Kip, the little shifter, catlike and quick, reached his padded hand out for a pear then drew it back. His fingernails retracted.
“Now that you mention it,” said Lukas, “usually we’re paid half in advance. This time we had debts against the crown, which were dismissed by the high procurator.”
“He promised you the rest?”
“Yes.” Lukas made a calculation, doubled it, then doubled it again. “Three hundred gold pieces.”
“Ah, so you see. But let me promise you, Lord Kendrick’s safe return was not part of your contract. On the contrary. Cousins of kings, they hate each other, always.”
Lord Kendrick’s forehead was high and bald, his hair drawn back in a queue, which normally he coiled under his velvet cap. The lady took it in her hand. She pulled back his head to show his throat and his protruding larynx, which convulsed as he swallowed. “It doesn’t matter,” continued the lady. “You humans—now, tomorrow, what does it matter? You understand—” she indicated with her golden eyes the gnome and the elf—“these others, what does it matter? What can they expect, fifty years, sixty years more? But I was already old when Caer Corwell fell, in the Year of Risen Elfkin. From the battlements I watched those other Kendricks dance on the scaffold, King Derid’s great-uncle, or great-great-uncle—they breed like mice, or weasels. Now here’s another one. He lives, he dies, in the blinking of an eye.”
She ran her thumbnail down the length of his throat. A thread of blood followed it down. “There, it is done,” she said. All together, they watched Lord Kendrick’s throat swallow and convulse, swallow and convulse, swallow and convulse. Then it was still.
“A sad thing,” she said, reaching for a napkin from the table. She wiped her hands. “But not tragic. Not like the death of one of ours, or even—” her eyes glittered as she nodded at Suka and the Savage—“traitors like you. Traitors to the fey.”
Suka grinned, stuck out her tongue, and ran her fingers through her pink hair. Like the elf, she had several piercings and tattoos, including a purple dog’s head on the surface of her tongue. From its mouth protruded a silver stud in the shape of a bone, which she now exhibited to the company.
Their host stared at them then threw down her napkin, turned, and stalked out through the portico. Outside it was a bright day, the last of the afternoon. The torches were dark, the fountain dry, the shadows long. “Leave him,” she said, and they followed her to the long stairs.
“Come,” she said to Lukas, who hurried by her side. “You see you were meant to die here with Lord Kendrick. Three hundred gold pieces—the high procurator of Alaron could have promised you six hundred, or a thousand. He never meant to pay. But I have work for you.”
In the light she was impossibly lovely, with her straight, dark hair and pearly skin. But now that Lukas knew that she was old, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, he could see behind her eyes a hooded shadow. She climbed rapidly downstairs then turned into the cobblestone streets of the old town. The doors gaped open in the empty houses, stone and brick, and dark passageways smelling of bat dung. Flocks of birds rose from the courtyards, and rats scurried among piles of fallen masonry.
She turned under a high gate into the block of an old prison, its windows covered with a mesh of corroded iron bars. Lukas stopped her in the courtyard. “We aren’t following you here.”
His crew moved into position, a ragged semicircle behind him. He raised his hand. Weapons were useless. His own bow was upon his back.
The lady turned around, then came back toward him until she stood uncomfortably close, her eyes almost level with his own. Even at that distance, her body and her clothes gave off no scent. “Captain,” she said, her thin dark lips a few inches away. “What is your name?”
He told her. “And me,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
“I have an idea.”
“Tell me,” she said. Her teeth were small and very white. He watched the tip of her tongue move between them. It was dark, and a peculiar shade of lavender.
“I believe you are High Lady Ordalf of Sarifal, queen of this land.”
A hiss escaped her lips, and Lukas could feel her cool breath. “Is that what you believe?” she asked, her long eyes mocking him. “Then you must also believe I have the power to destroy you where you stand.”
He shrugged.
“But I mean you no harm! On the contrary, I mean to reward you. Three hundred gold pieces from the procurator—you won’t see that gold, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t even see it if you dragged Lord Kendrick’s worthless carcass back to Alaron. But I will make you rich men.”
She blinked, and a tear formed in the long lashes at the corner of her eye. She raised her hand to touch it, pull it away, roll it between her fingers, a jewel now, or something close to it, a sapphire or a piece of crystal. She laughed, flicked it away. “And not just men,” she continued. “Please, introduce me to your company.”
The prison walls rose above them, three stories high. In the late afternoon, the flagged courtyard was full of shadows. She stepped away, then moved around the semicircle as Lukas named each member of the crew. “What kind of creature do you call yourself?” she said to Gaspar-shen. “You must forgive me. I do not travel much. This is the farthest I have been from Karador in many years.”
The genasi—small for his race, blue-skinned, almost naked—stood with his legs spread. “What kind of creature?” repeated the queen. Her gaze flicked briefly down his body to his eel-skin breeches. “And you, a human woman,” she said, moving to Marikke. “Priestess of Chauntea—you don’t find it … difficult, to share your quarters with so many … males?” She laughed, curtseyed sardonically, drunkenly, and then continued on to Kip, the cat-shifter. “Boy, I hate your kind.”
She made as if to turn away, but then turned back. Her beautiful face took on a hard, penetrating look. “Touch me,” she commanded, and Kip, hesitantly, as if against his will, brushed his hand against her outstretched fingers. She gave an exaggerated shudder, then smiled. “I hate you,” she repeated. “But not as much as I hate traitors.” She stared long and hard first at the elf, then the gnome.
Suka yawned, once more showing them the stud in her long tongue. “Thank you,” said the queen. “That’s quite enough. More than enough. Three hundred thalers each,” she said, mentioning the Amnian gold coins now current throughout the islands. “Three hundred more on your return. When you bring me … what I want.”
She paused, then continued: “Captain, come with me. You and one other—you,” she said, pointing at Suka. “The rest, wait for us beside the dock. You understand, I need some security. Someone to guarantee you won’t just sail away with my gold.”
She gave the genasi a final appraising glance then turned away under an arched doorway. Lukas nodded, and the company drew back, except for Suka, who peered up at him. “Your choice,” he said.
She shrugged as if to say there was no choice. The two of them followed the queen through the archway at the top of a flight of stairs, lit from below. Under the level of the port, the walls sweated and stank.
And there were men here too, the first Lukas had seen, sallow Ffolk on unknown errands dressed in urine-colored rags, who sank to their knees as the queen passed. “Behold the Claw,” she said. “The Winterglen Claw. Rebels. Warriors. Perhaps we should be quaking in our shoes.”
She was barefoot. Her high-arched soles left prints on the damp stones, as if she dried them just by touching them. The Ffolk squeezed their eyes shut and pressed their fists against their mouths. “Doubtless they will kill us in our beds,” she murmured.
Two levels down, the stairs debouched onto a wide, low-ceilinged gallery, stinking of offal and slime, lit with torches. She paused. “Captain, let me tell you a story.”
Again she came to stand in front of him, her lips close to his own, her cool breath on his face. “Ten years ago, I had a sister, who was taken from me. A half sister. My mother’s daughter, not my father’s. She was … younger. Much, much y
ounger even than my own son.
“You know,” she said, “that things are different for us. You humans can have many children in your tiny lives. An eladrin woman—one, perhaps two pregnancies, each one lasting several years. We give birth in pain, you understand. We live a long time, and because of it, it is the youngest who inherits. Always the youngest. My sister was nine years old when she disappeared.”
“Where did she go?”
The queen shrugged. “It was a mystery. A traitor stole her from her bedchamber in the high citadel. Suborned six members of my dragonborn guards. They took her to Crane Point on the lake, that much is known. There was a plot to kidnap her and take her to the castle of the Daressins on Snowdown—she did not arrive. Though we do not visit these places, still we have eyes and ears. A hippogriff snatched her from the lakeshore—we saw it. After that, nothing. Except a rider washed up on the west coast not far from here, at the entrance of the firth. A rider’s corpse, burned from the fire. This was ten years ago.”
“Maybe she drowned,” Lukas said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you? But you’re not listening. Snowdown is to the east.”
She turned abruptly, and he and the gnome had to hurry to catch up. “Let me show you something.”
At the back of the gallery was a spiral stair, its stone steps slippery, choked with filth. Barefoot, the queen climbed down it, unconcerned. The room below was lit with a charcoal brazier, and the air was foul. Three large prison cells, lined with iron bars, stood in a row.
The queen smiled. “There, you see?” she said to Suka, indicating the left-hand cell. “One of your ancient masters from the Underdark.” In fact much of the cell’s space was occupied by a single bloated body, a purplish-gray, yellow-haired, hump-backed giantess with an iron mask locked over her head and half her face, to occlude her evil eye. She stank.
The middle cell stood open. “Please, my dear,” indicated the queen. Suka stepped over to it and peered in.
On the inside the cells were separated from each other, again, with rows of iron bars. “Do you like it?” asked the queen. “It won’t be for long. Or that depends on Captain Lukas, I suppose.”
Inquisitive as a mouse, Suka darted inside and made a circuit of the bars. Inside the left-hand cell, the fomorian turned her heavy head, and Suka wrinkled up her nose, then caressed the ring in her left nostril, as if by doing so she could affect the smell.
“Of course no weapons,” said the queen. “And captain, a sense of urgency. Every five days we will remove one of the bars between her and that.” She nodded toward the giant. “And perhaps one along the other side.”
A jailer waddled forward out of the shadows, a fat, flabby, bearded man with a ring of keys. Lukas nodded, and the gnome unstrapped her crossbow, unbuckled her short sword. “What will you feed her?” he asked.
The queen laughed. “Oh, chicken and wine. Snails in honey sauce. She’s not a prisoner, after all. Rather a pledge, until you bring back what I’m asking you.”
“Which is?”
For an answer, she waved her hand to the last cage. In the dim light Lukas could see a figure huddled up against the back of the wall. The queen snapped her fingers, and the jailer held out a glass ball, oval in shape, which she grasped in her left hand. Soon, a milky light spread from her fist, the rays jutting out between her fingers. “Look,” she said.
She thrust her hand between the bars. In the new light Lukas saw a naked creature lying motionless on its side. Its eyes were closed.
Its form was roughly that of a human woman, with big shoulders and hips, fat breasts and a wide belly. She was covered in hair, thin and pale along her front, thicker and darker on her back, rising to a ridge along her spine. She had only two fingers on each hand and foot, thick, fleshy fingers over a wad of callous, fingers that were sharp and heavy, narrowing to curved, wicked points.
The queen shifted her hand, and a single beam of light touched the animal, caressing her long jaw, showing the curved horns at the corners of her mouth, the predatory teeth, the small eyes, the wide, distorted nose with its upturned nostrils. “Look,” repeated the queen. She let the beam play along the creature’s sinewy arm, and then she showed a bald place at her waist where the hair was thin or else shaved away, revealing a pattern that was artificial and deliberate, a tattoo of a climbing rose, a yellow rose etched in black and silver.
“The Rose of Sarifal,” murmured Lukas.
It was the royal symbol of the leShays. “Do you think? If that were true, then I would—wait,” said Lady Ordalf, and with her right hand she pulled her black hair away from her neck, while with her right hand she turned the light, so he could see the elegant tattoo below her ear, this one tinted pink. “My mother had a white rose inked on her backside because she was a whore, and died a whore’s death. Yellow was my sister’s color. But what is it doing here? Does this mean my sister …?”
She clapped her hands together, loud as a thunderbolt. The animal started awake, and then immediately began to shift into a more human shape, her features shortening and softening, her hair receding or else falling away, her fingers dividing and growing longer. Embarrassed suddenly, she put one arm over her breasts, while she brought her thighs together and put her other hand into her lap. She bowed her head, and her pale hair hid her face.
“There exists no force or power,” said the queen, “that can transform one race of creature into another. Amaranth was a leShay, half of my own blood, heiress to a royal house. Perhaps she was bound for Snowdown and the court of the Daressins. But what if the wounded rider fell into the sea, perhaps in the channel between Gwynneth and Moray? What if he was lost as he made his turn, and left my nine-year-old half sister buckled in her seat? Tell me, what do you know of Moray Island? You must have seen the coast from your ship as you came down from Alaron.”
Lukas shook his head. “I’ve never set my foot on Oman or Moray. It’s true, we saw the fires on the way, and at night you can see the signal fires back in the hills. Men used to live there. Maybe some still do. There were men in all these islands once upon a time.”
“Yes,” replied the queen, “the fey remember. But we’re not travelers like you. There are too few of us. You hate us, hunt us down if you find us away from home. It is your jealousy. You love to kill what lives so long, what is so much wiser and more beautiful. As for this creature, she’s from Moray, we know. She was dressed in leather clothes made from the hide of those great animals who live there. We do not have such beasts. Even instead, the lycanthropes do not wear clothes or sail on boats. We found her drifting on a spar after a storm. She will not speak to us. No pain was too great for her to bear. She spoke no words, either in Elvish or the Common tongue, which is all we know. Perhaps you would care to try.”
Lukas shrugged, then asked the lycanthrope her name in several languages, Chondathan, Damaran, Draconic, and Primordial. She raised her head, and he could see her porcine eyes shining in the dark. But she said nothing.
Curious, the gnome cocked her head. “Captain,” she said in Damaran, “you will not leave me here?”
“No,” Lukas told her in the same language. “I promise.”
Suka smiled, showed her tongue. “Fourteen days is all you have, before that creature—” she nodded toward the fomorian who, on her hands and doughy knees, had pressed the side of her face against the bars—“turns me into soup.”
When Lady Ordalf reached to grab Suka by the ear, the gnome ducked her head away and uttered a word of misdirection. Then, dignified as any queen, Suka stalked into the cage and let the jailer lock her in.
“You will not speak these foreign words,” said the eladrin queen. “Not in my presence. You will not plot against me or conspire. And you,” she said, turning to Lukas. “You will take your ship to Moray Island. You will find my sister there—she is alive. My only sister is alive against all odds, and after these ten years. I know it and I feel it. You will find her and bring her …”
Lukas shrugged, assuming a nonchala
nce he did not feel. “If she’s alive,” he said, “I’ll bring her back.”
The queen stared at him. A smile touched her lips. “You misunderstand,” she said. “One part of her is all that interests me. Bring me her head. That’s what I want to buy.”
LANDFALL
BEHIND THE BREAKWATER THERE WAS A STRETCH OF sand near where the Sphinx was moored, and there they had pitched their tents. In the morning the city was deserted, as before. Nor could they find the street that led down to the prison where they had left Suka in her cage. That whole section of the port was different in the morning light, full of low, collapsed buildings and crumbling alleyways.
Now, four days later, the wind blew from the northeast. The tea sloshed from Lukas’s cup as he tacked back and forth. The Sphinx was a sturdy boat, broad-beamed, and he had to struggle to keep it close to the wind. He was running on the fore- and mainsails only, not too much canvas because of the rocky pinnacles that made the straits treacherous this close inshore. Moray was out of sight to the west, but still he hugged the Gwynneth coast, heading for the narrows where he could make his crossing.
Up at the bowsprit the genasi lay on his stomach, one arm dangling down. Always he was there when the ship was under sail, reaching to the water that reached back to him, rising and surrounding him with glowing spray. Marikke tended the foresail. The boy, Kip, was in the cockpit. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How could we leave her? We didn’t even fight.”
These were the first words he had spoken since they’d left Caer Corwell, which meant he was feeling better. On the boat his cat nature had all but disappeared, he hated water so much. Any spray or drop of water, it was as if it burned his skin. An oilskin hat covered his short, calico hair. He wore his oilskin coat, too, as if they ran a gale or were expecting squalls. It was a clear, cold, bright spring day.
“Tell him,” said Lukas. The golden elf was clambering aft, and now he slipped into the cockpit. As always he was dressed in black—black boots, black breeches, and a soft black shirt, a mixture of silk and linen, buttoned carefully to his throat. He wore a gold ring on each of his dark fingers, and his long yellow hair was fastened in a golden clasp.
The Rose of Sarifal Page 3