Corsair Princess

by Hausladen, Blake;

  “Eyy. And quite a bit of other debris, too. It’s like Almidi has been swept out to sea.”

  The stiff southwesterly wind quartered into the Whittle’s sails, and she glided through the slow roll of the gulf. I began to see the bits of wood, and we were surrounded by millions of pieces, large and small.

  Every man went quiet. Was this all that was left of Almidi? I worried that we would strike something, and I gave up some of the wind to steer us west of the debris.

  We strained to see the town and waited to hear the report of the lookout.

  “She’s been gutted,” he yelled uselessly.

  “Report, rot you.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Meaning to say, the east side of the city is gone. The river is ten times the size. The Kingfisher is here, and a good number of smaller ships.”

  “Heh,” I replied, and the smarter men in the crew relaxed as well.

  Almidi had decided to flush its greasy warrens out to sea.

  “Quickest line to the open mooring across from the Kingfisher,” I ordered, and we dived in like the day we’d sacked Osburth.

  The Kingfisher was busy on the far side of the pier unloading her catch of yellowtail. My boatswain and his men were ready. The moment we touched on, twenty men charged across and boarded her. They snatched her provisions, every coil of rope they could, and the boatswain and his mates even managed to shoulder the Kingfisher’s stowed mainsail.

  A column of greencoats started down from the fortress. The prince and his regent were on their way. Mercanfur could not be far behind them. I could not suffer the delay.

  “Boatswain,” I called, “I’ll leave you behind if you do not get yourself aboard this instant.”

  He and his men managed it, but they did not leave me much time to spare. Rope and sail came aboard, and we pushed off.

  “Soma,” Prince Barok yelled across the growing divide as he rode onto the pier. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to be to Miandi and back fifteen days ago.”

  Men. Such big mouths on them.

  I said to him with a growling sigh, “Prince Barok Yentif, please meet Arilas Oenry Kiel of Aneth. You might recall that you sent me to open an avenue of trade with him and his neighbors in the east.”

  Barok blinked, but by the Spirit he was not a complete dullard. “Of course. Fantastic to meet you. I trust we will be seeing each other again after you finish doing … whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Oenry looked across at me and laughed. “You are a corsair, you know that, right?”

  “I’m also faster than your horses, Oenry.”

  “Prove it,” he said and took his place in the forecastle crew.

  Barok was left to watch us sail away. The last thing I heard from shore was Mercanfur’s yelling.

  The Whittle loved the rope and fresh canvas we fed her, and I’d had time on the cruise south to shift the heavier cargo aft. I called for full sails, and she repaid us the favor.

  68

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  I returned to Urnedi on the 68th of Summer, and it took many days for me to settle back from the panicked pace I’d maintained all year. The world beyond our borders was smaller, slower, and had lost many of its fangs. Soma made it back before I did. Aneth and back—it was astounding. The gold she delivered plus the wealth repatriated from the Pormes stabilized the bank’s reserves. I counted three of my six northern neighbors as trading partners, and the rest as prospects for the same. My burgeoning populous was well fed, my thriving businesses wanted for nothing from the Kaaryon, and Enhedu enjoyed the protection of a full division of greencoats and a navy whose dominance would only grow. The capital province and its exhausted armies, wounded church, and infighting nobility were not troubling us. My brother Evand continued to evade capture, and my father’s abilities to survive seemed boundless.

  Our attack upon the capital had succeeded, and there were no more Hessier in Bessradi—at least not in the open. The new Sten was compelled to show the city that his blood was red. We heard the occasional whisper that someone may have died at a distant port after Soma’s ship sailed through, but that was as close to hearing of the Hessier or their servant we came the rest of that perfect summer.

  And beneath the ground, upon a river of native silver, Enhedu’s happiest little girl was learning how to speak the language of the Spirit.

  Such was the calm we had wrought that nothing at all happened for days on end. In fact, it wasn’t until the 71st that Selt had a reason to come find me.

  “A tour of the curtain wall this morning?” he suggested with a strange tone.

  “Fresh air sounds fantastic,” I replied and returned the ledger I’d been rereading for fun to its shelf. “I’ll go get Dia. It is nearly time for her walk around the courtyard with Jescia.”

  “She’ll not want to hear all our talk,” he said and held up a letter bearing my father’s heavy mark.

  We went down and basked in the hot Enhedu sun while I read.

  The 55th of Summer, 1196

  * * *

  Barok,

  It is time for you to return to Bessradi, with all the blessings of our family. You have anchored the warring north and provided an example of calm that the rest of Zoviya would do well to follow.

  * * *

  Chairman Bendent has forgiven your failure to appear for the summer session of the Council and has agreed to extend a second invitation. Privately, he has confessed to me that he means to bring to the floor the status of Enhedu’s vote upon the Council. It is past due for you to take what rightly belongs to our family.

  * * *

  I have called the 3rd division of Hemari to Bessradi to keep the peace during the autumn session and will send a regiment to escort you from Enhedu’s borders to the meeting. The prohibition for provincial forces to enter the Kaaryon remains in force, though I hasten to remind you that you will be allowed a full company of your guards within the capital territory.

  * * *

  After the meeting, you will join me at the palace so that I may reward you and Yarik for your many successes and enjoy the pleasures of a father’s pride in his sons.

  * * *

  With deepest regards,

  Your father

  It was the letter we’d been expecting. His last two had hinted at the same. But I could not understand my reeve’s nervousness or the reason he’d gotten me outside.

  A pain-filled cry escaped from the keep, and I saw the same tension in the faces of my guards.

  “What was that?” I asked and froze when I saw Avin and Geart crossing toward the keep with a midwife. I took hold of Selt’s arm. “Ohh. Ohh! Dia? Is it time?”

  He nodded. “Pemini and Umera are with her.”

  I had no idea at all what to say. My confusions flung themselves about the inside of my skull like a panicked crowd of well-meaning aunts and uncles.

  The gates opened and Avin and Geart made their way up. I could not understand their calm. I rushed at them.

  “No need to worry,” Avin said and patted my arm. “A birth with two healers in attendance is not something that should distress you, gentlemen. Stand aside, please.”

  Selt and my guards had charged after me. None of us were equipped for this event. We stood like dull statues while the pair crossed the drawbridge as calmly as men on their way to dinner. Rooted in place, we were only slightly less useful than a collection of wall decorations.

  “Have you ever attended a birth? Your boy’s?” I asked Selt, and he shook his head. “Any of you?”

  The guards shook their metal heads as well, and Selt said, “I am mystified by the entire process.”

  “I saw an Akal-Tak shed a placenta the day I went to buy Dia,” I said. “I’d thought the horse had shit her liver. I threw up all over my alsman.”

  Selt laughed so hard at this he bent over at the waist and lost his breath. I couldn’t help joining in and was quickly out of breath myself. The guards looked on as though we were men from another world—and we were, I
suppose.

  What I had said about Dia began to dawn upon us. Our faces flattened, and we straightened our clothes.

  “What did you pay for her?” Selt asked.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “My alsman at the time found her father—soaked with debts and moldy wine. He was just days away from being taken by the bailiffs for churlishness. My alsman wanted Dia as a personal Dagoda plaything and tricked her father into signing a pledge of service to me. I got her for the price of the vellum he signed. The only reason she survived Dagoda was because I hated my alsman enough to pay five times the usual boarding fee to prevent her from being touched. Her survival is as cruel a trick as Bessradi can perform.”

  I welcomed my guards’ wrathful looks and basked in the clarity of the moment. “The only difference between Yarik and myself is that I was banished to Enhedu before rape and murder became the equivalent of dinner and desert.”

  Selt asked, “Why, by the Spirit, did she f0llow you here? I’ve heard tell that she stole an Akal-Tak and rode here alone. Why?”

  “You forget Bessradi, or you have never walked its streets.” I shook my head at myself. “Not that I have, either. But the life I saved her from is the worst possible kind. Imagine, if you can, to not only be a slave but to have your body shaped and trained to please others and for your very nature—your ability to continue life upon this earth—to be taken from you. Dia crossed the world to find me because she loved me for rescuing her from it.”

  “There is no measure for how much you have changed, is there?” Selt asked.

  “Perhaps not, but think on this. The man that I was … that is what we were made to be. The Deyalu is the perfect expression of the Shadow’s desires for us. The entire empire suffers and the world is made colder for it.”

  Selt turned away from me. He did not like the topic. Neither did I.

  “Are we changed?” he asked. “Underneath it all, I mean.”

  “You tell me. We started the year with arson, theft, and murder. I turned away my countrymen because their churlishness would embarrass me, and you unleashed a river that swept half a city and an untold number of people out to sea.”

  “I was hoping that you would say, yes,” he said, and I could only chuckle at what fools we were.

  After a time he gestured up at the keep. “Do you think it really is safer with healers? I mean, it’s all the way inside. What can they do if there is a problem?”

  The question slapped me. I stood, coughed, and looked around for help until I managed to think my way through it.

  “No,” I said. “Geart can heal anything. They’ll be fine.”

  We were left to examine Urnedi’s surroundings, and a more useless pair of men had never been seen upon the earth.

  The sound of Dia’s ordeal prevented any further conversation.

  “Perhaps a beer?” Selt asked, and we withdrew like the cowards that we were.

  69

  Madam Dia Yentif

  Clea Vesteal

  “Sing your rotting song,” I screamed at Geart as the next contraction started. “Make it stop, make it stop!”

  “Not until you’re done, Dia,” Avin said. “Stop pushing. You’re not ready yet. You’ll tear.”

  “She’s bleeding,” Umera said.

  “Hush,” Pemini told her. “That is just her water, and no reason to get animated. Go sit.”

  And then Pemini’s big hands had hold of mine. “Time to breathe, Dia. Nice and slow. Relax your hands. There you go. Good. Now your wrists and forearms. And up to your elbow and shoulders.” She brushed each with a warm cloth as she went, and piece by piece I relaxed all the way in to my back and my stomach. A blanket covered me as she stroked my stomach. I napped there. It seemed like only a second.

  Pain. “No, no, no!”

  “Don’t push. Not yet, Dia.”

  But I couldn’t wait. The pain came in a great wave. I screamed, and I pushed.

  “Out, out, out!”

  I couldn’t see through the stinging sweat in my eyes. Voices. All crowding me.

  The terrible tension subsided, and I dreaded the next. Voices moved, and the next one came. It was no longer in my control. I pushed and screamed.

  “Time to move her,” Avin said with a loud clear voice, and they swung me out of the bed and into the squat chair. They settled me down, my hips opened, and the pain of the coming contraction stole me away.

  I screamed, and pushed, and screamed some more.

  “Good, good, Dia! Just once more now. Keep breathing, dear, and get ready to bear down.”

  Pemini wiped my face and eyes with a cloth, and I got a look at her. “You’ll want to be able to see,” she said.

  The kindness touched my heart. I found a long breath of air and a second.

  “Good, good,” Avin said. He tapped on the top of my stomach. “Good, good. Here comes the next one. Bear down, dear. Bear down!”

  The next one was the worst. Everything felt torn, and I worried I was going to explode.

  “Push, push,” Pemini yelled.

  There was too much—too much. I lost track of everything.

  White, agony, numb, soundless.

  Forever.

  Release!

  “There you are, little one,” Avin cried through the ringing in my ears, and I did not understand. And then there was a thing upon my chest.

  “What is that?” I asked and weakly took hold of it. It moved and cooed, its little mouth sucked upon my collarbone. Her perfect face. She was perfect.

  “She’s bleeding more,” Umera said loudly. “Geart, sing.”

  “Not yet,” Avin shouted. The baby was snatched away, and I was lifted suddenly back up onto the bed. Avin was above me the next instant and looking straight into my eyes. “I need you to push one more time, Dia. Hurry now.”

  My stomach felt wrong—hollow. He put his hands upon it. “One good push, Dia. Come on now.”

  My body did it without my permission, and it was the worst pain yet. I lost track of the screaming and the agony.

  And something else came out. I panicked until I remembered dimly the purple mass Umera had let go of after her daughter was born.

  Avin pushed on my stomach again. A gush and loud splash.

  The world went black, until with a crackly flash, a crisp white warmth struck me. In a moment, all my pain was gone.

  Geart’s song reached straight through me. Everything inside seemed to shift around. I relaxed back into the grace of the Spirit’s warmth.

  The tiny girl was back in my arms then, suckling as the white light bathed us. The darling little thing took a great breath then and screamed her little lungs out—a cry that pierced my heart and struck the world like the keening of a great bell.

  I held her close. “Hush, hush, Clea dear. It will be for your enemies to scream when you bite them.”

  She quieted, and sleep took me.

  About the Author

  Armed with an English degree from Ripon College and an MBA from Chicago’s Stuart School of Business, Blake has delved for twenty years through the shadowed realms of the financial industry. He currently solves financial crimes during the day and gives life to wild fantasies during the blackest hours of night.

  Glossary

  Abodeen - A poor northern coastal province

  Adanas - A monster in a children’s story and the name of the lost religion of the Edonians

  Aderan - A rich western plains province

  Akal-Tak - The fierce warhorses of the Hemari

  Almidi - Provincial seat of Trace

  Alsman - A bodyman appointed by the Exaltier to each of his sons

  Alsonbrey - Eastern gateway city of the Kaaryon

  Alsonelm - Northern gateway city of the Kaaryon

  Alsonvale - Western gateway city of the Kaaryon

  Aneth - An eastern coastal province

  Anton - A greencoat trainee, Erom’s son

  Apped - A prison in Aderan

  Arilas - A provincial governor and hereditary titl
e

  Ataouk - A royal family defeated by the Yentif

  Avin - A former church lawyer who escaped to Enhedu with Geart

  Barok - Arilas of Enhedu, heir to the throne of Edonia, One of the last three surviving princes of Zoviya

  Bayen - The god of Zoviya

  Bellion - Rich noble family from Eril

  Bendent - Arilas of Thanin, and cousin to the Exaltier

  Bergion - The southern sea that often sends cold winds north

  Berm - A vast southeastern province of tundra and mountains

  Bessradi - The capital city of the Zoviyan Empire

  Bleau - Noble family in Kuet

  Bluecoat - Another name for a Hemari soldier

  Bunda-Hith - The monstrous mountains in Berm

  Chaukai - The secret order sworn to the King of Edonia

  Corneth - A rich noble family in Alsonelm

  Cynt - A rich family in the Oreol

  Daavum Mountains - A thick mountain range that runs south from Enhedu through Trace into Heneur

  Dagoda - A Zoviyan school that trains young women to serve the rich and powerful men of Zoviya

  Dahar - A poor eastern province

  Dame - A familiar title for the oldest woman in a family or place, grandmother

  Darmia - Leger’s wife, sister to Evela

  Dekay - A conservancy priest that serves Sikhek

  Deyalu (way of the blood) - A wing of the Bessradi Palace where the Exalier’s sons are raised

  Dia - Matron of Urnedi, married to Barok

  Dooma, Avinda - Avin’s full name

  Eargram - Urnedi’s bailiff

  Edonia - A kingdom destroyed by the Zoviya Empire

  Ellyon Grano - A Hemari captain who serves with Evand

  Enhedu - A desolate northern province