The Reaver

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Because I got you into a fight? You didn’t want the waveservant to drown Aggie, either. I could tell.”

  “That doesn’t mean I would have chosen to risk my life—and yours—to save her.”

  “People have to help each other. It’s what Lathander wants. It’s what Umberlee doesn’t want.”

  “If you say so.”

  Stedd frowned up at him. “Don’t you believe Lathander’s back?”

  Anton shrugged. “How would I know one way or the other?”

  “Because I healed you.”

  “And the magic had to come from somewhere. I follow the logic. But healers aren’t all that uncommon, they claim to derive their abilities from many different sources, and in my experience, some of them aren’t especially nice people.”

  “Do you think I’m ‘nice’?” Stedd replied.

  Anton snorted. “I didn’t let the sahuagin have you, so apparently I don’t mind you all that much. But here’s the nub of it. I’m helping you for your own sake, not some god’s. I don’t care if Lathander has returned or not. I don’t believe any deity is going to put himself out to make my little mortal existence any better. To the extent they notice us at all, the gods want us to serve them, not the other way around.”

  “That’s the bad powers like Umberlee. It’s not Lathander, or why did he save Aggie?”

  “I saved Aggie after—skip it. I don’t want to hear that the Morninglord inspired me or gave me strength or whatever rebuttal it is that just popped into your head. I want to know if you understand how lucky we are that this dismal little place is so completely out of touch. If the waveservant had been on the lookout for you, or if any of the locals knew about the price on your head, our afternoon could have turned out very differently.”

  “I have to speak up for Lathander even when it’s dangerous.”

  “Who’ll speak for him if Evendur Highcastle gets his slimy dead hands on you?”

  “Maybe somebody who heard me speak before.”

  “Curse it, boy, do you want to die, or do you want to reach Sapra?”

  “Sapra. You know that.”

  “And do you believe it’s the will of your Morninglord that has you traveling with a scoundrel who’s survived for years with all the navies of the Inner Sea trying to hunt him down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then mind me. When I tell you it’s safe to climb up on a stump and preach, do that. But when I say you need to keep your mouth shut, or tug your hood down, turn, and walk away, you do that, too. Agreed?”

  Stedd hesitated, then said, “I can’t just turn my back if something truly bad, like what was happening to Aggie, is going on right in front of me.”

  “The rise of the Church of the Bitch Queen notwithstanding, I doubt we’ll find ourselves constantly stumbling across attempts at human sacrifice. That would be bad luck to say the least. Will you follow my lead in less drastic circumstances? I swear on Lathander’s sword—”

  “He has a mace: Dawnspeaker.”

  “Fine. I swear on his mace Dawnspeaker that heeding me will increase the likelihood of your reaching Turmish alive.”

  Stedd frowned, pondering, and then held out his hand. “I promise.”

  Anton shook the boy’s hand and, yielding to a pang of curiosity, said, “What’s special about Sapra, anyway? Why is it important that you go there?”

  Stedd sighed. “I don’t know yet. I wish Lathander would just tell me everything at once, but it doesn’t work like that. He lights up things—the things I can see—a little bit at a time.”

  “Like a sunrise,” Anton said.

  Stedd grinned. “Yes! At first, when I got out of the camp—”

  “The camp?”

  The boy waved his hand, seemingly to indicate that “the camp” was far enough behind him that it no longer mattered. “I only knew I had to come south. And even with a war blocking the way, I made it. Then, when I saw the Great Rain, I understood I had to tell people the rise of the sea didn’t mean they needed to bow down to Umberlee and follow her teachings. They could still be good and put their trust in Lathander. Then, last month, I realized I needed to go to Sapra.”

  Anton smiled. “And do … something.”

  “I guess. Anyway, I think that somehow, Sapra is where a thing that’s supposed to happen, will. Or won’t, if I can’t do what I’m supposed to. But I’m going to!”

  Anton had to admit, Stedd made it sound interesting. For a moment, it almost seemed a pity that the boy was never going to get within a hundred miles of Sapra.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  STEDD PEERED ABOUT WITH FASCINATION AT HUMANS, HALF-ELVES, halflings no taller than himself, and even the occasional brown-skinned, fair-haired gnome pushing past one another in the cobbled streets and at vendor’s carts, shops, tenements, towers, and flags and banners that, though soaked with rain and hanging lifeless, still lent splashes of color to another gray day. Westgate was plainly larger than Teziir, and that made it the biggest city Stedd had ever visited. He’d been born on a farm, and though he’d passed sizable towns on his journey south and east, the Moonstars had kept him clear of them as a way of keeping clear of the war.

  As usual, the thought of the benefactors who had, for reasons they’d said involved some sort of prophecy, spirited him away from the camp and protected him thereafter brought a pang of mingled grief and guilt, the latter because he’d made friends with the very man responsible for their deaths. But he still needed someone to help him, and it seemed clear that, despite his past crimes, Captain Marivaldi was Lathander’s choice for the task. Stedd could only hope that, as they looked down on him from the afterlife, Questele and the others understood.

  Anton interrupted his sad reflections by stopping abruptly. “What is it?” Stedd asked.

  “Look,” the pirate answered, gesturing toward the block they were about to enter.

  Stedd did and saw that many of the doors ahead had trident shapes chalked on them. Frowning, he said, “Those people must all worship Umberlee.”

  “Or feel a need to placate those who do,” Anton said. “Either way, it’s a warning to stay alert.”

  “Or turn around and go somewhere else,” Stedd suggested. Actually, the sight of the Bitch Queen’s emblem drawn over and over again made him want to denounce her lies and proclaim Lathander’s truth in their place. But there was sense in his companion’s view that it would be stupid to do so where it was likely to bring about his death.

  Anton shook his head. “We assumed the waveservants would have a strong presence in Westgate; they had a decent-sized temple here even before their church started its climb to power. But in this town, there are ways to avoid the attention of those who wish you ill, and I guarantee I can finally get us a suitable boat.”

  “Aren’t we more likely to have trouble with the Iron Jest—or some other pirate ship—if we travel by sea?”

  Anton took a breath in the way that indicated he was making an effort not to grow impatient. “I’ve explained to you, I can avoid that, too.”

  “On horses, we could make good time traveling overland. Couldn’t we?”

  “With rivers in flood and trails washed out? Don’t count on it. Just trust me. Haven’t I kept you safe so far?”

  That was true enough. Since leaving Aggie’s village, Anton had successfully dealt with hungry wolves and a trio of would-be adolescent bandits lying in ambush for whoever happened along.

  “Yes,” Stedd said, “and I do trust you. Just tell me what to do.”

  To his surprise, for just an instant, Anton’s mouth appeared to tighten ever so slightly, like he was sorry Stedd had conceded the argument. But that made no sense, and the flicker of expression vanished in an instant if it had ever even been present in the first place.

  “Just stay close,” the Turmishan said, “keep your eyes open, and for weeping Ilmater’s sake, resist the urge to preach.”

  Stedd sighed. “Don’t worry about that.”

  He himself couldn’t help fretti
ng, though, as he and his guardian prowled onward and additional signs of the Umberlant church’s tightening hold on the city came into view. Bakers, masons, and hatters, folk whose trades had nothing to do with the sea, wore seashell pendants or garments patterned with scales or dyed blue-green. Someone had broken into a potter’s establishment, the only shop on its block without a trident on its door, and smashed the crockery. Mostly distressingly of all, perhaps, a shrine to Sune, with caryatids depicting Lady Firehair bracing its crimson door, did have a trident scratched on the panel; apparently, even the heartwarders within were conceding the primacy of the Queen of the Depths.

  It was wrong and had to stop! Stedd steadied himself with the thought that it would—somehow—when he reached Sapra.

  The wet streets took him and Anton gradually downhill until they started catching glimpses of the harbor. According to the pirate, Westgate had once been the third busiest port on the Sea of Fallen Stars with the facilities one would expect of such a hub of trade. The harbor was still busy, but it was also a beleaguered improvisation. The waves surged through the ground floors of partially submerged buildings while, farther out, warning buoys marked the locations of structures the sea had swallowed entirely. The docks had a rickety look because they were temporary, designed to be dismantled, moved, and reassembled when that became necessary to keep them above water.

  Eventually, Anton led Stedd down a street so narrow that the two of them nearly blocked it walking side by side. Even to a boy who knew little of city life, the shops had a shabby look to them. A fat man took a wary look around, pulled down his hat, and turned up the collar of his cloak before hurrying away from an apothecary’s doorway with a little bottle clutched in his hand. The bent-backed scribe in a cramped box of a shop reflexively hid the document he was working on behind his hand and forearm when Stedd glanced in at him.

  Anton stopped in front of a door decorated with a picture of a golden helmet topped with a crimson plume. Or at least, the colors might have started out as vividly yellow and red. Now, the paint was so faded and flaking that it was difficult to be certain.

  The pirate said, “Wait here. Keep your hood up and don’t talk to anyone. Understand?”

  “You’re going inside?”

  “To procure our transportation.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “It’s better if you stay put.” Anton squeezed Stedd’s shoulder, then turned and opened the door. Voices murmured from the dimness beyond until the Turmishan slipped inside and closed the door behind him. After that, there was nothing to hear but the rain drumming on rooftops and cobblestones.

  Stedd took shelter under a pawnbroker’s eaves and leaned against a grimy brick wall. While trying not to be obvious about it, he watched the visitors to the various shops, the pedestrians who simply traversed the narrow street on the way to someplace else, and a skinny black cat that kept coming near, perhaps in the hope of a handout, but scrambled away whenever he bent down to pet it.

  It passed the time until four men, all clad in shades of blue and green, turned down the street.

  Stedd could tell they weren’t waveservants. They weren’t wearing vestments, just outfits thrown together from random garments approximating the proper color. Nor were the tridents they carried the consecrated weapons of the church of Umberlee. Rather, they were pitchforks or implements for fishing. Still, the foursome looked more dangerous than the common worshipers who contented themselves with a shark-tooth pendant or some other simple token of devotion, and such being the case, maybe they were on the lookout for Lathander’s boy prophet.

  Swallowing away a sudden dryness in his mouth, Stedd told himself that couldn’t be the case, or they’d be rushing him already. Then it occurred to him that at a distance, on a disreputable street where children didn’t belong, they might take him for a grownup halfling instead of what he was.

  Unfortunately, he doubted they’d remain confused if they saw him up close. Trying not to look like he was in a hurry, and praying there was nothing in the way he moved that would give him away, he ambled to the door with the crumbling painting and pulled it open.

  As he’d suspected, the space on the other side was a tavern, with kegs and jugs on the sagging shelves behind the bar and outlines of human figures drawn on the walls. The gashes left by throwing knives mottled the targets like sores, especially in the vicinities of the hearts and eyes.

  The room smelled of beer, smoke, and a sweaty crowd packed in tight, although that last stink was a sort of ghost of last night’s carousing. At the moment, only a handful of glum-looking, possibly hungover folk sat drinking at the mismatched tables. Intent on their own solitary thoughts or desultory conversations, none paid any attention to Stedd. If they noticed him at all, maybe they too thought he was a halfling.

  Good. But he felt like a cornered animal until enough time passed that it was clear Umberlee’s followers weren’t going to follow him inside.

  Once he judged he’d given them enough time to prowl on by, he wondered if he should go back outside. But even the tavernkeeper, a barrel-chested fellow with pouchy, bloodshot eyes who looked as morose and withdrawn as his patrons, didn’t seem interested in demanding that the newcomer buy a drink; he was busy pouring himself a cupful of clear spirits. So perhaps, Anton’s instructions notwithstanding, Stedd was better off biding where he was.

  Thinking of the pirate made Stedd wonder where he was. Then he noticed a curtain that evidently shielded some sort of secondary room or alcove. It seemed likely Anton was on the other side conferring with his contact.

  Stedd decided to take a seat close enough to the curtain to eavesdrop. After his brush with the Bitch Queen’s bravos, it might settle his jangled nerves to verify that he actually did know where his protector was and that arrangements for the boat were proceeding as they ought. With luck, he’d be able to tell when the palaver was drawing to a close and be back on the street before it did, and then Anton would never know he’d disobeyed him.

  Making sure the legs didn’t scrape on the planks beneath the sawdust on the floor, Stedd pulled out a chair. He caught Anton’s voice: “… these years working together, you know I’m good for it.”

  “Times are hard,” replied someone who sounded like a talking bullfrog.

  “Surely not for a gang with ties to Jaundamicar Bleth,” Anton said.

  In a colder tone, the bullfrog said, “We don’t talk about that.”

  “Sorry. I was just looking for a way to remind you you’re not dealing with a simpleton.”

  “Neither are you. Do you think it hasn’t even occurred to me to wonder why you need a boat? Where’s the Iron Jest?”

  “Busy elsewhere with a chore that’s none of your concern.”

  “All right. Fair enough. And I suppose that in light of our years of friendship, you can settle up after. The voyage will just cost a little more that way: one thousand gold in lions, nobles, or a mix.”

  “One thousand doesn’t strike me as a notably friendly sum.”

  “To sneak Anton Marivaldi safely to his destination despite all the port officials, navy men, and rival pirates who live for the chance to lay hands on him? You’re right, that’s not friendship, more like a brother’s love.”

  “Fine, my gold-grubbing brother. I agree.”

  “Understand, that’s payment due as soon as the voyage is over. You might think you can just scarper off and leave the captain holding out his hand like a fool. From what I know of you, you might even get away with it. But ask yourself if you want to be at feud with the Fire Knives forever after.”

  “I already said I agree. What captain are we speaking of?”

  “Do you know Helstag Deepdale?”

  Anton snorted. “I know he doesn’t take that worm-eaten tub of his out of sight of shore. I believe it’s the only intelligent decision he ever made.”

  “He’ll make the crossing to Pirate Isle if I tell him to.”

  Stedd felt shocked, like someone had unexpectedly slapp
ed him in the face.

  But maybe things were really all right. Maybe Anton had only told the bullfrog he intended to go to Pirate Isle because that was what the other man would expect.

  No. No matter how hard Stedd tried, he couldn’t make himself believe that. As a reaver, Anton ranged all around the Sea of Fallen Stars, so why would he need to claim that he was headed for Pirate Isle to avert some sort of suspicion? And why would he reject Helstag Deepdale’s coaster if his objective was Sapra? Stedd was scarcely an expert on the geography of the region, but the Moonstars had taught him enough to know that a person could reach Turmish by hugging the southern shore. In fact, that was pretty much the only way to do it if one actually wanted to avoid sailing close to the pirate stronghold.

  Once again, Stedd remembered Anton killing Questele and her brothers-in-arms, then threatening to murder the captive villagers, and felt grinding shame at his own idiocy for ever trusting him. That feeling, though, immediately gave way to a stab of panic. He had to get away from the pirate, and this moment was likely his only chance.

  He rose and hurried toward the door. His departure finally evoked a halfhearted “Hey!” from the tavernkeeper, but he ignored the call and kept going.

  No ruffians with tridents were lying in wait on the street. That was a minor relief, but where was Stedd supposed to go in a city full of strangers, any one of whom, out of greed, piety, or fear, might see fit to hand him over to the agents of Umberlee? Perhaps if he found a safe place to pray, Lathander would help him figure it out, but for now, he needed to keep putting distance between Anton and himself.

  Struggling against the urge to run outright, he strode past the pawnshop and onward. He turned right at the first corner and left at the next one.

  “Or more likely drown me trying,” said Anton. “Please, tell me there’s another choice.”

  Perched on the high stool he needed to sit at the table comfortably, Dalabrac Bramblefoot smiled. The halfling dressed decently but with a sober lack of ostentation, carried no visible weapons, and with his round, avuncular face, looked more like a modestly successful tradesman than an officer in Westgate’s most powerful criminal fraternity. Where externals were concerned, his one exceptional feature was the guttural voice that had no business issuing from such a small body.