Treason's Shore (93 page)

“I tried to lift myself. So I can fall on it. But I can’t hold myself up . . . Halvir. Take the knife.”

Halvir’s own heart began to thump. “I have it, O my king.”

“Here.” The king’s fingers bumped his, then dropped, rose, swept his hand upward. Halvir jerked the knife back, afraid the sharpened edges would encounter the king and hurt him. “Here,” the king said impatiently.

When Halvir cautiously extended the knife again, the king pushed the knife point across his body until it rested, a sharp prickle, just below his rib cage. Halvir was standing on his toes now, half leaning on the king’s bunk.

“Jump up here, so you can use downward force. And make it fast, boy. I have it positioned. All you have to do is push it past my ribs, straight into my heart.”

“No,” Halvir cried, and fell back, the knife clattering to the deck.

Both froze, listening. The only sounds were the water along the hull,
whish-whish,
and the graunch of the mast at one end of the cabin, reaching down to the keelson several decks below.

The king said, “Halvir. I
have
to die. It’s the only way to defeat Erkric. If he does not have a body to control as puppet, he is exposed.”

“No,” Halvir squeaked.

“They won’t blame you. Oh, Erkric will, but I am convinced your father knows. He has not looked me in the face since we came home from Halia. He knows, I tell you; he’ll save you. And I think Ulaffa knows as well, though I cannot be sure they aren’t all in on it. But your father . . . I trust him to do what’s right. He always did what was right. Even when I didn’t. He would tell you now to help me do my duty and defeat Erkric.”

“No,” Halvir whispered.

“I command you, boy.”

Halvir rose, then fell back, tears burning his eyes. His chest heaved, his head throbbed sickeningly. “I can’t.”

“I tell you, no blame will attach to you once your father finds out.”

“I . . . can’t. Do that.”

Rajnir cursed him until Halvir’s squeaking, half-suppressed sobs forced him to get control.

Halvir also fought to get control. Should he do what the king said? Oh, but push a knife into him?
The king?
The idea filled him with such terror and wretchedness his chest couldn’t contain the pain, and he buried his face in the side of the bunk, sobbing desolately.

When he had to stop in order to breathe, he realized the bunk shook, and he heard the king making odd, creaky breathing noises.

“What a king,” Rajnir breathed at last, his voice tremulous, his consonants thick, and Halvir gulped, aching with desolation. “What a king! I haven’t even power over one obstinate boy. Halvir. Why do you not obey? Do you not realize I could have you flying the blood eagle on Sinnaborc for flouting my will?”

Rajnir considered the absurdity of his words, and uttered another creak, far too strangled a noise, and too bitter, to be laughter.

“I can’t,” Halvir squeaked.

“Why not?”

Water splashed the hull, wood creaked, before Halvir said in a whisper, “My mother will hate me.”

“Explain that.”

Halvir thought he
had
explained. He groped for words just as he’d groped with his fingers in the dark cabin, his mind bumping from horror to disbelief and sadness and fear, and anger, too.

But the king was waiting. “My mother says never harm an unarmed person. My mother says you take a knife to an enemy. And he has to have a weapon. She says war has rules, and the first one is that one. She says, Drenskar is not just the glory of winning battle, it is in keeping our oaths. To you.”

“But if I command you—”

“Not to kill you. I’m supposed to protect you.” The young voice quavered, but the tone was steady.

Rajnir forced his breathing to slow. He had no strength, and little will.
I am en-thralled
.

Erkric had reduced him to a thrall even lower than his own thralls, who at least could choose to move. All choice had been taken from him except for this one thing. He must die, for the good of a kingdom he had never ruled in actuality, not for so long as a heartbeat. How ironic, that his single true order would be his own death?

“Halvir. If I die, you can get out. The kingdom will be free.”

“I think you should escape,” Halvir said. After all, wasn’t that what the big boys always said in the games? If the enemy gets you, your duty is to escape.

“I’ve tried. I can’t even move anymore. The flesh hangs from my bones. It’s been too long since they permitted me to stand. It’s why I can’t get myself positioned to fall on my own knife.”

Halvir’s insides pinched at the roughness in the king’s voice, hinting at emotions bigger and darker than this stuffy, smelly dark cabin. But Halvir knew what to do. “
I
can move,” he said. Wasn’t that his part in the games? “I will find a way for us to escape.”

Joy hollowed Rajnir’s heart, just for a moment.

“You can’t.”

“Sure I can. I can move. When it’s dark. I’m good at hide-and-find!”

Rajnir let himself feel again the fierce triumph he’d experienced when he was able to put together Valda’s spells from the inside one layer at a time. Fierce, and bitter. If the boy could find a way to the deck, then Rajnir could get himself over the rail—and drown.

He just would not tell Halvir that.

He said, “I can take the spells off us. But it requires a long time. I cannot measure the time, because I am doing the magic from within. And as I’ve only learned it relatively recently, I have not been able to move to explore, so I don’t know what magic is warding the cabin.”

“If they don’t tie us up again, I can check,” Halvir said.

“They seem to have laid aside the bindings as too much trouble, since we have never moved. We must take care to sustain that belief.”

“We can do that.” Halvir spoke with the confidence of ten years.

“Your brother was like you.”

“Vatta?” Halvir said the name cautiously.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about him? Mama and Papa never do. They grieve for him, though it’s been a long time. Grandmamma told me so.”

Rajnir felt his way mentally to a new conviction: he must gather some measure of strength to try to protect the boy. His kingdom had dwindled to one human being outside himself. Maybe he could keep the vows Erkric put in his mouth.

Or he could die trying.
Thrall
.

I will not let myself be en-thralled.
“Let me tell you about Vatta. He was the best of us, though he wasn’t a Breseng boy.” Rajnir lifted his arms. His breath shortened, his belly jiggled, his muscles trembled. His arms dropped, but then he made another attempt.
Nine-and-ninety times. Each day. You just have to make it to the ship’s rail.
“He wasn’t a Breseng boy, being an heir ... though he was our age . . . Dyalf Balandir was the worst of us. That is, he was the handsomest, everyone said that, but he was slow at lessons, and mean . . . He thought he’d be picked for king, see.” Breathe, breathe, breathe. “The Balandirs all thought they were the next house for kingship . . . They acted as if they already had it. But Vatta . . . he was smart. I studied long at nights, just to try to keep up, and I pretended that I’d look at a book and remember it, like he did . . .”

Chapter Twenty-one

L
AUGHTER gusted from the open scuttles of
Cocodu
’s wardroom. Back in the bad old days of Gaffer Walic, this wardroom had been made large enough for the captain to fit his entire crew inside when he wanted to demonstrate his power on some hapless crewmate. The blood-soaked deck had been planed and stained by Inda when he first took it from the pirates. That never quite removed the discolorations, so Inda had put down some of the fine rugs from Bermund to hide them, later replaced by marquetry when Dasta became captain. Mutt added to this spacious, pleasant atmosphere his youth and popularity, drawing the more dashing captains from the independents—Khanerenth, and Sarendan—to meet here most often when they were not on maneuvers.

Everon’s and Ymar’s captains were forbidden to mix with raffish privateers (may as well call them pirates given leave by rapacious kings, Deliyeth insisted) and the Chwahir were forbidden to mix with anyone at all. The older captains, especially those sticklers for the strict decorum of rank, clumped together aboard Admiral Mehayan’s brigantine.

Tau had wholly failed at the task Inda had asked of him: to try to win over Deliyeth. On their first meeting, he’d seen in her dismissive head-to-toe scan and stiffened posture, the way her chin twitched back in mute affront, that his looks, clothing, even his smile marked him as untrustworthy. And the struggling conversation afterward, during which she became steadily more truculent, affirmed it.

So he’d made himself useful in other ways, one of which was volunteering to help Dasta’s cook when all these gigs began rowing or sailing over to
Cocodu.
This gathering soon became a regular occurrence in the evenings after maneuvers, as the alliance stood off and on just east of the Fangs in what soon became known as “polishing the teeth.” (The boring sameness of tack and tack again was deemed excellent practice for the younger members of the various crews, who came to thoroughly loathe the night watches.)

Cocodu
’s new cook, Nilat, had been trained by Lorm, which was another draw. The Khanerenth and Sarendan captains, well stocked by regular provision ships sailing up and down the coast to and from home, often brought food and drink as donations. Nilat turned them into delicacies.

As Tau helped, he listened. People talked about the alliance and how they perceived its divisions. No one questioned the leadership of Fox and Inda, not even Deliyeth. The two commanders were like sun and moon, as one stayed on
Death
’s deck, spyglass to hand, rotations of signal flag youths on duty as he directed ship maneuvers. Fox sailed around overseeing repel-boarder defenses and tactical ploys. The big Khanerenth brigantines served as the enemy, as everyone agreed they were most like the Venn in size. They thoroughly enjoyed attacking other ships; the allies liked repelling them as much as they hated trying to repel Fox’s own crews, who were far tougher.

Fox also conducted the hand-to-hand training. He was not anymore popular than his hand-picked boarder crews, but after several not-quite-friendly challenges the word spread faster than fire that he was the best fighter on any ship, and so the smartest shut up, listened, learned. The rest complained but did what they were told. When the gossip touched on Fox, Tau was amused by the drop in tone, the attitude reserved for the ally who could thrash you without effort. You only scorned the ally you considered under your protection.

As the days slipped past, Tau gauged the spread of the lies that Inda had told Tau in private to expect, meant to be passed to the Venn via the unidentified spies. The Chwahir were leaving; Elgar the Fox was now a prince of Khanerenth; the Chwahir were staying, first line in the defense; Finna of Fire Island, the renegade Venn pirate, was alive and allying with the Fox Banner Fleet; the Chwahir army was secretly on the march across Drael to attack the Venn homeland while its entire navy was busy at The Fangs.

Then came the breezy afternoon several fishers were spotted by the alliance patrols at the western perimeter. They were stopped, questioned, escorted along the coast of Chwahirsland to the easternmost point, and told to keep going south. They insisted that the Venn were out in a massive line stretching from the north coast of the Sartoran continent to the south coast of Drael. They were sweeping everything before them, taking any ship they caught.

Fox and Inda already knew from Signi’s chart that the massive line was fact. Now they could release the news and attribute it to the fishers.

Tau watched the effect ripple through the alliance over the next few days.
The Venn are a month away
. Drills tightened, ships no longer peeled off if they thought the weather hid them or it was past dark. The determination that Inda had met on his arrival was back.

Late one afternoon, Inda called off general maneuvers due to a series of lightning-punctuated black squalls.

Jeje signaled to the smaller vessels. They would carry right on with their own drills. Their tactics required line of sight, so the bad weather was a perfect test.

Since Tau’s station would not be on
Vixen
in the final battle (Inda wanted Tau on one of the capital ships, in case there was negotiation to be handled), she dropped Tau at
Cocodu
. From the number of gigs bumping in its wake, it was clear that the storms were an excuse for merrymaking.

Tau climbed up behind a work party of mids busy taking laundry down. “Oh
won’t
they nag if it’s damp or stiff,” one boy groused, so indignant his honking teen voice cracked. “Tougher they are, the more finicky. You think Angel Face is bad, you haven’t heard Fox!”

The complainer couldn’t see the violent gestures his wide-eyed mates made to hush him up, as his load was piled to his tipped-back chin. “You’d think a black shirt, you just throw it anywhere, dries in the sun, put it on, but ohhhhh no! Got to be just so, he’s worse than a guild-master. Worse than a baron—”