Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

  “You do not dare hurt me,” she yelled, so everyone would hear. “My mother will take a terrible vengeance on this ship if I’m harmed.”

  An uneasy murmur rippled through the sailors but Haraad’s voice was steady and dead. “If your mother were still alive and cared about you, she’d have been back long ago.”

  “Are you certain of that?” she said, forcing herself to step forward and meet his eyes.

  He blinked!

  “Do you see my face? Do you remember the pirate’s? My mother foresaw that my brother and I would meet here. Perhaps she’s planning a family reunion.”

  Haraad stepped back. He had seen the resemblance. More murmurs. Still, Haraad didn’t take his eyes off her. Only Cana and Haraad were between them and the railing.

  What is Avnai waiting for?

  “Perhaps she was testing you,” she continued. “Perhaps she is testing me. Perhaps—”

  The winddriver started up with a booming roar.

  “Mother! You have come for your daughter at last!” she cried.

  They couldn’t help it. Every eye shot fearfully to the sky. No one was watching her.

  As Responsibility, she had never offered violence to anyone. She had never dared.

  Azriyqam lashed out. Her wings had twice the reach of a man’s arms. Her right wing buried its horny claw in Haraad’s throat. She hesitated only an instant before her left cut into Cana’s thigh. She winced with the big man as he fell, breathing a silent apology, but she knew he would have stopped her to protect the Ship.

  “Zhad, on my back!” The slight figure crashed into her and held on. She let the momentum carry her past the two bleeding men. Then she was over the side and falling, gliding toward the waiting boat. They hit hard.

  Avnai cursed. “Hang on!” He cut the bow rope and the small boat angled crazily downward. Then he leapt past them for the stern, sawing madly. The stern crashed into the water. The hull of the Century Ship towered over them.

  “Now, hang on tighter!” Avnai yelled.

  Responsibility gripped the gunwales as hard as she could. Avnai did something to the winddriver and the boat surged forward. She’d never felt anything like it. The stern of the boat seemed to push her forward like a giant hand. Ekkaia dwindled in the distance as the winddriver kicked up water behind them.

  “No supplies, eh?” Avnai said seriously, looking them over. “It’s going to be a long, dry voyage home.” He adjusted the tiller to arc around the far-off Century Ship so the aurora was on their starboard. It was beginning to lighten, heralding the reappearance of the sun. Avnai steered them antispinward.

  “Home?” Azriyqam said as she watched Ekkaia vanish astern, and with it, her captivity.

  She realized she had gotten—in a way—the vengeance she had always wanted. The end of the world had come. Somehow, she had never thought beyond this. In her imagination everything had simply…stopped. She didn’t know what to think. She hoped Cana would be all right. “Home?” she said again. “Where is it?”

  Zhad took her shoulders in his hands. “Home is where it’s always been. It’s just that we’ve never been there.”

  Azriyqam felt herself nod as she looked out over the Endless Ocean. Somehow, it would be enough.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  Responsibility woke to the rocking of the boat.

  It was the fifth day since their escape, and she ached in places she hadn’t known she had places. She knew before she opened her eyes that Avnai was idling the boat again. She was hungry, but the meager rations had run out the day before yesterday.

  Blinking the blurriness away from her eyes, she sat up.

  Avnai was consulting a small table sewn into his sleeve and then staring at the sun, still too red and dim to dazzle the eyes, as it peeked above the cloudwall. Eventually, he looked back at her.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  Responsibility shuddered at the concern in his voice. All the hunger, thirst, and pain was worth it for that. Even if they died out here. She peered around and saw exactly what she expected to see: the flat waves of the Endless Ocean surrounded by the cloudwall and the blue dome of the sky.

  “Thirsty,” she said, because he could do something about that. Avnai nodded and scooped seawater into the clay pot that had contained their first two days’ water supply.

  It should be suicide to drink the water of the Ocean. Every child on a Century Ship knew not to waste fresh water. The very course of the giant Ship was determined, in large part, by where the giant cisterns could be refilled.

  Avnai’s eyes unfocused, and he muttered words she didn’t understand. He crisply pronounced three more words. She couldn’t understand them, either, but she knew what they did. He waited five seconds and then reached into the pot. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a whitish-gray cake of salt. It was sorcery, he’d said.

  Responsibility shook her head in wonder. Of course, she knew sorcery existed. It was how winddrivers guided the Century Ships through the trackless reaches of the Endless Ocean. However, sorcerers were never risked on the Century Ships themselves. They stayed safe in the Grove, where their arts maintained the fleet.

  Avnai said he was a very weak sorcerer, but everyone in the Near Islands could do some. He had even promised to teach her. Had said she would surpass him. She wasn’t sure she believed that. This talent alone would have made him a rich man in the Grove, from all she’d heard people say.

  Her fingers trembled as he filled her wooden cup. The water was still slightly brackish, but easily safe to drink. She reached out and shook Zhad awake. “Are we there, yet?” he asked. He’d asked the same question on each of the previous five mornings.

  This time, Avnai said, “Almost.”

  Zhad drank his cup of water. Avnai collected the cups and secured them tightly in a leather bag.

  “It’s just about time we started up again,” he said.

  “I’ll never understand how you make a winddriver work without a sail,” said Zhad.

  “In fact, it’s a lot harder to make them work with a sail,” said Avnai. “The Consortium builds their own style of winddrivers without any sorcery at all.”

  “How exactly do you make a winddriver without sorcery? That’s like saying you can make music without sound.”

  “No, it isn’t, but I understand why you would think so. We in the Near Islands felt the same way before the Consortium allied with us.”

  “And what do you mean ‘allied?’” asked Zhad. “One minute you’re talking about the Consortium as if they’re your conquerors and the next you’re talking like they’re your friends. Which is it?”

  Avnai snorted. “It’s a bit of both. When Shaaliym fled, it was to escape the Consortium’s sneak attack. The Consortium believed it could conquer us outright. It’s how they prefer to do business when they can’t intimidate their neighbors into submission. It turned out the Near Islands weren’t as easy to conquer as all that. To make a very long story short, the Consortium needed peace but couldn’t afford to lose face. The kingdom was about to fall apart but was still determined to fight to the end. So we agreed to become an Allied State of the Consortium. This means we can no longer be the evil pirates of your legends because that would involve the Consortium in a war to protect us. On the other hand, it means we can manage our affairs more or less as we would like. For now.”

  “But if the Consortium doesn’t have what you call sorcery,” said Responsibility, “then how can they do all these things the rumors say they can?”

  “They simply know more than either of our peoples do about how the world works,” said Avnai. “What I’ve done to the winddriver is simply an application of what my Consortium instructors call the Laws of Motion. When you throw something backward very quickly, you move forward very quickly.”

  “But the winddriver doesn’t throw anything,” said Zhad.

  “Sure, it does. Air. Wind.”

  Zhad’s face was a study in puzzlement. “Then why do w
inddrivers work at all on the Century Ships? Shouldn’t they blow the ship back at the same speed they blow the sails forward?”

  “Yes, they should,” said Avnai. “And if you want my guess, that’s why the Consortium disfavors the study of sorcery so strongly. They don’t understand it. I don’t think your people understand it, either. However, if he knows the right Commands, a sorcerer can do wonders. All I’ve done is destroy the part of the spell that allows the winddriver to break that particular law of motion and turned it around. Whatever it is, it also stops the winddriver from working as well as it should. A winddriver that’s ‘broken’ like this can move a ship far faster than the old ones made by sorcerous rite.”

  Responsibility nodded. She’d never dreamed anything could move so fast.

  “Unfortunately,” Avnai continued, “it also burns the winddriver out after about a week, and then you need a new one. Oh, and you can’t turn it off once you’ve started it. Turning it down and defocusing it is the best you can do.”

  Responsibility swallowed. “We’ve been using this one five days.”

  “Don’t worry.” Avnai smiled and pointed. “I think we’ll make it.”

  Azriyqam gasped and her heart lifted. High above her, almost too high to see, were the wheeling, diaphanous shapes of kitewings, recognizable by their pointed bills and leathery wings. They could not live on the bare water. Land was near.

  “Now, hang on,” said Avnai.

  Responsibility and Zhad scrambled to obey.

  Avnai moved to the rear of the small craft, grabbed the tiller, and slid the lever of the winddriver back. The little boat surged forward. Responsibility kept her wings tightly tucked in, but the wind of their passage still pulled at them, as if begging her to open them and fly. She hunkered down, and she found herself drifting, as she had on the previous four days, into a semi-trance. Her eyes fixed on the line where the sea met the bottom of the cloudwall, distracted by the occasional fish scared into leaping out of the water.

  Which was why she was the first to see it. “Look,” she cried. “A mountain! Land!”

  “That’s not a mountain,” replied Avnai. “That’s the pinnacle of the Kreyntorm, the capital and fortress of the crown and throne of Evenmarch.” He gave a great whoop. “We’re home!”

  * * *

  By the time they entered Tranquility Bay, it was obvious to Responsibility that her brother—she could still hardly grasp the title—had told her a half-truth. Either that or he had forgotten what his own home looked like, for the whole Isle of Stormness was an enormous, terraced mountain rising out of the Endless Ocean. At the summit, looking as though it was hewn out of the rock itself, was the many-turreted fastness Avnai called the Kreyntorm.

  The bay itself was alive with ships. Responsibility could not keep from gaping at them. Not at the number, for she had seen more ships at countless ports of call, but at their size. Standing on the deck of a Century Ship, or, more often, confined to her nest, she had never before seen them up close. She was used to thinking of lesser ships as tiny affairs, hardly worth noticing. But now, in a boat so small that she could trail a wing in the water, they towered over her. Even the single-masted fishing boats looked large, but the three-, four-, and even six-masted traders were simply enormous.

  Sailors paused in their work and pointed at their little boat, shouting.

  Avnai did not pause to exchange words, or even glances. Instead, he drove straight for the docks jutting out into the bay like a set of blunt wooden teeth. The shoreline grew until Responsibility felt the arms of the beach might swallow her up like a vast monster. Avnai aimed for a particular quay at which a long, sleek ship was docked. There was a row of evenly spaced ports lining its sides, which Responsibility soon realized housed cannons. That one small ship held almost as many cannons as one whole side of Ekkaia.

  But there was little time to look at that. Avnai throttled the winddriver back to its minimum as blue-and-bronze-clad soldiers ran toward them.

  Every one of them has a gun, thought Responsibility. Guns were carefully kept and maintained aboard Ekkaia, and she had only seen Gun-Captain Imrad drill his men with them once a year.

  Avnai rose in the back of the boat and gave the jury-mounted winddriver two swift kicks. With a rending crack, the machine fell off the lifeboat and plummeted into the water. He stopped their progress by grabbing a stone post.

  “What are you doing, man?” demanded one of the soldiers, hand on the hilt of his sword. Responsibility saw he wore a different hat than the other men and carried himself like an officer. “Don’t you know these are the royal docks?”

  Her brother vaulted off the boat onto the pier, a bit unsteadily, and threw a loop of rope about the post. “I assuredly do know it, Lieutenant. That’s why I am here.”

  The lieutenant gaped for a moment, peering into Avnai’s unshaven face. Then he dropped to one knee, sweeping off his hat. “My Lord Crown Prince!” he exclaimed. His soldiers instantly stiffened to attention. “We thought you were lost!”

  “What is lost is found again, and more than you know.” He turned back to the boat. “Come, sister. Come, Zhad.” He gave each a hand onto the quay.

  Responsibility stepped onto the warm stones. Against all expectation, they seemed to heave and buck under her feet. She clutched at Avnai for balance and felt Zhad do likewise to her.

  “These two may be a while getting their land legs back,” said Avnai to the lieutenant.

  Land. She was on land. She’d never set foot on land all the days of her life. By standing very still, she was able to keep her balance.

  The lieutenant rose. “What are your orders, kyrion?”

  “I think we’d better get to the Kreyntorm at once, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant shouted orders, dispatched messengers. “Please come this way, my lord. The pavilion is not exactly prepared to receive you, but…”

  “But it’s not a rocking boat in the middle of the bloody-damned Ocean and there should be some food there,” Avnai finished for him. “Lead the way.”

  Responsibility and Zhad were shown into a long, low, white stone building surrounded by columns. Inside, the walls were waist-height, allowing the cool sea breeze to flow through. Responsibility sank into a cushioned couch and thought she might pass out from the comfort. From the low exclamation Zhad gave, she thought he agreed.

  Watered wine, cheese, flatbread, and fruit were shortly brought. “Careful now,” said Avnai. “I know it’s tempting, but too much food on an empty stomach could make you sick. Eat slowly.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Who’s on watch at the third aeyrie?”

  “That’s Knight-Commander Cooriarh today, sir.”

  “Very well. My compliments to the knight-commander and ask if he would favor us with transportation for myself, the Lady Azriyqam, and our friend Zhad.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. “The Lady Azriyqam?” he whispered. Going pale, he swept her a deep bow. “Kyria,” he said, reverently. “This is a great honor.” He hurried off to do Avnai’s bidding.

  “What was that all about?” asked Zhad, bemused.

  “I did tell you.” He grinned at Responsibility’s consternation. “Minor legend: everyone in the kingdom knows who you are, or at least who you were supposed to be.” He took a bite of bread and cheese and closed his eyes with pleasure.

  Reminded of the yawning cavern of her stomach, Responsibility followed suit. The cheese was sharp and creamy, unlike anything she’d had before. She picked up a reddish sphere with a waxy finish. It was almost too big for her to hold.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “An apple?” asked Avnai, surprised. “It’s a fruit. You eat it.”

  Fresh fruit. That was almost unheard-of aboard ship. Except for the rare berries that came out of Cana’s garden, fruit wasn’t something the Century Ship often traded for at the far-off ports, mostly just enough to provide a morale-boosting dessert for the Complement. Fruit would never keep throu
gh the years necessary to return to the Grove. She bit into the apple and moaned with pleasure. She had never tasted anything so crisp and sweet before in her life.

  It was indeed an effort to avoid stuffing herself, but she didn’t want to be sick. Sooner than she would have imagined, a sharp wind blew through the open pavilion. She looked up and froze.

  Outside, looking in the pavilion with great, green eyes, was an immense black dragon. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Avnai rose. “Come on,” he said, with a grin.

  “Responsibility,” said Zhad, standing, “what’s going on?”

  “If I were you,” said Responsibility, leading him to the door, “I’d be glad, just this once, that I couldn’t see.”

  As if in a dream, she stepped out into the sunlight. The dragon was a mountain of scale, horn, and bone. She’d never imagined how big. Shot through with silver filaments, its black armor seemed to drink in the daylight. How can something that big exist, let alone fly? This is what my mother looked like? Dead and absent gods, how can I even exist?

  “Good morning, Sir Cooriarh,” said Avnai.

  The dragon’s head lowered before him. “Good morning, Kyrion.” His voice was like immense and quiet thunder.

  “I was hoping you might favor us with a ride to the Kreyntorm, good sir knight. We have had a bit of a hard journey.”

  “And you think that entitles you to ride a dragon as though he were a horse?”

  Avnai swept an exaggerated bow. “Well, if it’s too much trouble for a knight as great as yourself…?”

  Responsibility was astonished to realize the expression on the dragon’s face was a smile.

  “If it were only you I would tell you to find a beast to carry your royal buttocks,” he said. “But for the honor of serving Princess Azriyqam…” She swallowed as those enormous emerald eyes fixed upon her. “Welcome home, little one. I am honored to serve you. Climb aboard, and I shall bear you to your proper place.”