by T L Greylock
It was Eska who took his hand, who waited until he lifted his gaze once more. She squeezed his fingers and nodded. “I have all the proof of that I could ever need,” she said.
Making her way to the two wagons Gabriel had prepared, Perrin following, she looked over the six sleepy-eyed crewmembers who awaited her there. Gabriel gave her a nod to indicate everything was ready.
“I know you have questions,” Eska said, shifting her gaze from face to face. She could see little of them but their eyes. “And you will have answers. I promise you that. For now, we must make haste and I must trust each and every one of you. What lies ahead is unknown to me. It may be dangerous. If you would rather stay and sail back to Arconia tomorrow, you are free to do so.”
No one moved. Gabriel crossed his arms over his torso, as though daring anyone to back down.
Eska smiled, excitement building in her chest, assassins and accusations pushed to the corners of her mind by the thrill of the journey they were embarking on.
“Let’s hunt a myth.”
PART TWO
Chapter Sixteen
“Swords negate logic.”
Albus had discovered something he hated more than ships.
The rational part of him argued that without ships, this new terror would not exist. Therefore, it was only logical that ships were still at the heart of the matter. But when staring down the length of a very sharp, very pointed cutlass in the hand of a very fierce, very bloodthirsty pirate, well, Albus was inclined to find pirates the greater of two evils.
If Albus were a seafaring man, an experienced sailor or captain who ought to have been alert for these sorts of things, he would have been embarrassed for the ease with which the pirates had taken the small trading vessel, stealing aboard before dawn and silently slitting the throats of the two sailors on watch. And when the crew of Albus’s ship had stirred into wakefulness in search of breakfast, they had found thirty pirates, steel drawn, unpleasant smiles on their faces, waiting on deck. But Albus was not a seafaring man. Instead he was merely embarrassed by a moment of foolish delusion, a moment that saw Albus, whose most prized skill was his ability to read eighteen languages, attempt to fight back. His chosen weapon: a book. A treatise, to be precise, on the battle strategies of Emeric Montreux, the Conqueror of Calviza. The irony was not lost on Albus.
To be fair, the book was a hefty one—Montreux being a prolific wager of war and the city of Calviza being a particularly tough nut to crack—and Albus, after cowering unseen for a moment, had glimpsed an opportunity to deliver a mighty blow to the back of an unsuspecting pirate’s head. His efforts, however, were rewarded with a cutlass pointed at his sternum, the book, its binding slashed, pages bleeding from within, cut down to lay in ignominy at the pirate’s feet. And so Albus was left to watch the pirate captain, gold earrings gleaming, dark braids clinking—were those teeth?—exchange terms with the captain of his vessel.
The particular pirate in possession of the cutlass poised to carve Albus’s heart from his chest had more interest in scouring Albus for anything of value than in listening to the two captains. Without warning, he thrust his free hand into one of Albus’s pockets, startling Albus into yelping and leaping backwards.
“That’s hardly necessary,” Albus said, trying not to imagine his blood staining the blade. “I’ll gladly give you the contents of my pockets, if you would just ask.”
The pirate stared at Albus as though he had just offered up the Archduke’s celestial staff and a year’s worth of breeding fees from the Varadome’s prized stallions.
“Well, it’s only a few scraps of paper.” Albus rummaged in the coat pocket in question. “Ah, a bottle of ink.” He held up the square bottle, trying in vain to listen to the captains. The pirate captain was saying something about their cargo. She did not look pleased.
The ink did not impress the pirate. “That’s only because you don’t know any better.” Albus waggled the bottle. “This is expensive. Very fine,” he said. Though he very much suspected he ought to keep his mouth shut, the words seemed to be stemming from a fountain with an eternal source. “Ah, yes, and I have a handkerchief. Good stitching. See my initials there?” The white cloth twitched in his hand. “Only it’s very dear to me as it was given to me to commemorate my first year of study at the Lordican.” Albus suddenly clutched the handkerchief close. “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t take this.”
Only then, as Albus wondered if he was about to die for a handkerchief, did the librarian notice the silence. And then, no doubt the cause of the silence, he noticed the face of the pirate captain, lips pressed together in stern disapproval, her braids no longer clinking, just off his port side.
If Eska had been there, she would have congratulated Albus on learning his port from his starboard.
This foolish thought vanished as quickly as it had come. Eska was not there. Albus was alone. He wondered if she had felt, as he did now, her heartbeat pulsing in the pit of her stomach as she faced the Iron Baron in that dark alley. Certainly not. But Albus was exceedingly aware of the bodies of the two unlucky sailors behind the pirate captain, their shirts dark with blood, their empty eyes staring at nothing.
The woman freed the handkerchief from Albus’s fingers and let it flutter to the deck. She then pried the bottle of ink from his other hand, examined it in the sunlight, and let her gaze drop to the unfortunate remains of the Conqueror of Calviza’s brilliance. She prodded at the book’s splayed spine with the toe of her boot.
“Scribe?”
Her voice was heavily accented, thick with the tones of the kingdom of Seycherra. Albus might have paused to determine if she were from the coastal marshes or the inland lake region of that distant land were it not for her choice of word.
“Scribe?” Albus squared up his thin shoulders and continued in her native tongue. “I am a librarian of the great Lordican of the city of Arconia. I am a scholar, not a scribbler.”
Though her crew muttered and hissed, the pirate captain’s surprise at hearing her language came and went quickly and she eyed Albus with a newly calculating expression he did not much care for.
“Very well, scholar,” she said quietly, a hint of teeth emerging as she grinned. The pirate captain shifted her weight and addressed the assembled crews. “Negotiations have changed. He,” she shrugged a shoulder in Albus’s direction, “will be the decider of fates.”
“Unacceptable!” The captain of Albus’s ship burst to life. “Negotiations are done captain to captain. Surely even a pirate honors that code.”
The woman’s grin widened. “I am bored. The code is boring.”
“I won’t accept this!”
The grin disappeared and her blade, flashing forth with such speed that Albus winced, came to rest just between the captain’s eyes. “You will,” she said. “Or you’ll watch what follows with my blade up your ass.” When she was convinced the captain meant to hold his tongue, the pirate raised her voice for the benefit of all.
“Your captain tells me you have only bricks and wool in your hold.” The pirate shrugged. “We will see soon enough. Either he lies or he has wasted my time. I do not like liars. And I do not like men who waste my time. To make it up to me, you will play a game. He,” here her sword cut a lazy arc through the air until it was aimed at Albus, “he will play a game.”
The silence that followed was broken by a single voice. His voice, Albus realized.
“I’d rather not.”
This was, it seemed, hilarious. But then, Albus supposed it was better to make a pirate captain laugh uproariously than make a pirate captain stab him in the belly. Further protestation seemed likely to encourage the latter, so, as the pirate crew began to herd the captives into an orderly huddle, Albus kept his mouth shut.
“The rules are simple,” the pirate captain called out. “It is a game of questions. I ask,” she looked to Albus, “you answer. Answer wrong, someone dies. Answer wrong three times, everyone dies, you last of all.”
Fourteen
pairs of eyes stared across the deck at Albus. Some were resentful, some fearful. All were making it abundantly clear that they did not trust Albus with their lives. And why should they? He was not of their crew. He was a stranger, a temporary passenger. Worst of all, he preferred the company of books to the company of people. Albus could hardly blame them.
“Understood?” The pirate captain was waiting for an answer.
Albus tried to draw himself up as he had seen Eska do so many times. She made it look easy. He felt no better for it. In fact, he felt rather like a small bird puffing out its feathers, attempting—and failing—to look intimidating. It didn’t help that the pirate captain was watching him with a knowing grin.
“And if I answer correctly?” he asked.
“Each correct answer is a life spared.”
“Given the earlier parameters,” Albus said, “logic dictates that three correct answers equates with freedom for all.” The resolve he heard in his own voice was something of a surprise.
The pirate captain’s gaze narrowed. “Swords negate logic. I set the rules. I say when you have won your freedom.”
Albus hesitated, desperately trying to come up with a means of making a better deal. He never had been good at haggling over the price of fish or ink. Impatient, the pirate captain strode toward the huddled crew. Before Albus could speak, before he was even aware of the danger, a knife slid between the unsuspecting ribs of a sailor.
Stunned, jaw gaping, Albus stared as the man looked down at the blood streaming from his chest. He put a hand to it, his face creasing in shock and confusion. When he dropped to his knees, Albus flinched, unable to look away as the man’s life drained onto the deck of the ship. Three bodies. As easily as shooting a stag or gutting a fish. It seemed incongruous that Albus had been sleeping moments—mere moments!—before.
“Well, scholar?”
Albus forced himself to remove his gaze from the dead man. He met the woman’s eyes and understood that she had been watching his reaction intently. He knew, also, that she had left him without a choice.
Albus swallowed, his heart hammering in his chest. “I accept.”
***
It was all very formally done.
A strange thing, to sit at a small table, the pirate captain across from him, as though they were discussing a business deal, not playing with lives.
She leaned back in her chair, one arm slung casually across the back, her dark eyes never leaving Albus’s face. Space had been cleared around them, a ring for the chosen champions to grapple in. The dead sailors had been tossed over the side. The pools of their blood, smeared ever so slightly and darkening with exposure to the air, were the only evidence of violence. Albus avoided looking at it, though he knew not if this was out of cowardice or a desperate need to keep his mind clear for the game ahead of him. He supposed they were perhaps one and the same.
The pirates watched with smug expressions, anticipating bloodshed. The sailors waited, mute and terrified. Albus rather hoped one or two of them might be formulating a means of fighting back, of breaking free and rebelling against their captors, but they did not strike him as an enterprising lot. The captain, who Albus might have expected to rally his crew with words of encouragement or, at the very least, stoic resilience, had shuffled to the back of the pack, his face a sickly shade of grey.
“What is your name, scholar?”
Surprised, Albus did not answer.
“I am Keleut, daughter of Nestor, and it is customary among my people to know the names of those we meet in single combat.”
“Combat?” Albus noted that she was still armed, though the knife that had so recently spilled blood had been cleaned and returned to its home on her hip. Her sword, blade bared, had been placed between them on the table borrowed from the captain’s cabin.
“A skirmish of the minds, if you prefer. Your name, scholar, or another one dies.” Though he had just witnessed her dispatch a life with casual competence, the ease with which those words rolled off Keleut’s tongue sent a chill down Albus’s spine.
“Albus. Albus Courtenay.”
“Very well, Albus Courtenay, here is your first question. But first,” she gestured to a thickly-muscled pirate with a patchwork of scars on his forearms, “you will look into the eyes of the man whose life is now in your hands. Ichero, choose one.”
The scarred pirate dragged a sailor from the group, a young man, fair-haired and frightened. Ichero shoved him to his knees in the empty ring, the puddle of blood his only companion. To his shame, Albus realized he did not know the sailor’s name.
“You speak my language, Albus Courtenay, let us see how well you know my culture.” Keleut suddenly leaned forward, her elbows on the table between them, her eyes alight with interest. “Once a year, at the breaking of the cold season, people across Seycherra hold a ceremony to honor their ancestors. It lasts for days. We feast, we dance, we race by boat and by foot. We dig up the bodies of our grandfathers and grandmothers and dress them in new robes. Tell me, Albus Courtenay, what do we whisper to their bones before we return them to the earth?”
Albus allowed himself a small smile. “Your people believe the dead make their home among the stars, specifically in a constellation you call the Spider’s Web and we call the Shield of Domitarion. You whisper the way home to your dead, so they cannot get lost in the darkness between the stars. You whisper the path they must take, constellation to constellation, from the northern horizon to the Web.”
Keleut nodded, neither visibly pleased nor displeased that Albus was right. “You speak correctly.” She glanced to Ichero, who released the trembling sailor and directed him across the ring where he was left to stand alone, unguarded.
“Your second question. Your Alescu dynasty took countless treasures from my people when they rampaged across our land, yet were compelled to return one item. What was it?”
“The slippers of the hermit Corvalde, which bore traces of a disease the people of the Seven Cities of Bellara had little ability to withstand in that time, having never been exposed to it before.” Albus settled into his chair, relaxing just enough to become aware of the sweat sliding down his neck. “I should note that the intervening years have seen an end to that particular problem.”
“Shame,” Keleut said, her voice cold. But Albus had the fleeting sensation that she was more than a little pleased with his answers.
A second sailor joined the first, this one making fervent signs of thanks to his ancestors. Albus rather thought he, too, might have earned some measure of gratitude, but the sailor did not so much as glance his way.
“When the city of Rhia attempted to break free from the yoke of Bellara and reduce the Seven Cities to six, who led the rebellion?”
“The disgraced Celestial Knight Vimicus was the face of Rhia’s rebellion,” Albus began, then raised his voice and pressed on as Keleut’s eyes gleamed and her fingers flicked toward Ichero. “But later evidence proved his wife, a woman of Seycherran descent, was the true leader.”
The pirate’s fingers stilled, but the gleam in her eye didn’t diminish. “You have a firm grasp of history, Albus Courtenay. It has saved three of your comrades. Answer one final question and I will let the remainder go free as well.” Keleut gestured to the sword set between them. The blade, reflecting the sun into Albus’s eyes, was nearly too bright to look upon. “A pretty thing, no? Tell me, scholar, why do all true Seycherran blades have no more and no fewer than thirteen pieces of ivory inlaid in their hilts?”
Albus’s tongue went dry in his mouth, which, he was vaguely aware, was hanging open. Keleut watched him, expectant, the slightest quirk in her lips showing her pleasure in light of his silence.
“Come, Albus Courtenay, three times your answers have rolled off your tongue. Where are your words now? Where is your learning?”
Albus racked his memory, his traitorous gaze sliding from the pirate’s face to the faces of the sailors whose fate hung on his next words. He swallowed, though his sudden dearth of
saliva made it a painful experience, and forced himself to keep his eyes on Keleut and the sword, as though focusing on them might focus his mind.
Thirteen. Thirteen demons in the Poem of the Eid. Thirteen islands off the Onyx Coast. Thirteen diamonds stolen by the god Elontis—but that was a tale from far away Parphea. Thirteen ships burnt by Kora the Avenger. His heart pounding faster with each shallow breath he managed to drag into his lungs, Albus could think of no reason thirteen would be a number cherished by the Seycherrans.
“Time is up, scholar. An answer must be given.” A breeze rustled the sails above Albus’s head. He could hear—no, feel—the fear of the crew. The ship creaked beneath him, as though protesting what was to come.
“I…,” Albus began, his hands shaking as they came off the table. His fingers longed for a book. But no book would save them. “I do not….”
“Very well.” Keleut reached for the sword. Ichero was already pulling a screaming sailor from the herd. The blade flashed, whispering in Keleut’s practiced hand as she came to her feet. The sailor whimpered.
“Thirteen rulers!” Albus blurted. The sword went still. “Thirteen rulers in the Alescu dynasty.” He shoved himself up from the table, dizzy with the certainty that he was wrong, and found Keleut’s gaze. “Thirteen men and women who drained Seycherra dry.”
The sword hovered. Albus listened to the pounding of his own heart and was sure he could hear the heart of the man marked to die echoing his own. And then the sword was lowered.
“Release them.” Keleut’s voice was quiet but went unquestioned. The pirates stepped away from the crew of sailors. Albus let himself breathe. “Take him.”
Ichero had hold of Albus’s arm before he could comprehend the pirate captain’s words. The scarred man’s grip chased the protest from his mouth, leaving him to stare in utter incomprehension, first at Keleut, and then at the crew whose lives he had just saved. As they watched pirates climb over the rail and down the rope ladder that waited there, not a sailor, not even the captain, ventured to meet Albus’s frantic gaze. But at last, as Albus was led to the ship rail, he found some words.