Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

  “I am not refusing to listen. I am saying exactly what you told me to say! It’s just not working for me.”

  Senaatha’s lip curled. “Sorcery works for you as well as it works for anyone, when your mind and voice are clear. You can Command Union with the Theurge, plain enough. I thought better of you. You didn’t cry it was unfair when you faced Ambassador Celaeno in the dueling ring with far less time to study and prepare, but duels are fairer than sorcery. Their conditions are set and established by the combatants. The rules of sorcery have been discovered by long centuries of trial and error. Speak the wrong Command and your mind may be swallowed by the Void, from which there is no returning.”

  “I think I felt the Void trying to take me,” Azriyqam whispered.

  “No one feels the Void,” said Merav. “It takes you or it doesn’t.”

  Azriyqam glared at her. Mutual respect had tempered the younger halfdragon’s disdain for Azriyqam but hadn’t made her less patronizing.

  “And you’re not saying exactly the right words,” the younger halfdragon said. “You said ‘ssamatra nama.’ It has to be ‘ssamatra nam’a,’ with the glottal stop.”

  “When I want lessons from you I will ask!” Burning with shame, she retreated below deck. Senaatha called her name. Azriyqam ignored her, stalking toward her cabin.

  Running feet sounded behind her, and she walked faster. “Hey, Responsibility, wait a minute!”

  “Don’t call me that!” she snapped. “It’s not who I am!” She turned, and before she could stop herself, gripped Zhad’s cloak in her four strong fingers. “That name is not who I was ever supposed to be!”

  “Forgive me,” Zhad drawled. “I sometimes forget how hard your life has been.” He detached her fingers. “But I remember Responsibility was easier to talk to.”

  “Oh, Zhad, I’m just so tired of being so backward, and awkward and…and stupid!”

  “Yeah, that’s tough.” Zhad said, looking almost at her. Shame ate at her. She was a princess who had found her home. Zhad was still blind and now a refugee, even if one with a knighthood.

  “I’m sorry, Zhad,” she said in a small voice. She extended the leading edge of her wing to him: a long spar that would have been her middle finger were she a human.

  “Giving me the bird, eh?” he said, tugging her gently to her feet.

  “The bat is more like it,” she snorted.

  Thunder sounded above deck.

  “They’re letting Threlya fire real shot?” Zhad asked. “That’s new. Let’s go see.”

  Azriyqam emerged from the forward hatch to see Threlya sitting between the twin-mounted hundred-pounder rifles that made up half of Centennial Eclipse’s main armament.

  “Five degrees left,” Threlya called. The sailors manning the turret rotated it fractionally in the great iron ring set in the deck. “Clear!” They snapped down the heavy bolts, locking the guns in place.

  “Cover your ears,” Azriyqam told Zhad, doing likewise.

  “Firing!”

  The guns roared, and Azriyqam could see twin splashes as the massive shot skipped off the surface of the Great Ocean toward the Tidespinner ship. A faint, echoing crack sounded.

  “Drown me, she hit it!” muttered the master gunner. “That was supposed to be a warning shot. Reload with explosive shell!”

  “I’d say they were well and truly warned, then,” said Avnai, who was overseeing the operation. “At this distance, even our guns couldn’t hurt them too badly.” The gunners chuckled grimly at this.

  As two of the sailors helped her down from the turret, Threlya fixed Azriyqam with her thick, brass-rimmed lenses. “How goes the magic?”

  “Not as well as the gunnery.” The kingdom couldn’t recharge Threlya’s power-hungry warframe, and the Consortium flatly refused unless their “property” was returned. To conserve what remained, the kingdom’s engineers had built Threlya’s chair. Walking used the greatest part of the warframe’s power, but that only delayed the inevitable. Soon, Threlya would be completely helpless, and blinded as well.

  However, her vision used little power. She glanced over at the Tidespinner ship. “They’re not seriously damaged. We couldn’t hit them very hard at this range.”

  “The Tidespinners are proud folk,” said Avnai. “Always claimed they didn’t need dragons to take a Century Ship. Excellent fighters, but they’re still using broadside armament. Devastating at close range, but our twin turret mounts out-range theirs and have far more power. As long as we can outrun them, we don’t have to worry about a fleet of Tidespinners.”

  “And can we outrun them?” asked Azriyqam.

  Avnai grinned wolfishly. “The Centennial Eclipse was built for speed and power. Altogether a fitting vessel for a ruler of the dreaded Free Navies!” Which was also the reason for the thickly armored pilothouse between the two gun-mounts as well. No enemy short of the Consortium could breach that.

  “Why are they here?”

  “To show their power. The Tidespinners’ waters are a few hundred miles antispinward of our course to Suncliffs. They’re telling us they can intercept us, and they don’t like us going there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because without our support, they could easily have conquered it before the Consortium forced us all into their Pax. It’s a rich trading port, and they want it. Not that Father and the Throne would ever have let them; it’s their favorite winter retreat. I can hardly wait to show it to you.”

  Azriyqam turned her head at a soft footstep, grateful for the distraction, but only temporarily.

  Merav said, “Senaatha wants you. Now.”

  Azriyqam forced herself to walk back to face the placid gaze of the dragon.

  “Tell me,” Senaatha said. “Do you walk away from Elazar when he calls you?”

  Shame welled up in Azriyqam. “No, kyria,” she confessed.

  “You trusted him with your life. The art of sorcery requires that trust and obedience to me. If you cannot give it, then I cannot in honor teach you or ask anyone else to. Can you give it or not?”

  Azriyqam swallowed. “Yes, Senaatha.”

  “Good. We continue. Merav, speak the Commands.”

  Merav stepped into the warding circle, spun several times to confuse her sense of direction, and spoke the Command of Union. “Naidin vragatha nasth’a!”

  What was that? thought Azriyqam.

  Senaatha’s head snapped up and she hissed a curse. Simultaneously, Merav stiffened and took to the air in a wild beat of wings, her eyes wide and staring.

  “Kreykah Merav’u Verfaaln!” Senaatha’s Countermand killed Merav’s Command, and the dragon plucked her student out of the air with two strong arms.

  “You do not ever speak a Command I have not authorized!” Senaatha said, shaking Merav in her anger. “You have no idea what forces you are playing with! ‘Find our enemies?’”

  “Senaatha, please—” Merav’s eyes were wide and staring, her voice a frightened child’s.

  “You dare plead with me? Plead the Theurge to forgive your pride and foolishness, and on the day you draw a mind back from the Void, then I will listen to your pleas.”

  “Senaatha, please,” the girl repeated. “They’re everywhere.”

  Senaatha dropped Merav to the deck. “Who are everywhere?”

  “Our enemies.” Merav was shaking, looking wildly about. “All around us. Everywhere.”

  The ship lurched.

  “Beat to quarters!” Senaatha cried. “Captain Benjai! Sound beat to quarters!”

  “Beat to quarters!” Captain Benjai echoed the command from the quarterdeck without hesitation.

  Drums stuttered to life, but under them, echoing through the hull, a deep, arrhythmic scrabbling surged up the sides of the ship.

  “Boarders! Repel boarders!” snarled the captain.

  Blue-black claws hooked over the sides of the ship. Sailors with axes, cutlasses, and pistols raced for the railings. Steel cut at rock-hard chitin and left only inconsequential
chips. The invaders heaved their bulks over the sides.

  For a moment, Azriyqam couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. Nightmare shapes climbed onto the deck, all horns and claws topped by pale faces and spear-wielding arms. Each invader had a dozen limbs and where they struck, sailors fell.

  “Get to the pilothouse!” Senaatha shouted then composed herself as if no battle raged about her, preparing a Command. Avnai sprang before them in an instant, omnisword raised. An invader cried out in a glottal, liquid tongue and pointed at him. Three of the nearest invaders raised thin tubes of metal and there was a flutter of motion through the air. Avnai’s chest and arms sprouted three thin, finned darts. He cried out, more in dismay than in pain at the superficial wounds, but staggered, unable to hold his sword aloft.

  Poison, Azriyqam thought.

  Senaatha’s eyes opened. She spat a Command too intricate for Azriyqam to follow, and laid her hands on Avnai. Immediately, he straightened and slashed a hand from the nearest dart-shooter. The others fell back.

  Two more darts hit Avnai and he retreated, plucking them from his skin and swearing. “Get inside, go!”

  More darts whizzed through the air. Azriyqam ran for the pilothouse, followed by Merav and Senaatha. The assailants closing on them shifted their aim: two darts struck Senaatha. She plucked one from her bolero, stared at the tiny wound, began a Command, then fell bonelessly to the deck.

  By her side, Merav screeched rage and stepped forward. “Zharai nyarderi tsyl!”

  The nearest invader convulsed, every muscle spasming. It fell and writhed on the deck in two pieces.

  Now Azriyqam could see what it was. From the waist up, the twitching boarder was a muscular man with skin the color of winter ice. Long, hairy ribbons flowed from his scalp. From the waist down, six blue-black tentacles grasped for the deck. He was clad in a light coat of chitinous, spiked plates. He had fallen from a mount at least twice his size: a giant crab with chitin the color of its rider’s tentacles. As Azriyqam stared, the fallen rider stopped shaking and shot a dart. It whipped past Azriyqam’s ear. The next two darts, shot by steadier hands, did not miss, and Merav cried out, falling next to her teacher.

  Two dozen raiders surged over the deck with more following behind. They swarmed the huge deck guns. Those without the dart-throwers wielded two-handed spears. The pistols of the Centennial Eclipse’s crew stuttered erratically, dropping some of the crab riders, but shots only bounced off the tough shells of their mounts.

  “Your Highness! In! Now!” Captain Benjai was holding open the iron-bound door, beckoning frantically.

  Azriyqam couldn’t locate Zhad.

  A brass-limned form streaked into her vision. Threlya was out of her chair, using her waning power to save herself. A crab shape moved to intercept her, snatching out with a gripping claw. She caught it and twisted viciously with the full strength of her warframe. The crack of chitin echoed, and her foe flopped on the deck, throwing its rider. Then Threlya was past her and into the pilothouse.

  “Azriy, go!” Avnai’s voice rose above the din of combat. Her brother planted himself between her and the door. She turned and ran past him, diving for the opening. She got one last glimpse of him facing two crab riders. One stabbed at him with an obsidian-tipped spear. Avnai knocked the shaft aside with his foreblade, stepping inside his foe’s front pincers. He brought the omnisword’s pommel spike down at the base of one of the crab mount’s stalked eyes. It pitched forward reflexively, and he whipped the long, forward-curved point of the sword up between the rider’s ribs. Behind him, his other foe raised a spear to strike.

  Captain Benjai slammed the heavy door with the help of two sailors and darkness fell.

  After the bright daylight of the Endless Ocean, the gundeck was utter darkness. Azriyqam fumbled her way to an armored viewing port and pushed it open just in time to see Avnai backing toward her, his naked omnisword held with its forward-curved blade low and deadly. The foe formed a semicircle around him.

  “What are those things?” asked Threlya.

  “Sea People,” answered Captain Benjai. “What the hell have we ever done to them, I’d like to know!”

  “Respy,” muttered Zhad, urgently. “What just hit us?”

  He was here. Relief swept through her. “Some sort of crab-riding warriors with tentacles for legs and long red hair.”

  “That isn’t hair; it’s gills,” Benjai said. “How the hells are they even breathing? It’s not possible.”

  Azriyqam thought she knew how it was possible. Sorcery. Strong sorcery. Senaatha. Merav. “Are they dead? The ones hit by those darts?”

  “Who could know?” Benjai swallowed and faced her, a professional controlling his fear and bewilderment. “It doesn’t make sense, Your Highness. The Sea People don’t attack land-dwellers. There’s no reason for it.”

  “Could this be a declaration of war? Crippling our navy before trying to invade the land?” Threlya asked. It was the kind of thing the Consortium might have tried, after all.

  “We’d have as much luck invading the sea floor. Even if they could do it, how would they hold it?”

  “Perhaps our ship disturbed them somehow,” Zhad offered. “Did we sail above their sacred burial grounds or something?”

  Benjai’s face twisted. “How would they bury something in the sea? How would our passage disturb them any more than theirs beneath the surface disturbs us?” He paused, glanced at a sailor. “Look to port and see what’s happening with the Spinnies.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Perhaps it’s simple piracy,” said Threlya. “The Consortium trades with them. Luxuries mostly. Shellfish and pearls in exchange for fruits and glass. Perhaps they want to plunder us.”

  Benjai’s eyes narrowed. “Then what are they waiting for? They’d have to chop holes through the deck to get those crabs of theirs down our hatches. Those tentacles can’t haul them about on land. We can swim better than they can walk and they know it. I never knew they had cavalry.”

  “Skipper, the Spinny ship is closing, fast!”

  “No crabs on their deck?”

  “Too far away to tell, sir, but they don’t seem to be fighting anyone.”

  “That doesn’t seem like coincidence to me,” Captain Benjai growled. “Hard a-starboard! Show ‘em our tail!”

  The sailing master turned the ship’s wheel and stopped. “She won’t answer!”

  Captain Benjai tried to turn the wheel himself and swore. “Jammed. From under the water, most like.”

  A guttural shout sounded from outside. Azriyqam looked to the window. A rapid clattering told her that Threlya was doing the same at the adjacent port. A large Sea People male—a Sea Lord?—white-skinned, with his long gills threaded through an elaborately carved coral helm sat astride his mount shouting orders. In response, an even larger warrior fixed his eyes on Avnai and charged in a windmill of claws and legs.

  A shining, black claw punched at Avnai, who dodged and shore into it with his blade. It opened and snapped back. Another claw thrust out, grabbing. Avnai’s omnisword flashed again, piercing the joint. Clear fluid spurted and a guttural clicking cry sounded. The claw was wrenched back, and the crab fell heavily to the deck, spilling his rider.

  A female crab rider charged, blocking Avnai’s attempt to finish off his fallen enemy. Her blade flashed at Avnai’s head. He reversed his omnisword to catch the descending sword on his pommel blade and levered his own long blade up, sliding its wicked point beneath her ribs. The warrior screamed once and fell dead.

  Avnai stepped back. A dart flashed into him, but with their poison neutralized, those weapons were too light to do more than sting. Avnai plucked it from his shoulder and hurled it contemptuously at the leader who had ordered the attack. The dart fell short, but the message was plain.

  The Sea Lord urged his crab forward. Unlike his warriors, he held a sword of gleaming metal, almost as light as an airsword.

  The two combatants circled one another. Azriyqam felt an odd deta
chment from the scene. He’s not really courting death out there, is he?

  The Sea Lord steered his mount expertly, each tentacle wrapped around an upper limb of the great crab. His thin blade flicked out together with the striking claws of his mount.

  Avnai twisted aside, impaling a claw on the pommel blade of his omnisword. Then he sliced upward at the Sea Lord, who danced back.

  They’re slow, Azriyqam realized. The Sea People had learned to fight in water not on land, where the thin air gave humans what must be, to them, blurring speed. The Sea Lord’s moves were powerful, but deliberate. Only his thin sword was fast.

  He steered his mount aside and attacked again. This time, Avnai closed, avoiding the claw’s grasp and meeting his foe’s blade. The Sea Lord parried and gave ground, but his mount’s claw swept backward, knocking Avnai’s feet from under him. The Sea Lord pounced, stabbing down. Avnai rolled away and cut upward. The Sea Lord hissed. A line of dark blood ran from his arm. His face darkened to almost the same color as he recoiled, allowing Avnai to leap to his feet. The Sea Lord roared a command and swept his blade forward.

  The Sea Folk charged in a mass. Avnai turned and leapt for the sloping sides of the pilothouse, scrambling upward, just ahead of the spearpoints. At least three of them tried to follow him up, but they fell back, reeling from the blows of Avnai’s sword.

  They can’t reach him up there, Azriyqam realized. From that high ground, Avnai’s sword gave him an advantage they couldn’t match. The chitinous claws that could pull them up the ship’s wooden sides could find no purchase on the iron-sheathed pilothouse. They made a sound like the screaming of mechanical souls in hell as they tried.

  Suddenly, at a shout from their leader, they shifted tactics. Two of the warriors fastened their steeds’ claws on the door and pulled at it. The thick iron bolt securing the door did not give, but the sound of stressed metal reached them from the outside. A thin line of light appeared at the edge of the sealed portal.

  Then two sharp reports sounded, and the two crab-riders swayed and dropped, shot through by Avnai’s Consortium-issued service revolver. The Sea Folk gave back, horrified, but their lord stopped them with a shout, then he fixed his eyes upward over Azriyqam’s head, where her brother must have been standing.