“Wait!” Lera called out. “Do you have money?”
“I’m not taking anything from you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You need it, and I owe you.”
“I said I’m not taking anything from you. We’re even.”
“We’re what?”
Sighing, he leaned one shoulder against the nearest wall. “You were upset because I lied to you. This makes up for it, I hope.”
“Nothing will make up for that.” Her voice was more tart than a green apple dipped in vinegar, though it softened a little when she went on. “But why don’t you sleep on Checkmate tonight?”
Jason hadn’t expected that. “Checkmate? You’re not the captain of the ship.”
There was a soft explosive sound of breath. “I’m offering you shelter for one night, not a place in the crew. There’s enough room, so unless you’re planning to eat mice and sleep under that bench, come on. The captain won’t mind giving you a meal and a roof over your head once I let him know what you did.”
Jason considered, but he already knew she had a point. Refusing a handout from anyone, least of all a woman, was a reflex action, but he’d be a fool to turn down something that was both repayment and generosity. He was in enough trouble already without being picked up for vagrancy, and the thought of food had his stomach rumbling.
“I’ve never much cared for mice,” he said. “Lead on, Captain.”
She turned on her heel, and Jason fell into step beside her, easily keeping pace as he decided he would eat as much supper as he could hold, and more. That would sustain him while he made the long journey back to Crusaid the next day.
He thought about her journey too, and whether she would come back unharmed from it.
Lera woke so early that she wasn’t sure she had slept at all. After she had washed and dressed, she climbed up to a quiet deck and hesitated for only a moment before she went to the galley. Being awake in the dark before anyone else sometimes brought back unwanted memories of mornings in the valley where she had grown up, when she had run out to see to the milking as the sun crept over the hills, making icy streams glitter like glass.
The best way to deal with that was to busy herself with work, so she started a fire and hung a char-blackened pot of water over the flames. She stared at the ragged orange flickers of heat, but footsteps on the deck made her turn around. Jason had come up from the hatch. He inclined his head as if to acknowledge her presence, but he didn’t come any closer.
The sight of him distracted her from her thoughts, but it brought a whole new tension she didn’t want to deal with either. As she’d expected, Alyster had allowed him to string up a hammock in the fo’c’sle, but she’d lain awake in her cabin for some time, thinking about inviting him into it. One night with a man she’d never see again, a small pleasant experience before she went on another mission. Surely it couldn’t hurt.
She’d even forgiven his lying to her, because he’d done his best to make up for it. What held her back was the suspicion that he wouldn’t take her invitation as a brief interlude for physical release alone. Chances were, he’d get emotional and compare her eyes to slates and expect more than she was prepared to give.
Though even after what must have been a difficult day and a night in a hammock, he drew her eyes. He hadn’t had a chance to shave, but the start of a beard was a rough, masculine contrast to the soft suede of his jacket, and the stubble didn’t hide the angles of his cheekbones and jaw, much less his mouth.
She must have put too much wood on the fire, because the flames burned hotter than she had expected and bubbles plinked in the pot. But that gave her something else to do, and she wrapped a rag around the pot’s handle as she lifted it off and dumped in a fistful of tea leaves. Everyone in Dagre drank that, so Alyster was saving their little remaining coffee for the journey home.
She’d made the right decision by staying away from Jason last night, of course. Not only was he Dagran and a landbounder, there was an unpredictable streak in him. For all his calm demeanor, he seemed more than capable of desperate measures when he thought those were required. That was the problem with quiet, controlled people. When they finally did something unexpected, a lifetime’s worth of lunacy was unleashed, and it took everyone else by surprise.
The tea had brewed long enough—she hoped, because she had no experience with making it—so she poured out two mugs, sweetened them and carried them over. “You’re up early.”
“Thank you.” He took a mug. “Long way back to Crusaid. I want to give myself enough time.”
Since that was the limit of Lera’s conversational prowess, she sipped her tea. It was scalding, but the sting was less unpleasant than being self-consciously silent. At moments like that she always felt aware of the thick scarring on the right side of her face, the barrier between her and the rest of the world. She studied the steam rising from the surface of her mug.
“May I ask you something?” Jason said quietly. “Why are you needed on Nemesis?” In the pause that followed, he added, “You don’t have to tell me if it’s confidential. I just wondered.”
Well, it was something they could talk about, though Lera had learned to be closemouthed unless the information in question was something people were authorized to know. Then again, after the way they’d been treated she didn’t owe the Ministry of Defense anything, and Jason could hardly do much with whatever she told him, given that Nemesis would be leaving in a few hours. He looked out to the mouth of the harbor as he drank his tea, which helped too, since she didn’t have his gaze resting on her any longer. She realized the three warships had moved away during the night, leaving the way clear to the open water.
“Have you ever heard of Richard Alth?” she said.
His head turned as if she had dropped her mug to smash on the deck between them, but when he replied, his voice was as calm as always. “Everyone’s heard of Richard Alth. You’re going after him?”
He was lying again, Lera knew at once. Or if not actually lying, then keeping the truth from her, as if he thought she was too naïve to notice. She wondered if she had made a huge mistake in telling him anything about their mission, and the thought that she’d miscalculated once more with him was unbearable. I should have let him sleep under that bench.
“Keep it to yourself, would you?” Her voice came out taut.
“You learn discretion very fast in my line of work.” He was clearly able to take a hint, because he finished the rest of his tea and left his mug in the galley. “Be careful.”
She gave him a cool look and turned aside. Behind her, the gangplank rattled a little as he went down it, but she didn’t relax until the footfalls had died away. Thank the Unity he was finally gone.
Jason stepped off the foot of the gangplank. Richard Alth. Of all the names he hadn’t been prepared to hear.
Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. He knew Alth had fled Dagre, so unless he’d found shelter in some other land, which didn’t seem likely, he was at sea. One of the ships moored in the harbor might well be ready to bring him back to justice. All that was reasonable and expected. But Lera traveling with that ship and telling him about Alth without even being aware of his past…was not.
That was the kind of twist of fate which made him wonder if the Benevolent Ones really deserved the first part of their name.
It was still too dark for him to see the start of the Port Road, but he was familiar enough with the harbor to face in that direction. Walk. Keep walking and don’t stop. That was the road he had to take to go where he’d been ordered to be.
Yet he felt the same way as he had when he’d stood on the staircase in the Velvet Court, aware what he was supposed to do, but making a very different choice anyway. Whenever he was near Lera, she seemed to have that effect on him, whether she realized it or not. Since he’d met her, the steady course of his life had been altered, as though an unseen river had cu
t into his path.
He turned and headed towards where he guessed Nemesis might be moored. The warships had dropped anchor on the other side of the harbor after they had moved out of their close defensive formation. He had plenty of time to start the journey back to Crusaid, and he could take a look at the flagship. That was all. Set his mind at ease that the ship Lera was traveling on could take anything Richard Alth might send at it.
He stayed in the shadows of the buildings, partly because of the harbor patrol and partly because several lanterns glowed on the deck of a warship, but those lanterns gave enough light for him to see both the lookouts on the deck and the ship’s name: Nemesis. There seemed to be six or more sailors on watch, and he frowned. Was that normal for a ship in harbor?
Perhaps it was, for the flag of the fleet, and he was close enough for a good look. Nemesis was imposingly large, gunports studding the hull. At the prow were brass nozzles in the shape of stylized dragon heads, with long open muzzles that Jason guessed were spitfires. The Council was clearly taking no chances.
Time to leave.
Except he wanted to be on the ship. That at least had nothing to do with Lera, because all he needed to do was remember what had happened when he’d been fifteen, and how his father had died.
He knew his father would never have wanted him to hate Richard Alth, much less sacrifice what was left of his life to repay the man. Especially since he’d done that once already, to spectacular effect. But if he helped bring Alth to justice, it might ease the pang of guilt he always felt when he thought of his father. It might even help him keep his job. If he could find a way to be of use—
How, exactly? his better sense asked, and he had no answer. He wasn’t a sailor. Even his experience in health-related issues was useless; Nemesis probably had a full complement of medical staff, and wasn’t likely to need any assistance in that regard. Besides, he’d be a fool to risk his life on board a warship, for any reason. He turned to leave.
A quiet scuffling sound made him pause. He looked around, but nothing was visible in the darkness.
There was a quick muffled slap-slap, like someone bolting from one hiding-place to another.
It didn’t seem likely that anyone would try to rob him so close to a lit-up and guarded warship, and the sound was soft as though it had come from several yards away, but the skin on the back of his neck prickled. He put his shoulders to a wall. A wedge of light slanted beyond the edge of the building behind him, but that was far too dim for him to see anything clearly.
Soft thuds echoed in the dark, the sound of running footsteps. A thin figure stumbled forward over loose cobblestones and fell a few feet away from him. Even in the poor light, he caught a glimpse of long, tumbled hair. A girl?
Someone burst out of the shadows, a dark shape much larger than the girl, and stopped over her sprawled body. Closing a fist around her arm, the man hauled her up.
Her other arm whipped around. Jason heard a clink, and the man jerked back with a roar that echoed off the walls. The girl kicked out sharply, and the sound ended in a harsh, choking gasp.
The girl spun around, poised to flee, and something clinked again. That time, she was close enough to the light that Jason saw what it was—a shackle on her left wrist, with a chain hanging from it.
“This way!” He kept his voice low, but the girl must not have seen him at first, because she started violently. Behind her, the man dropped to his knees, still struggling for breath.
Jason ducked around the side of the building, and a moment later the girl followed. “Where?” she said.
He could see her less clearly out of the light, but he smelled her. Blood, coppery and pungent, clung to her like a miasma, though other than her fast breathing, she didn’t seem hurt. Where, good question. Go forward and she’d be seen by men on Nemesis; go back and she’d run into the man she’d…incapacitated. Left or right, and all she could hope to do would be to hide and evade the harbor guard.
Then go up.
“Climb,” he said, and cupped his hands. She stepped in them at once, without question or hesitation, and caught the gutter of the roof overhead. Jason moved so she could put a foot on his shoulder and pull herself up the rest of the way. He heard her chain clink as she scuffled out of sight.
Before he could do anything else, torches glowed ahead, and he heard Nemesis’s gangplank thump and rattle as men hurried down it. They’d heard the shout and were converging on his position. The faint coos of half-asleep birds overhead were almost drowned out in more shouts. He kept his back to the wall and his hands at his sides as the men reached him.
After the darkness, the light of their torches was painfully bright, though through the stinging in his eyes, he noticed the glint of drawn steel. His throat went dry. The men were from the warship, so they weren’t likely to just skewer him, but three of them surrounded him and the rest started fanning out through the maze of streets and alleys. Someone called out nearby, and he guessed they’d found the injured man.
His eyes were adapting. An officer who towered over the rest of them approached, a deep-blue uniform almost black in the near-darkness, buttons and trim glowing like gold. The men moved aside for him.
The look he gave Jason was equal parts suspicion and disdain. “Who are you?”
Stay calm. “My name is Jason Remerley and my identification papers are in my jacket. Left side.”
The officer slid a hand in, pulled out the papers and looked them over in the torchlight. His expression didn’t change, as if Jason might have murdered the real Jason Remerley and stolen his identifying documents.
“Did you see a girl anywhere here?” he said. “Medium height, slender, long black hair.”
“Who is she?”
In the next moment his shoulders struck the wall. The officer pinned him there with a large hand gripping his shirt, and Jason didn’t need to look down to know the other hand had drawn something sharp. The torches were so close that sweat broke out on his skin.
“You’re not in any position to ask questions, Remerley.” The officer’s eyes were colder than his voice. “If that is actually your name. I don’t care what papers you have if you’re loitering near my ship.”
He’s not going to kill me. Jason held on to that lifeline. As long as he stayed calm and didn’t try to fight back, an officer of the Dagran navy would not gut him like a fish. Though it occurred to him that if the officer ran out of patience and decided that codes of conduct be damned, he would probably get away with it. Hell, they could always claim the girl had killed him.
The girl. He didn’t need to say a word. One look up would be enough, and yet he couldn’t simply sell her out without knowing why she had been on the run from a shipful of armed men, much as he wanted to be on that ship himself.
Except the jab of a steel point to his belly told him he didn’t have a choice. “Tell me who she is and I’ll tell you where she went,” was the best compromise he could make.
A fist tightened in his shirt, twisting the collar around his throat until he could hardly breathe. “She’s an escaped prisoner who killed a man. That’s all you need to know.”
“On the roof,” Jason managed to say. The edges of his vision had turned red as if blood had been seeping into his eyes. But when the officer released his shirt, he gulped in a breath and his sight cleared. One of the men climbed up a drainpipe.
The dagger had never left Jason’s stomach, and the officer didn’t look away from him either. “Lossian, be careful,” he said.
“Aye, sir,” the man replied. The rest of them had already moved to surround the building, but they stood a little distance away from the drainpipe, as though bracing for Lossian to be knocked off it. Jason made a mental note to listen to his better sense right away next time, assuming he lived past that morning.
Lossian swung himself up to the roof with an ease Jason envied and was gone from sight, thou
gh he called down a moment later. “There’s no one here, sir.”
Jason’s blood went cold. Had the girl escaped? She’d certainly seemed resourceful, but how had she done it? The nearest buildings were perhaps five or six feet away; could she have jumped?
Every stare lowered from the roof to him, and the accusation in their faces was only too clear. Naturally they thought he’d stalled to buy her time. What now?
He wrenched his attention away from the dagger and looked up. “Is there a hatch?”
That was the only thing he could think of, if the roof was flat-topped enough for Lossian, but his hopes were dashed at once. “No. Nothing but a pigeon coop.”
The cooing sounds he’d heard earlier. “Is she in that?”
The creak of the door swinging open was barely audible—if the men hadn’t been silent, Jason would never have heard it—but a scuffle broke out at once. Pigeons shrieked and fluttered wildly as Lossian swore, and at the officer’s nod another man shimmied up the drainpipe. Before he could reach it, though, there was a dull heavy thud.
“Got her, sir.” Lossian sounded breathless. “Folded up inside that like a snakeling in an egg.”
“Good work.” The officer lowered his hand and gave Jason’s identification papers back. The suspicion in his face had given way to well-bred distaste, as if he had narrowly missed stepping on a dog dropping.
“Whatever you were doing here, you can leave,” he said. “You were fortunate that she didn’t kill you and that I won’t call the harbor guard.” He shoved his dagger back into its sheath as if to punctuate that and turned to leave.
“Wait.” Jason spoke before he could hesitate or reconsider. “May I speak to you? On your ship?”
He added that last part quickly, because it might be that much more difficult for them to get rid of him if he was actually on board. Benevolent Ones knew he needed every advantage he could get, no matter how small. Above, Lossian started slowly down the drainpipe with a crumpled body over his shoulder, a chain swaying with every movement, and the officer didn’t bother to glance back as he walked away.
The Highest Tide Page 6