Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  Ostre snorted laughter. “We’ve only the finest swimmers aboard the Lamprey. Besides, those stinking wretches needed a bath.” He sobered. “Mark me, girl, if this fails, they’ll be better off under the waves, than those of us above them.”

  “We will not fail,” Nesaea said, reassuring him as much as herself.

  Ostre gave her a clumsy bow. “Then I give you command of my ship and crew.”

  Stiff with cold, Nesaea marched to the rail. The Crimson Gull was backing water and furling her sails. Her boarding party looked with curiosity at the Lamprey’s abrupt maneuver, but showed no alarm. The same could not be said for the men waiting expectantly at Nesaea’s back.

  “Hold,” she called, as the Crimson Gull came about. Grapnels trailing hempen lines began falling over the Lamprey’s rail, and were quickly pulled taut. When the ships slammed together, a curtain of seawater sprayed up between them.

  Nesaea stared up at the Crimson Gull’s crew, hard-faced men all, with not a whit of mercy shining in a single eye. Some few of those gazes fell on her and Fira. Lustful smiles blossomed. Those who dealt in the flesh markets of Giliron cared not if the girls and boys they sold retained their virginity, only that they came pretty and unmarked to the auction block. Seeing such cruel hunger on so many faces killed all mercy in her heart.

  “Throw!” Nesaea commanded.

  A dozen jars launched from the Lamprey to fall and shatter among the crew of the Crimson Gull. Another dozen jars followed. Some corsairs looked puzzled, a few hurled taunts, the rest laughed at the foolishness of such pathetic resistance.

  Nesaea raised a veil over her mouth and nose. All those aboard the Lamprey mimicked her. She waited, eyes wide, pulse making her chest ache.

  One of the laughing corsairs retrieved a damp rag from the broken jar at his feet. He spun it overhead, unaware that he was fanning the vapors of a potent sleeping tonic into the noses of his mates. Others laughed with him. They stopped laughing when his eyes glazed over and he toppled headlong from the galley’s rail. He hit with a bone-jarring thump upon the deck of the Lamprey, much as the gaoler in the dungeon of Dionis Keep had fallen off his chair. The difference being the corsair would not wake from his broken neck.

  Laughter aboard the Crimson Gull died as more men pitched over, limbs stiff and eyes rolling, as though poleaxed. In moments, most of the crew was down. The few corsairs still awake flapped limp hands at the rail, struggling to keep their feet. Somewhere behind them, the captain of the Crimson Gull began calling up reserves in a panicked voice.

  Now it was Nesaea’s turn to smile. “Time to make legends, Captain.”

  Ostre jerked his cutlass free, a nasty bit of curved steel a hand span wide, notched and pitted over its length. “Take this whore!”

  The Lamprey’s crew howled across the pitching deck, waving swords, knives, belaying pins, anything and all that could end another man’s existence. Before the Crimson Gull’s reserve force could shake off their shock, Nesaea and Fira joined the Lamprey’s crew in shinnying up the grappling lines to gain the deck of the Crimson Gull.

  Screaming fury raced to meet them at the rail, a wall of two dozen faces twisted by rage, eyes alight with hope of vengeance.

  Nesaea’s dagger ripped out a throat before she could set her feet amongst the men sprawled on the deck. Blood splashed across her face, the sharp odor of it sinking into her veil. Choking, the man reeled past her and flipped over the rail.

  Drawing her short sword, she stepped forward to give those at her back room to board. Her sword battered aside thrusting steel. Her next stroke buried the short blade in the attacker’s neck. She yanked the blade free, its keen edge slicing to the bone.

  Nesaea spun under a thrust, her dagger opening a swaying belly. Intestines boiled from the wound, catching round her feet like slimy ropes. She went down, slid through the reeking mess, fetched up against the legs of a sailor battling Ostre. Before she could roll clear, the captain chopped off his opponent’s sword hand. With a frantic back slash, he then split the man’s cheeks. The twitching hand and a bit of severed tongue bounced off Nesaea’s face.

  She came up to see Fira run her blade through a corsair’s groin. She give the blade a brutal twist, and kicked the howling sailor away. She whirled, face not green now, but splattered with running scarlet lines. More blood matted her fiery hair. Her eyes flickered toward Nesaea, a brief grin showed stark white teeth, then she was off into the fray, slashing blade a lethal blur.

  Liamas, the fair-haired Prythian giant, caught a man’s throat in his massive fist, lifted him high, and swung a short-handled axe better suited for the field of battle than a ship. One of the axe’s two crescent blades devastated the corsair’s skull. Liamas hurled the thrashing corpse away, unmoved by the spatter of gore flecking his bare chest and stony face.

  A fist cracked against the back of Nesaea’s head, dropping her to her knees. She skidded over the blood-slicked deck, dropped her shoulder and rolled. She came up in the middle of a tempest of clashing steel, her assailant nowhere in sight. She shook her head to clear it, then sheathed her dagger in a corsair’s back, driving the tip deep up under his ribs. He flinched away with a shriek, his truncheon clattering to the deck. He fled two steps, and Liamas took off the man’s head with a single stroke of his axe.

  Nesaea registered the spreading carnage with a distant mind. She had seen such before, and felt neither joy nor revulsion. Emotion would come later. If she survived. And surviving meant getting below decks to the ship’s stores.

  She wheeled, slamming away a sword stroke, her own blade filling the gap and plunging into a snarling man’s eye, sinking hilt deep and bursting out the side of his skull. She shoved him away, cast about, and found the hatch standing open behind a seething tangle of fighting men.

  “Fira! Ostre! Liamas! To me!”

  Three heads turned her way. She did not wait for them to join her. Four strides took her through the jostling sailors, her flashing blades keeping foes at a distance, or laying open vulnerable flesh where they could. The reek of tar and fish wafted from the hatch, more pungent than the blood staining Nesaea’s veil.

  “Sooner done, the better,” Liamas rumbled at her shoulder. With a thundering cry, he leaped through the square of darkness, bloodied corn silk hair flying. Nesaea and Fira clambered down the steps, with Ostre coming hard after them.

  Like a golden god of death, Liamas waited for them. At his feet sprawled two motionless men, one whose torso had been torn nearly in half by the Prythian’s axe, the other split the other way, from crown to sternum. “The rest of the crew must be above,” he said, as though disappointed.

  A pair of swinging oil lamps gave fitful light to the ship’s upper rowing deck. Nesaea sheathed her dagger, took a lamp by its wire bail, and followed her sword to the forward hatch. Nothing moved below. She climbed down another steep set of steps to the lower rowing deck, went through a third hatch and into the hold.

  The iron-barred brig was nestled against the forward bulkhead, surrounded by bales of fabric, barrels, chests, stacked crates. Thankful there were no prisoners, Nesaea raised the lamp and made her way aft, searching for what she hoped was aboard. There was only one reason to raid whalers. At the rear bulkhead, she found what she wanted.

  “Liamas, if you please?” She nodded to a stack of oaken casks, their heads stamped with a whale spewing flames from its blowhole. The Prythian sank his axe into a cask, and a stream of honey colored oil began pouring over the decking. Nesaea flung the lamp down, and a whoosh of heat and licking fire erupted.

  The foursome fled. By the time they reached the main deck, they were red-eyed from the tarry black smoke pouring up through the ship and out of the hatch.

  Topside, they found the deck awash in blood, bits and pieces of men, and the dead and dying. What remained of the Lamprey’s crew had tied the Crimson Gull’s captain to the mainmast. The opposite of Ostre, he stood pretty and dashing, with fair hair and pale skin. Some of that prettiness was ruined by the fu
rious veins bulging at his neck and temples.

  “Fools!” he shouted, spittle flying. He cast about, eyes hard and gray as new-forged steel, quivering beard fashioned into golden serpentine spikes. “You will all dance in the shadow of the gibbet for this treachery!”

  Ostre strode out of the billowing smoke. “You mistake your present condition, Captain,” he growled, and with three strokes from his heavy blade, hacked off his peer’s head. Ostre raised the grisly prize to shouts from his crew.

  “Surely you do not mean to keep that?” Fira asked, nose wrinkled in distaste.

  “Aye, girl. ‘Tis proof the wings of the Crimson Gull have been clipped.” He leaned closer. “And proof of who did the clipping.”

  Shouts of, “Glory to the Lamprey!” and “Capt’n Ostre!” went up, as the first leaping waves of flame escaped the hatch.

  “To the Demon Gate, you whoreson curs!” Ostre bellowed, sending the celebrating crew back to their own ship.

  Around them, a full third of the Lamprey’s crew lay among those of the Crimson Gull. “A high price for victory,” Nesaea said, a familiar appalled weariness falling over her at the sight of so much death. Before and during battle, none of that mattered. After the fact, killing curdled in her gut, and she knew her victims would rise again to plague her dreams.

  “Aye,” Ostre grumbled, rubbing a thick finger under his nose, smearing clots of blood through his mustaches. He looked to the waves tossing round his ship. The crewman who had been washed over the side were still afloat, splashing weakly. “’Tis good those three fools decided to have a bath,” he said, and laughed uproariously.

  Nesaea laughed with him, because mourning her enemies was worse than killing them.

  Chapter 17

  Black and cold, the broad waters of the River Sedge parted round the hull of the Lamprey. After so many days sailing upstream, Nesaea could almost forget the harrowing churn of the Demon Gate, a strait dotted with razor-edged reefs, and awhirl with deadly eddies and sucking whirlpools. The icy spray and fogs of the tumultuous White Sea had been worse. With so many lost in the battle against the Crimson Gull, Nesaea and Fira had aided the crew in clearing ice off the deck, rails, and rigging. Even now, the memory of that invasive cold stayed with her. Or it might be the Iron Marches were lands that could never warm enough to suit her southern blood.

  Other cogs and small galleys shared the river with the Lamprey, slender fishing boats, and barges loaded with bales of fur. Under the climbing sun, the Gyntors rose to the south, an imposing wall of black-forested foothills climbing to immense snowcapped crags. North, hills reached to the horizon. A hard land, Nesaea decided, one she would enjoy leaving. But first, she had to find her father.

  “Monseriq sounds better by the day,” Fira said, shivering under the fur cloak Captain Ostre had found for her. The green cast to her pale skin had faded over the last days, replaced by the same shade of pink Nesaea wore. Somewhere along the voyage, Fira’s stomach had grown used to the pitch and roll of the sea. As with Nesaea, the unrelenting cold had become the frustrating enemy.

  “Soon as we are able,” Nesaea agreed, wondering how the crew of the Lamprey did not seem to feel the bite of the air.

  “They’ve blood of ice,” Fira said, favoring Liamas with a lingering stare. As always, the Prythian quartermaster went about in snug breeches and bare-chested, his golden skin tight over enough muscle for two men. “He’s too pretty by half,” Fira said abruptly, as though Nesaea had made a suggestive comment.

  Before Nesaea could respond, Ostre’s heavy tread alerted them to the captain’s presence. He dropped a thick hand on the rail, eyes focused upriver. “We’re soon to put in at Iceford. If you’re still fixed on venturing to Skalos, my brother usually keeps a few horses to sell. Better than walking, I expect.”

  “My thanks,” Nesaea said.

  Ostre rubbed his nose, then reached into his vest to withdraw the same leather pouch Nesaea had given him before boarding. “After all you’ve done, I’d not sleep a peaceful wink if I kept your price for passage.”

  Nesaea tried to resist, but he pressed the pouch into her hand, closed her fingers over it.

  “Never heard of the Maidens of the Lyre before you two, but if you ever need a bunk on the Lamprey, consider it yours.”

  Nesaea inclined her head in acceptance. When she looked up, Ostre had turned away to bellow orders.

  Within half a turn of the glass, the Lamprey had docked at the timber quays below Iceford, a bustling town filled with narrow streets that wended between stone-and-timber buildings with high-peaked, thatched roofs. The scent of fish and tanneries assailed Nesaea and Fira long before they followed Ostre off the dock and into town.

  “Busy,” Fira observed.

  “Aye,” Ostre said, following her gaze to the townsfolk, who all seemed to be rushing and shouting. “Winter comes swift and early, hereabouts.”

  “Winter,” Nesaea said incredulously. “It’s still the middle of summer, or near enough not to matter.”

  “Not here,” Ostre said. “Less than a month until the river starts to freeze over. If I be lucky, the Lamprey will go and come from the south once more. After, I’ll set her prow to the shores of the Muika. A pity, that. Cargoes are richer, going north to south.”

  “At least you’ll be warm,” Fira said.

  “And poorer,” Ostre lamented, turning into a stable yard.

  A boy pushing a barrow saw the burly captain, and his face lit up. “Uncle!” In his haste to reach the captain, the boy upended his barrow of straw and dung.

  “Willen!” Ostre called, throwing his arms wide. The laughing boy slammed into him, and Ostre lifted him high and spun.

  A sturdy bald man limped out of wide stable doors. A deep, twisting scar ran up his cheek, giving him a permanent sneer. “Didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  “For once, Robere, the winds favored us,” Ostre said, putting young Willen down.

  “’Tis good one of us has a touch of luck,” Robere said with a sour grimace. His gaze flicked between Nesaea and Fira. Whatever he thought about them accompanying his brother, he kept to himself.

  “Robere has more gold than he can spend,” Ostre revealed in a conspiratorial whisper. “But to hear him, you’d think he was pauper afflicted with a killing flux.”

  “All the gold in the world will no help those hereabouts, nor those of Wyvern, now, will it?”

  “Speak plain, man.”

  “’Tis those damnable monks down from Skalos, always poking their noses where they no belong.”

  “Naught new in that,” Ostre said.

  “True enough. But they’ve taken to pilfering.”

  Ostre sighed. “So everyone says, until someone pokes an arrow or blade into the true thief.”

  “Aye, well, mayhap that’s the way it’s been before now, but I tell you, they’re up to no good.”

  “Always are,” Ostre allowed.

  “Mayhap you’ve the way of it, concerning the monks,” Robere grumbled reluctantly. “Same can no be said for the Wardens of Tanglewood. Word has it they’re on the hunt again, up to Wyvernmoor, and parts thereabouts. Them and their mistress, seeking out the careless.”

  “Monks and ghosts,” Ostre said with the weary resignation of one who has heard it all before. “That all you have to fret over? Go count your gold, brother. You’ll feel better for it.”

  Robere dismissed his brother with a curt wave, and faced Nesaea and Fira. “If you’re whores,” he said, “Iceford has too many already.”

  Ostre gasped. “They’re not whores, you addled-witted fool. They be Maidens of the Lyre.”

  Robere blinked. “Musicians, is it? Well, now, there might be a place for you. The Minstrel’s Cup lost a … well, they lost their minstrel. A fortnight back, the fancy fool got a flagon of wine in his fat belly, an’ fell in the river. Never did come up. Could be the—”

  “They’re off to Skalos,” Ostre interrupted.

  Robere blinked again. “Whatever for?�
�

  “I’m looking for my father,” Nesaea said. “I was told he came this way. Sytheus Vonterel, a magician.”

  “Strange name, that. Sure I’d remember it, if I’d ever heard it. Still, we get more of that sort hereabouts than we get wastrel minstrels,” Robere said. “But I can no recall a magician coming through Iceford in over a year.”

  “Be that as it may,” Ostre said, “these ladies need a pair of good mountain horses to get them where they’re going.”

  “We will pay for the finest you have,” Nesaea put in.

  “They’re good for it,” Ostre assured his hesitant brother.

  At the prospect of earning a fair bit of coin, Robere’s eyes lit up, and he showed a gap-toothed grin. “I’ve just what you need. Yes, indeed, ol’ Robere has the finest horseflesh in all the Iron Marches!”

  Chapter 18

  “Sytheus did, indeed, call on us,” Brother Jathen said amiably. He guided Nesaea and Fira down an arched corridor lined with bronze lamps. The citadel of Skalos had been built into a mountaintop, and over long centuries it had grown into a veritable beehive of great halls, storage vaults, chambers, and innumerable libraries, all connected by labyrinthine passageways. As it had taken a handful of grueling days riding up a winding switchback trail to get to the fortress, Nesaea barely noted the floors of green marble, the vast collection of artwork, or the sheer enormity of Skalos. All she wanted was to sit on something motionless, and without a fickle mind of its own.

  “I fear we have not seen your father since he departed, some months gone,” Jathen went on. “I can scarcely believe good Sytheus never mentioned he had such a lovely daughter.”

  “Two daughters,” Nesaea reminded him. She had been hesitant to tell the man anything about her purpose, or that of her father. In the end, she saw little choice, if she was to find Sytheus.

  “Yes, of course. And you received word he came here because of this other girl, your half-sister, the one held for ransom against his return?” He did not scoff, but a skeptical edge flavored his words. Since meeting him, he always sounded skeptical. Still, she was curious.