The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  With the attention of both men elsewhere, Sorrel quickly slipped the oar wholly free and leant it against her body, glamouring her nonexistent skirts wide to block any view of it. Banstel, his attention fixed on Fels, didn’t notice. Fels was looking ahead and Voster couldn’t see her because of the position of the sail.

  “Your last chance, Fels,” she said. “You either set course for that Ardronese ship, or you die, right here on the sea in this Va-less land. Your choice.”

  Fels looked over his shoulder at her, and smirked. “You ain’t got neither the brawn nor the brav’ry.”

  She looked up at the sail, watching for the right moment. “You’re prepared to risk that? You wouldn’t be the first man I’ve killed.” Va guide me…

  “What you goin’ to do? Knock us senseless with your wit?”

  “Fels, come on,” Banstel protested. “You’re talking murder. I didn’t sign up for no murder.”

  She gripped the oar tight with both hands. The wind gusted, ruffling the surface in scurries, and filled the sail. The boat heeled in answer. Fels, gripping the sheet, leaned outwards over the gunwale to balance himself against the pull.

  Sorrel stood, feet wide. She dropped the glamour of her dress and poured her witchery into an image of her face. Not a woman now, but a monster of teeth and tongue, maw dripping saliva, eyes bulging and hair a twist of hissing snakes. And she swung the oar with all her strength.

  Fels never saw it coming. He glimpsed her movement and turned to look, but then his horrified gaze never shifted from her face. His jaw dropped; he leaned away, the beginnings of a scream starting in his throat. That was when the paddle struck him full in the face, smashing his nose and breaking his teeth. He dropped the sheet, the line spun loose and the sail whipped free. The boom swung across the boat. Sorrel didn’t see it crack Voster on the side of the head, but she heard the sickening sound of it. Fels, his balance upset, toppled over the gunwale into the water without the scream ever breaking free.

  Sorrel herself had tumbled between the seats, dropping the oar. She was an arm’s length from Voster. He was flat on his back in the bottom of the boat, blood streaming down his face. She knelt, checked to see that he was unconscious, then looked up at Banstel. He was still seated, hand still on the tiller, gaping at her, even though she’d dropped all pretence of her glamour. His face was so white, she thought he might faint. The dinghy was tossing in the waves, the sail hanging loose.

  “I’m no monster, Banstel. It’s all just a Va-bestowed glamour witchery.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her words.

  She turned her attention back to Voster. Dump him over the side?

  That would be murder. Another murder.

  But if she didn’t do anything and he recovered consciousness, he could easily overpower her and kill her and Piper. She vacillated, feeling ill.

  I am not supposed to misuse my witchery…

  Just then the boat rocked violently, knocking her off balance again. She sat down hard, landing in the water sloshing along the hull under the seats.

  She looked around wildly. The portside gunwale dipped low, shipping still more seawater on board. She tumbled towards that side as the boat tipped. Piper, unsettled, began to scream. Hands grasped the gunwale and then a leg and an elbow appeared.

  Sweet acorns, Fels is still alive—

  He was intent on climbing back into the dinghy.

  Scrambling up, she reached for the bloodstained oar. The boat pitched still more, and she went down on one knee fighting to keep her balance. Fels’ head appeared over the edge. She aimed a blow at him, but the blade slammed into the gunwale instead.

  Precariously balanced half in and half out, he grabbed at it. They battled, pulling in opposite directions. Piper screamed.

  Sorrel let go of the shaft. Taken by surprise, Fels slipped backwards into the water, but kept one arm hooked over the gunwale. She snatched up the second oar and stood balanced, one foot braced on the seat amidships, and leaned over the side of the boat to jab at his face with the blade, not once, but repeatedly, thrusting it downwards with a savagery she had not known that she possessed.

  The first oar drifted away, but he gripped tightly to the boat with one hand while his other made ineffective grabs for the oar she was wielding. Frantic, beyond thought, she hammered him with the edge of the blade. His nose and mouth poured blood, then his cheekbone caved under her blow. Her next strike slammed into his eye socket. When she withdrew the blade, an eye hung loose on his cheek. He tried to shout, to scream, but his swollen lips, blood-filled mouth and broken teeth only allowed spluttered gurgles.

  She stopped, exhausted. Dropping the oar, she knelt and stared at the battered remains of his face. Only then did she realise he was unconscious–or perhaps dead. One hand was still gripping the gunwale, fingernails hooked underneath the edge. She began to shake uncontrollably. Slumping back into the boat, she stared at Banstel. He still held the tiller, petrified with shock. Or perhaps terror. Fear of her, of what she might do.

  Dear Va, am I a monster?

  Piper’s screaming finally penetrated their consciousness. She reached for the baby, but Banstel was closer. He let go of the tiller and, crooning, picked up the baby to cradle her in his arms where she began to quieten.

  Sorrel turned back to Fels and unhooked his fingers, one by one, until his body slipped into the water and drifted away, face down. She clambered over to Voster and touched him. He was still breathing, still unconscious. Only then did she look back at Banstel.

  “Wh-who are you? he asked, his face ashen.

  She shook her head. She no longer knew. Her whole body was shaking. Her stomach heaved and she emptied her breakfast over the edge of the boat.

  18

  Imprisoned

  The ship’s brig was not designed for comfort or any possibility of escape. It was little more than an iron cage built on the orlop, the deck immediately above the hold. In addition to the brig, the orlop was where the ship’s stores and extra sails were kept, an area of the ship out of bounds to anyone without a specific reason for being there. It was cut off from the decks above by a bolted hatch cover, its contents the responsibility of the ship’s constable.

  Saker had hidden in the galley, sufficiently worried not to sleep, but his wakefulness had not helped him in the end. When he heard the ship’s constable and four able seamen searching for him in the galley’s larder he did have time to slip out through the rubbish hatch, but elected instead to climb across the still-warm top of the galley stove into the seaman’s mess. Once there, still undetected, he headed for Sorrel’s cuddy. Four more swabbies, waiting for him at the foot of the companionway, nabbed him after a short and brutal fight in the confined space. He emerged with a bloodied nose, bruised ribs and the ignominy of being relieved of his dagger, sword and shoes. More disastrously, they’d also found the picklocks he kept in a hidden pocket of his trouser leg. They then escorted him to the brig and left him there. No one had bothered to tell him why he was incarcerated–or for how long.

  It didn’t matter; he knew why. Sorrel had been right: Lustgrader had realised how to rid himself of his compulsion and now he was about to exact his revenge on the man who had laid it on him.

  I suppose I ought to be flattered that he sent so many men to arrest me.

  Once he’d tested the lock and all the ironwork and was sure there was no way out of the brig without his picklocks, he settled down to wait. And wait. He castigated himself for not doing something, anything, after Sorrel had told him about the captain’s trip to the galleon, but even now he wasn’t sure what he could have done. There had been no possibility of stealing a boat undetected–and how could he have ever left her to attempt the long swim to shore?

  Time passed slowly in the dark.

  He could hear many of the normal sounds of a ship at anchor, but no light penetrated to his prison. If he sat still, the rats grew bold, so he stood and kept moving in order to keep them at bay. Not that it was hard to
stay awake; the turmoil of his thoughts precluded any temptation to doze. Sorrel and Piper… Involved in this mess because of him and Ardhi. Not to mention that wretched, Va-forsaken dagger, pox on’t!

  At last, the dawning day was heralded by the ship’s constable opening the hatch for the cook’s boy to enter so he could fetch breakfast supplies from the barrels housed on the orlop. This morning it was pickled herrings. The constable supervised, ordering the boy not to talk to Saker.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” Saker asked.

  “Nothing you’ll enjoy,” the man replied. “Wouldn’t expect no ease into death, if I were you. The captain’s plenty angry.”

  With that pessimistic opinion, he left with the lad, and Saker settled down to wait some more.

  Patience and I, he thought disgustedly, have never been at ease with each other. Neither did he favour being dependent on others for rescue, and yet he suspected his only hope was Ardhi. A lascar was right at the bottom in the hierarchy of the ship’s command, but that was an advantage Ardhi often exploited. Everyone overlooked a lascar. His shipmates treated him as if he were an exceptionally stupid child and not even the fact that he was teaching the factors the basics of the Pashali language altered their erroneous perception. Deceived by his apparent lack of skill at speaking the tongue of the Va-cherished, unfeigned when Ardhi had first left Chenderawasi, they were unaware that his linguistic stumbling was mostly now all an act. His accent might still be thick, but his comprehension was excellent.

  Ardhi, I hope you can see a way out of this for me because, by the sweet oak, I can’t see any other solution that’s going to help me out of this one.

  When the constable returned with other crew members to open the brig and escort Saker to the quarterdeck, the ship’s bell was ringing, telling him it was only halfway through the forenoon watch. He was still blinking in the light when they came to a halt outside the captain’s stateroom, where one of the guards tied his hands behind his back with a piece of cord.

  A wise precaution: one of his half-formed plans had been to seize Lustgrader as a hostage for his own release. Instead, a moment later, he was pushed down to his knees in front of the captain’s desk by the same tar.

  Lustgrader looked up from the flintlock pistol he was holding, then laid it carefully down on the desk next to its ramrod and powder flask. “You may go,” he told the guards, brushing a few specks of gunpowder from his fingers while he waited for them to leave.

  Consign you to a choiceless hell, Saker thought. I hate theatricals. Nonetheless, he silently cursed the stench of cockroaches and rats clinging to his clothes in a foul perfume, exacerbating his irritation at appearing unkempt and barefoot before a man who wore starched white collar and cuffs.

  “Well,” he drawled, after noting Lustgrader’s nose wrinkling with distaste, “you should have let me have a wash before desecrating your private quarters with the disgusting smell of the ship’s brig. Of course, you could also have sent your sailors to scrub the place out from time to time. Oh, and if you don’t deal with the rats soon, you might have a problem with your food supplies by the time you get to the Spicerie.”

  Lustgrader gave him a look designed to shrivel the spirit of a crewman, but Saker chose to ignore it. “Would I be right,” he asked instead, “if I assumed you worked out how to free yourself of the power of the golden plume?”

  “You are scum beyond contempt,” Lustgrader said, his fury contorting his face. “What kind of a man chooses to serve the evil of A’Va and that vile feather? You brought Va-forsaken sorcery on board my ship! You are a traitor to our nation and a traitor to our faith. There is no fate too terrible for a leprous wretch like you.”

  A pox on our labels, he thought. We’re the ones who named half the world “Va-forsaken” in our unthinking hubris. We dismissed an entire hemisphere without even knowing its truths. We showed our contempt for all who live there with those words.

  Briefly he contemplated pointing out that Lustgrader now had power to coerce someone too, but decided the captain might not be aware that giving the plume away not only freed him, but also enthralled another. If so, it was probably better that he didn’t know.

  Instead he said, “I didn’t bring Va-forsaken witcheries to our hemisphere. You did, when you allowed your crew to kill what was forbidden to them. Think on that, before you return to Ustgrind with more such feathers. The plumes could spell the end of law and order in our land.”

  Lustgrader paled.

  “Ah, that made you think, didn’t it?”

  During the night he’d considered explaining that he was in the service of the Pontifect, but it would be difficult to prove. Early in the voyage, he’d feared someone on board might rifle through his papers and discover he was not actually a Lowmian bookkeeper, so he’d destroyed everything that connected him to her.

  Aloud, he said, “Do what you will to me, but don’t blame the woman for my sins. She had nothing to do with this.” He wanted desperately to ask where she was, but resisted giving Lustgrader the satisfaction of hearing him beg. “And the child–a child is always an innocent.”

  There was no softening of Lustgrader’s implacable malice. “I doubt that,” he said. “Devil-kin is what springs to my mind when I see that hussy and her ill-gotten babe. She has already been dealt with, and her death was more merciful than she deserved. Let no one say that Lustgrader takes pleasure in torturing a woman or child.”

  Shock pulsed through his blood. He leapt to his feet then, his hands straining at the bonds. Lustgrader seized the pistol from the desk, and cocked it in one fluid movement.

  Saker found himself looking down the barrel a bare hand-span from his face. “You lie!” Sweet Va, please tell me he lies! Lustgrader, if you’ve killed them, I’ll see you gutted.

  It must be a lie; Ardhi would never have let her die. The dagger would never have let her die. Fobbing hells, if it came to that Sorrel would have fought like a cornered cat; she had her glamour. Va, tell me I am right.

  Lustgrader looked him up and down. “So I have finally penetrated your calm. Believe me, the woman is dead and that’s no more and no less than she deserves.”

  “The child?”

  “Likewise. The spawn of a lightskirt deserves no pity.”

  He began to shake. A black hole with no bottom had opened up and he was falling into it, emotions tumbling. The blackness closed in on him, crushing the air from his lungs. Only force of will allowed him to drag in a breath. He gasped and whispered, because a whisper was all he could manage, “Leak on you, you whoreson! You’re a dead man, Lustgrader. I swear it.”

  No, I won’t believe it. I have more faith in Ardhi and Sorrel.

  “Fear not, factor. You won’t live long enough to grieve, let alone kill me. You are to be keel-raked.” The smugness of his triumph was sickening. “This morning, as a matter of fact. Have you ever seen that done?”

  He couldn’t stop shaking. His longing to put his hands around the captain’s neck and choke the life out of him was so strong he couldn’t understand why the bonds around his wrists weren’t torn apart.

  Through teeth he couldn’t seem to unclench, he said, “No, I can’t say I have. Keel-raking is a filthy Lowmian practice and I’m an Ardronese witan in the employ of her reverence the Pontifect.” He did know sailors often died in the process.

  He struggled against the cords that bound him, but sailors knew their knots.

  Lustgrader lowered the pistol, but it was still cocked at the ready. “I don’t care who you say you are because I doubt you know how to tell the truth. I will admit I never thought any crime committed on any ship of mine deserved such a cruel punishment, until now. Did you know that sometimes the miscreant has his head ripped off in the process? At the very least, he is skinned by the barnacles on the underside of the ship. Painful, I imagine. You will be glad to know that I don’t intend to behead you in such a fashion. That would be too… merciful. After you’ve been keel-raked, you will be revived. Then we’ll hang
you from the yardarm, quarter your body and throw the pieces to the fish. May Va have mercy on your filthy soul.” His fingers drummed on the surface of his desk as if he could not contain the rage that fuelled him.

  Oh, fuck. Saker felt himself sink still deeper into the blackness of the abyss. Oh, fobbing hells. Sorrel, please, you have to have been better at saving your own life than I am at saving mine. For your sake, but most of all for Piper’s…

  Every thought of Piper bruised his soul, so he thrust them away. He had no notion how he was ever going to live through the day ahead, let alone escape the ship, but he was damned if he’d die quietly.

  Survive. Va, show me how to survive. While there’s a single breath left in my body, I’ll fight.

  It was hot up on the deck. The pitch-and-hemp caulking between the planking burned his bare feet, forcing him to stand on one leg at a time. He steadied his breathing and looked around. One of his escort still gripped his upper arm tightly, fearing perhaps that he would try to leap into the ocean.

  From the number of men on the deck, he guessed the whole crew had been assembled to witness his punishment. As his glance shifted from one man to another, he saw a whole gamut of expressions: sympathy, anger, anticipation, indifference, dread, nausea. Several of the factors and the officers, men he’d come to know well during the voyage, refused to catch his eye. Cultheer the merchant was openly furious. The bo’sun was more nervous than angry, which was odd. He wondered if there was a rumour spreading about sorcery and his hold over Captain Lustgrader. Now that the captain was himself again, and he and Sorrel were in trouble, that was a distinct possibility.

  Sorrel. She can’t be dead.

  He looked beyond them to the other moored ships in the bay, all of them closer to shore. Lustgrader had not yet changed the anchorage of Spice Winds to a more convenient proximity to the jetty and warehouses. Lord Juster’s Golden Petrel was still in the bay, but too far away to be of any help. The bumboats, which had been floating around them the day before and were still flocking around the other ships of the Lowmian fleet, had apparently been warned away from Spice Winds.