The Lascar’s Dagger

by Glenda Larke

  Saker staggered backwards towards the wardens; no way to flee, no way he could escape the wicked jab that was going to push through his ribs. There was no time to feel anything: not terror, not regret, not despair. Just an inward cry of denial that burst inside his chest, that only he could hear. Noooo … not like this. Va, not like this.

  Then sheer amazement. Not only was he still alive and unhurt, but it was Dyer who was staggering, Dyer who dropped his sword with a grunt of pain, Dyer who fell to the ground on all fours with a dagger in the back of his right shoulder.

  Ardhi’s Chenderawasi kris.

  No time to wonder. With one fluid movement he dropped his own dagger, yanked out the kris, booted Dyer in the backside and raced for the launch. At the bottom of the steps he took a flying leap to clear the cleric, now on all fours on the landing. He alighted precariously on the gunwale. The hen squawked, panicked and flew back to the wharf. Ardhi pushed the boat away from the steps with a boat hook, and Saker wobbled alarmingly, arms flailing. One of the seamen pulled him into the launch, just saving him from a ducking.

  He plonked himself down next to Ardhi, dropped the kris on the seat and sheathed his sword. The seamen put their oars in the water and began to stroke towards the Spice Winds. “You missed,” he said to the lascar. “You should have got the bastard in the jugular.” He hoped the seamen did not understand Pashali.

  Ardhi shrugged. “Next time.”

  “There will be a next time. That fellow is trouble. You owe me a dagger, by the way, dammit. What the fobbing hells happened to Sorrel? Did you see where she went? Did they get her? Is she hurt? What happened to the baby?”

  “The goat,” muttered Ardhi. “Take a look at the goat.”

  He did, and it wasn’t Sorrel’s goat. It was Sorrel, glamoured, crouching in the bow of the boat, clutching Piper to her chest. The look she gave him would have soured a cask of beer.

  45

  Spice Winds

  “Get – me – off – this – ship!”

  Saker winced as Sorrel growled at him, emphasising every word as she glared from him to Ardhi.

  “I can’t stay here! Piper is going to want to eat any time soon, and I can hardly milk an imaginary goat. Nor glamour away a baby’s howls, either.”

  They had managed to get Sorrel up on the weather deck undetected as anything except a nanny goat, but were now left with the problem of what to do next. Ardhi wasn’t supposed to be there, doing nothing, and it was only a matter of time before one of the officers noticed and took exception to his idleness. Sorrel had banished the goat and blurred herself into her surroundings instead. Saker appreciated her problem, but was at a loss to know how to deal with it. He didn’t even know how to explain to the bosun the absence of the extra goat that had apparently come aboard.

  “Spice Winds got she-goats,” Ardhi remarked, abandoning Pashali to include Sorrel in the conversation. “Two. Tie up on deck near chicken. Ship officers drink milk.” He pointed, then looked around uneasily. “I go aloft soon or big trouble. No one send boat to shore now. Spice Winds sail soon.”

  Sorrel looked close to weeping. “Saker, please. I can’t sail all the way to the Va-forsaken Hemisphere! The only woman on the ship, with a baby that’s only a couple of days old!”

  “The only way to get you ashore now would be to tell the captain we have a stowaway,” he said, worried, “but that would mean being rowed back to the same wharf and into the hands of the wardens or worse, the Dire Sweepers.”

  “More big problem,” Ardhi said, pointing. “Look! They come!”

  Saker forgot himself long enough to swear richly. A pinnace had put out from the wharf and was already halfway to the Spice Winds. It was easy enough to make out the uniforms of the Castle Wardens, interspersed with people in black. “Oh, Va,” he whispered, “they mean business.

  “Listen, Sorrel, there’s only one way we can save us both. And it means you have to stay on board when the ship weighs anchor. We can get you off later when we’re sailing down the Ardmeer estuary, but for now you have to stay here. We’re going to see the captain, but first I have to pick up something from my luggage. Stay here; I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Saker do what?” Ardhi asked, a look of alarm on his face.

  He reverted to Pashali, to make sure the lascar understood what he intended to do. “I’m going to gift the captain my feather.”

  “No! No! You can’t!”

  Saker grabbed him by the arm. “Show me where my luggage is, right now.” He dragged Ardhi away from Sorrel towards the companionway, speaking urgently into his ear. “Listen. If those men on the boat persuade Captain Lustgrader to surrender us to them, which they will, you won’t get me to go to Chenderawasi, because I’ll be dead. You need me alive. And this is the only way to keep me alive.” He gave Ardhi an unpleasant smile. “This, I think, is the one thing that you can’t force me to do, or not to do. That plume you gave me is mine, and whom I gift it to is my choice and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it, is there?”

  Ardhi stared at him, his dismay comical.

  When Saker returned to the deck, the ship was like a waking behemoth; the closer to the moment of sailing, the more the activity. Sorrel, blurred into little more than a shadow near the mast, was the only person doing nothing.

  Ardhi, following Saker up the companionway, was blasted with a roar from one of the ship’s officers the moment his feet hit the deck. “Hey you, you scurvy son of a cur! Get your skinny arse aloft now!”

  He fled up the shrouds.

  “He thinks his precious fobbing magic will solve all our problems,” Saker muttered to Sorrel. “A pox on it, it’s more likely to kill us.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re going to do!” If Sorrel was trying to contain her trepidation and curb her rage, she’d failed.

  “We gamble everything. We can’t hide you and the baby, not on board a ship. Not even with a glamour.” His piece of bambu containing the feather in his hand, he seized her by the elbow and propelled her towards the quarter deck at the stern, where Captain Lustgrader was standing with several of his officers behind the two helmsmen, eyeing the activity aloft as the sail unfurled from the spars in a slap of canvas. Around them were all the sounds of a ship about to get under way: the groan of the anchor chain being winched through the hawse pipe, the grunting of sailors as they hauled on ropes, orders repeated the length of the ship like an echo.

  Before approaching the Captain, Saker drew Sorrel into the shelter of one of the deck cannons, eyeing her critically. The ragged garments she wore were more those of a homeless ruffian than a woman of substance. He said, “Glamour up some decent clothing. A woman’s. Neat, good quality. Make yourself look respectable and clean.”

  “There might be someone on board with a witchery who can see through a glamour.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone yet.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing, Saker? Because it doesn’t sound like it,” she said as she adjusted her appearance.

  “I think a sailor would say making any port in a storm is better than hitting the rocks. I think I’m doing the only thing that will save us both.” He paused to look her over. “That’s better. Now let’s present ourselves to Lustgrader.”

  He marched past the helmsmen, pulling Sorrel behind him, and bowed to the Captain. “Sir,” he said, “Factor Reed Heron reporting. I’ve found a stowaway on board. A lady.” He indicated Sorrel and before Lustgrader could react, he added, “And this is for you. Both a personal gift and a matter of considerable urgency, sir.” He thrust the bambu at him and Lustgrader took it without thinking.

  “Captain,” a midshipman said, interrupting them, “pinnace off the portside, a Castle Warden requesting permission to come aboard. Flying the Regal’s standard, sir.”

  “Before you grant them permission, sir,” Saker said hurriedly, “please look inside the bambu.”

  Lustgrader directed a thunderous frown at Saker, then switched his attention to the mids
hipman. “Find out who they are and what they want. And it had better be urgent before they can come aboard a vessel about to sail.” He looked back at Saker. “What the fobbing blazes is a woman doing here?” he demanded. “How did she get on board?” He inserted his fingers into the end of the bambu to draw out the contents. “Is this what I think it is? And is that female holding a child?”

  “A plume, sir,” Saker said, ignoring the last question, “given to me by a lascar, which I wish to present to you. It will be of value to you in the Spicerie. I wouldn’t pull it out here, if I were you. The wind…”

  The captain had his fingers gripped around the end of the quill, and they were shaking. Saker knew what he was feeling. Desire, gratitude, longing. And an odd sense of inevitability.

  He wanted to snatch the feather away from Lustgrader, tell him he hadn’t meant it, it was his, dammit. He bit his lip to halt the words and tasted blood.

  “That’s – that’s very kind of you. I accept,” Lustgrader said. The look he turned to Saker was obsequious, almost lover-like. Saker felt sick. Pain welled up to choke him. He wanted to howl with the agony of letting go. At the repulsiveness of enslaving another. Instead he said, “Ask your second to take command of the sailing. It’s important you attend to the pinnace. Deal with the stowaway later.”

  The Captain looked at him in a puzzled way. “Yes, of course. You heard, Mynster Tolbun? You have the ship.”

  The man standing behind the captain looked shocked, but stuttered, “Ay, ay, sir.”

  As Saker and Lustgrader left the poop deck, Sorrel trailing behind, Saker spoke softly into the Captain’s ear. “You will get rid of this pinnace. No one is to come aboard. Some of them are Dire Sweepers. You know, the assassins who hunt out and kill those with the Horned Plague.”

  Lustgrader nodded. “There’s no plague on board,” he said. He sounded as if he was having trouble focusing. “I’ll stop that nonsense immediately!”

  Saker was relentless. “The woman and the baby are to be given a cabin to themselves for as long as they’re on board. You will tolerate no discussion of this among the crew. Just tell them you’ve received instructions that they are to be regarded as privileged, um, supernumeraries. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course.” Lustgrader strode off without a backward glance to where the midshipman was calling down to the pinnace. “Refuse them permission, Mynster Bachold! If they insist, fire that wheel-lock pistol of yours at them…”

  Saker let him go and drew in a deep breath. “Don’t go near the railing,” he murmured to Sorrel. “We don’t want anyone on the pinnace to be certain we’re on board.”

  She turned to him, her face a picture of utmost horror. “That – that was hideous! How could you do that?”

  “Easily enough, if it was the only way to save your life and mine. And Piper’s.” He sighed. “I think if anything it’s worse this way than the other way around, with me on the receiving end.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There were four bewitched feathers. Ardhi gifted me one, which meant I had to do everything he asked of me. And what he asked was that I steal the other plumes from Regal Vilmar. I had no choice.”

  Her jaw dropped as she began to understand. “And now you’ve done that to someone else?” She took a step away from him in revulsion. “You just used the same witchery on Captain Lustgrader? A ghastly magic from the Va-forsaken Hemisphere! How could you?”

  “Would you rather be returning to the shore, with Piper in your arms?”

  She stared at him. “This is vile, Saker, and you know it. How can you not, when it was done to you? How long will this – this witchery last?”

  “Long enough to save us, I hope. Look, the good thing is you’ll have a cabin of sorts to yourself, with Piper, which means you’ll both be safe. Later, I’ll tell you everything we know about … about all this. About why I am on board this ship. Everything.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she said.

  She wasn’t smiling.

  Saker was up on the deck at first light, watching the sky beyond the coast of Ardrone. Angry anvil-shaped storm clouds glowered, promising stormy seas. The ship was scudding down the Ardmeer estuary with a strong following wind from the north-east. Looking up, he noticed the mainsails had been reefed some time during the night in anticipation of bad weather.

  Sorrel, with Piper sleeping in her arms, came to stand next to him at the railing. She was wearing a real dress this time instead of a glamoured one, and she’d obviously had an opportunity to wash.

  “What happened to the rags you were wearing?” he asked.

  “I kept them. They’ll do for swaddling once they’re clean. Fortunately I had my own clothes in my bundle.”

  “I’ll order the captain to put you ashore in Ardrone,” he said. “He’ll have to do it if I ask. Port Teal, or Port Sedge, perhaps. I hope the strong winds won’t be a problem. Did you sleep?”

  “Not much.” She laughed. “A woman with a young baby rarely sleeps much. But I felt … safe. The ship’s boy milked the goats for Piper.” She grimaced. “I was worried I might be sick, the wind is so strong, but it seems I’m a good sailor.”

  “Piper?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Can I hold her?”

  She transferred Piper to his arms and he stood for a long time in silence, looking down on her. Then he said quietly, “She might have lied to me.” It wasn’t a question and he knew she’d understand who he meant. “She lied about a lot of things. She lied to King Edwayn. She planned it all.” He looked up from the sleeping baby. “Vilmar’s first wife was also from the Ardronese royal family. There was some suggestion she was murdered because she didn’t give him a son. Mathilda might have heard that story.”

  He drew in a deep breath, feeling he needed more air before he could continue. “Perhaps she took me to bed hoping it would put an end to her marriage. But maybe, just maybe, she had a second plan if the first one didn’t work. Maybe she wanted to make sure she was increasing before she was married.”

  “And if the wedding had been called off and she was already bearing a child?”

  “There are ways to get rid of an unwanted child early on. Maybe she thought it was worth the risk.”

  She thought about that. “You’ll never know. Even if she were to tell you, you’ve no way of knowing what’s truth and what’s lie.”

  “No. I’ll never know.” He touched Piper’s cheek. “What an empty-headed ninny you must have thought me.”

  “Yes, I did.” Her honesty was brutal. “There is something else you don’t know. To be truthful, I’m not sure I know it either.”

  He looked at her, curious. “Go on.”

  “Prime Fox called Princess Mathilda to Faith House several times after you were arrested. Both times she came back crying, but also strangely … buoyant. Later she kept asking to see him again, but he never would. I didn’t think much about it. But then, when she was delivering Piper here, half out of her mind with pain, and not being able to scream … she blamed someone for not helping her. Said he was an evil man who’d promised she wouldn’t have to marry Vilmar. I thought she might have meant you. After the birth, she said, ‘What if these are his children?’ She calmed down a bit after that, but I don’t think she remembered exactly what she’d said. She threatened me with death if I told anyone what she’d said about Fox. But she hadn’t mentioned the Prime at all. So then I thought, she wasn’t talking about you at all. She meant Fox.”

  He stared at her, shocked. “Va above, you think Valerian Fox bedded her, promising to help prevent her marriage if she agreed?”

  “She might have been muddled. She’d been in pain, with no sleep. But yes, that’s what I think.”

  He stood in silence for a long time, looking down on the face of the sleeping child. Then he said quietly, “I loved her, you know. Or I thought I did.”

  “That doesn’t excuse your actions.”

  “No. I’ve spent every day since
then wishing I could undo it, but I can’t.” He looked away from her, unable to meet her gaze. “Afterwards, the only thing I held on to, tenaciously, was that we’d loved one another. That was my justification. And then I realised the person I thought she was … doesn’t really exist. Never did exist.”

  He bent and brushed his lips to Piper’s head. The milky, baby smell of her made his chest feel tight. “It was your idea wasn’t it? Coming to my trial, defending me, taking that dangerous ride to the Chervil Moors. Your idea, not hers. You wanted to make things right. I didn’t deserve it, but you did it anyway, because she’d wronged a foolish witan. Va above, you must despise me.”

  She cocked her head to regard him with a serious expression. “Despised? No. I’ve only ever despised one man, and believe me, he deserved it. And died for it, too. You were just clay-brained.”

  “Dizzy-eyed was the expression you used, I believe.”

  She smiled then, a playful twitch of the lips. “Extremely.”

  Piper stirred in his arms and he wrapped her blanket a little tighter. Her mouth blew a kiss and he felt as if his knees had turned to sand. “I seem to have ruined your life, and I never meant to. We can still undo some of the knots, partly. You can still get to Vavala from the Ardronese coast on one of the coastal boats. Once in Vavala, the Pontifect will help you. You – you’ll like her.”

  “You can come with me now. Ardhi can’t force you to do anything any more, can he?”

  “No, he can’t.”

  “So come ashore with me. We’ll both go to the Pontifect.”

  “I could do that,” he admitted, and smiled at Piper. “There’s nothing I would like better than to take the problem to her and dump it in her lap. To say: ‘You fix it. This is a problem for the Va-Faith, not me.’”

  “But you hesitate.”

  He decided to be honest with her. She deserved that much. And telling someone might clarify my own thoughts on it. “When I was granted a witchery, it was an odd one. I’ve never heard of someone being able to talk to birds. Well, sort of talk to them. And then along comes Ardhi and tells me things about bird feathers and witchery and birds of paradise.”