by Shannon Page
“And, meanwhile, you would be where — getting ashore how?” Reikos asked even more carefully.
“She and Domina Kattë would be with me,” said Pino, catching on, “waiting in this boat as close to shore as we could get without being noticed. As soon as everyone was chasing you, we could sail ashore somewhere. It’s a good plan, I think.”
“And if my ship does not succeed in outrunning your nation’s entire fleet of gunboats?” Reikos asked miserably.
“If we were in position before your ship arrived, you could just sail past the harbor at full speed, Captain, firing to draw them off without even slowing to let us down into the water, could you not? I expect they would have to pursue you from dead stop.”
“Possibly …” He nodded, still looking very dubious. “And, I am sorry, my lady, but it is my ship we speak of risking here. Though I have no wish to hurt you further, I feel I must ask it. If your son is no longer at the Factorate House, or no longer … savable …”
“I say to you what I said to Sian’s son-in-law. As I am no longer in any position to guarantee anything after the fact, the decision must, of course, be entirely yours.”
Reikos looked at Sian, who felt awful now for having thrust such a decision upon him. “Is this what you wish, Sian?”
Ah, she thought with chagrin, so it is to be my decision after all. What did he owe her? Nothing that she could see. What did she owe him? More, perhaps. He had suffered much for her already — after she had cut him loose. He still cared for her. That much was obvious by now. Did she still care for him? She’d had no real chance to think any of this through yet. But she did care for him, clearly. More than she had thought — a week or two ago. Was she to let him suffer for her again? His ship … “I wish …” She struggled to find some anchor point inside. Some clear compass to guide her. “I have come to believe that I am … like this now so that I can heal Arian’s son. I wish to have the chance to try.”
Reikos gave her a soulful look, and a sad smile. Then he looked away and sighed. “We will sail to the port at Cutter’s then, and hope my ship is even there. If she is, well, she’s got a belly full of fine cloth. What are your colors, My Lady Consort?”
“White, light blue and green. The Factorate insignia is basically just a large gold star.”
Reikos nodded, still not meeting anyone’s eyes. “That can be arranged, I believe. My men are good at mending sails quickly in a storm. They can probably stitch together a crude flag of that description in less than half an hour.” He turned to face them again, his eyes straying to Sian. “And we’ve a few nice dresses aboard as well. As soon as I’m aboard Free Passage, Pino will take you on to Home.” He looked at Pino now. “Be careful, lad — for once. When we’ve parted, I’ll have no way of knowing how you fare, much less of helping, should things go wrong.” He looked back to Sian. “If things go right, I’m sure you’ll know when it is time to sail ashore.”
“Thank you,” Sian said quietly, her heart breaking at the certain knowledge that it was for her he had agreed to risk his ship. “You will come back for me, I hope, when all of this is over?”
He smiled at last. “I’d like to see even a fleet of gunboats try to stop me.”
“Captain,” said Arian. “If I am still in any position to pay debts when this is over, you will have far more than my undying gratitude in reward.”
He smiled at her as well, if strangely. “I dreamed once, not long ago, in fact, of a life more meaningful than the one I have been living all these years, my lady. Of doing things that mattered more — even to myself.” He gave her an almost playful shrug. “Perhaps my dream is coming true.” He gazed back at Sian. “I’m told it costs us everything to make the world new.”
Sian climbed clumsily to her feet then, pushing the tarp aside as she lurched awkwardly from hiding on the swaying boat, and went to put her arms around him. An instant later, their lips touched, and she did not care who saw them kiss, or what they thought of it.
Not half an hour later, Sian peered once again from underneath their concealing tarp, Arian beside her, as Cutter’s shoreline ghosted past them off the starboard side now.
“My ladies,” came Reikos’s voice from above them, “we approach the harbor. I can see my ship from here, thank the gods of war, so it is not sunk or stolen since I left — but for a while now, you must again be cargo.”
“All right,” Sian said softly. Arian and she tucked the canvas closed around them, and crouched down to listen and wait.
As they drew near the port, Sian’s ears told her that it was aswarm with activity — shouts and splashes, banging timber, the flap and boom of canvas being raised or lowered, the creaks and susurrations of many vessels, large and small, getting underway at once. From this collage emerged the sound of some much closer boat approaching them.
“Ahoy the Coppersmith!” came a voice from over the water. “I am the Cutter’s Port Authority! You must turn back! The port is closed by order of the Factorate!”
“Ahoy the Cutter’s Queen!” Reikos’s voice boomed back. “I am Captain Konstantin Reikos of the Fair Passage, berthed just yonder! You know me, I believe! I am trying to return to my ship!”
Sian strained to hear but detected only mutters on the other boat. Then, “I recognize you, Captain! Where have you been? Your crew’s been quite concerned — as have I!”
“Detained by unexpected business up on Malençon!” called Reikos. “All this took me by surprise! I’ve had the devil’s own time getting back here!”
There was another pause, more half-obscured voices conversing on the Cutter’s Queen.
“You may re-board your ship, Captain!” they finally responded. “But you may not go ashore for any reason, and must set sail at once! All foreign ships are to be evacuated from Alizari waters by Factorate decree until the current conflict is resolved!”
“I thank you — and will do so, sir!” Reikos called back, without hesitation.
“See to it quickly, Captain!” came the official’s voice, already moving farther away as the Coppersmith eased forward. “Or I cannot vouch for the continued safety of your vessel!”
“Yes, yes,” Reikos muttered. “Now to see if I’ve sufficient crew left to weigh anchor.”
The Coppersmith tacked this way and that, doubtless avoiding heavy traffic in the narrow channel leading to the docks. Then Sian felt the sloop come sharply around to stall just before it bumped and recoiled gently as it slid against … a dock perhaps? The Fair Passage’s hull? She wasn’t sure.
“Well, there’s someone up there making ready to steal my ship,” Reikos growled to Pino. “Here’s hoping it’s my crew. Ahoy the Fair Passage!” he called out. “Ahoy, my ship!”
“Captain? Oh, thank the gods! You be-n’t dead then!”
“Kyrios!” Sian whispered, flooded with relief. Fair Passage’s first mate, a wiry blond Smagadine with a quick smile and a stronger accent even than Reikos’s.
“Sorry to disappoint you!” Reikos called back. Sian could hear the relief in his voice. “You’ll not be taking her from me just yet after all!”
“Sir, the orders!” Kyrios protested. “I had no —”
“Yes, I know! You’ve done right, and thank you for it! How many of you have I left up there?”
“Only seven, sir! And a time I had getting some of them to stay, what with this war is going now. Most the others signed on with Kenners’ boat when we’re two weeks passing without word of you. What happened, Captain?”
“I’ll explain it when we’re under way! Lower a boat, will you? Off this side!”
“We already got them battened, Captain. But I can be having gangway down, sir, in a —”
“A boat, Kyrios! The port side, please! Right here beside us!”
“Aye-aye, Captain!”
A minute later, Sian heard Reikos tell Pino quietly, “As soon as I’m into the other boat, you set sail, lad. Take the channel between Cutter’s and Montchattaran and Toad. It’ll take you longer, but we’l
l be a while here yet, and that route will keep you farther out of harm’s way between here and Home. When you get there, wait off the north face of the island, as close to the Factorate harbor as you can without being notice. And I’m serious, lad: none of your recklessness this time. Try thinking like a timid old man, will you?”
“I’ll guard them with my life, Captain. It’s what I’m sworn to do.”
“If you’re guarding them well, your life should not enter into it.” There was a pause. “Sworn by whom?”
“The priest, sir. You were there. He charged me to guard her, and I don’t mean to fail him — or the god.”
“Hm,” Reikos grunted. “That still stinks a bit much of heroics for my tastes, and I don’t much care one way or another just now for the priest or his god. Don’t you fail me. That’s what matters — if you still wish to join my crew.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Sian heard Pino say with what seemed a touch of pride. “I won’t fail any of you, sir.”
“No heroics!” Reikos said again. “Heroics are dangerous! Are you hearing me?”
“No heroics, Captain. Think like an old man. I heard you, sir.”
“Good. Here comes my boat. If I can’t come myself when this is over, I’ll send someone to fetch you. You’ve a bunk on Fair Passage, son. With my gratitude and respect. Now get out of here — and keep them hidden ’til you’re safely ashore.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Sian heard a great splash, and the sloop rocked and scraped beneath her as the lifeboat landed beside them. Then she heard the scrape of boots against the gunwale, and a grunt or two as Reikos moved from one boat to the other. As she heard the winches start to lift Reikos to Fair Passage, she felt Pino fending them off and pushing them out far enough to trim the sails and get their small sloop moving.
“I hope,” Arian murmured beside her, “I am not putting all of you through this for nothing.”
“If this god gave me such a gift for nothing,” Sian said, “then he’s not much of a god. I think I’d know, if it were too late.”
“By your god and any others listening,” said Arian, “I hope with all my heart you’re right.”
“My ladies,” Pino called to them, quietly, “there will likely be much heavier traffic on the waters around us from here on. It may be best to make no noise at all.”
“Understood,” Sian whispered.
Arian nodded, and silence settled in, filled only with the distant sounds of harried seamanship around the port.
From there the trip seemed uneventful. Even tedious. Darkness and silence. An occasional shout or mysterious boom from far across the water. Time stretched, and Sian’s eyelids grew heavy. She put her chin down on her chest. Just for a moment …
“By the gods and all their weeping mothers!”
Sian wakened with a start at Pino’s exclamation.
Arian was already scrambling against her to peel back the tarp above them, just far enough to see out. “Oh!” she whispered in distress. “Oh, what have we done?”
Sian twisted and crawled to peer out beside her, all sleepiness forgotten as she gaped over the boat’s rim.
Raging fires leapt high above the smoke-shrouded city in at least five places, casting a red and golden sheen across the water as Coppersmith crept ever closer. On its lofty perch, parts of the Factorate House were ablaze as well. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell whether the remaining portions of the structure were as yet untouched by fire, or had just already burned. All along the shoreline before them, gunboats flying the devices of half a dozen leading families in Alizar moved ponderously amidst dozens of other, smaller craft, often fitted out with ad hoc cannons of their own, it seemed — or just sat dead in the water, staking out some little patch of maritime territory, if not already sunk or burning. As they watched, several vessels along two different stretches of waterfront fired their cannons at who knew what targets. The shore itself seemed to writhe with troops and mobs of who knew what civilian contingencies, like swarms of fighting fire ants.
“How will we get through that?” Sian wondered aloud.
“It has grown much worse since we were here this morning,” Pino told them in hushed wonder, still staring at the spectacle. “You two had better stay hidden, while I —”
He was cut short by a rapid volley of loud concussions from one of the nearer gunboats, still far ahead of them. Seconds later, all three of them looked up as something tore audibly through the sky above them, then hit the surface not a hundred feet away, sending gouts of foam and water up into the air. Pino wrenched the Coppersmith’s tiller around, nearly jibing the mainsail, before letting it out to snap taut as they ran before the wind, away from shore. “That was just to warn us away — I think!” Pino shouted up to them. “I hope,” he added, more quietly. “We will wait farther out. But get back under the tarp, please. We don’t want to give them any new reason to take interest in our little boat.”
Sian and Arian immediately crouched down again, and pulled the tarp back over their heads.
“I should not have asked this of your captain,” Arian said. Her voice was shaky in the darkness, more frightened than Sian had ever heard her sound — even on the night they’d been attacked by Lod’s temple thugs. “He cannot hope to draw all of that off. I had no idea. I’ve just lured him to his doom.”
“Captain, with respect, sir,” Kyrios sputtered, despite the comfort of being free to speak his native tongue again, “this is … Could we not just stand some kind of manikin upon the prow?”
“Their reason for chasing us must be convincing,” Reikos said, just managing not to laugh as he turned from the charts he was studying to find his first mate wiping long, windblown blond hair out of his eyes while struggling to keep the elaborate silk dress he wore from blowing up into his face. “The Factora-Consort must shake her fist believably as we fire our cannons, and if they should decide to fire back at her, she must run away as well, or else the whole effect is spoiled. A manikin can do none of that, can it?” He went to hand Kyrios the charts. “Here. Take your mind off your elegant garb by keeping me from wrecking us on this godsforsaken minefield in the dark.”
Off to port, the island of Toad was all that blocked their view of Home now. Just a few more minutes, and they’d be able to see what they were getting into. Reikos climbed to the helm and took up his spyglass in anticipation. Given the number of things he felt unwilling or forbidden to reveal even now about the exact nature of his entanglements these past few weeks, it had not been easy to explain to his scant remaining crew exactly where he’d been, or why they were headed now into the very center of a civil war to antagonize a whole fleet of Alizari gunboats.
All of that, however, had been easier than talking Kyrios into a dress. Reikos had been forced to some severity to keep the other crewmen from heckling the poor man mercilessly. The Fair Passage was a fairly honest trading ship, and his men were, for the most part, respectable sailors — not pirates used to such shenanigans as they were bound for now. Reikos hoped they wouldn’t all just leap overboard the minute things got really scary — as he had no doubt they would before this ill-advised adventure had run its course.
As they started round Toad’s westernmost promontory, Reikos did not need his spyglass to see the ominous glow of firelit smoke filling the sultry air over distant Home. A second later, the island itself began coming into view, and Reikos lifted his glass to have a closer look. “By the ghosts of all my fallen fathers,” he murmured in disbelief, lowering the glass again as he struggled to absorb the sight. Fighting had erupted around the Factorate House before their brief visit to the island with Ennias that morning had ended. There had been a few exchanges of naval hostility as well … But nothing like what he saw now. The heart of hell indeed. This was madness. Sheer hopeless madness.
As Fair Passage came further out of Toad’s shadow, Reikos heard his small crew start to murmur and exclaim on the deck below him as they too began to understand what lay ahead.
; “Kyrios, are those flags ready?” Reikos called down.
“Aye, Captain,” Kyrios called back. “Rigged and ready to hoist, but, well, sir … should we not, perhaps, go take a closer look before we raise them?”
“Indeed we should, man,” Reikos growled in reply. “Rest assured, our suicide will be as cautiously navigated as anyone could ask. Douse all our lights. We’ll fly no colors, and come around to full stop half a league off the island to adjust our plans as necessary. You have twenty minutes to memorize those charts. Use the time. The rest of you, come here and listen up.”
Reikos climbed down from the helm and went to stand among his little remnant as they gathered around him in clear uncertainty. Propriety be damned. He was not going to ask them to sail into such an inferno without knowing better why. “You six men waited out my absence after all the others gave me up for lost and left. As I said before, I am both grateful and honored by that trust. Now, I fear, your trust is to be rewarded with even more danger than I had realized when we left Cutter’s not an hour ago. So I’m going to tell you what I couldn’t before. When you have heard it all, you must tell me whether you will do it. I cannot — and will not — attempt to order you against your will into what we all see yonder now.” One or two of his men nodded, but none spoke. “I told you back at port that I had agreed to assist the besieged Alizari government by creating this small tactical diversion on our way out of the islands. But here’s the rest, lads.”
He pointed past them at the distant conflagration. “Right now, somewhere at the edge of that, the Factora-Consort of Alizar herself is waiting in a little boat for our arrival. Our diversion will, I hope, make it possible for her to get ashore and return to her husband and son.” No need to tell them, he supposed, that at least one of those was likely dead already. “There are two others with her. One is Pino, who you met right before all this … trouble started. He is to be your fellow crewman, and a braver, more good-hearted lad there never was. The other …” How to handle this so that it would not sound as if he were asking them to risk their lives to save his girlfriend? “In your time ashore here these past few weeks, has any of you heard of a woman they’re calling Our Lady of the Islands?”