The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  ‘Where you happened to be wandering, lost and plenty dishevelled—’

  ‘After failing to defeat Nerak at Sandcliff, yes.’

  ‘How’d you meet her?’

  ‘She was a rich woman with no husband and a burgeoning stomach.’ Gilmour smirked at the memories. ‘But she lost no social standing, suffered no humiliation and never went into hiding. I introduced myself to her and we became friends; I about pissed myself when I read her name in Prince Tenner’s notes. But looking back on it now, it makes sense. She held her head high, knowing her child was special.’

  ‘Well, that was certainly— how does it go? Naked pastry-chef luck?’

  The old sorcerer laughed out loud and hugged Garec. ‘Good night, my boy.’

  ‘Good night, Gilmour.’

  He watched Garec move beyond the foremast, then whispered, ‘I’m proud of you, Garec. I truly am. If I’d ever had a son—’ Gilmour wiped his eyes. ‘Well, that’s just silly, isn’t it?’

  EIGHT AVENS

  Dawn found the Morning Star running north, with Captain Ford at the helm and clearly in his element. He was deeply relieved to be putting distance between his ship and the Welstar docks. Shouting orders to his weary crewman, he gazed downriver, plotting how to reach the Pellia headlands by the midday aven. The morning was cold and steely; the sun barely rose behind low clouds.

  ‘Pel!’ he ordered, ‘haul those mains in tighter; I want to squeeze this crosswind while it lasts.’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain!’

  ‘Then you and Kellin get some rest. Send Garec and Brexan up to take your place, and Hoyt if he’s feeling up to it.’

  ‘Sir, don’t you think—?’

  ‘Pel! Tubbs, Kanthil, Marrin and Sera are on their way to the Northern Forest—’ he smiled sadly as memories crowded his mind, ‘—are you honestly going to take over as the one dough-headed horsecock on this boat who insists on questioning my every order?’

  ‘Captain?’ Pel snapped to false attention, saluting smartly but comically. ‘Everyone questioned your orders, Captain.’

  ‘Get out of my sight, Pel,’ he laughed. ‘You too, Kellin. Get some sleep.’

  The Falkan woman, clearly not as amused by the sailor’s antics, nodded as she disappeared below.

  ‘Garec will have his hands full with that one,’ the captain murmured to himself. ‘She doesn’t look happy, nope, not happy at all.’ He hummed a jaunty shanty, at odds with the grey day, and basked in the moment, alone on the deck of his beloved old ship and heading for open water. The Welstar River was still crowded, but no one gave the little brig-sloop with her oversized colours a second glance.

  When Pel’s replacements appeared, he motioned Garec into the bow and gestured for Hoyt and Brexan to join him at the helm.

  ‘Good morning, Captain,’ Hoyt said. ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘Not yet, son. I find it’s easier to go with no sleep than to have just a bit.’

  ‘I hear you on that,’ Hoyt agreed. ‘I feel like I’ve been run over by a laden wagon.’

  ‘You may feel bad, but I’m pleased to see you actually look a bit better.’

  ‘Those pill-things Hannah brought back for me are working wonders,’ Hoyt said, ‘especially since I don’t have to taste them. My shoulder’s dried up, the swelling’s gone down and I even feel like eating again. I can walk around a bit too – it’s astonishing medication.’

  Brexan broke in with a small frown, saying, ‘You should still be taking it easy. Why don’t you go back and lie down for a while? I can handle this.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ he protested, ‘and it feels good to be out here. It’s a nice morning to be up and about.’

  ‘That it is,’ the captain agreed, then, changing the subject, said, ‘I don’t need much help up here this morning. We’re all shipshape and running fine, and I know I won’t be able to sleep until Pellia’s no longer in sight. But I do want to talk with you about your plans. I need to get back to Southport before too long. We’ll make for Orindale now and I’ll take on cargo; it’s a captain’s market there in the wake of Mark’s devastation last Twinmoon.’ He paused to watch Garec, in the bow. He’d unslung one of his quivers and was methodically checking fletching and tips, running his fingers down the shafts to check they were all still straight and true. He turned back to Hoyt and Brexan. ‘You both know I’ve lost most of my crew, and so I’m inviting you two to stay on with me, as long as you like. I’m going to be a busy man while Orindale’s shipping companies are rebuilding. I’ll try to confine my runs to Orindale and Southport – that shouldn’t be too difficult to do – so you won’t have to worry about going too far from home, either of you.’

  Brexan put a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘Captain – Doren – thank you. That’s a wonderful offer, it really is… but I’ve got to get back to Nedra and the Topgallant. She’s not getting any younger, and I felt like what I was doing there was– well, something special.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘And this isn’t? Brexan, you’re out here saving Eldarn—’

  ‘I suppose, in a way; I made a tiny contribution – but this is different; you can’t be a hero every day. There has to be something else, something good, and steady …’

  ‘Something good and steady? That’s why I’m here—’ he gestured around the quarterdeck. ‘You’ve just described the reason I sail this little boat back and forth across the Ravenian Sea.’

  Brexan said, ‘I can see that… but I’ve got to find my own peace. It’s been a long journey; I’ve come a long way …’ Her voice tailed off for a moment, then she went on, ‘I managed – quite unexpectedly – to kill the man who started me on this road, but you know, when I finally watched him die, I realised I was missing Nedra and the comforting predictability of the boarding house – where, come to think of it, I’ve got a four-hundred Twinmoon party to reschedule.’ She laughed. ‘Gods, just think of all that food to cook!’

  ‘That’s a curious thing for a soldier-turned-partisan to say.’ Hoyt pulled his cloak tight around him and turned away from the wind.

  ‘Who knows?’ Brexan said, ‘maybe I’m getting old. But I thank you, Captain, for your offer.’

  ‘So you won’t go looking for this woman, Gita Kamrec?’ Captain Ford asked, still hopeful that the lure of adventure would change Brexan’s mind.

  ‘Maybe, if she arrives in Orindale,’ Brexan said, ‘but to be honest, I spent a Twinmoon looking for Resistance forces in the Eastlands and I couldn’t find anyone.’ She chuckled. ‘Some spy, huh?’

  ‘How about you, Hoyt?’ he asked.

  ‘Me?’ Hoyt sighed. ‘I don’t know. I think if they all come back from Jones Beach, or wherever it is they’re going, I might accompany them to Sandcliff.’

  ‘In Gorsk?’ Brexan hadn’t expected this.

  ‘I have quite a collection of textbooks,’ Hoyt said, ‘medical treatises, most of them old, verging on ancient, but they’re about all we have left in Eldarn – outside the library Alen discovered beneath Welstar Palace, of course.’ He pulled the spent ampoule out of his tunic pocket. A few drops of anti-venom still clung to the glass. ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘Hannah was able to steal this from a village healer’s shop, a village large enough to require only two guards. That’s a small place – and yet look at the technology.’

  ‘So you’re going to teach? To conduct medical research?’ Brexan asked.

  ‘If Steven and the others succeed in closing the Fold, I’m hoping that perhaps they might find a way to preserve the integrity of the far portals. With those operating, who knows what a healer might bring back? If they’ll have me, I’ll do anything they want – sweep, dig latrines, whatever – if only we can get a medical university started there in Gorsk.’

  ‘So you’re heading for Southport,’ Captain Ford said.

  ‘First stop, yes; I have my things to pick up, and a cache of books stored outside the city.’

  ‘And then?’ Brexan asked.

  ‘If I can, hitch a ride back to Or
indale and wait for Alen and Gilmour to return.’

  ‘I know just the place, good food and comfortable beds guaranteed,’ Brexan said with a grin.

  ‘That sounds just right,’ Hoyt said. His face dropped as he thought of Churn and Branag, and all they had sacrificed.

  Captain Ford cursed under his breath and grumbled, ‘All right, I understand … but I rutting hate signing on a new crew. You never know what you’re going to get – drunks, root addicts, shiftless losers…’

  ‘Maybe you’ll get lucky,’ Hoyt said, ‘after all, I guess there’ll be no shortage of out-of-work seamen in Orindale these days.’

  ‘They’re probably all drunk and freezing to death out behind the southern warehouses,’ he muttered.

  ‘You’ll find the right people, I’m sure of it,’ Brexan said firmly, then turned to Hoyt, who was hunched over, his hood pulled over his head, looking like a man two hundred Twinmoons his senior. ‘And you need to get back to bed,’ she said, even more firmly.

  ‘It is mercilessly cold out here,’ he said defensively.

  ‘Go on, back to bed with you, Doctor Navarro – but I do hope when you have your own medical practice or your own classroom you’re not this lazy,’ Captain Ford teased.

  ‘Only when I can get away with it, Captain,’ Hoyt said, smiling himself. ‘And like Brexan, I thank you for your offer, but I—’

  ‘Now, don’t kill my hopes entirely.’ He adjusted their course slightly. ‘It’s still a long way to Orindale; you might change your mind, so I’m leaving the offer open.’

  ‘And now I think I’ll take your suggestion and return to my berth.’ Hoyt held the handrail and shakily negotiated the quarterdeck ladder to get below.

  Brexan looked out across the grey sea. ‘How far to Pellia?’

  ‘About an aven. It’s another half-aven into deep water and then half an aven after that to see us through the blockade.’

  ‘What will you tell them? Why are you running empty?’

  ‘I heard about the destruction of the merchant fleet in Orindale; it’s worth the journey to secure long-term shipping contracts. Any Malakasian captain with a shallow-running ship would be insane not to go. Whether they search us or not will depend on the seas. If it’s blowing, they might wave us through. We’re obviously not hauling anything big, like refugees or troops, or heavy crates of weapons. Fennaroot is well out of season, and I don’t know if they’ll board in heavy seas just to track down an illegal shipment of tobacco or wine. Who cares? It isn’t a very big boat; so how much could we really be running? As it is, we’re practically skipping over the surface, so I’m hoping they’ll wave us right through.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’ Brexan’s face showed her anxiety. ‘We’re a large crew for such a small ship, aren’t we? And Hannah and Alen said the Home Guard are looking for Milla. If the wrong officer gets a look at her, we could be in—’

  ‘Then our friends will just have to disappear through their tapestry portal a few avens early, won’t they.’

  ‘But that could leave them anywhere in their world, many days’ travel from this Jones Beach.’ She sounded increasingly worried.

  Captain Ford frowned. ‘Short of reefing sail and waiting – which is even more dangerous, because then we’d be practically begging them to board us – we have to keep going. We have to look like we’re keeping to a normal routine.’

  Brexan stared aimlessly into the steel-grey clouds, saying nothing.

  After a while, Captain Ford threw up his hands. ‘All right, all right. Were you just going to stand there all morning?’

  Brexan laughed. ‘I just wanted you to see things my way. Sometimes keeping my mouth shut is the best strategy.’

  He reached for her and she backed away a step, then blushed when all he did was turn her wrist to stare at Mark’s watch. ‘How do you read this thing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Give it to me.’ He stepped back from the helm. ‘Keep us on this course. Don’t make eye contact with any of the schooner crew, but you can wave or smile at the bargemen. We don’t want to look like we’re up to no good, but then again, we are up to no good, so we don’t want— Oh, rutters, you know what I mean.’ He jumped to the main deck and disappeared below.

  Captain Ford knocked, then opened Marrin’s cabin door to find Steven, Gilmour and Alen huddled over a thick leatherbound book. There’s another item that will have us all hanged, he thought. I’m glad I didn’t see that before. Milla was sleeping in Steven’s berth and Hannah was gone.

  ‘—like an infection,’ Alen said, finishing a thought.

  ‘For lack of a better term, yes,’ Gilmour said. ‘It was a way to teach the novices, but you’re right too: in its most basic form, it’s like an infection.’

  Steven waved Ford inside and asked, ‘What news, Captain?’

  He held out Mark’s watch. ‘I need to know how to read this.’

  Steven chuckled. ‘We can’t be more than an aven from Pellia, we’ve got a full fleet of Malakasian navy ships and a regiment of Home Guard searching for our little friend here, and there are a myriad other ways for us to die in the next day, and you’d like a lesson in telling time? And pointless time at that, I might add; you know that thing is essentially worthless here in Eldarn?’

  ‘We have a problem.’ He held out the watch.

  ‘Shit,’ Steven said, his smile melting away, ‘I was joking …’

  ‘We’ll make Pellia in an aven,’ he began as Alen closed the ancient book. ‘It’s another half-aven, maybe more if we lose this wind, to the blockade, and once there, we might wait in line for half an aven, and take another half-aven before they wave us through to the Northeast Channel.’

  ‘But…’ Gilmour said.

  ‘But we may get boarded, especially if the wind dies down.’

  ‘Shit and shit and shit,’ Steven said. ‘You’re right: this is a problem. I didn’t think of this last night, Captain. I’m sorry.’

  ‘If they see Milla, we’re sunk – perhaps literally,’ the captain said, ‘and if they get even a whiff of that thing—’ he pointed at the book, ‘then we’re as good as hanged.’

  And we can’t go through the portal early,’ Alen said, ‘because with my bloody luck, we’d step out onto an Irish potato farm.’

  ‘Exactly – whatever an eyerish potato farm is. So I need to know how to read this, and how much time we have to wait until you all can get off my boat.’ He held out the watch.

  ‘What time is it?’ Steven checked his own wrist. ‘Ten fifty-five. Hannah’s been gone four hours; that’s almost two avens.’ He mumbled to himself for a few moments, then said, ‘Eighteen divided by two point five is seven point two – so, to be safe, figure about eight avens.’

  ‘Good rutting lords,’ Captain Ford cried, inadvertently waking Milla, ‘that’s a long time!’

  ‘How can we help?’ Gilmour asked.

  ‘You can stay out of sight,’ he said. ‘We’ll moor in the harbour, not the marina where we were; that’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Right,’ Alen said, ‘you’re right: we left too quickly on the heels of that mess along the waterfront. They’ll be watching for us.’

  ‘I can get a two-aven mooring to resupply. The harbourmaster won’t give us a second glance. But if we wait around too long, or we sail back and forth across the inlet too many times—’

  ‘They’ll alert the navy,’ Gilmour finished for him. ‘Very well, Captain. We’ll remain below.’

  ‘Three avens from now will be just past low tide,’ Captain Ford thought aloud, ‘and we can break off the mooring and pretend we’re making repairs. The incoming tide will haul us back upriver and at the right moment, we’ll put on sail and run for the blockade. You can disappear before we get there.’

  ‘An excellent plan,’ Alen said.

  ‘Until it all falls apart,’ Captain Ford said glumly.

  Steven showed him how to read Mark’s watch. ‘It will have to reach five o’clock – that rune there
– twice before we leave. Understand?’

  ‘Got it, I think,’ he said after a few more moments studying the round face. ‘Right now you’re welcome to come up on deck, for about another aven or so, then I’ll need you below.’ He turned to Milla and managed a smile. ‘Especially you, my darling.’

  She rubbed her eyes and yawned.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ Gilmour said again as the tired seaman slipped back into the corridor, already shouting for Pel.

  ‘I’ll need it for about two avens,’ Captain Ford told the Pellia harbourmaster. ‘We’re heading in for supplies; we’ll be back before the tide changes. I’m leaving two crewmen on board to mind her.’ Brexan sat in the brig-sloop’s miniature launch, gripping the oars hard to keep her hands from shaking.

  ‘It’s fifteen Mareks for two avens,’ said the harbourmaster, a thin, reedy man with pale, pockmarked skin and a receding hairline. He stood in the bow of a single-masted ketch while his assistant, a boy of perhaps a hundred and twenty Twinmoons, minded the tiller. Both were wrapped in heavy cloaks which had the Whitward family crest embroidered in gold across the back.

  ‘Let’s make it twenty-five Mareks,’ he handed the harbourmaster a fistful of coins, ‘and you keep an eye on her for me, huh?’ He winked. ‘We’ve a long journey ahead of us and I don’t want to see anything scraping her.’

  ‘It is rather busy today, isn’t it?’ The scrawny official sniffed noisily. ‘All on the heels of that disturbance yesterday morning – Lords, but that was trouble.’

  ‘Those frigates involved?’ He nodded towards the bulky Falkan vessels moored side-by-side in the deeper water.

  ‘That’s none of your concern, Captain …’ He fished for the name, but Captain Ford shook his head gently.

  ‘That’s none of your concern, my friend,’ he murmured.

  Unperturbed, the harbourmaster pocketed Captain Ford’s gratuity. ‘We’ll see you off in two avens, Captain.’