Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  When dark fell, the enemy had vanished. But so had the city, and the servants, it seemed. The bells were quiet.

  “We drove them off,” Carlael said at last, and sheathed his sword. “We will ride around the palace, and then into the city and make certain. Then we will plan.”

  Rel was heartsick, but kept his peace as the angry king mounted up. Those left of his honor guard (for the Norsundrians had not gone easy on them) also mounted up. They discovered that the inhabitants had not departed. They were going about the evening’s activities as though nothing had happened. Carlael did his best to see triumph in the peaceful streets, the quiet palace; gradually the city’s indifference was borne in on the king.

  They stopped near the place where they had commenced their fight. A small flame still burned in an old herbal garden, where someone had knocked over a torch.

  Fire licked along a low fence. In its ruddy, uncertain glow the elegant Carlael looked about, eyes wide with horror, his long, sweat-tangled hair hanging over his fine suit embroidered with the crown-lilies of Colend wound with roses.

  “Where are they?” he said at last, drawing his sword again. “My people. What happened to them?”

  Rel answered as the remainder of the honor guard listened. “Siamis went around to your guild leaders, and your stewards, while we chased that patrol, which was probably a decoy. He spread the enchantment. Your people are not abandoning you. They are lost in a dream.”

  “I can’t fight this kind of war,” Carlael whispered. “Ican’t. Better he should kill me now.”

  Rel said, “Then guard them as they are.”

  “No.”Carlael turned on him like a viper. The tension went out of him and he flung down his sword, which rang on the marble. He pressed his hands over his face, then dropped them. “You did what you thought right. But I must do what honor requires.”

  Rel did not ask what that would be. Whatever he thought of Carlael Lirendi, he hated the deliberate cruelty of his defeat. But he couldn’t say that, either, so he saluted the guard, who would watch over their distraught king, and departed.

  o0o

  Senrid had been permitted two hobbies.

  One, as he’d told Linet, was reading history. He’d told his uncle that he was reading about boys of the past, which had sounded sufficiently dull that Tdanerend had never bothered to monitor what he’d actually read.

  The second hobby, drawing, Senrid had confined to map-making. He’d been very careful to avoid making military maps, once Keriam had taught him how to read them. Instead, he’d drawn elaborate maps with fine lettering, and neat little representations of castles and towns, every building stylized, sometimes right down to fences alongside roads, and blue-painted rivers and lakes.

  When Senrid had completed the finest of these maps—the one of Marloven Hess that hung in his bedroom—he’d turned to making maps of other countries. Tdanerend had despised this exercise in prettiness as useless, but suitable for a boy-king whom he intended to suffer a terminal accident the moment he felt his grip on the kingdom was sufficient.

  He’d never stopped to consider that all that map making would give Senrid a formidably clear internal map of the kingdom—indeed, of the world.

  When Senrid’s riverboat neared the harbor on the Elgar Strait, Senrid’s efforts to remain unnoticed got tougher, for not everyone was enchanted, most especially those who moved about on the seas, loyal to no one but their ship, or their cargo.

  He’d worked quietly and well at the tedious job of recording trade items loaded and unloaded at each stop along the river journey. He found the company of the enchanted port workers boring, for Siamis had swept through from west to east while Senrid was traveling north, his visit only detectable by the change in the people around him. At the end, the captain—unenchanted—offered him a permanent job, and Senrid got around her by another lie.

  The port of Hanbria was a busy place. Senrid spent a day walking about in the brisk sea-salt wind, watching the noise and bustle and listening.

  He had to get across the Elgar Strait—and there was a patrol of Norsundrians prominently riding back and forth along the harbor concourse, questioning every ship that came in.

  Senrid watched this happen three or four times, wondering if he could risk a stop-and-search. How much did Detlev really want him? He was a king, yes, but only for a month, already deposed, without a single follower.

  And yet Detlev had wanted him for a second interview . . . and Senrid had found himself able to understand the Norsundrian language. What little he knew about Detlev did not lead him to think the commander was ever careless.

  Senrid sat on a stool in an old dockside inn, eating fried fish with his fingers, and thought: It’s never good to be careless.

  Four long days Senrid spent along the docks used by the smaller short-haul ships. He skipped the big ones, noting that some even had Norsundrians aboard.

  On the fourth day he found a smallish, old ship taking wine northwards to Imar, Everon, and beyond. The captain, a grizzled, suspicious old cuss, did not want passengers.

  This captain—shifty-eyed, angry and fearful, probably running just as far outside the law as he dared—brought vividly to mind the disastrous journey with Leander and Kitty. There was no help for it. This seemed to be the only type of person who’d deal with him.

  “Passengers mean trouble,” the captain said, spitting over the rail, a deliberate insult, but Senrid did not react. “I got me a crew, an’ Sea Star don’t want no trouble. Trouble costs.”

  “I’ll pay,” Senrid said, smiling his sunniest smile. “I’ll pay and work both.”

  “You a runaway?” the captain demanded, squinting down at Senrid.

  “Oh, no. Would a runaway have coins?”

  “A thief would.” The captain spat again, into the choppy green sea.

  Senrid kept his face bland. “You can ask Captain Mallec of the river trawler Diamond. She offered me a year’s employ—”

  “So why ain’t you there?”

  “Because as I said, I’m homesick. My uncle brought me south to learn to be a scribe, and I did learn, but I want to go home to Numa Har.” He named a land well north of the Fereledria—in case.

  The captain hesitated.

  “I have good handwriting, I don’t mind work—I can lay aloft and reef, don’t mind standing a watch—and I’ll pay. You can have my whole winter’s wages. I won’t need them at home.” Senrid shook his bag of coins. “I just want to get back there.”

  The captain took the golden bait, and put him to work at the grunt tasks that no one else wanted.

  Senrid kept his smile, and his temper. When the tide ebbed, he was scrubbing down the worn, warped deck of the Sea Star. He watched Hanbria’s busy port slid away, the Norsunder patrol riding in neat twos at the east end of the docks. None of them gave the old trader a second glance.

  o0o

  Rel’s rescue attempts did not always fail. Once, he carried a crucial message. In each case he was interested to notice that his instincts on where the Norsundrians would be—or for that matter, where to find hidden resistors—had been right on every count. Not just right, but strong, almost like a wordless urge or message. He’d always had a knack for finding trouble in which he could lend a hand, but the precision of his knowledge was a new thing. He shrugged it off as incomprehensible; maybe it was no more than an unexpected side effect of everyone else around him being under enchantment.

  Watchful for Norsundrians, spies, or enchanted people, at first he was scarcely aware of his small black shadow.

  o0o

  The captain ignored Senrid at first.

  Senrid was not surprised to find that the captain was not popular with his crew, but he was steady, successful, paid what he owed, and he sucked up shamelessly to harbormasters, local lords, and Norsundrians—anyone who could interfere with his trade. It seemed that those who made him afraid made him honest, and he was very afraid of the Norsundrians.

  So Senrid did what he was told, watch
ing the slow progress of the old, round-hulled ship and spending his scanty free time running calculations on probable arrivals.

  The first port, Imar’s enormous Jaro Harbor, was so empty that they were signaled immediately to a dock, rare for an old trader. And the Sea Star was boarded—as expected.

  Senrid had already tried to find a way to nose out what was said during private interviews in the captain’s cabin, but the suspicious old geezer had thick walls and a good stout door framing his cabin aft under the flush deck.

  So Senrid lurked around the ‘tween-decks, sedulously scrubbing the rowboats—and was surprised when the captain appeared suddenly and jerked his thumb at Senrid.

  The Captain poked his finger in Senrid’s chest. “Get out of sight,” he whispered hoarsely. “Bunk. Sick.”

  Senrid slipped down the ladder to the crew deck, swathed himself in his cloak and lay in his hammock with his face turned away from the ladder, and the flickering lantern nearby.

  Not long after, he heard the sounds of heavy boots climbing down. The captain’s voice came: “Ship’s boy. Got the gut-grippe. Had him for two years.”

  No one spoke. After a moment came the sounds of ascent.

  Senrid counted to fifty, then ran up and forward to the mates’ quarters to peer out a scuttle. He glimpsed the Norsunder searchers marching down the ramp to the dock, sunlight glinting off their sword and knife hilts. They rejoined the mounted patrol waiting on the dock, while the captain bowed and smirked. That search had been cursory indeed, Senrid thought. Interesting. A fast, scanty search indicated too many done in a day; Siamis still had his forces spread too thin. Hmmm.

  He sighed, wondering what sort of lie he could concoct now, because it was inevitable he’d been sent for and jawed at—something had scared the old buzzard of a captain.

  In a very short time the captain himself appeared in the narrow forepeak, his hands shaking, his weather-beaten face dark red with fury.

  “Just goin’ home.” His voice was a strangled croak, as he poked Senrid painfully in the chest.

  Senrid made himself take it. He knew the man’s anger masked fear, and it was that fear that his lies would have to assuage.

  “They have a list, some of ‘em younguns, and head of that list is Prince Senrid Montredaun-An. And the descriptions was detailed right down to the color of your eyes.” The captain seized Senrid’s chin and forced his head back, toward the light coming through the scuttle. “Curse it! Gray-blue!” His voice scaled up to a squeaky whisper. “It is you!”

  So much for trying to stick it out. Senrid snapped his forearm up to knock the captain’s hand away, then started down to the crew deck, followed closely by the captain, whose voice was hoarse with strain. “I woud’ve turned you in except I don’t want to end up in jail for leavin’ Hanbria with you. Should you see any on this list detain them and report to us at once. To refrain is a capital offense. If I see your face by the watch-bekk, I’ll do just that.”

  Senrid had his pack slung over his shoulder before the captain stopped speaking. By the time the captain finished his curse-punctuated expostulation about how he was going to keep your money against your lies, you little shit, Senrid’d already gotten his cape and was halfway up the hatch. Two breaths later he trotted down the ramp, scanning quickly for the patrol, and plunged into the crowd of busy dockworkers, carts, horses, and barking dogs.

  When the crowd thinned at the other end of the harbor, he dropped onto a pile of boxes to figure out what to do next.

  ‘Prince Senrid.’ He kicked at a coil of rope, thoroughly disgusted. Obviously Uncle Tdanerend was still on Marloven Hess’s throne.

  He thought of the captain’s fear of prison. Prison! Senrid’s lip curled. Unwanted memory blocked out the harbor noise; he was a small boy again, standing before the assembled palace guard to endure a beating. Kings don’t fall off horses, Uncle Tdanerend had said, but that wasn’t the lesson the seven-year-old Senrid had taken. Even though he was supposed to be the king, he’d learned who held the power—and what holding power meant.

  The Norsundrians held power over people such as that captain just by simple threats.

  A shadow crossed Senrid’s line of sight. Senrid tensed for flight or fight.

  “Senrid,” a man said quietly.

  Senrid saw a tall silhouette of a man, with the strong spring sun shining directly over his shoulder. Senrid flung up one hand to shade his eyes, his other hand drifting near his hidden knife.

  “Yes. So?”

  “You’re on a capital list,” the man said, in Imaran; his accent was Mearsiean. “My first mate saw you running down the quay just now.”

  Senrid tensed to run if the man made a move.

  “You were once on board my ship, the Tzasilia?”

  The man shifted slightly, and Senrid took in the regular features, the tied-back brown hair and the traditional green captain’s coat.

  “Captain Heraford,” Senrid said, thinking fast. What lies had he told when he was on the ship last summer, with Clair’s cousin Puddlenose Sherwood? He said, testing, “You know who I am?”

  “Yes,” Captain Heraford said. “You’re from Marloven Hess, about which I’ve heard plenty during port visits along the Rualese coast. But I like to make up my own mind about people. And if you’re on a wanted list, then you can’t be allied with Norsunder.”

  Senrid let his breath out in a whoosh. “My last captain didn’t feel that way.”

  “Got your gear?”

  Senrid picked up his pack.

  As they walked, Heraford said in Mearsiean, ”They’ve already searched us once. But that might not suffice, these days. We’ll get you aboard in a roundabout way.”

  Senrid assented, amazed and wary both. Nothing had ever been so easy, in his experience. He’d liked Heraford and his privateers; even so he half-expected a trap. Just half. Not enough to refuse Heraford led him to a noisy inn.

  Heraford said, “Don’t look at me. Just follow. Head down. Act like the enchanted. You were drawing too much attention, running like you did.”

  Senrid grimaced as he slipped behind the man, and followed his broad back through the common area to the kitchen, and through a concealed door to a dank, briny-smelling storeroom down some steps.

  There he had to crouch down in a box labeled GLASS, its slats rough with space between them.

  Glasses were loaded in with him, and he was told to let them clink together during the transfer. He was hammered in, which caused his heart to beat in panic.

  But he arrived on board the Tzasilia with no mishap, and when he was at last freed from his box, it was to find that the streamlined little three- master sailing out on the tide.

  “Here you go, young’un,” a skinny old sailor said cheerily. “Cap’n’ is waitin’ in his cabin.”

  By which Senrid understood that his blond hair, gray-blue eyes, and accurately reported height and build weren’t to be seen on deck just yet.

  He made his way from the ship’s hold to Captain Heraford’s familiar cabin. There on the bulkheads were the beautifully made old maps, just like summer. Senrid found those reassuring, though he couldn’t have defined why. Senrid shifted his attention from them to the captain, who sat near the open stern windows, from which he could hear the calls of his navigator and pilot.

  “Sign the ship’s book?” Heraford asked, and as Senrid hesitated, he added, “The elevens will never find it. I’ve a magical hidey if we get boarded.”

  Senrid looked down at his first name, his print neat and bland, with no family name or country. Nor far above he saw CJ’s bold hand: Cherene Jennet Sherwood of Mearsies Heili.

  And a little ways above that, he saw a strong masculine hand: Rel from Tser Mearsies, and he wondered if it was the same fellow who’d pulled him out of the Base.

  Senrid dipped the pen and sign with a proud flourish:

  Senrid Indevan Montredaun-An of Marloven Hess.

  There, it was a part of the record, and it felt absurdly gratifying just to b
e himself. Let the consequences come.

  “Thanks,” Captain Heraford said, closing the book, and stowing it away in a cabinet. “Now. You’re a new top hand, night watch, so you may as well claim a bunk and get some sleep. But before you leave the cabin, you’re going to wear this.”

  He tossed Senrid a bright purple knit cap with a long tassel.

  “That is what our enchanted passengers will remember, if anyone asks about our ship’s boys.”

  “Enchanted?” Senrid felt that horrible sense of a trap closing.

  Heraford raised a hand. “We’re all enchanted, they think. You just go about your business without chatter, without curiosity. My guise for years has been as a post ship. No one is writing letters except in the course of regular business. I have three couriers carrying business post.”

  “Got it.” Senrid swallowed, and pulled on the cap, making certain his hair was completely hidden.

  “Behave as though you’re asleep on your feet. Anything that disturbs the truly enchanted can bring Norsundrian mages to inspect. I don’t know how. I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life.”

  The man looked out the stern window at the rippling wake, a muscle in his jaw jumping. He said finally, “We don’t know how to fight it. But someone will.”

  He waved a hand in dismissal.

  o0o

  When Rel finally reached the coast, he lurked around the busy port at Hanbria for a month, listening to what rumor said about events, and lending a hand to the small group of non-enchanted resistors he found, who had set up a HQ under a dilapidated old inn.

  After a hot, stormy month of summer, he was able to get a job as a deckhand aboard a small trading vessel. He kept his own counsel and worked hard. One morning, he glimpsed a little black cat among the ship’s felines. It reminded him of the one he’d shared the adventure with in Sartor.

  Weird, that.

  He paused in scrubbing the deck and studied the cat. She really did look like that one in Sartor as she sat there on the capstan, front paws neatly together, still as a carving.