Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  When the malaise wore off, they stood on an old stone platform, mossy and cracked, atop a hill: a transfer destination. Below them lay a long coastal plain, some of it marshy. The cold air smelled faintly of brine. They could just see the ocean, a distant narrow strip of silver, gleaming coldly in the light of the sinking sun.

  Leander said, “Is this your border?”

  Senrid said, “Yes. That’s Enneh Rual below us. I’m sure Norsunder has border tracers set up by now. We have to walk across.” He pointed toward the ocean. “If we can get to the shore, I can transfer from there. No one can ward the ocean.”

  Senrid looked at Leander expectantly. He’d discovered that he liked Leander—found him interesting—right before he made Leander an enemy, out of what had seemed dire necessity at the time. He hated thinking about now.

  “Let’s get moving,” Leander said.

  Senrid understood that as an offer of truce. At least long enough to travel together.

  They flailed their way down the hill, Leander and Senrid talking about wards, tracers, and spells.

  The snow was fairly dry, but Kyale hated the cold sting that got in-between her gloves and her sleeves, and on her ankles. She refused to wear trousers because she thought they were ugly, and princesses did not have to wear ugly clothing. Now she wished she hadn’t been so picky. Except how was she to know Leander would mess everything up and they would have to walk everywhere?

  She glowered at the two boys, so superior with all their magic chatter. How dare Leander talk to Senrid as if they were allies, and leave her out, his own sister!

  Well, all right, so she didn’t want to learn magic the proper way—it was so boring! But they didn’t have to assume she was stupid.

  She smiled to herself. It just so happened that she could learn magic, and just the way she wanted to. It made so much more sense to learn the spells you needed, and put them all together some day. She had had to promise Leander she would not use the transfer spell or any other dangerous spells, but that promise (so she reasoned) did not extend to anything that wasn’t the least bit dangerous. Like a certain spell that was quite handy, especially in a castle where a certain brother refused to hire more servants, so even a princess would get stuck going down to the kitchens to scout out something to eat as if she was a scullery-maid. Huh! The food-transport spell had been easy enough to memorize, and she’d proved she could do it.

  And Leander didn’t even know.

  She sighed, wishing she had seen the smallest crust of bread in that vast, ridiculous castle of Senrid’s. The problem was, you had to see the food in place before you could transfer it. It worked fine at home, because she knew what Cook made when, and where it was kept—something no princess should ever have to know.

  She fumed over old grievances as she stumped along behind the boys, until Senrid stopped and threw back his head. “Damnation!” he shouted.

  Kitty frowned. “Watch your language.”

  “What is it?” Leander asked, instantly wary.

  Neither of the boys had heard Kitty. “It has to be Detlev,” Senrid muttered, gloved hands pressed over his eyes. “Tdanerend could never be that fast.”

  “Do you have to use bad language?” Kitty said more loudly.

  Senrid’s mouth thinned. Leander spoke quickly, to forestall a squabble, “Your protection wards?”

  “Gone. All of it. Except the warning if someone set wards against me.” He smiled sourly. “I can’t do anything now, no transfers, nothing, without them knowing it.”

  “So we find a ship. My map shows Mearsies Heili straight west of here. If we can find a ship crossing to their coast, we could get Clair Sherwood to transfer us up north.”

  Senrid snapped his fingers. “Excellent plan.”

  Leander stole a look at his sister, who glowered down at her shoes. How to turn the subject without seeming to turn the subject? “About bad language,” he said. “We all learn not to ever call anyone an ‘eleven’—not unless we want a fight. But what I wonder is, why?”

  “Ancient pejorative,” Senrid said, kicking snow at every step.

  “From?”

  Senrid sent both Lerorans a derisive look. “Sure all this nasty talk isn’t going to make you feel faint?”

  “I’m fainting already,” Leander said. “You’ll have to carry me. Why is it eleven, anyway? Why not six or twenty?”

  Senrid laughed. “I doubt Norsundrians care at all what we call them, but it was meant as a pejorative. But it came from them first. From what I can gather, they used the number and the time a long time ago as a kind of symbolic strike against the Old Sartoran Twelve Blessed Things.”

  “Which no one knows all of anymore,” Leander said.

  “Because most of ‘em were destroyed. Or maybe they had different things in different regions—my long-ago territorial enemies, the Venn, thought so, anyway. Anyhow it also has to do with time. We all grow up used to the idea of the day being divisible into twelve units midnight to noon, and the night twelve as well. That notion came from another world called Earth—”

  “CJ came from there!” Kitty exclaimed; Leander was relieved that she was too interested to pursue her grudge.

  “Right. That’s where they also use twelve and twelve. Even in lands where they don’t have clocks but candles and bells, the time divisions equate eight sets of three hours each—or four sixes cut into twos. “

  Leander nodded, covertly watching Kitty. She was still listening.

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s true but people supposedly believed centuries ago that light magic was diminished at the end of the day, and at midnight, the start of a new day, it would be fresh. Like the day. Whether it’s true or not, Norsunder makes the transition easiest from there to the physical world here at eleven at night. One of my ancestors said that the notions of magic waning is footle, and that Norsunder chose that time because it’s when people are most tired, it’s always dark, and they can scare you the most.”

  “So saying eleven is not really an insult to them,” Leander explained, his leg beginning to ache again. “If anything it makes them a little stronger if only in your mind, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I wonder how it got turned around?”

  “Because people don’t like to hear bad things. Names for bad things become bad words,” Kitty said in a lecturing tone. “Llhei taught me that, when my horrible mother was still ruling. She said you can refuse to say something because others don’t want to hear it, which is manners, and you can refuse to say something because you’re afraid that saying it will make it true, which means you just gave it power over you before it even comes.”

  Senrid shrugged; Leander let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  Chapter Four

  Kitty stalked up the dock behind Leander, hands tightened into fists inside her mittens. She was furious with Leander for having dared to say, “Either you go with us, or fare well on your own,” and with Senrid for having chosen such a disgusting-looking ship to travel on.

  She did not believe that this was the only one going westward to the coast of Mearsies Heili. There were so many beautiful ships all along the dock, ones that obviously had spacious cabins that were appropriate for a princess.

  She was sure that Senrid had deliberately chosen the ugliest, smallest, nastiest one, with the meanest captain, just to irritate her. Even Leander had looked stunned when he first saw it, but Senrid had said, under his breath, “Only one who didn’t ask questions—and seems to have some kind of hiding spot on board, if I understood right. Probably a smuggler.”

  A smuggler! Princess Kyale Marlonen of Vasande Leror to be traveling with thieves! And the worst of it was, that stupid Senrid had given that creepy captain all the rest of their money, so they were stuck. They wouldn’t have a single copper-bit when they landed at the other shore.

  The captain and some of his scruffy crew stood about in a knot on the dock as the three kids marched up. He’d said to board just at dawn, and it was dawn. A mo
re bleak, bitter dawn was impossible to recall. Leander had woken Kitty up while it was still dark out—she had insisted on her own room in the small, cramped inn Senrid had found. About all she could say for that place was that it had been near the docks, so the boys could go up and down for the long, dreary two days they’d waited in the harbor, before they could find something. Senrid, that is; he had the Universal Language spell on him, and Leander hadn’t.

  Kitty huffed her breath out, watching it cloud. The water smelled of salt, and old fish, and she was certain she would loathe this journey, especially the way that captain and his repulsive-looking minions stopped what they were doing, turned around and eyed them.

  The captain didn’t speak. He just watched their approach out of pouchy old eyes, his gray beard blowing in the wind. When they reached the group, Senrid said something in some language, and the captain spat over the side, a rudeness that made Kitty shudder. Why didn’t he use the Waste Spell? Because he wanted to insult them, of course.

  She muttered to Leander, “He’s going to kill us and dump us over the side, I just know it.”

  Senrid said under his breath, “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to dump you over the side. And I know you can’t swim.”

  Kitty’s chin came up. She clapped a hand to her arm where she still wore the magical armband she’d been given the summer before, but Leander nudged her with his elbow.

  “Don’t.” He mouthed the word.

  She scowled. Obviously the boys were not going to change their minds, the idiots. And maybe she shouldn’t mention her armband, because what if that horrid Senrid tried to take it away and sell it, or something?

  “This way.” A tall one-eyed man said in accented Leroran, beckoning for them to follow. The crew, who looked every bit as old and mean as their captain watched them as they followed the man up the ramp onto the ship. Kitty held her nose. The undulating, jerking ramp and the smell of salted fish made her stomach churn.

  Leander studied the lashed-down cargo covered with blackweave rain-cloths. No magic here. Good. Senrid’s expression was impossible to interpret as he glanced here and there.

  All three kids regretted the absence of cabins on the weather deck, like some passenger ships had. They climbed one by one down the ladder, and along a narrow passage. The air was stuffy, and smelled of rope and oil and fish. It was lit by swinging lamps. Kitty held a part of her skirt over her face.

  “Here.”

  The tall man unlatched a small door.

  Senrid glanced beyond, and held up his hand. “We paid for a light-port.”

  The man snorted, ducked in, and a moment later a small opening in the hull-planking let in light. Senrid ducked inside.

  Kitty waited until Leander had gone in, and followed reluctantly. She moved so slowly that the hatch caught her on her shoulders as it slammed. She fell between the boys onto a pile of smelly, mildewed old sail. The tiny cabin was obviously a storage space. One end curved sharply, and overhead the bowsprit cut upward at an angle; they were in the forepeak of the ship.

  Behind the hatch they heard rumblings: crewmembers rolling barrels up to store, blocking off access to the forepeak.

  “We’ll be locked in until we leave harbor,” Senrid said. “That’s all right with me. Customs officials scare them, which is good. We don’t want any inspectors seeing us and memorizing our faces. We’re well served by the smugglers’ caution.”

  Kitty snarled, “So what’s to prevent them from just locking us in here until the journey is over, and Disappearing our corpses at the other end? You gave them all our money.”

  “But I promised them three times the amount when we get to Mearsies Heili. I’m gambling on the fact that someone at the other end will understand the importance of our mission and come up with the gold.”

  “Oh, and they’ll let all three of us go?” Kitty asked with corrosive scorn.

  Senrid said, “Of course they won’t. One of us will have to stay behind, but Mearsies Heili is small. Hire a horse on their coast, ride inland, half a day at most, get transferred to Clair’s castle. Then get Clair to transfer back by magic. Not a long wait.”

  “I’ll do the waiting.” Leander sighed, and stretched out his legs on the warped wooden flooring, easing his bad knee. “I won’t be very fast until this heals. How’d you explain our presence?”

  “Runaway prentices, with wealthy overseas connections.”

  “Ah.” Leander nodded. “That sounds reasonable to me.”

  “When do we get to eat? Or get to breathe some air?” Kitty snarled, angry with her brother for cooperating with Senrid without an argument. “Or didn’t you bother with that part.”

  “We’re to be fed once a day, and if no one is in sight, we are supposed to be able to go on the deck and get some exercise.”

  Kitty looked around. “No cleaning frames?”

  “No.” Senrid shrugged. “But no magic aids at all means they won’t draw the attention of any Norsundrian searchers.”

  “Yeuch.” Kitty folded her skirts beneath her, shuddering as she looked about. “So what are we to do in the meantime?”

  Senrid pulled from his pocket a set of handsomely painted playing cards, and brandished them.

  Leander snorted a laugh. “And what do we use for wagers?”

  “Our kingdoms, of course.”

  o0o

  And so it was. Leander played cards with Senrid during the long hours of daylight.

  Kitty felt sick that first couple of days, and the illness did not improve her temperament. If Senrid and Leander began a conversation about history, or magic, Kitty got angry at being closed out. Senrid fell silent, his expression sardonic. Leander exerted himself to think of things to keep Kitty entertained, or at least occupied.

  There wasn’t much. She slept until she adjusted to the motion of the ship. After that she was continually hungry. The food, when it came, was never enough, and she refused to eat portions that had other bits of food in them. It was obvious that they were getting the scrapings from the crew’s plates, the idea of which made Kitty shudder in revulsion. She couldn’t make herself eat anything but the stale biscuits, she just couldn’t.

  The boys forced it down, each fighting grim thoughts about the future, and about the kingdoms they had left behind.

  For a long, miserable week Kitty endured the utter boredom as the ship made its way northward—boredom interspersed with periods of misery when they sailed through rain squalls, and the ship’s working leaked cold water through the seams. Two more stops, then at last they headed west. The air through the light-port was cold, but if they wanted light, they had to prop it open; it wasn’t lined with glass, but instead was a watertight wooden piece that fit snugly to the hull. Leander had pointed out that it was probably invisible to the eye from outside when closed.

  Once the ship was out of sight of land, the three were let out, as promised.

  The deck was cramped, the wind icy. They had to watch out for crew members, who didn’t watch out for them. Already Kitty had been knocked staggering by a man carrying a barrel. She’d expected him to let her by first, because she was a paying passenger. He hadn’t spoken, just thrust the barrel against her, knocking her out of his way.

  It happened again at the end of the week—suddenly something hard rammed into her back, knocking her sprawling. Kitty glanced up, furious, to see a sailor smirking as he hefted a bulky roll of canvas.

  “He did that on purpose!” she yelled.

  “Keep your voice down!” Leander whispered.

  Kitty gulped on an angry sob that shredded in the raw wind. No one cared about her—these smugglers only looked at her to sneer. “He knocked me down on purpose! And you won’t do anything!”

  Leander sighed. “Kitty. Please. We have an important mission—”

  “Yes, we do! So why not tell this awful captain? I think Senrid’s fear about Norsundrians coming after us shows just how self-important he thinks he is, but it’s not real.” She glared around the ship.
“This horrible ship is real.” Her voice rose. “Disgusting people, and treatment, and food!”

  Two crew-members nearby stopped pulling ropes and looked their way.

  “Kitty. Please. Remember, his uncle knew we were on our way to Marloven Hess. Anyone can figure out that Senrid is with us, and whatever tracers they set up to detect any magic he does are probably set up against me as well.”

  “Why should there be spells against him? He thinks he’s so important, so superior, but he ran out just like we did. Faster! And there wasn’t even any danger, like we faced! Leander, why are you on his side? Don’t you care how I feel?” Her voice rose to a wail.

  One of the crew guffawed. Leander felt the attention of every crewman on deck. He muttered, “At least stop whining until we’re back down below.”

  He regretted it the moment he’d spoken.

  Kitty whirled around and marched to the hatch. One of the men said something to her, which she ignored with her nose in the air. She looked more like an outraged princess than ever. As she clambered down the hatchway, the men laughed and joked in some other language, derisiveness making their voices harsh.

  Leander hunched into his cloak and trudged after, wishing he’d controlled himself. He knew what Kitty was like. She’d been so badly raised by her villainess of a mother. If only she wasn’t twelve...

  He wondered if it had been wrong to give her the anti-aging spell. Except he knew that age did not confer wisdom. Tdanerend and Mara Jinea had been proof of that. And how much better would she be at thirteen?

  Humor and patience. Those were the ways to calm Kitty, get her to see reason. Humor and flattery, and appeals to her imagination. Now he’d have to spend a day being ignored; he felt treacherous at the small spurt of relief caused by this thought.

  No. He was all she had in the world.

  He put a foot on the first step of the hatchway ladder. One of the crew addressed him. “You. Girl.” The language they spoke in was probably Rualese—which had some words in common with Marloven. “Little duchess, yes?”