The First Betrayal

by Patricia Bray

  The sandy beach where they came ashore was larger than Josan had recalled, and he wondered if this was another legacy of the storm. They pulled the rowboat ashore, dragging it far above the tide mark and storing the oars carefully under the plank seats. It was too heavy for two men to lift, so tomorrow Piero and others would return to place it on the boat rack, then cover the rack with tarps to protect the boats from the winter storms.

  By the time they finished, dusk had fallen, but the rising moon provided enough light for them to make out the rocky path that wound up the bank of the hillside. Josan followed Piero as he strode along confidently, showing no hesitation even when trees shaded the path. Skirting the edges of the village, he led Josan to the keeper’s cottage, which was set some distance apart from the rest of the village, then bade him good night.

  Yawning with tiredness, Josan opened the door to the cottage, blinking a bit as the light spilled out through the doorway. The scents of fresh bread and fish chowder greeted him, warming his spirits as much as the brightly burning fire. Terza had even thought to stack fresh kindling by the fire. Placing his pack on the table by the brightly burning lantern, he shrugged off his robe and filled a bowl with the rich chowder. It took two bowls to satisfy his hunger, then, without even bothering to unpack, he kicked off his sandals and crawled onto the cot, where a cedar-scented woolen blanket covered a feather mattress.

  He would have to find a way to repay Terza for her kindness, he thought, as he slipped into sleep.

  But despite his weariness and the fine mattress he slept fitfully, for his body was still accustomed to the schedule of working during the night and sleeping during the day. Long before dawn he found himself awake, so he stirred up the fire and lit the fish-oil lamp. Opening his journal, he recounted what he had seen the day before and the changes wrought by the storm.

  When dawn came, he reheated what was left of the chowder, then washed his face and hands and combed his hair. Changing into the better of his two winter robes, he made his way to the village and called upon Old Piero. He gave Piero the scrolls to be sent to the order, then listened as Piero recounted the latest news from Skalla. He stayed long enough to drink two cups of tea as custom required, then returned gratefully to the peace of his own dwelling. His years as lighthouse keeper had accustomed him to solitude, and now even a small gathering made him nervous. To a man who spent weeks at a time seeing no other face and hearing no voice but his own, even a handful of people could seem like a bewildering crush.

  Fortunately, the villagers respected his wish for solitude. If a hunter had a good day, then Josan was given a share of the fresh meat, and when the weekly baking was done a wrapped loaf was left at his door. Other than that, he cooked for himself and split his own wood, and accustomed himself to the rhythm of winter life.

  When he found himself craving the company of others, he sought out Renzo. Unlike the younger men, Renzo saw no need to fill silence with empty words. Renzo was not an educated man, yet there was something in him that reminded Josan of the gray-haired monks who had been his tutors. Perhaps it was his kindness, and the memory of how patient he had been in the face of Josan’s endless questions during the first months of their acquaintance. Or perhaps it was Renzo’s curiosity about the world beyond the borders of this village—that same curiosity that had led him to take up the life of a sailor in his youth. Whatever the reason, he was the one person that Josan could call a friend in this place.

  During Josan’s first winter there, Renzo had taught him how to weave the snares that were used to trap birds, and now, when Josan joined him at his labors, he used his younger eyes to inspect the snares, mending those that could be salvaged and weaving new ones to replace those whose cords had rotted from age or hard use.

  Winter wore on, and one day blended into another so he could no longer tell them apart. Midwinter’s Eve came, and Josan made the mistake of joining the villagers for their celebrations. Unaccustomed to strong drink, he awoke the next morning with a pounding head and no recollection of what had transpired the night before. Renzo later told him that he had lapsed into a foreign tongue, peering at the villagers as if they were strangers until he had been persuaded to lie down to sleep off his drunken folly.

  It was no comfort that others had apparently behaved far more outrageously than he had. They were uneducated peasants and could be forgiven their follies. He was a scholar and knew better than to let his intellect be overwhelmed by strong drink.

  As spring approached, Josan returned to the island, along with two men from the village—skilled carpenters who made swift work of mending the wooden shutters. Replacing his living quarters had been another matter. Only a narrow ribbon of sand now separated the tower from the lapping waves at high tide. Even an ordinary storm might flood the gently sloping beach, so instead they constructed a small cabin up over the dunes, next to the newly redug well. Hidden in the shelter of the dune thicket, Josan could not see the ocean from where he slept, but he could still hear the rhythmic pounding of the waves.

  A few days after the men had left to return to their village, a ship sailed cautiously up the coast and anchored well offshore. A pair of longboats rowed the long distance to shore. In addition to the cabbage-seed oil and other expected provisions, they brought three new glass globes for the lamps, carefully packed in straw. It took four trips to bring everything ashore, and the sailors sweated as they stacked the goods in the storeroom under Josan’s supervision, making haste so they could leave before the tide turned.

  On their last trip they brought a leather document case, and in turn Josan gave them a sealed letter to the head of his order, and a copy of his logbook to be delivered to the collegium.

  The case contained a letter from Brother Nikos. There was no mention of Lady Ysobel in the missive, and Josan spared a moment to wonder if she had indeed reached Karystos safely. But surely if she hadn’t, Brother Nikos would have seen fit to mention it.

  Brother Nikos expressed concern regarding the condition of the tower and urged Josan to be mindful of his safety as he went about his duties. In case the tower fell or had to be abandoned, Josan was to send word to the brethren and await instructions. He was not to return to Karystos under any circumstances.

  This phrase was repeated twice, as if Josan were a willful child who needed to be reminded of his responsibilities.

  Josan swallowed hard as he realized that he would never be allowed to return to the collegium. When the sea reclaimed this stretch of beach, as surely it would during the next great storm, the brethren would find somewhere else where he could end his days.

  He had thought of this as a place of exile, but only in his worst nightmares had he imagined that it might be permanent. When he had first arrived, he had been certain that, given time, his mind would heal itself, just as his body had slowly recovered from the ravages of the fever.

  And indeed, within months his coordination had returned so instead of jerky scrawls he could once again write with the precise script of a scholar. True he had forgotten much of what he had once known, but he had taken comfort that he was mastering new skills. After all, he had learned the language of the villagers with relative ease.

  But Brother Nikos’s letter made it clear that Josan had been clinging to a foolish dream. The brethren did not need him. Nor did they want him. He was no longer their equal but merely an obligation, no different from the brothers whose wits had grown feeble with age and had to be confined to the pensioners’ ward lest they cause injury to themselves.

  It would have been far kinder if the fever had killed him.

  Chapter 4

  My dear Lady Ysobel, you must be exhausted from your ordeals. There is no need to stand on formality. Surely you will want to rest and refresh yourself,” Ambassador Hardouin declared. A polished courtier, his eyes remained firmly fixed on her face, but she had no doubt that he had taken in every detail of her appearance.

  In deference to the winter chill she wore a soft wool mantle over a calf-length chi
ton. Her legs were covered with stockings so sheer that her sandals buckled over them with nary a wrinkle. Though her only visible jewelry was a strand of pearls woven through her hair to hold the coif in place, the pearls themselves were of fine quality.

  In short, her appearance was eminently respectable—for the wife of a merchant or provincial bureaucrat. But she was neither, and therein lay the source of Ambassador Hardouin’s discomfort.

  “My ordeal was weeks ago,” Lady Ysobel pointed out. “Since then I have endured no more hardship than any other traveler. I have lost enough time as it is; I do not intend to lose any more.”

  “Of course.”

  With that small skirmish won, she took her seat, and the ambassador followed suit. Because it was still morning, a servingman brought a tray of nut pastries and crystal glasses filled with tipia: a mixture of fruit juices and pale wine. She took a sip for politeness’ sake, repressing a grimace at the overly sweet taste.

  She had missed many things in her absence from Ikaria, but tipia was not one of them.

  She took advantage of the ambassador’s distraction with the rituals of hospitality to study him. He had changed little in the five years since she had been here last. Still portly, the good humor implied by his round cheeks was belied by his shrewd gaze. What gray hair he had left was cropped close to his skull—a local custom that he had adopted. He had served as ambassador to Ikaria for the last dozen years, and by all accounts he was good at his job.

  When she had first met him, she was a novice at this game, as green as any landsman heaving his guts over the side of his first ship. Then he had been the one with power and she the junior anxious to impress, and to curry his favor.

  Now the balance had shifted. He was still ambassador, but she had returned as a trade liaison, which meant that in many ways she was his superior. Even the Ikarians, who were not known for their sensitivity to cultures that differed from their own, knew that the Seddonian ambassador was a mere figurehead. The ambassador, after all, dealt with matters of government. A necessary position, of course, but hardly crucial, not when compared against the importance of the trade liaison. In the federation, trade was everything. Mere governments rose and fell, but a canny trader could outlast them all.

  Not for the first time, she wondered what role Hardouin had played in her recent misfortune.

  “Has there been any news of Seddon’s Pride?”

  Hardouin shook his head. “None. As soon as I received your letter, I sent word to all the ports along the coast, but no one has seen her. I fear you were correct, that she was lost at sea.”

  “A sad loss for us all. I am sure that Captain Tollen did his very best, and I will inform the guild so they may make appropriate compensation to his family.”

  “I have already sent word back to Seddon. Though a personal letter from you would surely be prized by his family,” he added.

  It was the least she could do. After all, she was certain that Captain Tollen had done his best. She had spent enough time at sea to know that Seddon’s Pride had been a well-run ship, the captain respected by his crew. It had taken great skill to survive the first storm they had encountered and to guide the ship to a safe landfall. She owed her survival to Captain Tollen and his insistence that she ride out the storm on the island rather than staying with the ship.

  But just whose orders had the captain been following? The course he had followed had been unusual, but explainable as a need to avoid the dangers of an autumn storm. At the time, she had not argued. The Pride was a federation ship, built for transporting important passengers in comfort, rather than the swift trading vessels with which she was familiar. And Tollen was a government captain, not a merchantman. It had not been her place to interfere with how he ran his ship.

  Still, she could not help wondering if his orders had included delaying her arrival in Karystos. Perhaps he had left her on that island not out of concern for her safety but because it was the perfect opportunity to delay her. And if ill fortune befell her after her landfall, the captain could hardly be blamed.

  Where was Tollen? Did his body lie on the ocean floor, along with that of his ship? Or was the Pride anchored in a foreign harbor, its timbers repainted and the distinctive gold figurehead replaced with a plain wooden pole?

  It would have been better if she could have arrived unannounced and seen for herself Hardouin’s reaction to the news of her survival. Even an experienced diplomat could let things slip in the first moments of shock. But such a course had been impractical. It would have shown that she believed Hardouin might have been involved in her trials, and that would have meant tipping her hand. Let him think that she trusted him and hope that he would trust her in return. In the meantime, she would make her own inquiries.

  She took another sip of the tipia. “As you can see, most of my possessions went down with the Pride. There was not time to gather anything more than the documents chest and a few trifles.”

  The holds of the Pride had contained chests of coins to be used for bribes and samples of the newest and rarest trade goods with which to tempt Ikarian merchants. And weapons, of course—deadly daggers and short, curved swords manufactured in Vidrun, favored by mercenary troops from one end of the great basin to the other. Not to mention a wardrobe fit for the second-highest-ranking member of the Seddon Federation’s mission to Ikaria. All would have to be replaced. Some openly, some less so.

  “There are many fine garment makers in this city. I will have my wife send over her own tailor this afternoon.”

  “I will provide a full accounting of what was lost, so you may account for the expenditures in your report.”

  Hardouin winced, but did not protest. She had expected him to argue over replacing her clothes, since the cost of a new wardrobe could vary from merely expensive to ruinous.

  The fact that he did not protest might be a sign of his guilt over her ordeal. Or perhaps it was merely a sign that he recognized where the true power lay.

  Not that Ysobel had any intention of bankrupting the embassy. She had several lines of credit that she could draw on, including her own line with the merchants’ guild, and that of her house, which could be tapped into for an emergency. But there was no reason to spend Flordelis funds when the federation could be held liable. She would let Hardouin replace the goods that she needed for her mission and provide her with a basic wardrobe for court functions. Then she would use her own funds for luxuries…and for those purchases requiring the shroud of secrecy.

  It took some time for her to escape from the ambassador, but at last she was able to make her way to the rooms set aside for her use within the embassy. There was a sitting room for entertaining visitors, which flowed into a private dining room, furnished with couches to host dinners in the Ikarian style. A door from the sitting room led into her office—a narrow room, but long, with one wall filled with files and books. She glanced idly at the books, noting that her predecessor had left her a catalog of Ikarian vessels, along with a nearly up-to-date copy of the registry of merchants. Her own copy, safe in the documents box, had been printed just prior to leaving Seddon. On the wall opposite the files, a large map portrayed the harbor of Karystos, with each anchorage, dock, wharf, and warehouse clearly labeled.

  She would take inventory later, but it seemed she had everything a trade liaison would need. Her public role was assured.

  Her other role would require privacy, and there would be nothing committed to paper.

  Passing through the office, she entered her bedchamber; beyond that lay a private bathing room. While soaking in the baths, one could admire the exquisite views of the city or the equally exquisite glass mosaics that covered the walls. The two baths—one hot for soaking, and the second tepid for bathing—were large enough that she could share, if she so chose. In that, too, it would be wise to be discreet. It was not just Hardouin who would know of anything that went on within these walls. She must assume that the Ikarians would know as well.

  A glance into her wardrobe
showed that her maid Anna had already unpacked the few clothes that Ysobel had acquired during her journey. No doubt Anna was also responsible for ordering the charcoal braziers lit, to chase off the damp chill of the winter’s morning. Of the ever-efficient Anna there was no sign. Hopefully she was obeying Ysobel’s instructions to relax, for she had certainly earned a holiday. Ysobel had retained enough gold to smooth their journey, but traveling the length of Ikaria in winter would never be anyone’s idea of a pleasure jaunt. Anna had earned herself a rest.

  Her mistress, on the other hand, was eager to get started on her tasks. Ysobel gave one last glance at the bathing chamber, promising herself a long bath later. Then she returned to the office and sat at the desk.

  There she wrote three letters, each with its own cipher. The first letter was to Lord Quesnel, the head of the ministry of trade. There was very little difference between the surface letter, which contained an account of her arrival and praise for Ambassador Hardouin’s hospitality, and the hidden message beneath. The cipher in this letter was simple, and meant to be broken, to lull the Ikarians into a false sense of ease.

  The second letter was to the house of Flordelis, using the house cipher. On the surface this letter informed her family of her safe arrival in the Ikarian capital and offered her assurances that she would bring honor to her house by her diligent performance of her duties. Encoded within the letter was the news that she might need to draw on the Flordelis line of credit at the merchants’ guild. And, of course, that she would pass along news of any opportunities to their trade representative here in Karystos. For while civic duty was important, there was no reason why one could not serve the federation and improve the fortunes of one’s house at the same time.

  The final letter was to Captain Zorion, the senior of her three captains. With luck, this letter would reach him before he took his ship on its first voyage of the spring. She informed Zorion of the presumed loss of Seddon’s Pride and asked him to pass along any news of Captain Tollen or his officers. This letter was encoded with a cipher of her own devising. To the uninformed it appeared to be a list of cities and trade goods, along with firm directions on where the captain should plan his next voyage. Typical correspondence between a trader and a captain in her employ, there should be nothing here to rouse suspicion. Only Zorion would be able to read the contents, and she could trust both his instincts and discretion. If Tollen or the Pride had somehow survived, Zorion would find them and send word.