Red Tide

by Marc Turner

  He was on his knees straightaway. To his left was an archway leading to the gatehouse. To his right three Gilgamarian soldiers stood on the walkway, all facing away from him, shoulders pressed together so that they blocked him from the view of anyone farther along the wall. From the direction of the Canal Gate came the sound of more smashing glass, a louder crackle as if the flames had taken hold.

  Immediately below Ebon, a deserted road ran parallel with the wall. Sitting on the edge of the walkway, he twisted and took his weight on his elbows before dropping the final way.

  Vale followed him down.

  Ebon slipped out of his cloak and tossed it onto the ground before setting off. He ducked into the first alley he came to. Some sixth sense warned him he was being watched, but that was probably just his nerves talking. He’d done it! He’d made it to the Upper City! The hard part was over; now he just had to locate the Mercerien embassy, find Lamella and Rendale, and spirit them away without Ocarn noticing.

  His face twisted. Yes, it was all going to be smooth sailing from here.

  * * *

  From the quarterdeck of the Fury, Galantas stared west through his telescope across the slumbering sea. In the distance, the lights of the stone-skin vessels made their fleet look like a floating city. Still more lights indicated the position of sentry ships guarding the armada’s flank. It had proved surprisingly easy for Galantas to overhaul the Augerans. On the journey north, the stone-skins had sent scout ships ahead through each channel they came to in order to confirm the safety of their route. One such ship was returning now from the passage through the Outer Rim known as Shroud’s Gullet. A dangerous path to take when the seas were high. But with the waters currently as mild as a lullaby …

  Galantas snapped his telescope shut. The enemy’s course was set. He couldn’t afford to linger here longer if he was going to brave Liar’s Crossing and arrive at the end of the Gullet before the Augerans did.

  He signaled Barnick to turn the ship about.

  It took a few hundred heartbeats to reach the bay where the other Rubyholt ships were anchored. Galantas saw their masts before he spotted the Crossing itself: a saddle of rock between two ridges that formed the backbone of an island near the western end of the Rim. From his vantage point, the notion of a ship cresting that saddle seemed absurd. According to legend, Xaver Jay had once made the Crossing to escape a pursuing dragon. A Falcon vessel had tried to repeat the feat three years ago, but it had fallen short, and was now marooned up on the rock. Galantas could make out the shadow of it near the top of the slope. He hoped his own ambitions would not similarly be left high and dry when this was over.

  Barnick brought the Fury round to face the saddle, then glanced at Galantas for the signal to go. It was clear from his look that he hoped Galantas would call off this madness. Earlier, the mage and Mokinda Char had paced out the Crossing. The thoroughness of Mokinda’s preparations, together with his confidence on his return to the Fury, had given Galantas cause for optimism. Barnick’s expression … less so.

  “Ready when you are,” Galantas said.

  The sorcerer gave a weighty sigh.

  The ship rose on a wave of water-magic and moved forward. Mokinda had said he would add his power to Barnick’s only when it was needed. Now he spoke from beside his Rubyholt counterpart.

  “You might want to narrow your focus,” he said. “Don’t waste your strength making the wave any wider than it has to be.”

  Barnick scowled, but nodded.

  Galantas looked at Mokinda. The “suggestion” he’d just put to Barnick was typical of the way he conducted himself. So unassuming. Timid, even. Not at all what Galantas had expected of a Storm Lord, and Mokinda Char in particular. Eight years ago, the Untarian had been emir during Dresk’s failed attempt to sabotage Dragon Day. The Storm Lords had responded by battering every settlement in the Outer Rim with waves as tall as the Bleakpoint Cliffs. The year after, Mokinda had passed a decree that said any Rubyholter caught in Sabian waters would be thrown to the dragons on Dragon Day. Galantas had lost many friends to that law before it was repealed by Imerle Polivar in a rare gesture of conciliation. But then maybe the rumors were true—that Mokinda had been merely a stooge for more uncompromising forces on the Storm Council. Gensu Sensama, Thane Tanner, Imerle herself.

  What a loss they would be.

  “A point to starboard, I think,” Mokinda said to Barnick. “The gradient is less steep that way.”

  The Fury changed course.

  As the island rushed closer, Galantas saw the gentler slope Mokinda had been referring to. Across it were speckles of gray from limewing nests. Galantas looked back at the other Rubyholt ships. In due course they would follow the stone-skin fleet through the Gullet, but for now they’d been ordered to stay put while Galantas attempted the Crossing. Succeed or die, he didn’t want his efforts to go unwitnessed.

  “Now!” Mokinda said to Barnick. “Give it everything you’ve got!”

  The murmur of water beneath the Fury built to a roar, and the ship surged into the air. Galantas’s stomach jumped with it. The ship climbed to a seemingly impossible height—as high as the saddle itself—yet still it continued to rise until Galantas could see a strip of moonlit sea beyond the Crossing, another island in the distance. The rumble of water grew louder. Someone in the crew shouted for people to hold on to something. Like having a grip on a line would save them if the hull cracked open on the saddle. Strangely, none of Galantas’s crew from among the other clans had asked to be returned to their own tribes. It was as if they expected him to make the Crossing. As if they trusted him, even.

  When the Fury reached the island, Galantas felt a drag on the ship’s momentum. He looked over the rail. Far below, the wave devoured the shore in a flood of foam. But it was already receding. The Fury started to sink. Ahead, limewings took to the air in a raucous cloud. Qinta’s head twitched from side to side as he tried to make sense of their passage.

  He frowned.

  The deck trembled. Galantas could make out the jutting ribs of the Falcon vessel that had failed to clear the Crossing. Amid the debris were white patches that might have been bones. Lots of bones. Moments later, the Fury rolled over the wreck to the sound of cracking wood. The saddle hastened closer, yet for every length the ship moved forward, it seemed to sink an armspan too. Some of the crew shouted prayers to the Sender. The demon figurehead, sensing their mood deteriorate, started wailing.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Barnick said.

  Galantas had reached the same conclusion. The Fury’s quarterdeck was only just level with the top of the saddle, so there was no chance the lower parts of the ship were going to clear it. Time for Mokinda to enter the game. He glanced at the Untarian, but the Storm Lord’s expression was so distant he might have been looking past the plane of this world into Shroud’s realm beyond.

  “Help me, damn you!” Barnick said.

  Mokinda pursed his lips as if considering the request. Then he nodded. There was no flourish as he released his power, but all at once the deck ceased quivering, and the Fury began to climb once more. Yet slowly, oh so slowly. Galantas clutched his shark-tooth necklace so tight the teeth dug into his flesh. Was this all Mokinda had? It had to be, since the Storm Lord had no reason to hold back. Perhaps he’d left his intervention too late. Perhaps with most of Barnick’s wave now spent, there was too little water for Mokinda to work with. At the rate the ship was rising, it might just make it over the saddle. But what of the land that lay beyond? Was there enough energy left in the wave to carry them all the way back down to the sea?

  Not a chance.

  The voice of the Fury’s figurehead went up an octave. There was a note of glee in it, as if the ship reveled in the threat of its own annihilation. If there had been time, Galantas would have ordered one of his men to shove a rag in its mouth, but the saddle was already upon them. As the Fury reached it, he expected to hear a grinding sound as the keel scraped rock. It never came. Still, there could b
e no more than a few armspans of water now supporting the weight of the ship.

  For an improbable heartbeat, the devilship seemed to pause at the crest of the rise as if taking in the view. The downslope was blanketed with trees, while beyond …

  Galantas started laughing, for he understood now why Mokinda had saved his strength. Rising up to meet the Fury from the sea below was a wave of equal size to that which had carried the ship to this point. With perfect timing, it caught the vessel as if it were a baton passed between the two bodies of water, and bore it down toward the distant swell.

  * * *

  Standing on the Fury’s quarterdeck, Amerel peered through the darkness at the huge stone carving overlooking the entrance to the strait. Lines in the cliff hinted at the features of a bloated, demonic face so lifelike it seemed the beast had been trapped in the rock. The warning behind the image was plain: Do not enter! And yet wasn’t this one of the waterways that offered safe passage through the Outer Rim? Was the carving meant as a caution against the perils of the Isles as a whole? Or was it an attempt to trick strangers into taking other, more dangerous routes?

  In the strait, currents stirred the waters into patches of silver foam, and their rustle mixed with the fizz of the sorcerous waves carrying the stone-skin ships. For now, those ships remained hidden behind a bend in the waterway. Amerel hefted the flask of dragon blood and looked inquiringly at Galantas beside her. He’d know better than she would how far away the Augerans were.

  Galantas shook his head.

  Wait.

  When it came to tipping the blood in the sea, Amerel needed to get her timing just right. Do it too soon, and the blood might disperse before the stone-skins arrived. Leave it too late, though, and the Augerans might see the Fury waiting at the exit to the passage. It was unlikely they would deduce the significance of liquid being poured into the water, but why take the risk? And why take the risk of a chase through the Outer Rim when Mokinda had already departed on his swim north for the Dragon Gate?

  She drew the stopper from the flask of dragon blood. When the signal came, she wouldn’t be able simply to pour the blood in the sea, in case some splashed back onto the Fury’s hull. Instead she would have to throw—

  Galantas touched her arm, and she startled, almost dropped the flask.

  She glared at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring along the strait. When Amerel followed his gaze, she saw shimmers of reflected light on the waves. The Augeran fleet. There were sounds now too: the creak of wood, the flap of a flag, the groan of ropes.

  “Do it,” Galantas said.

  Amerel nodded.

  With an underarm throw, she tossed the flask of dragon blood up and out over the waves, then used a nudge of her Will to set it spinning so its contents were sprinkled as widely as possible. She lost sight of it in the darkness, but there was a plume of spray where it landed. A whisper of water-magic told her Barnick had used his power to stop the flask from immediately sinking and taking its contents to the bottom of the sea.

  Eight, nine, ten heartbeats, then Galantas tapped his mage on the shoulder, and the sorcery faded.

  Amerel looked along the strait again, saw ripples of brightness moving along the cliffs at the bend.

  A wave formed beneath the Fury and carried the ship away.

  PART IV

  RED TIDE

  CHAPTER 18

  GALANTAS WATCHED the three Needle and Falcon krels enter his cabin. Cleo and Tub he remembered from the White Pool. The second Needle was a tall man called Blist with an unkempt beard and body odor that masked even the lingering smell of blayfire. Galantas’s own krels came after them: Seagle and Worrin and the rainbow-haired Clamp. He’d briefed them earlier on his plan to trail the stone-skins north, but he wanted them here—along with Qinta and Barnick—to bolster the numbers and thus make it harder for the Needles and Falcon to turn down his request for help. He needed their ships, not just to witness his triumph, but also to strengthen his fleet.

  A decanter of Elescorian brandy and seven glasses had been placed on the chart table. Galantas gestured to the decanter as the krels sat down.

  “Help yourselves to brandy,” he said. “This was a Raptor ship before I claimed it, so the drinks are on Kalag.”

  Worrin chuckled dutifully, but the Needles and Falcon gave no reaction. Nor did they make any move toward the decanter. Evidently they wanted to keep their heads clear; they would know something was afoot from the fact they weren’t sailing back to the Hub.

  Galantas poured some brandy into a glass and leaned back in his chair. He’d already decided how he would play this. Ordering Tub and the others to follow him north was out of the question, so the next best thing was to present his plan to them as a done deal, and hope they didn’t have the stones to challenge him. How much of the background should he reveal to them, though? Whatever story he used now he’d have to repeat to the other clan leaders in due course, so it made sense to keep things vague in case he needed some wriggle room later. Most important, he’d have to make sure the krels never got the chance to interrupt him with questions. If he let them start picking holes in his tale, he suspected they’d never stop.

  “We don’t have much time,” Galantas said, “so I’ll keep this short.” Unless it proved hard to sway them, of course, in which case he’d speak for as long as was necessary. “Yesterday, before the stone-skins came, I captured three Storm Isle agents in Bezzle. They were carrying a flask of dragon blood, which they’d been ordered to use to mark some ships in the harbor. When I asked who their target was, they said the Augerans. That might be true, though it does leave open the question of how they knew the stone-skins would be arriving when they did.”

  Blist opened his mouth to speak, but Galantas raised his hand to forestall him. “Later,” he said. Then, “After the attack on Bezzle, I had the idea of using the blood against the stone-skins in the same way the Storm Islanders had intended to. But the priority was to get our ships back, and then the Augerans pulled out after they fired the city. Opportunity missed, you might think. No way now to mark the enemy’s ships.” He paused. “Except there is another way. That is why I ran the Liar’s Crossing earlier—so I could reach the end of the Gullet before the stone-skins did. So I could pour dragon blood into the waters their ships were about to sail through.”

  He waited a heartbeat to let the implications of his words sink in, then nodded and said, “Right now the Augerans are sailing north in ships marked with dragon blood. And in a few bells’ time, the Storm Islanders will raise the Dragon Gate to release the dragons that were trapped behind it on Dragon Day.” He smiled. “Anyone else curious to see what happens when the stone-skins meet the dragons?”

  A hint of a smile showed on Cleo’s face, but the two Needle krels remained impassive, waiting for him to show the rest of his hand.

  “Unfortunately there’s a problem,” he said. “Judging by the course the Augerans have set, you can guess their destination as well as I.”

  “Gilgamar,” Tub said.

  “Gilgamar,” Galantas agreed. “Which means there’s a chance they might reach the city and be tucked up safe behind the harbor’s chains before the dragons catch up to them.” He sipped his brandy. “But not if we can slow them down on their passage north.”

  Cleo’s smile beat a hasty retreat to leave his expression as pained as the other two krels’. Galantas spoke quickly to head off the inevitable outburst. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “I’m not talking about fighting them. We are seven ships to their twenty, with barely enough men to keep them on the water. But the Augerans won’t know that. They’ll see us on the horizon and think we’re a threat. They’ll try to engage us, but we won’t oblige them. If they turn, so do we. If they head north again, so do we.” He put his fist on the table and leaned forward. “We’ll sail rings round those whoresons until they count it a blessing when the dragons show up.”

  Approving murmurs from his own Spears. Tub nodded along like he’d written the
speech himself. The mood in the cabin had thawed a fraction, but Galantas still had work to do.

  “Now, I won’t lie to you,” he lied. “This isn’t how I thought it would go. If the stone-skins hadn’t left Bezzle so soon, I’d be at the Hub now discussing this with the other clan leaders.” He looked at the two Needles. “And if Malek had been at Clinker’s Bay, we’d have had his ships with us on the journey north.” Because the Needle chief was sure to have gone along with Galantas’s scheme. “But the fact is, Malek isn’t here, and the stone-skins aren’t going to wait for him to show. We have to play the hand we’re dealt. The job of finishing this falls on us.

  “I can live with that, though. I know you weren’t picked for the raid on Bezzle by accident. You were chosen because you’re the best. Tub, I heard about you capturing one of the stone-skins and throwing her to that creature in the harbor. And Cleo, I saw the parting gift you gave to the enemy when you set alight the sails of one of their ships with some of your own flaming arrows.” The two men shifted in their chairs, apparently uncomfortable with his flattery. But liking it at the same time, he saw. “Seven ships we may be, but I say that’s more than enough to put the stone-skins in their place. And do you know why? Because there’s no one else out there who can match our seamanship. Ask the Erin Elalese. Ask the Storm Islanders. Now it’s the Augerans’ turn to learn that the hard way.”

  All empty words, obviously. Once the Rubyholters left the Outer Rim, they would give up home advantage. On the open seas, seamanship counted for little compared with the strength of a ship’s water-mage, and at Bezzle the stone-skins had proved they held the upper hand on that score. In Barnick, though, Galantas had one of the few Rubyholt sorcerers who could go toe-to-toe with the enemy. And Galantas was willing to sacrifice his other ships if it meant taking down the Augeran armada.

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking we’ve done our bit. You’re thinking the stone-skins are probably already doomed, thanks to the dragon blood on their hulls. And you may be right. But this isn’t the time for half measures.” His voice was grave. “We all lost friends in Bezzle. I can only hope Malek’s failure to show at Clinker’s Bay doesn’t mean we’ve got another clan leader to avenge.” Tub’s and Blist’s expressions made it clear they’d already considered that possibility. “If I had my way, the raid on Bezzle would mark not the end of the tribes working together but the beginning. And I sure as hell don’t want to be the one who has to return home and explain how I let the Augerans escape because I wasn’t prepared to see this through.”