A rustle and whisper behind Balandir caused him to jerk around. He bit back a command to shut up! and confined himself to a glare.
“Get your sword,” Balandir said, drawing his.
Fox crossed his arms and tipped his head. “Don’t need one.”
Balandir wasted no more time. He roared, charged, swung—and found himself attacking air. The man in black snapped his hands out, blades gripped in each. Balandir swung again, with all his strength. The whirling knives came at him, and he died before he hit the wharf boards.
Fox looked past him to the still captains, who were divided between stunned disbelief and grim anticipation of what that black-sided ship would signal next.
Fox said, “The rest of you may wait here for Sarendan’s representative, who will land shortly. If you don’t come to an agreement by midday, we’ll use you for target practice.”
“That was almost fun,” Fox said a short time later, as he walked into Cocodu’s wardroom and stamped to warm up his numb toes.
Death was under repairs, it having been the target of Balandir’s primary raider packs. Though Inda was still a formidable warrior even without the use of his right arm, Fox and Barend had seen after the battle how much such effort pained him. Inda was asleep when the Venn appeared under the truce flag demanding a duel. Fox and Barend privately settled their response, and just before dawn, when Inda woke Fox reported the news as he strapped on his knives, adding, “You took Vixen against Rajnir and Erkric, and I didn’t squawk.”
“Yes, you did,” Inda said, laughing a little.
Fox shrugged. “So squawk. But now it’s my turn.” And he’d left before Inda could finish getting dressed.
Now he was back.
“I thought Venn were better trained than that.” Inda waved his spy glass. “He was a big enough fellow. What happened?”
“Oh, he’d had the rudiments of good training, but my guess is, he’d never had a serious bout in his life. Probably thought any enemy would consider himself to be privileged to be killed by so exalted a fellow. He was arrogant right up until he was surprised.” Fox saw Barend sitting at the table, then his eyes narrowed. “There a reason it’s just us?” Us three Marlovans, he meant.
The wardroom door opened, and Tau entered. “Jeje and Eflis have everybody on the Sable for the victory party, except a nominal deck watch.” He tipped his chin up toward the weather deck.
Fox dropped down on the bench, hands on his knees. “Inda?”
Inda got up and prowled around the enormous room. His restlessness seemed to fill the space, large as it was, and somehow magnified the outer sounds, making them distinct: the wash of water down the hull, the creak of masts, and through the far doors, in the captain’s cabin, a high female voice.
“. . . and when have you ever heard me tell anyone my name is Waki? When, Mutt? Name once.”
“Almost everybody’s at the party,” Fox murmured.
Inda paused midstride. “What’s the problem with those two now?”
“Nugget’s become the toast of those young fellows in the Khanerenth navy.” Tau opened his hands out. “The ones with titles.”
“So? He’s got all the young female mates after him.”
Tau said, “But Nugget likes to share. Mutt does not.”
Inda shook his head, his shoulders, waved his left hand, then resumed his prowl. “Our other alliance captains. Everything was fine until yesterday. Everyone agreed we’d use Gillor’s and Tcholan’s plan—they’d fought at Fire Island longest, had charted this bay—”
The low and high voices had tangled, fast and angry, then abruptly Mutt’s voice rose, distinct: he had to be standing at the door to the captain’s cabin. “. . . as long as it suits you. But when you’re tired of us, you can go off to your damned castle and be Lady Waki. I hate that!”
Inda began to rub his hand over his face, wincing when he encountered a pair of cuts, and an enormous bruise on his cheekbone. “Should I say something? No.” He hit the table with his hand, then moved on, touching bunk, bulkhead, table, opposite bulkhead, and around again. “Everything was fine. Then we launch the attack. That’s fine, too, though it got mighty hot when they hit us with those six raiders. Have to remember that formation—two inside trying to board, four outside laying down arrows.”
Tau thought, Why didn’t I ever notice that before, how Inda touches things in a pattern? But he hadn’t done it for a long time. Since the days right before the battle at Andahi.
Barend whistled under his breath. “Worst fight we’ve been in since the tussle at Jaro.”
“Well, with the Delfs coming out of the hills, like we figured they would, we got them bottled. Just like we thought. Right?” He paused, all made motions of agreement. “So here’s this fellow wants a duel, Fox, you go off, but ever since the sun came up and I walked out on deck, our allies’ve been watching me with their glasses. Not you and that Venn fellow on the wharf. Me. Why?” He turned around, rapped the hull, the table, the back of a chair, his right arm in its sling knocking against his ribs; the pattern was drawing in. “Last night when I rowed around to look at damage, they were all watching me. I mean the hands put down buckets to stare. Is it because I took a couple of cuts, they think I turned soft?”
“No.” Fox snorted, amused at the vastness of Inda’s understatement. A couple of cuts indeed. “They all think you’re invincible. Even with one arm hanging. Even if you had no arms.” He flashed a brief grin. “The Venn, too,” he added, thinking of the idiocy he’d spouted on the wharf and the glum conviction in those watching faces. Then his humor vanished. “They were all waiting for you to pick up Balandir’s crown. Still are.”
Inda sighed. “That’s why you’re here right now.”
Nugget’s voice rose, more and more shrill. “. . . and you really think I could just walk in, and those court people would welcome me? When I don’t know their customs, or their dances, or their clothes, or even their words for things? Mutt, you’re a bigger snob than Nilat!”
A door slammed.
“How’d Nilat get into that?” Barend asked.
Inda cut a fast glance his way. “She says she won’t cook for any but crowned heads anymore.” He turned to Fox. “I told you Evred’s orders.” He self-consciously touched the locket through his clothes.
Scorn burned in Fox’s gut, but he kept his vow. It was easy to see that, much as Inda was in pain from the fight outside the harbor, the internal pain was worse. “It’s up to you, Inda. Either way you decide. So what have you decided? Are we here to plan how to take the strait?”
“I already know how to do that,” Inda said impatiently, dropping into a chair. The others watched him wince as he carefully touched the right side of his face with his left hand. “But . . . what they’ve all been saying. Deliyeth thinks I want to start an empire. Chim says Queen Kliessin thinks Evred’s going to take her throne away. Thog . . .” He turned, mouth compressed, then turned back, as though he could not sit still despite the evident headache. “But I’m ordered to bring peace to the strait. I take the harbors, and they all have the same laws. Same as our harbors at home. Which are doing well, everyone says so. How do I get them to see that, without a fight? I don’t want to fight Chim—not even Deliyeth.”
Tau thought, It’s time. “Inda, I think I have a compromise.”
Inda’s sudden hope was a startling contrast to his previous tension. “You wrote to Evred?”
Tau’s anticipation, his confidence, faltered at the intensity of Inda’s hope. “No. I left my golden case with Evred’s mother. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.” He flicked his fingers out, toward the rest of the fleet. “I’ve been talking to everyone, trying to find compromises. I have two signed treaties—Ymar and Danara, though they recognize that no one has countersigned. But it’s a step in the process, a preliminary promise of commitment. The rest of them await your presence at a formal meeting.”
Inda said, “So they agree to our patrols? Our laws?”
T
au said slowly, “No. To mutual peace, yes. To guarantee freedom of trade, yes. But they do not want overlords.”
Inda’s gaze went distant, and his hand moved absently to the locket inside his shirt. Then he blinked and looked up. “Fox, I’m under orders.”
“I know.” Fox kept a tight grip on himself. “That’s why I’m not arguing. You decide. We’ll back you.”
Barend turned his thumb up, gaze on his hands.
They all felt it, how Evred Montrei-Vayir’s will had become a presence among them. One his cousin and lifetime ally, one his sworn Shield Arm and boyhood friend, one his lover, one his potential maritime commander—all of them in one sense or another under his command.
Tau began to knead Inda’s tense neck muscles. “You don’t have to decide today, Inda. We’ve got plenty of sailing time ahead. Let’s meet with the others, and you can hear what they have to say.”
“Evred-Harvaldar Sigun!”
“Indevan-Harskialdna Sigun!”
The roar of the Jarls from the throne room sent a few winter birds flapping skyward, past Fareas-Iofre, who was taking her daily walk on the castle wall.
The air was so cold she shivered inside her woolen robes and the scarf wrapped to her ears and nose. When she encountered another female form, she would have passed on by, but the woman veered toward her, so she stopped.
“How is Hadand?” It was Mistress Gand.
“Sleeping. He came faster this time.”
“A he?” Mistress Gand asked, and cracked a laugh. “No wonder the king is down there getting the wolves to howl.”
“There was a ship victory,” Fareas said.
Mistress Gand gave her a squint-eyed look. “Your boy turfed some more Venn, or pirates, or pirates and Venn?” She grunted. “Have to say he’s done well. And at least so far, no harm to us. Though I was angry.”
Fareas had known about Mistress Gand’s anger for years. It had been an unspoken wall between them—not that they’d ever been friends as girls. Fareas had come to the queen’s training as the betrothed of a Montredavan-An, which had divided her off from most of the rest.
The “us” referred to women. Inda had broken his promise to Hadand by teaching Evred the women’s Odni. And Hadand had carried on training Evred after Inda’s exile. Two of Fareas’ children had thus contravened generations of careful training, which had caused anger in some, and a bracing for trouble in others.
Fareas suspected that the mention now, after so many years of silence, was a kind of forgiveness, or at least acceptance. Her children had certainly proved their loyalty, all three of them.
But it didn’t do to say. So she initiated a conversation, for the first time. “There are three boys in the nursery now.” She smiled at the thought of tiny, newborn Tanrid, of the bright, bright red hair. And though many insisted you could not possibly tell which hand a child would favor for years, she was convinced that he would reach for the world with his left.
“Three boys,” Mistress Gand said. “It’s time and enough for some girls, eh?”
A hard, double-reef topsail east wind drove the alliance back toward The Fangs at a speed that would have been exhilarating except for the blizzard obscuring all but the pale greenish waves crashing over the bow.
The weather had been so bad there had been only two ship visits since their departure from Fire Island. Already their numbers were diminished as Taz-Enja was ordered home. For Sarendan, the adventure was over. Their interest in the strait was limited to the old trade route that followed all the ports around the great Sartoran continent. If necessary, they could venture through the windy ice islands of the south below Sartor. They preferred the strait, but it was not crucial. For the rest, the strait was vital.
During the long series of storms Inda exchanged notes with Evred via the slow, painful method of the lockets. Slow because, though Evred never failed to answer him instantly, most of the time that first answer was some variation on Permit me to consider the question. The second note might be half a day later, sometimes two or three, always written in tiny, careful lettering that Inda had to hold directly under a glowglobe to read.
“What’s Evred said?” Tau asked Inda every day.
After the first note, Tau realized that Evred had not—and would not—greet the prospect of his treaty with instant approval. His confidence in having found a solution twisted into self-mockery.
As the fleet sailed inexorably west on the harsh east wind, the self-mockery at his assumption that he could civilize a king twisted into anxiety.
There came an afternoon when snow fell steadily on the deck and Inda sat backward on a chair next to the ceramic stone with its Fire Stick, rocking back and forth. “Any news from Evred?” Tau asked, brushing snow off his arms. “I was just aboard Kavna’s Swan.”
No need to say what the subject of the talk had been.
“I hate these little pieces of paper,” Inda muttered without looking up, his forehead bumping the chair back, bump, bump, bump. “Everything you say, and Dhalshev says, and Kavna says, makes sense. But I can’t seem to get it right for Evred.”
“Let me try,” Tau said, after a protracted pause.
He hated the way Inda’s face eased, but he said nothing more, just sat down and pulled paper over. Someone had already added a drop of whiskey to the ink to keep it liquid; Tau warmed his fingers over the lamp as he considered what to say.
He rewrote his words in several drafts to explain clearly but succinctly that he had put together a treaty in which the signatories would agree to freedom of trade for all—including Iasca Leror—and no sovereignty in the strait. Instead, the waters were to be guarded by all.
After the last draft, he lined out all the claims about how this was the first such treaty in history—a white stone to mark the history of peaceful relations—all the words the diplomats and princes and captains used to one another. Tau could too easily envision Evred’s disbelief, his silent derision at what he’d dismiss as empty oratory. Evred Montre-Vayir understood the dynamic of human relations within one context: force.
Sighing, Tau threw the carefully written square into the fire, and wrote out the treaty stipulations once more, ending it with these words: This document is unprecedented, and while high-flown hyperbole decorates the mutual compliments, there is a truth all acknowledge: the power of goodwill. All including Inda. He’s fought beside these people and believes in their goodwill.
He gave it to Inda, who sent it unread.
There was no answer that night—but who knew what time it was on the other side of the world?
There was no answer the next day.
Three more days passed. Inda went about his usual tasks, but Tau’s anxiety increased as he avoided all his old friends outside the Fox Banner Fleet.
“What is wrong?” Jeje finally asked, after he’d been restlessly prowling around Vixen, getting in the way of Viac and the new mate he was training.
“Let’s go below,” Tau said.
Jeje’s dark brow rose. When they’d shut themselves into the cabin, he said, “Evred ordered Inda to take control of the strait. The Marlovans will run it.”
Jeje shrugged. “So? Makes sense to me. You know he’d do a good job.”
“Jeje. Think back to your single meeting with Princess Kliessin. Now queen. Multiply her words by every king along both coasts, but add double for Kliessin because Bren Harbor is also their capital. Anyone who runs that harbor effectively runs the kingdom.”
Jeje’s brow now drew down into a glower. “So she’d have Inda shot. Why? Because he’d do a better job running things than she would? That’s just why I hate kings. And that goes for queens.” She sighed. “I also hate politics.”
Tau gazed at her, his lips shaping the first words—Inda’s life depends on his obedience—then he hesitated. Inda had not told Jeje, he’d not told anyone outside of Fox, Barend, and himself about Evred’s orders.
“This matter is all politics,” Tau said slowly and waited for her to ask how. Or wh
y. Or what could be done. He wanted badly to talk about it, and with Jeje he knew he’d get sympathy for his own dilemma. But he needed insight, not sympathy. Though Jeje left him far behind when she talked about sea tactics and strategy, she had never evinced much interest in land history, and none in the doings of kings.
Jeje gave a loud sigh. “Spare me.” She made a spitting motion. “They’re all idiots. Politics is another word for idiocy.” Her scowl turned into a squint as she peered out the steamy stern window. “Besides, Inda’s signaling for you.”
Their private signals were flown from the mizzenmast. Tau climbed into the gig and despite the choppy gray seas throwing up packets of icy water, scudded from Vixen to Death.
He had to wait until Inda was finished overseeing bow training, and then a visit from Woof, then at last Tau was alone with Inda, who held out a slip of paper.
Evred had written only: Who is to enforce this treaty?
Tau grimaced. So much for the power of goodwill. He sat Inda’s table and wrote, The alliance in common will guard the treaty, details to be agreed on through negotiation.
“Here, send that,” he said to Inda, after twisting the paper.
Inda shrugged, tucked it into the locket, and sent it. “Now, let’s go down to the galley. Lorm’s got food waiting.”
It was a long day and night before Evred wrote back to Tau.
The way they allied in common to defend Bren? Inda may sign your treaty if he deems the wording true to my orders. But he is also under orders to guarantee peace with the force he has raised.
Tau read it through three times, then sat down unheeding as Inda, Fox, and a couple of the other captains pored over the charts of the eastern end of Land of the Chwahir, which were dangerously vague: the Chwahir would not permit foreigners to chart them. “Stay away from the rock teeth, then there’s no danger,” Thog had said, which was the same thing Chwahir had been saying for centuries.
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