by Marc Turner
No, he couldn’t have played things differently. Yet that knowledge didn’t ease the sting of his humiliation—a sting that was made all the sharper by the fact the confrontation had been played out in sight of the Fury’s crew. Galantas looked again at his men on the main deck, all busy with their tasks. Had anyone witnessed what happened? Perhaps it was his imagination, but the Raptor, Toben Stark, seemed a little too anxious to keep his gaze from meeting Galantas’s. Could Galantas afford to take a risk on the man’s ignorance? It wasn’t just Galantas’s own future at stake, after all. Everyone in the Isles stood to lose out if they were robbed of the unity that would come from his leadership. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one, and all that. Unless that one was Galantas himself, of course.
“What now?” Qinta said.
Good question. Galantas opened his telescope and looked east. The stone-skin fleet was in full flight, the dragons in pursuit. Three ships remained beneath Gilgamar’s wall, including the two vessels that had collided at the entrance to the Neck. Both were studded with arrows. Those missiles must have accounted for the ships’ water-mages, because the vessels weren’t trying to flee. A third craft lay on its side to the west of the Chain Tower, a hole in its hull. What remained of its crew climbed onto the stones at the base of the seawall, or swam for the safety of the Neck while a bronze dragon glided among them through the debris-covered waves.
Galantas reached a decision. “We go west. Find a bay where we can lie low and wait for nightfall.”
“And after?”
“After, I thought you and I might pay a visit to Gilgamar with Barnick.”
Qinta regarded him skeptically. Then understanding dawned. “The Eternal.”
Galantas nodded. It was possible Gilgamar’s Ruling Council might give him the ship as a reward for his role in defeating the stone-skins, but Galantas wasn’t going to ask for something that was his by rights. More important, after what had happened with Cayda, he needed more than ever to score a victory over the Storm Islanders. Stealing the Eternal from under the Gilgamarians’ noses surely counted as that.
Reaching the ship would be the easy part, he knew, for the Gilgamarians would have more important things to worry about than guarding a vessel in their harbor. The hard bit would be escaping the city. It might be some time before the chains were lowered to allow ships to pass through the Neck. Galantas, though, would have surprise on his side. No one would expect someone to try to break out of the harbor, especially when the dragons, and what remained of the stone-skin fleet, were at large in the Ribbon Sea.
He swung his telescope south.
And stiffened. A ship with black sails was visible on the horizon. The Karmight? Alongside it was a three-masted vessel that looked like the Scion. A Falcon ship. Maybe they’d hung back in the hope of arriving late to the piece, or maybe their mages had genuinely been unable to match the Fury’s pace. Either way, they would now find themselves in the path of some stone-skin ships and their pursuing dragons. A thought came to Galantas. Might his kinsmen’s slowness work to his advantage? If the two ships’ captains survived their brush with the enemy—and even now they changed course to take themselves out of the Augerans’ way—they would know nothing about Cayda destroying the three stone-skin ships, or driving off the dragon. All they would know was that the Augeran fleet had been put to flight. That Galantas’s plan had worked. In other words, all the good bits, with none of the inconvenient qualifications.
Assuming, of course, they heard nothing to the contrary from the Fury’s crew.
Galantas closed his telescope and looked again at Toben Stark. There wasn’t a crewman on board who had escaped the fight with the stone-skins without a scrape or three, and the Raptor had a gash to his chest that had stained his shirt crimson. “Nasty cut our friend has got there,” Galantas said to Qinta.
“Gonna sting,” the Second agreed.
“Still, a few stitches, and he’ll probably be good as new.” He paused. “Though it never ceases to amaze me how the most innocent of wounds can go bad. Be a shame if that happened to the krel’s cut.”
“Damned shame,” Qinta said.
He actually sounded like he meant it, too. Oddly Galantas found a part of him sharing the Second’s regret. But being a leader brought responsibilities, and one of those was to take hard decisions when they had to be taken. Harder on Toben than on Galantas, perhaps, but there it was. “Before you call on the Raptor,” he said, “maybe you could listen to the rest of the crew’s chatter, see what they’re saying about Cayda.” If anyone had seen her clash with Galantas, the Fury’s stores of Elescorian brandy were sure to loosen their tongues.
Qinta made to say one thing, then seemed to change his mind. “There’ll be eyebrows raised if we get home without a single survivor from the other clans on board.”
“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Qinta’s gaze strayed to the sky as if seeking confirmation of the wisdom of Galantas’s command. Galantas wondered what the birds would have to say about the sense in questioning his orders. Nothing, it seemed, for the sky was empty.
Barnick was on his way back to the Fury now, his long hair streaming behind him as the barge swept over the waves. Cayda and Noon remained on the beach.
Qinta followed Galantas’s gaze to the Erin Elalese. “This spells trouble, don’t it? The emperor and the emira working together.”
Galantas nodded. It also made it all the more important that he become the next warlord, for what chance would the Isles stand against the twin threats of the stone-skins and an Erin Elalese–Sabian alliance if the divisive figure of Kalag was at the helm?
“The Storm Isles’ part in this, I get,” Qinta went on. “They’ve got a score to settle with the stone-skins after Dragon Day. But what about Erin Elal? What’s their interest here?”
“Perhaps they feared they were the Augerans’ true target, and not the Storm Islanders.”
“But why? Stone-skins attacked the League on Dragon Day, not Erin Elal.”
Galantas had no answers, but he meant to find out. Maybe there was something between the Augerans and the Erin Elalese he could use when he next crossed paths with them. Bad blood, perhaps. Maybe even old blood. The sharpest kind.
“And what about this Cayda woman?” Qinta added. “Why’d she pretend to be from the Storm Isles if she was really a Guardian?”
“To hide the fact Erin Elal and the League were working together.”
“You still think she was the one who took down the stone-skin commander?”
It made a certain sense, yet it left a host of questions unanswered, not least of which was how she had managed to kill Eremo without being near him. And how she had known the stone-skins would be returning to the fortress at precisely the hour they did. An inside source, perhaps?
Galantas shrugged the questions aside. His priority for now was retaking the Eternal, and then launching his bid to become warlord. Later there would be time to consider the implications of the partnership between Erin Elal and the Storm Isles, as well as Galantas’s response to it. Who knew, perhaps there was still a deal to be done with the Augerans. Perhaps when they learned who had been responsible for Eremo’s death, they would be willing to resurrect the pact they made with Dresk. The events of the past twenty-four bells would surely have taught them the folly of picking a fight with the Rubyholters. True, Galantas would still have to sell any possible deal to his own people. But if any of the clans had cause for grievance against the Augerans, wasn’t it Galantas’s own Spears? If Galantas could find it in himself to forgive their transgressions, doubtless the other tribes could do so as well.
And he suspected that, given time, he could forgive the stone-skins for the killing of his father and Galantas’s subsequent rise to the leadership of the Spears.
The sacrifices I make for my kinsmen.
* * *
Amerel watched through spirit-eyes as Barnick hooked the boat onto the Fury’s chains and climbed to t
he main deck before crossing to join Galantas and Tattoo. If she’d been minded to, she could have listened to their conversation, but it didn’t matter now. She floated for a time, staring at the Islanders but not seeing them, as if they were but a memory of something that had gone before. A memory that would plague her like all the others when this day was done.
Amerel felt a grudging respect for the Rubyholters. It was a miracle any of them had survived the clash with the stone-skins. They had proved themselves surprisingly capable in repelling their stronger and more numerous foe, and while the devilship had played a role in firing their blood, that did not detract from the skill they had shown. Earlier she’d suggested to Galantas that his crew wouldn’t have helped him if he attacked her. She knew better, though. Pirates they remained, but with what they had come through today, they had taken the first steps toward becoming … something more. Maybe they deserved better than what fate intended for them. But this was war, and war cared no more for right and wrong than Amerel did.
She looked east. At the entrance to the Neck, a dragon clambered onto a stone-skin ship as if it were trying to escape something in the water. The vessel began to tip, the masts swinging down until they hit the water with a slap of canvas. Screams sounded, cries for help, the joyous trumpeting of the dragon. The other Augeran ships had scattered, no two of them heading in the same direction. One was on a course that would bring it close to the Fury. Galantas must have seen it too, for he gave the order to set sail.
The Fury rose on a wave of water-magic and set off west.
No more delays. Amerel had put this off long enough already.
She focused her Will on the remaining sorcerous globe, now hovering over the devilship’s quarterdeck.
And shattered it.
She opened her corporeal eyes in time to see a blinding white flash. It was followed by a crack like a mountain breaking on an anvil. A ring of fire bloomed outward. The Fury’s sails burned in sheets of flame before collapsing into ash. The decks, too, were alight, and the boards that had been soaked in blayfire oil burned fiercest of all, sending plumes of purple-gray smoke into the sky. Even on the beach Amerel could feel the hunger of the flames. A furnace-wind swept up the shore with a roar like some creature from the Abyss. It stung her eyes and knocked her back a step.
The urge to look away was strong, but she forced herself to witness the destruction. Cries sounded from the Fury’s decks. The lucky ones among the crew would have died instantly, but a handful of unfortunate souls cavorted about like living firebrands before hurling themselves into the sea. No relief to be found there, though. The waves round the devilship hissed and steamed like a pot on the boil. The swimmers sank beneath the surface and did not reappear.
“You had no choice.” Noon said from beside Amerel. Like he thought she might need reassuring.
She didn’t. Galantas dead was the only way to be sure her involvement in the assassination of Eremo remained secret—to be sure Augera remained the Isles’ enemy and not Erin Elal. It had to be done; no sense fussing over it. She remembered the time eleven years ago in Helin, at the dawn of the Confederacy, when she’d received her first orders to kill in cold blood. Her target then had been a Helinian councilor. A good man. A man of principle who had argued against joining the Confederacy because he had feared—reasonably—that his city would become Avallon’s plaything. A young and inexperienced Amerel had failed to sway him in three days of talks, even with her Will. Yet still when the order to kill him came, she had sat up through the night, reading and rereading the Guardian Council’s dispatch like the words might have changed since she last looked. And for what? The task hadn’t needed doing any less the next morning.
Erin Elal had been safer for the councilor’s death, she’d told herself afterward. It was either him or who knew how many of her kinsmen. There comes a time, though, when the excuses run out. When the weight of your actions defies justification. After the Helinian councilor had come that guild master in Mezan. Then the Kalanese pasha and his household. Each one a small step, perhaps, but if you took enough of those steps, you were apt to look back one day and wonder how you’d come so far in the wrong direction. Sometimes your steps took you to a place beyond any hope of returning. Sometimes you lost your way entirely.
The Fury’s mizzen yard crashed to the deck, shattering the starboard rail and throwing up sparks. A blood-dream bubbled up in Amerel’s head, but she forced it down. She felt Noon’s gaze on her and looked across.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.”
A wave broke against her sandaled feet. She bent down to scoop up some water, then splashed it on her face. When she rose again, Noon was still watching her.
“Ever think we’d make it this far?” he asked.
“Sure. Right from the moment we stepped off Barnick’s boat just now.”
“Gotta hand it to you, you get the job done. Not how I’d have done it, maybe, but that hardly matters.” He extended a hand. “It’s been”—he paused—“an interesting experience working with you, Amerel.”
She blinked. Had he just used her name? She looked at his hand, then at him. “Let’s not get carried away.”
Noon gave a half smile and lowered his hand. “Where next? Gilgamar?”
“Gilgamar,” Amerel confirmed. It would be a long walk to the city, but at least they wouldn’t be meeting any dragons on the road. Maybe when she got there, she would find out why the stone-skins had come this way, but she couldn’t pretend she cared. She just wanted to get back to Erin Elal, and Lyssa. Admittedly there wouldn’t be many captains willing to risk the Ribbon Sea while the dragons were about, but Amerel reckoned she might be able to persuade one.…
Lyssa. It was a strange feeling having someone to return home to after a mission. Strange, but not altogether unpleasant.
She turned to climb the beach.
“You know,” Noon said as he followed, “I’ve been thinking about those globes of sorcery. Any idea where they come from? Or how many more the emperor’s got?”
“No.”
“With enough of them things, you could destroy a stone-skin fleet. Destroy every stone-skin fleet. If you surprised them in their home harbor, maybe. Or if you knew where they were going to land.”
As if things would be that easy. “You’d still need a Guardian to set them off at a distance. And what are the chances of the emperor entrusting a Guardian with that many globes?”
“Or of finding a Breaker and a Guardian willing to spend enough time in each other’s company to get the job done?”
Amerel considered for a moment, then nodded. “We’re doomed.”
* * *
Senar knocked at Kolloken’s door and entered at the man’s call.
The floor of the Breaker’s room was crisscrossed with bloody footprints. Kolloken sat on a chair with his left leg stretched out on a low table. His trouser leg had been torn away to reveal a gash to his thigh. He cleaned the swollen skin around the cut with a wet cloth, his pinched lips the only indication of his pain.
The doors to the balcony were thrown open against the heat, and Senar looked outside. The Alcazar was afire with talk of dragons, but beyond the chains there was no sign of the beasts, just a stone-skin ship slumped at the entrance to the Neck, its sails hanging limp. In the harbor itself was a scattering of corpses. The bodies had drawn snakes from the canal, slithering atop the water like an oil slick. Boats moved among the dead as scavengers picked over the corpses.
“Still got Strike’s sword, I see,” Kolloken said. “Emperor’s gonna want that back.”
Senar glanced down at the blade in his scabbard. “Then he can come and get it himself.”
The Breaker finished cleaning his wound. He’d washed his face of the gore Senar had seen on him in the courtyard, but there were still smears of blood under his eyes and nose. His gaze on the Guardian was appraising. “I’ll pass that on.”
“Who was that stone-sk
in I fought?” Senar asked. “What was he?”
“A Syn, most likely. They’re mentioned a few times in the old texts. Augerans used them as assassins mainly, and who can blame them? Walk through a wall, stab your blade through your enemy’s parry—there ain’t many who can defend against that, eh?”
“Then we’re fortunate he didn’t think to target the emperor before the fighting started.”
“Who says he didn’t?”
Senar studied him. “You drove him off? How?”
“Emperor got lucky, is all. When the shit came down, he was on his way to meet the emira, had plenty of men around him to keep the Syn from closing.”
Men with the Will, presumably. And well-versed in it too, to have survived the encounter. But it stood to reason some of the Breakers in Avallon’s party would have a talent for the power. Senar closed the balcony doors. “I hear that the meeting with Mazana won’t be happening now. I hear you’re leaving as soon as the Gilgamarians drop the chains, even if that risks a confrontation with a dragon.”
Kolloken’s gaze flickered to the doors, then back to the Guardian. “What can I say? Avallon’s a sensitive soul. Doesn’t want to intrude on the emira’s grief.”
“Either that or he’s already got what he came for.”
The Breaker said nothing.
Senar curled his lip in disgust. “Mazana was right, wasn’t she? The emperor planned this all along. He let the stone-skins know he was coming so he could lure them into attacking Gilgamar.” It explained a lot of things—like Avallon’s downbeat reaction to hearing Mazana had sent the Chameleons to Bezzle. The news should have come as a boost to the emperor … unless he had already told the Augerans he would be in Gilgamar, and thus drawn their fleet away from where the Chameleons were going.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kolloken said. Then, “But if that was Avallon’s plan, I’d say it worked out pretty well, wouldn’t you? Imagine the picture a couple of weeks back when he finds out the stone-skins are planning to meet Dresk. The eastern seaboard’s exposed. The hammer could fall at any time, and the emperor with no one to hold his hand when it does.” Kolloken swung his leg down from the chair. “I’d say them storm clouds are looking a good deal less threatening now, eh? Avallon sends Amerel to pay her respects to Dresk, then he drops in for a visit with his friends in the north”—he spread his hands to take in the Alcazar—“and suddenly the stone-skin fleet has gone to Shroud, with both the Rubyholters and the League helping to send it on its way. Not a bad week’s work, all in all.”