Corsair (8 page)

“What choice did the harmach have? He couldn’t let House Veruna stay after they helped Sergen in the attempt to unseat him.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Hamil admitted. “Your uncle did what Darsi Veruna forced him to do. But until some more trade costers or merchant Houses take over Veruna camps, those Cinderfists won’t have anything to do other than stand around on street corners and trouble passersby.”

“That isn’t so easy as it seems. Nimessa told me that House Veruna threatened retaliation against any other Moonsea companies that buy up their former rights.” Geran fell silent, thinking over the Cinderfist situation. His friend was right about the unintended consequences of House Veruna’s exile, but there was more to it than that. He’d also heard stories of Cinderfists threatening or beating other foreigners in search of work, pushing them to either join their movement or leave Hulburg and search for prospects elsewhere. A thought struck him, and he looked down at Hamil. “Have the Verunas threatened the Red Sails anywhere?”

“Us?” Hamil shook his head. “No, I would’ve told you if I’d heard anything like that. You’re a stakeholder, after all. But if you want my guess, I’d say that the Verunas have already assumed we’re no friends of theirs.”

“True enough.” Geran clapped Hamil on the shoulder. They walked on another half block and came to the sign for Erstenwold’s Provisioners, which hung above a large, somewhat ramshackle old wooden building. Several clerks and customers counted, haggled, or carried goods in and out of the store. Business had been good for the Erstenwold store in the months since House Verunas banishment from Hulmaster. No one was extorting native Hulburgan establishments anymore; the wary truce between the large foreign merchant companies and native Hulburgan establishments was holding. Only now there was the Cinderfist situation to complicate matters, Geran reminded himself.

Geran and Hamil took the steps up to the old wooden porch and pushed their way into the store proper. A long wooden counter ran the length of the room on the right side, with a familiar clutter of stocked shelves and various pieces of tack and harness hanging on the walls. The uneven floorboards were worn to a glossy polish by decades of foot traffic, and dust motes drifted in the sunlight slanting through the windows. Geran had always liked the place; the old wood, the fresh leather, and the pipeleaf all blended into a rich, comfortable aroma. “Mirya?” he called.

A tall, dark-haired woman with her hair tied back in a long braid looked up from her ledger-keeping at a small standing desk behind the counter. She wore a plain dress of blue wool and a stern expression on her face, but she smiled when she caught sight of them. She closed her ledger and came over to the countertop. “Here to see to your order? It’s not even been two days, you know.”

“The carpenters were about ready to throw Geran overboard,” Hamil answered. “We thought it might be best to let them oversee themselves for an hour or two.”

“So you decided to trouble me instead?” Mirya snorted. “Well, you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve almost all of your ship’s goods laid aside in the storehouse. Provisions, canvas, plenty of line, bedding, lumber, casks of ale, spars, hand tools, oakum, pitch—here, come around the counter, and I’ll show you.”

Geran and Hamil stepped around the long counter and followed Mirya into the storehouse that adjoined her shop. Large doors stood open to the street outside, allowing the afternoon light to stream in. Barrels and wooden crates lay stacked up in orderly rows on the dusty old floorboards. “I fear the harmach’s to pay dearly for all of this,” Mirya said. “To fill Seadrake’s hold in the time you gave me I had to pay half again what I should have. It was no help that all of Hulburg knew that I had to have your provisions as soon as they could be found.”

“My uncle knows you wouldn’t cheat him,” Geran said. He paced down one of the aisles, glancing over the assembled material. It filled a substantial part of the Erstenwold storehouse, and Mirya’s clerks were wheeling in more tubs and barrels as he watched. It seemed hard to believe that it would all fit below the decks of the ship down by the old Veruna docks, but he knew from experience that ships could carry a lot more than one might expect. “I’m amazed you found this much in Hulburg in just the last two days. Is there anything important you couldn’t find?”

“I’ve only half the canvas here that you should carry,” Mirya said. “I’ve sent word to provisioners in Thentia and Mulmaster—quietly, of course— to see if I can get my hands on more, but I doubt I’ll have it before you mean to set out. You’ll want to be careful of your sails.”

“I hope your new sailing master knows his business,” Hamil said.

Geran nodded. “The winter storms are still two months off. With good fortune, we won’t see any bad gales until after we’ve had a chance to fill the sail locker.” He looked over to Mirya. “I’ll have my crew send up a working party first thing in the morning. We’ll have most of this cleared out of your storehouse by suppertime tomorrow.”

“We’ll be ready.” Mirya looked over the provisions and shook her head a little. “Strange to do business with you, Geran. All the years I’ve known you, and I have never thought of you as the sort of man who’d take an interest in it. You always seemed to be cut from a different sort of cloth.”

“The indolent nobility? The brooding romantic?” Hamil asked. “I certainly don’t trust him with anything important for the Red Sails.”

Geran laughed. It was true enough. “My thanks, Hamil.”

“I didn’t mean I thought him too lazy for it,” Mirya said. “Too impatient, perhaps. Too anxious to be off to the next thing, whatever that happened to be. He used to be a hard one to keep anchored for long.”

“Four years in Myth Drannor taught me a few things,” Geran said. He glanced down at the rose-shaped pommel and mithral wire of the sword hilt at his belt. He’d won it in the service of the coronal. Somehow he doubted that many of Ilsevele Miritar’s armathors had spent much time in storehouses such as Erstenwold’s. “I suppose I’m not the man I used to be.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a better man.” Mirya gave him a lopsided smile. “Selsha and I mean to see you off when you set sail. Take care of yourself while you’re chasing after pirates, Geran Hulmaster. I’m becoming used to having you around again.”

“I will,” he promised her.

19 Eleint, The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Seadrake sailed on the morning tide three days after Geran’s visit to the Erstenwold storehouse. As promised, Mirya and her daughter, Selsha, came down to the wharves to see them off, along with a couple hundred prominent Hulburgans and curious onlookers, including Nimessa Sokol and Harmach Grigor, who was driven down from Griffonwatch in an open carriage. Geran enjoyed the fanfare until Hamil punctured his mood by pointing out that all of the Moonsea would know of Seadrake’s sailing within five days. They wouldn’t be surprising any enemies for the foreseeable future.

The breeze was light and fitful; the caravel nosed her way slowly past the spectacular Arches guarding Hulburg’s harbor. In the morning light the soaring columns of stone seemed to glow with an emerald luminescence. As Hulburg receded behind them, the breeze freshened and Seadrake n to throw back a small wave from her bow. “Master Galehand, make your course south by southwest,” Geran told the dwarf. “Hold that for an hour or so, and then bring her around to a northwesterly course. We’re going to keep in sight of land and work westward until we pass Thentia. I doubt Kraken Queen is still on this shore, but we might as well make sure she isn’t.”

“Aye, Lord Geran,” the dwarf replied. He shouted orders at the sailors on deck, followed by colorful oaths in Dwarvish as the untried crew set about their work.

Geran retreated to the lee side of the quarterdeck and left Galehand to supervise the watch, leaning against the rail to observe the crew at work while he considered his course. Sarrh Khul Riizar climbed up onto the

quarterdeck and glanced at the town falling into the distance behind them. The tiefling was an intimidating sight, with ruddy red skin and black horns sweeping back from his forehead. At his belt hung a long scepter of iron marked with golden glyphs. Geran knew they held powerful spells of battle and ruin; Sarth was a talented sorcerer. “Hardly any breeze to speak of,” Sarth observed. “We might as well have waited for better winds.”

“I was anxious to begin.” Geran straightened up and clasped Sarth’s arm. “I’m glad you decided to join us, Sarth.”

“It’s nothing.” Sarth shrugged. “I am happy to be of service, but I fear that I have no spells to summon a more favorable wind.” Five months ago Sarth had emerged as one of the heroes of the Battle of Lendon’s Dike. The people of Hulburg knew he’d battled furiously on their behalf, and few held his devilish appearance against him. From what little Geran had gathered of Sarth’s travels and adventures before his arrival in Hulburg, that was an unusual circumstance for the tiefling to find himself in.

“The wind suits me well enough for now. No one else is sailing any faster than we are today,” Geran replied. With the wind out of the west, they’d need to tack back and forth across it to beat their way westward. “But since you mention spells … do you have any means for divining the location of Kraken Queen?”

“Not without some tangible connection to the ship. Find me something or someone that was actually part of the ship, and I might be able to discern the direction and distance to her.”

“What about Nimessa Sokol? Should we go back to Hulburg for her?”

“I spoke with her already. She was held on Whitewing, and didn’t set foot on the pirate vessel. And even if she had, it might not have left a strong enough psychic impression. It takes time for such a link to form and grow strong, and Nimessa was only in the pirates’ keeping for a few hours.”

“I suppose that would have been too easy,” Geran said. “Well, we might find something you can use at the cove where Whitewing was sacked.”

It took Seadrake most of the day to work her way along the deserted coastlands between Hulburg and Thentia. Geran remained on deck, learning the feel and sounds of the ship, watching the crew handle the sails, and watching the sailing master and the other officers handle the crew. Two hours before sunset, Seadrake rounded the last cape and came within sight of Whitewing’s burned skeleton.

There was no sign of the pirate ship. “Damn,” Geran muttered to himself. He hadn’t really expected to find Kraken Queen here after eight days, but it certainly would have been convenient. He looked over to Worthel, who’d replaced Galehand on watch. “Drop anchor here and lower a boat, Master Worthel. I’m going to have a look ashore.”

“Aye, Lord Geran,” Worthel said. He frowned under his broad mustache of red-streaked gray. “But I don’t think there’s much to see there. She’s burned down to her keel.”

A quarter hour later, Geran, Sarth, Hamil, and Kara waded ashore from the ship’s boat. They inspected the burned wreck of Whitewing, and the scattered remains of the Sokol ship’s cargo, still strewn across the pebbled shore. Kara carefully studied the tracks and refuse left behind by the pirate crew, pacing back and forth across the cove as she followed the story she read there. Geran knew of no better tracker on the north side of the Moonsea, and he waited for her to finish. If there was anything to be found in the cove, she would find it. After a time, Kara brushed her hands off against the mail aprons of her armor and rejoined him. Her eyes gleamed with the uncanny azure of her spellscar in the fading light of the day.

“What do you make of it?” Hamil asked her.

“They left five or six days ago,” Kara answered. “I make their numbers at eighty or ninety, mostly humans with a few ores and ogres. Most of the crew slept on the beach for the two or three days they stayed here.” That was not unusual; most captains, pirate or merchant, preferred to make camp ashore if conditions permitted. As long as the crew posted a few sentries, it was undoubtedly safer than continuing to sail through the hours of darkness, and most vessels plying the waters of the Moonsea or the Sea of Fallen Stars offered very little in the way of accommodations for their crews.

“Did you find anything that might have belonged to Kraken Queen?” Sarth asked. “A scrap of canvas, some discarded rope, an empty water cask?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid,” Kara answered. She held up a battered old wooden baton about two feet in length—a belaying pin. “I did find this near where they had their ship drawn up. It’s the best I could do for something that was part of the pirate ship… but there are several fresh graves over there in the brush above the high-water mark.”

Geran nodded. “I killed at least two men when I fought my way out of the camp.” He didn’t think he’d mortally wounded anyone else, but

perhaps the pirate captain had decided to settle some question of discipline during Kraken Queen’s stay in the cove. The bodies might serve Sarth’s requiremenr, but he kept that thought to himself. They were too near the Highfells and the domain of the lich Aesperus to unearth corpses, regardless of what they intended to do with the remains. Better to leave the pirates’ dead in peace.

“Let me have a look.” Sarth held out his hand for the pin and examined it closely. The tiefling murmured the words of a spell and then closed his eyes in concentration. After a moment he snorted and shook his head. “It belonged to Kraken Queen, but the aura is weak or the ship is far away,” he said. “I cannot discern her direction.”

“It was worth a try,” Geran said. He sighed and looked out over the purple-hued waters lapping against the pebbled shore. “Very well, then. We’ll have to search out Kraken Queen the hard way. We’ll stay here for the night and begin in the morning.”

Over the next five days Geran steered Seadrake westward along the Moonsea’s northern coast past Thentia and Melvaunt as far as the River Stojanow and the small city of Phlan, with no luck. The weather worsened, as cool gray skies settled in with sheets of cold rain every night. By day Seadrake crashed through heavy swells, throwing white spray over the bow and running across the wind with a strong heel to her decks. They crossed the Moonsea to the southern shore near Hillsfar and spent another five days working eastward as they searched the numberless islets and forested coves that crowded the shore between that city and the River Lis. Still they had no sign of the ship they sought, and Geran decided that his quarry was not in the southern Moonsea either. That left only the two far corners of the Moonsea unvisited: the west end by the River Tesh and the Galennar, the wild eastern reaches of the Moonsea, where the mountains ringing Vaasa met the coast in mile after mile of spectacular cliffs. But Geran hesitated before ordering Galehand to set his course for either end. Both were desolate and unsettled, with no merchant shipping to speak of. Pirates would find no prey, no safe harbors, and no markets for their stolen goods at either end of the Moonsea. Geran worried at the puzzle for most of a rain-soaked afternoon then decided to call at the port of Mulmaster before he settled on his next move. If he heard nothing of Kraken Queen in the crowded city, he’d venture into the desolate Galennar.