Corsair Princess

by Hausladen, Blake;

  “Sahin? Is this a joke? Our Sahin claimed to be a Ludoq and raised the East against the Kaaryon? And won?”

  “Read the whole thing,” Barok said.

  I did not like when he did that, but the cure for my confusion was already in my hand.

  65th of Spring, 1196

  * * *

  To my most honored nephew, Barok Yentif, Arilas of Enhedu and Prince of Zoviya, Urnedi in Enhedu,

  * * *

  The Kaaryon stands at a crossroads. We have just learned that Grand Prelate Disand and Prince Evand have betrayed us all. Their armies attempted to murder Prince Yarik as battle was joined with the Havishon just five days ago. Yarik survived, but at the cost of the 2nd Hurdu division. Evand’s 5th Hemari division as well as Disand’s army were destroyed. Disand was killed, and Evand is missing. The pretender royal known as Sahin was also killed in the battle, but the Arilas of Havish rallied the armies of the East and took the field. He sent envoys to Bessradi, and an audience with the Exaltier was granted. It is therefore expected that the summer session of the Council will be attended by every member.

  * * *

  It is in this context that I write to you, as the membership of the council has many concerns.

  * * *

  Recent events in Trace, Heneur, and the disputed region known as the Oreol have drawn many eyes. Objections have been raised, and numerous petitions for sanction have been delivered to the Council alleging harms caused by yourself, your bondsmen, and the dealings of your province. Chancellor Parsatayn is the chief author of these charges.

  * * *

  The Council therefore requires your presence on the 1st of Summer to account for yourself and your province. I petitioned the Exaltier on your behalf, and he has granted you dispensation from the prohibition against your traveling to the capital territory.

  * * *

  I will be the arbiter of the cases brought against you. It is my hope, upon the successful discharge of these allegations, to add to the docket the restoration of Enhedu’s vote upon the Council. Fear not, nephew. Your Yentif blood has proven strong, and I do not doubt that Bayen has graced you as he does all of our divine bloodline.

  * * *

  With kindest regards,

  Council Chairman Bendent Yentif

  Arilas of Urmand and Protector of the Bergion

  Escandi in Urmand

  Barok nodded. It wasn’t the story of our lost men that troubled him—it did not trouble me, either. Sahin had done as he’d dreamed, and I was happy for the ending he had found for himself.

  “Why so morose? Not the summons, I trust? A confrontation with Chancellor Parsatayn has been your goal all year. You even have time enough between now and then to take that tour of the northern village and approved all their loan applications, if it is the size of your tax rolls you are worried about. What could you possibly fear from the council?”

  He hesitated, then handed me a folded collection of rotting pages. The mismatched sheets were in the same hand, and dated back to the start of the season. It was a diary of sorts, written to me.

  The 3rd of Spring

  Madam Yentif, your silver has seen us safely south to the Tracian town of Grish. Not everyone made it, but not all ever do. It is a dry place surrounded by goats and empty valleys. I’ve heard tell of a dell we may be able to hide in.

  * * *

  The 7th of Spring

  Leger Mertone marched near our encampment today. We have decided to leave our hiding place and follow him. We hope to cross with him to Enhedu.

  * * *

  9th

  General Mertone called for volunteers today. I read the details of his offer to the rest, and every man has decided that he must join.

  * * *

  The 12th of Spring

  All are away. The men marched west with General Mertone, and their families go north to claim the land the service of their fathers will earn them. Land, great lady, land.

  * * *

  13th of Spring

  I am returning to the Kaaryon. There are others who would come. I have your silver still and will not waste a coin of it.

  * * *

  34th of Spring

  I meant to only bring a few. The slaves in the market I spoke to about a haven in the north revolted. They killed their keepers, and word quickly spread. The entire district-worth of slaves ran, and we fled north into the night.

  * * *

  36th

  Bailiffs out of Alsonbrey attacked us late last night. Many were captured or killed. I escaped with most into a forest, and we slipped north.

  * * *

  53rd of Spring

  We have arrived at the valley near Grish. Send word of your next plan. I don’t know how so many could move across. I will keep us hidden here as best I can.

  “What is your concern?” I asked. “This is better news than the defeat of the Kaaryon’s armies. This is exactly what we wished. Kyoden’s people are coming home.”

  “This man Aden seems very fit for the task you have given him, but what he represents could undo us utterly. He is an escaped slave hiding upon my land. He shows no care. I wish him to come but pray that he keeps himself quiet and hidden.”

  “Is it his location that is most concerning?” I asked.

  “I can survive many accusations, but aiding escaped slaves is not one of those. Yes, their location concerns me greatly.”

  “I will send word to him—have him move.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you care? As long as it is not on your land, correct?”

  “Don’t be cross.”

  “You started scowling before I even got here, so do not lecture me on my mood. Tell me you will be satisfied if he removes himself from your land.”

  He nodded but would not stop frowning.

  A small puff of smoke rose from the back of the lead ship, and a great wave of happiness rolled through me—through all of us. Even the men in metal swooned.

  “Soma,” he said. “By the Spirit, she has grown strong.”

  I whispered to my prince, “You will give her more before you leave?”

  He shrank a little. “It really is my blood, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Give her all you can, love. And ask her no questions.”

  The frown deepened. “I wish Leger was here.”

  I hugged his arm and kissed his cheek. “He is, love. His spirit is right here with us upon the wind.”

  He hid his tears by snuggling his face into my hair.

  I pushed myself gently back against him, wrapped his arms around me, and put his hands upon my belly.

  We watched Soma come ashore. She grabbed Sevat by the face and planted a kiss upon him that staggered the man and drew another great roar of applause from the crowd.

  Barok managed a small laugh, and hugged me close. “I love you,” he said.

  “Oh, love. Yes. Say it again.”

  He whispered it in my ears over and over.

  58

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  The 74th of Spring, 1196

  It was a wet morning when all was ready for my expedition north. Everyone else was already aboard the waiting carriage.

  The driving rain was wonderful. It pressed back my hair and snatched away the morning’s heat. Enhedu had taught me to stop wearing silk long ago. Errati had not learned this yet but made no complaint as he greeted me from the unprotected alsman’s seat on the back of the carriage.

  I shook off what I could of the rain, situated myself inside, and got a look at my companions. Geart looked perfectly content to be wet the entire trip, and Lilly was all laughs and smiles. It was very unnerving. Thell rounded out the foursome and hurried to close the carriage door against the persistent downpour. The trip was the result of significant planning and arm-twisting on his part. The schedule included 174 meetings, and he seemed convinced we could manage it in the seven days before I was due to head to Bessradi.

  The carriage started away, and I began to recall my previous
overland adventures aboard a carriage and the endless boredom that awaited me.

  I grabbed hold of the first topic I could and addressed Master Thell. “Will Sevat have started his second ship by the time we arrive?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said as he fidgeted this way and that in an effort to dry the water off the seat and woodwork. He had only the one small cloth but industriously wrung it out above the sloped footing and drain between us. I very nearly accused him of being too particular until I recalled the length of our first ride. We were all soon working to do the same with whatever kerchief or rag we had.

  Geart did a fair bit more laughing than moping. He’d thought to bring a broad cloth parasol so had avoided the brunt of the rain. His attention shifted to the crowd huddled under the canopy of the mill as we passed along the river.

  It was a very large group. The summer wheat was in, and the trio of mills and half-dozen threshers had been working Enhedu’s grain for days.

  Geart slumped heavily back onto the seat after we’d passed.

  “Were you singing?” I asked. “I did not hear your verse.”

  “Hmm? Oh. Yes—keeping it quiet for the girl’s sake. It was a small magic.”

  It did not seem like that could be true. “Which?”

  “The same magic I used to draw the mercury from those on the island. This song would kill a thrall if there are any here.”

  I could not entirely read his mood. He seemed older and unhappy. I started asking him why when Lilly shushed me. A moment later his eyes closed and his chin sank onto his chest.

  “He’ll be happier after he has napped,” she said.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Oh, well, the singing will kill him, but the Spirit has forgiven him. He is okay—mostly.”

  I did not like the note of worry that went with that “mostly.”

  She shook her finger at my frown. “You just do all your business. Everyone is working so you can be our king, okay? Kings don’t frown, they do things.”

  Thell shook his finger at me, too, as only an old and happy man could. “No arguing with that.”

  No. No there wasn’t.

  Enhedu’s warm rain came and went as we worked our way north. Our first stop was the lakeside town of Hippoli. The insuppressible Aunt Burti remained the town’s social governor and had a tour well organized for me. Beer was the topic on everyone’s lips and the drink in everyone’s glass. It was hard to turn men away from talk of the brew.

  The town’s industries were uninteresting, due largely to location, but substantial all the same. Freight and storage were Hippoli’s specialties. I approved loan applications for men who would manufacture harnesses, collars, bits, bridles, plows, and yokes. Another man convinced me he could kiln-dry pine in ovens carved into a cliffside. Another would store grain. The most interesting of the Hippoli applications was from a drover who had it in mind to corral and domesticate the elk that thrived in the pine forest. He arrived at our meeting upon a saddled buck and managed to coax the animal the length of the bustling street without it bolting on him. Geart lost a bet to Thell on the result. The drover had a tilling harness ready, but I declined the demonstration. I loaned him the 550 silver he requested in notes of fives and tens.

  Geart sang his song to the town without result, and we made our way east.

  I enjoyed the villages and towns upon the coastal plains along the crinkled coast. The spider’s web of rivers there were spectacular.

  Their needs were universally the same: bridges and irrigation. I made loans of tin coin and notes to each village that was organized enough to have signed its residents into association. I left the coast confident that the funds I’d left behind would be well used and the debts paid.

  The ridgeline we approached on our third day was thick with the tall pines I so loved. There were no villages along that wide and low stretch southeast of Terapier Bay. Muddy rivers crisscrossed the place, and the road followed a tortured course. The grass growing there had been cut back—great swaths of it, in fact.

  “Who is out here in the mud cutting all this useless grass?” I asked.

  “The foxtail millet?” Thell asked. “Not so useless. Your bread was made from it when you first arrived. The hogs love it. It also makes a fine beer.”

  “Beer from millet? Is that what everyone is so happy to be drinking?”

  “You’ll love meeting the brewer. He’s our next stop.”

  “Terribly bready and too bitter a follow,” Geart said, and you would have thought that he’d insulted Thell’s mother.

  “Oh, you don’t know shit about beer,” Thell said. “Have you seen what he’s done—what they’ve done up there? They kiln-dry it now, keeping it at just the right heat until it’s browning. Then they pick through it—every burnt grain comes out. Next, they grind it coarse—not like flour—and boil more water than you’ve ever seen. Have you seen the copper tubs they use? They are enormous. What a life it would be, ehh? Up there all day stirring it with those wooden paddles …”

  His voice started to take on a dreamlike quality, and Geart was dreaming right along with him. “Wood smoke and malt … the scent pours down from the hills. Boiling down. Then they add the hops. Boil, boil, boil. Smells like paradise. They cool it, and then the yeast is pitched.”

  “Have you seen how they do it?” Geart asked.

  “No. That part they have all underground. All you see is the casks and barrels rolling out the far side of the hillock.”

  “Sounds like a great deal of work,” I said.

  They looked at me. Geart said, “You’ve never had a beer.”

  “I have. The night of my wedding. I drank myself quite blind.”

  Thell chuckled, “Ahh. That was the local stuff. From before—open tubs up on rickety platforms, wild yeast getting in all the time. It could be so sour you’d think it was wine. This is something else. They got started with nothing but wild millet, a bit of summer wheat, and wild hops. With that they brewed liquid gold. They have two real brews in the offing now with their own crops of hops, grain, and yeast.”

  “Don’t forget that cargo of cocoa Sevat sold them,” Geart said with anxious glee. Was his mouth watering? “Have you heard any details of how they mean to use it?”

  “Eyy,” Thell smiled. “I got a taste of both. One sweet water lager—cold-brewed from the limestone spring water up the valley. What you’re waiting on is a taste of the second. It is a dark milk stout.”

  “The cocoa is added during a secondary?”

  Thell nodded. His mouth was watering, too. “Worth going to war for,” he said.

  Geart leaned back and nodded his head.

  I would have laughed at their foolishness, except that this was Thell and Geart. Both were common men, but not simple men by any measure. Was it possible that they would fight over a beer? And if so, that meant there were others who took the brew as seriously. I wasn’t dealing with a beverage, I was dealing with a religion and religions enjoyed corruption as much as maggots.

  I studied again the list of applications from the next town. I understood those from the ropemaker, sailmaker, farmers, timbermen, sutler, and the enormous list of additional proposals from Master Sevat related to his shipyard. Approval for each of those was a formality.

  The proposals from the brewer and the cooper, however, bordered on larceny. Both requests were for more coin than what Sevat needed to build fifteen ships. Both applications were also very short on details.

  Our carriage made it up out of the millet-choked mud flats, and we got a look at the vast Terapier Bay. A single ship slid northeast toward the distant mouth of the bay. I was about to remark on it when our destination came into view.

  The structures along the town’s river did not look altogether right. Each had reached some state of completion and were in use, but oddities prevailed—chimneys half-bricked, a stairway made of rough-cut stumps, and a bridge that looked too battered by the passage of cut pines beneath it to be relied upon to cross on foot mu
ch less in a carriage. My driver had the same thought and stopped us well short of it. The plaza on the near side was bordered by fencing that was half done, and the mill that took in all the pines was a ramshackle collection of workshops.

  The crowd that came out to meet us was the personification of the frantic town. Sevat was the first across, and he began—without the formality of the introductions he was known for—to apologize for the quality of his loan application.

  “Please, my lord. Would you allow me to amend it?” he concluded abruptly, as if expecting me to assault him with its failings.

  “You need more funds?” I asked.

  “Additional? No. Metal. I understand that loads of iron and copper are arriving at Urnedi from Heneur. It is all moving to Hippoli now, yes?”

  “This supply impacts your application?”

  “Immeasurably. I need all of it. I was going to make do with parts made of oak, but they will not serve. I need iron, copper, and plenty of it.”

  Other groups of men crowded into the half-cobbled plaza. One man looked rather like a Deyalu alsman for all his finery. Perhaps this was the brewer whose name I could not recall. Had someone warned me about him? Soma, perhaps?

  This man did not bother with introductions, either. “Hold a moment, Sevat,” he said. “We’ve discussed this. I’ll be taking the first shipment.”