by Robert Brady
They hadn’t gotten close enough to verify the land army, but no one doubted where that army waited now.
Her son—his sister should be helping him chose a new warrior’s name. Her husband had wanted ‘Vulpe.’ He informed her it meant ‘fox,’ just as Lupus meant ‘Wolf’ in one of the languages of her husband’s people. That suited the growing boy, but not the new man, a general among the Eldadorian Regulars.
She’d chosen Tali Digatishi, Two Spears, for her brother because he could throw one hunting spear at a gazelle, then another before the first struck, and see both hit the same, moving target. It marked his strength and skill, setting him apart from other Andarans.
Her mother, still alive then, had preferred some sort of bird-name. He’d been Usdi Wohali or ‘Little Eagle’ as a child. Shela didn’t see much use in birds.
Which is why sisters, not mothers, decided these things. She wouldn’t make the mistake of advising her son now.
Of course, now that the father had the son beside him, she didn’t advise him as much either. Yonega Waya had this ‘Jack,’ his son, grim-faced Thorn and a few Eldadorian commanders around him at all times. Like Men, they argued and pointed, shook their fists and laughed at each other for farting, and cast contemptuous glances at women who offered their opinions.
If Raven hadn’t betrayed them, Shela would have her now. She’d been convinced at one point Eveave had provided two to them instead of one, so when ‘Jack,’ took too much of the Emperor’s time, she’d have the other.
Now her daughter sat the throne in Galnesh Eldador, the boy she’d cuddled and rubbed noses with six months before carried a sword over his shoulder and saluted his subordinates, and her one remaining female, Nina, stood three steps behind him and to his left, guarding him as she had Lee.
She didn’t even have her baby to console her. Chawny would be knuckling her eyes for the wet nurse now, under her sister’s care.
No wonder so many noble women stayed home from these things. In fact, for all of the battle and the glory, she found it boring.
“My Lady?”
She turned her head to look over her right shoulder and found a Lieutenant in the Eldadorian Regulars standing at attention behind her, trying hard to look off into space and not at the lower cheek of her behind where it poked out from her short leather skirt.
She should be wearing the raider’s jacket to cover her, but Weather had given them a hot day.
“Yes?”
“Central Communications, my Lady,” he said.
They’d opened a conduit on the Bitch—such power broadcast their exact position, but in fact that’s why they’d done it.
She straightened and turned on one long heel. Normally she’d shuck the boots at sea, but learning to walk on the dangerous surface on the tall, narrow heels, if nothing else, gave her something to do. A sorceress spent most of her time relearning her focus, after all.
“With me,” she said, absently. Of course the officer would guard her person right to the door of the executive cabin they’d converted for Central Communications. “What,” she considered, employing her husband’s dry wit, “would she do if she were attacked by a flounder along the way?”
Central Communications at Galnesh Eldador required a huge room in pristine marble. She’d spent weeks enchanting it, making the whole room vibrate at one pitch, allowing a Wizard or herself to create a channel between it and another room, more simply constructed, allowing whole groups of people, not just the magically gifted, to communicate on one caster’s efforts. The room, then,did most of the work—the caster merely had to tap in to it.
The other rooms, which her husband called ‘satellites,’ could be aligned to that same vibration, what he called a ‘frequency.’ The idea had come to her when he’d tried to describe machines his people used to store data and run things called ‘programs’ on a server.
She’d never understood that, but it had inspired this.
She entered a small, clean cabin, whose center shone with a glowing sphere. In it, she saw her daughter’s face, and knew at once that trouble brewed at the capitol.
So like her father, this one, she thought. They might appear calm to others, but Shela knew the angry set to the eyes, the scowl, not quite a frown, and the focus of a Mordetur with a problem.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” she said, and curtsied, “may I present his Grace, Hectar Gelgelden, Duke of Galnesh Eldador.”
Shela couldn’t keep a smile back. She nodded to the Duke, dressed in his usual elegance, his hair gleaming on his shoulders. “My compliments,your Grace—you’ve perfected my daughter’s court manners.”
“But that I had,” Hectar informed her, “but that I had. Her Highness has seen fit to increase the ranks of her father’s Wolf Soldiers with none other than my son.”
“What?”
Lupus loved and encouraged his daughter, but Shela couldn’t imagine a good ending to his learning she’d altered his Pack.
“It was my intent to send him to Thera to sail out with the fleet,” Hectar informed her, “and properly asked the Princess’ permission. At that point she intervened and decided instead—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Lee intervened. Now her scowl was pronounced. Shela noted, as any mother would, the circles at the young girl’s eyes, and her hair in disarray.
This responsibility had been telling on so young a girl.
“I told you, ‘Sure,’” she pointed an accusing finger at the Duke. “Your coward son, Hectaro, said he wanted to stay.”
“My son is not a coward!” Hectar turned a shoulder to the sphere, and the connection wavered at her daughter’s distraction.
Shela added her own power to it, and then communicated directly with her daughter, “Patience,child—Hectar is one of your father’s most loyal Dukes, and there are even Wolf Soldiers who might listen to him over you.”
Lee seethed and bit her lower lip, turning back to the orb.
“Your son has certainly distinguished himself with me,” Shela insisted to Hectar. “My daughter may have seen otherwise, but I saw your wisdom in him when he held his tongue and bided his time with the Bounty Hunters who abducted us. When he was needed, like any Gelgelden, he was there.”
Hectar straightened. They’d misjudged Hectar’s needs, Shela knew. He’d been waiting for some acknowledgement of his son, and hadn’t gotten it from Lee. Hectar had great ambitions for Hectaro.
Shela returned her attention to Lee. “So Hectaro preferred to remain in the capitol?” she asked.
“He said he wanted to guard me,” Lee informed her, with a sideways glance at Hectar. “And I told him if that’s what he wanted, then he could serve with the Wolf Soldiers.”
“You gave him no option,” Hectar objected. “You all but called him a coward in the royal court.”
Shela sighed—this had already passed, apparently. “Has Hectaro taken the vows?” she asked.
Both shook their heads. “The Princess at least allowed him to be relieved of his Wolf Soldier duties upon the Emperor’s return to Galnesh Eldador,” he said. “I’m sure she’s uninformed as to how long that might be.”
Lee turned on Hectar. “What?” she demanded, sensing insult.
“Enough!” Shela commanded both of them, and in her mind added to Lee, “Patience,daughter—you’ve offended him and, like any man, he’s just trying to shake some of the hurt off.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to do that to me,” she insisted in her own mind.
“Who else does he have?” Shela asked her. Aloud, she said, “Well, what is Hectaro’s opinion of all of this? Is he miserable in the Pack?”
“With your daughter’s permission, you might ask him yourself,” Hectar informed her. “He’s been assigned to her protection, and is standing right here.”
Lee turned the focus of the orb and, sure enough, there stood Hectaro at attention with a squad. Shela recognized the sergeant, D’leer, as one of the personal guard for the family. She’d been one of the few to turn do
wn promotion because she preferred the Royals.
“D’leer,” Shela addressed the sergeant. “How does he?”
D’leer gave him a sideways glance. To Hectaro’s credit, he left his eyes focused straight ahead, as if he wasn’t a party to and didn’t care what went on around him.
“As good as any, Lady,” she reported, her back straight. “He’s had his moments, but the Pack accepts him.”
“Do you want out of the Pack, soldier?” Shela asked him.
“No, ma’am,” he responded, in that guttural voice her husband’s soldiers used.
“He can’t say otherwise, shamed as he is,” Hectar complained. “You have to release him—”
Shela saw where this was going already. Her daughter had handed her an untenable situation. Either she left Hectaro in, and his Packmates would wonder about him, and his father become an enemy, or she released him, and the rest of Fovea would think him a coward.
Apparently Hectaro saw that too. Standing in the second rank with the swordsmen, he pulled his weapon and put it to his breast.
“With all respect, my Ladies,” he informed her, “but if you order me out of the Pack I’ll throw myself on it.”
Lee’s eyes widened. Hectar gasped. The Wolf Soldier squad kept looking straight forward, but Shela could still detect a few satisfied expressions among them, especially D’leer.
Lupus’ Wolf Soldiers made for a strange breed. Every one among them came on a second chance. Some balked at it and a few deserted, but for the most part, these men and women formed a very special bond with Lupus at the center of it and, once in, they were Wolf Soldiers above all else.
“I think I’d rather not kill your son, your Grace,” Shela informed him. “Perhaps your son and my daughter know better than we what they need in their lives?”
“This is that Wolf Soldier training,” Hectar began, and Shela interrupted him because she knew where he was going.
“You mean the training that makes them the most effective soldiers on Fovea, and the most vital part of Eldador’s defense?” she asked him, before he could go farther.
She’d alienate the Duke before the Wolf Soldier guard.
He looked into the sphere, trying to focus on her eyes, and she saw the man’s shoulders slump in resignation. “I suppose that’s what it is,” he informed her.
“I recall a dashing Duke who spent a good part of his life by the sword,” Shela informed him. “I don’t suppose you know the sort of Man that made of him?”
Ever vane, Hectar had to give her a half-smile for that. “I admit I might have forgotten for a while,” he admitted.
“Think of the dread the rest of Fovea will feel for the Duke who was once a Wolf Soldier,” Shela reminded him. “Think of the fortunes of the Duke who can call on the loyalty of the Pack? I have to think my daughter has added to your son’s future immensely.”
She could see she’d caught Hectar entirely off guard with that. She’d come up with the point on the spur of the moment, as her husband put it, but even she had to admit the argument hit home.
Rule stood on the shoulders of respect, and no one dared but respect the Wolf Soldiers.
“But only until your return,” Hectar insisted. “I won’t lose him to the Pack.”
“Your decision on that, soldier?” Shela asked Hectaro.
He slammed his sword into its sheath and returned to attention. Looking straight forward, he said, “Once in the Pack, always in the Pack, my Lady, but I know I’m returning to my father’s service when I’m done here.”
“If he lasts that long,” D’leer added. “He fights passable well, but I’ve yet to get a decent punch out of him.”
Shela allowed herself a grin, which spread to all of them. “Well,then—I trust this issue is to everyone’s satisfaction?”
She could feel her daughter faltering—the discussion had taken a lot of time and cost more of her energy when it went on more than one level as this one had. “I’ll discuss this with your father, and then with you, my daughter,” she promised Lee, using the private conduit. “You will not do this again, and you will be certain to tend your herd with Hectar.”
“I promise, mother,” she responded.
“Have you seen to your brother’s needs?”
“I moved us both to the royal tower,” she said. “Chawny’s in the nursery—she’s doing okay. I see her a few times a day.”
“You keep an eye on Hectaro, as well,” Shela informed her.
Lee sighed in her mind.
“You’re culling your herd of that one too early, daughter,” Shela informed her. “Some warriors who weren’t worthy have gone into the Wolf Soldiers, but not one has left it except on his back.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Your Grace,” Shela said aloud, “I thank you again for guiding my daughter in what must be a trying time for you. Please be as generous with your advice to her as you have been to the rest of us.”
“Ever at your service, your Imperial Majesty,” he said, and threw a sideways glance at Lee. Clearly he counted himself the victor in all of this, and when a Man considers himself the victor, Shela had always found him easiest to manage.
She broke the connection. Her daughter could tend her own herd now. She’d have to speak with the Oligarchs in order to find out how this had progressed so rapidly so ill.
Later that day, when her husband had decided to take a break from his generals and advisors to eat, he asked her, “What have you been doing with yourself today?”
She considered telling him of her daughter’s troubles, but instead settled on, “I spoke with Lee for a little while. She moved hers and her brother’s rooms to our tower.”
“Weren’t you going to ask her to do that anyway?”
Shela nodded and stroked the side of his face, by the scar. “Seems Hectaro has also taken a short commission for himself.”
Lupus frowned and nodded. “Good for him,” he said. “I was surprised when his father didn’t beg me to take him along.”
“Yonega Waya!” she pretended to exclaim. “We have to leave someone home!”
He smiled and kissed her, and she let herself melt into that for a while. Simple enough to handle Men, when they consider themselves in control, she reminded herself.
* * *
Raven sat on the fo’csle of the Confluni ship that carried her and her friends across Tren Bay, the sun warm on her face, the breeze cool in her hair. She’d grown long and shaggy in these months here, giving her a wild look.
It fit her mood.
Their dog lay at her feet—it barely left her now. Vedeen sat to her left on the deck and smiled that benign smile of hers. To her right, the ship’s wooden rails came to a point—she knew it was called the ‘bow’ in English, but she couldn’t remember the local word.
That struck her funny, because she had already started thinking in the Language of Men, and forgetting her English.
Zarshar hovered at the bow, perched like a gargoyle, his black hair blowing out like a streamer. Behind him and across from her, Slurn had curled himself up in a ball, and next to Slurn sat Karl, sullen and alone, missing Jahunga.
Vedeen had returned to them with a story of how Jahunga had fallen to Scarlet Nantar of the Daff Kanaar. Karl had sworn a blood oath on the spot to avenge him, and barely said a word since. In a week and a half he’d barely touched her in bed and wouldn’t talk about it. Glynn had informed her, on one of her rare visits, that this was the way of Men, to grieve such losses, and she must excuse him. Vedeen seemed to support her in that.
For her, grieving meant communicating. She’d been informed it wasn’t up to her to tell another how to grieve, either.
She needed to talk to someone, too. She really missed Jahunga—he’d been a friend, the first one she’d made here who wasn’t forced on her. However Glynn clearly didn’t listen to her when she spoke of it, and Vedeen just agreed with everything she said. Zarshar thought it was great that Jahunga had fallen in battle, and Karl just wasn’t
talking.
Slurn and the dog really didn’t give a lot back.
“There,” Zarshar said, finally.
Karl’s head came up. “What?”
The Swamp Devil’s head didn’t turn. “Straight ahead of us, just past the horizon, the Emperor’s fleet. I know his woman’s magic—the whole place reeks of it.”
Raven stood and tried to look over the horizon. All she could see was water, blue as the sky. Their ship was near the front of the fleet. To either side and all around them, long wooden ships with single, triangular sails, some with oars, spotted the Bay.
“His fleet should be past the Llorando,” Karl said, standing as well. “No way did we come that far, this fast.”
He’d remarked on that before. They’d come to the Straights of Deception too fast. They’d crossed it too fast. They moved too fast when he could see the coast of Sental.
Glynn had told her of a spell Uman-Chi used to make their ships go faster—to make the front of their sails repel air, and the back of their sails attract it. They could do it to one, maybe two sails at a time. In their home nations, they’d found types of cloth that could hold spells, and used their magic to create fast ships that always worked that way.
She hadn’t had any of that cloth, but Ancenon had. All she’d needed to do was to see it up close, and then to use her power to put its structure into her mind. From that she could make subtle changes in the structure of the canvas of their Confluni ships.
By the third day, their fleet was skipping across the waves. Glynn had commented that the cloth was rare, and so the effect was limited. When the cloth was pure, as it was when Raven changed it, the spell casting became that much easier, and the effect that much greater.
“What can I tell you?” Zarshar rumbled. “We’re here. I’m going to tell Glynn we need to slow down or be ready to fight.”
Raven focused on the water right at the horizon but couldn’t see anything but more waves. The Swamp Devil was using his magic to sniff out other magic—she wasn’t as good at that. Nina had told her a person’s magic was their own—that it would give them abilities to do some things very well and some things less well. It depended on the mind and the god that favored them.