Dangerous Waters (37 page)

Tornauld was startled into a laugh. ‘For a wizard with firelight at his fingertips, he’s as blind as a man in the dark!’

‘Show some respect for my element master,’ Merenel said swiftly. ‘Take him for a jackass and you only prove you’re a donkey yourself.’

‘Our Hearth Master is no fool, Tornauld,’ Planir agreed. ‘He is however an idealist, which is why he’s so confident that any dissent would be set aside in Hadrumal’s best interests. That’s what he would do himself.’

Planir shook his head. ‘As I’ve told you more than once, Kalion seeks only good for Hadrumal, and after that, for the mainlanders. As far as he’s concerned, that’s easily achieved. Once the princes and powers of the mainland yield to Hadrumal’s guidance, everyone’s best interests will be secured.’

Jilseth recalled Ely’s unguarded words in the wine shop. ‘He thinks they’ll yield if we save them from the corsairs?’

Planir inclined his head. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t share his confidence that the next crisis would be so readily answered. So I’ll do without the mainland’s gratitude this summer for the sake of avoiding its disillusion and anger in some unforeseen season to come.’

‘While we go to work with the likes of Canfor, to persuade everyone that you and Master Kalion are the firmest of friends?’ Tornauld evidently loathed that prospect.

The Archmage grinned at him. ‘I’ll settle for the hotheads realising that Kalion and I will settle our differences of opinion without anyone’s interference.’ His eyes hardened. ‘I want it understood that anyone bold enough to play advocates in the alleys and taverns will feel the scorch of Kalion’s wrath from one side and the full weight of my anger from the other.’

Jilseth was glad she wasn’t the object of his censure. She only hoped their word carried enough weight to tilt the scales of opinion around Hadrumal’s halls.

Nolyen’s thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Are we to work with Master Kalion’s nexus to follow that slave galley you’ve had us searching for?’

Planir nodded. ‘Until we’re convinced that malcontent trooper isn’t going to spring some unforeseen surprise.’

‘While we continue to scry along the Caladhrian coast?’ Merenel asked.

‘For all the evidence you can gather,’ Planir confirmed, ‘to convince the Council that the barons can manage their affairs without our interference.’

‘And as long as we’re working with them, Canfor, Galen and Ely won’t be able to deny such evidence.’ A slow smile spread across Tornauld’s face.

Planir’s grin answered him. ‘Quite so.’

Jilseth found her own spirits rising. Hadrumal had escaped being entangled in Lescar’s wars. Now she could reasonably hope wizardry wouldn’t be dragged into Caladhrian affairs. The last echoes of Minelas’s treachery were finally fading away.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
HREE

Black Turtle Isle, in the domain of Nahik Jarir

37th of For-Summer

H
OSH WAS TREADING
very carefully, and not only because the noon sun made the ground hot enough to scorch the soles of his feet. Not just because he was carrying a heavy bucket brim full of water.

The anchorage was crowded with unfamiliar vessels; twelve galleys at last count and three triremes. Wasn’t Grewa, the blind corsair, worried that one of their masters might threaten his dominion over these raiders? Or had he brought more triremes here to make sure that none of the galley masters could try to usurp his authority?

Hosh had more immediate concerns. Most of the arriving ships’ slaves were kept afloat but some had to be allowed ashore to fetch water. Though the Aldabreshi swordsmen and crewmen were supposedly restricted to the beach, every day saw some of them wandering across to the encampment between the resident captains’ pavilions. That rough and ready settlement had doubled in size since the start of the spring as more ships had chosen to sail in the blind corsair’s wake.

How many of them were regretting that choice now or second-guessing the portents that had urged it? Since that first raid when two galleys had failed to return, there had been two more expeditions northwards. Under high tides and dark skies, two more ships had been lost and when both moons had been at their full, three had disappeared.

Corsairs prowled the shore at dusk and dawn, disputing the patterns of clouds and studying the moons and constellations and the jewelled stars wandering the heavens most intensely of all.

There were daily clashes between corsair and corsair, between raider and rower, between slave and slave. Not that anyone ever hurried to break them up, not even Ducah, whose whip and blade enforced such rigid discipline between the
Reef Eagle’s
rowers ashore. When he found such a fight, the brute would hold off anyone trying to intervene. Then he’d take wagers from anyone gathering to see the sport, until one of the wretches lay dead at the other’s hand.

Without Corrain, Hosh had no one to watch his back. So he was spending as much time as he could lurking around the
Reef Eagle
pavilion’s back steps.

Now he was paying the price, summoned to fill this bucket from the jealously guarded well in the pavilion’s courtyard. Now he had to carry the cumbersome burden across the searing dust between the encampment and the shore. Every blade of grass had long since been worn away by uncounted feet.

Spill this water and what might happen to him? Hosh was trying to look in all directions, for fear of some passerby intent on slyly tripping him or an openly malicious shove. He’d learned the hard way that too many slaves resented the favour that Nifai showed him. Not that Nifai cared. Hosh had learned to keep such bruises to himself.

The corsairs were even more dangerous. Plenty of them were looking at mainland rowers with hate-filled eyes. The wealth that Grewa had promised on these recent raids had largely failed to materialise. Pickings ashore were lean, with deserted villages stripped of anything worth stealing. The only raiders to return with full holds were those who’d been prowling the sea lanes to catch fat merchants sailing from Col or Peorle to Relshaz.

Struggling on with the heavy bucket, Hosh could only be thankful that those not seeking some shade from the noon sun were watching the horizon for any sign of the missing vessels.

So much for the blind corsair’s envoy declaring that the current skies promised death to the mainlanders, with the Ruby for strength of arms and the Opal talisman for truth in that very arc of the sky. In some other significant alignment which Hosh couldn’t quite fathom, the Pearl apparently led the Winged Snake against their foes.

Half a season ago, as far as Hosh could reckon with no hope of an almanac, no one would have questioned Grewa’s interpretations. Since then though, even with so many newcomers to the anchorage, these losses couldn’t be denied.

Whispers mingled with the breezes among the fringe trees. Was some new nest of mainland pirates preying on their galleys? But Grewa himself had led the attacks leaving those barbarians dead in the surf a handful of years ago. Perhaps one of his own galley captains had ignored the blind corsair’s strictures against attacking Aldabreshin merchants. Some outraged warlord could have sent his own triremes to safeguard Archipelagan trade.

Hosh paused and set the bucket down to ease his aching shoulders. A splash over the rim slopped welcome coolness on his feet. Even the breeze from the sea was a furnace blast these days.

Presumably some tide would wash up the answers. For now Hosh could breathe a sigh of relief as he reached his destination without incident. He showed the bucket to a bored-looking swordsman sitting under a tree. ‘Water for the captives.’

He couldn’t take much comfort from the corsairs’ losses. Those galleys that had returned had done so with both booty and slaves. The men had already been subjected to their ordeal in the ring of stones, the survivors hauled off in chains to the waiting galleys. Now the women and children were loosely penned some way along the shore, a prudent distance from the pavilions and the encampment.

The galley masters weren’t concerned with preventing escape. They merely wanted to keep their goods from further soiling before the slave traders of the southern and eastern reaches arrived to take their pick. Then the corsairs would get their leavings, to be plucked for a night’s passing pleasure and discarded. Women and children who survived that degradation and any diseases that followed would be kept in servitude until, sooner or later, they were traded away.

The swordsman nodded absently. Then he looked up at Hosh with more interest. ‘What say you to the news, mainland man?’

‘What news?’ Hosh asked warily.

‘You know the
Red Heron
rode the tide into shore in the north?’ The swordsman studied his face. ‘They found one of our missing galleys as a black and broken skeleton. They’re saying those craven mainlanders burned it.’

‘More likely some fool dropped a pot of sticky fire.’ Hosh managed a half-hearted shrug even though his heart twisted with hope almost too painful to bear. If the Caladhrians were finally fighting back, that could that be the answer to the puzzle of the corsairs’ lost ships.

Corrain had sworn he’d rally the barons to avenge Lord Halferan. His return with Kusint would prove that the Aldabreshi weren’t so great a foe, if they could be outwitted by mere slaves. More fool them, to underestimate a free man of Caladhria and a Soluran mercenary. So Corrain had said. Could he have possibly have found a way home to make good on his words?

No, Hosh couldn’t allow himself to hope that Corrain had escaped Khusro Rina’s isle, still less that he’d managed to make good on his oath. Not until he had some better reason.

He looked along the paltry fence of laths and woven vines. Women sat desolate within, not even trying to escape. They knew full well how much worse they would fare beyond that illusory defence.

‘Shall I share out the water?’ Hosh offered as casually as he could. ‘I hear these cats claw at each other if they’re not kept in check. Grewa won’t want too many dying of thirst.’

‘True enough.’ Unsurprisingly the swordsman was content to let Hosh take on that task in this punishing heat.

Hosh carried the heavy bucket as far along the fence as he dared, in hopes of getting beyond earshot of the swordsman. The women within watched him with dull and lifeless eyes. What little shade they could contrive with sacrificed clothes and boughs torn from the trees had been given over to the children.

Hosh dipped a nut husk cup into the water. He offered it over the fence. One woman forced herself to her feet.

‘Where are you from?’ His heart sank as she looked at him, uncomprehending. Not Caladhrian then. He repeated himself in Tormalin.

‘Relshaz,’ she mumbled, her tongue thick with thirst. ‘Sailing for Ensaimin.’

Hosh’s hopes fell further. ‘You’re Lescari?’ He thought he recognised her accent, like some beggars whom his mother had once fed at her scullery door. She scorned Steward Starrid’s order that vagabonds must not be encouraged to linger in Halferan. Let him answer to Ostrin for scorning such unfortunates, she had said. Let him discover too late that he’d spurned the god of hospitality travelling in human disguise.

Corrain had said that any mainlanders enslaved in the Archipelago would be thieves or debtors fallen foul of the Relshazri magistrates. Hosh had been troubled by that. His mother had always warned that debts could as easily mount up from misfortune as they could from folly. She always kept a pot of coin buried beneath a pantry flagstone against the day when Raeponin was looking elsewhere.

The woman had gulped down the water. She looked longingly at the bucket, clutching the nut shell with dirt-encrusted hands. ‘Parnilesse,’ she said more clearly.

Hosh recalled Corrain saying that any Lescari’s first loyalty was to their dukedom. Well, to their purse and to their own self-interest and then to their dukedom. That was why the realm’s festering divisions so often burst into bloody strife. That and tolerating rulers too arrogant and selfish to yield to a parliament’s collective wisdom. As Hosh’s mother always said, thank Saedrin we were born Caladhrian.