Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga)

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Let me take a look,” Blaine said. Kestel handed it over. Blaine carefully wiped down the wood with a rag to make sure no seawater would drip into whatever was hidden inside. The cap stuck, but he carefully pried it loose.

  “Papers,” he said, looking into the dark interior. “Just papers.”

  Gently, he teased the rolled parchment from its hiding place. He glanced at the two sleeping men on the benches, but neither Engraham nor his companion stirred. Kestel motioned him over to a worktable, and cleaned off the surface so he could stretch out the parchment. Blaine caught his breath when he saw the map.

  “It’s just a map of Donderath,” Piran said. “What’s so special about that?”

  “Not a treasure map, is it?” Verran asked, his eyes alight.

  “It just might be,” Blaine murmured. He glanced up at Kestel. “Can you see if Ifrem can come in here?” He glanced around the kitchen, but there was no one else except his friends and the two sleeping castaways. “And let’s keep this just among ourselves, huh?”

  Kestel gave him a questioning look, but went out to find Ifrem, and returned a few minutes later with the tavern master in tow. Blaine looked up, giving Ifrem a nod to come over and look at the parchment still stretched between Blaine’s hands on the table.

  Ifrem let out a low whistle. “Where did you get this?”

  “One of our new friends had it hidden under his tunic,” Kestel replied.

  Blaine met Ifrem’s gaze. “A mate to the other map?”

  Ifrem bent closer, studying the parchment. “To my eye, it looks like it. Unless it’s a very clever forgery.”

  Blaine shrugged. “Why bother with a forgery?”

  Verran eyed the map with curiosity. “So it’s a map of all the places where magic’s very strong—or places where magic doesn’t work?”

  “So it would seem,” Ifrem replied.

  Piran snorted. “If Donderath’s had the same problems we’ve had, magic doesn’t work anywhere. Not sure what use that map is now.”

  Kestel laid the obsidian disk down atop the map. “Do either of you know what this is?”

  Ifrem touched the disk gently with his fingertips. He slid it carefully across the map so that the runes that appeared to be scattered at random on the parchment filled the slits in the pendant’s surface. “Offhand, I’d say it’s a key to the map. I can’t read the runes, but I’m betting someone could.” He picked up the disk and carefully examined it. “There’s also no telling whether it needed magic to work.”

  “Looks to me like we’ve got a map of places that don’t matter anymore and a disk that doesn’t do anything,” Piran observed. “Let’s hope that we get more useful stuff from what we can scavenge tomorrow. Something that actually works—or that we can eat.”

  Blaine carefully rerolled the map and replaced it in the wooden box. He offered it to Ifrem, who took it and nodded.

  “I’ll put it with the other,” Ifrem said.

  Blaine looked back at their sleeping guests. “What I can’t figure out is—what were they doing with the map, and why did they bring it here?” He sighed. “And what in the name of the gods was Engraham thinking when he asked for me?”

  Kestel followed his gaze with a worried expression. “I don’t know, but we’d better find out before we let them out of our sight.”

  Blaine and his friends took turns sitting up with the shipwreck survivors throughout the night, napping on pallets near the banked kitchen fire. Ifrem joined them once the crowds thinned and the tavern officially closed, a few candlemarks after midnight.

  “A copper for your thoughts,” Ifrem said after Blaine had gone for several minutes without talking. Ifrem poured them both another finger of whiskey. Blaine swirled the dark liquid in his glass and took a deep breath.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m dreading having them wake up,” Blaine replied. “I’d been hoping that Donderath would just forget about us and let us go our own way.”

  “Every new ship of convicts was another reminder,” Ifrem said quietly. “Pasts never stay in the past—not even here.”

  “Yeah, but Donderath always stayed at a nice, comfortable distance. This,” he said with a wave of his hand toward the two men, “brings it all too close.”

  Ifrem looked at him. “So you were a lord, huh? Do you think Prokief knew?”

  Blaine hesitated and then nodded. “He knew.”

  Ifrem looked at the two castaways. “I wonder what brought them all the way up here. We’re not exactly on the main shipping lanes.”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to find out,” Blaine replied, knocking back the remainder of the whiskey. “And I don’t think we’re going to like what we hear.”

  “Wake up! They’re coming around,” Kestel hissed in Blaine’s ear. Blaine blinked his eyes several times and then scrambled to his feet.

  Engraham and the other man were beginning to stir. The blond man thrashed as he awoke, falling from the bench before Verran could steady him. He landed on his hands and knees, eyes wide and wild, looking around himself in panic.

  “You’re safe,” Kestel reassured him. “Safe on Edgeland.”

  “Velant?”

  “Velant burned. You’re in Skalgerston Bay—Bay-town. Take it easy. You’ve been through a lot.”

  The blond man stared at Kestel with wide eyes, and Blaine wondered whether he was more surprised to discover himself still alive or to find his caretaker to be a beautiful woman. He allowed Kestel to help him back onto the bench. He looked around the room. “Where am I?”

  “You’re a guest of the Crooked House,” Verran said with a flourish. “Best tavern in all of Bay-town.”

  “What’s your name?” Kestel asked, and the man reoriented on Kestel’s green eyes.

  “Connor. Bevin Connor.”

  Engraham awoke with a groan, drawing their attention. Verran helped him sit. Engraham squeezed his eyes shut as if fighting off a bad headache. “Did we make it?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  “That all depends,” Piran replied, “on where you intended to go.”

  “Edgeland.”

  “Well, then, congratulations. You’re here.”

  Verran poured a cup of water and pushed it into Engraham’s hand. “Drink something. Your voice is nearly gone.”

  “What happened to your ship?” Kestel asked.

  Engraham drank slowly, nursing his raw throat. “Broke apart in the storm. Did the other ship make it?”

  Blaine and Kestel exchanged puzzled glances. “What other ship?” Kestel asked.

  Engraham and Connor looked at each other. “Four ships left Castle Reach. One went down in a storm. One hit floating ice. We lost sight of the other. We’d hoped they’d made it.”

  Kestel shook her head. “Not to Edgeland. If they were going to put into port, it would be here. I’m sorry.”

  Engraham had not taken his eyes off Kestel since she spoke. “I know you,” he said quietly.

  Kestel gave an enigmatic smile and nodded. “I got invited on more than one occasion to bring good luck to the gamblers in your back room.”

  Engraham looked around the room, and his gaze fixed on Blaine. “Lord McFadden,” he said.

  Blaine took a deep breath and let it out. “I go by Mick these days. How are you, Engraham?”

  A shadow of a smile crossed Engraham’s features. “Alive. That counts for something.” He paused. “May I present a friend of mine, Bevin Connor, steward to the late Lord Garnoc.”

  “Why in the name of the gods did you come here?” Blaine asked.

  Just then, Connor sat upright as if stung. His hands patted down his loose shirt, and one hand slipped inside the neckline of his tunic to feel around his throat. “They’re gone,” he exclaimed. “I must have lost them when the ship went down,” he said in despair. “I had brought some things of value with me, and they’re gone.”

  “The map and the pendant are safe,” Kestel assured him.

  “Which leads us to another question: What are you doin
g with that map?” Blaine asked.

  Engraham cleared his throat. “Perhaps it would be better if we started the story from the beginning.”

  Blaine nodded. “Probably so. But answer me one thing. Will there be more ships from Donderath—ships with soldiers and convicts and supplies?”

  Engraham shook his head slowly. “There are only refugees. Donderath has fallen.”

  Blaine and the others listened in dumbstruck silence as Connor and Engraham took turns telling their tale of Donderath’s last days. Kestel wept as Connor described the fall of the castle and the death of King Merrill. Piran blanched at Connor’s account of how badly Donderath’s army had been beaten. Verran and Ifrem sat motionless, as if the shock was too great to elicit any reaction at all.

  “The Lesser Kingdoms were destroyed as well?” Kestel’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “I’m sorry,” Engraham replied. “What we saw from the coast looked no better than what we left behind in Castle Reach.”

  “What of Meroven and Vellanaj? Did we take them down with us?” Piran’s eyes blazed and his voice was as tightly clenched as his fists.

  Connor shrugged. “Lynge, the seneschal, believed so.”

  “And the magic?” Verran asked.

  Connor shook his head. “Gone. I thought that it was something local just to Donderath or maybe to the Continent itself. But even when we were in the middle of the ocean, the magic didn’t return.”

  Blaine looked at Engraham. “Why did you ask for me?”

  Engraham gave a sheepish grin. “Because besides my mother, you’re the only person I knew up here.” He sighed.

  “My father, Lord Forden, spoke well of you,” Engraham continued. “He was in my tavern the night we heard about the murder. Father was rather well into his brandy—as usual—but his reaction startled me. He went on a rant about how it was time someone took care of Ian McFadden, and what a son of a bitch he was. Seems my father knew your aunt, Dame Judith, well enough to be privy to some family secrets. He never faulted you for what you did.”

  Blaine looked away.

  “Truth be told, I think he wished he’d had the courage to kill your father himself,” Engraham continued. “You weren’t the only ones Ian McFadden ever hurt. He had a reputation for being a mean-tempered blackguard.”

  Blaine swallowed hard. “I didn’t know that.”

  Engraham snorted. “People were hardly going to say it to your face, now were they?”

  “It’s true.” Everyone turned to look at Connor. “I heard Lord Garnoc talking about it to Millicent. He went to the king on your behalf, when it happened. Urged Merrill to be lenient.”

  “Who’s Millicent?” Verran asked.

  Connor opened his mouth to reply and then closed it, searching for words. “His wife. It’s… complicated.”

  “Why?” Blaine asked, feeling light-headed. “Why would Garnoc care? I’m not sure I met him more than a couple of times.”

  “Lord Garnoc was a good man,” Connor said, looking down. “His youngest son would have been about your age, but he died of a fever when he was just a young boy. Garnoc told me once that just a few weeks after his son’s death, when he was still sick with grief, he saw you and your father at court. You did something that displeased your father, and he caned you. All Garnoc could see was that here was someone with a living son who was too stupid to appreciate it. He was so mad with grief that he said he shoved your father aside and broke the cane over his knee, offering then and there to adopt you if your father didn’t want you.”

  “I remember that,” Blaine said quietly. “I was terrified. I didn’t know what to fear more—father’s rage or a strange man with wild eyes who wanted to take me home with him.” He forced a sad smile. “I can’t bear thinking what would have been different if father had said yes.”

  Connor bit his lip, struggling with his own emotions. “Lord Garnoc was a good man,” he repeated. “It was an honor to serve him.”

  “Did Garnoc know about the map?” Blaine asked, frowning.

  Connor nodded. “He sent me to the royal library to find it. Just as I did, the firestorm struck. By the time I got back to Garnoc, it was too late.”

  “How did he know about it?” Blaine pressed.

  Connor paused for a moment. “Lord Garnoc had many sources of information,” Connor replied. “He received a tip. Garnoc hoped the information would be useful for the war strategy.” Connor’s voice became bitter. “Obviously, we were too late.”

  “Engraham—you mentioned that your mother is here. On Edgeland?” Kestel asked, breaking the tension.

  Engraham nodded. His cheeks colored. “Yes. Lord Forden did not acknowledge my mother. He didn’t step forward at all until my mother had been convicted for stealing to keep the two of us from starving. Father intervened on my behalf, but my mother was sent to Velant.” Engraham’s voice was bitter.

  “How long ago was she sent here?” Kestel asked gently.

  “Fifteen years,” Engraham said. He sighed. “I know it’s unlikely that she’s still alive. But if she’s here, I want to find her.”

  Kestel nodded. “The ones who are hardy enough to survive the ship passage stand a good chance of living through the first year in Velant. Those who survive more than a year or two in Velant usually figure out how to stay alive long enough to get their Ticket. Once you got out of Velant, your chances got a lot better,” she said with a wry expression.

  She met Engraham’s gaze. “Let us put out the word. Among the five of us, we know a lot of the colonists. I’d wager Ifrem knows even more folks—especially the ones who’ve been here the longest. If she’s here, we’ll find her for you.”

  “Thank you,” Engraham said. “It means a lot to me.”

  Ifrem cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Everyone turned their attention to the tavern master. “By now, everyone in Edgeland knows that we’ve fished survivors out of the sea—and they’re going to guess that they came from back home. There are going to be all kinds of rumors flying around. People will be in a panic that the ship was full of spies sent from the king, soldiers to put down the uprising, new convicts—you can imagine where people’s imaginations will take this.”

  “That’s why the front room is even more filled than usual at this hour?” Piran said.

  Ifrem nodded. “Everyone out there wants to be first to hear the news.”

  “So how do we tell them that it’s worse than the king sending soldiers?” Kestel said, thinking aloud. “How do we tell them that everything they knew is gone?”

  Blaine looked at Connor. “Do you have any idea how badly places outside the palace city were hit?”

  Connor flinched. “We heard that the manor houses had been destroyed first.”

  “All of them?” Blaine said with a pained expression.

  Kestel laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Mick.”

  By the time the Council assembled, Ifrem had moved their two new guests to the large room upstairs. Connor and Engraham told their stories, omitting any mention of the map or the amulet, as the Council listened in stunned silence.

  For a few moments after the report was finished, no one moved. Trask, the butcher, and Mama Jean, the dry goods merchant, were openly weeping. Wills Jothra, the cooper, looked stunned. Peters, the fishmonger, sat without moving, his face ashen. Fiella, the head of the Whore’s Guild, had a distracted look on her face, and Blaine wondered if she was mentally calculating the impact to her profits. Adger, the distiller, was looking at Engraham as if he were trying to decide whether the newcomer posed a threat to his business. Annalise, the potions master and chandler, had closed her eyes and was swaying back and forth, fingering her prayer beads.

  “By Charrot, I didn’t expect that,” Peters said finally. “All these years, I’ve wished we’d never see another convict ship. And now we won’t—ever again.”

  “We won’t see another supply ship either,” Fiella said with a practical glint in her eye. “So whate
ver we can’t make ourselves, we won’t have.”

  Trask had collected himself. Red-eyed, he looked at Connor. “So both the king and the heir are dead?”

  Connor nodded. “Aye.”

  “There will be chaos.” Fiella’s voice was clear. “Without the king and the army, there is no law. We’re fortunate to be here, far away.”

  Mama Jean sniffled and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “On the other hand,” she said, swallowing hard, “there’s no one telling us we can’t send out ships of our own to trade.”

  Adger made a dismissive gesture. “Who are we going to trade with? The Continent is in ruins.”

  “The Far Shores,” Mama Jean replied, lifting her chin defiantly. “They might be glad of our copper and rubies.”

  “Or they might send up their own troops to take them, now that Donderath doesn’t have a garrison here,” replied Jothra.

  “Once the Cross-Sea Kingdoms realize that their trade with the Continent is gone, they’re likely to have problems of their own for a while,” Engraham said. “An upset like this will do more than wipe out personal fortunes. It could topple kings.”

  “Meaning the Far Shores will be too busy to bother with us—for good or ill—for quite some time,” Ifrem finished. “We’re truly on our own.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A FEW CANDLEMARKS LATER, A RESTLESS CROWD gathered in Bay-town’s commons, undeterred by the cold. Blaine rubbed his hands together to warm them, despite his heavy cloak and his fur-lined mittens. “Have I mentioned how much I hate the long night?”

  “Only every day, and sometimes twice,” Kestel replied. She looked as cold as he felt, even though she wore a fur hat, a wolf-fur coat that went to her shins, and the warmest boots she could buy from the village cobbler.

  “As damnably cold as it is, it hasn’t kept people from turning out,” Blaine observed.

  “And Ifrem’s probably betting they’ll all head back to his place for a nip of whiskey and a chance to hash out what they’ve heard among their neighbors.” Kestel was bouncing in place, her breath clouding on the cold air. It was late afternoon, but the sky was perennially twilight, a cold winter sunset that would last for five more months.