The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  “Night before. We came aboard just after the midnight watch. I stayed on deck. Thought that was your order.”

  “Go below. I’ll take the helm until the change.” And, seeing her hesitate, Inda added, “I need the time to think.”

  She raised a hand as she trotted down the still-streaming gangway. He watched her hip-swinging stride, a privateer’s stride. Such a conversation after an order would never have happened in the Marlovan military and he suspected it was the same for any navy. Could he successfully use the shifting nature of authority common to the pirate life to defeat the tradition of hard-drilled obedience of the Venn military?

  Fox’s voice rose above the hissing of the diminishing waves, ordering the green flag hoisted to the top of the mainmast. The watch-change bell tinged; the lookout lanterns were hung once again, and the remainder of Gillor’s scant crew emerged, most refreshed from sleep. They began setting sail so they could beat back into the inner harbor and opened the hatches to air the hot, stuffy cabins below.

  Inda watched idly as Fox oversaw the work. He knew he could not take independents and privateers against the Venn—arguing, fighting, side-switching independents, owing allegiance to no one, their goal usually confined to immediate wealth and the prospect of squandering it. Sometimes the division between independents and pirates was a very narrow one indeed.

  So he needed discipline, but that required consent first. So how did one get the consent of pirates?

  Inda felt the wind dying and knew he could tie the helm down and slacken sail, but it felt good, tired as he was, to lean against the polished wood, feel the ship creaking sleepily underfoot, sniff the clean air with its tang of the sea. The treasure stowed below in the captain’s private, locked hold had stiffened the Death slightly, setting it by the stern so that the masts raked even more sharply back. Big as it was, it would handle like a scout in most winds, and he would need speed and agility.

  He would need speed.

  “I’m going ashore.” Fox leaned against the rail, Gillor’s tired crew standing by to boom down the launch. “I can name those who’ll stay with us and those who’ll run. Let ’em run with my goodwill. Most of them are worthless. But some of those who’ll ship out with us might see fit to kick up some trouble before the morning tide. I want to be able to return to this island without getting my throat cut, so I might have to break a few heads to remind them of their manners.”

  Fox would only take a couple of crew to handle the launch; he was capable of doing his reminding on his own. Everyone in the fleet—probably on the island, by now— knew that nobody outfought him and his Marlovan steel.

  “There were also a few possible hires,” Fox added.

  Inda heard the question in his statement. “Tell them the new plan. If they still want on, find out their experience.”

  Fox lifted a hand, and presently the launch splashed down, raised a sail, and eased away toward the shore, faster in the variable breezes than the Death making its way at a stately pace back toward the harbor.

  Inda remembered he was going to send Tau, and ran up a signal so that Cocodu would come up on the lee.

  Then he leaned his arms between the spokes of the helm. Either his fleet followed him or not. Either Fox challenged him or not. No use worrying. Just go on.

  So what was first in “on”? Supplies to be seen to. Weapons. Then drills. A mage to be found, new tactics to be designed and practiced.

  He thought of these things as little threads stretching across the empty loom of the future, a loom built like the ones he’d seen every day in Tenthen Castle at home, before he was sent to the academy to train in military command, with Sponge and Noddy and Cama and Cherry-Stripe.

  And Dogpiss—

  No. Forget the past. You cannot change it.

  Look to the future. Which ships to send where. Crew, training. What he’d say to the Guild Fleet organizers when he reached Bren. Where to seek what he needed to know about the Venn. Whom to trust to what task. Warp. Weft.

  He picked up the glass and swept the harbor, more for something to do than anything else. To his surprise he saw one of the little hired boats set out into the choppy seas. He straightened up as it sped toward them, slanting with the wind.

  The lookout yelled, “Boat ahoy!”

  “Hire!” came a woman’s voice.

  Inda looked down at the battered hired coracle bumping up against the trysail’s smooth hull.

  “Come aboard,” he called.

  A short, bandy-legged, weathered woman scrambled aboard and swung her patched, worn sailor bag to thump on the captain’s deck. Even in the darkness there was no mistaking a Delf. Impossible or not, he seemed to be getting a Delf as a volunteer.

  She faced Inda. “Fibi Rumm by mother relation of Fussef, cousin-second to Niz Findl.”

  Inda grimaced. “If you are looking for Niz, I am sorry to have to tell you that he died by pirates’ hands. I told his family when we stopped at the Delfin Islands a couple months ago.”

  Fibi poked her beaky nose forward, a gesture that brought Niz strongly to mind. “So the word is,” she replied without any hint of sentiment. “The Fussefs decided to send another o’ us. Me you’ll be needin’, especially if you take on one o’ them square-sail Venn shits.”

  Inda stared into pale eyes in a face whose age was impossible to guess. “How did you know that?” he asked.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Figured us Delfs, Venn’s next. Makes reason, ye’d finish what ye start.”

  Inda smiled. “Welcome aboard. We sail on the ebb tide tomorrow.”

  “What’s a Harskialdna? Besides a war king’s Shield Arm, whatever that means?”

  In the Vixen’s tiny cabin Jeje, Tau, and Dasta crowded around the little table, now that the worst of the storm was over, and they were no longer needed on deck.

  The two scuttles were closed, the cabin door shut tight.

  Tau sat back tiredly, his long hands open and loose, golden eyes reflecting the fiery lamplight overhead as it swung to and fro. “I haven’t told anyone this—didn’t seem to be a point. But the night before we took on the Brotherhood, I found Barend on deck. It was after that sword dance exhibition. He was alone—remember how isolated he kept himself? Just sitting there drinking and staring up at the fox banner on the Death. I asked its origin, and Barend was drunk enough to actually answer, instead of bowsing up like they usually do.”

  Dasta sighed and Jeje snickered. “Go on.”

  “He told me it used to be the personal banner of the Montredavan-An heirs to kingship but now they use it at some academy where they train their commanders up from boys. The one Inda was apparently in before he came to us.”

  Jeje shrugged. Her people, fishers for generations, had no interest in the plains-riding Marlovan warriors, their kings, or their academies. To the coastal folk the Marlovans’ single virtue was that they avoided the sea.

  Dasta ran his thumbnail back and forth along the wood grain as though it helped him plumb his memory. He said, frowning, “Aren’t their kings called something else by way of family name?”

  “Barend’s name is Montrei-Vayir.”

  Dasta grunted. “Fox. Banner. Our Fox, you mean.”

  Tau laughed softly. “That’s right. Anyway, Fox, our Fox, is the descendant of the displaced kings.”

  “So that’s what Inda meant,” Jeje said. “I think. He said Fox is haunted by his ancestors. Something like that.”

  “I won’t pretend to know Fox’s mind, because he’s as close as Inda. Closer, in many ways. But what we have topside are a son of disgraced kings and a disgraced son of a prince.”

  Dasta dug harder into the wood grain.

  Jeje groaned. “So what? So what? Who cares about a bunch of dead kings, or even living ones?”

  “Patience,” Tau said, raising a mock-admonitory finger. “When we overheard Fox accusing Inda of attempting to become Iasca Leror’s Shield Arm, you can perceive some of the scope of the insult, perhaps.”

  Jej
e hated this kind of talk; she didn’t know why. On second thought, yes, she did. It was because she loathed the idea of kings. In her view, they were no better than anyone else. Underneath all the jewels and velvets and so forth was skin and bone, they ate, they farted, they snored like anyone else. But their passions didn’t affect just one or two people, they affected whole kingdoms of people—people who might never see a king in their lifetime—a concept so fire-scorchingly unfair it made her itch all over.

  “Inda’s not doing any such thing,” she said crossly. “Inda’s going up against the Venn because they’ve all but destroyed ship trade. We all know that.”

  Dasta glanced from one to the other, his nails working away at the grooves in the grain.

  Tau grinned across the table at her.

  “Don’t we?” she asked, less belligerently now.

  “How much has Inda ever told us of his motives?” Tau sat back. “My mother always used to tell me that people put different values on sex at different times: sex with our people at the pleasure house, sex with others outside of it. Though she was talking about the way they came at the price of exchange, I’ve come to the conclusion that she spoke a general truth. That is, people put different values not just on others’ lives, but their own, and the exchange isn’t always money.”

  Dasta pointed a calloused finger. “You think our Marlovans don’t value our lives? Or their own?”

  The swinging lamplight gleamed in Tau’s eyes, twin golden flames. “I don’t think Inda has any value for his own life. Not at sea. That might be one of the reasons he’s so formidable a fighter in battle, though we can all see that Fox has the edge on skill. Just barely, now that Inda seems to have gotten his full growth at last—he might not be tall but he makes up for it through here.” He drew a line across his own chest.

  Dasta said, “He wants to go home. I always thought that,” he added in a low voice. “Wondered why he didn’t after we sank the Brotherhood. But he never even went ashore, except before we left, to pay our shot.”

  Tau shrugged. “Let’s say Inda can’t go. Not because of some threat. Or even a price on his head. That wouldn’t stop him if he had sufficient reason.”

  Jeje nodded. Anyone who had seen Inda in battle could believe that.

  “It’s a question of honor, which means—here I’m guessing—he really does have to have sufficient reason, something that supersedes whatever it was that disgraced him.”

  Jeje sighed, restless again.

  Dasta rubbed his bony chin. He said, “All right. Makes sense. But why would he want to go home if they are all such shits?”

  “Because they aren’t. Only the king’s brother and his first son are. Barend spoke well of Inda’s sister, Hadand by name. She will apparently one day have to marry the royal heir. Barend loves Hadand. Says Inda does, too. And she loves him, misses him terribly. So does Barend’s paternal cousin Evred, the king’s younger son. Barend called Evred ‘Sponge,’ I cannot imagine why. Anyway, Barend spoke even more highly of this cousin Evred, or Sponge.”

  Jeje drew in a sharp breath, remembering Inda’s first day or two on board. How he’d been staring at the bucket of red sponges just pulled up from the sea, his face drawn with pain.

  “This Evred-the-Sponge being the one who is supposed to become the Marlovan Royal Shield Arm, if his brother doesn’t kill him first.”

  Jeje snorted as directly overhead seabird feet skittered on the deck. “Figures. The ones Inda misses are the ones who have no power and are probably even dead by now. When it comes to kings, bullies always win—because kings are bullies.”

  Dasta laughed. “So says Jeje, who knows what’s what.”

  Tau grinned, and Jeje flushed. “Find me one single exception if you don’t believe me.”

  Dasta yawned. “Who cares? We’re never going to meet any kings. Or queens. Rain’s over.” He opened a scuttle and peered out. “Looks like that might be your signal, Tau, aboard Death. And I want to get some shut-eye while I can. You know right well that tomorrow, if Inda or Fox don’t set us to rousting our crews out of the bawdy houses, we’ll be grunting supplies aboard in that heat, stowing, and making sail, all before tomorrow’s ebb.” Dasta grinned, an unexpectedly nasty grin that was the more startling because his expression was usually so mild. “Anyone who comes aboard drunk on my ship is gonna wish they was under a Marlovan king.”

  Chapter Six

  MIDSUMMER’S Day was a month and a half away for the southern half of the world.

  In Iasca Leror’s royal city this year it meant a coronation. Not that Marlovans wore crowns. The only metal involved was the steel of swords. But the closest word for kings becoming kings in Iascan was “coronation.” Before taking Iasca Leror, the Marlovans had been commanded by chieftains, usually selected after extremely violent competitions among the three ruling families and anyone else ambitious—or mad—enough to challenge them. But coronations happened in castles, and when the Marlovans took the Iascans’ castles, they adopted many of their customs.

  So there would not just be a coronation, but a wedding as well.

  Sentries patrolled ceaselessly along the towers and walks, men looking outward, women guarding inward. Memory of the winter’s bloodshed was fresh enough that the sentries were extra-vigilant in case certain Jarls thought they might try their hands at king-making with more success than Mad Gallop Yvana-Vayir had had.

  While the vigilant sentries walked under the brilliant sky, pausing only to wipe their damp faces, Queen Wisthia sent a messenger from the residence wing to locate Evred and Hadand.

  The queen so rarely disturbed anyone, preferring during the long years of her marriage to remain in the stronghold of her private rooms, that Evred and Hadand, who had far too much to do and far too little time in which to do it, immediately left their respective tasks. They met in the hall on the way to the queen’s rooms.

  “Do you know what the problem is?” Hadand asked.

  His brow furrowed as he observed Hadand’s worried face. “I do not,” he said. “I thought you might.”

  She opened her hands, flicking him a glance. Though he had grown up with her and once would have said he knew her better than anyone, save only his cousin Barend, he could not account for this new habit of hers. If one could call it a habit, that quick, anxious look into his face, followed a heartbeat later by a studied calm, her attention on a distant corner of the room. Or a window, he discovered, as she peered out at the alley leading to the old tack rooms back of the stable’s outbuildings.

  “She’s not spoken to me of it,” Hadand said in a low tone. “Not even about changing rooms. Nor would I ask,” she added in haste. “My own rooms are fine until she goes back to Anaeran-Adrani. If she goes?” She looked up in question.

  He said, “She’s mentioned no change in plans.”

  During her very first interview with Evred after the slaughter of the royal family during winter, Wisthia had said, “May I go home?”

  They were now in earshot of the female guards posted outside the queen’s suite across the hall from the king’s suite, where Evred would take up residence in a month’s time. The door to the queen’s sitting room was not opposite the king’s. Wisthia had chosen an entryway at the other end of her suite, and so Evred and Hadand kept walking down the hall. The guard women saluted, palms striking over their hearts.

  Entering the queen’s chambers was like walking into another world. Hangings on the walls; low, stuffed chairs; the scent of carefully nurtured foreign blossoms; the distant sound of soft woodwinds and metal-stringed instruments, all were designed to recreate her Adrani home.

  Evred had always found his mother’s rooms alien and cloying; Hadand was used to them, and had even come to appreciate the artistry in their design.

  Queen Wisthia, tall and thin, her hair grayer than it had been in winter, gestured from her inner chamber. A maid-servant curtseyed to them, a gesture Evred found odd, though he’d seen his mother’s servants do it all his life.

  �
��My dears,” said the queen, as Evred kissed her hands in the way she had taught him when he was small.

  Evred said, hoping to please her, “The highest mountain passes have been clear for at least a month. You can go home whenever you like.”

  Wisthia looked at her only living son, and again repressed the surge of sorrow for what might have been, what never could be. The truth was, they had nothing to say to one another. After his birth he’d been locked into the Marlovan way of upbringing as had her first son, who had willfully pulled away from her to embrace his uncle’s war teachings. The prospect of enduring that rejection yet again had caused her to avoid Evred once his Marlovan education had begun; consequently he had grown up regarding her as a benevolent but distant figure, removed from any of his concerns.

  Both wanted it to be different, but it wasn’t.

  So she said, “I will stay to see you take your place as king. For my own pleasure, and because I think it right. I will depart directly after. But I have a last pair of requests before I prepare for that departure.”

  “Please speak,” he said, courteous and remote to her as always.

  Hadand, acutely sensitive to every shade and timbre of his voice, heard the regret that he would rather have hidden.

  “I would like to take Hadand with me, for a visit.”

  “Me?” Hadand exclaimed.

  “To preside in her place here, I would have you invite Fareas-Iofre of Choraed Elgaer.”

  “My mother?” Hadand whispered; then she closed her mouth, thinking, Mother never leaves Tenthen Castle. The next thought was: Would she if she could?

  Evred opened his mouth to deny the request as impossible, but the queen forestalled him. “Think on it for a time, my son.” She added with a wry smile, “I know that your negotiations with my brother for the treaty renewal have stalled.”

  Evred and Hadand could not prevent reactions of surprise, subtle as they were: no more than his putting his hands behind his back, and her eyes turning upward to his, but Wisthia saw these things. “I have stayed most straightly out of Marlovan affairs, for your late uncle negotiated specifically for my noninterference when I first came here, but I cannot help knowing a little of what concerns my homeland.”