by David Drake
Chalcus grinned broadly at Ilna. "Not so, dear heart?" he asked.
"I can't tell anything from here," Ilna said. Smiling faintly because the situation really did amuse her, she added, "Of course I may not be able to tell anything when we're in the middle of whatever unpleasant business is going on, either."
"Indeed, we may not," Chalcus agreed equably. "And we may all have our heads taken for trophies in the airy halls of the birdmen. If any of you lads would stay ashore tonight, the dock's a short step now but a very long one if you wait."
"We're with you," Hutena grunted. He reached for the third bow.
"This bow is for me, I think, Master Bosun," Chalcus said mildly. He straightened, surveying the crew. "Does Hutena speak for you all, then?"
Nobody replied. Hutena said, "Cast off the bow line, Kulit. I've already gotten the stern."
Kulit loosed the line, then took a boat-pike from the mast rack and joined the bosun in shoving theBird of the Tideaway from the quay. The rowers took up the stroke, falling into a rhythm without external command.
The bosun set a bow between each pair of oarsmen while Chalcus brought out bundles of arrows. Ilna thought about the attack on the fishermen; if the Rua chose, they could drive theBird 's crew into the hold as easily as they'd cleared the decks of the open boats. But she was increasingly less convinced that the winged men had anything to do with the attacks on merchantmen in the Strait.
TheBird of the Tidemade for the harbor entrance. Kulit called low-voiced bearings from the bow, but the oarsmen needed little correction. Their faces had the set, unhappy expressions of men about to go out in a drenching rainstorm. They didn't look frightened; and perhaps they weren't.
That there were no lights in the village of Terness was only to be expected; Ilna would've been surprised if any fisherman had been wasting lamp oil at this time of night. The castle was equally dark, though, and that was another matter. She'd seen enough palaces and noblemen's mansions to know that there should be the gleam of a lantern in the guardroom, the glow of fires beneath the ovens where bread for the company was baking.
She smiled tightly again. In this particular place, she didn't suppose the lord would be reading far into the night; but it was likely enough that the wink of a rushlight through a shutter would indicate that a clerk had been late finishing his accounts.
The stars shone as bright points undimmed by a haze of wizardlight. Whatever had awakened her was over now. That part of it, at any rate.
Chalcus distributed short cutlasses to the crew, all but Hutena who had his own broad-bladed hatchet thrust through his belt. The short, curving cutlasses looked clumsy to Ilna, but they were as keen as Chalcus thought they should be-working edges rather than being sharpened chisel-thin and sure to break at the first hard stroke. They must have suited the men using them or else they'd have had something different. Blades were no business of hers, anyway.
Another gush of wizardlight stained the sky as theBird of the Tide negotiated the last of the narrows. The cliffs on either side of the vessel stood out starkly against the scarlet glare above them. Ilna felt the hairs on the backs of her arms rise; her nose wrinkled in irritation at her body's inability not to react.
"Dead ahead on the horizon," Kulit called, his voice strong but just a half tone higher than Ilna had heard it on other occasions. "I saw a mast when the… when the sky was bright, you know?"
Chalcus hopped to the top of the deckhouse, the highest vantage on theBird since they'd unstepped the mast and left it back on the quay. "Row on, lads," he said in a tone of quiet excitement. "That's theQueen of Heaven or another so like her it makes no never mind. There's lights aboard her, and it's more lights than any captain would burn while anchored in calm weather. We'll learn something soon or I'll know the reason why."
He dropped beside Ilna again and crossed his hands before him. "Had I left the mast up," he said, "we'd have a better view as you doubtless are thinking. But we'd have been visible from farther out as well, and that concerned me more than whatwe could see."
"I wasn't thinking anything of the sort," said Ilna tartly. "I assumed you knew your business; and I certainlydon't know your business."
She was knotting and loosing patterns as she spoke. She'd taken the cords out of her sleeve almost as soon as she awakened, and she'd been working-and unworking-them ever since. She saw Chalcus glance at the latest version and quickly cupped it between her palms. He couldn't have gotten a clear enough look anyway, but "That wouldn't be a good thing to see," Ilna said without letting her voice display her terror at what had almost happened. "I'm nervous, you see, and when I'm nervous my mind calms itself by thinking of dark places to send my enemies."
"Ah!" said Chalcus. "I can understand how that might be." He laughed merrily and hugged her with his left arm, though his eyes continued to scan the sea ahead of them.
TheBird of the Tide drove over the slow swells. The steering oar was raised and lashed to the rail where it didn't drag against the vessel's progress. Ilna knew there was a current because of what the sailors had told her and from the way bubbles of foam slowly drifted right to left, but Nabarbi and Tellura on the portside oars were compensating for it by taking longer strokes than their shipmates to starboard.
"There's theQueen or her twin…," said Chalcus, pitching his voice just loud enough to be heard over the faint squeal of the rowlocks. The crew had tallowed them just after nightfall, before they opened their bedrolls to sleep. "And there's boats in the water beside her, low ones. Hutena, were any of the fishing boats missing from the harbor tonight?"
"They were not," said the bosun, standing with a hand on the tiller and a hand on his axe head, ready at instant need to drop the steering oar into the water. "Every boat that went out this morning came back to harbor, saving the one you say the demons took. And every boat that came back was there in her berth as we put out."
"My thought as well," said Chalcus with a smile. "And there's more and bigger vessels by theQueen than one poor fishing boat that was left for the Rua."
Wizardlight pulsed in the deep sea, spreading outward like a ripple on a pond. It silhouetted the merchantman, now little more than a bowshot away, and two long, low barges moored to it. An instant later theBird of the Tide was suspended in crimson purity. Fish, caught in the same clarity, hung lower in the light-shot void, and arrowing through the sea toward the merchantman was the great seawolf Ilna had glimpsed from the deck of theDefender.
The flash spread on and vanished. It hadn't affected Ilna's night vision.
"Dear one, do you know what it was that just happened?" Chalcus asked in a voice all the crew could hear. He held his bow in his left hand with an arrow between his fingers, but his right hand wasn't on the cord. The light had shown everything nearby; the air was empty of Rua and of every other thing beneath the clouds.
"Beyond the obvious, that there's a wizard working," Ilna said, "I know nothing at all."
She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. She realized that the crew, brave men though they were, needed or at least deserved reassurance, so she had to be willing to offer it.
A question formed in Ilna's mind and resolved itself; she chuckled, but she didn't explain the reason when Chalcus raised a quizzical eyebrow. She'd thought, How can telling the men that we're completely ignorant be reassuring? And the answer came as swiftly: We've told them they're as well off as the people putting them to this risk; and that's not what they'd assume if we failed to tell them.
"A hard pull and we'll come up alongside the barge at the stern," Chalcus said. "Hutena, have you seen ships like that before?"
"Grain scows on the River Erd," Kulit answered in the place of the silent bosun. "A hundred feet long and forty broad, but they'll swim in water that won't come to your waist."
"There's marshes on the west side of the castle where you could land a barge," said Shausga. "I sailed the Carcosa run when I was a lad. Though why you'd want to berth there with Terness Harbor so good, I don't see.
"
"Indeed, a marsh?" said Chalcus. "It'd conceal your barges from an agent of Prince Garric with his eye on theDefender, would it not?"
"They're not hidden now," said Ilna. "Wherever they land and sail from, we can see the barges as soon as they're used."
"Aye, my love," said Chalcus. "And so could anyone else who put out when he saw wizardry in the sky at night. But would, do you think, every agent choose to do that? And if he did, or she did-would their crew obey the orders to put out?"
Chalcus laughed, but quietly. They were coming up on theQueen of Heaven and her attendant barges. In a conversational tone he went on, "Conn us around, Kulit, starboard to starboard with the barge. Not that I think they'll try to chase us down, this lot, but for the craftsmanship of the thing."
He grinned at Ilna. She smiled back, touched by the humor but aware also of the patterns that formed and scattered under the play of her fingers.
There were many lights on the merchantman's deck, more than Ilna could count with both hands. She heard men's voices, often that of Commander Lusius himself, shouting angry orders.
"Won't they see us coming?" she asked in a quiet voice, almost a whisper. "Don'tthey see us?"
Things splashed into the sea, followed moments later by a swirl of water and theclop of great jaws. Ilna'd seen the seawolf; now she knew why it followed whenever Lusius put out to sea.
"Not this lot," Chalcus murmured. "Not till we tread on their toes, and maybe not even then."
"We're going aboard, captain?" asked Hutena as theBird of the Tide slipped toward the barge with a soapy ease. Shausga and Ninon shipped their long oars; crewmen on the port side backed water to kill the vessel's remaining momentum. "We know who the pirates are already, don't we?"
"I think we know who," said Chalcus. "But not how, and just possibly not who either-since our Lusius wouldn't be one to leave a derelict with a full hold. You and I will board her, Hutena, while the others will wait ready to cast off."
"And I'm coming, of course," said Ilna. She'd made a choice of the pattern to have in her hands; she'd chosen or her fingers had, either one. She sometimes thought that her hands had not only more skill than her conscious mind but more wisdom as well. If she'd been wise, she'd be rich and powerful beyond all other folk-but she wouldn't be Ilna os-Kenset any more, and that was a greater price than she was willing to pay for anything in the world or beyond it.
"Of course you are, my heart," said Chalcus, striding forward to hand his bow and the bundle of arrows to Kulit. "Of course you'll come with us, or there'd be no reason for us to be here at all."
Thick hawsers at bow and stern lashed the barge to the merchantman. A coarse swatch of rope netting draped the bigger ship's side provided a ladder which several at a time could climb. A few worked on the barge by the light of several lanterns, stowing bales which the larger number who'd gone aboard threw over the merchantman's railing.
The men were Lusius' Sea Guards, though for the most part they were in tunics rather than linen cuirasses and only a few wore their swords. That was a factor Chalcus would have noticed from the moment theBird of the Tide drew within bowshot; it explained why he was blithely taking theBird 's handful into the midst of the much greater number of Lusius' men.
The Sea Guards used many lamps, more than the work itself required, on theQueen of Heaven and the pair of barges. Lamp light illuminated only a small circle around each flame, and by doing so hid whatever was beyond those circles more thoroughly than the darkness itself. Lusius his men so feared what might be lurking aboard the merchantman that they ignored the possibility another ship might slip up on them.
TheBird thumped alongside the barge. Shausga and Ninon looped ropes around two of the oarlocks that lined the other ship's gunwales. Though the barge was by far the larger vessel, its deck was actually lower than theBird 's. Ilna and Chalcus hopped aboard together.
"Hey!" cried a Sea Guard as he and his fellows turned to see what had struck them. "Com-"
Ilna saved his life by spreading the pattern she'd knotted. She held it out so that lanternlight fell squarely on its seemingly effortless artistry.
The man who'd spoken doubled up, spewing vomit which appeared to be mostly wine. Those nearby retched and covered their eyes. A man who'd been at a distance so that he'd gotten only a slanted view of the pattern called, "What? What?" in the voice of one waking from a nightmare.
Hutena cracked him hard over the head with the peen of his axe. "Tie these scuts up while we're gone!" the bosun ordered over his shoulder. He grabbed the boarding net a moment after Chalcus and Ilna had started up.
Ilna's eyes watered. She sneezed fiercely, smothering the sound in the shoulder of her tunic. TheQueen of Heaven reeked of brimstone. Had it been a grain ship, it might have been fumigated before setting out on this voyage, but there was no call to worry about rats seriously damaging a cargo of tapestries. Besides, the smell hadn't clung to the timbers when they'd boarded the ship with Commander Lusius.
The netting was made from the same sword-leafed desert plant as the rope Ilna had handled earlier. It had a clean, dry feel, and the strands had been twisted by a careful workman who knew her business. There was nothing so simple that there wasn't a right way to do it-or for most people in Ilna's experience, a wrong way.
"Hey, what's going on down there?" a man called from theQueen 's railing. "Stop playing the fool or we'll tip this bloody tapestry on your bloody heads!"
Chalcus vaulted the railing, using his left arm as a pivot. He hadn't drawn his inward-curving sword, but Ilna knew how quickly the weapon could appear in his hand when he wished.
The Sea Guard screamed and stumbled back, crossing his hands before his face as if to keep from seeing his own oncoming doom. There'd been four of them lugging a rolled hanging, a full weight for them all together. Silk with gold and silver wires on a wool backing; valuable no doubt but journeyman's work, exceptional only in the value of the raw materials… The others jumped away also, and one started to draw his sword.
"Gently, lad, there's no need for that," Chalcus said, taking the man's sword wrist with fingers which Ilna had seen bend iron nails. The Sea Guard gasped in pain; then Hutena mounted the railing behind him and quieted him with another rap from the axe.
"Who are you?" demanded the Sea Guard who'd first spoken. He wasn't armed, which may have been the reason his tone changed from hectoring to merely inquisitive in the course of a short sentence. "Sister take you, I didn't see you when I looked over the side, and I thought…"
He didn't bother to explain what he'd thought. Ilna could've guessed closely enough, even without a pair of Sea Guards coming out of the deckhouse hauling a corpse between them.
Part of a corpse: a man's head and shoulders, with the torso below that ending in a ragged slant at mid-chest. Ilna believed that the victim was the chief of the Blaise armsmen.
The men dragging the torso had sour expressions, and their minds didn't take in the things their eyes glanced over. They walked past the group around Chalcus and tossed the fragment into the sea between the two barges.
"We're guests of the Commander, don't you recall?" Chalcus said. "Now, where is it he would be, friend? For we've business for his ears only."
"You're…?" the Sea Guard said. He shook his head in puzzlement. "Well, I don't know, in one of the holds, I suppose, but-"
"Hoy, Commander!" Rincip bellowed, striding out of one of several open doors on the side of the deckhouse. He held a lantern high in his left hand. "There's a strongbox but there's money bags all over-hey!"
His eyes fell on Chalcus, then Ilna. "Where'dyou come from!"
"In a crisis like this, all men must stand together," said Chalcus, stepping toward Lusius' second in command. "Not so, Master Rincip?"
Rincip touched his sword pommel but didn't let his fingers close around its shagreen grip. After only a moment's thought he pointedly lifted his hand away.
"Civilians have no business here!" he snarled, but he didn't try to keep Chal
cus and Ilna from entering the cabin he'd just left.
A lighted candle burned in a free-swinging holder hung from the ceiling. It threw a pale tallow illumination over the interior of the cabin, sufficient to see by even before Rincip followed them back in with the lantern.
A bedframe was folded out from the wall. The mattress was a common one of waxed linen filled with straw, but the bedclothes-now mostly tumbled on the floor-were silk. Instead of an ordinary sea chest roped to floor bitts so that it didn't skid around the cabin in bad weather, the wealthy occupant's large chest was cross-strapped with iron and padlocked to the bitts. The lid had a hasp and staple also, but the padlock which should have secured it was missing.
Three heavy leather moneybags closed with lead seals lay on the floor. Beside them was a document case and several thick codexes. Ilna recognized those last as ledgers, though she couldn't have read them even if they weren't in cipher-as they almost certainly were.
On the floor, half-covered by the bedding, was a man's hand and wrist. The hook-bladed sword it'd been holding lay beside it. One of the long bones of the forearm was still attached, broken off at the elbow end. The muscles had been stripped away, but some tendons still dangled.
Smiling in friendly innocence, Chalcus gripped the hasp of the strongbox in his left hand and tugged. The lid didn't rise; it was fastened even though the external lock was missing.
"What's this about money?" said Lusius, stepping into the cabin with a Sea Guard holding a lantern. "There should be a specie chest-you!"
Four men and Ilna crowded the cabin. Hutena remained on deck, very possibly overlooked in darkness and the confusion. Chalcus had a way of drawing eyes to him, which-given the bosun's demonstrated ability to think and act quickly-could be the key to escaping a situation that was literally-Ilna smiled-getting tighter by the moment.
"Aye, Commander," Chalcus said. "We saw the trouble in the sky and came to it, like good citizens of the Isles. And what should we find but you and your men?"