Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

  He spoke. “A-a-a’vnai. Mo’shaiu. Pa-a-a’rley.”

  The voice was like no accent Azriyqam had ever heard. It was glottal, almost a gargle. She looked at Threlya and at Captain Benjai. They had called him by name. They knew he was here.

  Above their heads, Avnai raised his voice. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. Who are you and what is the meaning of this unprovoked attack?”

  The Sea Lord spoke slowly, struggling to form the foreign words in air: “Sur-render. And you have. My word you. Will be unharmed. I, Glarai’qa, Warmaster of Unan, swear it.”

  “You see I am immune to your poison. How, then, can you take us prisoner, except by drowning us?”

  “We are. Not your captors. You are. For the other humans. The Spinners of the Tides.” He chuckled as if the name were a joke. “Rejoice, Prince of Dragons. They come to rescue you. From evil, evil Sea People.”

  “So,” said Captain Benjai. Azriyqam tore her gaze away from the Sea Lord and looked out the portside opening. The Tidespinner ship was indeed bearing down on them.

  Avnai’s reply, however, was calm. “What have the Tidespinners offered you that you should spill your blood on their behalf in our unwelcoming realm?”

  For answer, the Sea Lord drew from behind his back a thin rapier with a black blade. “Me-tal.”

  Azriyqam blinked. Of course. Forging metal would be difficult, if not impossible, for these people, permanently denied access to fire.

  Avnai said carefully, “I see. If they rescue us from you, they can hold us as guests for ransom, and never appear to violate the Pax. You know, the Crown and Throne of Evenmarch could give you metal. More than the Tidespinners could. As well as a stronger alliance. If we were left unharmed and allowed to go.”

  The Sea Lord grinned. “Perhaps. Or not. Even so, one’s allies. Should not be. Too strong. And one should not. Break one’s word. Except at great need. And you. Are already defeated.”

  “Am I? I can shoot you down where you stand. Unless you leave now.”

  The Sea Lord laughed, a wet, clapping sound. “A small weapon. To defend so large a ship. You would have. Used it before now. If you could shoot us all.”

  “I can shoot the next person to touch that door. Who will your next volunteer be? Besides, I have more warriors in this castle, beyond your reach.” He brought his heel down on the armored roof. “They are preparing a counterstrike you do not wish to meet. Leave now.”

  Azriyqam couldn’t hold her audible gasp.

  Threlya whispered urgently, “Don’t queer his bluff.”

  “Can you do anything?” Azriyqam whispered back.

  “Not anymore,” said Threlya, in a strange voice. She swayed, then stiffened. “I-I’ve lost power to my legs.”

  “I think I have other methods of persuasion,” returned the Sea Lord. He called out in rapid sentence of gutturals. A warrior came forward. In her grasp hung Merav, a bone knife at her throat. Her wings and legs twitched uncontrollably from the effects of the dart toxin, but her face was alive with controlled terror. “Now come out. Or I shall kill your people.”

  “You said one should not break one’s word,” Avnai answered.

  “You have not. Surrendered,” smiled the Sea Lord.

  Azriyqam’s breath caught in horror. Through the tiny firing-slit, Merav’s bulging eyes fixed on her and her lips formed silent words.

  What was she saying?

  Avnai’s voice hardened. “You have already broken oath once. Why should we give ourselves up to easy slaughter?”

  “If you do not. Surrender I. Surely will.” He gestured. The knife began to draw a slow line of blood across Merav’s throat. She croaked but mouthed more frantically at Azriyqam, but Azriyqam was helpless to make it out.

  “The Crown and Throne of Evenmarch,” said Avnai, “do not pay ransom. It only encourages the honorless to prey on us. We will not do this.”

  “No!” the word burst from Azriyqam’s throat in a cry. “Avnai, you can’t let them.”

  “I can!” roared Avnai, and for that instant his voice was their father’s. “It is not my doing, but theirs. This is the Crown’s law, which I am sworn to uphold.” Azriyqam shrank back, silenced. “What we do instead,” he went on, “is take a terrible vengeance on those who would dare assault our persons. The dragons and their riders of Evenmarch, not to mention their navies, are very good at that.”

  The Sea Lord laughed again. “We do not fear your. Vengeance. What good is dragon fire. Beneath the sea?” He gestured again. The knife bit deeper into Merav’s throat. Merav was still frantically shaping words, even if it got her killed. Azriyqam didn’t understand.

  The Sea Lord dropped his hand. “As well. When the other humans come. There will be enough. To pry you out. Without loss. Or they can tow you.”

  He withdrew into his warriors.

  Captain Benjai’s voice cut through the stillness. “Matthai, Nathan. We’re barricading the door. All we have, now.” All three men leapt to work.

  “Why bother?” said Azriyqam, bitterly. “We’re going to be captured anyway, and Father’s not going to ransom us, he said.”

  The captain didn’t stop moving. “Beg your pardon, Highness, but he very well may. Your brother is hoping to convince our Sea People pirates otherwise.”

  “Then why did he risk getting Merav killed?”

  Captain Benjai stopped and fixed her with piercing eyes. “It’s not your place to ask that, Highness, nor is it mine. Ours is to obey, and that’s what I will do.” He paused, and then said, in a slightly softer tone, “Permission to speak freely, Highness?”

  He was asking her permission? She nodded.

  “If he backed down before that threat, he’d lose his last chance of negotiating our release at all. You didn’t grow up to the House of Evenmarch or you’d understand, but that young man up there is our next Crown. While he’s on this ship, he’s our lord. Everything he does today will be remembered on the day he mounts the Dragon Throne, and not just by us, his people, and he knows it. Right now, he’s on the verge of an illegal war with the Tidespinners and these Sea People, and if he plays it even a bit wrong many people die. More than just we on this ship. So, if he thinks preventing that means a few of us—any of us—die, then that’s his prerogative.” He took a deep breath. “As well as his responsibility, Dead and Nameless Gods help him. So, I follow him, to keep that burden from getting heavier, and so should you.” He went back to heaving the barrels, leaving Azriyqam’s head spinning.

  After a while, she heard Avnai’s voice, farther away. Had he climbed into the rigging? He said, “Your sorcery must be powerful, Sea Lord, to allow you to breathe our air, and yet they could not stop ours from immunizing me against your poisons.”

  What was Avnai talking about? Then Azriyqam felt her eyes go wide with recognition. Of course. If Senaatha had died, then her Command would have died also. Or was Senaatha skilled enough to have made her protection permanent in such a short time? Azriyqam thought not. Merav was alive. All of them were alive, probably. But why was he drawing their attention to that?

  He continued. “Are you quite confident in their abilities? If their attention should waver, I would hate to think how many of you would suffocate, gasping like beached fish on our decks.”

  “Aye,” said Captain Benjai, grunting with effort. “If we had one sorceress left to fight them, they’d never survive. Must’ve got them all before they could figure it out. Centennial Eclipse could blow that Tidespinner hulk out of the water before its own guns could touch us.”

  “That Tidespinner hulk is closing fast,” Threlya said, “and we do have a sorceress.” They looked toward Azriyqam.

  “I’m not a sorceress!” she protested. “Haven’t you listened to me? To Senaatha? I can barely establish Union! All my Commands fail!”

  “No, your Commands go wrong,” said Zhad. “You fail because you mispronounce the words.”

  “What does it matter why they fail?” said Azriyqam. “If Merav were here you�
�d have a sorceress, maybe.” She felt her throat close up. “She even…she tried to tell me something while they were holding her, and I couldn’t even make it out! What kind of sorceress can I be if I can’t even understand what another one is saying?”

  “She was trying to tell you something?” asked Threlya. “Wait.” She went utterly still, and Azriyqam knew she was replaying her recorded vision. Then, “What does ‘kry kah fer fallen’ mean?”

  Before Azriyqam could answer, Zhad said, “‘Kreykah Verfaaln.’ It means ‘End Sorcery.’ Senaatha used it on Merav right before the attack.”

  Azriyqam stared at him. “That was perfect. How—”

  Zhad scoffed. “Do you think I haven’t been listening to what you do in practice?”

  “That would disrupt the Sea Folk’s breathing. That’s what she must have meant, but it wouldn’t be strong enough to counter real sorcerers.”

  “You might be,” Zhad said. “One of Senaatha’s first lessons was that countermanding is easier than commanding. The only question is why didn’t Merav do it?”

  “She probably can’t talk yet,” Threlya said. “The toxin they used was strong. Even I could barely make out her words.”

  “But Zhad, we train with a Warding Circle inscribed on the floor. It strengthens Countermands. We don’t have one here, and I can’t reproduce it.”

  “I can,” said Threlya. “I’ve watched you practice, too. I still have power for my hands and eyes. Distance is on your side, too. Sorcery is harder at a distance. You’re here, the Sea Folk sorcerer isn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because no one risks their sorcerers in battle,” growled Captain Benjai. “Not unless they must. Theirs are probably several fathoms beneath us. Dead and Nameless gods, we have a chance.”

  “Help me down,” said Threlya. She unlocked her legs and Benjai eased her to the floor. With a bit of chalk from the Sailing Master’s pouch, she began to sketch.

  “But I can’t pronounce the Countermand,” said Azriyqam.

  “That’s because you’re not really listening,” said Zhad. “You keep trying to say the words your way, not Senaatha’s way.”

  “I listen!” she shouted.

  “But you say them wrong!” Zhad shouted back. “Now repeat them after me.”

  While Threlya drew, Azriyqam practiced. After two dozen repetitions, even Zhad gave up, and tears streamed down her face. “I don’t hear any difference. I’m saying the same thing you are.”

  “You’re not.” He shook his head. “But I can’t explain why not.”

  “Then you say the words,” Threlya said.

  “I haven’t been granted Union.”

  “Azriyqam didn’t have to draw the circle,” said Threlya. “Why does she have to speak the Countermand?”

  “Sorcerers always speak their own Commands,” protested Azriyqam.

  “You Command Union,” said Zhad. “You say that one correctly. That’s always the first Command. What if you Command the Theurge to listen to me?”

  “I’ve never heard of that being done. If I do it wrong the Void could swallow both of us.”

  Zhad cocked his head at the door. “I’d rather trust our skill than these Sea Folk.”

  She nodded and sat in the circle. Zhad took a position behind her. She spoke the First Command: “Thystur klishain…Zhad’u.”

  She was drowning again. Drowning in the cold saltwater. Then a voice pierced the waters.

  “Kreykah Verfaaln!”

  Her eyes snapped open at the sound of Zhad’s voice, Union lost.

  Nothing. Nothing at all. Azriyqam turned helpless eyes to her friends.

  Then a series of impacts sounded on the deck outside, like a rain of soft boulders. There was an ululating cry that dissolved into a whimper.

  Azriyqam ran to the firing-slit, with the captain only a step behind. The great crabs scuttled aimlessly about the deck; their riders fallen and insensate.

  “Move!” the captain yelled. “This isn’t over!” He and his sailors attacked the barricade, throwing it aside. Benjai and a mate heaved Threlya up, staggering under the weight of the warframe while his men wrestled the door open.

  They burst into daylight. Avnai landed beside them.

  Crabs were everywhere, waving their claws. The Sea Folk lay where they had fallen, white bodies turning blue and cold. Glari’qa’s was not among them. All around them a few unpoisoned sailors were getting to their feet.

  To starboard, the Tidespinner man o’war swelled. Far bigger than Centennial Eclipse, it was closing rapidly.

  “Get me to a gun!” cried Threlya.

  “You man the rear turret, we’ll take the fore!” cried Avnai, and took Threlya’s weight from the captain.

  “Aye!” yelled Benjai, gathering men to him as he raced aft. Azriyqam followed Avnai and the mate forward and they placed Threlya in the gunner’s chair.

  The Tidespinner ship was turning her broadside toward them. They know their plan has failed. They have to wipe us out now, make sure we’re never found. Of course, that cuts both ways. “Twenty degrees right!” called Threlya. “Elevate ten degrees! A little more. Back down three. Clear!”

  Azriyqam, Zhad, and Avnai leapt away.

  “Fire!”

  The two one-hundred-pound rifles spoke as one, and the thunder drove spikes of pain into Azriyqam’s ears. The explosive shells struck the Tidespinner vessel amidships, erupting in a fireball of splinters and wood. The aft turret fired thirty seconds later, and the enemy ship broke apart, burning timbers and sailcloth before sliding into the sea.

  Azriyqam sat dazed among the bodies of the Sea People. Merav. Where is Merav? She scrambled to her feet, searching the deck. Near the helm, she found the young halfdragon, dumped unceremoniously over Senaatha. Both were twitching. They were alive.

  She sat the young woman up.

  “You…did it,” Merav gasped, her voice still slurred from the Sea Folk toxin. Azriyqam could barely hear her through the ringing in her ears. “Didn’t…think you…could. But had to try.”

  “I never could have without you,” said Azriyqam. “Or Threlya. Or Zhad. Merav, could you…please teach me? How you Command?”

  She managed a half-smile. “Are you actually…going to listen?”

  “Yes,” Azriyqam said. She shook her head. “As soon as I can hear properly again.”

  “I th-think even Senaatha will want to take a break for t-today.”

  The two halfdragons clasped each other’s fingers and rested.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9

  Like a ghost, Azriyqam prowled the deserted corridors of the Kreyntorm.

  On the Century Ship where she’d been raised, ghosts were the malign spirits of the drowned who wanted nothing more than to drag more living souls into the eternal embrace of the Endless Ocean.

  But here, in the towering fortress-home of her family, Azriyqam felt like a strange, mirror-image of a ghost who was frightened for the living, but powerless to protect them. It was the third morning she had woken early, the third morning since the Centennial Eclipse had brought them back from Suncliffs. Suncliffs, where for several months it had almost been possible to forget the abortive attack by the Tidespinners and their Sea People mercenaries. She wished with all her heart that they were still there, as frightening as it had been to see this land that technically belonged to her. Here at home, a gnawing unease would not let her rest.

  She stepped onto the railing of the nearest balcony and hurled herself off.

  She flung out her arms, and her wings caught the air with a painful snap of membrane and muscle, but while the exhilaration of flight made her feel more alive and less ghostly, it did nothing to calm her. She landed on a lower balcony of the adjoining tower.

  You know what’s wrong, she told herself, he’s leaving, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Today, Avnai returned to his service in the Navy of the Consortium, and she could not shake the feeling that he was in danger. Sh
e found herself walking toward her father’s apartments. Outside the door to his solar, two guards stood silently.

  Guards? At this time of morning? She approached. “Is Father awake already?” she asked the elder of the guards.

  “Kyria, the Crown has given orders that he not be disturbed.”

  “Even by me?”

  “By anyone, kyria. He was quite firm about it.”

  Azriyqam’s sense of unease grew, but she did not know where it came from. It was her father’s palace, after all, and she knew the guards by sight if not by name.

  Danger. She knew it without knowing how.

  The parlor next to the Crown’s solar was empty, with a view of the pale aurora piercing the cloudwall. She faced the thick wall that separated her from her father. It was time to put her hard-learned lessons into practice. For a moment, she hesitated. If her father caught her, he might be very angry. But, she reasoned, if her father had been so anxious to prevent her sorcery, he really should have had a halfdragon guarding his chambers.

  She invoked the Command of Union. She braced herself for the sensation of drowning, but none came. Whatever caused the strange hallucinations, they were becoming less frequent, and Senaatha had no explanation for that, either. Instead, Azriyqam felt only the Theurge listening to her. She spoke a Command, careful of her pronunciation. Long hours of listening to Merav at Suncliffs, and on the voyage back, hard as they had been, had allowed her to make true progress in her sorcery. There was a moment of resistance and she faced an instant of doubt. Then the wall became transparent as glass. No, as air.

  Her father faced her brother across his ornate writing desk. Avnai already wore the blue uniform of the Consortium Navy, and the two men stared at each other with cold intensity.

  “…asked the best sorcerers we have to look at her and you think I don’t care?” her father was saying. “Every one of them tells me they’re more likely to kill her than to save her.”