Covenants (v2.1)

by Lorna Freeman

  “Not to mention His Royal Highness, nephew to the Amir of Tural,” Javes murmured as he swung his quiz glass by its ribbon. “Tell me, Suiden, how close are you to the Turalian succession?”

  Suiden shot Javes a glance and then looked back at Chancellor Berle. “We’d be a tasty morsel to snap up, so the vice admiral is making sure our back is covered.” The captain turned to First Lieutenant Falkin, who had stood quiet throughout the exchange. “Have the boat put to, Sro Falkin, and be prepared to accompany me to the vice admiral’s ship.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Suiden turned back to Chancellor Berle. “The vice admiral’s compliments, Sra Berle, and he asks that you and Lord Esclaur please join him for dinner upon the Pearl Fisher.”

  The chancellor’s wry smile swept across her face. “Please thank the vice admiral for his kind invitation and tell—signal him that I will most certainly attend; the pleasures of his last dinner party were beyond compare.” With that, she bowed and left the bridge, Esclaur trailing behind her. I went to follow, but Captain Suiden stopped me.

  “A moment, Lieutenant Rabbit.” Suiden looked at Falkin. “Inform Ambassador Laurel of the vice admiral’s invitation, if you please, Sro Falkin.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Captain Suiden waited for his first officer to leave. He then looked back at me. “You’re not going but will stay here and attend to your duties.”

  As my duties consisted mainly of adventures in meditation and rudimentary talent lessons with Laurel Faena, I gaped at my captain. “Sir?”

  “First, though, you will report to Lieutenant Groskin.”

  “Sir?” My eyes went wider.

  “That is all, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

  Dazed, I left the quarterdeck, vaguely aware that Captain Javes had accompanied me.

  “I understand that Captain Suiden waited an awfully long time while you palavered with your Uncle Havram,” Javes remarked as we reached the main deck of the ship.

  Jerking my head around, I met his quiz glass aimed at me. I scowled but then thought better of it.

  “Just so,” Javes said, his yellow wolf’s eye gleaming at me through his glass.

  I tried politeness. “Whatever do you mean, sir?”

  Javes had mercy and let his glass fall. “Your uncle fell on your neck like you were a long lost nephew—”

  “I am, sir.”

  “So you are. But you don’t know him any more than you knew your Uncle Maceal or your cousin Teram.” Javes gave me a serious look. “Kind words don’t necessarily mean a kind man, Rabbit. Do not jump at them like a goose at a currant, or else you may find your neck stretched across the chopping block.”

  “But it may be just as he says, sir, that he misses my da and wants to get to know me.”

  “That is also true.” Javes smiled, all affectation gone. “I know that it has been very hard for you these past weeks, with all the attachments you thought you had turned upside down or severed altogether. The lure of a place to hang words like ‘mine’ and ‘kin’ can be almost overwhelming.”

  We started walking towards the railing. I caught a flash out of the side of my eye and I turned to look, but it was only Ryson rushing to the railing too. Javes and I stopped at the sound of retching, and changed course, heading towards the foredeck.

  “It doesn’t help, sir, that everyone either wants to kill me, dismisses me as a provincial, or seems to have a hidden agenda,” I said. “Sometimes all three.”

  “I suppose not.” Javes reverted to his silly bugger smile. “But that’s life when you’re royally connected, what?”

  I judged it best not to answer that.

  Javes’ smile faded as he watched the sea. “You’ve called Suiden a dragon—”

  “Called, sir?”

  “All right, he is a dragon, with fire and talons and everything. Like all dragons, he hoards things, but instead of obsessing over gold and jewels and whatnot, he has his troops.” Javes looked over the water, his face pensive. “I think that was what angered him the most about Groskin— and even Ryson. That Slevoic would dare to poach someone who was his.” He looked back at me. “You are also Suiden’s, Lieutenant, and he will not lose you. Not to some salt dog crying ‘Nephew.’ ”

  “He doesn’t trust me to make the right decision, sir? To see the true from the false, no matter who claims me kin?”

  “Of course he doesn’t. You are newly made a lieutenant, just out of your boyhood for all that you shave every morning. Not so long off the farm and fresh out of a little town in the northern marches where the fastest thing is the spring snowmelt running down the mountains.” Javes considered me. “To tell the truth, Rabbit, I’m surprised that you haven’t had your head turned by the heights you’ve ascended to recently.”

  “Maybe, sir, it’s because my parents didn’t raise a fool.” I was distracted from the frown forming on Captain Javes’ face by the glower Chaplain Obruesk threw at me as he stalked by. “Though it may be also because there are those who do their best to make sure I know my place and to keep me there.”

  Javes also tracked the chaplain, men turned back to me, his eyes glinting. “Your place? You’d push at God in the face of hell. Tell me, are all in the Border like you?”

  I thought a moment. “Pretty much, sir.”

  “I see.” Javes let out a long breath. “Then it should get very interesting when we arrive there.” With that, he nodded and strolled away, leaving me to seek out Groskin.

  I found the lieutenant in, no surprise, the lieutenants’ berth. He had appropriated several lanterns, placing them around his open trunk, and had spread his gear out around him. He saw me and beckoned. “I haven’t had a chance to look over my stuff since we left the embassy, and I figured that I’d better make sure that there weren’t any of those damn spiders in my locker.”

  I had started towards him, but at the mention of the possibility of Pale Deaths, I was back on the ladder at the fourth rung with no memory of rungs one through three.

  Groskin gave a slight smile. “Don’t like spiders much, do you?”

  “No,” I said as I sat down. “I understand their purpose in the grand scheme of things, but I don’t appreciate them up close and personal.”

  “Well, not to worry. There aren’t any here.” Groskin started packing his gear away in the locker. “Where are your shadows?”

  “Jeff’s indisposed.”

  “In the head, huh?”

  I nodded as I looked around, searching for my ghost companion. “What the navy considers breakfast gives him the gripes something fierce.” Something flickered in the corner. “And there’s Basel.”

  Groskin looked over at the haunt, hesitated, then nodded. “Didn’t see you there, Basel.” He went back to packing. “I tell you, trooper, I miss your cooking.”

  “Fiat,” I murmured.

  In the silence that fell between us we could hear the dinner party leave for the vice admiral’s ship. “Are you sorry you’re going to be missing that?” Groskin asked.

  “Not really,” I replied.

  “What? The food was no good there too?”

  “The opposite. But they served a roast and the vice admiral carved it right in front of me.” A shudder ran through me at me memory.

  “Roast beef?” Groskin asked, his eyes fastened on mine. “What else?” I described the dinner and dessert, and his eyes glazed over.

  “A roast beef dinner with all the trimmings and the captain takes a damned roots and berries eater, and a ghost,” Groskin said when I was finished, shaking his head.

  It became quiet once more. The lieutenant packed the last of his gear and shut the lid. He then looked up at me and sighed. “If I say I’m sorry again, it wouldn’t help much, would it?”

  I shrugged, finding the shadows cast by the lanterns fascinating.

  Groskin sat down on his locker and a quick glance showed me that he too was very interested in the overlapping shapes of light and dark. “You know, I didn’t believe in the
magical growing up—like everyone else I thought it was just stuff in children’s stories or tricksters doing sleight of hand, and even that was frowned upon by the Church elders. Then I got assigned to Veldecke.” He shifted, the locker creaking a bit. “It’s a plum posting and I mought I was on my way: a captaincy, get my majority, garrison commander, and then who knew? Lord Commander Groskin of the Royal Army, and shield bearer for the king.”

  “What happened?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.

  “Discovered that the magical was more than pantomimes that I wasn’t allowed to see as a lad.” Groskin raised his head and met my gaze. “Did anyone tell you why I was sent to Freston?”

  “Only that something happened to you at Veldecke.”

  Groskin lowered his head and shook it. “No, not to me, it didn’t.” He took a deep breath. “There was a rape—” I made a sound between a gasp and a growl, every muscle stiffening.

  Groskin, his head still down, held up his hand. “I didn’t.” His hand fell to his lap. “I did not, but I watched it happen and did nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she wasn’t human.”

  I felt the wind at my back, whispering words I couldn’t make out. Basel ghosted out of his corner, his haunt’s eyes wide on me as he shook his head. His lips moved and I could make out “Rabbit.” I grabbed hold of the ladder, feeling the wood under my hand, the rune tingling, then turning warm.

  “Damn it, Rabbit!”

  I looked up and met Groskin’s stare.

  “You started to—I don’t know, blur.”

  “It’s happened before.” My voice was hoarse. “Who was she?”

  Groskin’s face changed and he looked aside. “Some fairy.” He sat silent for a moment. “A bunch of the lads and I had sneaked over the wall to the woods on the Border side. We’d liberated some wine from a supply shipment that had just arrived and we figured that was the best place to enjoy it in private. She happened upon us, wearing the filmy things they always do.” He ran his hand over his face, his mouth pulling down. “She was found the next morning in the forest. She had killed herself.” I dug my fingernails into the rung, feeling the wood splinter.

  “The Weald Faena came for us. He was a fire salamander. I remember the flames as he spoke in the garrison commander’s office, white hot.”

  “Yet here you are,” I said, my brows coming together. “Free.”

  Groskin shrugged. “The commander pointed out that I hadn’t actually participated.”

  I ignored the hairsplitting as my frown tightened. “And the others?”

  Groskin shrugged again, this time looking up, his mouth hard. “They said they couldn’t remember who did what, each one claiming to have been too drunk to do much of anything and all of a sudden it was my word against theirs. One went so far as to say that maybe I had raped the creature—” Groskin stopped at my expression, then sighed, lowering his eyes. “That I had done it, as it seemed that I was the only one sober enough.”

  “But the Faena,” I began, then stopped.

  “Oh, the commander told the Faena that they would be punished,” Groskin continued, “but they were lords’ and officers’ sons. They got a slap on the wrist for taking the wine, and were sent to other posts, as there was no proof beyond a tipsy lieutenant.” He raised his eyes again to look at me. “Only I was sent to Freston—for drunkenness and failure to control my men.” The wind started whispering again, but I shook my head and it fell silent.

  Groskin leaned back against the cabin wall and folded his arms, staring at the floor before him. “I’ve always told myself that she wasn’t like my sisters, but instead a soulless, poxy nymph who probably serviced more than a hundred whores combined. Besides, it was all political—the lord’s sons were let go while I was judged expendable. So I’ve said.”

  “So you’ve said,” I repeated, frowning.

  Groskin’s mouth twisted. “Then you and the cat come along and say that we have all been translated. That we’ve become as magical as those in the Border. That I was the same as the fairy.” He looked up and met my eyes. “If that’s so, then what did that make me?”

  “Someone who stood by and did nothing while a person was gang raped by a bunch of drunken soldiers,” I said, focusing back on the lieutenant.

  Groskin closed his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Then left her there in pain and distress so great that she killed herself.”

  “Yes.”

  I held up my hand, the rune glowing in the berth’s dimness. “No wonder this caused you to go berserk.”

  Groskin’s eyes snapped open, a wary expression coining over his face.

  “Tell me, did the fire Faena touch you with it?”

  Groskin nodded, shuddering, his face still wary.

  “But not the others?”

  Groskin shook his head. “They—the commander and the Faena—said that as I was the senior officer—”

  “What the bloody hell does that have to do with holding an inquiry?” I interrupted.

  Groskin shook his head again. “It’s what they said.” His eyes stayed fixed on my palm.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you.” I dropped my hand and Groskin let out a relieved breath. I stared a moment over the lieutenant’s shoulder at the cabin wall, and then looked back at Groskin. “So the Faena showed you the truth, but you called it a lie and thrust it away from you.”

  “Yes,” Groskin said.

  “Then you do the same thing with me and Slevoic. Stand back and let him have at me to his heart’s pleasure. And because of that, the Vicious felt bold enough to murder Basel.”

  “I know.” Groskin surprised me by agreeing. “When I saw Basel dead, it was like a fog had lifted and I could see clearly what I had done—”

  “I bet you could, all sixteen points of it lying there with his throat slit.”

  “—and I thought that was it. My days in the Royal Army were over.”

  “Your ‘days in the Royal Army’? Slevoic killed Basel and you worried about your army career?”

  Groskin nodded again, glancing at me and Basel, then away. “The Faena cat came to see me after Basel’s funeral.”

  I paused at the conversation shift. “So?” I asked, my voice cautious.

  He studied his fingernails. “You wear that blasted braid and your prissy clothes and don’t eat meat, and bedamn to anyone who doesn’t like it. But I do care what others think.” I discovered my mouth was open, and closed it with a snap.

  “Well, not so much think, as what they see.”

  “Appearances,” I managed.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Groskin’s mouth turned wry. “I was connected to the Doyen of Dornel, and through him to all kinds of big hats, including Obruesk. God forbid that anything I do reflect badly upon the Church.”

  My mouth now formed the ‘Oh’ of comprehension.

  “It’s kind of hard, though, being perfect.”

  “Uhm—”

  Groskin gave a rusty laugh. “Yeah, the cat said as I was nowhere near perfect, I should have no worries about disappointing anyone by giving it up.” I felt a twinge of concern at the thought of seeing Groskin’s true self.

  Groskin’s wry smile was back. “And he offered to work with me on that, one cat to another, so that—he said—I could stop making the same damn mistakes over and over in my fear of being seen a failure.” The twinge became a full-blown spasm and Basel leaned against the ladder, staring at the lieutenant.

  “I reckoned that at this point it couldn’t hurt, might even help.” Groskin’s smile turned into a fair approximation of Captain Javes’ silly ass grin. “Should be interesting, what?”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  It was a quiet evening. The moon was risen with the stars covering the sky, all the way down to the water. The Dauntless moved in a soft rocking motion as the swells gently lifted her up and put her down again. I had heard the return of the vice admiral’s guests and was waiting for Laurel Faena at the gangwa
y. However, the first person I saw was Captain Suiden.

  “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” he asked, as he got off the bosun’s chair.

  “No, sir. I’m just waiting for Laurel.”

  “I see.” His eyes shifted to where Jeff, looking a little wan in the just lit lanterns, stood behind me. “You spoke with Groskin?”

  I blinked at that. “Yes, sir.”

  Suiden nodded and started to walk away. “With me, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir?” I said, obeying.

  “Please have the ambassador see me in my cabin when he comes on deck,” Suiden said to Jeff. “Then go fetch Javes and Groskin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Basel and I followed Suiden into his cabin. “Sir?” I asked again.

  “This is the first time since Sro Cat joined us that I’ve seen you actively seek out his company,” Suiden said, sitting down at his table. “What has happened?” At his gesture, I joined him. “Nothing, sir. I mean, at least not now—”

  “So this does have something to do with what Lieutenant Groskin told you.”

  “Uhm—”

  There was a tap on the door and, at the captain’s command, it opened to reveal Laurel. “Honored captain?” the Faena asked as he entered the cabin.

  “Please have a seat, Ambassador,” Suiden said, “as we wait for Javes and Groskin.” Laurel gave me a look as he sat down and I gave him a furtive shrug.

  “The vice admiral sends his regards, Rabbit, and was very sorry that the press of your duties kept you from attending dinner,” Laurel said into the silence. “The cook also was very sorry you weren’t there, but he made up a basket. Lord Esclaur has it—” Laurel broke off as we heard steps, and a moment later Groskin and Javes were ushered in. Suiden had Jeff stand guard outside the cabin door.

  “With Slevoic gone and Ryson fighting seasickness, I doubt we’d have anyone foolhardy enough to try to eavesdrop,” Captain Javes remarked as he sat down.

  “There’s always a new fool ready to take the old one’s place,” Suiden said. He shifted in his seat to look at me. “Well?”