Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  I returned the tray to the galley, swiping an apple on my way out in hopes that Hlanan would get in trouble for forcing me on board. Munching on the fruit, I returned to the deck and oozed along the gangway, keeping a wary eye for dangers—and Hlanan.

  The wind had come up strong in the bright, clean air. Several sailors clung to yards high above, calling to one another as they unreefed the sails, which bellied out in wind-filled curves. Near the base of the tallest mast a grizzled man bellowed orders in a voice that would frighten a stone. Yet not twenty paces from him two well-dressed females stood at the rail looking out to sea, as if they were alone on a terrace at some castle. The sailors paid them no more attention than they paid the sailors.

  When I was five paces away, the ladies turned from the rail, one’s skirts billowing out like the sails above. Their faces changed, and I laughed aloud at the contrast. The yellow-haired one in the fancy gown looked affronted, and ostentatiously drew away from me as if I was a giant slime bug. The short-nosed one was Thianra. She gave me a welcoming smile, and started right in with the questions. She had to be related to Hlanan!

  “Good morning, Lhind. Have you ever been aboard a ship before?”

  “No.” Since hers was an easy question, and she hadn’t forced me onto the yacht, I made her the sort of grand bow I’d seen some of the merchants give the Mayor on First Day of the Spring Fair. She laughed and made a dainty curtsey, incongruous in her unremarkable blue jacket and riding trousers. “And, good morning yourself.”

  “Thianra, you aren’t going to speak to this revolting creature,” the other managed to drawl and sigh at the same time.

  “He is a guest, Princess, as are we,” Thianra asserted gently.

  “Next time maybe the pirates’ll take her with them, if she prefers their company,” I said promptly. “Would serve the pirates right.”

  The princess gave me a sour look and stalked away. Thianra turned an observant gaze my way. “Princess Kressanthe isn’t usually quite so rude. She’s slept badly since that frightening attack.”

  “No matter.” I made a grand sweep with one hand, dismissing the Princess of Pouters. “I’m sour myself, having been forced onto this yacht entirely against my will.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “It’s just the unlikely combination. Thievery, and Thesreve . . . ” She looked around. “And magic,” she added quietly. “Hlanan, who’s an old friend of mine, did tell me about that.”

  “Thieves can steal a lot more than gold,” I said.

  She tipped her head pensively, her air once again reminding me of Hlanan, though in every other way they were different: he tallish and slender, she medium height and roundly compact, he very brown, she with paler skin and lighter eyes. Well, maybe there was a slight resemblance in the fact that both had wide, thoughtful brows. “I think he wished to offer you a chance at a better life.”

  The brow could be accidental, and so could the air of question, as well as their manner, as if we were equals. Disgusting as he was, I understood Rajanas’s behavior better, and beyond avoiding him I did not have to waste a thought on him. These two made me uneasy. “Hlanan’s related to you, isn’t he?” I asked.

  Her brows arched in surprise. “Yes, but few know that fact. Can I ask you to keep it to yourself?” She was not only assuming equality, but trust.

  I hated that.

  But I liked her.

  So I shrugged. “No harm done. I’m mum. Anyway, you won’t be seeing any more of me soon’s we hit port.”

  She began to say something else when a shadow darkened the corner of my vision. I ducked, keeping my back to a mast as Thianra turned and smiled up at Rajanas. He’d come up as quiet as a cat. I oozed to her other side, keeping her between me and the Rotten Road-Apple.

  “Hiding behind an unarmed bard?” he inquired pleasantly.

  “Why not?” I retorted. “And she’s not unarmed, she carries at least one knife. Also, I wouldn’t have to hide at all if someone hadn’t forced me on this tub.”

  His eyes narrowed as he smiled. “Interesting that you noticed. Few do.” I gulped inwardly, disgusted with myself, as he made a suave gesture. In annoyance I mentally priced his rings. That ruby alone would feed me for three seasons.

  Thianra surprised me then by putting a protective hand on my shoulder. “Kressanthe has been complaining to you, has she not? Don’t be angry with Lhind. The princess was horribly rude.” I had no idea what game Thianra and Hlanan were playing, but at least their rules seemed to be fair.

  “She has indeed,” Rajanas said. “But I guessed what had happened, and I stand more in her disfavor than this little thief does, for informing her that she got what she deserved. So I can hardly chastise him for angering her.” His tone to her after his words to me was like winter to spring. “So I am not here as executioner, but as emissary. Hlanan thought the boy might like to see the aidlar, and sent me to fetch him down.”

  Thianra smiled. “Oh, yes. You’ll like Tir, Lhind. So beautiful, and very rare this far south.”

  She walked away, but before I could run, Rajanas snapped out his hand and closed five steel-band fingers around my arm. In spite of his lazy air, he could move pretty fast. Disgusted with myself for not keeping well out of his reach, I went along without fighting.

  When we got to the stairway leading below, he stopped and held me against the wooden rail so that I had to face him. He said in a low voice, “It’s clear you’ve a past. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve one as well. But understand this. There will indeed be no retribution for your conduct toward Princess Kressanthe, but I warn you against further baiting of her. You can contrive to stay out of her way until we reach port.”

  I shrugged. He must have considered that agreement enough; he loosened his grip and with a mocking air of deference, indicated for me to precede him downstairs.

  4

  Several doors opened off a narrow hallway. One of the doors stood open, and we went in.

  This cabin was larger than mine. Paintings graced the walls, and Hlanan sat cross-legged on a wide, spacious bunk, next to neatly folded counterpanes. Behind him the little window they called a scuttle stood open, and salt air blew in, ruffling his fine brown hair.

  When he saw me he smiled a welcome, and gestured toward one of the carved shelves near the painted ceiling. There perched a long-bodied bird with brilliant white feathers tipped with dark gray shading to black, a seed-picker’s beak and eyes like the ruby in Rajanas’s ring.

  “This is Tir, Lhind,” Hlanan said, pride warming his quiet voice.

  “Good mor-row, good mor-row,” the bird croaked.

  Staring in fascination, I entered slowly. Memory stirred in me, just as it did when I heard certain kinds of music. Had I ever seen such a creature? I was instantly sure I’d dreamed of one.

  The bird fluttered its wings, then flew from its high perch to the edge of a chair near me. It looked at me from one eye then the other, and without warning a voice said inside my head:

  Hrethan!

  The same voice that had spoken in my head the night of the pirate attack. This time, the voice radiated recognition.

  Yes, you hear me. You are Hrethan, in false guise—

  Though I had always been able to hear the thoughts of creatures, never before had one contacted me. And no one, ever, had questioned my disguise.

  I clapped my hand over my ears and backed away. When I saw Hlanan react with alarm, I realized he hadn’t heard the words—he’d been startled by my movements. His smile faded into question, and Rajanas’s eyes narrowed intently.

  I dropped my hands and pretended to stumble against the strong yawing of the yacht. Turning my eyes to the bird, I answered in my mind: I deny I am anything but what I appear.

  You are Hrethan, the bird answered, flapping its wings agitatedly.

  Afraid it would squawk its words out loud, I shouted in my mind, DON’T TELL THEM. And, because I was frightened by this totally unexpected attack from an unexpected source, I tried to
force the other mind out. Something flicked down inside my brain, like a little door or an inner eyelid, and once again I heard only my own thoughts.

  The bird promptly shrilled in distress.

  “What’s wrong, Tir?” Hlanan asked in a soothing voice, his eyes wide with question, his manner evocative of surprised wariness as he flicked glances from the bird to me and back again. Holding out his arm, he murmured, “Lhind is our friend. Don’t be frightened.” He spoke like one would quiet a frightened baby.

  So he and the bird didn’t talk mind to mind. He had no idea what the bird thought— how much the bird knew.

  I edged toward the door as the bird settled on Hlanan’s arm and croaked, “Lhind good! Lhind good!”

  Hlanan’s perplexity eased to a tentative smile, but his gaze was still speculative as he said, “There. Whatever happened, it’s all right now.”

  But it wasn’t. The bird kept flapping and trilling.

  “Must be his smell,” came Rajanas’s dry voice—from right behind me. Even more quiet than I, he’d moved to block the door. “The distinctive aroma of vintage thief would upset anyone, obviously even a bird.”

  “Rather smell than have the face of a wart-nosed slime-dweller,” I retorted under my breath.

  “What’s that you’re muttering?”

  “I wish you’d take that cowl off, Lhind,” Hlanan interrupted Rajanas’s laughing challenge. “It rides so low on your brow I find it difficult to read your expression. Perhaps you aren’t really scowling as much as it makes you look—” As he spoke, he reached toward me, as if to help me take it off.

  “No!” I said, and I dove under Rajanas’s arm toward the door.

  At once those steel-band fingers closed on my arm, and Rajanas pulled me back in. I twisted around and kicked his shin so hard I bruised my toes.

  Giving a grunt of surprise, Rajanas thrust me further inside the room and let me go. So they wanted a fight? Backing up so I could keep them both in view, I whipped out my knife and crouched, waiting.

  “What? Where’d he get that knife?” Hlanan said, looking from the flapping bird to me. “Tir? What’s wrong?”

  Rajanas sank down onto a stool bolted to the bulkhead, eyeing me in faint surprise. “Probably has a dozen of ’em in those clothes,” he said with a soft laugh. “So you think the prospect of a bare head is a matter for steel, eh, my noisome young miscreant?”

  Hlanan sighed. “Put away your knife, Lhind. I am sorry. I should have remembered that even an underage, half-starved thief has a sense of dignity. If you object so strenuously, then we shall allow the subject to drop.”

  Rajanas laughed, waving a hand lazily at me. “As well. Doubtless whatever he hides is sufficiently loathsome if he prefers that grimy item as a mask.”

  “Loathsome toe-mold yourself,” I snorted, walked slowly past him. He did not move, merely watched. Keeping a suspicious eye on him, I reached the doorway, then ducked out, slamming the door behind me.

  I headed for the deck, limping on my numb foot, but when I reached the stairway to the open air, I faltered. Nobody was following me, and I knew the only way to get answers to some of the questions crowding my mind would be to catch the cause unawares. So I sneaked back and listened at the door.

  They were not speaking in Chelan.

  “—slippery little bug,” Rajanas was saying.

  “And his remarks and actions remind me very much of us when we were that age,” Hlanan returned. “You should know as well as I do that people with lives balanced between hunger and danger grow up a lot faster than most.”

  “Or they don’t grow up,” Rajanas acknowledged, with one of his sardonic laughs. “So what are you thinking now? You know your thief has led a thief’s life. He’s entertaining, but useless.”

  “No, that he’s not. Have you forgotten his illusion when the Brotherhood attacked us?”

  “His one trick. And it is a good one, I’ll admit. But of what use to us? The sooner you give up this foolish plan of yours, the sooner we can get back to matters of real import, such as Dhes-Andis’s prospective fleet—”

  “Or what to do with Kressanthe,” Hlanan replied calmly.

  “You invited her aboard, you entertain her. You have no title, so you’re safe enough from her designs.”

  “Ilyan, we couldn’t have left her stranded in Tu Jhan.”

  Ilyan? Had to be a private or inner-family name. Nobles had them, and others who had public faces, I’d discovered. Ilyan for intimates, Rajanas his family name, and that nasty princess had addressed him by a territorial name, as if his importance was measured by what he owned.

  For a delicious moment I imagined binding magic onto all three of his names while he was present, so that, oh, every time he tried to speak, snakes would fall from his lips, or he’d fold his arms and cluck like a chicken, but he’d probably find the snakes funny, and Hlanan would give me one of those looks, partly question, partly puzzlement, maybe a little sad. I hated that . . . that expectation that I had a better nature.

  “Why not?” Rajanas said, blithely unaware of my fulminations. “Kressanthe has plenty of money, a powerful father to keep those thieving City Magisters from touching her, and I still maintain she only came to the regatta to nose around. The question is, for whom? We really should have left her on the dock. She could have bought her own ship.”

  “But she appealed so directly,” Hlanan replied with a sigh. “I could not turn her down, not in any way that would not register as offensive when the reasons were conveyed back to her father. It is beyond necessary that no more attention be called to your activities than would normally accrue to a nobleman on a pleasure cruise. It’s bad enough we’re forced to carry Geric Lendan with us, but at least he’ll find nothing of interest aboard the yacht. And carrying her ought to kill any rumors about our being on secret missions.”

  “Perhaps. But she’ll repeat everything that my dear ‘cousin’ Geric gets these lackwits to say over drink.” He gave the word cousin some extra drawl. “And she’ll even carry back tales of this accursed mudball of a thief you’ve thrust on us. What a pleasant cruise we’re having!”

  Hlanan laughed, sounding free and boyish. “But Kressanthe’s gossip is all to the good,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  Rajanas replied ironically, “Yes, I’d momentarily forgotten how valuable it will be to have us laughed out of the Imperial Court once the tale of our cat-and-mouse game with one undersized thief gets around. How better to keep up the appearance of a couple of bumbling wastrels?”

  Hlanan laughed again, then said, “Come. Halt your gloomy mood with the midday meal. Let’s find Thianra. Maybe she can sing you into smiles again. I heard her picking out some new pieces.”

  Quick as thought I hopped up the stairs to the deck.

  The problem with eavesdropping, I thought aggrievedly as I massaged my throbbing toes, is that you can’t take revenge for insults that you were not supposed to hear.

  Limping swiftly back to my own cabin, I thought over what the two had said. What did it mean? And how could I use it against that Rat-Spawned Rajanas?

  I felt the sun warm on the back of my cowl, and fought the urge to lift the hair that lay squashed against my spine. Scratching crossly, I reflected that the only bad thing about taking a bath every year or so is the itching in the warm weather. Each year I forget how much I hate summer until it threatens to come again. The sense of being smothered in all the thicknesses of my disguise nearly overwhelmed me.

  Nasty as it was, it was also safe.

  Fighting against a mood worse than any Rajanas could be suffering, I jammed my hand inside my trousers to shift my gear around more comfortably, and my fingers closed on Yellow Smock’s money bag. Why, I’d almost forgotten it!

  I thought angrily that this just showed how unsettling this adventure had been—imagine letting a take go this long before being explored!

  First I went back to the cabin door and threw the bar, then I opened the bag onto my bunk. The wealth of glitteri
ng coins improved my mood with a bounce. Counting carefully, I came up with half a twelve of silvers and three-twelve and four lecca. More money than I’d seen at one time for quite a while.

  Raising my eyes to the window, I saw a startling sight.

  The horizon was no longer a flat blue, water dissolving into firmament. A line of dark mountains now stitched sea to the sky.

  I moved toward the scuttle, as if pulled by an invisible thread. Mountains! It had been several years since I’d seen any. The sight inspired both fear and longing. In my earliest memories the fear had driven me to run away from mountains and hide. Those were my earliest distinct memories.

  Restlessness itched at me, worse than that on my skin. I scratched irritably at my hood, wishing I could tear off my cumbersome clothing and loosen hair and tail. The itch subsumed the fear, freeing a desire to break through the fog of half-memory and puzzlement that surrounded my early years, and figure out who I truly was, and wherefrom I had come.

  I glanced back at my wealth on the bunk. Whatever I’d said to Hlanan, I knew I was done with Thesreve. It was time to run again.

  A knock at my door caused me to sweep the coins back into the bag. I got the bag stashed in my trousers again before I unbolted the door.

  To my surprise it was Hlanan, bearing a tray of food.

  “I thought you might like a noon meal,” he said, coming inside.

  “Doesn’t it bother anyone, your waiting on me like this?” I asked.

  “I have not asked. Does it disturb you?” he replied.

  “Well, yes,” I admitted. “A few scraps thrown my way would be more in keeping with what I’m used to. This makes me feel something bad is about to happen.”

  “I cannot ask Rajanas’s servants to wait on you, and I am not the sort of person who flings scraps. You’ll have to do with me. I noticed yesterday that you do not eat either chicken or fish.” He looked at me questioningly as he set the tray down on the little table.

  I shrugged, uncomfortable with any kind of personal questions. “Disagrees with my innards,” I muttered, and filled my mouth with food so I wouldn’t have to talk.