Inda (53 page)

His comprehension of the interiors of kingdoms was hazy, but he knew the Venn had taken everything north of the strait except Ymar at the thumb, still held by the Everoneth, apparently with the unlikely help of the Chwahir on the opposite coast.

The Marlovans had now taken the westernmost end of the Sartoran continent, directly opposite the Venn. It was time, apparently, for the Venn to react.

Up in the tops old Scalis knew one thing: the Venn were going to be hunting Marlovan blood. And his boy Inda, his prize scrapper who could even parse his letters, in two languages yet, was some kind of Marlovan, probably a runaway stable boy. Scalis was not about to let these Venn piss-heads get him.

Dun the carpenter’s mate paused, setting down his carpenter’s tools.
They’re coming here because they’re searching for us,
he thought. It was not even a question.

 

 

 

Lieutenant Tigga of the
Reed-Skimmer
gave the brig a quick scan. Five years patrolling the strait had given him insight into these southerners. The south was an astonish ingly chaotic welter of lands, tongues, customs, and alliances, but even so there were motivations and reactions, shared by most humans. Universals, you might say.

Fear foremost—to be expected. Trepidation, resentment. Anger, imperfectly hidden in downward gazes, gripped hands, the determined silence when their captain standing up on the aft-castle deck saluted first, aboard his own ship, a salute that Tigga acknowledged with the barest nod.

But no sign of desperation. He knew at once that he would not find Marlovan warriors or spies on this old tub; he was even familiar with the Pim name from a recently acquired list of Iascan merchants. But orders must be followed.

So he said, in Dock Talk, “Return to your duties.” Having issued orders on the captain’s own deck, he now turned his face up to the captain. “If you will lead the way?”

Captain Beagar descended to the main deck and Tigga followed the furious man to his cabin, ostensibly paying no heed to Captain Vaki of the marines, who motioned his men to their search. Tigga spared a moment of brief sympathy for Beagar, subordinated on his own ship, but it was necessary, not just for the implementing of orders, but to underscore the supremacy of maritime command in these wretched waters. He had no sympathy for Vaki, who longed to get away from sea duty and be promoted to land once again. The command struggles of the land warriors on Drael were almost as alien to him as those of the southerners on their own continent. What interested Tigga—what he understood—were those who lived on the sea.

Beagar indicated, with expressive irony, the door to the cabin, and followed the tall Venn. At least whatever was about to take place would happen in private, and not before the hands. The Venn could, and would at the slightest opportunity, do much more. And no one would stop them.

“Your cargo and destination?” Tigga asked.

His Iascan was clear, fluent, accented with the precise consonants of Venn—or Marlovan. The man himself typical of the Venn: tall, pale-haired, pale eyes, strong features.

In a flat voice Beagar named the cargo and the ports he was scheduled to stop in, as from below came the random thumps and clunks of Vaki’s searchers. Tigga’s quarry was living and breathing.

“You are now warned. By what you southerners call the New Year, there will be a total embargo against Iascan sea trade. You have three passes of the moon to make other plans. If you have any Marlovans among your mariners, surrender them now.”

Beagar did not speak or move.

Tigga dismissed the captain from his attention and paced the companionway of the old brig, scanning the closed, resentful faces of the crew on watch. He dropped down to the lower deck, where the off-watch were obviously hoping to get back into their hammocks and their interrupted sleep. They froze at the sight of him, reacting with bewilderment when he rapped out in Marlovan, “Liegemen of Tlennen-Harvaldar, in uniform or out, will be put to death.”

Silence. A few of them realized what language he spoke, but belatedly, without the reaction of the familiar.

He did not see the blond carpenter’s mate just behind him in the companionway, who blanched at the sound of Marlovan and retreated soundlessly.

As Tigga moved down to the hold to confront the purser, his two mates, two cook’s helpers, and the bosun’s third mate, Dun’s thoughts raced ahead to the inevitable betrayal on deck, unless he could divert those watchful Venn eyes. Most on the ship were aware of the growing tension between the larboard and starboard mids and their rats, but few cared. Dun had watched, because it was his duty to watch, though he never interfered when Norsh, now a third mate, alternately hounded Taumad and spied on him with frustrated hunger. He never interfered when Norsh was joined in his prowling, glowering enmity by Fassun, smoldering with humiliation over the defeat of Idayago and now hating all southern Iascans, and by Faura, who on passing the threshold from girl to young woman had conceived a longing for the impervious Taumad almost as obsessive as Norsh’s. Her own reaction to his indifference was a breach with Jeje, whom Tau had admitted within the guarded citadel of his friendship.

When that voice echoed up from below, “Liegemen to Tlennen-Harvaldar, in uniform or out, will be put to death,” Norsh drew a deep breath.

Dun watched the young man grin, his gaze flickering. The easiest way to get at Tau would be through Inda Elgar, the reading mid that some said was secretly a Marlovan—

Dun crossed his arms. His own betrayal didn’t matter; the penalty was already death. If that Venn up there heard someone accuse Inda of being Marlovan, the response would be immediate and final, that much Dun knew. They’d execute the boy right on deck, because Inda would never deny it.

“If you say a word,” Dun murmured, staring straight into Norsh’s eyes, “you will not live past the night watch.” Away, fast, before the mate could recover enough to ask questions that Dun would not answer.

Dun heard steps along the gangway. He paused until Tigga reached the deck, then emerged just as Tigga looked around, then bawled in a topmast voice, for the third time, “Liegemen of Tlennen-Harvaldar, in uniform or out, will be put to death.”

Tau had recognized it below, a language he’d sometimes overheard in his mother’s pleasure house, and one he hadn’t expected to hear out on the water, so very far away from home.

He knew what would come next, and so he had time to think and to smile, and after the Venn’s extraordinary declaration, to laugh, drawing all eyes to him. So that Tigga missed it when Inda, high in the tops, jerked around, his mouth open. Then pain exploded across Inda’s face, and a voice snarled, in Dock Talk, “Get it right, ye stupid rat.”

Get what right? Inda blinked away the spots in his vision resulting from the clout, and realized he must have missed an order: Scalis wanted those lifts tended. Silently he helped the two men working, but the shock of memory echoed that short speech, and in Marlovan! Wrong word order, odd word endings, but otherwise the accent of home.

“Piss-hair is looking for horse turds?” came the hoarse whisper of Niz, who’d swung himself down to the crosstrees. They sat side by side, their skinny bodies blocking Inda from view below, where Tigga was confronting Tau.

“The Marlovan tongue amuses you?” Tigga asked in a soft voice, studying the golden gaze before him, the winning smile, the open hands.

From his earliest days Tau’s mother had said,
Smile, sweetie, you have my smile. Use it and you’ll get anything you want.
And later,
Smile for Mama, a pretty smile from Mama’s pretty boy, and the gold will pour in
.

“I’m sorry,” Taumad said, using his mother’s open gaze, her tip of the head. The same gestures he’d seen her employ so many times. He’d hated them for their falsity, but they came so naturally now. Inwardly he laughed at himself, the laughter of self-mockery, even though his heart beat fast.

The Venn studied him with a dispassionate coldness.

Tau said, “It’s just you won’t win any friends here, speaking that tongue, not with Idayagans among the hands.”

Tigga sorted Tau’s Iascan accent, assessed his looks, the freedom with which he spoke, and decided he had to be the captain’s favorite. Vaki appeared from below right then, and Tigga waved Tau aside with a dismissive gesture.

“Anything?” he asked Vaki, in their own tongue.

“Nothing.”

Well, he hadn’t expected to find any Marlovans hiding on this old tub. In the meantime, these Iascans would carry the story all down the coast, they and their consorts, who still had to be boarded, searched, and intimidated before sundown.

Tigga climbed down into the barge, quite aware of the vast sense of relief, of release, that he left behind him, and Vaki and his men followed. They raised their oars, dipped them on a signal, and after they had rowed round the bow of the
Pim Ryala
in one last gesture of arrogant superiority, they headed back to the
Reed-Skimmer
.

Captain Beagar gave the command to raise sail, put the helm down, and continue on. He did not stay to see his order carried out, but withdrew at once to sit at his table with his head in his hands.

Up in the tops, Inda remained silent during the work of hauling round the foretopsail. When it was taut and drawing again, and the ship had once more come to life, the hands started down, some silent, others talking in low voices, eyes shifting right and left.

Tau was still amazed at his own action. It was the first time he had ever stirred himself to take a risk on anyone’s behalf; he, who believed in comfort and trusted the predictability of human weakness, was giddy with amazement.

Scalis kept an eye on his Marlovan. Oh yes, young Inda was a real Marlovan, all right, as if anyone had doubted it. Every top hand had seen him jump as if he’d been roped when that piss-hair Venn yapped out that jabber in Marlovan. Scalis had heard it before, when he was small. He didn’t understand any of it, but you remembered the sound of it, after those long-haired horsemen in their tight, long coats rode through your town, cutting down anyone who stood against them with a single stroke of those curve tipped swords of theirs. But Inda wasn’t one of
those
. No. Just a runaway. In Scalis’s experience, runaways never talked about their past.

Norsh decided on silence for now. But as soon as they touched land he’d get together some people he could trust and have it out with that carpenter’s mate.

Chapter Eleven

T
ORCH making was an art, an old one. The torches used by the Marlovans had come across the continent from the Chwahir, who had mastered the art of winding oil-soaked, leddas-wax-dipped flax round and round carefully hardened wood, giving off a pungent smell that buzzed in the nose.

Torches (and glowglobes) that burned by magic spell were imported, but the numbers that the distant, mysterious Council of Mages had deemed appropriate to be sold to Iasca Leror were far below what the Marlovans required.

This limit was especially felt at the New Year’s Convocation that the Marlovan king hosted every year, and had ever since the days of the plains, when torches were set in a ring on the frosted ground, circling the celebrants who fought, danced, and sang night and day.

New Year’s Week was yet a few days off, but Runners arriving with the news of the Harskialdna returning home in triumph had caused the king to order the city lit in welcome.

The glow of the royal city, a dim golden dome against the cold winter sky, could be seen half a day’s ride away by the tired conquerors. By nightfall they saw every wall and tower outlined by firelight.

Anderle-Harskialdna and the Sierlaef rode at the front, the Sier-Danas directly behind them, bannermen surrounding them, and an impressive sight they were.

Only the king noticed how, despite his smiles and his fist raised in acknowledgment of the cheers, drums, and triumph songs raised by the royal city as they rode in, the Harskialdna’s brow was tense. And so he sent word for the victory supper to be held half a bell later than planned.

How like our father he is,
Tlennen thought. His foremost emotion was pity. He knew his brother conspired against imagined enemies as passionately as he did against the real, that he cherished grudges formed in boyhood. So had their father, as much as he’d craved order—and life was never quite orderly enough in spite of his constant vigilance. First to rise every day, the sounds of bells acting like a rope yanking him from one scheduled task to the next. Last to sleep, thinking of endless lists. Endless preparing, training.

He knew why his brother was tense, but he must give no sign of it. He kept his brother’s respect partly because Anderle’s loyalties were as long-enduring as his grudges, and partly because of Tlennen’s own apparent omniscience that was perceived by his brother as wisdom.

As soon as they were alone the Harskialdna said, before even drawing off his riding gloves, “Here is your treaty, Brother.”

“Sit down. Here is some hot cider with bristic.” Tlennen indicated the pungent drink sitting on the side table, and while his Shield Arm poured out a drink and sipped gratefully, he took the heavy scroll weighted by seals. He already knew what it said from Jened Sindan’s precise reports, conveyed by magic weeks ago, but he took the time to read it through, noting little things like the deliberate angles of the writing here, the angry slants there. Whose name was writ large, whose small. That the king of Idayago wrote only
Idayago
in gold ink and none of his names or other titles at all.

When he looked up some of the tension had already gone out of his brother’s face. His cheeks were flushed from the double-distilled bristic.

“This is as good as we could expect,” the king said. “Yet you do not seem pleased with your victory.”

The Harskialdna prowled around the room, his boots making muddy patches on the fine rug, which would have to be brushed clean. Usually he was aware of such things, as personal fastidiousness was a part of his craving for order, had been clear back in the nursery days, when he and their sister Tdiran would stack all Ndara’s and Tlennen’s papers and line up their drawing chalk according to size. The muddy prints testified to the depth of his distress. “It was not my victory,” he said finally, in short words. His captains would have stiffened at that tone, a little too loud for the room, a little too harsh; his wife had loathed it since they were small children together in the nursery. Too often it had presaged violence in those days. Tlennen knew it to be unhappiness. “It was Sindan’s.”