Isles of the Forsaken (28 page)

“Excuse me, Governor, I need to attend to this,” Joffrey said. Inside, his stomach tightened with tension. This meant that more news had arrived from the South Chain.

When he returned to the party half an hour later, the guests were assembling by the door to the banquet hall. Livvie materialized by his side, iridescent in abalone and pearl. “Where were you?” she said. Evidently, he had missed her entrance.

“I was called away by my duties,” he said. “You look splendid, Miss Sorrell.”

His eyes strayed from her to locate the admiral. He felt doomed.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“Some bad news,” he said. “It’s a worried time just now.”

“Those brutes on Thimish, you mean? I hate them.”

Not nearly as much as I do, Joffrey thought.

The musicians struck up a stirring, patriotic march and the tall doors to the banquet hall swung open. The guests began to parade inside. When he reached the door with Livvie on his arm, Joffrey was disturbed to see that one whole side of the banquet hall was a wall of windows, now dark. The long, glittering table ran parallel to the windows. Automatically, he looked around to locate the admiral. Talley and Tiarch were hanging back by the doorway, conversing, both instinctively reluctant to appear before lit windows at night. He knew how Tiarch had come by that instinct; she had survived three assassination attempts. How Admiral Talley had acquired it, he didn’t know—probably at his mother’s knee.

“I’ve got to find your father,” Joffrey said to Livvie, and then left her without even showing her to her seat. When he got to Worden Sorrell, he whispered, “Sir, are there curtains for the windows?”

“There is nothing outside but the garden,” the merchant said.

“Still, it is a security risk. I’m afraid I must insist you draw them.”

The servants, who had been poised to serve the first course, were redeployed to draw the heavy curtains over the windows. As Talley was finally strolling to his seat, Joffrey intercepted him and whispered, “Sir, when you have a chance, I need to speak to you.”

“What is it?” the admiral said, his unnerving blue eyes on Joffrey’s face.

“Some more news from Thimish.” He strove to make his voice signal non-urgency, and willed the man to sit and enjoy his dinner first; after all, there was nothing they could do tonight.

But instead, Talley went over to their host and apologized for having to withdraw. Sorrell, by now concerned at the unsettled tone, suggested they use the scriptorium, and showed them the door. A watchful silence settled over the banquet hall as Joffrey led off the guest of honour.

The scriptorium was a long, board-floored room with two rows of clerks’ desks running down the middle. The walls were lined to the ceiling with the merchant’s letter books and records. Joffrey lit two lamps on the desks nearest the door.

“Who is handling security tonight?” Talley said in a deceptively conversational tone.

“Dorris, sir,” Joffrey said. “He won’t be doing it again.”

“That’s just as well.”

There was a pause as Joffrey tried to think how to frame the news in the least damaging way. “We are getting some specifics now, and names,” he said. “It wasn’t the same band of brigands we knew about; they appear to have some new ringleaders. The chief insurgent is some character named Harg Ismol—”

“What?” Talley interrupted sharply.

Joffrey paused. He was quite sure he had never heard the name before. “Harg Ismol. You know him?”

“Yes.” Talley looked like a thousand bitter thoughts were racing through his head. “He was Native Navy. A man I believed to have some loyalty towards me.”

Joffrey realized that the admiral’s tone reflected a real sense of personal betrayal. It was an aspect of Talley’s personality he knew well. The man feared and despised betrayal above all things. He was always expecting it, and was almost always right.

Talley turned away, thinking. “This explains a great deal. I have much more sympathy for Captain Slavens now. He was up against a man—” He cut off his thought in mid-sentence. “Damn the ungrateful viper! We taught him everything he knows. We raised him up from nothing. He could have been . . . and this is our reward.”

Joffrey waited silently, vowing to find out what had gone on between the two of them.

“This is going to change our plans,” Talley said, and now his voice had a ruthless edge. “We’re not dealing with criminals or agitators, as we thought. We’re up against what amounts to a mutinous faction of the Native Navy. We have to expect them to fight us the way they fought the Rothurs. This is not going to be pleasant, Joffrey.”

“No, sir.”

“Was that all?”

“No, sir. There is a story that worries me, knowing the superstitions of the Adaina, and how impressionable they are.” He told the story then, as it had been told to him, of how Harg Ismol had prevented the sacking of Harbourdown.

When he finished, Talley was silent a moment. “And for this he gets credit?”

“Yes, sir. Credit, and even reverence.”

“So he is praised for preventing anarchy, when it was he who provoked it. We had been preventing looting right along, but do we get praised for it?” His tone was irritated beyond bearing.

He hadn’t understood the point of the story, Joffrey reflected. It was not that Harg had prevented looting; it was the way he did it, with Lashnura backing. But it was impossible to explain to an Inning how dangerous that was.

“There is one more thing, sir.” Joffrey drew a deep breath. “They have a number of Inning hostages, as we knew. What we didn’t know was that one of the hostages is . . . well, they’ve captured your brother Nathaway, sir.”

This time the admiral’s reaction was totally silent, but not impassive. His jaw was clenched tight. He drew in a long breath. When he spoke, it was with coldly controlled anger. “Is there one single, solitary thing that has not been completely fucked up?” He pinned Joffrey down with those blued-steel eyes. “Well, Joffrey? Tell me there is one way Harg Ismol has not run circles around you.”

There was nothing Joffrey could say. To open his mouth would sound defensive, an implicit confession of guilt.

“I will expect your resignation to be on my desk in the morning,” Talley said.

“Yes, sir.”

It was a sentence of exile. Joffrey would never be able to show his face in Tornabay again. He would have to move away, back to Fluminos. It was the only other place where he knew anyone. Mostly, he knew enemies of Corbin Talley who might find such a man as he useful to have in their employ.

The admiral had asked him a question. He had to say, “Sorry, sir?”

“I said, who the bloody hell sent Nathaway to Thimish?”

“No one. He was supposed to be on another island where there was a small force to look after him. Apparently, he left of his own accord, before they could prevent him.” He hesitated, wondering how much compromising detail to go into, but decided he had nothing to lose. “There seems to have been a woman involved.”

“The fool,” Talley said under his breath. He gave Joffrey a piercing look. “Was
that
all?”

“Yes, sir. That’s all.”

“Very well.”

Joffrey turned stiffly to leave, but the admiral said, “Joffrey.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ve changed my mind. I have another assignment for you.”

He paused so long that Joffrey said, “Sir?”

“Come back and see me in the morning, when I’ve worked it out. In the meantime, go enjoy the banquet.”

“Yes, sir.” He didn’t say thank you. A commander couldn’t sack someone, then take it back, and expect everything to continue on as before. The bond of trust had been broken.

The banquet was sheer torture after that. He had been seated next to Livvie, and she tried gamely to flirt him out of his morose silence. But every time he overheard Corbin Talley engaging in pleasantries with his dinner companions several seats away, his bitterness grew.

At one point, the conversation down the table turned to the subject of charity for the poor. Admiral Talley said, loud enough for Joffrey to hear, “Personally, I’ve found that altruism is a risky investment, as likely to end in disappointment or betrayal as in rewards. Debts cut both ways, it seems. Be careful who you help.”

Joffrey could feel the eyes of the Inning officers on him. They had been waiting for him to fail so the admiral would come to his senses.

At the earliest possible moment Joffrey excused himself, pleaded the press of duty, and left. He emerged from the Sorrell mansion into a light rain that fell silently on the walled garden that surrounded the house. When he reached the front gate, a liveried footman intercepted him. “Commodore Joffrey? If you please, sir, the governor has sent word that she would like to meet with you. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in her carriage . . .”

Joffrey glanced around, but no one was watching him. The invitation was balm to his smarting pride, proof that he was not yet out of the game. He crossed the walk to the plain black carriage waiting in the street. The footman opened the door for him, and he climbed inside.

He didn’t have to wait long. Within ten minutes the carriage began to move, then turned into the gate of the Sorrell compound to pick up the governor at the door. Joffrey waited in the darkness of the curtained interior till Tiarch climbed in. She didn’t acknowledge his presence till the door was closed; then she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“How could I decline such a mysterious invitation?” Joffrey said.

“Sorry if it seemed theatrical.”

“Not at all.”

The horses set off at a sedate walk. Once they were on the street again, Tiarch pushed back the curtains. There was no light in the carriage; they saw each other only by the occasional streetlamp.

“You’re not a Tornabay native, are you?” Tiarch said conversationally. “Where’s your family from?”

“Rusk,” Joffrey answered.

“Merchants?”

“Shopkeepers.” He didn’t often admit it, but he knew the governor’s father had been a butcher.

“They must be proud of you.”

He gave a humourless laugh. Tonight, there wasn’t much to feel proud of.

“Don’t undervalue yourself,” Tiarch said, a ray of light from the street outside glinting from her eyes. “
Never
undervalue yourself. That’s advice from an expert.”

He couldn’t help reflecting on how much she must love the rebels on Thimish for demonstrating to the Innings how valuable she had been to them all these years.

“I was born in Tornabay,” Tiarch said. “It’s been home all my life, and I know it like my own hand. This neighbourhood we’re in now is the oldest part of town.”

Looking out the window, Joffrey saw they were passing one of the many angular little parks where pieces of forgotten statuary stood. The neighbourhood was a hodgepodge of old and new. All down the street, no two structures were the same height or style. It was as if they sprouted from the rubble whenever an old giant fell, as if the buildings fed on the remains of their own kind.

“The last decade has been good to Tornabay,” Tiarch said. “We’ve had peace and prosperity, and the Innings took their tithes but left us to manage our own affairs. Fifteen years ago, the Inner Chain was a conquered satrapy. Now it is a profitable, self-sufficient territory. That kind of change doesn’t happen by accident.”

She spoke with an air of personal pride. Joffrey stayed silent, waiting to see where this was leading.

“And now it is all in jeopardy. You saw those Inning officers today: young, ambitious men, restless for command. These poor, doomed Adainas on Thimish have given them just the excuse they need. We’re on the brink of a war—a ruinous and cruel war that will shatter our prosperity and take our independence with it.”

Joffrey knew that she spoke for most of the merchants who had been at the banquet tonight. He was sitting at the junction of two sorts of power: the power of wealth and the power of force.

“Have you spoken to Admiral Talley?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know him yet. I’ve just begun to know you.”

It was important that she had turned to him. What he could do for her was less clear. “We can’t ignore the challenge to Inning authority,” he said. “We have to respond.”

“Of course,” she said. “But we don’t have to over-respond. The event on Thimish is a flash in the pan, or would be if the Innings knew their islanders. The Adaina can’t unite. They have nothing in common but their quarrels.”

“They have united in the past,” Joffrey pointed out.

“When they had an Ison and an Onan. But they can’t have that while we have their Heir of Gilgen.”

Joffrey said, “Does the name Harg Ismol mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“He’s the ringleader of the rebels on Thimish. They are not entirely without leadership now.”

The slow steps of the horses had carried them into the Gallowmarket, one of the many open squares that formed the commercial hubs of Tornabay. It was deserted except for a lone soldier patrolling. One side of the square was formed by the towering palace wall, and against it stood the wooden platform where criminals were executed. A row of six sharpened stakes stood there, symbols of justice. In the shadow of the stakes was the gate through which condemned prisoners passed from captivity to death. Ringing the square, the buildings looked down like witnesses, their faces blackened by the immortal soot of fires that had died generations ago.

Tiarch rapped on the ceiling of the carriage, and the driver brought it to a halt, parked in view of the execution stand. She sat looking out. “That’s not bad news, actually,” she said. “If it were just a general insurgency, putting it down would be like swatting mosquitoes. If they have a leader, at least there is someone to blame, someone to negotiate with, someone to defeat and execute.”

“Admiral Talley will not negotiate,” Joffrey said. He knew that with absolute certainty.

“Even for the hostages?” Tiarch asked.

Ordinarily, Joffrey would have said no. But knowing what he did, he hesitated. “Their policy is not to bargain,” he said. “But he is in a bad spot. The rebels are holding his brother.”

Tiarch gave a soft exclamation. “Damn them! How did they manage that?”