Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Tabitha, we can see his ship now.” It was indeed Isabelle up there, and that was probably the first mate with her. “At least, I assume that’s his. I’ve told the captain that they’ll be coming alongside.”

  “Very well. You should go back down.”

  Isabelle hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “I am supposed to do this myself.” If her friends refused to help Tabitha with this, then they could stay below with Maga Rollana.

  Isabelle did not answer, but she ducked under the foresail and eased herself down the sloping ladder to the main deck. She tried to meet Tabitha’s eyes as she approached the hatch to the companionway, but Tabitha looked straight past her.

  “Please promise me that you’ll listen to him,” Isabelle sent.

  “I will make no such promise.”

  Isabelle sighed heavily and went inside. Tabitha decided to allow the sigh to pass without consequences, and instead turned toward the sloping ladder that led up to the quarterdeck. The door to the captain’s cabin was up here, and she had not been standing at the rail for long before old Captain Flint emerged and greeted her, his bald head gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Obviously curious, he tried to ask her why they were meeting Lord Graegor’s ship, but she gave one-word answers, and he quickly took the hint. He had served in Tabitha’s father’s fleet for a very long time, and he knew when to shut his mouth. He went down to the main deck and up to the forecastle to have a look for himself, and the sailors started moving more busily over the ship. Tabitha remained where she was, calm and still.

  Calm and still. Rage made her skin prickle, but she remained calm and still.

  At least the air was fresh out here. Fresher. Ships smelled. Truth be told, she preferred the deck to the cramped cabin, but it was not appropriate for a lady to spend so much time among common sailors unless her father was with her. Her first trip by sea, from Betaul to the mouth of the River Libou on their way to Tiaulon, had been aboard one of her father’s war galleons, escorted by two caravels like this one. Her father had spent time with her and Pamela on deck, telling them what the parts of the ship were called and what the sailors were doing. It had been boring at the time, but it made her wistful now.

  Isabelle spent part of each day up here to sharpen her weather-sense, which she had only discovered that she possessed while on her voyage to Maze Island with Beatris and Pamela. She had tried to explain to Tabitha how the weather “felt”, but Tabitha had not been able to follow what she was doing. Tabitha knew that she should be able to feel something, at least, since all sorcerers were supposed to have weather-sense. Weather magic, on the other hand, included both water magic and wind magic, and while Tabitha could now dowse and summon water, she did not think she could steer the wind. Ilene could, and the big Medean girl had shown impressive control of air streams when they were all in the labyrinth.

  Tabitha kept her mind studiously on weather-sense and weather magic until she started to hear calls and shouts from the sailors. The noise seemed to indicate that Graegor’s ship was near, but although she peered forward and aft, she could not see it. Then she realized that the sailors were not looking in the same direction that she was. The other ship was approaching from the other side. She grit her teeth, turned, and carefully crossed the deck to the port rail.

  Across the water, Graegor’s ship was beating against the same wind with which her ship cut through the swells. It was a schooner, like Natayl’s ship, in which she had first traveled to Maze Island. Unlike Tabitha’s caravel, it had only two straight masts instead of three, and no fore- or sterncastles. Its sails and rigging looked much more complicated to her, which she assumed gave the schooner its speed. It was fast, but if it was like Natayl’s, it was also hideously cramped. She was definitely going to build a bigger ship once Natayl was gone. She had seen so many different types and sizes in her journeys through the archipelago. Sailing ships were the most common, but she had also seen rowing galleys, including a bireme, which was likely from the south. It had been painted bright yellow, and she tried to remember if its trim color had been red or orange.

  What could he possibly say to excuse what he had done? Swimming with girls. There was no excuse, none at all.

  Graegor called to her, and naturally she refused the contact, but her eyes focused again on the schooner, still forward of the caravel’s position, and among the figures along the rail, she saw him. They were much too far apart for her to see his eyes, but she did not want to see them anyway. The caravel’s first mate was shouting from the forecastle, and someone who was probably the first mate of the schooner was shouting back from its bow.

  Captain Flint rejoined her on the quarterdeck. “My lady.” He nodded his grey pointed beard toward the schooner. “Will we need to launch the boat?”

  Tabitha managed not to bark a laugh. “No.” This was too good an opportunity for Graegor to show off his acrobatics, like he probably had when he was swimming with those girls. She eyed the ballista that was folded and latched against the bulkhead, ready to be set up and loaded at a moment’s notice. What would Graegor have done if she had told Captain Flint that these were pirates, and that they should launch a preemptive attack?

  It was amusing to consider. But Captain Flint would not have believed her, and it would have put him in the difficult position of having to obey her when he knew she was wrong. A pirate’s schooner would have ballistas of its own, and this schooner obviously did not. More to the point, no pirate in the world was foolish enough to counterfeit Lord Contare’s flag.

  As expected, when the two ships were finally alongside each other, maybe twenty paces apart, Graegor climbed up onto the schooner’s starboard rail and took hold of a rope that had been tied to the top of the mainmast. He said something over his shoulder, and once his sailors cleared a path behind him, he crouched and pushed himself to swing backward over the deck. She felt a hint of his magic boosting his momentum, and when he swung forward, the rope carried him much farther and faster than it should have, so much that Tabitha heard a collective gasp from all the sailors. Graegor half-flew and half-fell through the air between the two ships, and Tabitha wondered if it was at all possible at this point to interrupt that soar and send him straight down into the cold sea.

  Likely not. But it looked like the angle of his descent would put him in the middle of the caravel’s main deck. Tabitha watched, and then pressed on the boards of the deck with her telekinesis, hard, just as he landed. She saw them warp enough to trip him, and he stumbled. Even though he managed to turn the stumble into a forward roll, it still was not nearly as impressive as it would have been if the landing had been clean. After the roll, he got his feet planted and stood up, but then the ship pitched and he had to broaden his stance and even windmill his arms. No, not very impressive at all.

  The ship’s crews were entirely unbothered by this graceless display, though, and they all started cheering. Captain Flint’s eyes were as wide as a child’s as Graegor sidestepped the mainmast’s rigging and came up the ladder to the quarterdeck.

  He had not grown any taller. He wore plain magi grey trousers and a shirt with a linen overtunic, along with heavy boots, but no cloak or hood. He had not changed his hair or his beard. Telgards could be handsome, but he was not particularly so.

  Not like the men back home.

  Not like the men she had killed.

  “Lord Sorcerer,” Captain Flint said with a deep bow, as sailors drifted closer to them from all parts of the ship. “Welcome aboard.”

  He had spoken Thendalian, since he knew very little Mazespaak, and Graegor answered in Thendalian, though he knew too little of that. “Thank you, Captain.” Then he glanced at Tabitha.

  She did not glance back, because she did not want to meet his eyes. But she dutifully introduced the two of them by name and translated their small talk. She did not smile once, and after a few pleasantries, she looked pointedly at Captain Flint. “The Lord Sorcerer and I need to confer. If you will kindly excuse us?”


  “Yes, my lady.” He gestured toward the door behind them. “My cabin is of course at your disposal, should you require it.”

  “That is unnecessary.” She had her father’s cabin to use if she wanted to go below, but she had no intention of going below. She did not want anyone to wonder what she and Graegor were doing alone together there. She did not want anyone to think they had ever been intimate. She wanted to stay where everyone could see them, so she nodded toward the ladder on the starboard side of the quarterdeck. “The sterncastle has sufficient privacy.”

  “As my lady wishes.” The captain shifted, as if to try to assist her, but she ignored him and crossed to the ladder herself. “This way, my lord,” she heard him say to Graegor. Her magic, tight and alive around her, prickling and itching and burning, kept her from sensing any of Graegor’s feelings, but she could imagine the confusion on his face. She had made it all the way up to the sterncastle before she felt his weight on the ladder.

  She kept one hand on the rail as she walked around the mizzenmast to the starboard corner, the corner without a ballista folded into it. The young sailor who had been standing there like an idiot immediately scrambled up the rigging to get out of her way. She stood against the corner railings, looking down at the water churned by the ship’s passing, then up at the white clouds in the blue sky. When Graegor’s mind reached for hers, she again refused him. Telepathy was too much right now. She had to remain calm and still.

  Falling behind them, the schooner began the first turn in a series that would eventually point it south again, to follow the caravel to Maze Island. Tabitha heard and felt Graegor’s steps on the deck behind her. He stopped, and after a moment, he asked, his voice barely carrying to her ears, “Who told you?”

  Tabitha did not think she needed to reveal the source of her information, so she ignored the question. Graegor waited, then said, “What were you told?”

  Tabitha shook her head. She was not going to let him try to refute Velinda point for point.

  “Tabitha …”

  “Tell me what you intended to tell me when you first called to me,” she ordered. “When you asked to meet me, what is it that you wanted to say?”

  “Were you told that Maga Brigita used to be a rogue?”

  “I know,” Tabitha said, emphasizing each word, “that you were swimming with her.”

  She heard him take a breath before he said, even more quietly, “I didn’t know the girls were going to be there.”

  “Oh?”

  “I didn’t,” he repeated. “Jeff said that Patrick thought it was too hot and wanted to go swimming, so five of us went. All boys. But then, when we were there, the girls rode up, and we had to let them water their horses.”

  “So you are saying that none of them were swimming in the pond with you.”

  “Two of them did. But they stayed dressed.”

  Those sluts Velinda had mentioned. “What about you?”

  “We had our shirts off,” he admitted. “But the water was too cold to strip all the way down.”

  “I see.” She had never seen him without his shirt.

  “It wasn’t …”

  When he did not finish, she asked, “Was not what?”

  “Wasn’t like it sounds.”

  “Bare chests and wet dresses is not like what it sounds?”

  “No,” he insisted. “Really. It was like … I mean …”

  “Are you trying to say that these girls don’t like boys?”

  He did not answer. She knew that like most L’Abbanist men, he had the ridiculous, tract-taught aversion to such things. But right now she had no aversion to making him uncomfortable. He deserved it. “Well?” she prompted.

  “No,” he said evenly. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying it was like … like children playing.”

  Yes, that is so much more believable. “Was it Jeffrei who arranged this outing?”

  The pause was long enough to answer her question before he did. “Yes.”

  “He truly hates me.” The feeling was mutual.

  “He doesn’t,” Graegor tried to say, but he seemed to realize how absurd that sounded.

  “Then why is he always trying to corrupt you?” Always. Always. Jeffrei was a jumped-up churl, a piece of refuse from Chrenste’s gutters who did not deserve to be magi.

  “Corrupt me?”

  “Girls and drinks are what he loves best, and he drags you down with him. Taverns, games, brothels—”

  “We have never gone to brothels,” he said, and now he sounded offended.

  “Some of those taverns are little better,” she snapped. “Who is to say what would happen if you got too drunk?”

  “I can’t get too drunk,” he countered. “When I drink, I can clear my head in moments. We all can.”

  “Were you drinking when you went swimming?”

  He paused. “No.”

  And that proves everything. She gave a single sharp nod. “Then it does not even have to be when you drink, does it? It seems you will play with girls whenever the mood strikes you.”

  “No!” he protested. “It wasn’t like that. I swear it wasn’t.”

  Honestly, how stupid did he think she was? “You did not touch a single one of those girls while you were swimming with them?”

  “It …”

  He did. He touched them. She had hoped, desperately hoped, that he had not. Her spine was a column of solid ice, but a Betaul sorceress always remained composed, even when faced with such betrayal. “Magi don’t touch each other,” she reminded him. “Not like ordinary people do. The touch of a hand can so easily become the touch of a mind. Don’t pretend that this was innocent!” She stopped, pressed her mouth shut, and laid her cold hands more sedately on the rail, resolving not to raise her voice again. She should have put on her gloves.

  He murmured, “You’re right.”

  I know I am.

  “One of the girls did try to kiss me. I didn’t let her. I didn’t want her to.”

  Tabitha stood very still, and gripped the ship’s rail to keep herself so, to keep back a scream of rage. She had not wanted Velinda to be right. Velinda had not been there, so it had been possible, until now, that Velinda had been wrong. She had wanted Velinda to be wrong.

  “I got out of the pond then,” he went on.

  She was clenching every muscle to hold herself together. “Why did you not get out of the pond right away?” she demanded.

  “We were there first.” He immediately seemed to realize how stupid and childish that sounded. “Not … not that it matters who was there first. But I … I thought it would look bad if I left too quickly. That it would look like I was uncomfortable with my own magi.”

  So you would rather be inappropriate with your own magi? she screamed silently. How is that better? She swallowed, and when she thought she could speak, she stated the obvious. “You care more about what they think than what I think.”

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “Then why do you let them near you if you know I don’t like it?”

  “Magi men constantly flirt with you,” he said.

  As if that’s the same thing. She would tell him what was the same thing. Tell him so that he understood. “How would you feel,” she said, “if I told you that while I was in Cuan Searla, my friends and I went swimming in the baths with some guardsmen?”

  She did not have to see his face to know that she had hurt him. His silence seemed huge behind her, radiating from him like heat from the sun. “I think you did not want to leave,” she said. “I think you stayed because those girls came. Were they pretty?”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, then again, louder. “I’m sorry. Tabitha, I am so sorry.”

  He had not answered her question. They must have been pretty. “You want them to look at you,” she told him. “You want them to admire you. You like it. You want them to dream of you at night.”

  “Don’t,” he pleaded. “It’s not—”

  “So when they come to a pond
where you are swimming, you don’t graciously step aside and leave them to their own fun.” She shook her head. “No. Instead, you let them see you half-naked and play kissing games with them.”

  “Stop it!”

  She froze, and then turned to stare at him in shock. He had never yelled at her like that before. Never. Even as she watched, his sharp frown started melting away, into panic and pain and a dozen other emotions before his blue-eyed gaze dropped down to the deck.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  You said that before. You always say that.

  “You like being admired too,” he said then, still not looking at her. “All people do.”

  “Of course they do,” she said between her teeth. It was infuriating how easily he could stand there and balance without holding on to anything at all. “But you don’t know how to handle it.”

  His eyes came up to her again in a dark, flat glare. “You aren’t perfect either.”

  “I never said I was,” she returned.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you speak Telgardian?”

  What? “Telgardian?” she repeated blankly.

  “When we met the heretics.”

  For a moment she thought he meant the shovel-men. But even as that shock sent a chill up her back, she realized he was talking about the Telgard heretics. “What do you mean?”

  “You spoke Telgardian to Rond and Ahren. You understood them.”

  “They spoke Mazespaak.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  She had ignored his accusation back then, and she denied it now. “I don’t remember that.”

  “I do.”

  “And?” It was up to him to supply the necessary point.

  “And I feel like you should have told me, before, that you spoke Telgardian.”

  This deserved a roll of the eyes, which she gave him. “I am sure that I told you the truth, that I had a few lessons when I was a child.”

  Now he hesitated, uncertain, and Tabitha did not give him time to think about it. “I know I told you that. I did not think I had to tell you to stay away from other girls while I was gone.”