Inda always said.’ You’re already on the crew to rebuild the damage the brigantines’ cut booms did to the jib, and to repaint the fire damage. Then you’re going to be scrapping with me. An entire watch. Tomorrow, another one.”

Everyone was gathered now, and not a single face gave her pity or sympathy.

Fox showed his teeth. “There is nobody on the seas who fights nastier than I do. And I’m not going to stop scrapping with you until you’re the second nastiest. Get used to it.”

The ship creaked, blocks rapped, the sea hissed down the deck at their feet, then poured away.

“Now go repack the signal flags.”

He turned away. Shortly afterward the door to the cabin slammed. The crew dispersed, some talking in low voices. But no one talked to her. Not even Pilvig.

Nugget gulped on a sob as the rain hissed down around her. She picked up the first signal flag. It was the same one she’d thrown down before she ran to hide:
Engaged with enemy
.

Chapter Three

S
PREAD in two great wings, masts slanting like the pinions of raptors, the high-prowed Venn warships sailed toward the main harbor at Twelve Towers.

Not one of the people crowding the parapets, wall walks, and towers of the ancient city assumed it accidental, this triumphant arrival on the first day of spring, which marked the turn of the year for the Venn.

So far north, each day’s gain of light was noticeable, dawns and sunset often dramatic, if not stormy. A rare sight, the rising sun in a milky-pale sky behind the city; for many in the southern fleet who possessed spyglasses, it was a heartening sight after more than ten years away.

The southern fleet commander, Stalna Hyarl Fulla Durasnir, did not notice the weather.

For those watching from the walls and tower crenellations the complicated geometry of wind-curved sails were silhouetted against a dark western horizon, from which racing clouds tumbled, bringing yet another storm.

As they neared, the fleet peered hungrily back at Twelve Towers, so named for the twelve original ships that had gone a-viking in search of glory and trade. Finding no trade or prey, the twelve had sailed north toward what they thought was home. They’d found instead a rocky, grim coast and no humans anywhere: somehow they had ventured out of their world and into another. Faced with the immediate prospect of a winter that promised to be even less merciful than those at home, they’d dug in and built a city. Twelve ships, twelve towers, twelve clans in varying precedence. By the time those clans had renamed themselves the Oneli, the Sea Lords, the twelve towers had been reinforced into mighty, bastioned edifices on the surface connected by a single stone-patterned road that bridged the river; large as the towers were, they gave no sign of the far larger complex of domiciles underground joined by a system of tunnels.

Those onboard the ships, sweeping their spyglasses over the thick-walled imposing towers of pale gray stone, strained to pick out individuals from the clusters of mostly flaxen-haired heads. Already the wind had begun to rise, ripping across the gray seas from the snowy northern wastes, and hoods came up, some faces covered entirely except for the eyes.

From his position before the koldar, at which two strong men braced against the running current, Stalna Hyarl Durasnir stood in full battle armor, silver over white, his winged helm fitted over his long, thinning gray-streaked yellow hair. The rising wind whistled through the wires holding the wings in place and tugged at his sweeping white fine-woven wool cloak. He braced his feet on the surging deck, knowing that he was an object of scrutiny by all those gathered on the walls in the city.