by Glenda Larke
Barden, a frantic look of horror on his face, threw himself backwards to avoid the jab. His staff picked itself up off the cobbles and slammed against the knee of the older lancer to knock him off his feet. He landed with a bone-crunching thud.
Fritillary ran forward to help Barden up. The staff moved – by itself – lifting from the pavement into Barden’s hand. With a look of heartfelt gratitude, he leaned on it. The older lancer, wailing as he clutched his thigh, rocked to and fro, his lower leg at a strange angle. Blood seeped through the cloth of his trousers.
Barden looked down at the staff and ran a loving hand over its smoothed wood. “This,” he said, “is my witchery.” Looking up, he smiled at Fritillary. “I think we are done here. Neither of these fellows will fight again, methinks.”
She took a deep breath, but said nothing. No words would come. Picking up her pack from where she’d dropped it, she followed Barden as he scuttled away from the wounded men like a three-legged spider.
Va help them, she’d been wrong. Horribly, disastrously wrong. Barden’s walking stick, crafted from the wood of the living oak of the hemisphere’s greatest shrine by an unseen guardian, told her that much. The knowledge was an indigestible lump of grief – and hope – in her insides.
As they approached the waiting barge a few minutes later, Barden’s nose wrinkled with distaste. “Curdle me sour, what is it carrying?”
“Salted fish, I believe,” she said. “It seemed an unlikely cargo for a barge bearing the Pontifect.”
He glanced at her, puzzled. “You asked for a barge full of smelly sprats? But aren’t we just crossing the Ard to Staravale?”
“That’s what I wanted everyone to think. In fact, we are going to the last place anyone would think to look for the Pontifect, and the best place to be to get anything done.”
He waited for her to explain, but she didn’t oblige. At this stage, the fewer people who knew, the better. Instead, she said, “We have a war to win.”
“No holds barred?”
She took a deep breath. “No holds barred. Va help us all.”
2
The Eagle and the Oak
“Something’s wrong.”
The words, uttered by Saker Rampion, were said softly, but the chill of them iced the back of Ardhi’s neck.
“Something is definitely wrong.”
Ardhi looked upwards. Yes, there was the sea eagle, drifting effortlessly above, scarcely moving a wingtip. It had followed them all the way from Chenderawasi to the coast of Ardrone, often perched on one of the yardarms, sometimes fed fish by the sailors after Saker had assured them it was a bird of good omen.
A bird of the Summer Seas, irrevocably connected now to a man of Ardrone, by Chenderawasi sakti. Va-forsaken magic, these people called it, in their ignorance. Everything the bird saw and felt, Saker saw and felt too, though he often struggled to interpret it.
Even so, when Saker said something was wrong, not one of those standing on the weather deck of Golden Petrel was prepared to ridicule his assertion. His increased perception had proved invaluable on their journey home. He even had the ability to twin himself with the bird, to have his consciousness fly with the eagle and guide it. It meant leaving his body inert and unthinking and vulnerable, not something to be done lightly, especially as there was no guarantee he would or could return to it. Those times were the hardest, and they left Saker exhausted. Bird and man, they’d hated one another in the beginning as they’d fought the link, both wanting to be free and yet both incapable of breaking the tie the sakti had forged.
Ardhi had watched unhappily as the conflict gradually changed from a battle, to acceptance, to respect, but never to affection. It had been difficult for Saker to acknowledge that this wasn’t supposed to be a punishment or a penance, but rather an added weapon in a magical arsenal, all part of the sakti protecting a Summer Seas archipelago from the rapine of invasion.
He looked back at Saker, worry niggling him. The man had paid a high price for that avian connection. The strain was etched into his face, visible in the troubled depths of his gaze as he laboured to maintain his humanity and his sanity. The only time Ardhi saw something of the man Saker had once been was when he played with Piper. Then his sorrow was banished and his eyes would soften with tenderness.
Sighing, he turned his gaze to the shoreline slipping past. Borne on a following breeze, Golden Petrel was making good time towards the royal city of Throssel, already visible in the distance. The larger buildings caught the afternoon sun, walls and towers aglow, glassed windows burnished. The royal standard flew from the palace’s highest point, indicating the king was in residence.
“Over two years,” Lord Juster Dornbeck muttered from where he stood behind the helmsman. “Anything could have happened in that time.” The last news they’d had, in Karradar from a newly arrived Ardronese trader, had been four months old even then. The ship’s merchant-captain had spoken of marauding bands of religious zealots called the Grey Lancers, and an argument between the king and his heir, Prince Ryce, which had left the king well-nigh blind. Pressed for details, the man had been vague. “We’re from Port Sedge down south,” he’d said. “What do we know of snotty nobles and sodding clerics up in Throssel?”
Now, looking at Saker gripping the bulwarks with both hands as if his life depended on his hold, Ardhi wondered if it hadn’t been a mistake to come straight to the Ardronese capital. He couldn’t help but think they should have stopped for news instead of bypassing the port of Hornbeam.
It would have been easy enough. Hornbeam was not far from the estuary’s entrance to the open ocean, and Lord Juster had ordered his prizes, the two Lowmian ships they’d commandeered, to divert there while Golden Petrel sailed on to the royal city. Both of the captured vessels, ravaged by ship’s worm, wallowed like pregnant sows even with the pumps constantly manned. Juster had deemed that the sometimes choppy tidal flows of the Throssel Water might prove the final fatal blow to their seaworthiness and had ordered them in for repairs.
“Saker,” Juster said in answer to his remark about something being amiss, “cryptic utterances about things looking ‘wrong’ are not overly helpful. Could we have a comment, an elucidation of some sort, possibly a scintilla more… specific? You know, like perhaps that fobbing feathered spy of yours can see cannon aimed in our direction?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s the coastline – it’s altered.” Saker had appeared more puzzled than alarmed, but now his bewilderment changed to the shock of realisation. “The oak,” he said. “The King’s Oak. It’s gone.”
The words meant nothing to Ardhi, but all those within earshot on the weather deck blanched.
Juster glowered. “What do you mean? Shrine-oaks don’t disappear!” When a reply was not forthcoming, he snapped out a stream of commands, sending seamen aloft with instructions to report anything out of the ordinary, then ordering the ship’s boy, Banstel, to fetch the telescope from his cabin. “Saker, position that heap of feathers above the palace and tell me what it sees.”
“What do you expect? It doesn’t talk to me, you know. All I get is a picture.”
Juster hesitated, obviously wanting Saker to twin with the bird, but when no offer to do so was forthcoming, he said instead, “A picture which you can interpret.”
Saker sent an eloquent glance Juster’s way, but a moment later the eagle tilted its wings and slid across the sky towards the palace, still several miles ahead of them.
When the telescope was produced, Lord Juster scanned the coastline where the King’s Oak shrine should have been. “That is… uncanny,” he admitted. “I can’t spot the oak, it’s true. But I also can’t discern signs that there’s been a tree cut down. Or burned. It’s just—”
“Not there,” Saker finished. “All I could see was a kind of blur.”
“A local ground mist?”
“No.”
“Rattling pox, a fobbing great tree can’t just vanish.”
“This one has.”
> “Could it be the work of A’va?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You’re the Shenat witan! You tell me!”
“I would have thought it impossible to wipe a shrine-oak from the surface of the earth, but that’s what it looks like.”
Ardhi edged away into the shadow of the mizzen mast, where he could unsheathe his kris and glance at the blade without them noticing. As always, when his hand closed over the bone of the hilt – Raja Wiramulia’s bone, cleaned and carved by Rani Marsyanda, washed with her tears – he felt the anguish of his memories. And now gold flecks of the Raja’s regalia gleamed fiery red in the blade, always a sign that trouble was close.
“What do you see?” The whisper came from behind him, making him jump. Sorrel, glamoured, had been standing there all along, blended into the mast. In spite of the sakti which allowed him to see through her witchery, he had not noticed her there. Simply dressed in a sailor’s culottes and shirt, she was barefoot because she had been up on the rigging and, like him, preferred the firmer grip of unshod feet. As he watched, she changed the glamour that had blended her into the mast to her own appearance – except this time she clad herself in the illusion of a demure gown.
He smiled, amused at her successful deception travelling the length of the ship aloft without anyone spotting her. “Si-nakal! You imp! You know the captain hates you using your witchery on board.” Juster Dornbeck didn’t particularly like her clad as a sailor either, so it was just as well he’d have no idea that the glamoured dress she was apparently now wearing was all a sham.
“Fig on him! He’s ready enough to make use of it when it suits him. What’s the blade telling you?”
“It’s unhappy,” he said. “Nothing more than that.” They were using the Chenderawasi language, as they often did when alone. She’d asked to learn it and now, speaking with an accent he thought charming, her grasp of the nuances of his island tongue never failed to delight him.
“Not good, then.” She pulled a face.
“No. But did we expect anything different?”
She shook her head. “I’m frightened. I was scared even before I knew a shrine-oak could disappear…” Her gaze remained steady, but her words were poignant in their honesty.
His breath caught in his throat. “All – all we can do is our best.”
“We can’t afford to fail.”
“No. But the Rani implied that our unity – our ternion – is a strength.”
Her hand touched the small pendant at her neck. It was made of stoppered bambu and hung on a gold chain he had bought for her on one of the Spicerie islands. Inside the hollow were three tiny pieces of the old Raja’s tail feathers, each imbued with his Avian sakti. Saker had two more pieces, but no one knew exactly how best to use that magic.
“Piper,” she whispered, and the name summed up all her worries in one word. Her gaze slid away to where the child was playing on the deck with a rope doll made for her by one of the sailors. The dark curls of her hair flopped over her forehead. The prettiest of two-year-olds, she never would keep her bonnet on for more than a few minutes at a time. She looked up just then, saw Sorrel and waved the doll in her direction. “Look, Mama!”
Sorrel waved back.
If they failed… If they didn’t use the sakti wisely…
He swallowed hard at the thought of what would happen. If the Chenderawasi circlet Piper wore around her neck failed to control the sorcerous blood she had inherited, she could follow in the footsteps of her father, Valerian Fox. Possibly even worse was the knowledge that – if they failed to contain the rampant greed of the Va-cherished Hemisphere – then the islands of the Summer Seas, his own included, would be devastated by the guns of Lowmian and Ardronese merchants. His people would lose their freedom.
“Our failures are all in the past,” he said, striving to sound confident. “Yours, mine, Saker’s – they were monumental, they delivered their lessons, but they are in the past. Now we are three, a ternion, united to succeed. The Rani said the ternion was our hope. We will rid your hemisphere of its sorcerers and we will persuade your leaders to treat my hemisphere with respect.”
She could so easily have mocked his certainty; instead she arched an eyebrow and asked, “What do you know about my failures?”
“I know you married the wrong man. And I know you’ll never do that again.”
He grinned at her, and she punched him on the arm. “Only you could ever make me smile about that!” She shook her head at him and glanced over to where Lord Juster and Saker were still arguing. “They are being snippety with one another again.”
“They enjoy it.”
“Tell me, please,” Captain Juster Dornbeck was saying, “what that flapping bundle of fluff and quills is telling you about the palace.”
“It has a roof. Oh, and chimney pots.”
“Saker—”
“Oak ’n’ galls, my lord, what do you expect? The bird can’t tell me anything! All I get is a picture of what it sees, and even then it is not interested in what interests me. All it ever wants to do is hunt, eat, preen and find a female it can mate with. Yes, I can order it here and there, and force it to do certain things, but I can’t change its nature. Nor would I want to.”
“You could do more. I’ve seen you do more.”
“Yes, and you’ve seen what twinning with it does to me, too. I have to give up all of myself and be a bird… And I would beg you to consider this: I am never sure if I will be able to return. Every time it is a struggle to come back. Don’t ask it of me, my lord, unless it is a matter of life or death.”
They were gazing at each other, the captain rigid as he glared, Saker expressionless. Ardhi did not quite understand the subtleties of why Saker was sometimes formal with Juster Dornbeck and sometimes not; he suspected it was a game only the two men involved fully understood.
“One of the oldest oaks in Ardrone has vanished,” Saker continued. “Which means that whatever has happened since we left here has been disastrous. We should take heed.”
Juster gave a perfunctory nod and turned to the helmsman, Forrest. “We won’t try for a berth tonight. Instead, let’s anchor leeside of Beggar’s Island. Just in case.”
Ardhi raised a questioning eyebrow at Sorrel.
“That’s the one anchorage close to the city that’s safe from the palace cannon,” she explained. Seeing his surprise at her knowledge, she added, “I was the Lady Mathilda’s spy, remember? I learned a lot from eavesdropping.”
“Best I keep to the middle of the waterway, mayhap, cap’n?” Helmsman Forrest asked. Even Ardhi knew that normally they would have run up close to the town, advertising their return.
“That would be judicious, I think.” Juster glanced upwards to the sprinkling of seamen now on the top yards, but no one had reported anything amiss yet. Even so, he was scowling.
Later, as they slipped past the city in the last of the evening sunlight to anchor behind Beggar’s Island, the lack of activity onshore was troubling. Ardhi knew from his time working dockside in Ustgrind that the return of a merchant vessel from Karradar or Pashalin was a matter for hubbub and bustle and rejoicing. Families would flock to see if their relatives among the ship’s crew had returned safely. Brokers and bankers and city merchants would gather dockside to find out what was in the cargo. Carpenters and chandlers, sail makers, rope makers and coopers – they all thronged there too, hoping for business or employment. The return of a privateer after more than two years, especially one owned by a buccaneer as notorious as Juster Dornbeck, would normally have been celebrated throughout the city.
Yet, when they took turns viewing the docks and shoreline through the ship’s spyglass, the people gathering dockside appeared subdued. Worse still, the usual flotilla of small boats seeking news from an arriving vessel was absent. No one approached Golden Petrel.
“Where the Va-less hells is my agent?” Juster asked half under his breath, his tone sharp.
No one had an answer to th
at.
Eight bells of the dog watch sounded just as they finished dinner. It had been a hurried meal, eaten in silence. Saker knew Juster well enough to know he’d been using the time to plan and he wasn’t surprised when the captain asked Surgeon Barklee, Ardhi, Sorrel and himself to stay after the plates had been cleared. Grig Cranald might ordinarily have been asked to join them, but Grig was the officer on watch. Moreover, although their present anchorage was sheltered, tucked away behind the heaped boulders of the uninhabited Beggar’s Island, Juster was edgy anyway and had told Grig to inform the crew that no one was to sleep below that night.
Reeky hells, I don’t blame him.
King’s Oak had disappeared. Vanished as if it had never existed. Perhaps not as important as the Great Oak of the Pontifect’s city of Vavala, King’s Oak was nonetheless revered as one of the oldest of Shenat shrines. Because it served Throssel, the Ardronese capital, it had additional significance.
Something was deeply awry in Ardrone, and they were not well-positioned to deal with any threats. Golden Petrel was sorely undermanned. Splitting the ship’s company up in order to sail three ships all the way home had meant the first mate, Finch Aspen, was no longer on board; he was in command of the captured prizes now in Hornbeam, along with a number of other members of the crew.
“What are you planning?” he asked Juster. “Because I’m blistering sure you aren’t going to sit here and wait for the dawn.”
“Of course not. I’m going to bend my knee to the king. But first I need more information. Barklee, you have a brother living in the docklands, right?”
“Aye, cap’n. He’s an advocate for some of the merchants. My wife and bairns live with him and his wife while I’m gone.” Barklee had married late in life and was itching to get back to his much younger spouse and their young children.
“Then I’ll talk to him first.” Juster looked across at Sorrel. “Tomorrow, I want that ev—” He stopped to glance at Barklee, then said, “I want Piper off this ship. It’s no place for a child.”