The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  This request was met by a studied silence. Juster looked from one to the other; no one said a word. “Saker,” he said, pulling a face, “You disappoint me.”

  “I consider you a friend, but not all secrets are mine to share. My lord, will you take us to Kotabanta in the Summer Seas?”

  Sorrel was startled. It was surely a strange question to which Saker must already know the answer. Why would Lord Juster even consider doing such a thing?

  “Of course not!” Juster said, echoing her thought. “My job is here, separating cargoes from their Lowmian owners to the best of my buccaneering ability.”

  “Best of your privateering skills,” Saker corrected.

  From the way Juster chuckled, she guessed it was a shared joke. “Exactly so.” He turned to Ardhi to explain. “I have letters of marque from King Edwayn of Ardrone which permit such, er, piracy. Our aim is to make sure Lowmeer doesn’t corner the market on spices. Saker already knows this, so I have no idea why he thinks I would go to Kotabanta.”

  “I don’t. Not really. And because you won’t, I don’t think it wise to tell you the whole tale. Some things are better not known.”

  “What utter bilge rot! Knowledge empowers. Information is wealth and safety.” Suddenly Juster sounded seriously annoyed.

  “Perhaps,” Sorrel agreed, “but he’s right. There are secrets which are not ours to tell. All I can say about myself is that it is of utmost urgency that I reach Vavala as soon as possible. With Piper.”

  Juster considered that in silence, then turned to Saker. “And you, my friend?”

  “Ardhi and I must go on to the Summer Seas.”

  “Take a Pashali vessel from here to Javenka and arrange an ongoing leg from there. Do you have sufficient money?”

  “Hardly. I left everything on board Spice Winds. I doubt Lustgrader will restore anything to me.”

  “So you want money as well. Sometime you must tell me what happened to my rubies.”

  Juster wasn’t looking at Sorrel, which was just as well. Her face burned red with embarrassment. Saker had sold the rubies to supply her with the coin she needed.

  “You know whom I serve,” Saker said. “You know you’ll be paid back.”

  Juster glanced pointedly at Ardhi. “Do you know who gives this witan his orders?”

  “First time we meet, I tear his shirt,” Ardhi said. “I saw his medallion. Mystery for me then, but I find out he’s a witan. He works for his god.” He frowned. “Maybe that not all true. Now I think he works more for Lady Pontifect, not so much for this god.”

  Sorrel, not for the first time, was impressed by Ardhi’s acuity. He understands you better than you understand yourself, Saker. “Lord Juster,” she said, “the secret I hold, of who Piper’s parents are and what her parentage means, I hold for the Pontifect. You have my assurance that it is in Ardrone’s interest that I reach her. I still have some money that Saker gave me. I don’t know whether it will be enough.”

  “When I left Ardrone,” Juster said slowly, “Lady Mathilda was about to marry. You were her handmaiden. Now you turn up with a baby of an age to match a baby–if there was such a one–born some nine months or thereabouts after a royal wedding. My mind is—”

  “—jumping to unjustified conclusions!” Saker interrupted. “You will be glad to know that the Regala Mathilda gave birth, as is customary, in the presence of numerous court officials, to a son and heir. Piper is a girl.”

  “Ah. I’m relieved on that score, then. Consider it done, Mistress Sorrel. If you need money, I will supply it. Finding a safe berth for you might be much more problematical as ships from here to the Va-cherished Hemisphere are not suitable for a wayfaring lady travelling alone. The traders who ply the route are rough and ready. It might be easier and safer to go via the Pashalin Empire.”

  She sent an unhappy look to Saker.

  “You could go with Saker as far as Javenka,” Juster pointed out. “Javenka is closer to us now than Throssel. It’s not so bad, Mistress Sorrel. Pashali ships happily take passengers and look after them well. They ply back and forth regularly because Pashalin buys and sells goods here for the Va-cherished Hemisphere.”

  She stared at him, trying to take in all he was saying, a sick feeling rising up through her stomach.

  “Once you’re in Javenka,” he went on, “Pashali coastal vessels would take you to the start of the mastodon caravan route on the Bay of Kzyl and hence to the Principalities over the ice cap. Very safe, and you’d find it interesting.”

  She was appalled. “Interesting? I am not interested in it being interesting! I have a child to consider. Besides, it would take months!”

  “It would take you four months to get from here to Vavala anyway. Possibly six. Plus you could be waiting weeks, or even months right here in Karradar, for a suitable berth on a Lowmian or Ardronese ship with an honest captain prepared to take you as far as Ustgrind or Throssel and not treat you as the ship’s whore servicing the sailors. Forgive me for my bluntness, but it needed to be said.”

  She shot Saker a look of angry frustration. “This is all your fault!” Standing abruptly, she dropped Lord Juster a curtsy. “Forgive my rudeness, captain. You are generous indeed, and I am truly grateful. I never had any wish to be a burden to anyone. Now I must leave you to attend to Piper.”

  She left the room blinded by tears, unable to decide whether she was crying with despair or sheer uncontrollable rage. Va-damn you, Saker Rampion! If you’d kept your pizzle where it belongs, perhaps none of this would ever have happened.

  Saker slumped back in his chair, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut.

  Juster sent him a sidelong look. “Why,” he asked, “just an hour or two after being saved from a nasty form of torture, culminating in death by hanging, do you look about as happy as a mealworm on a fishhook?”

  “Maybe because that’s how I feel: as low as a mealworm. She’s right: I’m the one who involved her in this mess in the first place. If it hadn’t been for me, she’d be safe in Vavala by now, and as ridiculous as it may sound, the Va-cherished Hemisphere would be safer as well.”

  “Not all true,” Ardhi remarked. “Much my fault too. And Va-cherished Hemisphere is not safe.”

  “She didn’t deserve any of the things that have happened to her,” he replied. “She has saved my life. And it has cost her dearly.” Sweet Va, what had he ever brought to her in return, save misery?

  He thought back at all she had done to keep him alive, from the first time in an Ardronese courtroom, then risking herself on the Chervil moors and later in Ustgrind Castle in the Regala’s solar, not to mention bringing Juster to his aid just then.

  “Come to think of it, she’s actually saved my neck four times. And yes, you are to blame too, Ardhi. I don’t know how either of us can compensate her. Fiddle-me-witless, Juster, how can we send her off on a journey halfway around the known world, with a baby and no protector?”

  Juster snorted. “Sounds as if she doesn’t need one. Not if she can repeatedly rescue a swordsman agent of the Pontifect! Sounds to me as if you are the one who needs help. She has a glamour for a start. You did know that, I suppose?”

  “Of course I did,” he snapped. He took a deep breath and added more calmly, “Would you consider giving up this particular privateering jaunt and taking her to Vavala instead, if I could give you a good enough reason?”

  “There’s no possible reason that could be great enough. If we lose this spice war, Ardrone will be a subject nation of Lowmeer economically, and we’ll all be doffing our hats to the Regal. I must reduce the Lowmian profits long enough for Prince Ryce to get our new fleet in the water! Then with copper cladding on our ships to prevent ship’s worm, and our knowledge of how to prevent scurvy, we will rule the oceans and the trade and the wealth, not Lowmeer.”

  “You are one ship and one man. How much can you achieve? Let’s say you do catch Lustgrader’s fleet on the way home. Five ships, one a fully-armed galleon. Are you going to sink them all
?”

  “Well, it used to be I’d steal what I could and run for home. Not any more. And I am not one man. I have the best crew afloat.”

  “So?”

  “First, odds are that the Lowmian galleon and the carrack will not make it back from the Summer Seas. They are old, and ship’s worm will make honeycombs of their hulls. If they do arrive here on the homeward journey, they’ll have so much marine growth on their bottoms, they’ll be as slow as grain barges going upstream. First decent storm, and they’re gone.

  “Secondly, the Lowmians are so determined not to learn anything from the Va-forsaken Hemisphere, they’ll lose at least half their crew to scurvy and fevers. No one on any ship of mine ever sickens with scurvy, and few die of the Fitful Fever, because I know how to prevent them.” He nodded to Ardhi. “Thanks to lascars, who told us about Karradar limes for scurvy, and about an infusion of the bark of a certain tree for the fever.”

  Ardhi nodded to Saker in agreement.

  “So,” Juster continued, “when they call in to revictual here, on their way home, your Lowmian fleet will have–at best–three ships and whatever’s left of a sickly crew. It will be like stealing from a child. What I do then is put all their crew on one ship of theirs and let them escape to Lowmeer. I’ll even let them have the cargo that’s on board. I happen to believe it’d be counter-productive to impoverish Lowmeer, a philosophy your employer promotes, I believe.”

  Saker nodded. He’d heard Fritillary say as much.

  “We’re waiting for Kesleer’s earlier fleet at the moment. If I have too much cargo for the ships I’ve seized, I pay the Pashali merchants here to deliver the captured cargo to their caravan terminus in Kzyl Bay, and it finally arrives in the Va-cherished Hemisphere on the backs of mastodons. Once we have a fine merchant fleet, we will bypass Pashalin, of course. But that’s all in the future.”

  Saker shook his head, bemused. “That’s the… the most curdled crazy thing I think I’ve ever heard. The same spice cargo goes from the Summer Seas to here in Karradar, bypassing Pashalin, then sets sail for Lowmeer, only to fall prey to you, or so you hope. It then comes back here where you now own it and send it all the way to Pashalin! From there it has to cross a number of Va-cherished lands until finally some of it ends up in Ardrone.”

  “And the profits end up in Ardronese pockets, don’t forget that,” Juster said.

  “Not to mention Pashalin’s,” Saker added.

  Ardhi said quietly, “Me, I wonder what price is paid in islands like mine.”

  Saker was stilled. That sounded very much like a pointed play on words, and he had an uncomfortable feeling it wasn’t accidental. Pickles ’n’ hay, life is complicated sometimes.

  “We Chenderawasi folk till the soil and grow the spice trees and pick and dry the spices,” Ardhi said.

  He thought of the words Ardhi had spoken to Juster in Pashali, and said, “Ardhi, I’d like you to trust me. I want to talk to Lord Juster alone. Do you mind?”

  The lascar rose to his feet. The smile he gave was knowing. “I hope your betrayal of secret has good result, no?”

  “I would have thought you were confident,” Saker snapped. “Confident that your blistering sorcery would win the day.”

  Ardhi shook his head soberly, the smile vanished. “Sri Kris, he tries, but in him, there is little bit of the Raja’s regalia, so witchery is also little bit. One plume, though, has much witchery, so much more power. We lost all four plumes. I not sure what happen now. We have only the power in Sri Kris.”

  He turned and let himself out of the wardroom.

  “Translate what he said to me in Pashali earlier, about himself,” Juster said. “I’m not sure I understood it all.”

  “Something like this: ‘Not a mere seaman, my lord, but a graduate from the world’s most prestigious university. Youthful, perhaps, but a man already old with the weight of the history he carries on his shoulders. Not so lowly either, as counted by men who think birth is important, for I am the grandson of a ruler. A fool, though, who pays yet for his foolishness. You may call me a fool, then, and speak the truth; they call me si goblok where I come from. That means: the idiot.’ ”

  “Ah.” His expression was wry. I had the gist correct. Si goblok. Delightful expression. And I suppose you know what happened to make him call himself a fool.”

  “Yes, he did tell me.”

  Juster eyed him moodily. “I’m guessing this is all about who Piper is.”

  “Juster, there isn’t one secret. There are several. Ardhi’s secret is all about feathers. Plumes of the paradise birds found in the Chenderawasi Archipelago, which is the only place where nutmeg trees grow. On board Spice Winds there are three such plumes that belong to Ardhi. He abandoned them to save my life today, and they meant everything to him. Possibly his life. The debt I just racked up to him is, well, huge.” He ran a worried hand over his hair. “On Sentinel, that’s the Lowmian galleon, there’s another plume that used to belong to Ardhi.”

  “So? They are valuable… why? To adorn ladies’ hair-dos? Gentlemen’s hats?”

  “All four are sorcerous artefacts. Or witchery ones, perhaps.”

  “Superstitious nonsense?”

  “No, unfortunately, and I know that for a fact.”

  “Nasty. So are you going to tell me the whole story?”

  There was a knock at the door before he could reply, and Cranald stuck his head in. “Cap’n, seems the Karradar Council wants to see you both. Now.”

  22

  Secrets

  Mathilda smiled at the Regal and popped a sweetbread into his mouth. “Your favourite,” she said and dabbed at his lips with a napkin when saliva dribbled on to his chin. He was having trouble with his rotted teeth, so she made sure all the softest dishes coming up from the kitchens were also those most rich in creamy sauces, or made with thick gravy laden with liver and kidneys, or topped with minced oysters and shellfish.

  Unfortunately, although he ate the foods wolfishly, he never appeared to have the slightest dyspepsia or imbalance of humours as a result.

  He waved her away as he swallowed. “Enough, enough,” he said. “It is late, and I must dress. A Regal’s responsibilities are never done, my child. Would you ring for that pesky manservant of mine?”

  “Of course, Your Grace. Although I really think Torjen is getting too old and decrepit to look after you properly! You ought to retire him and find somebody younger and more able.”

  She had little expectation that he would follow her advice; he was far too fond of Torjen. The wretched man was the one person she feared because she knew he didn’t like her influence. If he were ever suspicious…

  My plan is not working, she thought as she left the Regal’s apartments a while later. He’s never going to die from a surfeit of rich food, confound him.

  Vilmar might have looked sickly, but he was like a stone pillar with a crumbling and mottled exterior and a core of tough granite. So what was she going to do? She didn’t think she could stand another month of his pawing hands, his dribbling chin, his rotten breath and his continual disapproval of anything at all frivolous or fun.

  I’ve had enough!

  She might have put up with him with more equanimity if there’d been some possibility she would conceive again. Another son would make her position even more secure. However, he called for her to share his bed less and less frequently, and when he did, the result was often inadequate. He was pathetic.

  Still, at least she had no cause to worry about the health of the Prince-regal. Karel was her joy, as plump and healthy as a baby could be. He’d be a fine Regal one day, and she’d be the one to educate and teach him, not Vilmar and his sanctimonious relatives and advisers.

  First, though, she had to find a way to hasten his father’s death.

  She had no compunction about that. Why should she? He’d bought her like a gem in Goldsmith Street, without ever asking her how she felt. And afterwards? Not once had he consulted her feelings about anything. He and th
at canker of a cousin of his, the wards-dame Friselda, they determined who she could talk to, what she wore, what she read and what she did with her days.

  Well, she’d show them. She wasn’t quite ready to use rat poison yet, but it was a possibility, especially if she could persuade Vilmar to send Torjen into retirement.

  Gerelda, cursing the untidy writing of a rural cleric who had sent a letter to the Regal two hundred years previously, sighed and stretched. Va, how she wished the various clerical schools had standardised handwriting conventions, not to mention spelling. Still, she was learning a lot from her research. Too much, perhaps. Sometimes it was hard to find the gems among the dross. There were clues and odd pieces of information that were building up a frightening picture, but Fritillary Reedling had been clear: she wanted proof of the Vollendorns’ involvement in twin murder and their supposed pact with A’Va, or the so-called Bengorth’s Law that all Vollendorn heirs were supposed to swear to before their coronation. She wanted proof of the Fox family’s involvement in the kind of sorcery that could produce men like the gaunt recruiter of lancers. Unfortunately, there was one thing Gerelda was now certain about: the Vollendorns and the Dire Sweepers and the Foxes were all diabolically clever at keeping secrets. They never put anything in writing and were apparently very skilled at making sure no one else did either.

  “Agent Gerelda, I think I might have found something.”

  She raised her head to look across the table to where Perie had been poring over a hand-stitched book. Over the past month and a half of her labours in the castle library, his diligence at his task had surprised her. She’d expected the research to bore him, but on the contrary, the library fascinated him and he was content to spend hours searching the shelves for anything that would help their task, so long as he could also spend time wandering the town. She’d worried at first that his lack of experience in a big city might make him vulnerable, but soon realised his previous wanderings with his father, not to mention his tragedy, had left him with a healthy scepticism of all he was told and a shrewd caution around strangers.