We took our pilot on board and drifted with the tide, first slowly, and then with a great rush, the lights of the city receding swiftly as we raced down the Brood, the longboat pulling to keep us in the center of the channel. There were eight leagues of low sandy hills between the city and the sea, and we made that journey in a single rush, after which the tide carried us right out into the salt water. The channel to the open sea was beset on either side by dangerous banks of sand, on one of which Royal Stilwell had struck before the battle in which I took her, and it required all the skill of the pilot, aided by the navigation lights on shore, to bring us safely into the deep ocean.
And there, the ebb finally failing, we had to drop anchor in eighteen fathoms of water, for still the western wind assailed us and we could not get completely clear of the land. We put off the pilot, and I returned to the cabin and my hammock until eight bells, when the crew were called to breakfast. Floria and I rose from our beds and looked aft, out the great stern windows, to see the pale sun on the eastern horizon just breaking free of the land.
For the first time in weeks, I felt my heart ease. For here, as the ship pitched at its hawser’s end, was the evidence that our flight was successful, and that we had won free of Bonille.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
During the morning, Able pitched at its anchor while the wind whistled and moaned through the rigging, but at noontide Captain Langsam thought the wind had backed a little, so when the tide began again to ebb, he set sail. Were our track southerly we would run straight onto the sandbanks, so he shaped our course a little west of north, and thus we clawed free of Bonille. Unfortunately, our course took us farther from Selford, not nearer, but Langsam intended to tack back and forth, as the galley had on the Long Firth, to come by slow degrees to our destination.
Close-hauled, the ship’s motion was unsettling, the stern rising into the sky in a great swoop, then descending through a series of lurches, each violent enough to rattle the teeth and cause the crockery in the cupboard to clatter. Floria proved a good sailor and was not ill, though the lurching of the ship made it hard for her to rest. Even so she continued her recovery, and her cough faded under the influence of possets of honey-sweetened wine.
We continued northward till dawn, then wore around onto the other tack. The western wind continued to blow fierce and cold, and Langsam proclaimed that this dry, persistent gale was the strangest, most froward wind he had ever encountered.
We tacked back and forth for another day and night, and then at dawn we saw another ship on the horizon. I recognized Sovereign, which had stranded you at Bretlynton Head and had then been tacking back and forth into the same western wind for days. Sovereign was a far larger and more comfortable vessel than Able, and Floria and I shifted from the privateer to the great galleon, and to the protection of its formidable guns. I now commanded a brave squadron that was small, but far stronger than any I was likely to encounter in the Sea of Duisland.
Floria and I had a large cabin all to ourselves, for Sovereign had quarters beneath the poop reserved for owners or distinguished passengers. At the stern was a great expanse of glass to let in the wan winter light, and we had our own private stern gallery if we wished to venture into the air. We had a large oaken table that smelled of polish, and armchairs with embroidered cushions, and deep boxlike beds to larboard and starboard.
Though the cabin was spacious, Floria found it too small for her temper. To maintain her boy’s disguise and avoid the company of strangers, she pretended to be more ill than she was, and shut herself away from company. When she could not avoid speaking, she spoke in gruff whispers. But she was restless in this self-imposed confinement, and often I found her pacing back and forth by the windows, her eyes glancing out at the sea, then down at the stout timbers of the deck, then out again. Sometimes I found her on the gallery, the wind snatching at her tight short curls, her hooded cloak spangled with spray.
“Curse this perverse wind!” said she. “I wish we were in Selford, so that I could take counsel there with my friends, and choose my course of action.”
“I will be your counsel,” said I. “And as for your action, there is but a single course possible, and that is you should be proclaimed queen on Coronation Hill.”
She gave me a dark look. “Still you counsel civil war,” she said.
“I did not fly with you from Bonille to watch you surrender yourself in Fornland,” said I. “And I think what follows your coronation will be less a war than a parade that will end with your triumphant installation on the throne of your ancestors.”
“I hope you are right,” said she. Then she approached me and put a hand on my arm. “You may be an excellent sailor, and I know you are a caring and devoted nurse, but you must leave the business of politics to me.”
“As Your Highness wishes,” said I.
Reflected by the waves, spots of afternoon sunlight danced on her face. Our wooden lodging creaked and groaned about us, and I heard the thud of feet on the deck above us as the hands were called to the braces. Floria’s hazel eyes looked up into mine.
“I wish to thank you for your care of me,” said she. “There were many times on this journey when you could have abandoned me, and run to save your own life.”
“I could not do such a thing and still look at myself in a mirror,” said I. “For remember—you shot down those brigands, and were willing to come rescue me sword in hand, and I could never desert one with such high spirit and courage.”
“I think you are not so simple a man as that,” said she. “Your motives are never so simple.”
“Perhaps they are not,” said I, and kissed her parted lips.
It may be that I would not have so kissed her if we had not been hanging in that strange suspended moment of time, zigzagging in that persistent westerly wind, unable to go forward or back. The hurly-burly of the world, the trumpet-cries of power, and the very judgment of the gods seemed far away, and the girl in my arms had become the only reality.
She was not surprised by my kiss, nor did she reject it, but instead accepted it gravely, and ventured, as if conducting an experiment, to brush her lips against mine. We kissed and kissed again, and her kisses grew in confidence, and her cheeks flushed with desire. I picked up her small form and carried her to her bed, and there I allowed Floria to continue her experiments.
I have some experience with women, as you know, but it must be admitted that I know little of virgins, let alone royal ones. And so I contented myself with being but a guide to the world she now chose to explore. I think she was little surprised by her own capacity for pleasure, for she was after all an Emelin and the daughter of King Stilwell; but she had not anticipated her ability to draw pleasure from another, and was a little taken aback by this revelation of her own power. But she learned soon enough to relish her dominion, and as the days went on, and Sovereign continued to tack back and forth in that endless, timeless, streaming wind, she became a monarch indeed, and exercised that power as she wished.
As we lay together, my mind was a whirl of sensation, of delight and laughter and joy, but yet I heard your words whispering in my inner ear: Yet if Floria decides to take you to her bed, you should comply.
For in this, too, as in all things, I submit to your will.
* * *
The starry night blazed above me, with Cthonius rising in the east, and Sovereign was close-hauled on the starboard tack. Cordage thrummed, and the bonaventure creaked overhead as I paced the poop to take the air. That beastly west wind blew my hair about my ears, and I felt my cheeks burn with the cold. I had left Floria asleep in the cabin, her slight body curled beneath the counterpane, lashes dark crescents on her cheeks, her breath sweet with wine. I spoke briefly to the mate who stood the watch, and then went aft to stand below the great stern lanterns; tall as a man, and view Sovereign’s silvery wake stretching out on the sea. And as I gazed on the salt-scented rolling sea, I became aware of another figure standing erect by me, her head crowned by the radiant
light of Cthonius.
“My lady,” said I, as I recognized Floria’s lady-in-waiting, Countess Marcella. Her lithe Aekoi form advanced, and stars shimmered in her liquid eyes.
“You do not seem surprised,” said she.
“I know that your ladyship is composed of miracles.”
Those star-flecked eyes searched mine. “How did you guess?”
“You always were a little too extraordinary,” I said, “and no one, least of all Floria, seemed to know where you came from, and so it seemed that you had some great power to influence even a princess. But it was when we were aboard Kiminge, and you so politely asked me to carve the ham right under Wilmot’s nose, that I recognized your peculiar brand of malevolence. For you took the occasion to turn that man’s mind to violence, and then let him fall into the sea to his death.”
“His death was a blessing,” said Marcella, “for otherwise he would have lived all his life with a disordered brain.”
And then her form shifted, and the golden skin paled, the slight form grew in stature, and the dark hair turned to tongues of red flame. Her emerald eyes glowed like Horagalles in the night, and her gown of forest-green satin blazed with gems.
“Afterward,” I said, “when you made such a point of introducing me to Elvina, I assumed some kind of trap, and I was on my guard. You could at least have saved Meens from that fall.”
“When my instrument breaks,” said Orlanda, “I blame the instrument.”
“I had wondered why you inspired three men to attack me,” I said. “I wondered if your invention had failed, and you could only repeat yourself. But then I realized that these threats to my life were to distract me from something else.”
Maleficent mischief glowed like moonlight in her face. “Do you guess what that something else might be?”
“Something that brings me here, to this sea, this ship, this wind that keeps everything at a standstill.”
“Yes,” said she, “something that has caused you to abandon your fortune, your plans for advancement, and your mistress. But now you have another mistress, do you not?”
“I am most fortunate in that regard,” said I.
“You have chosen a princess and the life of the court,” said she, “but I tell you that you would be safer on a battlefield. For at court flattery conceals the deepest envy, the wine-cup conceals bubbling poison, and deadly ambition is hidden by fair words, Bonille lace, and perfume. And there, Quillifer, you will contend with a malice so bottomless, and so time-honored, that it is become the very ocean in which the courtiers swim.”
“I believe I have encountered the malevolence of courtiers before,” said I.
“But however it swelled your pride, a Lord Warden in Ordinary Against Monsters is an insignificant office. Whereas the favorite of the monarch is another species of monster entirely, and the object of the greatest hatred in the world.”
I shrugged. “I am accustomed to being hated.”
Orlanda favored me with a catlike smile. “I think your vanity is puffed only by the regard of others, or by their hatred, which at least assures you that you are important.”
I folded my arms. “Is that all you have to say, my lady? Because the night wanes, and my bed calls me.”
“Your bed?” She smiled. “I think you mean the bed of another. Yet soon your other mistress will appear, and you will have to decide which to betray.” She leaned close, her smile glittering. “And remember, Quillifer, I know who you really love.”
* * *
Orlanda vanished then, and I stood for a moment beneath the great stern lamp, contemplated the wan light of Cthonius over the eastern horizon, and then returned to the cabin. I was soon curled against Floria in her deep, narrow bed, the arc of her body a warm comfort to a man who had spent too long in the cold air conversing with a cold-hearted nymph. Yet sleep did not come, for I picked through Orlanda’s words carefully, and the only thing I could understand was that soon you would return to my life, and at that I felt my heart soar.
I wonder, therefore, if Orlanda gave you aid in that journey from Winecourt to Selford, with the intention of you arriving in the palace to cause chaos and heartbreak to explode around me.
I found Orlanda’s vaunting less than convincing. She knows my ambition, and intended me to betray my friends to Edevane and the viceroy, and in the eyes of the world become a mean perjured informer, basely paid for treachery. In this she failed, but of course she may have laid deeper snares against me, and I would have to beware.
She also tells me that I will betray you or Floria, but I believe I have arranged things so that we all may be happy. I shall tell you that plan later.
We tacked back and forth for another day, and then finally the wind veered to the northwest, and we were able to shape our course directly for Fornland. The wind continued to veer and to moderate its force, and after another day we reached the latitude of Selford and were able to set a course directly for the mouth of the Saelle, and in another two days we reached Selford’s harbor at the Isle of Innismore. I thanked Captain Gaunt for his kind hospitality and hired a coach to take Floria and me to Mossthorpe on the left bank. Across the river I could see soldiers drilling on the Field of Mavors, some of the viceroy’s new recruits. As we came closer to the royal capital, I could look across the river and see the lacy white royal castle that crowned the bluff above Selford, and I felt a surge of joy that soon Floria might lodge there, a crown shining on her short dark curls.
But I did not want to go directly to the castle, for I didn’t know what news had reached the castle’s warden, or the commanders of the guard companies sworn to Aguila’s service. Instead, once we crossed the great bridge from Mossthorpe to Selford, we took the coach to the park on the west side of town, and to the vast Roundsilver palace, with its facade of many-colored Ethlebight brick, its battlements and towers, its twisting chimneys carved into fantastic beasts, all snarling into the sky.
I told the footman at the door that Sir Quillifer the Younger of Ethlebight needed to see His Grace on a matter of urgency. He said that the duke and duchess were riding with friends to the royal deer park south of the castle, but would be back before dinner. Roundsilver’s steward knew me, and we were shown into a parlor and offered refreshment.
It was not an hour before His Grace came into the room, still in his riding clothes, and followed by his golden duchess. His dark eyes fixed mine, and he walked toward me.
“What is it, Quillifer?” he asked. “What’s afoot? What is so urgent?”
But Her Grace looked from me to Floria, standing behind me in her boy’s clothes, and comprehension dawned like a sunrise across her face. She made a deep curtsy.
“Your Highness,” she said.
The duke paused, turned toward Floria, and comprehension entered his dark eyes. He bowed gravely, then straightened and looked at me.
“Well,” he said, “I imagine this promises more unhappiness for the kingdom.”
“The viceroy aimed at bringing Her Highness before the Siege Royal,” said I. “I have rescued her and brought her to your house.”
“Ay. My house.” Weariness seemed to settle upon the duke, and all at once he seemed ten years older than he had been but a moment ago. “There is a reason I never entered public life,” he said.
Her Grace walked in graceful silence to the duke and took his arm He looked at her and sighed. “Well,” he said finally, “it ill suits me, but I will do what I can do.”
Roundsilver could do a great deal, not least because he could open his strongbox and send forth his gold and silver into the world to work their wonders. Within two days the castle’s companies of Yeoman Archers, Horse, and Artillery had received their months of back pay and declared for Floria, and Floria and I moved into the great white castle that shone above the city. The lord mayor and the alderman came to kneel and offer their allegiance, as did the Trained Bands and the masters of the guilds. The new recruits drilling on the Field of Mavors also bent the knee and swore allegiance t
o Floria. Nobles and great gentlemen galloped from their estates to pledge their fealty.
Eight days after her arrival in Selford, Floria was crowned Queen of Duisland on Coronation Hill south of the city, to the acclamation of the population. Because Berlauda’s crown regalia had not returned from Loretto, Floria’s scepter and orb were antique pieces taken from the castle strongrooms, and the crown had last graced the brow of Emmius the Good. It was in an old style, I suppose, but it looked just like the crowns on the money. In her coronation speech, Floria said that she had come to restore the ancient liberties of Duisland, and would abolish taxes wrung unjustly from the people. Both sentiments were interrupted by wild cheers. It was my duty to lead the cheering, but the crowd was so delighted that my task required little effort.
The celebration following the coronation was far less grand than that presided over by her sister Berlauda, who had fed the entire city. In a time of hunger, and with only a few days to organize the ceremony, Floria could not find enough food to feed the population, and so the coronation was celebrated by a great show of fireworks that blazed up from the castle and showered burning stars and shining flower-petals upon the gaping citizens below.
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