The Shamer's War

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “Dina?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did he hit you?”

  I had almost forgotten about that. But as soon as Rose mentioned it, my cheek stung all over again at the memory, and I remembered the way Davin had looked at me. Never do that again. Ever!

  “How did you know about that?”

  “It showed. And Nico asked. Nico asked me if I knew what was wrong between the two of you.”

  What is wrong, I thought to myself, what is wrong is that my brother can’t stand the fact that Sezuan is my father. Also, you probably shouldn’t have tricked him, insisted a small inner voice I didn’t want to listen to.

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  I hadn’t even realized that I had said the words out loud before Rose answered, “I never said you did.”

  But I had done something. Without thinking. Almost without wanting to. It was just that I wanted Davin to stay on the pier. I wanted him to look the other way while I sneaked aboard the Sea Wolf. It wasn’t as if I had forced him to look into my eyes and used the Shamer’s voice on him, or something like that. I hadn’t really done anything… and yet I had.

  It was a slippery thing, the serpent gift. It didn’t wait for you to make up your mind whether or not you wanted it. It didn’t even wait for you to decide that you meant to use it. Wanting something was enough.

  Wanting. I would have to be careful about that in the future.

  I wasn’t angry at Davin anymore. I just felt miserable. I would have liked to tell him I was sorry, but that was not exactly possible right now. The Sea Wolf had left Farness Bay, and I didn’t know whether I would ever see my brother again.

  Callan came back with the Harbormaster and two other men at his heels.

  “Go back to the yard, girls,” he said.

  “Why?” I said. “What are you going to do?”

  Callan hesitated for a moment.

  “We will try to catch them,” he said. “The Sea Wolf is not slow, but the Master’s own ship is faster. We shall catch them, never ye worry.”

  “I want to come.”

  “No. Better ye stay here. A ship like this is no place for a lass.”

  But I was not going to be put off like that. I didn’t want to be stuck here, worrying and waiting.

  “Callan. I want to come.”

  Usually, people did what Callan told them to do. Even grown men did as they were bid without a second thought when it was Callan doing the bidding. But when it came to Mama and me, I wasn’t sure why, but he seemed to have a soft spot.

  He was looking at me now. And more than that. He was letting me have my way.

  “Come, then,” he said. “If ye must. Rose too. But quick. And stay out of the way of the crew.”

  I could tell the other men were surprised. One of them grinned.

  “Are ye making this a ladies’ trip, Kensie? Not so sure I want to come, then.”

  Callan looked him up and down. “Tell me one thing, Malvin. Can ye stop six hundred fighting men with a word?”

  The man looked properly confused. “I cannot say that I can. Why?”

  “Because Dina can. So if ye make me choose, Malvin, I take the lass.”

  Malvin opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked at me sideways, as if he was trying to work out what was so special about me. But he didn’t say anything after that.

  “Go below,” said Callan. “They have a pretty lead. It will be many hours before we catch up.”

  “I know that.”

  “Go below, then. Ye’re cold.”

  I shook my head. Not because I wasn’t cold—my teeth were chattering. But down in the cabin I would not be able to see what at least I could see now, despite the darkness and the wildness of the weather: a glimpse, every now and then, of the stern light ahead of us.

  A stiff wind blew from the northwest almost straight into our faces, so that we had to cross against the wind. The Harbormaster and his crew were busy, and the Swallow leaped and heaved, leaped and heaved, dancing from wave top to wave top.

  The light in front of us winked out. It was not the first time I had lost sight of it. The sea was choppy and wild, and sometimes the blackness of a rock spur hid it from view. But this time it didn’t reappear. I clutched at the gunwale until my fingers hurt, but still there was nothing to see except dark sea, dark sky, and a few thin slivers of moonlight that escaped the clouds.

  “Callan!”

  “Aye,” he said. “I saw.”

  “What happened?” What if they had hit a rock? What if they—In my mind’s eye, people and wreckage were already floating in the cold water, Davin, Nico…

  “They put out the stern light,” said Callan. “They know we are chasing them.”

  I breathed a little easier. But this was bad enough, because how were we supposed to catch a ship we couldn’t see?

  “Steady as she goes,” the Harbormaster called to his helmsman. “If they go on, we’ll sight them as soon as the sun comes up. If we do not, there are only two places they can be—Dog Isle or Arlain. They cannot hide in Troll Cove. It is too shallow for the sloop.”

  “What if they dump their cargo?” asked Malvin. “They would ride higher, then.”

  The Harbormaster grinned. “That is the Crow’s ship ye’re talking about, and he is a tightfisted bastard. He will not throw as much as a dishrag overboard, never ye fear.”

  I hoped he was right. And this time, when Callan told me to go below, I went. But the hours until dawn came were long and restless, and I did not sleep much.

  As soon as I woke up, I knew the wind had died down. My hammock was swaying only gently, and although I could still hear the creaking of the boards and rigging, it was nowhere near the racket it had been when I went to bed.

  I tumbled clumsily out of the hammock. It was not the sort of bed I was used to, but Callan had said it would be better for me than one of the berths because the hammocks moved with the ship and did not toss you about with every wave.

  Rose was still asleep. She had pulled the blanket all the way up to her nose, and all I could see of her was a bit of fair hair, so summer-bleached it almost shone white in the gloom of the cabin. I opened the cabin door as quietly as I could so as not to wake her, crossed the cargo hold almost without teetering, and climbed up the narrow ladder onto the deck.

  Behind us, the sea was flame-colored with sunrise. Ahead, the sky was darker, but not so dark that I could fool myself. No sail. No ship. The Sea Wolf was nowhere in sight.

  “She gave us the slip,” said Callan when he caught sight of me. He looked tired, and that was rare. Normally he seemed about as frail as a mountainside or an oak tree. “We’ll put in at Arlain to see if they are hiding there.”

  “And if they’re not?”

  “We’ll try Dog Isle. Never ye worry, lass. We’ll find them.”

  At Arlain—a tiny fishing village, no more than a score of houses—there was no Sea Wolf.

  “It will be Dog Isle, then,” said the Harbormaster, bringing his ship about. But when we cleared the point at Dog Isle, there was no sloop waiting in the shallow bay.

  “Could she have returned to Farness?” said the Harbormaster? “She might have run past us in the dark.”

  “Why would they?” objected Callan. “What use is that to them? Perhaps they’ve headed out to sea.”

  “We would have spotted them. The weather is clear enough, and Malvin has been up the mast with the glass four times already.”

  “That ship has vanished from the face of the sea,” said Malvin, and I saw his fingers make the witch sign, just to be safe. “Poof! Like magic.”

  The Harbormaster frowned. “The Crow is sneaky, I grant ye, but he is no magician. They must be here somewhere.”

  All that talk of magic reminded me.

  “Troll Cove,” I said. “What about Troll Cove?”

  “I told ye, she cannot go in there.” The Harbormaster slid me a sideways look, not happy to have his judgment questioned.

 
“Could we check? Where is it?”

  “East. About an hour’s sail.”

  “Please, can we look? Maybe he did dump his cargo.”

  The Harbormaster shook his head. “The Crow likes his money. Ye trust me now—he does not throw away anything he does not have to.”

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about the words Davin had heard him say: that there was money in it, a fortune.

  “How much is his cargo worth?” I asked.

  “Mostly wool this time, as I recall, and herring. About sixty silver marks. Or seventy, it might be, with times as they are.”

  That was a huge amount. More ready money than the whole of the Kensie clan saw in a year. But still nothing to the hundred golden marks Drakan would pay for Nico.

  “Go to Troll Cove,” I said.

  And perhaps Callan’s thoughts were like to mine.

  “We must,” he said. “We cannot afford not to.”

  DINA

  Troll Cove

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said the Harbormaster.

  The Swallow inched her way forward with the black cliffs of Troll Cove hugging her on both sides, so tall and dark that the water, too, looked entirely black. There were lookouts up the mast and at the stern, and the helmsman looked poised like a hunting dog, ready to act instantly on their calls. This was a narrow, dangerous place, with reefs that could rip and tear like monstrous teeth. But this was not why the Harbormaster cursed.

  In the water in front of us, a bale of wool was bobbing. It was low in the water, barely visible. Brine had already started to soak it, and had we arrived half an hour later, we might not have seen it at all.

  “I’ll be damned,” repeated the Harbormaster. “He did dump his cargo!”

  Callan smiled. “Yes, and the beauty of it is it does him no good. We have him now.”

  The Swallow moved carefully farther and farther into Troll Cove. At the very bottom, the narrow cove opened up a little, to form a natural harbor. And that was where the Sea Wolf was anchored. I knew her at once by the red sails and the wolf’s head at her bow.

  “Furl sails,” called the Harbormaster. “Drop the anchor.”

  “Why?” I whispered to Callan. “Why don’t we go all the way in?”

  The Harbormaster heard me despite my whispering.

  “We have him right where we want him,” he said. “This way, we are like the cork in a bottle, and there is no way he can pass us without running aground. And if we want to talk to him, we can always use the dinghy.”

  “We do want to talk to him,” I said. “We want to get Davin and Nico off there.”

  Callan nodded slowly. “Aye,” he said. “If we can.”

  What did he mean? Of course we could. Hadn’t the Harbormaster just said that they couldn’t get past us?

  The Swallow’s small dinghy was lowered into the water, and Malvin dropped the rope ladder down the side of the ship. Callan began the climb, and I moved to follow.

  “Not you,” he said. “Ye stay here.”

  “But I can help. Nico listens to me!” I didn’t say anything about Davin, because I knew that listening to his little sister was about the last thing he wanted to do right now. But Nico might. He still felt he owed us something, Mama and me.

  Callan hesitated. Then he nodded. “Come on, then.”

  I swung my leg over the gunwale and grabbed the ladder. It was a long way down, longer than I had thought, and when the Swallow rocked, so did the ladder. One of the crew held it steady with a boathook, but it still swayed alarmingly. I was quite relieved when I reached the dinghy. Me and boats… we didn’t really agree with each other. I’d much rather have a sensible horse.

  Rose made no bones about following, and she was clearly more at home with rope ladders and dinghies than I. Callan gave her a grouchy did-I-say-you-could-come look, but he didn’t say anything. He and Malvin each took an oar, and the boat slipped across the dark waters toward the Sea Wolf.

  “Ahoy,” called the Harbormaster when we came within hailing distance. “Ahoy, the Sea Wolf.”

  They had already seen us, of course—there was no way two ships that size could be that close without noticing each other—but apparently no one felt like answering. The Harbormaster had to hail them three times before they bothered to reply.

  “What do you want?”

  It was the Crow himself, leaning across the gunwale of the Sea Wolf to look down at us. His narrow face was completely expressionless, and right now he looked more like a hawk than a crow.

  “We want to talk. Permission to board?”

  “No.” That seemed to be all the Crow had to say to that.

  “Ye do not have to be rude,” said the Harbormaster.

  The Crow didn’t answer. The waters whispered against the hull, and the silence grew.

  “Ye have two passengers aboard,” the Harbormaster finally said.

  “Really? That’s news to me.”

  “Come on. This is stupid, man. Let us aboard so that we can talk like ordinary, decent people.”

  The Crow looked no friendlier than before.

  “This is Troll Cove,” he said. “There’s no sheriff here, nor no harbormaster neither. No watch, no port fees to be paid. Here your word means no more than a seagull’s cry or the splash of a wave. So turn your ship around and go back where people actually listen to what you say, Harbormaster.”

  And with that, the Crow turned away from the gunwale, and we could no longer see him. It had begun to rain, tiny little cold pinpricks almost like hail. For a while the Harbormaster stood staring up at the Sea Wolf, a thunderous look on his face. He did not like being spoken to in that way. Finally he sat down again.

  “Go back,” he said. And Callan and Malvin turned the dinghy and rowed back to the Swallow.

  We sought shelter belowdecks.

  “What do we do now?” said Callan. “It will not be easy to persuade him.”

  The Harbormaster growled in his throat. “He is well within his rights. He does not have to let us on board. On the other hand, we are also well within our rights if we simply stay here, riding at anchor. Then we will see who tires of the game first.”

  Malvin, who apparently doubled as the ship’s cook, came in with a pitcher full of hot, spicy wine and half a loaf of dark bread.

  “How long d’ye want us to stay here?” he asked. “The larder is a bit understocked, what with leaving so sudden.”

  “Aye, well, we can manage for a few days, surely,” said the Harbormaster. “And I reckon the Crow might be in more of a talking mood by then. He seems to be in a hurry, and he has more mouths to feed than we do.”

  “A few days, aye,” said Malvin. “If ye do not expect a feast.”

  Callan stirred uneasily. “Maudi’s purse might stretch to feeding us,” he said, “but we cannot pay the crew wages for many days.”

  “I know that,” said the Harbormaster. “But nearly all my crew are Laclan men, and they will do what serves the clan, with or without wages. Which is more than can be said for the Crow’s men.”

  “Kensie thanks ye,” said Callan.

  The days passed. We took out the dinghy again, but this time the Crow wouldn’t even come to the gunwale, and we had to return once more with our business unfinished and our call unanswered. As the sky grew dark and the sea even darker, I stood staring at the Sea Wolf. It was so strange to know that Davin and Nico were so close that they could hear me call if I shouted. But even though I had borrowed the Harbormaster’s glass several times, I had seen neither hair nor hide of them. They must be down below, hiding—though I couldn’t for the life of me think why. We knew they were there, so what good did hiding do? Perhaps they thought we would give in more quickly if we couldn’t see them. But the Harbormaster had a pleasingly implacable look on his face. He wouldn’t budge. The Crow’s own rudeness had seen to that.

  “Get some sleep, lass,” said Callan, once the darkness was so complete that the Sea Wolf was no more than a vague outline, almost indistinguishable
from the black rocks. “You too, Rose. Nothing more will happen tonight.”

  “Do you think they will try to get past us in the dark?” I asked.

  Callan shook his head. “Not unless they are completely daft,” he said. “They would end up on the reefs.”

  Bump. Scrape. Footsteps on the deck above my head.

  “Oh, be quiet,” I muttered. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  A half-strangled cry, and still more steps.

  “What’s happening?” said Rose in a sleep-soaked voice.

  “I don’t know.”

  I lay for a few moments, listening to the sounds that filled the night. Something was going on up there.

  Suddenly Callan’s voice cut through the darkness.

  “Foes!” he called. “Foes aboard!”

  Foes? It could only be…

  “The Crow,” whispered Rose, her voice thin with fear. “The Crow and his men.”

  I swung my legs over the side of the hammock and fumbled for the lamp. Then I realized that this might not be the smartest move I could make. I thought of the Crow’s cold black eyes, and I suddenly didn’t want to do anything that would make it easier for him to see me.

  Something touched my arm. I jerked, but it was only Rose, of course.

  “Should we go up?” she asked. “Or hide?”

  I felt like scuttling under the bed, except there wasn’t one. But the Swallow was not a big ship, and they would find us sooner or later. I could hear shouts and thumps and tramping feet, and there was clearly fighting going on. If the Crow won that fight—I knew Callan was a strong and cunning fighter, but who knew how many stood against him? Probably there wasn’t much two twelve-year-old girls could do, and yet Rose had saved the day before now, once with her knife and once with a frying pan. And I had weapons too, though they were not the kind you could cut and bash with.

  “Let’s go up,” I whispered.

  We crept up the ladder, but we were barely halfway there when someone came tumbling the other way. A large body slammed into me, knocking me backward.