Scaling the side of the ship wasn’t difficult, even with the bow and quiver. (She’d changed her bowstring in the dark.) Tico was faster than any of them, a leap to an anchor chain, then along that to the deck as if he’d been doing this all his life. Danica reached the rail, pulled herself over, stood on the deck in the grey light. Most of the raiders were there before her. She needed to learn to be quicker, she told herself. The crew had surrendered already, there was no resistance. Some of the Senjani had already gone below, to see what was being carried.
She hoped no one could see how frightened she was. A merchant ship from Dubrava wasn’t going to fight them, but she knew—every one of them did—that they weren’t supposed to board and rob a Jaddite ship running from Seressa to Dubrava. It would be hard to make a case that this was part of any war against infidels.
Not their fault that they’d been locked on their strand by Seressa, unable to even trade with the islands. If you starved people, you left them no choice, right?
That was what their leader, a man named Hrant Bunic, had said yesterday evening when they’d seen the sail and begun following it. Senjani boats were shallow-bottomed, low to the sea, hard to spot as they approached. Good at escaping into shallows, even up rivers when they needed to.
It was early in the year for a Dubravae ship to have reached Seressa and be heading home. If they’d caught it earlier, coming north, Bunic said, they’d have reaped a harvest of goods from Asharite lands, and had a claim to those—as heroes of the border. The story they always told. And believed, mostly, Danica thought. Now, it was going to be Dubrava-bought cargo from Seressa, which meant Jaddite merchants selling to Jaddite buyers, which meant they shouldn’t be taking it.
With luck, maybe some Kindath goods, her grandfather said. There is a district of them in Seressa.
And we war on the Kindath?
She knew he was trying to calm her. She’d taken up a position towards the mainmast with two others, Tico beside them. The other two held swords. Danica had an arrow to her bowstring, but was holding the bow casually. There ought to be no need for violence. So Bunic had said, and her grandfather had said the same in her head.
The Kindath? Depends who you listen to. They deny Jad, after all. And besides, after those war galleys you can take Seressini cargo and claim it as a toll for what they did. Bunic probably will.
The ship’s captain, a broad-shouldered man with a black beard, was facing Bunic now. His expression in the brightening light was somewhere between anger and grim resignation.
“Early in spring for Senjani on this side of the water,” he said, almost conversationally.
“Took a chance,” Hrant Bunic replied, also lightly. “We’re in some need, as you’ll likely know. Early this way for the Ingacia, too.” Bunic smiled briefly. “From Khatib? Wintered there? You made it back quickly then.”
“We did. I don’t think I know you.”
“I don’t think you do,” Bunic replied. “You’ll forgive us if we check to see if there’s anything from Jad-denying heretics below?”
“There isn’t,” said another man, approaching from behind the captain. He was extremely tall, a neat beard, golden hair under a hat, a polished voice and manner. “There is nothing but Jaddite cargo. Check it and leave. Or take my word for it. I’m Marin Djivo. This is my ship. You have no business being aboard, and every cleric in the world will say as much.” This one was controlling anger, Danica thought.
“Not our clerics,” Bunic said. “Ours were hungry this winter and spring. Seressa was hanging islanders who traded with us.”
“We heard that. We aren’t Seressini. You don’t hurt them if you steal from us. We’ve paid them for what we’re carrying.”
“And you’ll trade east with the Osmanlis, denying the god with every coin you pocket.”
Their usual argument in Senjan. Danica had never paid much attention to Hrant Bunic before. She knew he was a leader of many raiding parties, said to be calm and respected. She was impressed with him just now.
The tall man laughed. “Ah. I have a devout man on my ship,” he said.
“We all are,” said Bunic quietly. “We are Jad’s warriors on the border.”
“Then go inland!” snapped Marin Djivo.
Tico growled, Danica gestured him to silence. Marin Djivo glanced at them, then back to Bunic.
“Fight east if the khalif’s armies bring war. Do glorious battle for Jad and the emperor and Patriarch and leave honest citizens in peace! You don’t need more enemies! And no thief can name himself a hero while boarding another man’s ship. No one believes your lies about heroism.”
“Bold talk for a man facing swords.”
“Pah! I’ll fight you alone to end this foolishness.”
“What? To the death?” Bunic’s tone was mocking.
“If you like.”
There was a rippling of sound along the deck.
Bunic laughed. “A swordsman? Schooled in your youth by a rich man’s fencing master?”
The tall man smiled. He tossed his hat away. “Can this be? A Senjani raid leader afraid of a merchant?”
Stop this now! her grandfather said abruptly. This is no fight.
Danica didn’t understand, but she made herself move forward from the mast. She took off her own cap, shook out her hair. Everyone could see it now, and know she was a woman. “I’ll fight you, rich man’s son! Keep your sword, I have two knives. Just tell me where you’d like the killing blade to enter.”
She was afraid of what Bunic might say, only relaxed when she heard him laugh again. “Yes. Fight one of our women, Gosparko Djivo! If you want to battle for your cargo, go ahead. You are all insured against raiders and storms. You think we don’t know that?”
“I have no idea what the level of ignorance is in Senjan,” Marin Djivo said icily. He was staring at Danica. “I am sure your girl can throw knives extremely well—or she wouldn’t be here.”
Danica was trying to breathe normally. What if he had accepted the challenge, what if the moment had forced him to? People could be trapped by pride.
Then she saw the merchant’s mouth quirk. He said, in a different tone, “I’ve been scarred by women before, as it happens. Different reasons, but a wound’s a wound.”
There was laughter along the deck of the Blessed Ingacia. A change in the mood. Relief. No one, she realized, had wanted a fight, with what might follow. It was brighter now, birds wheeling and diving as the sun rose.
Well done. Her grandfather’s silent voice.
I’m not sure what I did.
Saved a few deaths, it might be.
That merchant’s?
Maybe after. If our men went wild. But Bunic dead first, I think. That pretty man can wield a blade or he’d not have challenged.
He’d beat a raid leader? She was startled.
Swords, one to one? Very likely. And if he killed our leader, then—
His voice in her head broke off. He was seeing what she saw.
What followed happened at speed. It was uncertain who might have stopped it, or how. Her own eventual action was a response, not a forestalling.
It was her first raid, after all.
—
“LOOK WHAT I FOUND!”
Marin turns and sees that the speaker, pushing someone before him, is one of the raiders. He is lean and long-nosed, hair shaggy like a wolfhound. And he has a hand gripping Leonora Miucci’s elbow, thrusting her onto the deck through the hatch not far from where Marin stands. She wears only a light-blue night robe. Her hair is unbound, which makes her look terribly vulnerable.
It is important, he realizes, to control anger now. He feels shame, though, which can engender fury. This is his ship, the woman is a guest. He is aware that Drago, behind him, will be feeling a murderous rage. Ships’ captains take pirates personally; being boarded is an affront. But
this is an old dance and they know the steps. The Senjani want money and goods. No one is looking for violence. This is a transaction for the raiders. They are conducting business, much as he does in the market in Seressa or their factors do in Khatib.
Nonetheless. This is also theft, and an assault on his ship, and he likes the Miucci woman, even if he is almost certain she’s a spy. She is clever, attentive to her husband, attractive.
She looks more angry than afraid, he sees with renewed admiration. It cannot be pleasant having a man like that forcing her up here, barely clad. He is still gripping her arm.
There are two women on his deck now, impressive in different ways. The tall Senjani girl holds her bow with relaxed assurance. He has no doubt she can use it. The leaders of Senjan don’t play games in picking their raiding parties, there is too much at stake. And Marin does know—everyone knows—what the Seressinis tried to do to Senjan this spring. There will be anger on their part as well.
A need to be careful, accordingly. He gives Drago a meaningful glance over his shoulder. He turns back and says, “It would be kinder to release her. No one is going anywhere.”
“Kinder!” mocks the man who has dragged Leonora Miucci from below deck. “We are kind to Seressinis now?”
“I am from Mylasia,” she says coldly, her voice suddenly as aristocratic as her bearing. With a twist she tries—and fails—to remove herself from the raider’s grasp. Marin, fighting anger, is about to speak again when he sees the Senjani leader nod at his man.
With a shrug, the raider lets her go.
Partly the effect of her voice, Marin guesses. Men will deny it, but there is instinctive deference to the obviously well-bred.
Or they kill them. Or demand an extravagant ransom. That is how the world works. And ransom is what this is now about.
“Ah! Do forgive us, esteemed signora! Mylasia, is it?” The man beside Leonora Miucci rasps the words like a woodcutter’s saw. He spits on the deck. “Will we split hairs like lawyers?”
“Be quiet, Kukar.”
The raid leader is experienced, Marin can see it. He will want a fair return from this boarding—but not so much as to arouse fury in Dubrava. Then he’ll be gone, north and east in their light, swift boats to their own waters and walls.
But a ransom is now in play for the woman. It might have been better if she hadn’t used such an elegant voice, he thinks. He wonders why she did, after days of sounding much less high-born. It is interesting that she can do it, too.
She steps away from the one called Kukar, as if proximity offends. “If your quarrel is with Seressa I will not do. Sorry to disappoint.”
The man grins. He looks her up and down. He is enjoying himself. “Haven’t disappointed me yet, girl. We find other uses for the ones not ransomed, back home.”
“Kukar!” The raider leader says the name again. But his man steps over and grips Leonora once more, on the arm above her elbow, higher, more intimately.
That one is vicious, Marin thinks. Some of them will be. Theirs is not a life conducive to civility. Hardship and fighting and faith, mostly. He looks at the leader again, sees distaste. Some do think of themselves as beleaguered heroes in Senjan. It might be amusing, except that their courage is well known, and they do fight the Osmanlis for the emperor, or on behalf of farmers and villagers on the border all the time. And they had sent men to defend Sarantium before it fell, unlike most places in the western world. Including Seressa. Including Dubrava.
There is nothing tidy about the Senjani or their place in the world. Right now Marin doesn’t want to be reflecting upon that. He wants them gone. He will lose some cargo; he needs to keep the quantity acceptable. And it will be a disgrace to let them take the woman.
She isn’t Seressini, which helps, but her family will be wealthy, most likely, which doesn’t. He wonders how she ended up married to a doctor. A physician and a Mylasian aristocrat? It doesn’t square.
Marin leaves that for now. He is reconciling himself to negotiating a ransom on his deck, a price for the raiders leaving her behind. And then he’ll need to hope her family reimburses his own. That will depend on many things, and is hardly a certainty.
But then everything becomes much more uncertain, because why should men be permitted certainty in life, especially at sea?
—
PERO VILLANI WENT quickly up the ladder to the deck. Later he would wonder why he’d moved so fast. It wasn’t as if he could bring anything to a confrontation with pirates.
It had been clear what was happening. Strangers were striding about below deck, shouting, shifting and banging things. His heart was beating fast. You heard tales about piracy at sea. Seressa lived and breathed in fear of Asharite corsairs from the coastline below Esperaña, or these so-called heroes from Senjan across the narrow sea. The corsairs were worse. Men and women were taken into slavery by them. Almost never returned. Lived, died, on galleys or in Asharite lands. The Senjani just wanted ransom and goods.
Or revenge now? Because of those war galleys that had just come back after trying to starve them out. Bad luck, he thought, to be taken so soon after that failed adventure.
Was this to become his own failed adventure now? Ending before it began? He had no one to ransom him, was worth nothing to the raiders. Would they want paint pots and sketchbooks? Their portraits rendered in charcoal? Or—the thought occurred—would their well-known piety be offended if they learned he was going to Asharias to paint the grand khalif for coins and fame?
Perhaps best not mention that.
Up on deck he stayed by the rearmost hatch, conspicuously unarmed, a threat to no one. Hardly worth noticing, really. He had hurried into a tunic and trousers and pulled on his boots. His clothing, he thought, was much better than it was at home. Would they decide he had money?
Marin Djivo, whom he had come to admire, was speaking with the captain of the pirates when there was a commotion at the other hatch and Pero saw Leonora Miucci manhandled up to the deck by a raider. Her hair was unbound, exposed. She was barefoot, clad in an unbelted night robe.
Pero took an impulsive step forward, then remembered who he was, and where he was. This was not something an artist was going to be able to address. He swore under his breath. He had a sword here. It was below with his servant. He wasn’t very good with it.
The man gripping Signora Miucci was skinny, sour-faced, with unkempt hair. Pero was not going to think him any kind of hero. It pained him to see this woman even touched by such a man. She twisted to escape. Then the Senjani leader snapped a name and she was released. She spoke, in a voice cold and cutting—and suddenly patrician. And she wasn’t Seressini, it seemed.
Wouldn’t matter. Pero knew enough to know that. What would raiders care about her birthplace? Her voice would say money to the Senjani. He realized that she was at risk of being taken now. He looked an urgent appeal at Marin Djivo. Read a hard anger in the shipowner’s face.
There were about forty raiders on the deck, however. Four of their small boats surrounded the Blessed Ingacia like wolves around a solitary sheep. They were outnumbered here two to one, and they were seamen and merchants (and an artist and a doctor), not fighting men. This would need more than anger, Pero thought.
Then the doctor came on deck, and a mild morning turned dark.
—
IT WAS BRAVE BUT FOOLISH, and those two together, Danica thought, could get men killed.
The man who burst onto the deck of the Blessed Ingacia, behind Kukar and the woman, was holding a thin, bright surgeon’s knife.
He said, a voice with some authority, in fact, “You will unhand her now, or you are dead now!”
Kukar Miho had been raiding since he was a boy. His father and grandfather and Miho men for generations had been Senjani fighters.
He turned towards the voice. He did let the woman go. Did so in order to draw his sword and run the physici
an through with it, in the belly.
He pulled the blade out, twisting, as you were taught. Blood followed. The gutted man’s mouth gaped. He fell. The knife clattered on the deck.
It was too fast, too unexpected. They had been moving towards ransom talk, Danica was certain of it. That was what Senjan did with people like this woman. Ransoms negotiated and paid immediately, on the ship. Easier for everyone, no letters, no intermediaries, no time-consuming back-and-forth. They would take the coins and some of the Dubravae cargo, and go home. A successful first raid of the spring. Money for the town to buy food. Goods to resell up the coast . . .
Not now.
Oh, Jad! That limp-cock fool! she heard her grandfather snarl.
She saw the ship’s owner, the tall man, stride forward, reaching for his sword. The other woman was screaming. Danica looked at Hrant Bunic, her leader. His face had gone dark with fury.
“Kukar!” he roared.
The merchant was halfway across the deck—sword leaving its sheath—towards Kukar, who had spied on Danica once outside Senjan’s walls, thinking he was unseen, who was a crude, thoughtless, stupid man.
She loosed her arrow. Targeted him. Kukar Miho. Her raid companion. It struck him in the chest, an easy, short flight. Killed him instantly. An arrow to the heart will do that.
—
HE WAS NOT HER HUSBAND. He was dead. Her life was over, with his.
Leonora knelt beside Jacopo Miucci whom she had met only days before, and who had been so unexpectedly decent and kind. She was amazed at how desperately she was weeping on the deck of a ship in bright sunlight.
There was blood soaking her night robe, she realized. The man who had killed the doctor lay beside her, on his back. He had seized her from their small room below, gripped her in an ugly, insinuating manner, his hand on her an intolerable insult. There was an arrow in the raider’s chest. His mouth was open.
She couldn’t stop crying. Jacopo Miucci, in death, looked startled, affronted. He had come rushing up to save her with a surgeon’s knife—against raiders with swords.
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