by Erin Hoffman
“Charnak; vikktu ari lashuul,” Vidarian said, and Kaltak let out a trilling whoop of approval.
Thalnarra's voice was warmer, but still guarded. // Your memory proves excellent again. // She reared back and stretched her wings, then folded them again. // I could wish we would not need that particular blessing, but fear that we shall. //
// And we extend it to you also. // Ishrak, smallest of the three creatures and usually quietest, gave this solemnly, and the other two nodded, an odd expression from beaked faces.
// Good luck to you. We will meet again soon, goddess willing. // Thalnarra's voice, Vidarian realized, was comforting, like a crackling fire in autumn. He would miss it.
They stepped back as the three gryphons first shook out their feathers-beginning with the tips of their beaks and extending all the way to the plumes at the ends of their leonine tails-and then began to beat their wings in preparation for taking to the air. Ariadel and Vidarian watched, taking in the wonder of powerful muscle and feather, until they completed a tight upward spiral and disappeared over the trees to the southeast.
As they watched from the north shore of the harbor, Val Harlon went about its business with tranquil ordinariness. Ships passed in and out of the harbor, queued for inspectors, were shuttled in and out of drydock. The dull thud of carpenters’ hammers echoed off the shoreline here, where the soundest trees had long ago been cut back for ship lumber.
Vidarian knew some of the ships, but none sufficient for the kind of favor they needed: a sea journey across the Outwater. Grudgingly, he told Ariadel as much.
“What was that ship you recognized? Out on the harbor's edge?”
“It's called the Viere d'Inar,” he said, knowing the name itself would mean nothing to her.
“Is that Velinese?”
“Yes,” he said, impressed. “It means ‘the crown of the sea.'”
“Rather ostentatious.”
“It comes by the name honestly.”
Ariadel squinted at him. “What aren't you wanting to say?”
Vidarian drew in a deep breath and held it, then exhaled fast. “It's a Sea Kingdom ship. A close ally of my family's.”
“Then we should speak with the captain!”
“It might not be so simple.” Gods, this was tortuous. But better, he decided finally, to have it all out at once. “Her name is Roana. Years ago, her mother and my parents thought that she and I should marry to cement a business alliance.”
Ariadel blinked. “Oh.”
Vidarian soldiered on. “She's the West Sea Queen now, after her mother.” Ariadel's eyes widened even as he felt a pang at the words-Rhiannon had died when they were teenagers in some sort of duel. “Once she became the Sea Queen so young, a business alliance became far beneath her station.”
“Isn't it dangerous for her to be here?”
“Probably. But the Sea Kingdoms are peculiar. If she were to show weakness, a fear of a particular port, no matter how reasonable, she could be challenged and even overthrown.”
Ariadel looked out over the water, to the far side of the harbor and the Viere. It was a large ship-half again larger than the Quest, truly a queen of the waves. Strong and formidable, even in the Outwater. He saw Ariadel making these calculations, eyeing the other ships in the harbor, turning at last to face him again. “I think we should ask her. I don't think we have a choice.”
“We can't afford to linger in the city,” he said, “but I can at least look around in the shipyard. Could be there are other friends here.”
“We have little to bargain with,” she reminded him, and he nodded. “This could be fortune.”
“Or more ill luck,” he agreed glumly, ire still tickling the back of his eyes whenever he caught sight of the Quest, so close and yet impossibly out of reach.
The shipyard of Val Harlon was run by an old ship's carpenter known to the Rulorats-he'd even repaired the Quest a time or two. Stimson Allanmark seemed to have been crushed by the weight of the sun over his years, and had handled so much tar it now marked a permanent dappling on his hands and forearms. His beard, knotted with sea air, gave him a perpetually put-upon expression that made it difficult to tell when he was being friendly.
“Vidarian, my boy,” he greeted them, first bowing to Ariadel with polite correctness (and no more), then reaching to shake Vidarian's hand. “Nistra's gift to see you again. I wondered where you were, with the Quest anchored aught. Never seen you apart.”
“Strange times, my friend,” Vidarian said, and Stimson's thick eyebrows knit with agreement.
“Strange indeed,” he agreed, voice husky with seriousness. “Scuttlebutt is you've had some trouble with the fire priestesses. Beggin’ your pardon, my lady,” he gave another proper nod to Ariadel, though with an eyebrow inched in curiosity at Vidarian.
“There is a disagreement,” Vidarian agreed. With the knife ships blocking in his own, there was little point in arguing.
“You Rulorats and your mucking about.” Stimson chuffed. “I hope you can resolve it before you get an Imperial inquisitor's attention.”
“I'm working to address it presently,” he said. “But at the moment, what we need is a ship and an exit-outside the temple's sight.”
Stimson grunted, then turned and waved a gnarled and tar-stained paw for them to follow. “We should discuss this in my office.”
“You have an office?” The words escaped Vidarian before he could stop them, and Stimson turned back for just a moment, giving him a look that asked if it were entirely necessary for him to be quite so thick. Vidarian cleared his throat and motioned Ariadel to follow.
The yardmaster's “office” was the belly of a permanently drydocked galleon, a retired Imperial war-queen. Stimson led them through a heavy salvaged door that had been fit into a massive patched fissure in the hull. He hauled the door open, and before Vidarian's eyes could adjust, the yardmaster's voice carried a smile with his greeting: “Well, here's one might be able to help.”
The shadow of the familiar leather cap over inimitable riot of red curls came into view first, and Vidarian braced himself as he crossed the threshold.
For a moment it was like seeing a ghost. The bold figure perched on a supply barrel-white swordsman's shirt and black leather vest, longsword and main gauche at hips, black linen trousers disappearing into embroidered leather boots-was direct out of his childhood. Roana, from the mantle of red curls to her sardonic, challenging smile, was the spitting image of her mother as Vidarian had known her, sun-gilt and utterly unstoppable. The tattoos that curled around her neck and hands, indeed most visible patches of skin, were different ones, but they were in the same places.
“Queen Roana, I take it,” Ariadel glided in front of Vidarian, all smoky diplomacy. “I am Priestess Ariadel Windhammer. Vidarian has told me much about you.”
“Call me Ruby.” She winked aggressively as she stood to greet them, and Vidarian saw his life becoming more difficult.
“Queen Ruby.” Ariadel was unfazed. “Mr. Allanmark suggested you might be able to assist us with passage from Val Harlon.”
Ruby's widening smile, all faux-innocence and teeth, was aimed at Ariadel but intended for Vidarian. “But Priestess, the harbor just happens to be full of temple knife-ships. Surely one would bear you hence at far gentler expense?”
Her feint scored; Ariadel colored.
Vidarian stepped forward to join Ariadel, deliberately placing himself with inappropriate closeness. “We're looking for passage to the Selturians. The temple is not especially well disposed toward us, nor we them, at the moment. A simple misunderstanding surely soon corrected.”
“Surely,” Ruby repeated, still smiling at Ariadel. “And until then, you're a renegade fire priestess. Fascinating.” No seafarer sympathized with a follower of Sharli, as a general rule, but Ruby was far too canny a captain herself to let herself be won over by a religious vendetta. “And a liability.”
Flashbacks of his original deal with Endera disoriented him for half a mome
nt, but he didn't hesitate to use exactly what had turned that conversation, hoping the tiny chime of guilt in his conscience wouldn't percolate into his voice. “I am owed a pair of sun rubies by a high priestess,” Vidarian said, and Ruby's eyes darkened with surprise and greed. “When our disagreement is resolved, they are contract-bound to deliver. I assume you'd have a natural interest.”
Ruby covered her avarice adroitly, but not before Vidarian could make it out, and she conceded his point with a genteel wave of her hand. “For the pair-”
“For one,” Vidarian interrupted.
Ruby laughed and extended her hand. “For you, Vidarian-of course. One sun ruby, passage for two to the Selturian Islands. My ship, as it happens, stands ready to depart.” Not without trepidation, Vidarian shook the proffered hand, altogether too aware of his situation. Whereas he had demanded collateral from Endera, Roana knew that her resources were too powerful and vast to even think of worrying whether Vidarian would repay his debt. With a gallant sweep, she released her hand and spun in theatrical invitation toward the back of Allanmark's “office.” Vidarian and Ariadel squinted, and just barely made out the upper edge of a concealed door further masked by a wall of stacked crates.
While they calculated where it must go-down into the earth, below the harbor-Ruby laughed again, a sound like a pennant snapping in the wind.
“You thought we'd come in through the front door?”
The tunnel that wound from Allanmark's door down beneath the pier was highly illegal, and therefore spared the inconvenience of safety inspections. Twice in their journey out of the city they took side tunnels that detoured around muddy cave-ins, and by the time they emerged, Vidarian and Ariadel found their hands covered with silty muck from the cave wall. Ruby, of course, was spotless.
From this promontory over the north side of the harbor, a precarious stairway of small granite slabs marked a track down to the water, where one of the Viere's shallow prams waited to ferry them aboard. Vidarian thought he recognized the old sailor who saluted them aboard the craft and wordlessly launched it, but couldn't summon a name. To buy time and forestall awkwardness, he turned to point out to Ariadel the gallant ship that grew larger with their approach, a shadow rising out of the sunset-stained harbor waters.
To know the Viere d'Inar was to know love and envy and terror all at once, a storm of rapture that clenched the heart of any seafarer who knew boot from tail. She was a spectacular frigate-built brigantine, tall sails like the arched wings of a gull fit to split the sky, sleek and truly unreasonably fast for a ship her age and tonnage. And she was a city-thirty-two guns and over a hundred and fifty souls, if he remembered right. The emperor might boast larger ships in tamer eastern seas, but here in the west with its wild ocean and labyrinth reefs, the Viere was queen of all she surveyed. There would never be any ship for Vidarian save his Empress, but only a fool would doubt the Viere's primacy.
As the pram drew closer, two sailors high above manned the davits, dropping its hook lines in unison with powerful strokes on the winch. Their sailor shipped his oars just in time to fasten the hooks, and they rose into the air, all with the swift efficiency of a machine. Ruby affected a stern expression appropriate for a captain surveying her sailors, but the glint in her eye betrayed her pleasure at this small demonstration of the Viere's superior performance.
Vidarian was close enough to Ariadel to feel her rapidly indrawn breath as they ascended the rail, bringing the full bustle and scurry of the ship into view. With night coming on, cabin boys trotted briskly across the deck to light rows of ship's lanterns. Even this mundane task was elevated on the Viere-the boys (and one girl) used antique glow-poles dating back before the Sea Wars. Vidarian had only ever seen one in operation, and here Ruby had four. The ball of fire-magicked glass at the end of the elaborately worked iron rod would ignite a wick but nothing else-not even flesh or powder.
As they stepped onto the deck, a burly man wearing the knots of a first mate strode purposefully toward them. He wore little ornament, likely needing only his vast size to intimidate; the deep lines etched into his face were hereditary rather than marks of age.
“You look familiar,” Vidarian said, before he could manage pleasantries. The man grinned, wide mouth parting like a riven hull.
“This is Galon, my first mate,” Ruby said. “You knew his father, Remi.”
Vidarian turned toward her in surprise. “Old Remi had a son?” The man had been a sea dog if there ever was one-veteran of multiple wars, hardened further by a yearslong feud that had devoured most all his blood kin. He turned back to Galon and offered his hand. “Vidarian Rulorat, captain of the Empress Quest.”
“Two sons!” Galon said, taking Vidarian's hand inside a massive paw, and indeed his deep voice was an echo from Vidarian's childhood. “And a daughter. Though my sibs're land-crawlers, all. A merchant and a scribe.”
“I'm pleased to hear of the Aldani clan's thriving,” Vidarian said, and Galon's grateful smile betrayed some of the gentle giant behind the hardened mariner.
Ariadel shifted beside him, and before Vidarian could make a belated introduction, Ruby sailed in.
“And this is Priestess Ariadel Windhammer, of Sher'azar. We'll be escorting her and Captain Rulorat to the Selturians.”
“Around the horn?” Galon chirped, surprised. Ruby smiled, and Galon only shrugged, then returned her smile and bowed himself out. “Adventure awaits, then. I'll see us launched, it won't be but a moment. Vadri's been working on the mizzen, so I'll have to pry him off.”
“Tell him to check the aft hold,” Ruby said. “It should keep him busy for a few days.” When Galon saluted-a casual thing, more parody than military precision-and turned aft, shouting commands to the crew, Ruby explained, “Our ship's carpenter is a little zealous. Fantastic in a bind, requires a little managing otherwise.” She smiled, turning to watch the accelerated motion of the crew as they moved to set the Viere on course. “Shall I show you to our guest quarters?”
A genteel request it was not, entirely-without waiting for them to agree, Ruby turned aft and set off in long stride, leaving them to hop to or be left in the scuttle. They crossed the Viere as fish swimming upstream, traversing the long deck-twice the length of the Quest-before reaching the capstan. Beyond it and the towering mizzenmast lay the large and heavily carved aftcastle, and there a cabin boy-scruffy, redheaded, likely a cousin of Ruby's-scrambled to haul open the ponderous oak door that led inside.
Vidarian had assumed Ruby was exaggerating when she mentioned “guest quarters,” but she hadn't been. A childhood memory of the Viere gave him a rough understanding of its layout-he'd spent six weeks aboard this ship in exchange for training that had, among other things, cemented the goodwill between his parents and the West Sea Queen-and the quarters he and Ariadel were assigned had been Ruby's while her mother still lived. The captain's quarters occupied the many-portholed stern of the ship, ornately worked inside and out, and flanking the carpeted hallway that led to them were two other large (by ship standards) chambers, one for the first mate and one, it seemed, for the captain's guests.
Ruby shouldered open the heavy door while still managing a flourish, and invited them in with a sweep of her hand. Ariadel stepped inside and Vidarian followed, swept in a memory. Himself, an awkward fourteen made more awkward by knowledge of his parents’ intent for Ruby and he; the Sea Queen's daughter, sprawled on the deck of this cabin with her then-frizzy head of copper curls obscuring the book open across her palms. The furniture had changed, but the pale celadon rug, expensive silk from the Qui Empire, was the same.
Ariadel turned toward the door, where Ruby leaned against the jamb. “We thank you for your hospitality, your majesty.”
Ruby, who had never been called “majesty” in Vidarian's hearing, grinned. “You've paid handsomely for it. Or you will.” There were teeth, but no threats, in her smile. “We'll be under way presently, and I'm for the launch. A pleasant rest to you both, and be welcome on our Lady Crown.”
While Vidarian set to inspecting the contents of the satchels they'd salvaged from the gryphon's little craft, Ariadel moved toward the small shelf of books set into the aft bulkhead like a moth toward light. A narrow bar of polished brass kept each shelf from losing its contents with the ship's movement, and it took a bit of maneuvering for her to extract a small cloth-bound volume. The books, too, Vidarian remembered from his youth-largely texts written about the Sea Kingdoms by outsiders. Queen Rhiannon had wanted her daughter to know what was said of their way of life by landers.
The leather satchels proved disappointing: a few days’ rations for the two of them, a fire kit and flat traveler's pan, and a map. No magical artifacts this time. Likely Thalnarra had learned from the last trip and hidden them away.
A whisper of movement as he set the second satchel beside the bed was his only warning.
Something struck the side of his head, hard-the heavy blow sent him reeling with spots across his vision. He spun, sword flying from its sheath, but staggered into the port bulkhead with a crash. Ariadel stood with feet braced, her hands, still wrapped around a book, glowing with elemental energy that sang the sword into life. Clenching the hilt, he wrapped his own energies into it, turning to face one corner of the room and then another, baffled-he and Ariadel were alone. The crash had brought shouts from above, and thundering footsteps echoed down from the deck.
The unseen enemy struck again, darkening the world for precious seconds. The blow left dizziness behind it and he faltered, seeing three Ariadels and lowering his sword for fear of accidentally striking any of them. He raised his arms to protect his head, blade flat against his neck as he crouched, half in defense, half in fear that if he remained upright the vertigo would take him.
A whisper in his mind-this is quite a mess, isn't it? Words quite unlike Ariadel, and the voice wasn't the same-