She looked down at Buck lying there, the wreck honor and glory had left of him. Her throat tightened. Maybe someday they could send him to Sartor, but she knew from writing to Hadand that there was no regrowing limbs even among the highest mages.
As for sex? Who knew. So what did she know? That Buck had never in his life had a favorite. Frequent sporting in his academy days and after, yes, but his heart had never gone to any of them. Why are these things never straightforward? she thought sadly. Horses and dogs have it easier. Then she caught herself up. She hated pity and whine as much as Buck did.
Honor. Buck had done his part, now it was her turn.
“Fair’s fair,” she repeated his last words as she sat down beside him on the bed. She took his sweaty, anger-tense fingers in her two hands. “You and I made a deal when we were fifteen—half our lifetimes ago. Didn’t matter what anyone else did. Marriage was going to be a ride neck and neck for us.” Her voice roughened. “It was a good vow, is how I see it, so I’m making it again. Just like we did before. Neck and neck means we go over the hedgerows together. Through the swamps together. We ford the river side by side. If one’s horse throws a shoe, the other dismounts and we put it on together. And if the shoe doesn’t stay on, we both walk the horses home.”
His eyes squeezed shut, his mouth twisted. She pulled his head against her shoulder, stroking his damp, tangled hair. “Side by side, Buck. Wherever the road goes.”
Chapter Eight
TAU’S trade ship skirted through The Narrows well ahead of the first ice and beat northeastward into the Sartoran Sea.
Tau was just getting ready to shiver through a night watch when he absently touched his golden case to discover the magical tingle that meant it actually contained a message. His third ever? Jeje had written twice, once to let him know she’d found his mother, and the second message had been even more cryptic:
When you reach the market town that sounds like Shee-yov-han, you take the north road all the way to Elsaryan or Elsarayin, or however they spell it. Their letters are funny here, not quite like the Sartoran ones Inda taught us, and they pronounce it funny.
Typically, Jeje had not written back since. Tau fingered open the box. The note was in Inda’s handwriting, seldom seen, his letters still school-boy round: My popularity has doubled, Tau thought wryly.
E. was looking for you when we arrived. I don’t know what that means. I wish you were here. You see things differently from me. Everything here is fine. In the city. Even though there’s no one attacking, the people like it when I do a sentry walk every night. T. or H. come with me, sometimes E. when he gets away from work. They asked about you.
Tau looked up, and not for the first time sustained an intense wave of . . . what was this? Regret? Unhappiness? Definitely the desire to turn around and sail back.
He spent his watch pacing the ship and composing an answer. As the sun made a bleak appearance over the distant juts of southern Halia, the mate of the watch shuffled forward, squinted at the sandglass, yawned, then gave the bell a ting-ting! ting-ting! Tau withdrew to the cramped wardroom nook in the forepeak and pulled paper and pen from his gear bag. Tired as he was, he wrote out his letter while all the turns of phrase were fresh in his mind, stopping only to hold his fingers over the candle when they began to go numb from the cold.
“. . . Would you like me to remind you what ship gruff tastes like, especially when the cook is glad-handed with the old potatoes and pinch-tinklet with the cheese? Your army slurry is a Colendi delicacy by comparison.” Inda lowered the paper. “The rest is mostly ship talk. It’s probably funnier if you know what the mizzen hatch is, and a capstan bar.”
He and Evred sat in the royal schoolroom, which Inda had meant to use only to finish off reading the piled up reports of wounded still in lazaretto or released to duty. But as the days slipped by he discovered he preferred this room, with its four tall light-streaming windows overlooking the academy, to the dark parlor in his and Tdor’s quarters, or the cramped, windowless old Harskialdna office down in the guards’ command center.
He waved the letter. “I’ll skip the rest. Though it made me laugh. I wonder why he wrote all that. Think he wants me to miss being on shipboard?”
“Do you?” Evred asked, the humor fading into the familiar shuttered countenance.
Inda was getting used to that look and to the fact that he just was never going to figure it out. He shrugged it away, and considered. Did he miss being on shipboard?
Evred scorned himself for the poison-spear of jealousy. Tau and Inda were not lovers. Evred had experienced that side of Tau in a way that Inda never would. And there had been no detestable demands, or assumptions, on Tau’s part afterward. I must accept that Inda had his own Sier Danas, undefined by any custom, but just as loyal. And Inda’s loyalty is to me.
“I do miss sailing,” Inda said. “Sometimes. But would I go back? No.” He threw his letter down. “My day makes Tau’s look like a snooze in the hammock, and won’t I tell him so!” The dawn bells began their unmusical clangor, and Inda jumped up. “Drill, and then Gand and I have to—ah, never mind that now. Listen, you’ll be with those guild fellows about the ore, when I get back. Have any message for Tau?”
“No,” Evred said.
Inda bolted out the door, his voice fading down the hall as he issued orders to the Runners waiting outside.
. . . & though Evred’s day is much longer than mine he listened to your letter, & by the end he smiled. Hadand reports every time he smiles, because it’s too rare. Especially with Convocation coming up at month’s end.
In the fading light the Fox Banner Fleet sailed steadily northward toward The Fangs, at the extreme eastern end of the strait. Everyone was at battle stations. The smell of smoke from the firepots singed Mutt’s nose as he stood forward on the bow of the Sable, glass pressed to his eye. His bow team crouched along the rail behind him, some rubbing their hands to keep them from numbing, others with their mittened fingers tucked in their armpits, their breath puffing in soft white vapor trails as the wind whipped the last of a sleet storm above the formidable line of round-hulled Chwahir ships ahead.
The Chwahir were silhouetted against the retreating clouds, obscured by slanting showers.
Mutt bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself alert. The long two days of battling this storm had left him exhausted and unprepared when the departing clouds revealed the battle fleet forming ahead.
At least I’m not on the Death, he thought as he swept his glass toward Fox’s flagship, a long, low, lethal silhouette just in front of them. The Sable flanked the Death at the left, Cocodu at the right, the rest of the fleet spreading behind them in arrowhead formation, which had become Fox’s favorite: he liked breaking lines himself, the Death being designed for speedy attack. The others, stationed in the widening wake, could either comb a line or combine to take on pairs of enemy ships, depending on how the enemy reacted.
Mutt thought he’d said those words inside his head. He held conversations with himself when pulling long watches at night. He discovered he’d spoken when a snort just behind alerted him.
“Bet Fox is in a real good mood,” chortled Kanap, one of the Sable’s old crew.
“Less yack, my friends,” said Captain Eflis as she strolled the length of the ship.
She was tall, blond, strong, with a ready smile. Her wide sash, bold blues and reds and yellows in her clothing, and her bristling weapons made her a familiar and dashing figure in the fleet. She and her first mate Sparrow sailed the fastest capital ship in the fleet. Mutt, serving as second mate so he could earn his way to captaincy, hoped to pick up their tricks for wringing extra speed.
Eflis doubled up her fist and thumped Mutt on the shoulder. “Eyes front, now. Let’s see if our dish-faced friends want to come play.”
Her tone went vague on the last three words as sails began to shift on the Chwahir vessels. Attention sharpened on the Sable’s deck.
“Looks like they’re gonna haul wind,”
the lookout yelled from above.
“Naw. Has to be a ruse,” exclaimed one of the bow team on the masthead just above Mutt.
On the Death, Fox expected absolute silence at battle stations. The rest of the captains were marginally more lenient.
But just as the lookout predicted, the sails shifted and the Chwahir fleet tacked southward, and began bucketing toward the jagged line of mountains signifying their homeland.
“Now that’s odd,” Eflis said finally. “We had the wind, but they’ve got the numbers. And I’ve never seen any Chwahir decline battle.”
The lookout swung down to the deck, his lower face below his knitted hat blotched with cold. “They was squintin’ at the Death,” he said in the universal sea language known as Dock Talk. “I seen the glasses on the flag’s foredeck.”
“Then they know who we are.” Eflis peered under her hand into the distance, the wind tangling her hair, then she grunted. “With them, who knows why they do anything? So. Mutt. Since we’ve been on watch and watch for two days, I’m going to relieve everyone by stations for one watch. Tomorrow we’ll be back to regular. You go rack up and be back at midnight, got it?”
Mutt yawned so hugely his jaw cracked. When he entered the swinging cone of light under the mainmast lantern, he checked at the sight of Nugget leaning wearily in the waist, her good hand gripping her stump against the bitter cold. Mutt forced himself to pass on, though his heart, tired as it was, beat the drum.
He dropped down the hatch and made his way to the wardroom, where as second mate, he had a cubby all to himself. This was supposed to be the first mate’s cabin, but as Sparrow and the captain were tight, they shared her cabin. He kicked off his winter mocs, not bothering to see where they landed, though he knew he’d hate himself when it was time to waken.
He was trying not to think about Nugget as he climbed into his hammock, but that meant he thought about not thinking about her. He lay back, discovering how much his body ached only as he relinquished his iron hold on overtired muscles. As he sank into the swinging canvas, he stared at the faint blue-white light around the cloth that hung in his doorway, the reflection from the glowglobe in the wardroom just beyond.
Nugget. He still did not know what to think about her. Once she’d been the pet of the entire fleet, back in the desperate days under Inda’s command, when they were going after the pirates that had killed most of Inda’s former crew. Then they fought the Brotherhood, and Nugget vanished. When she reappeared the spring before, the two years she’d been gone had turned her from a skinny ship’s rat into a girl. With shape. A pretty girl with shape. But then she started whining, which they all excused because she’d been gone two years and thought they were all dead, because she’d lost an arm. Then she started scamping work. They still covered for her because this was Nugget, everyone’s pet, she was alive, she was back—except for that arm.
Then she started hiding out, and lying, when they had to fight. And when Fox caught her at it, her friends had finally had enough. No one defended her. In fact (Mutt had seen it in every face) they’d been glad to see her catch it hot.
She’d been ignoring them ever since, except for glares, and they’d been ignoring her, too. Mutt was glad when the rotations between all the crews that Fox insisted on put him on one of the other ships. Nugget had been kept on the Death for the entire sail up the coast. Sometimes Mutt had heard the thumps of her private drill sessions with Fox on the deck overhead, and he knew how rough Fox was. No mercy. Ever.
Two days ago, she’d turned up for a rotation on Sable. She still didn’t talk to anybody among the old rats from Inda’s day, and nobody talked to her. But Mutt always knew where she was.
He closed his eyes . . . and jolted awake at the impatient tug of a crack-voiced ship’s rat. “Midnight watch. Captain says tumble up.”
“I’m awake.”
It came out sounding like mflmpguh, but the rat was too tired to care. Mutt forced himself out of the hammock before he could give in to the almost overwhelming urge to shut his eyes again.
His head pounded as he hit the deck. The cold deck. His temper was as vile as the way his mouth felt. He felt around on the deck, found his mocs, jammed his feet into them, and made his way out.
His temper improved incrementally when a sleepy galley mate ducked out as he passed and pushed a hot mug into his hand. He didn’t care what was in it, he just wanted the heat. Then the smell of freshly scorched coffee hit his nose, and he drew in a deep breath.
When he reached the deck without spilling a precious drop, he slurped half of it down, ignoring the sting on his tongue. This was the good stuff Fox had negotiated from some traders a week ago, when they’d driven off another swarm of galley-pirates.
Really awake now, Mutt waved at Sparrow, who leaned at the binnacle, her eyes watering as she gaped with yawn after yawn, the chimes in her braids tinkling with the violence of each.
“I’m here.”
“All yours. Stay on station, topsails plain. If the wind freshens, reef ’em.”
Mutt ducked his head in agreement and gulped the rest of his coffee. When he blinked away the tears, Sparrow was gone.
Mutt paced around the deck, listening to the ship. He’d discovered during his years on the sea that each ship had its own sound, though they all shared a combination of wood and rope and block-clatter counterpoint to the wash-slap of the sea.
The lanterns at the mastheads swayed in rhythm, and the new watch looked as stupid as he felt. But the horizon was clear in all directions, except for the Fox Banner Fleet ships, the sky a scattering of brilliants against a black sky. All that remained of the storm were thin shreds of clouds in the distance, glowing faintly in the reflection of the almost full moon.
Almost New Year’s week. He started to think about what might be fun to do when he realized that the sounds of rope and wood were not right. He looked up, peering past the intersecting lines and arcs of the fore-course with the square topsail above. Nothing. He moved past the bow and down the other side, looking up at the mainmast, where a shadow glimmered briefly then vanished behind the enormous curve of the main-course.
Mutt set the mug down on the capstan, ducked around the mainmast, and turned his head upward in time to catch a flicker at the extreme edge of his vision. He spun.
Nothing.
Then he realized what it had to be: someone was skylarking. In the middle of the night! He paused, his body calculating the roll of the ship, then he dashed around the mast the other way—and there swung a figure.
It was swinging above the lanterns, whose glow made it difficult to see, but he knew something was odd. So he scrambled up to the masthead, where the topsail hand sat on a folded storm sail, head pillowed on knees, sound asleep. He dashed past—the ship was fine—and peered out, then his jaw dropped.
The figure had looked wrong because it—she—was upside down. As he stared in blank amazement, a slim girlish body swooshed out in a long arc and then, high above the deck, writhed in a way he’d never seen before and sailed out and around the topsail!
“Nugget?”
“Shut up.” Her voice was barely audible above the sounds of the wind and sails and wood.
She swung around the other way. Now he could see what she had done; she had the rope wrapped around her legs and the crook of her knee in some way. She swooped down, her one arm extended outward.
“What are you doing?” he exclaimed, and the hand on the masthead woke with a snort.
“Shut up.”
“Nugget, you are not supposed to be up here.”
No answer as she swerved around again, whoosh!
“Nugget, there’s no reason for you to be up here. You can’t use a bow. You can’t bend sail. Skylarking all alone—it’s just stupid!”
“Shut. Up.”
She swooped out of nowhere, and her slim fist socked him on the arm. “Awk,” she exclaimed as she spun away, then slammed into a brace, ricocheted off. Mutt realized he’d caught his breath, but she snapp
ed her arm to her side, twisted her hips one way and her legs the other, and her arc changed.
“Nugget, if you don’t stop that, I’ll . . .”
He stopped, hating the very notion of snitching.
“. . . you’ll go shit in your hat.”
He climbed down, angry, resentful, embarrassed. And curious.
Headmaster Gand did not have his interview with the new Harskialdna for several weeks after Inda’s arrival. He was gone to the mountain forges at Evred’s request when Inda arrived, and on his return he glimpsed Inda from a distance from time to time, usually in company with young Evred-Harvaldar, sometimes trailing half a dozen Runners.
Gand scarcely recognized his former charge. As scrubs, the boys had been pretty much of a size, varying a little in family features, and more in style of learning. The only remaining resemblance to the boy Gand had eleven years ago seen toeing the flagstone line each morning for callover while staring vacantly up at the towers was a pair of wide-set brown eyes and a head of unruly brown hair.
Those same brown eyes appeared in a scarred face abruptly one morning. During the winter, the academy’s headmaster worked in a cubby in the row of rooms adjacent to the Harskialdna office. Gand rose and saluted, his manner grave.
Inda flushed to the ears. He saluted back, a loud thump to his broad chest with a hand even more scarred than his face, then pointed at the rumpled papers on the desk. “What’s all that? Letters about the boys already?”
“Not the boys we’ve invited or who are returning. Most of these are letters from Jarls, or Jarls’ men, interfering some way, on whatever pretext, most of ’em relating to the war.” He tapped two letters. “These, just in yesterday, are about the pair of seniors from Hali-Vayir who ran away. You knew about them, right? Dressed as Runners and joined Buck Marlo-Vayir’s men on the coast below Lindeth Harbor.”
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