Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga)

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Your name came up far more than anyone else’s,” Ifrem said. “You’ve got a reputation as a fair man.”

  “Just wait till they find out you were the one who killed Prokief and Ejnar,” Piran put in. Blaine rolled his eyes, but Ifrem looked from Piran to Blaine.

  “Truly?”

  Blaine turned away uncomfortably. “It’s not like I set out to do it. I was looking for Dawe—”

  “They’re both dead? Praise the gods!” Ifrem stood back from the bar. “Prokief and Ejnar are dead. Mick’s the one who done it. Next round is on the house!”

  With that, Blaine found himself the toast of the evening as townspeople he barely knew made it through the crowd to shake his hand and offer their thanks. He was unused to the attention and uncomfortable with the acclaim. When he had just about made up his mind to see if he could escape out the back door, Kestel sidled up to him and took his arm.

  “Give the hero a little room, he’s been up all night,” she admonished the crowd of well-wishers. “You can thank him tomorrow. Prokief will be just as dead.” With that she deftly steered Blaine out of the thick of the mob toward a table in the kitchen.

  “Sit down. You look awful. Who clipped you on the side of the head?”

  “I don’t remember,” Blaine said, touching his fingers gently to his throbbing temple. His hand came away sticky with blood.

  Kestel got a cloth and dipped it in a bucket, then wrung it out. “Here. It’ll take the sting out. Wait here while I go get Dawe and Piran.” She returned in a few minutes with the other two men and sat them down at the table with Blaine like errant schoolboys.

  “Eat. Drink a whiskey—it’s good for digestion.”

  She turned her attention to Dawe. “Eat as much as you want. Ifrem’s buying.” She crossed the room and rummaged in a small chest, returning with a variety of tins and a mortar and pestle. As the men ate, she ground dried herbs and mixed them with a few drops of wine to make a paste, then began to bind up the worst of Dawe’s injuries.

  “You know, I got banged around pretty good, too,” Piran muttered half-jokingly.

  Kestel regarded him primly. “Ah, but you’re the rough and tough professional man-at-arms, aren’t you? I wouldn’t want to affront your dignity by assuming that you minded injuries that were less than the loss of a limb.”

  “I like a bit of comfort as much as the next man,” Piran groused.

  Kestel gave a loud sigh. “Men! You’re all babies. All right, Piran dear. I’ll get to you after I finish up with Dawe. Mick’s got a couple of nasty gashes, too. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

  They were finished with their food by the time Kestel finished tending to Dawe. He looked tired and haggard, but some of the pain in his eyes had lessened. As she finished, Dawe took her hand and turned it over, kissing the back. “Thank you, m’lady.”

  Kestel shook her head. “Don’t get all courtly on me. I just figured you might as well be in one piece if I have to live with the lot of you.”

  It took much less time for Kestel to apply her poultices to the worst of Blaine’s injuries, and he was surprised at how quickly the mixture relieved the pain. Finally, she straightened and looked at Piran.

  “All right. Your turn. Now, where are you hurt?”

  Piran thrust out his right forearm. It was badly bruised, but the skin was not broken.

  “You’re not even cut!”

  “Probably nicked the bone,” Piran muttered. “One of the guards tackled me and slammed me into the hitching rail. Lucky I didn’t break my arm.”

  Kestel gave an exaggerated sigh, but Blaine could see the affection in her eyes. “My poor dumpkins,” she clucked. “Does it hurt awfully?”

  Blaine and Dawe stifled their laughs. Piran reddened, but did not retreat. “As a matter of fact, yes. And for your information, soldiers feel pain like anyone else. Only more of it.”

  Blaine could see Kestel biting back her laughter as she took lavish care applying the homemade ointment to Piran’s arm and binding it with a strip of cloth. For good measure, she fashioned a sling for him out of one of the serving maid’s rags. “There you go,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Now off with you—and if you’re planning to use that injury for sympathy, remember that the ladies will still expect you to bear your weight on your arms, regardless.”

  Piran smiled broadly as Blaine and Dawe guffawed. “You know me too well, Kestel.”

  “You four are the children I’ll never have,” Kestel said with mock irritation. “Now be gone. Ifrem needs Mick upstairs, and I need to go help Verran in the tavern before there’s a riot over the ale.”

  A few moments after Kestel disappeared into the common room, Ifrem entered the kitchen. “I trust you’ve left some food for my paying customers?” he said, raising an eyebrow. Blaine noticed that Ifrem was limping.

  “What happened to you?” Blaine asked. “Lift a keg wrong?”

  Ifrem swore and shook his head. “No. Damnedest thing happened last night after you bedded down and the storm eased up. I went out to see to the guests’ horses in the barn, and a man jumped me. Why he thought I’d have anything of value on me, I can’t imagine.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  Ifrem shook his head. “He had a cloth across his face. Came at me with a knife, and might have gutted me if he’d been a little faster. Made a clean slice through my cloak, but since the coat’s big on me, I wasn’t where he thought I was. I had a bucket in my hand and swung it as hard as I could. Caught him hard between the shoulders. Then he ran away.”

  “You get hurt?” Blaine nodded toward the way Ifrem held himself, favoring one side.

  Ifrem shrugged. “Like I said, he got in a good slice with his knife. Didn’t go deep, but it put a crease in me below the ribs that hurts like Raka.” He sighed. “Could have been worse.” He grimaced. “All these years, and no one’s ever tried to rob me. Now I think everyone’s lost their minds.”

  Just then they heard a muffled groan as Dawe tried to stand but sank back down into his chair. Ifrem looked at him with concern. “Come on, Dawe. There’s a cot in the back that cook uses sometimes. You can sleep until Mick and the others are ready to head home.” He escorted Dawe to the back of the kitchen and got him settled, then returned to where Blaine and Piran waited.

  He looked at Blaine. “The Council would like to see you, Mick. I’m pretty sure they want to offer you a seat.”

  “I don’t think I’m Council material,” Blaine protested.

  Ifrem shook his head. “I don’t believe that, or I wouldn’t have put your name in for consideration. You’ve got a good reputation as an honest man—and odd as it sounds coming from a convict, that counts for something. We need someone like you representing the colonists.” Ifrem paused. “Besides, you’ve got more education than most of the folks in Edgeland. I know you can read and write, and figure, too.”

  Blaine glanced sharply at Kestel, wondering if she had exposed his secret, but she gave the slightest shake of her head. “I guess it won’t hurt to hear them out,” he said.

  Ifrem grinned. “That’s great.” He looked to Kestel and Piran. “Keep the bar running for me while I take Mick upstairs. Your drinks are on me.”

  Blaine followed Ifrem up the narrow back stairs. The Crooked House was the largest tavern in Bay-town, with several rooms upstairs where guests could sleep off their whiskey and a large room used for dances, which was now occupied by eight men and women seated around several tables that had been pushed together. They looked up when Ifrem entered, and Blaine could feel the weight of their gazes on him.

  “I told you he’d show up tonight,” Ifrem said. “He’s just come from Velant, so he can give you an eyewitness account.”

  Blaine recognized the faces around the table. Peters, the fishmonger. Wills Jothra, the barrel maker. Trask, the butcher. The dry goods merchant, whom everyone called Mama Jean. Annalise, the candle maker, who was also the village’s broker in potions and household spells. Adger, the wh
iskey man, who ran the distillery and kept the folks of Skalgerston Bay supplied with more than homemade ale and wine. And Fiella, head of the Whore’s Guild, who owned the two largest brothels in town.

  There were two empty chairs. Ifrem sat down next to Adger, and motioned for Blaine to take the other seat.

  “It’s true, then? Prokief’s dead?” Peters leaned across the table. His voice was as rough from the weather as his hands were red from seawater.

  Blaine nodded. “Both he and Ejnar.” At Peters’s prompting, Blaine gave a shortened retelling of what had happened at the prison, making sure to give Piran and Taren their due. When he finished, the Council was silent, its members deep in thought.

  “I didn’t think I’d live to see Prokief dead,” Annalise said, her voice harsh. “I intend to light candles to thank the gods.”

  “I don’t know what we’ll do with so many new colonists all at once—and no ships from home,” Wills Jothra mused.

  “Actually, I was thinking about that,” Blaine said. “With no ships expected from Donderath, we won’t get any new shipments of the things we used to trade for. We’ll need everything from pottery to iron and we’ll have to do for ourselves.”

  He looked around at the Council. “We may not need to mine rubies, but we’ll still need the copper. Prokief never bothered mining for iron because Donderath sent the tools and implements, but if we ever want new, we’d best have a source of our own.” He spread his hands. “There’s no reason we can’t make almost everything Donderath used to supply. Fabric, pottery, even dyes and perfumes—we don’t have to rely on the kingdom to provide it.”

  Trask, the eldest of those assembled, nodded. He was a broad, stocky man, as thickly set as the hogs he slaughtered. “What of the guards?”

  Blaine shook his head. “Some were killed—but most surrendered without incident. I believe Piran could make a town watch out of them, make them into guards who work for us instead of against us.”

  The Council members whispered among themselves, but gradually frowns eased into more neutral expressions. “It is an idea worth considering,” Peters said.

  “But what if Donderath’s ships suddenly appear in a few weeks, or a few months?” Fiella asked. Fiella was an angular, bony woman whose dark eyes glinted with intelligence and old wounds. She was reputed to drive a hard bargain, but was also known to keep her girls clean and well fed and to pay them better than she had to. Kestel had once told Blaine that Fiella had murdered more than one patron who got rough with her girls and had made sure the story spread to assure that her visitors remembered their manners. Now her eyes held fear that was close to panic.

  “We’ve been over that,” Wills Jothra replied impatiently. He pushed a stray lock of middling brown hair behind his ear. Through Dawe, Blaine knew that Bay-town’s cooper had once been a furniture maker for Donderath’s aristocracy, convicted of theft on evidence supplied by his competitor. “I doubt Donderath cares whether the convicts are imprisoned or drowned, so long as they never return. We deal with the ship captains, not the king. If we can make it worth their while and remain the king’s dumping ground, Donderath may leave us alone, especially if they’ve got other problems.”

  “And you don’t think that the king will care that his ‘governor’ was murdered?” Mama Jean asked, leaning forward. Grocer Bosq’s widow was at least twenty years younger than the old man who had left her his name and his store. Her face and figure left no question as to what had attracted the old man, but Mama Jean had a nose for business as keen as any man in Bay-town.

  “No, I don’t,” Ifrem replied. “I’d heard from more than one source that Prokief barely evaded the gallows himself. He was disliked among the king’s commanders, and the king sent him here because it solved two problems at once.” He paused and poured himself a glass of dark amber whiskey from the flagon on the table. “If it’s true that the war’s gone badly for Donderath, it’s possible the king meant to cut us free. We’re just Donderath’s oubliette. Maybe it was time to forget us altogether.”

  Adger harrumphed and shifted in his chair. The wood protested beneath his bulk. The distiller was a coarse-featured man, with a pockmarked face and a broad nose that testified to how much he sampled his own wares. “We have always existed at the pleasure of the king,” he said, his voice rumbling through the nearly empty room. “What has changed? King Merrill was free to starve us or slay us whenever he chose. If he meant to kill us, a noose is far cheaper, and he could have hanged the lot of us back home without the expense of a sea journey.

  “Ever since Donderath discovered rubies and copper in Edgeland, there’s been reason to have a colony here,” Adger continued. “If we had less damnable weather, the king wouldn’t have had to populate his mines with convicts.” He drew a wheezy breath. “Let the mining continue. Make rubies and copper the currency of the realm. And if Donderath sends its ships, show the king he has lost nothing save the expense of upkeep on his miserable prison.”

  That seemed to satisfy the others. Ifrem cleared his throat. “If discussion is at an end, we have one remaining piece of business.” He looked at Blaine. “I recommend Mick McFadden as our ninth and final member, as the representative of the colonists.” Ifrem looked around the table. “How votes the Council?”

  Adger fixed Blaine with his gaze. His eyes seemed too small for his large head, but it would be a mistake, Blaine knew, to underestimate the distiller’s street savvy. “Aye,” Adger said. “He’s got as much at risk as any of us, bein’ the one who put a knife to Prokief.” He thumped his broad hands on the table, and it shook. “I’m for it.”

  One by one, the others gave their assent. Ifrem grinned. “That makes it official, Mick. You’re the colonists’ voice on the Council.”

  Blaine felt the events of the last few days beginning to catch up with him. He blinked hard and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. “Thank you for the vote,” he said. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get some rest before I fall over.”

  “Take your rest,” Trask replied, “but don’t stay away. It’ll be the long night soon, and we’ve got work to do before then to see to changes.” He dropped his voice. “We’d best have our plans in place, or Bay-town’s likely to go up in flames like Velant.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I WOULDN’T MIND THE MAGGOTS IN THE BREAD so much if the grog was stronger,” Dorin said.

  Connor nodded. “Talk with the tavern master. It’s his grog.”

  Engraham shook his head. “Don’t blame me. I bartered good rum for our passage. I suspect the captain’s watered it.”

  “To keep those of us down below from feeling rebellious, I wager,” Dorin said.

  “Hard to work up much spirit for rebellion when you’re heaving up your guts,” Connor added.

  “That, too,” Engraham allowed. He glanced toward the portholes and turned his attention back to Dorin. “Any idea where we are?”

  Dorin consulted the scratches he had made in the wood that tracked their days at sea. “We’ve been out for thirty-nine days. Stars tell me we’re still on a northern heading. I’ve always heard it said that it took forty days, if the seas were favorable, for a convict ship to reach Velant.” He shrugged. “And it’s definitely gotten colder. My guess is that we’re nearly there.”

  Connor shivered. It was late summer, and Donderath had still been warm. Now Connor was glad that he’d grabbed his cloak as well as his pack. The Cross-Sea Kingdoms might have been warm this time of year, but Edgeland was another matter entirely.

  “What happens when we get there?” Connor asked, looking from Dorin to Engraham. “After all, Velant’s a prison. Can they turn us away?”

  Engraham frowned. “I don’t know. Edgeland itself is very large.”

  Dorin nodded. “Aye. The sailors would talk when my men and I would go to unload the ships. They spent time in Skalgerston Bay, the port town. From what I heard, you might have opportunity to open yourself a new tavern,” he said, clapping Engraham on th
e shoulder. “I heard that the whiskey up there is potent, but raw. A good distiller like yourself might find his skills in demand.”

  “So if there’s a colony, there’s hope that there’s somewhere for us to go,” Connor said. “I’ve no desire to live through the voyage just to starve or freeze.”

  “Well,” Dorin replied, “there’s no guarantee. Edgeland’s not exactly a paradise. I’ve always reckoned that if the king could have gotten colonists by asking nicely, he wouldn’t have had to ship convicts all the way to the end of the world. On the other hand, what I’ve heard ’round the docks is that people make a go of it. The convicts who live long enough to earn their leave papers get a bit of land and their freedom—so long as they don’t try to leave Edgeland.”

  Engraham nodded. “I’d quibble about it being ‘freedom,’ because there was no hope to ever leave. But between the crops that will grow and the fish, the colonists don’t starve. There are trees enough to have wood to stay warm through the winter, and rubies and copper to trade for coin.”

  Connor thought for a moment. “The Prowess was one of the last four big ships to leave Castle Reach’s harbor. I don’t know what the war did to the other ports, or whether any of their boats had luck dodging the blockade. But I think it’s safe to say there won’t be many supply ships behind us.”

  Engraham shook his head. “Probably not. It was a miracle that more ships didn’t burn and sink in the harbor. No telling how it went for the other ports.”

  “Vellanaj can’t hold its blockade forever,” Connor replied. “The war is over. Sooner or later, the ships will find out and go home. I’m guessing that they only blockaded our main ports. We haven’t seen any sign of them since we veered north.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Connor shrugged. “If Edgeland has rubies and copper, maybe there’ll be a way to trade with the Far Shores once the blockade is over.”

  Engraham considered it for a moment, and nodded. “Assuming that Meroven doesn’t come calling.”