Gretchen herself had bounced back from her momentary panic and was now in high spirits. She kept praising how well the rest of us rowed: it was her way of contributing and probably more helpful than if she’d actually taken an oar. Gretchen wouldn’t have been good with oars. And no one looked disgruntled about her idleness, not even Impervia—you don’t blame a lapdog for not being able to hunt.
We quickly established a rhythm to our stroke. I didn’t realize how fast we were going until we passed Oberon, still working his ponderous way toward the beach. He shouted at us to stop until he secured the landing site, but Gretchen only laughed. “Silly billy, don’t worry.”
Beside me, Annah muttered, “Maybe we should slow down.”
She was still wet, her hair drooping, her clothes puckered against her body—not a bad look, especially with steam trickling off the parts most warmed by the sun. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, just superstition: I hate it when someone says don’t worry.”
I glanced over my shoulder toward the shore. We were sitting backward in the boat, facing away from the front because Impervia claimed that was the correct way to row. Backing blindly into unknown territory. “Slow down,” I told the others. “Let Oberon land first.”
“We don’t have time,” Impervia said. “Every second we waste puts Sebastian at risk.”
“Slow down!” I repeated, my nerves starting to jangle. “Gretchen, keep a watch on shore.”
“What am I watching for?”
“Whatever you see.”
“Since you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?”
Gretchen shifted in her seat; she’d been facing our way to give us encouragement, but now she turned front, peering at the docks. Out the corner of my eye, I could see her rise off the seat, leaning forward with her hands on the gunwales. She stayed there only a few seconds, then muttered, “To hell with this. I can’t see a thing.”
I thought she was giving up; but she just took off her hat and veil. They must have been blocking her view. Now, either she’d steeled herself to being seen in sunlight, or she’d decided if she was facing away from us we wouldn’t notice her crow’s feet. Maybe she was just sick of wet lace sticking to her nose. She pulled off the headgear and shook out her hair, open to the sun at last.
“This is nice,” she said. Then a rifle cracked on shore, and Gretchen’s blood splattered like surf crashing over the boat.
16
WE SHALL FIGHT ON THE BEACHES...
“Hold on!” Myoko yelled from the stern.
I barely had time to grab a gunwale when the front of the boat lifted clean from the water—as if the boat’s nose had been hoisted on a crane. The rifle cracked again...but now the boat was tilted up at a forty-five-degree angle, forming a thick wooden barrier in front of us. The bullet thunked into the hull but didn’t get through; then Gretchen’s limp body slid down the slanted decking and slumped against my back.
Switching my grip on the gunwale, I turned to see if there was any chance to save her. No. None. The bullet had gone in cleanly through her forehead and out messily through the rear of her skull. Bone chips and brain matter snarled in her hair. I tried to tell myself, “At least she didn’t suffer,” but the words didn’t mean a damned thing as her blood gushed onto my shoulder.
Another shot. This one missed the boat and whizzed into the water. It might have been aimed at Oberon. At any rate, the giant lobster decided it was time to stop being a bright red slow-moving target—he plunged out of sight beneath the waves. Oberon swam a few strokes underwater, then rose just high enough to stick his snout above the surface...nothing showing except his nose-spike and nostrils. I could hear him take a deep breath; then he submerged once more and struck toward the beach as fast as he could go.
More bullets sliced the lake in his vicinity, but I don’t think the shooter knew where Oberon was. Sunlight dappled the surface; I soon lost sight of the big lobster myself. Even if a chance shot found its target, Oberon’s armor would probably stop a bullet that had already been slowed by water. He’d be safe till he reached the shallows. After that...his shell was better than no protection at all, but I doubted it could stand up to high-power slugs.
Then again, maybe the slugs weren’t high-power. When the shooter realized Oberon was just a waste of ammunition, the barrage turned back to the upraised jolly-boat...and bullet after bullet struck the hull without getting through. Thank heaven for solid oak timber.
Meanwhile we continued shoreward, propelled by Myoko’s mind plus strenuous rowing from Pelinor and Impervia. They’d moved to the stern of the boat, the only part still in contact with the lake. Fighting the oarlocks (which weren’t designed to function when the boat was two-thirds upright), Pelinor and Impervia heaved us ahead, skating the jolly-boat toward shore as if it were riding an invisible wave.
Beside me, Annah produced a mirror from some hidden pocket in her cloak. Though it looked like an ordinary face mirror, it had a long telescoping handle: useful for looking around corners if you practiced a profession where looking around corners was useful. Impervia might carry such a mirror for spying on students...but Annah? I’d ask her about it later. In the meantime, she extended it deftly around the edge of the boat and tilted it to scan the shore.
“See anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. Drops of Gretchen’s blood darkened Annah’s right cheek. I reached up to brush the gore away, then realized my hand was even bloodier. Gretchen’s corpse still slumped against me, but she’d stopped sliding downward: one of her legs had got wedged under the wooden thwart where I’d been sitting to row. Blood streamed from her head wound, soaking into the crimson gown.
She’d have been horrified by the way her dress was ruined.
I laid my hand across hers (my fingers sticky with blood, her fingers clean and warm but lifeless). Under my breath, I whispered words I remembered from long ago. “In the name of Most Merciful Compassionate God: Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being...”
Another bullet chunked into the boat. “Yes!” Annah murmured, still using her mirror. “I saw the muzzle flash. He’s behind one of the shrines.”
“Which shrine?” Impervia snapped. “Describe it.”
“Bright white—all the others are colored. An hourglass shape, maybe two and a half meters tall. The shooter’s taken a position where the hourglass curves inward; steadying the gun against the shrine itself.”
Impervia growled. “If people in Crystal Bay had any true righteousness, they’d charge the shooter to stop him defiling their altar.”
“Maybe they will,” the Caryatid said, “when the gun runs out of bullets.”
No locals were rushing to get themselves shot. We were well inside the harbor by now, passing fishing boats at anchor; not a soul was visible, despite the number of people who’d been working here minutes before. At the first sign of trouble, they must have dived for cover—into the holds where they stored their fish, or straight over the sides of their boats. These folks had no urge to get involved in our troubles. They might have risked their lives for fellow villagers, but not for strangers who’d just arrived in an imposing military vessel. As far as these people knew, we were either soldiers or customs officers; facing criminals was our job. Therefore the people of Crystal Bay would lie low until the shooting had stopped...and only then would they poke up their heads to ask, “What was that all about?”
So we were on our own. Desperate, but not devoid of resources. When we got close enough, perhaps the Caryatid could send a pack of flame-buddies to set the shooter’s clothes on fire. Even easier, Myoko could knock the rifle away and hold the shooter helpless till Impervia and Pelinor subdued him.
Assuming Myoko had any strength left by the time we got to shore. She was sitting on the thwart just below me, her body rigid with concentration and her face deathly pale. I’d seen the same color on people so sick they were ready to pass out. The Caryatid must have noticed the same thing, for she’d clambered up from the rudder sea
t to perch at Myoko’s side: wrapping motherly arms around Myoko’s small frame and holding her, helping keep her balanced and warm despite the strain.
Myoko began to shiver. She was supporting the weight of seven people plus the jolly-boat, which was several hundred kilos in itself; and on top of holding us up, she was driving the boat toward the beach. A fierce sustained effort after years of not using her full power. Like someone who’d spent a decade never lifting anything heavier than a glass of ale suddenly hoisting a loaded hay-wagon...and keeping it up for ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty...
“How close are we?” I asked Annah.
“Almost to the beach.”
“And from there to the shooter?”
“Twenty meters.”
Twenty meters: two or three seconds of sprinting, even for someone as fast as Impervia. And running on sand would slow her down. The shooter would have plenty of time to aim and fire. Even if we all charged en masse, he’d get at least two of us before we crossed the gap.
“Any cover we can use?” I asked Annah.
“No. The people of Crystal Bay obviously like an unobstructed view of their shrines when they’re out on the lake.”
“Damn.”
I tried to picture how far twenty meters really was. A reasonable stone’s throw, but too far to hurl a knife with any accuracy. An easy shot for an arrow, but none of us had a bow. Besides, if we could draw a bead on the gunman, he could draw a bead on us. For the past ten seconds, he hadn’t fired a single round. Probably reloading...or at least conserving ammunition. It would be nice to think he’d used all his bullets, but I didn’t believe we were that lucky.
Sand crunched beneath the jolly-boat’s keel. We were still in the water, but we’d bottomed out in the shallows. “Ten meters from here to the beach,” Annah said. Impervia and Pelinor dug their oars into the sand, trying to pole us forward like punters...but the only result was a harsh rasping sound as the keel buried itself deeper. We’d run aground and pushing would only make it worse.
Myoko took a shuddering breath. The Caryatid squeezed her: “Hang on, hang on...” If Myoko dropped us now, our prow would fall forward, leaving us exposed to gunfire at close range. We’d have to flatten ourselves on the bottom of the boat; the hull would protect us, but we’d be pinned down for as long as the shooter wanted to toy with us.
Suddenly, the boat soared upward: hurtling out of the water as if propelled from a catapult, flying in an arc that ended with a brutal collision as the boat snapped up to the vertical and slammed its flat stern onto solid land. We almost tipped over, our balance precarious—the boat was now completely upright, nose pointing to the sky. If we hadn’t been holding tight already, we would have spilled into the line of fire. Pelinor and Impervia jammed their oars out into the sand on either side, making diagonal struts to keep us from wobbling left or right...but it was Myoko who saved us, giving the boat one last shove downward, driving the stern a full hand’s breadth into the sand. Planted deep and solid. Then Myoko went limp, blood gushing from her nose and mouth.
The shooter blasted another bullet into the jolly-boat’s hull. It didn’t go through—we were still safe. If “safe” is a valid word when you’re stuck on an open beach, and your only protection is an upright rowboat. It was as if we’d taken cover in a tiny privy-shack while a murderer waited outside.
“Phil,” Impervia whispered, “how much money are you carrying? Enough to buy our way out of here?”
“Yes and no,” I told her. “I have enough cash to pay a healthy bribe...but if we tell the shooter that, he’ll just have more incentive to kill us. Once we’re dead, he can get rich looting our bodies.”
“Let’s skip the bribery,” Pelinor said. “We’ll try Plan B. We do have a Plan B, don’t we?”
Impervia scowled. “Bribery was Plan B. Plan A was having Myoko jam the rifle down the shooter’s throat.”
We all looked at Myoko where she lay ashen and unconscious in the Caryatid’s arms. The bleeding from her mouth and nose had slowed to a seeping ooze; I hoped that was a good sign.
A moment’s silence; then Impervia said, “Flames,” in a cold hard voice. “Caryatid, can you set fire to this man who wants to kill us?”
“I don’t know.” The Caryatid continued to gaze down at Myoko: rocking the limp body, the way one might rock a sleeping child.
“Can you do it?” Impervia said more sharply. “There’s no way to help Myoko right now; first we have to deal with the gunman. If you aren’t up to the job, just say so and we’ll try something else.”
The Caryatid forced herself to look up from Myoko and meet Impervia’s gaze. “I don’t have much range on making flames obey me. And I can’t control them at all if they’re out of sight.”
Without a word, Annah handed her the mirror.
“All right,” the Caryatid said. “I’ll try.”
The Caryatid’s ready supply of matches had got soaked when Oberon did his belly-flop. She had to find more matches in her pack, then search for a dry place to strike a light, but at last she had a single flame balanced on her fingertip.
(All this while, the shooter stayed silent. Everything was still—the town, the docks, the fishing boats. Oberon had to be somewhere, but I couldn’t see him. I assumed he was lurking in the water, just deep enough to stay hidden: snout breaking the surface now and then to breathe, biding his time for a chance to rush the shore.)
The tiny flame leapt from the Caryatid’s finger and skittered across the sand like a blazing insect-sized crab. As it rounded the edge of the jolly-boat, it flickered in a wash of breeze...but it held itself together and slipped out of sight. Only the Caryatid, watching with the mirror, could keep an eye on its progress.
“I see the shrine,” she murmured. “And I see the shooter. I think...yes, it’s Warwick Xavier.”
“Not much of a surprise,” I said. Nobody but the Ring would shoot us on sight; and nobody but the Ring had the connections and incentive to acquire first-rate firearms in this part of the world. Knife-Hand Liz must have landed in Crystal Bay and left Xavier here to stop anyone who might be following. Either that or she was so sick of Xavier’s surly attitude, she ordered him to stay behind just to get him out of her hair.
Xavier must have started shooting as soon as we came into range. But why did he kill Gretchen first? He knew her by sight; he’d spied on her back in Dover. Why waste his first shot—his one chance at surprise—on a woman so utterly harmless? Impervia and Pelinor were far more dangerous threats; you could tell that just by looking at them. But Xavier had taken aim on Gretchen’s skull and killed her with a sniper’s deliberation. Why?
A bullet cracked at close range. Sand sprayed as the shot hit the beach. “Damn!” the Caryatid said. “He got my flame.”
“I saw that once in a carnival,” Pelinor said. “Fellow shot a flame off a candlewick.”
“Xavier’s not that good. He didn’t hit my flame dead on, but the sand he kicked up did the job.”
“So light another flame,” Impervia said. “And move it faster so Xavier can’t hit the moving target.”
The Caryatid shook her head. “Any quicker and the flame will go out. There’s too much wind.”
She was right. A spring breeze played around the beach at random, darting in off the lake, then whisking the other direction or swirling crossways. It wasn’t strong, but it could easily blow out a candleflame. As if to emphasize that, a gust puffed in my face, carrying with it a mixture of fragrances— fresh tar for patching fishing boats, the scent of last season’s catch, a piercing smell of wood smoke...
Familiar wood smoke: the pheromone that poured off Oberon when he thought Gretchen was in danger. Its smell stood out amidst all the other odors of the port. I’d been wrong when I thought Oberon was hiding in the lake—he must have circled around underwater and come up somewhere out of sight. Now he was sneaking back, close enough that the quirky wind brought his whiff to my nose.
“We’ve just been handed Plan C,” I tol
d the others. “Oberon is nearby: probably creeping up on Xavier.”
“How do you know?” Impervia asked.
“I can smell him.” I turned to the Caryatid. “Whip up another flame—if you can distract Xavier, it’ll give Oberon a chance. Maybe. It’s hard to believe Xavier won’t notice a giant red lobster sneaking up on him, but let’s do what we can.”
“We’d better get ready to attack too,” Impervia said. “Whether Oberon makes it or not, we’ll never have a better chance to take Xavier down.”
Pelinor nodded. The Caryatid was concentrating on lighting another match. Until she got it going, we needed something else to draw Xavier’s attention away from Oberon. “Hey!” I shouted. “Xavier! Can’t we talk this over?”
“Nothing to talk about,” a gravelly voice answered. “Unless maybe you come out and let me end things fast.”
“You mean shoot us in cold blood?”
“Blood is always warm, boy. Or boiling hot.”
“I’ll show him hot,” the Caryatid muttered. She’d finally got her match lit. The flame jumped to the ground and scampered across the sand. As soon as it rounded the corner of the boat, a shot rang out. The Caryatid, watching her thimble-sized blaze in Annah’s mirror, said, “Hah! Missed, you bastard.”
“Going to waste ammo on miniature fires?” I called to Xavier.
“I have dozens of rounds,” he laughed. “The Ring just smuggled a big shipment from Rustland.”
“Bet we have more matches than you have bullets.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Xavier said. “And the price of the wager is your life, you stupid—heh?”
A sudden roar. Oberon’s voice. “Assassin!”
“Rush him!” Impervia yelled.
My feet hit the sand as a rifle shot fired.
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