Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

  “He is no better?” asked Tselah.

  “No, he grows steadily worse,” said Elazar. “Very slowly, but he will not recover until we can have him treated by one of our own master sorcerers.”

  “Then what shall we do?” asked Tselah. “If we sit on our hands and wait for your ships to find us, we may die at any moment. If we panic and abandon ship for no reason, we have lost everything!”

  Elazar turned to Azriyqam. “I am sorry, kyria, but we’re at the limit of my knowledge. Only your brother knows enough even to make a guess at such things.”

  Azriyqam bit her lip. “Do we dare to wake him?” Do we dare not to?

  “We must ask Merav. She’ll know better than either of us.”

  With a heavy heart, Azriyqam nodded. They excused themselves and trudged down to the sickroom where Avnai lay. There was nothing she wanted to do less than disturb her brother’s healing.

  But what choice do I have?

  Elazar brought Merav out of her trance. She looked up, irritable and tired. “He’s not stable for long,” she said. “Which of you is taking over?”

  “Merav, we need your advice,” said Azriyqam. “How dangerous would it be to wake him?”

  “Has the Void swallowed your wits? He’s using all his strength to remain stable. If you force him to wake now, there’s no telling what might happen. Why would you even consider it?”

  Azriyqam stumbled through her explanation of the aircraft that had sighted them.

  Merav’s lips firmed. “If you think the aircraft might have a radio, you should just assume that it does. That’s the most dangerous case, and you know it. Zhad says he could use some of these winddrivers and a boat to get us all home a lot faster than we are now, and that’s what we should do. If we want to save Crown Prince Avnai, that is.”

  “Of course, we want to save him, but we’re all a lot more likely to die if it comes to war with the Consortium. Avnai is the only one who knows what the Consortium can do.”

  Merav’s face set. “You cannot wake him. He’ll die.”

  Elazar asked, “He’ll die immediately or he’ll die faster than he is dying now?”

  Merav glared at him, but then she looked away. “He won’t die right away, no. But he’ll start slipping away faster, and I won’t be able to control it. If you excite him too much, I may not be able to stop the coughing. I may not even be able to put him back to sleep. If that happens, he may not last more than a day!” Her voice rose. “You cannot do this.”

  “We have to do this,” said Azriyqam. “If the Consortium succeeds in their attack, we’ll all die.”

  “You can’t make me,” said Merav. “The crown prince commands here, and he would not give any such order.”

  “Clearly, if the Princess Azriyqam gives that order, the crown prince does,” said Elazar, quietly emphasizing her title. “He left her in command if he should fall.”

  Azriyqam turned to him. “What should I do, Elazar?”

  He met her eyes. “I cannot advise you in this, Princess. It involves the future, which you alone may know better than we. If we are to be saved, all of us, even the crown prince, must bear the risk. I do not know which course is likely to save the kingdom and that is the choice that we are all—even him—bound to follow. It is not my place to decide this. It is his, and, by his command, yours. You are the blood of the Crown.”

  Azriyqam took a deep breath. She gazed on Avnai’s face, pallid and waxen, now. So different from the first time she had seen it, sunburned and alive, passing her and smiling grimly as he was marched off to face a slow, agonizing death in the Cage.

  “Wake him,” she said.

  “I won’t,” said Merav.

  “Merav, you fail in your duty,” said Elazar sternly. “And you break your oath of fealty to the Crown and Throne to defy your orders.”

  “Her orders?” shrieked Merav. “She’s the one who’s breaking an oath. She hasn’t even lived among us for a year! She’s risking everything, even her brother’s life, to save the filth on this worm-eaten garbage scow! She doesn’t care about him! Since she arrived it’s been nothing but ‘Azriyqam this’ and ‘Azriyqam that’ in the Kreyntorm. The Crown’s precious lost daughter returned, and she doesn’t even know anything about the kingdom or her own family!”

  She turned on Azriyqam, hatred blazing in her eyes. “Your father will never forgive you if you kill his heir. Do you think this ship is more important than him? Do you think you are? You think the Crown loves you, like he loves Avnai? I’ll tell him what you did! I’ll see he knows everything! And the Throne, too! I’ll see they both know that you threw away the life of the heir to the Crown just so you could save this vast boatload of garbage you call your home!”

  “Merav!” thundered Elazar. “You forget yourself and dishonor us all!”

  A haze of rage had descended on Azriyqam. After all this time, all the abuse and contempt she had suffered, and this soft, simpering bitch thought that she risked her brother’s life because of a secret, twisted loyalty to her former jailers.

  And yet, the rage did not take hold of her. She saw the fear behind Merav’s venom and the love for Avnai that fueled it. But despite that love, she did not know him at all.

  “Wake him,” she said, and her voice came out as clear and cold as diamond. “I order you in the name of the Crown and Throne, in his name, or be forsworn to your oath.”

  Merav went a pale pink. “Then be damned to you.” She spat a phrase of Command.

  Avnai’s eyes snapped open. For a moment, they were bright and clear, but then the pain of his wounds hit as he drew a labored breath. “Azriy, what’s happening?”

  She quickly explained to him all that had happened, concluding with the plane.

  “They have a radio on board those planes. All of them. They’ll be talking to the submarine.” A fit of coughing seized him. It seemed to go on forever, and when it passed, he needed several long, gasping breaths before he could say, “Get me the charts.”

  Azriyqam shouted for them, and it was another long wait before they were delivered. She laid out their position and what they knew. Levering himself painfully on one elbow, he gazed at them, not speaking.

  At last, he said. “We have a day. Perhaps a day. You can’t outrun the submarine.”

  “What about the carrier?”

  “Don’t know. Only as last resort,” he labored. “They want to preserve…” He took a long, shuddering breath. “Their scheme. Only submarine equipped for it. Will attack before we enter kingdom waters. Elazar will explain.” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “Radios. If only we had. Radio. Could call. For help. Of our own.” He subsided, breath coming in agonizing gasps.

  Merav moved forward, but Avnai’s eyes opened again. “Signal!” he gasped. “Smoke! Any way you can!” Then he collapsed into frightening stillness.

  Merav swore and began chanting Commands. Desperation and fear drove her words, but they came out steady and precise, with a vocabulary that Azriyqam couldn’t hope to follow.

  Finally, Merav’s urgency subsided. She paused in her chanting long enough to fix Azriyqam with a level stare. “I don’t know how badly you’ve hurt him,” she said. “If you do that again he will die.”

  “Merav,” began Elazar.

  “Shut up. I haven’t time for rebukes.” Merav sank back into her low chant.

  Azriyqam rose and pulled Elazar out the door, quietly. Then she cried softly while he held her.

  “Do not take her words too much to heart,” he murmured. “You did what you had to do. What he would have had you do. Whatever happens.”

  Azriyqam made herself nod. “What did he mean that the submarine would attack before we reached kingdom waters?”

  “If they allow us to enter the waters of the kingdom, their scheme fails. The treaty with the Consortium does allow us to act in self-defense, and a Century Ship would represent a potential invasion. We’d have the right to sink it. Their whole scheme depends on catching us attacking Ekkaia in the lawles
s wilds of the Endless Ocean, on which the Consortium claims the right to enforce peace upon its members and allies. If we do that, then we have broken our treaty of alliance and may be considered an enemy state. That is what the Consortium wants: the kingdom clearly guilty, with witnesses.”

  Azriyqam’s mind raced. “But if we had witnesses of our own. If kingdom ships, out on the Ocean, saw the attack and that it was done by the Consortium, not by dragons, then it would be our word against theirs.”

  Elazar nodded, but frowned. “It might be done. But the Ocean is vast. And according to the crown prince, we have less than a day before they catch us.”

  “Then we will have to use the time. Because Avnai is right. We need to make smoke.”

  And she was racing up the stairs of the forecastle.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 19

  The flat calm of the sea mocked Azriyqam with its emptiness.

  She knew she was being foolish. The pale gray column of smoke that unfurled like a broken pillar hadn’t been going for more than three hours. The chances that it had been sighted, much less responded to, in that time were almost nonexistent.

  She wanted—oh, how she wanted—to spiral up and up, over the sea, to see if there was anyone within sight. Perhaps if there were, she could even fly there and beg for help.

  A sudden commotion on deck drew her from her reverie. Men and women were gathered by the starboard gunwale calling for a rope. Had someone fallen overboard? Surely not. She would have heard that cry, and, given the Ekkaia’s present speed, a person falling from the front of the ship would have been swept aft far faster than a rope could have been paid out to sea level.

  She ran down to the deck to see what was happening. By the time she joined the growing crowd, Tselah was there, too, and Elazar.

  It was Water-Captain Tairen.

  His light-brown face was pale and shaken with his effort, trembling as he unlatched the hook-boots and claw-gloves used for hull-work. His thick, tightly curled hair stood out like a mist-soaked cloud. Azriyqam’s eyes widened as she realized the older man had actually climbed along the outside of Ekkaia’s hull just to get here.

  “Water-Captain Tairen,” said Tselah with a salute.

  “Tselah,” he said, rubbing his arms and wincing.

  “We didn’t expect a visit, obviously. Have you come to join us?”

  “Hardly, but I do think there are things we should discuss. In a more private venue, perhaps.”

  Tselah nodded. She looked around, and spotted Azriyqam. “Bring your man and meet me in my quarters.” She tapped a couple of her lieutenants as well.

  “How is Avnai?” Azriyqam asked Elazar, as they went to Tselah’s quarters.

  “Merav insists only she can undo the damage we did, whether it’s real knowledge or young precociousness that’s driving her to it. I’m not sure whether she deserves a medal or a thrashing.”

  “If Avnai lives, I’ll give her the medal. Though I suppose there’s no reason we couldn’t give her both.”

  When they arrived in Tselah’s cabin, Water-Captain Tairen went silent.

  “Tselah, when I said private, I meant that these matters should be discussed only among the Ship’s Complement.”

  Tselah shook her head. “No, I have reason to value these two and their opinions. Besides which, Responsibility was at one time part of the Ship’s Complement, was she not?”

  Tairen snorted. “Hardly.”

  “In any case, I will have their advice. You may have noticed that they have proven useful to us here.”

  “They supported your mutiny, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I mean that they helped to resist Haraad’s illegal exercise of power over a captain,” returned Tselah, her voice like steel.

  “All right,” said Tairen, raising a hand. “That’s not going to get us anywhere, and we both know it. If I could argue you out of this, I’d have already done so, and it’s too late for that now.”

  “Then why have you come?”

  Tairen’s mouth worked and his hands twitched, like a man trying to grasp an argument out of the air. Finally, he snarled, “Just what in the green hells of the sea are you doing, girl? And how are you doing it? We can see that you’ve done something to those winddrivers you have sticking out of the hull, and whatever it is, all of our winddrivers together are powerless to stop you. We’d understand if you’d turned us to spinward and home. That’s where you’d get justice for your father and where most of us wanted to go, anyway, but you’re taking us antispinward. Don’t you realize you’re taking us into pirate waters?” He glared at Azriyqam and Elazar.

  “Yes. We’re taking this Ship to Stormness and the Near Islands.”

  Tairen’s face fell into a grimace of disgust. “I never thought I’d see the day when one of your lineage would turn mutineer and traitor. What excuse do you have for committing the worst crime since the Mutiny of the First Fleet?”

  Tselah’s lieutenants looked uneasy, and Azriyqam tensed. She felt Elazar do the same. Even Tselah looked upset at this denunciation, but her face twisted in anger.

  “And what excuse do you have, you and Elam and the rest, for supporting Haraad when he had my father beaten to death? One of my lineage, as you say, a member of the Captains’ Council, and with no trial before an Officers’ Court. Flogged to death like any common crewman when his only crime was being wounded by an escaping prisoner.”

  “She was the one who wounded your father to his death,” said Tairen, pointing at Azriyqam. “Tried to kill him and the high captain both, and you invite her to this meeting and question our judgment?”

  Tselah looked at Azriyqam, and there was no love in her eyes, but she looked away and back on Tairen. When she spoke, her voice was like a dead thing. “She wounded my father in the thigh. Haraad she stabbed in the throat. Which of them was she trying to kill? Yet Haraad recovered, and my father died. Which of them was beaten?”

  “Tselah, he didn’t mean him to die. Your father was old—”

  “Then Haraad should have known better than to beat an old man like a dog!” shouted Tselah. “‘The high captain is responsible for the results of his actions!’ It’s our oldest law! And the rest of you let him get away with that, even though it was against all our law, because you knew the alternative and couldn’t bring yourselves to face it! You couldn’t take the responsibility to relieve the high captain!”

  “We were very close to relieving him,” he grated. “Just days ago we almost had the votes, and then you went and blew the rudders off the Ship! It’ll take another week to fix the damage those bombs of yours did. That convinced the doubters we had to stick with him, because you were more dangerous to us. You talk of our oldest laws: you damaged the Ship and turned our course toward pirate waters!”

  “It was the only way to save the Ship. The Consortium’s man proved himself in the duel. Ulzhe was a liar, and you should have acted accordingly.”

  “A lot of us thought so. That was how we were going to relieve Haraad. But the way it ended…Haraad convinced some that they’d killed each other, so the issue was still in doubt.” Tairen blinked. “You say he’s alive? The Consortium officer?”

  “Barely, but he lives.”

  He let out a slow breath. “That could change things. Or it could have if you hadn’t damaged the Ship.”

  “A curious point of view,” murmured Elazar. All eyes turned to him, as if the furniture had spoken. He spread his wings in a gesture rather like a man’s shrug. “A piece of wood is damaged, which can be repaired in a matter of weeks, and it stops you from relieving your high captain of duty. A man’s life is snuffed out on the same high captain’s whim, a life that was clearly of some value to you, which can never be replaced, and it does not motivate you to relieve him. I thought we were the piratical barbarians, and you the civilized men.”

  Tairen looked away.

  Tselah’s eyes lit, and she said, “If you had possessed the courage to relieve Haraad over what he did to my
father there would be no damaged rudders, and we would now be days away from Home. That I had to run to our enemies to save us from your high captain and get justice rather than find it where it should have been, do not blame me.”

  “We’re not going to get anywhere arguing blame,” Tairen muttered. “Haraad has the support he has. The only reason he hasn’t attacked yet is that Elam, myself, and some of the others are making sure he doesn’t launch a stupid, half-arsed attack like last time.” He raised his eyes. “But that means that when we come for you, there won’t be any quarter. We cannot allow the Ship to be commandeered by mutineers, no matter how that mutiny came about. Haraad will face judgment by the Captains’ Senate when we reach the Grove, but we can’t allow you to force his relief here and now, and we won’t let you take the Ship to our enemies. Obviously, I’m not giving you details, but in three days, you won’t have a chance.” He gave an exasperated sigh, then said, again, “Why did you have to run to the pirates?”

  Tselah gave Azriyqam a baleful stare, but she said, “Do you believe the Consortium officer or do you believe Ulzhe?”

  Tairen looked uncomfortable. “One man is dead, the other near death. They both could have been lying. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Tselah curled her lip. “Yet you decided to allow Haraad to go on anyway with his plans to find a dead man’s treasure and do nothing about it, even though you could have made him sail for Home.”

  “All he wanted was a few weeks. Besides, what does it matter? You have already changed our course. We’re further away now from this trap your officer spoke of than we were when you arrived. Even Haraad has calmed down. He’s listening to us and not trying to prod us forward before we’re ready. And we will be ready.”

  “Haraad is calm?” Azriyqam asked.

  “As calm as he ever gets,” said Tairen.

  “When did this miraculous change occur? This morning, when the airplane was spotted?”