The Sea Change

by Patricia Bray

  Josan’s heart pounded as they drew ever closer to the enemy ships. Finally, Septimus was satisfied.

  “By your leave,” he said.

  Josan nodded, his mouth so dry that he could not speak.

  Septimus turned to address his crew. “In the name of Emperor Lucius, who honors us with his presence, we will destroy the treacherous rogues who foul the shores of our trusted Kazagan allies,” he bellowed, in a voice that could be heard from one end of the ship to the other. “Today we will achieve a victory that will be celebrated for generations to come.”

  The sailors cheered, by rote rather than with any real enthusiasm. Only the engineers and the sailors chosen to assist them had ever seen the new weapons demonstrated. The rest were trusting in the skill of their officers and the courage of an emperor who was so confident in victory that he had come in person to bear witness.

  He knew their eyes were upon him. Josan did not know how to wear the semblance of courage, so he assumed a mask of boredom instead, as if any outcome other than victory was unthinkable.

  At Septimus’s signal, the lead ships reefed all but a single sail, slowing their movement.

  The ballistae were cocked, and a sailor dipped the first of the rag bundles into the concoction, then carefully loaded it in the bowl of the ballista.

  “Aim for the center ship, with the commodore’s pennant,” Septimus said.

  Josan held his breath as the weapon was fired. It tumbled through the air, an unremarkable ball of white. He strained his eyes, but could not see where it landed.

  “A miss,” the lieutenant advised Septimus. The gears under the ballista were hastily adjusted, and then it was loaded again. The second shot seemed to miss as well, and Josan felt the first stirrings of panic. The most powerful weapon in the world would be useless if it could not reach its target…

  Then he saw it. A small orange glow on the deck of the enemy ship. A fire so small that it could seemingly be smothered with a blanket. In a moment the ball doubled in size and then doubled again, racing hungrily across the deck as a second missile struck.

  Septimus stood by his lieutenant, who bellowed orders that Josan heard but did not comprehend. He had eyes only for the sight in front of him, as one after another, the federation ships began to burn.

  The Burning Terror clung to whatever it touched. It could not be quenched by water or extinguished by beating it with rags. It would consume everything it touched until there was nothing left to feed upon. What happened when it fell upon a man’s flesh was something he did not want to imagine.

  He heard Septimus’s sailors cheering, chants of “Septimus” and “Hail Emperor Lucius” nearly drowning out the distant cries of terror from the federation ships. The Seddonians’ disciplined ranks dissolved into chaos as those ships that had been spared in the initial volleys fled, abandoning their hapless comrades. Sailors leapt from the burning decks of their ships, but no comrades would pause to rescue them.

  Septimus approached, forgetting himself in the excitement of the moment as he clapped his emperor upon the back. Josan rocked forward with the impact, catching himself against the rail.

  “By the grace of the triune gods, it’s working,” Septimus said.

  Josan forced himself to smile, though he could not share in the excitement.

  “By your leave, I will order our ships to seize those enemy vessels that are still in range,” Septimus said. “Some may escape, but I doubt the rest will offer any resistance once we close with them.”

  “What of the men in the water?”

  Septimus shrugged.

  “We cannot leave them there,” Josan insisted.

  “If it is a choice between drowning or being hanged as pirates…”

  The empire was not yet ready to declare war, so they had borrowed the federation strategy of declaring the enemy to be pirates, and pirates had no protection. Indeed, the law commanded that they be executed as a warning to others. Josan had known this from the start. But faced with the sight of men struggling in the water, he reconsidered his decision.

  “Save the sailors,” Josan said. “Set them ashore, so they may carry word of what we have done here today. You may hang their officers as you will.”

  “As you command, my emperor.” With a hasty bow, Septimus began calling out orders, and his lieutenant started signaling the other ships.

  Josan wanted to return to his cabin, but he forced himself to stand where he was, to bear witness to what was being done in his name. Hours later, as the sun set, the last of the surviving federation sailors was taken aboard an imperial ship. Septimus had refused to allow any prisoners on his flagship, out of concern for the emperor’s safety, but had assured him that the ordinary sailors would be spared, told that their lives were a gift of mercy from Emperor Lucius himself.

  Later that night, Septimus brought him the tally. Seventeen federation ships burned to their waterlines and sunk—more than half of their force. Nine ships captured, and two more pursued until they wrecked upon the shoals. Only five ships escaped—mainly smaller vessels that had been allowed to flee in favor of richer prizes.

  By contrast, only a handful of Ikarian sailors had been killed when they boarded the enemy ships—most of the federation ships had simply surrendered. They had come close to losing one of their ships when a missile ignited while still in the ballista, but a quick-thinking sailor had chopped the arm of the ballista free and thrown it overboard before the fire could spread.

  It was more than a victory. It was a rout—the complete and utter destruction of their enemy.

  Josan dismissed Septimus and retired to his cabin, though he knew he would not sleep. It was exactly what he had hoped for, yet success had a bitter taste. What he had done could not be undone.

  The emperor had brought victory to his people, while the monk had dishonored himself. Josan had once called himself a peaceful scholar and prided himself on his pursuit of knowledge. The man he had been would never have betrayed his order by teaching their secrets to another.

  He thought back to the day when he had killed the assassin sent to murder the man who wore the body of Prince Lucius. That day marked the last when he could honestly claim to be a scholar. Every choice since then had taken him further and further away from the values he had once held dear.

  Josan no longer recognized the man he had become. What difference was there between himself and Brother Nikos? Both had perverted the knowledge of the brethren to their own ends. Both had sought power—and could he honestly say that his goals were any nobler that Nikos’s?

  At the time, each choice had seemed inevitable, but it was only now that he realized how far he had strayed.

  He wondered what he would do, the next time he faced a challenge. Could he trust his own judgment? Or would the day come when he could no longer recognize the difference between good and evil?

  Chapter 20

  Lady Ysobel held her breath as the imperial functionary scrutinized her documents of office. Greeter, as he was known, had once been in her employ—blackmailed into providing intelligence on the empress’s court. It had been his warning that had enabled her to flee Karystos before the empress’s men could take her into custody—a gesture meant as much to conceal his own actions as it was for her safety. Today there was no trace of recognition in his face—he had not acknowledged her with so much as a glance. It was as if she were merely a vessel for the documents she bore.

  The two guards who flanked him, however, glared at her with undisguised loathing. It was clear that her part in the unsuccessful attempt to unseat Empress Nerissa had not been forgotten…nor forgiven.

  It was curious that Lucius had retained all of the late empress’s retainers—from the ministers who ran the imperial bureaucracies down to the men who guarded his life and the functionaries who oversaw the imperial household. One would have expected that the new emperor would have replaced them with men personally loyal to him, but he had not. His main appointments had been to elevate Kiril to the rank of g
eneral, in return for his support against the upstart Markos, then to name Septimus the Younger to lead the Imperial Navy. If the emperor had interests besides the defense of his realm, they had not yet been revealed.

  With a snap of his wrist, Greeter rolled the scroll closed.

  “You will take her—” he began, then he paused.

  Ysobel’s heart raced. Was she to be brought to see the emperor? Or taken to the dungeons as a prisoner? Either was possible—King Bayard had selected her as his envoy to Ikaria in hopes that Lucius would remember Ysobel’s past efforts on his behalf and be disposed to listen to her. But Lucius seldom did what was expected of him.

  Greeter’s gaze met hers. Despite the tattoos that disguised his features, she knew he was enjoying having power over her for a change. “Take her to the emperor, he is expecting her,” he finally said, holding out the scroll of credentials so she could take it.

  He stood aside as she entered the palace. Though palace was a misnomer—the imperial complex was a series of buildings connected by courtyards and colonnades. Her previous visits had been confined to the public spaces where the empress held her audiences and entertained her guests. Ysobel had expected to be brought to the central chamber where Nerissa had received petitioners, but instead she was led around the main buildings, through a courtyard dominated by a statue of Aitor I, and finally into a private garden surrounded by a low wall. A curved stone path, bordered by creeping lavender, led into the center of the garden, where Emperor Lucius sat on a stone bench next to a small fountain.

  She paused as she saw that the emperor was alone. When she had been summoned to the palace, she had expected a formal audience—or imprisonment. Lucius, it seemed, had other plans.

  She stopped the proscribed twelve paces away, and bowed low, waiting to be acknowledged. Her escort stopped immediately behind her.

  “Lady Ysobel,” he said.

  “Most Gracious Emperor Lucius, I am honored to be received into your presence.” As she straightened, she was conscious of the contrast in their appearance. She wore the formal uniform of the Ikarian court—a knee-length robe of embroidered silk over a tunic of unbleached linen, while Lucius was dressed in a simple linen tunic, banded in purple. His informal attire and the choice of location for their meeting was not meant to put her at her ease—rather it underlined her insignificance. He did not need the trappings of power to impress her.

  She started as something ran across her foot, and looked down to see a bright green lizard disappearing beneath a bush.

  “The gardeners encourage them,” Lucius observed.

  Of course. Lizards were the symbols of his house.

  He rose to his feet. “Walk with me,” he said.

  She fell into step beside him, stealing a sideways glance at his expression. It would have been easier to read his features if they had conversed face-to-face. Instead they strolled together as if they were friends. He had learned to use intimacy as a weapon, thus robbing her of even the slightest advantage.

  “I know why the federation selected you as their emissary, but I don’t know why you accepted,” he began. “You had no assurance that you would be welcome.”

  “King Bayard and his councilors felt that I was in a unique position to understand the needs of both our countries,” she said, choosing each word carefully. “I am honored by their trust in me.”

  If the circumstances had been different, she would have taken pleasure in refusing the council’s request. After all, she had repeatedly advised them against underestimating Lucius. But the new Ikarian weapons had changed everything. Faced with the potential destruction of the fleets upon which all depended, past rivalries must be put aside for the good of all. It did not matter who had led the federation to the brink of disaster—what mattered was who would find a way out of this mess.

  It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and Ysobel had seized it with both hands.

  “What could you possibly have to say to me? What can the federation offer?” he asked.

  “Peace.”

  She let the word linger in the air between them. Lucius paused by a flowering rose tree, idly fingering one of the fragrant blooms.

  “Tell me more,” he said.

  She pressed home her advantage. “Peaceful coexistence is the only true road to prosperity for both our countries.”

  Lucius turned to face her, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. “And this is why you encouraged Nerissa’s subjects to rebel against her? Was it this desire for coexistence that drove you to seize our colony at Gallifrey and harass our ships at sea?”

  “Mistakes were made,” Ysobel said. “In our efforts to secure safe harbors for our ships, there were…unfortunate actions taken.”

  “Unfortunate,” Lucius repeated.

  It was difficult to negotiate for peace when there had been no war declared. Instead there had been a series of increasingly bloody encounters done in the name of ridding the sea of pirates, or defending oneself against un-provoked attacks.

  “We regret—”

  “You regret being caught,” he broke in. “In your greed, you thought to take what spoils you could while my attention was occupied elsewhere. Now that our fleet has shown itself a match for your own, you come running here to cry peace.”

  She decided to return his bluntness with some of her own. “Both of our countries have suffered grievous losses. We could spend the rest of the afternoon reciting the wrongs that each of us has done to the other. But that is not why you summoned me.”

  He wanted something from her. She could feel it.

  Perhaps his control of Ikaria was only an illusion, and unrest did indeed bubble under the surface. Or perhaps he feared that the federation would master the secret of the fire missiles, and Ikaria would soon lose the advantage they had gained.

  Troubling enough that Ikarian ships had been sighted far out in the great basin, traversing routes that were once used only by federation captains. It seemed clear that some captain had been persuaded against his will to relinquish the secret knowledge. The wonder was not that the secret had been revealed, but rather that they had been able to keep it for so long, until no one even suspected there was a secret to be found.

  Fire missiles had been the stuff of children’s tales—ancient legends from kingdoms that had long since crumbled into dust. When the first reports had reached Sendat, they had been dismissed as exaggerations. The arrival of the first survivors had proven that the missiles were all too real—and a threat unlike any the federation had faced before.

  It was said that Lucius himself had invented the weapons, and been so confident in their power that he had sailed on the flagship that had launched the first of a series of attacks upon the Seddonian fleet. Many had discounted these rumors as mere rhetoric, meant to inspire his subjects, but she believed otherwise. This, after all, was the man who had possessed the self-confidence to hand himself over to Empress Nerissa, gambling that she would not put him to death.

  Lucius knew how to risk everything on a single chance—a quality that she prized in herself.

  Once before he had chosen to make peace with his enemy rather than plunge his country into war. She was gambling that his goals were unchanged.

  “We propose a truce between our two countries. Our fleets will return to their home ports to prevent any further unfortunate encounters. In token of our respect, we will give up our claims on Gallifrey and the other colonies that we occupied.”

  This was the condition that the council had most bitterly contested when they had discussed what terms they could offer. They would be arguing still, if news had not arrived of a second defeat, one that dwarfed the scale of the Battle at the Naryn River.

  “That is a start. But I want compensation for each Ikarian merchant ship that was lost.”

  “And what of the ships that my people lost? And their crews?” she asked.

  A look of sorrow passed over his face, but then his features grew cold.

  “The price of your folly,” he s
aid. Gone was his earlier casual posture. He drew himself up to his full height so he could stare down upon her.

  The council would not be happy with his terms—but they were more generous than she had expected. He could have chosen to press home his advantage, asking the federation to concede territories or demanding tribute instead of mere compensation.

  “On behalf of the federation, I accept the general terms of your offer, though naturally our representatives will need to negotiate on the specific details of the arrangements,” she said.

  “Of course. And as a sign of good faith, you will remain here in Karystos until the final terms are agreed upon. And if we should fail to reach agreement…there is still a writ of arrest with your name upon it.” He smiled, the practiced grimace of a courtier that did not touch his eyes.

  The threat was clear. Cooperate with him, or suffer the consequences.

  “It would be my pleasure to do whatever I can to forge an alliance between us,” she said, with a practiced smile of her own.

  But there would be no lasting alliance. Lucius chose to make peace with the federation because it suited his purposes, not because he wished to spare both their peoples. Free to turn his attention to internal matters, he would use the interval to consolidate his power. He would attack again—driven by the prospect of conquest, or the need for a common enemy to unite his people.

  She had bought the federation time to prepare. Even as she spoke, sorcerers and engineers from across the islands were busy trying to re-create the Ikarian fire missiles. If they could be duplicated—or a way found to protect ships against them, then the empire would lose its advantage.

  The federation had underestimated Lucius once, to their great cost. She would not do so again.

  About the Author

  Patricia Bray grew up in a family where the ability to tell a good story was prized above all others. She soon realized that books were magical creations that let the author share stories with people he’d never met, and vowed that someday, she, too, would have this magic power.