Arctic Prison: King's Convicts I

by Gail Z. Martin

  By daybreak, two of the sick passengers were dead. Their bodies had been stripped in the night of anything of value—shoes, belts, and extra clothing. The dead men’s companions were more afraid of the relentless arctic cold than they were of contagion, or perhaps they reasoned that if they were fated to fall ill, they would have already done so.

  Two sailors tossed the naked bodies overboard, into the cold gray sea. Blaine and the others stood back from the rail, but he could not tell whether they feared that they too might be pitched into the water by their dodgy companions or whether they all fought the same small voice that murmured jump.

  “Land!” The prisoners crowded toward the other side of the ship, hungry for a glimpse of Edgeland.

  “That’s Estandal, the volcano,” one of the sailors said, pointing toward a bleak gray mountain off the coast of the distant shore. “Blows up now and again. Blots out the sun when it does, not that you can see much now anyhow.”

  The sun barely peeked above the horizon this far north. The ‘long dark,’ as the sailors called it, would last until spring when the sun would not set for six months, stretching into the ‘white nights.’ Blaine and the others strained to see the wasteland that was to be their new home.

  Frigid air stung Blaine’s skin and whipped his chestnut-brown hair into his eyes. He shivered. The prisoners wore what they were wearing when they boarded the Cutlass in Castle Reach, with the addition of one threadbare blanket apiece. Only those who had stolen or ‘inherited’ clothing from the other passengers or the dead had more than a single layer of cloth between them and the arctic wind.

  Velant had better make some provision, or we’ll all be dead in a few days at this rate, Blaine thought. Still, he was as curious about Edgeland as the others, and pushed forward for a better look.

  Edgeland was more shadow than substance at this distance. Blaine could make out the coastline and mountains in the distance. Faint lights shone near the waterfront in Skalgerston Bay, the harbor town and only large settlement beside the prison. And to the left of the harbor, high on a rocky bluff, sat the menacing silhouette of Velant Prison. Even at a distance, the fortified prison looked ominous.

  “Not exactly welcoming, is it?” Verran quipped, but Blaine could hear the nervousness in his tone. “Wonder if it looks better in daylight?”

  “We won’t know that for six months—if we live that long,” Dunbar added.

  Blaine stared at the unforgiving landscape, wondering which of the rumors he and the others had heard were true. Throughout the voyage, the prisoners had traded information of dubious veracity, things overheard and half-remembered about their destination.

  “I heard the wind can freeze a man dead in minutes,” Garrick observed.

  “They say there are bears twice as tall as a man out on the ice that can smell your blood from miles away and can rip through rock walls to get to you if they’re hungry,” another man said.

  “What difference does it make if the monsters get you first?” one of the female prisoners asked, her voice quivering with the cold. “I heard there are all kinds of strange things prowling around in the dark. And they don’t just eat the living. I heard they dig the dead out of the ice and gnaw on their bones.”

  “Wild dogs’ll do that,” Dunbar replied, unimpressed. “So will rats and other critters, if you don’t dig the grave deep enough. Don’t need monsters for that.”

  “The dead should rest in peace,” the woman reproved.

  Dunbar gave a coarse laugh. “Like the ones that got tossed to the sharks? Bloody little rest they’ll get, I wager.”

  “See those lights?” one of the sailors said, pointing toward the line of lanterns that marked the harbor. “Got some mighty fine whorehouses in Skalgerston Bay, sure enough. ’Course, the likes of you won’t get to visit, seein’ as how you’re prison-bound, but the lasses of Bay-town can warm up a man, that’s certain.”

  “And the whiskey and ale at the Crooked House isn’t half bad, though a sane man wouldn’t sail halfway ’round the world to drink it,” another sailor added, and his companions guffawed.

  “That’s what’s in Bay-town?” Blaine asked, genuinely curious. He and the others were unlikely to get more than a glimpse of the harbor city until they earned their Tickets of Leave—if they were fortunate enough to survive that long.

  The first sailor waved vaguely toward the dark shoreline. “Oh, there are a few shops for the colonists—like tools and candles and cloth. The ships always bring provisions for the colony as well as the prison—things they can’t grow or make for themselves. We bring back barrels of their damned fish—salted, pickled, and dried. But we spend most of our coin with the ladies and in the tavern, so they get the best of us, I wager.”

  “Get below, all of you!” The first-mate strode toward them, carrying the short whip he was known to use on prisoners who were slow to obey his orders. This time, there was little resistance since the convicts were shivering with cold. The bitter wind seemed to cut right through Blaine’s clothing, making the cramped warmth of the hold feel inviting.

  “We’ll be in port in the morning,” Verran remarked as they lined up to go below. “That’s when it’ll really get interesting.”

  Blaine turned to get one last look at the Edgeland shoreline before he descended into the hold. The kingdom of Donderath and his life there was completely lost to him now. All that remained was an uncertain future, bleak as the gray sea, unyielding as the ice.

  PART TWO: Welcome to Velant

  Blaine slept fitfully. Now that the Cutlass was close to Edgeland, the reality of his situation sank in. He woke before dawn and had gathered what few possessions he had other than his clothing. Just a blanket and a tin cup, and a small, sharp knife he had looted from a dead man’s pocket.

  “So that’s Edgeland, huh?” Verran said, straining to see out the wooden grating that covered one of the few portholes in the hold.

  Blaine nodded. He had been watching at the porthole for the last candlemark, though in the arctic twilight, there was little difference between noon and midnight. Like Verran, he strained to make out details in the gloom. As the Cutlass sailed into the harbor, the details of Skalgerston Bay remained maddeningly hidden in the shadows.

  “Not much to look at,” Blaine replied.

  “Wonder if I’ll run into some of my old mates,” Verran mused. “Could be a good thing—or maybe not.”

  “Did you owe them money?”

  Verran flashed an insolent grin. “What do you think?”

  Perhaps that was one small consolation. Blaine was unlikely to encounter anyone he knew—or anyone who knew him. Members of the nobility were rarely convicted of crimes, and when judgment was passed, it usually resulted in banishment from court, or house arrest. High crimes, such as treason, warranted beheading. That made King Merrill’s dubious ‘mercy’ all the more unusual, and Blaine knew that for many among the nobility, the thought of being stripped of title, lands, and noble standing, let alone condemned to live among commoners, would been considered worse than death.

  “Now that I recollect, I can think of at least a dozen of my old acquaintances who might be up here,” Verran went on, paying no mind to Blaine’s lapse into silence. “About half of them I wouldn’t mind seeing again, and the other half I’d just as like pretend we’d never met, if you know what I mean.”

  “Any who might be happy to see you?” Blaine asked. It had never occurred to him that his passengers might be rejoining friends, family or co-conspirators who had been sent into exile. Depending on whether they’ve got friends or foes waiting for them, that could make the difference in surviving—or not lasting through the first week.

  “Well now, that depends,” Verran said. “Jakey used to run a pawn shop down on the waterfront. Good deals to his friends, bad cess to his enemies. We did a lot of business together.”

  “You mean, he was your fence.”

  Verran slid him a sly look. “I’m not confirming, and I’m not denying. I’m just
saying—we did good business, and he cheated at cards less than most people I knew.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Verran thought for a moment. “Hmm. Elsie was a fine girl, and kept me company many a night down at the Rooster and Pig. I heard they caught her for lifting a bit of coin to feed her children, and sent her up here. Been a year or two. She might even be a colonist now, if she made it.” He looked wistful.

  “Nat Candle got nabbed for running a crooked betting game winter before last,” Verran added. “I told him he was skimming too much off the winnings, but no one ever listens to me. ’Twasn’t the bets themselves what upset the guards, and if he’d stayed mostly honest, he’d be a free man today.”

  Seems like the friends Verran is likely to have here are a colorful crew, Blaine thought. Then again, Verran and his pals knew all about getting by on their wits and surviving on little else than nerve, a skill Blaine would need to learn quickly if he intended to earn his Ticket of Leave.

  “You think most folks here have friends up here?” Blaine asked, growing more aware every day just how sheltered he had been.

  “Friends—or enemies,” Verran laughed. “Sure. You don’t?”

  Blaine shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t keep track.”

  “Uh oh,” Garrick observed, coming up behind them. “For better or worse boys, Looks like we’ve arrived.”

  “Line up, single file!” the ship’s first mate shouted as sailors slid back the bolt that secured the hatch to the hold. “Take what you’ve got with you, you’re not coming back. You’ll stop on deck to get your manacles, and then down the gangplank and good riddance.”

  Fear. Resignation. Desperation. Anger. Blaine saw a variety of emotions in the eyes of his fellow prisoners. He wondered what they saw when they looked at him. After more than a month in the hold of the Cutlass they were rank and filthy. The wind whipped at their thin blankets and lashed their hair. He counted it as a small mercy that it was not raining.

  Blaine had feared this far north that even in the summer there would be snow. He assumed that was true for the mountain peaks, but the temperature as they shuffled down the gangplank, wrists chained, felt more like a late-autumn evening back in Donderath. The worst was yet to come, and Blaine doubted spring came early on Edgeland.

  “Move,” the sailors shouted, shoving one or two of the prisoners for good measure.

  The sun was barely visible above the horizon, giving Blaine to guess that it was daytime. He strained for a better look at the Skalgerston Bay harbor front, but it was still too dark to make out much more than the outline of the buildings. Garrick was in front of him, and Dunbar, as the convicts shambled onto the dock. Verran was behind him, then Jern, and Fultz. A few more of the prisoners who had kept to Blaine’s side of the hold brought up the rear. Coan and his buddies had been first in line. Blaine had signaled for his allies to hang back. There were some situations where being in front was a good thing. This, he suspected, might not be one of them.

  Guards were waiting for them on the docks, along with heavily built farm wagons drawn by massive plow horses. Blaine tried not to shiver as the wind gusted. The guards, he noted, wore woolen uniforms, solid boots, and hooded, heavy capes.

  “Pick up the pace,” the lead guard snapped, grabbing Coan by the chain that bound his wrists and hauling him toward the wagon.

  Coan growled and tried to take a swing at the guard. The other soldiers were ready, and four of them set on Coan with short, stout staves, beating him mercilessly until Coan was a bloody heap on the dockside road. In the half-light, Blaine could not see whether or not the big man was still breathing.

  “Anyone else have an opinion about getting in the wagon?” the lead guard challenged, holding his bloodied staff at the ready.

  No one was stupid enough to reply, though there was no mistaking the malice in the prisoners’ eyes as they stepped around Coan’s broken form. One by one, Blaine and the others hauled themselves up into the wagons. Groups that had clustered together in the hold tried to stay with each other, though the guards directed some to one wagon and some to another with no discernible reason.

  They probably know we’ve formed alliances on the ship, Blaine thought. They’ll want to isolate us, make us more vulnerable without anyone to watch our backs.

  When all of the other prisoners had been loaded into wagons, two of the guards lifted Coan and tossed him like a sack of turnips into the back of the last cart. The big man groaned but did not move.

  Most of Blaine’s companions managed to stay together. Verran’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes were haunted. The horses headed away from Skalgerston Bay and its rough village, toward the imposing shadow on the cliffs, Velant Prison. The iron manacles, connected by heavy links of chain, bit into Blaine’s wrists. He guessed he should be grateful that they were not shackled at the ankles.

  A few of the prisoners traded whispers, one eye on the guards to avoid a beating. Now and again, Blaine caught a snatch of prayer to Charrot or the High God’s consorts, Torven and Esthrane, but he suspected that most had given up on beseeching the gods long before they reached Edgeland’s shores.

  During the long sea voyage, Blaine had searched his memories for any remembered mention of Velant Prison or the colony on Edgeland. He had spent little time at court, so he had not been privy to any of that gossip, though he doubted that courtiers would have deigned to mention such a vile place. Hangings were common in Castle Reach, and how the magistrates determined who should hang and who should go to exile was a mystery to Blaine, since his own sentence had been handed down by King Merrill himself.

  Perhaps it’s true, he thought. Maybe the magistrates did choose who lived and who died based on which prisoners might make good labor for Velant and Edgeland, and settled for hanging those unlikely to survive the journey. If so, Donderath’s ‘justice’ was even more cynical than he suspected. His father had enjoyed timing his trips to Castle Reach to witness the monthly public hangings. Blaine found no sport in watching people die, some of whom were only a year or two older—if that—than his younger brother, Carr.

  Carr’s only twelve. He won’t remember much about me. Maybe that’s for the best. Or maybe Mari and Aunt Judith will tell him stories, let him know that I wasn’t always the criminal who destroyed what was left of the family’s fortunes.

  Saving Mari and the others from Lord McFadden’s rages came at a price beyond Blaine’s exile. Even if his aunt was able to keep Mari’s shame from public knowledge, Blaine’s crime and trial had been sensational news at court. He remembered bitterly how crowded the galleries had been when the king passed sentence, people who might have barely recognized him on his rare visits to Quillarth Castle jamming in for the spectacle of seeing a nobleman condemned for the murder of his father.

  Judith and Blaine’s fiancé Carensa had insisted on attending the sentencing, though Blaine had tried to warn them away, for their sake as well as because he did not want them to see him, chained like a beast and forced to kneel before the king. Thanks to Blaine’s father’s temper, the family had been on the fringes of court society. With a criminal—a convict—in the family, Blaine knew his family would be unwelcome at court, shunned by the nobility and the townspeople, reviled and outcast.

  Carensa and Mari might never find suitors willing to overlook the stain on their reputations cast by their connection to Blaine. Carr would inherit a title and an impoverished manor. Judith would have all she could manage to keep the manor and lands functioning when Blaine’s infamy tainted the willingness of tradesmen and merchants to trade with them. In saving them, Blaine had ruined their lives, and his own along with it.

  And if I had the choice to make over again, I would do the same thing. Father was a monster. Someone needed to put him down. I’m only sorry that the backlash affected anyone else. I knew I would pay a price when I drew my sword. Then again, he had expected a few weeks in the king’s dungeons, a humiliating walk to the gallows, and then death by the hangman’s noose. Did M
errill really mean exile as a ‘mercy’ or was it his way of extending the punishment—and sending a signal to any other noble son who considered murder as an option?

  Blaine would never know the answer to his questions, though they came repeatedly to him in the candlemarks after midnight when the world was quiet and he had no way to drown out his thoughts. Judith will find a way to take care of Mari and Carr—and Glenreith, he assured himself. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Carensa will surely rise above the scandal. I never wanted to hurt any of them.

  “We’re here.” Verran nudged Blaine in the ribs with an elbow, with a look that acknowledged Blaine had been lost in thought for the dark ride up the cliffside.

  The massive gates of Velant Prison loomed dark and forbidding against the twilight sky. An eerie green ribbon of light glimmered high in the sky, against stars that had never seemed so clear and bright. The wind had picked up since the wagons left the port, and it was colder now, too. Blaine held his blanket close around him, turning his back to the wind. At least in the wagon, packed tightly against each other, they had the warmth of shared body heat, but once inside the prison, they would lose even that small comfort.

  “Get out. Here’s where you end.” The guard likely intended his comment to sound just as ominous as it did. Blaine hoped his eyes held the flat, cold look that so many of his fellow prisoners affected, eyes that had already seen the worst life had to offer. A lifetime of dealing with his father had taught him how to hide his fear, conceal his emotions. And in self-defense, he had learned something of fighting.