by Shannon Page
The men glanced at one another. Dannos and Molian raised hands.
“She’s a healer, is she not, sir?” said Dannos. “Touched by the gods, they say.”
“She brought a dead man back to life, is what I heard, Captain,” said Molian. “Right there on Cutter’s somewhere.”
Reikos nodded, seeing that Kyrios had come to join them, charts or no. “She did indeed. And I was there to see it. That dead man was Pino. He and I were imprisoned together after that, by the man now attacking Alizar’s rightful Factor. The Census Taker of Alizar held Our Lady of the Islands prisoner as well, to prevent her from healing his own cousin’s gravely ill son, the Factor’s heir. The healer’s escape from him is, in part, what set off this war. And she is the third person waiting in that little boat we go to rescue now.”
At this, his men grew wide-eyed, looking at each other in astonishment.
“Then you have been … involved in all of this?” Kyrios asked him.
“I have, and am, though I never intended to be. So now you understand. We go to save the Factora-Consort, Our Lady of the Islands, the young man she brought back from death, and, if we succeed in helping them get ashore and back to the Factorate House in time, the life of the Alizari Factor’s rightful heir as well. If we choose not to do this, it seems likely all of them will die. Tonight. That is what’s at stake here.”
He fell silent, awaiting their response.
“Well, this will make one hell of a tale to tell our grandkids, won’t it, lads!” blurted Sellas, happily.
“My mum’ll be right proud of her black-sheep salt dog now, I wager,” said young Eagent, nodding in satisfaction, “once I go home and tell her how I saved the king and queen of Alizar.”
Reikos allowed himself the merest smile, seeing no need to correct the fellow’s political misapprehensions.
“If this Lady of the Islands is truly god-touched,” said Dannos, “I figure it can’t hurt to help her out and earn the favor of her god, right? Luck’s no laughing matter for a sailor. And who’s to say we don’t end up cursed for not saving her? I say let’s do it.”
“I sure ain’t just sailin’ off and lettin’ some puffed up gooney murder his own cousin’s kid and steal his throne that way,” Molian put in. “No sir, Captain. I ain’t the sort.” He turned to his fellows. “What about the rest of you?”
There was hearty assent from everyone then, including poor Kyrios, who seemed at last unconscious of his humiliating attire. Reikos loosed a quiet breath in relief. Perhaps he should not have doubted them. These were the ones who’d stayed, after all.
“All right then,” Reikos said. “I hardly need to tell you this is likely to get hairy. With so few of us, I need every one of you to look sharp and keep your heads no matter what may happen.” Having told them this much, he saw no reason not to sweeten the pot a bit — against likely second thoughts when they got in the thick of it. “The Factora-Consort has told me personally that if she and her husband win this fight, I’m to be richly rewarded. There can be no guarantee who’ll win, of course, or even who will live, but I swear to each of you right now that if any such reward is given, it will be split evenly between us all. No Captain’s portion in this venture. Tonight, we are brothers without rank to separate us. Agreed?”
A cheer went up all around. They clearly felt — just as he did, for once — that they were doing something momentous now. And their blood was stirred, as his was. Here’s hoping that’s still how it seems come morning, he thought, turning to head back up to the helm. “Now make this boat up neater than the Factor’s bed, men! We can afford no tangled sheets or luffing canvas in the pinch tonight! Every one of you will need to be worth three!”
As they scurried to their tasks, he stood beside the wheel and retrieved his spyglass, shaking his head again at what he beheld through it. Brave speeches were not going to get them out of this unscathed. Just don’t any of you die tonight, he thought. I don’t want your blood on my conscience, any more than Sian’s or Pino’s.
Dark and silent, the Fair Passage ghosted closer to the burning island with its ring of angry gunboats and smaller, makeshift sniper-craft. As Kyrios stood beside him, burning holes through the charts with his eyes, Reikos scanned the water ahead with his glass for any sign of Pino’s little sloop. They should have reached the island at least half an hour ahead of him. But there were so many craft around Home now, and so much glare and smoke from all the fires, both ashore and afloat as ruined vessels burned and sank, that he began to despair of ever finding them, if they were there at all still. What if they’d been sunk or captured already? Or just had the sense to go farther around the island in search of safer access? It’s what Reikos would have done as soon as he’d seen this mad waterfront with his own eyes; what he’d have told Pino to do if he had understood in time what they were headed off to. If they weren’t even there, this whole maneuver would just be pointless, if potentially very costly, theater.
And then he found them! Bobbing in the darkness, right where he had told the boy to wait. Reikos lowered the glass, and damned himself aloud.
“What is it?” Kyrios asked, looking up from his charts in concern.
“I’ve already sunk us all.” Reikos brought a hand up to cover his eyes, as if that might make the scene before him go away.
“How?” said Kyrios. “We are not even —”
“I told him to wait just north of the island. So he wouldn’t barrel too far ahead and get them killed before we even got here. The lad tends to be impetuous.” He shook his head and let his hand fall. “Now, there he sits, just as instructed, right between the godsdamned harbor full of gunboats and our only path past them and out to sea. If we come straight in at speed, as I’d intended, and veer off to starboard toward open water, all those armed boats will be drawn right through the sloop as they come after me. Even if they aren’t seen and fired upon, they’ll likely just be cut to bits and sunk beneath some rushing gunboat’s prow.”
“Then what are we to do?”
“I don’t know! I never do these days, it seems.” Reikos paced the little space around them. “If it were still mine to choose, now that I’ve seen this mess, I’d just sail past them without any fanfare whatsoever and continue out to sea. Abort this entire ridiculous affair. If the lad had any sense, he’d see me leave, and understand that he must give it up for now as well. But he hasn’t any sense. He’ll learn some, if he lives that long — he’s not stupid. But right now he’s just young and reckless and convinced that he is under some divine mandate. If I leave them to flee without our aid, he’ll take it upon himself to do something heroic instead, and I will spend the rest of my days … mourning the results.” Alone, he added silently. I cannot leave Sian waiting in that boat, abandoned and betrayed by me. “I have no choice.”
“No choice but what, sir?” Kyrios asked fearfully.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, man. Feel free to chime in with suggestions.”
“So, the gunboats are to port of us, and the sea’s to starboard, and the sloop we’re here to save is in between?”
“That’s a more concise summation, yes, though I derive no new insight from it.”
“Then, can we not sail in just to port of them, between the sloop and gunboats, shout down as we pass that they must flee northward, then draw the gunboats southward out to sea?”
“Here,” said Reikos, handing Kyrios the glass. “Look at where they sit.” He pointed as Kyrios peered through the glass, then reached up to guide it with his hand. “The little sloop, its bow all covered up in tarp. The women hide beneath that. Do you see it?”
“Aye, Captain. I’ve got them now.” Kyrios lowered the glass, looking sour.
“You see the problem then. Run so much as fifteen feet east of them, and we’ll have no path back out to sea without turning this great tub at least ninety degrees to starboard before ramming into shore. Even if there’s room for that — which I doubt — we’d have to surrender nearly all our speed t
o make the turn. They’d be on us like a pod of killer whales before we’d reached the point there.” He shook his head. “We are left two choices now, old friend. Either we draw all those gunboats to the east instead, or … we save ourselves and leave the people in that sloop to die.”
“But Captain,” Kyrios said, pale and disbelieving. “To draw them east, we’d be sailing straight into the islands. Through the city’s very heart.”
“That’s right.”
Kyrios held up the charts he had been studying, as if Reikos might not understand what they foretold. “The channels aren’t deep or wide enough between them. We’d just run aground.”
Reikos nodded, already too lost in grief for his beautiful ship to attempt speech.
“How would that serve anyone, sir?” Kyrios asked desperately.
Reikos drew a long, deep breath. “That would depend on how long we could draw them off before we ran aground, I suppose. If we bought them time to get ashore, then we would not have sacrificed my ship in vain.”
“Sir … you can’t be serious. Are you?”
“Never more, I fear,” Reikos said quietly. He looked back toward the firelit island. “Though we’d likely have outrun their ships the other way, there was never any surety that we’d have outrun all their cannon balls.” He turned back to Kyrios, committed now, inside and out. “If they’re going to sink us, better in shallow water with land close by on either side to swim to, eh? Than well out to sea where there’s nothing for us to do but drown.” He gave his first mate a companionable slap on the arm. “If we do manage to help the Factor and Factora-Consort win this fight, I’m sure she’ll buy me another ship. Almost as nice,” he added, with a catch in his throat. “Better go down and explain our new objective to the crew, I guess. I can count on you to help convince them, I hope?”
Kyrios looked at him with, to Reikos’s consternation, the gleam of unshed tears in his eyes. “It’s been an honor serving with you, Captain. All these years. I’ve no intention of abandoning you now.”
“Don’t start speaking of us in the past tense that way, will you?” Reikos dragged a pale grin from somewhere inside. “It’ll just spook the others.”
Is my Viktor really dead? Can this be true? The question circled endlessly, vanishing into the murky waters of Arian’s mind, only to resurface moments later. If he was … it was her fault. Or was it? Could this have been avoided? Or was it all but started anyway before she’d even left the Factorate to free Sian? Arian could not imagine her husband dead. However pessimistic he had seemed at times, he had been too much alive last time she’d seen him. Only days ago.
Only days ago this war had seemed no more than an academic possibility to her. Only weeks ago they’d had no greater worries than the vicissitudes of Alizar’s economic turmoil, and deflecting some inconvenient trade delegation from Copper Downs. Or so it had seemed.
And Konrad’s illness, of course. Was her son, at least, still living? Where was he now? Not still lying in their burning house, surely. Where would they have taken him? And who would they have been? Was Lucia with him still? Was she even alive — or Maronne? What of her poor repentant brother, Aros? Was anyone she’d cared for here still living? She wondered if Viktor’s pernicious cousin was happy with where his self-serving schemes had brought them all, or whether he too was hiding somewhere now, wishing as desperately as Arian did that he could take so many blunders back and wake up from this nightmare.
“Arian,” Sian whispered, peeping through a crack between the gunwale and their tarp, “is that not another of Viktor’s ships? I think … yes! It flies the banner of House Alkattha!”
“As do any ships Escotte has hired, I’m sure,” said Arian, unable to prevent herself from raining pessimism even on Sian. “I’m sorry. That was …”
Sian shook her head. “I understand. This waiting … is not easy.”
No, thought Arian. It leaves too much time for thought.
Rationally, she knew that they could not have been here for much more than half an hour, but it seemed they’d waited half the night. Was the captain still coming? She hoped, almost, that he was not; that something had prevented him from even leaving port on Cutter’s. That she might yet avoid having his death and those of his crew on her conscience as well by morning.
“I see at least a few ships flying Factorate flags,” Sian pressed. “If they’re still fighting, then … we cannot have lost yet, can we?”
Perhaps not, thought Arian, if they haven’t just been captured or stolen during battle, and our flags left flying just to catch other members of my husband’s fleet off guard. She managed to keep her mouth shut this time, anyway. Was this what it had been like for Viktor, she wondered, drowning in despair while she had badgered him to be less pessimistic? “I’ve seen half a dozen all too recognizable warships tonight,” Arian sighed. “I ordered them equipped with cannon myself, hardly more than a week ago, for that ridiculous parade to beard Duon in his own den.” A wretched little laugh escaped her. “I can hope, I guess, that they’re still under the command of captains loyal to my husband’s government.”
“My ladies!” Pino’s urgent voice came muffled through the tarp. “I see him! Reikos is coming — fast!”
Heedless of the risk, Arian reached up to shove their tarp aside and stuck her head up. “Where is he?”
“My lady,” Pino said, “please, stay hidden until —”
“No!” She had to see. Had to watch — praying that Reikos would realize the futility of what she’d asked of him, and turn around. “Please, I …”
“There, my lady,” Pino said, abashed. He pointed into the darkness north of them, where it still took some time for her to find and recognize the hulking silhouette of his darkened ship. Heading straight at them, it seemed.
“I cannot see him,” Sian murmured beside her.
“There,” said Arian, just as lamps bloomed suddenly at the ship’s prow. One, then three, then many more, lighting up … a figure, waving from the deck. No, shaking its fist. Long, pale hair and flowing lengths of amethyst silk lifted on the wind. Arian groaned and hid her eyes. “All my fault,” she whispered.
“None of it,” said Sian. “Escotte is to blame for this, and whoever put him up to it. If anybody did. I can see now that his greed alone may have been sufficient to cause all this.”
Arian shook her head, not remotely willing to let herself off so easily. “They all warned me —”
“That you mustn’t try to save your son. I know,” Sian cut her off. “But if I wasn’t given this terrible gift to heal Konrad, then why was I made to suffer it? And if a god cares enough to save your son, how could you have been wrong to care as well?”
Arian had once believed there were no gods in Alizar, then thought Sian’s new god might save her son. Now she only wondered how they’d all allowed themselves to read whatever they most wished for in the tea leaves of this catastrophe. Even if there was some new god in Alizar again, how had she imagined that a deity her husband had ordered butchered might re-order the world just to help them save their son, much less their little kingdom? Why should a god care for any tiny clot of islands, much less three miniscule lives on one small hilltop?
“My ladies, we must make ready to sail now,” Pino pled. “As soon as Reikos draws these ships away, we must start for shore. It will be very important then that you are not seen. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Arian said, knowing he would not suspect how deeply or for how much. “And Pino, please, do not endanger yourself either, if it can be helped at all.” She and Sian ducked down again and pulled the tarp back into place above them, leaving a gap to see through.
Reikos’s ship was fully lit now. Like a ballroom on the night of someone’s coronation. Not one, but two fair sketches of the Factorate’s banner had been raised upon its masts as well. Arian had not realized how close they were when they had been a shadow still. She glanced again at the ridiculous figure she had called for at its prow, then looked back at the harbor
, realizing what felt wrong.
“He’ll draw them here!” she hissed to Sian. “When he turns out to sea, the chase will bring all those other boats right past us! He must not realize where we are! Pino!” she shouted, “Pino, can you wave a light, or something? He must see us and change direction or we’re —”
“My lady, no!” begged Pino. “They will see us too! On shore! You must stay down!”
“But don’t you see? He’s —” She glanced back at the looming ship, and fell silent, unable to make sense of what she saw. “What’s he doing?” she gasped. “Why is he turning east?”
Sian put a hand to her mouth. “There is no escape for him that way!”
“My lady …” Pino said, staring at Fair Passage in equal dismay as it thundered past them at full speed, not five hundred feet off their port side, “the other boats have seen him too. They are moving … away from us, but …” His eyes grew round. “Hang on!” he shouted as the great ship’s foaming wake crashed toward them. Seconds later, the port side of their little boat was shoved into the air as Arian and Sian cried out and grabbed for any purchase they could find. Just as it seemed the boat would roll, the port side fell away again, more violently than it had risen, and the starboard side heaved up to roll them in the opposite direction, as water poured across the gunwales. There was barely time to gasp and grab once more at the sloop’s bare ribs before the port side rose again, though not as swiftly or as far, followed by the starboard side, and then, as suddenly, the little craft grew still, bobbing quietly, as if to catch its breath.
“Blackblood’s balls!” Pino gasped, unwrapping his arms from around the mast, and climbing to his feet again. “Did he not see us here, or —”
Whatever else he might have said was drowned out by a deafening roar as Fair Passage fired all its cannons at the passing shoreline, running due east now, without seeming to have slowed at all. As if the sound itself had torn them free, boats of every size and apparent faction began turning on the wind to follow Reikos toward the island channel.