Fugitive Prince (34 page)

When her brother took his time to indicate direction, Feylind jabbed down one oar like a rudder and shot the lighter craft sideways. Head twisted, she sized up the motley collection of boats, small and large, riding over their slice-cut reflections in the shelter of Innish harbor. Her grasp of detail quickly winnowed the clutter of merchant brigs: the slipshod ones with their sails tied in gaskets, and others run by more rigorous captains, rolling neat at their moorings with yardarms varnished and stripped. She assessed crosshatched rigging, the swept decks with baled cargoes, then unerring, spotted the one vessel set apart.

“Hah!” she whooped, triumphant. “Belay Fiark’s word, I already see.” She backwatered, hauled, and jacked the lighter onto her selfdetermined new heading. “We’re bound for the brig with the shameless bronze tits on her figurehead.”

“The
Cariadwin,”
Fiark admitted to the muddled-up oarsman, who
sat with his looms raised and dripping. “She’s the new-looking brig on the far southwest mooring, and if anyone’s shameless while still fully clothed, it’s my sister. Please accept my regret for her manners.”

“Shameless, is it?” Feylind jabbed in her right blade and sent a rocketing arc of water dousing over her brother’s neat head. “Take worse than a wetting to cool down your insolence, but that will do for a start.”

“Wench!” Fiark laughed. “For each salt stain and watermark, I’ll see you chained to the washtub at home. Our stepfather won’t spare you from drudgery either. He swore he’d help if I held you down. We’ve all got ripped hose and holed stockings for darning. High time you sat for us, mending.”

“You conspired against me?” Feylind accused.

“Well yes.” Fiark flipped back the dripping bangs plastered to his raised eyebrows. “Don’t look so wounded. Your mother and I share the general opinion that you could stand more practice at needlework. You ought to cultivate some womanly graces for the day you weary of seafaring.”

This time, he was wise and fast enough to duck as the water grazed over his head. “No chance at all,” countered Feylind, carving into the pull of the next stroke. “If that means getting soft and thick bearing babes, I’d sooner swim with the sharks.” Her expert handling shot the narrow lighter into the choppy crosscurrents alongside the
Cariadwin’s
side strakes.

Not to be outdone, Fiark dug into his scrip and pressed another coin in the palm of the flummoxed lighterman. “Come back at sundown. Our appointment should finish then.” Despite his town clothes and his love of staid commerce, he proved then and there he could still beat his sister up the battens of a deepwater trader.

The
Cariadwin’s
captain sauntered on deck to meet them. He was a thick man, swarthy and wrinkled, with one eye crimped to a permanent squint from judging the set of his canvas. Wind and sun, and the tireless barrage of the elements had gnarled his joints, and his unlaced shirt ruffled against a chest broad enough to muscle a siege ram. He tucked away the rigging knife just used to clear a jammed block, his sharp glance touching Feylind and swinging at once back to Fiark. “Your sister, yes?” His thick, frosted eyebrows tipped upward with inquiry. “She have a strong stomach? There’s business we’ll have to conduct in the hold that’s no pretty sight for a woman.”

“Nor for a man, either,” Feylind retorted, stance braced against the mild swing as the brig turned to the wind on her beam. “I promise not to puke first.”

The captain threw back his head and roared with bass laughter. “By Dharkaron’s vengeance!” He dealt Fiark’s twin a slap between the shoulder blades that might have staggered her forward, had she not reflexively shifted her footing. “Why couldn’t I have found a lass like you before I had a wife and eight weans, not to mention six lusty mistresses?”

“Because lasses like me have no use for weans, and even less for a husband.” Feylind grinned back, her teeth like fine ivory, and her hair a gold rope in the sunlight. “Keep your eyes and your insinuations out of my shirtfront, and get on with what Fiark came for.”

Not chastened at all, still very much taken with the female curves underneath the breeches and waistcoat, the captain waved a lanky arm toward the opened hatch amidships. “Step into my lair, then, shewolf.” He sidestepped to the ladder and led the way down. More of his peppery invective boomed up from the cavernous opening. “First or last, if you puke, lady, you’ll be the one handed the bucket and rag to swab up the mess on my deck.”

Fiark elbowed his sister aside before she could effect a reply. “A man might think you had bollocks in those breeks, the way you carry on.” He ducked Feylind’s punch through a hasty descent, then laughed at her scowl, framed in cloud fleece above him as she swung onto the ladder. “Step on my fingers, minx, you’ll be sorry.”

Feylind’s retort came more thoughtful than barbed. “Trust me, it isn’t your fingers I’m itching to flatten.”

They descended into the brig’s lower deck, enveloped by gloom and the fusty miasma of damp arisen from the bilges. The hull was new, the fug of lamp oil and mildew not yet entrenched through the tarry bite of the oakum worked into her seams. Feylind knew ships, in particular ones fashioned by Cattrick’s exacting craftsmen. Attuned to the hull like a sounding board, she analyzed the chafe of the lines and the slap of wavelets transmitted through the thick timbers; in her critical judgment, she determined the captain was competent. No fittings banged, and no halyards thrummed loose to tap and spin kinks at the masthead. The small talk of three hands at work mending sail drifted down from the forecastle. In the aft cabin, a nasal-voiced purser conducted an inventory of stores with the cook, standard enough practice for a ship between legs of a sea passage.

A blue-water trader just cleared into port followed a preset routine. The lower hold beneath would be cleared and swept, ropes and nets tidied in smart readiness for onloading new cargo. Aboard
Cariadwin
the main hatch was not open in welcome, but shut fast in the velvety gloom. No lit lamp burned in the ring overhead. Rather than roust
out his sailhands for laggards, the captain crouched and whispered a password.

The countersign returned was a sequence of taps. Then, from the inside, the hatched grating cracked. A brown eye peered upward. Against total darkness, the bared gleam of a knife scribed a thin line of silver.

“It’s himself,” assured a low voice in clan accents. A stirred exhalation came from below, as listeners released pent-back tension.

“You carry convicts freed from Lysaer’s galleys?” Feylind whispered in excitement.

“Aye.” The captain muscled the heavy grating aside. “They’ve got the news out of Tysan and Havish your brother’s been sweating to hear.” To the clansmen below, whose lives would be instantly forfeit if the authorities at Innish caught wind of their presence, the brig’s master assured, “You’re kept safe enough. Fiark’s loyalty’s true, and I’ve three hands with good eyes sitting guard on the forecastle. They’ll shout if anyone boards us.”

The face moved, then the knife in token of cautious trust granted. “For me,” the man said, emphatic, “I’d slit my own veins and leave my blood to the sea before I’d risk freedom again.”

Warm air swirled up from the close, musty darkness, made stifling by the lack of ventilation. Someone below unshuttered a candle. The weak illumination showed the upper-deck planking had been tacked over with canvas to seal off any chance gleam of light. The men who inhabited this miserable den numbered an odd forty, faces upturned in keen wariness toward the visitors brought by the captain.

For all their cramped confines, they were reasonably clean. The few knives shared among them kept them shaven and groomed. Torsos roped in muscle from hard labor at the oar were decently clothed, some in the mended rags of forest-tanned leathers, and others in shirts gleaned by sailhands from Innish’s used clothing stalls and motley from the ship’s slop chest. No face looked healthy. Most were sorrowfully thin. The wrists and ankles rinsed by the flickering light were disfigured and angry where steel and salt water had chafed into permanent scars.

Feylind felt sorrow before sickness, then a ripping fresh anger as she reached the base of the ladder and a younger scout brushed by her to replace the hatch. A chance flare of the candle touched the raised, ugly mark left by some mayor’s harsh practice of branding men sentenced as convicts.

Fiark sucked a shocked breath, then said without preamble, “What
are your needs? You’ll have anything in my power that doesn’t jeopardize my patron or require an outright act of theft.”

The clan spokesman pushed forward, squinting through hanks of salt-and-pepper hair not yet regrown long enough to braid. He limped badly, his right ankle fused from a poorly set break. Still, he had not lost the grace of his manners. “Fiark?” He extended a forearm for the traditional clasp of amity. “My loyalty belongs to the Earl of Taerlin. In his place, hear my gratitude for your strength of heart.”

“Speak,” Fiark urged. He need not stress that each hour
Cariadwin
lingered in a port ruled by townsmen, the risk to her fugitives increased.

The clansman bowed his head, for a moment overcome. “Provisions, first off. Fresh meat and fruit. Bad diet has left many of us sickened.”

“Clothing,” Feylind added. “I’ll supply funds.”

But the freed man touched her wrist in restraint. “Bless you, but no. We won’t be beholden for what our cousins in Selkwood are able enough to supply.” To Fiark, he summed up, “For that, you need only sign us a legitimate cargo bound upcoast to Elssine or Telzen.”

“Have to be luxuries,” the captain chipped in from his laconic, square stance by the ladder. “Our lading list out of Cheivalt says our main hold’s chock full of wool bales and barley bound for the brewers upcoast.”

“Fine brandy in bottles and some Sanpashir gemstones, will that do?” Fiark measured the clan spokesman afresh, a warning hard glint in his eyes. “Should they be underwritten?”

Someone else’s barbed dialect jibed from out of the darkness, “What, you don’t truly want to stay honest?”

Before light words caused umbrage, the captain reassured, “The cargo you consign will be safe, with one small delay. We’ve an unscheduled stop on the coast of Alland to take on what our lists say we shipped out of Cheivalt.”

“That’s Erlien’s territory,” Feylind broke in. Her quick mind leaped ahead, taking stock. The barley would have been grown in Orvandir, and the wool shorn from Radmoore sheep. The
Cariadwin’s
pending illegitimate cargo would be nothing else but the spoils from a caravan raided en route to Sanshevas or Southshire.

In typical fashion, her brother’s thought flanked her. “Are the High Earl’s scout raiders in conspiracy with Arithon?”

“Not precisely,” the
Cariadwin’s
captain corrected. “Don’t have to take sides to hate chains and slavery. The High Earl’s river inlets in Selkwood make an ideal place to load contraband. I used to shift
cargoes from there before Arithon hired me. And anyway, these days, a number of brash younger scouts want to ship out to Corith as volunteers for sea training.”

“Volunteer pirates, more like,” Fiark said, no stranger to the marauding ways of Erlien’s chieftains. The factors at Innish knew well enough: the best silk from Atchaz always moved overland rather than risk the river route into Telzen. “You’ll want a return cargo?”

“Not just then.” In soft words and darkness, the plans were laid out. The brig’s share of gold from Erlien’s plunder would fund new rigging and canvas from the Southshire shipyards. “Those supplies and provisions are critically needed at the Shadow Master’s outpost at Corith. Cattrick’s crews have been busy,” the clan spokesman said. “Maenol was told to expect three more brigs for refitting early in the spring.”

“Why can’t the
Evenstar
bear these men to Alland?” Feylind broke in, still angling for her chance to escape another decorous run down the southcoast.

Fiark shook his pale head. “The
Evenstar’s
bills of lading are clean. Need one ship honest and yours was elected. If you didn’t know, all her profits are going to buy weapons to outfit the ships purloined out of Riverton. With luck, by high summer, the clans will have their fleet of sail to play havoc on Alliance shipping.”

“Slave-bearing galleys won’t pass with impunity,” a hard voice affirmed from the darkness. “Once our people have the armed ships to strike back, we can make rags of Lysaer’s new edict by putting the screws to his trade.”

Feylind was not mollified. “Looks to me like you’ve already started with that.” She turned upon Fiark, tenacious, to nail home her point. “If the
Evenstar’s
clean, I don’t see any reason why I can’t run cargo to Capewell. The outpost at Corith’s a short leg away. Supplies and dispatches could be left on a regular schedule without any undue risk.”

“No.” The clan spokesman caught Feylind’s shoulder and gave her a fatherly shake. “You care for Prince Arithon?” At her stubborn nod, he bore in. “Then see sense! Stay where he’s placed you, or see him hurt if you fall to grief!”

Pearls flashed in the shadows as Feylind stiffened to argue.

The clansman cut her off, merciless. “Then look at these men and the cruelties they’ve suffered! You have no idea just how tense things have grown, and not just in Tysan. Havish’s king is caught in contention as well.”

They heard the news then, of how the forty men in the
Cariadwin’s
hold had come to be freed by the seal of King Eldir’s justice.

“Three galleymen and the fat harbormaster at Cheivalt were just arraigned for treason.” Seated once more, elbows braced on his knees and his hands jammed through the uneven hair at his temples, the clan spokesman qualified. “Those were put to trial for an exchange of bribes to refute Havish’s crown edict. They’ll die, and not nicely. Lysaer’s bailiffs have been rebuffed twice, denied any right of extradition.”

Amid the dense quiet lying on all sides, Fiark accepted the tied packets of correspondence from Arithon’s westshore contacts. Sweating and sobered, he knelt by the candle to read. As always, the broad range of sources astonished him. From sheets soaked in the incense from the intrigue of court brothels, to others, encasing filched documents with official ribbons and cracked seals, the damning, grim picture unfolded, with warnings phrased in stark language. Feylind shared the written pages alongside her brother, cursing as he turned yellowed leaves too slowly, or the flame fluttered low, making thin, ciphered script too difficult to peruse.