by Sarah Remy
The draft burst again from the mouth of the tunnel and up the shaft, and with it came the shiver of barrowman magic. The gate, then, must be the other side of the rock.
Avani groaned and shed her cape and her sword belt. She kept her dirk, shoving it in her boot. Her hair, grown long again, she plaited quickly and tucked down the back of her salwar. Then she lay on her belly and crawled headfirst through the tunnel.
It was muddy and wet and immensely unpleasant, but relatively narrow. She slithered out the other end onto her elbows, tucked and rolled and came up standing.
“Still impressive.” The familiar drawl echoed off limestone. “Do you practice tumbling, black eyes?”
Her knife was in her hand before she thought much about it. Everin, who had taught her how to fight, laughed. Avani didn’t, because in the light of her drifting sphere she’d seen both the beribboned doll in his hand, and the dangerous gleam of something that looked like to threat in his yellow regard.
“Those are dangerous,” she said, meaning the doll. “Renault ordered every one collected and burned.”
“He missed a few,” the big man said. “There’s a veritable heap, just beyond - “he jerked a thumb sideways, and Avani noticed the gate open in the curve of limestone wall. “But don’t fret yourself, the infestation’s gone dormant. It’s too cold down here. They need the heat of early spring to hatch, and they won’t get that so far below.”
Without lowering her knife, Avani walked around Everin, carefully out of his reach. She glanced through the gate, and saw that he spoke true. Not four paces into the next tunnel a collection of the dolls lay limp in the mud, tossed carelessly here and there.
They had company, a skinny corpse fallen facedown over satin ribbons and mud. A man, his face worm-eaten and unrecognizable, his eyes long gone to jelly. His gray hair, come out in clumps, mingled with the doll’s yarn tresses. She saw no sign of his ghost.
“Who is he?”
“Desert man,” Everin said. “Spy, I imagine, sent by the desert lords on a killing mission. It’s possible he didn’t know the death he brought in his little dolls, but I doubt it. Far more likely this was the first foray in a war Renault doesn’t yet know he’s fighting.” He shrugged. “The sidhe found him, holed up here beneath the Fair with his goods. Killed him for sport, then decided mayhap they’d better tell Faolan. Faolan came to me.”
“Why?”
Everin shrugged. The doll swung back and forth, satin ribbons looped around his fingers. “They trust me to handle trouble, as much as the sidhe trust any man.”
“Nay, why.” Avani retorted. “Why are you standing here, in front of the very same gate I’ve just today decided to seek out and seal?”
“Your Goddess has a sense of humor. My luck. I didn’t know you’d be here, Avani.” He turned slowly, so as not to startle, and lobbed the doll through the gate and atop her brothers and sisters. “I’d been trying to decide whether to gamble a small fire, burn the toys and any eggs might still be upon them. Seal the gate and I’ll not have to risk it. We’ll let them lie, entombed.”
“What about the barrowmen?”
“They’ll not trouble with this tunnel again. They mislike human things, and they’ve had their fun with the dead man. When are you coming home? Your sheep miss you, black eyes.”
Avani sheathed her knife. “My sheep, is it?”
“I’ve finished the stairs, started the second floor. The summer lettuce is waking. Liam’s ship docks at Low Port tomorrow. Two days to Wilhaiim, another three to look your fill on the Vocent. Then bring the lad back. Let him grow the rest of the way to manhood on the Downs.”
“If he likes,” Avani agreed. “Become lonely, have you, Everin?”
He smiled, then, and bowed, and folded his large frame back through the barrowman gate.
“Seal it tight,” he called back. “The sidhe will thank you for it.”
RENAULT REFUSED AVANI leave to meet The Cutlass Wind at Low Port.
“I’ll not lose another vocent to mishap on the coast,” the king said. “And I have it on good authority your lad is hale and grown another handspan.”
She didn’t ask after Mal. A new ease sat on His Majesty’s shoulders. A good part of that relief was the plague season gone, Avani knew, but a larger part was Renault’s brother soon returned to Wilhaiim.
“What will they be like?” she wondered. “Roue’s contingent? Mal wrote of great cannons on carts, elephant guns that shook the ground and routed the desert army back over the hills.” She let Renault see her scowl. “Deval says they are jealous tradesmen, easily angered. And Liam writes their palace is built all of gold, and they grow their crop in flood.”
Renault smoothed his beard. Avani thought he smiled small behind his palm.
“They know war,” he said, simply. “And have a distaste for yellow-eyed marauders. And now, thanks to Malachi, their Rani owes Wilhaiim a debt. I suspect Roue and I have much in common, and much to discuss. If your Everin’s right, and there’s war with the desert tribes looming on our horizon, then I’m going to be in need of an ally experienced in desert warfare.”
JACOB CAME FIRST, over the white walls, riding the summer sky. The raven laughed when he found her, dropped like a stone to her shoulder, and bit her ear in greeting. The bird smelled of salt and amber and he chortled again when Avani scolded his betrayal.
Wilhaiim’s great gates stood wide in welcome—the Masterhealer had put his plague masks aside until the next spring. Peter Shean led Roue’s small contingent past Wilhaiim’s pennant with little fanfare, although all about the bailey, people paused and stood on their toes to better see.
“Scald strike me dead,” Russel muttered. She stood stiff in uniform between Avani and the rest of the watching court. “Your lad wrote true. They’re hung all over with true gold.”
Avani had eyes only for Liam where he walked tall and proud midway through the procession. She whooped, and left Russel behind, dodging through the crowd and past Peter on his irritated chestnut. Jacob, complaining, took to the air. She elbowed aside a blond man in tattered captain’s togs and launched herself at her son.
He was indeed grown taller, and he caught her easily, held her up off cobblestone as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
She laughed into his shoulder, and wiped her tears on his tunic.
“Avani! You’ll never guess,” Liam said, proud and eager all in one breath. “I rode atop an elephant.”
“Did you?” She laughed and found her feet. “Ai, a real elephant? And here I thought they were but a story found in books, like the humpbacked fish, or the winged serpent.”
“Avani.”
She turned, still laughing, and then stilled. “Mal.”
He had true gold in the lobes of his ears, and around his neck, and enamel on the hilt of his sword. He wore silk as green as his eyes, and sandals on his feet, and his wrists were shackled tight in old ivory. His pupils were blown wide, obscuring iris.
Peter drew up his horse, even as the rest of the contingent eddied past.
“Be calm,” he said. “It’s of his own doing. He wouldn’t let us free him, not even once safely on land.”
“I tried.” The man in captain’s togs hovered, desert eyes wide and worried. “He said he’d swallow me entire if I so much as touched them, and after our first crossing, I knew better than to chance it.”
Renault was suddenly at Avani’s side, surrounded by nervous kingsmen, the Masterhealer lurking just behind.
“Brother?” His Majesty demanded, and all about, the bailey grew hushed. “What is this?”
“A constellation of stars,” Mal said. He licked lips gone red and chapped. “Avani, can you help me?”
Avani looked into his face, felt the pulse of power behind those blind eyes, and saw the other half of herself returned home, worn and wounded and frightened but intrin
sically whole.
“I can,” she said with certainty. “Malachi, I can.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks as always to Paul, Katherine, and Aidan for putting up with my authorial eccentricities. To Mary and Eric for letting me have the Writer’s Chair all summer long. Thanks to Willem’s Hobblings and the Sherlock Tumblr fandom because there’s no procrastination like good ole interwebs procrastination. To my editor Kelly O’Connor for her hard work, to Ellen Leach for controlling my over-enthusiastic use of commas and dashes, and to the rest of the Harper Voyager team for all their hard work.
About the Author
SARAH REMY writes fiction to keep real life from getting out of hand. She lives in Spokane, Washington, where she shows horses, works at a local elementary school, and rehabs her old house. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahremywrites.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Sarah Remy
Stonehill Downs
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ACROSS THE LONG SEA. Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Remy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780062383440
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062383457
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com