Lord of the Isles (46 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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The fire in Meder's brazier hissed angrily around whatever he'd added to the flames. Sharina smelled a bitter odor but her eyes continued to scan the line of Sleepsalot's crew.
Sleepsalot eased back, probably unconsciously. “You have to defeat all the King's Sons to challenge the king!” he said, but his confidence was clearly bluster.
“I don't think the King's Sons look like much, do you?” Nonnus said nonchalantly. He spun his javelin between his thumb and two fingers, then transferred it into his left hand behind his back, still spinning. “Of course …”
The woman beside Sleepsalot turned so that the twenty-armed starburst tattooed on her shoulder was toward the hermit. Sharina remembered what Nonnus had said about the Folk worshipping the monsters of the deep.
“ … it might be that Longtoes will decide to make you the harpooner in a boat that
I
captain, tomorrow,” Nonnus said, grinning at the chief and spinning the javelin back into his right hand. “If Longtoes did that, why, I wouldn't feel a need to challenge him.”
Sleepsalot's jaw dropped. He looked as though the hermit was dangling him over the open jaws of a seawolf—which was pretty close to the reality of the situation. The members of his crew were backing away noticeably; even Threefingers was looking at his father as if they'd met for the first time.
“
Barbathiathiao brimaiao chermari!
” Meder shouted, completing his incantation. The fire hissed, then
cracked
as sharply as a blow on the ear.
All of Sleepsalot's crew retreated. Sharina risked a glance behind her.
A cloud of pulsing white smoke rose from the brazier. It was humanoid in shape and already the size of a man as it continued to grow. The child jumped to his feet to stare at the image wide-eyed. Meder grabbed the boy by his long hair.
Nonnus stepped sideways so that he could look at the wizard without turning his back on Sleepsalot, though the chief and his people weren't the threat they might have been a minute earlier. “Meder!” the hermit said. “Put the boy down! I've got this under control.”
The child screamed and kicked. Meder punched him with the butt of the athame, then held the point to his throat.
Meder's eyes were wide with fear and anticipation. “You have to give us your boat and let us go!” he called to Sleepsalot. The image of smoke gyrated as though it were dancing on top of the fire. It was about seven feet tall; hulking, faceless, the arms and torso much longer than the legs.
Threefingers and Sleepsalot exchanged glances. The younger man laughed and stepped forward, careful to skirt Nonnus. “Or what, islander?” Threefingers said. “If you think your tricks—”
Meder flushed. He thrust his ivory blade through the child's throat in a spray of blood. The child's screams ended in a gurgle, but Sharina screamed in his place.
A spurt of dark blood from the neck arteries splashed onto the fire. The brazier geysered red flame as though the blood had stoked the fire instead of quenching it. Liquid sparks spewed in all directions, some charring the whaleskin decking while others went over the side to sizzle in the water.
Meder stood unharmed and unmoving in the midst of the blaze, though the dead child's hair was beginning to burn. The image of white smoke dissipated.
The sea roared. A humanoid shape formed from water as
red as flame. It caught the houseboat's gunwale in one hand and pulled itself up on deck. Its limbs rippled bonelessly.
Sleepsalot shouted and stabbed the creature in the chest. The harpoon stuck as though thrust into warm pitch. The creature roared. Seizing Sleepsalot by the scalp and one shoulder, it pulled his head off.
Meder laughed like a demon. He tossed the child's corpse away. The fire had vanished. The brazier was shards of blackened bone, destroyed by the powers it had initiated.
Threefingers flung his harpoon into the creature's back and leaped over the far side of the houseboat in a dive as graceful as a tern's. Sleepsalot's crew ran for the bow, some of them jumping into the water while a few tried to get into the boat. The creature caught two of the hindmost and crushed them together in its arms.
Dropping the corpses, the creature took the hawser in its hands and drew the bow of the catcher boat out of the water. The three crewmen aboard her went over the side. They swam toward the houseboat hundreds of yards distant instead of trying to reboard Motherhugger's vessel. Members of Motherhugger's family were in the water also or poised to dive.
The creature dropped the whaleskin rope and turned toward Nonnus. The hermit cocked the javelin to throw. Sharina stepped in front of him, facing the creature.
Meder shouted a word lost in thunder. The creature's form sagged like wax in a fire. The color washed away. The figure became water, sooty water, splashing across the deck and over the houseboat's side.
Sharina dropped the hand axe. She turned sobbing and threw her arms around Nonnus. All she could see was the face of the boy as his cries drowned in his own blood.
“The past is past, child,” the hermit whispered. His ribs beneath his coarse black tunic were as hard and ridged as the bark of an oak tree. “For the child, for you and me. The past is past.”
He shifted slightly as he turned his head, though Sharina was still blind with tears and memory. “As for Meder, well,
we all have our ghosts. But I'll pray for the soul of his as well as for my own.”
“I had to do it,” Meder said in a high-pitched voice. “Procurator, you saw that there was no choice. You saw that!”
“Help me load our provisions onto the boat, child,” Nonnus said softly in Sharina's ear. “They won't come chasing us, I think.”
He sighed. “Skin boats don't sail much better against the wind than a dugout does, but we'll manage. With the help of the Lady, we'll manage.”
I
lna heard the voices in the hallway. She stepped away from the loom before the faint, fearful knock at the door.
“Mistress?” the maid called. The door panel was carved with a boar's head, the coat of arms of some former owner. “There's a man who says he has to see you.”
The chamber was intended as a winter parlor. Light flooded it through the deep bay window into the garden behind. Ilna used it as a workroom: her looms were set so that the sun was always over her shoulder as she wove.
She'd neglected the garden since Beltar rented the mansion for her, but it remained awash with striking color. Pink and yellow hollyhocks mounted from planters among the brick walks; red and white roses covered the walls against the adjoining properties and Erdin's central canal across the back.
The flowers' beauty didn't matter to Ilna. She never looked around while working, never noticed the play of light on the petals through the day or the tranquil buzzing of the insects they attracted. They weren't a part of her pattern.
The maid who opened the door was small, dark, young,
and terrified. She'd been told that Ilna must never be interrupted while working. The least she expected for violating that order was that she'd lose the well-paid position on which she depended. Rumors about her employer opened much more frightening possibilities.
Ilna nodded. “Show him in,” she said.
The girl needn't have worried: she would only have disobeyed Ilna if she'd been forced to do so. Ilna understood compulsion very well. She lacked compassion for those others compelled as she lacked compassion in all things, but neither did she mete out punishment without a reason for doing so.
The maid curtsied. “Voder or-Tettigan, mistress,” she said with a sob of relief. “From the chancellor's office.”
The man she gestured in before closing the door was compact, reasonably well dressed, and in his late thirties. He had a bit of a paunch on him and enough rank that the hickory baton he carried only served to identify him as a member of the City Patrols.
He hadn't always had the rank. The wood had seen its share of hard knocks, as had the man carrying it.
“Mistress,” he said, bowing a hair deeper than bare politeness required. He'd been sizing her up just as she had him.
“I make a regular donation to the district captain,” Ilna said coldly. “If you have a problem with his division of the spoils, I suggest you take it up with him. Good day, sir!”
Voder shook his head. “I work out of the central office, mistress,” he said. “I'm not here to squeeze you. I'm here to close you down.”
His voice was low, slow, and had a slight burr. His build and manner reminded her of Cashel; Voder lacked her brother's size, but they shared a rocklike solidity and a determination as certain as Ilna's own.
“There's a law against a gentlewoman weaving in her own home?” Ilna said. If she'd been speaking to the usual sort of man there'd have been contempt in her tone, but there was nothing contemptible about this man. “I transact no business in this dwelling. I transact no business at all, Master Voder.
If the chancellor has questions about the quality of my work, let him take them up with Beltar or-Holman at his shop on Glass Street.”
Voder shook his head again. “I'm sorry, mistress,” he said and sounded like he meant the words. “There's been a dozen killings already over your ribbons. Men killing their wives, wives killing their husbands' girlfriends … people drowning themselves because somebody left them, and there was one poor devil last night who hung himself because of the way he'd treated his wife. He really loved her, I guess. There's people like that.”
His eyes had been surveying the room as he spoke: the looms, the worktable, the ironbound chest bolted to the floor; the lack of any amenities whatever. He met Ilna's eyes again, gave her a lopsided smile, and said, “It's got to stop, mistress. It's got to.”
Ilna sniffed as she walked across the room to the strongbox. “All right,” she said dismissively, though she knew that it wasn't going to be right; not this time. “How much do you want?”
“Mistress, I really wish it was that simple,” Voder said; again she heard the ring of sincerity. “I won't tell you any lies: I've got a family and sure, I've done what I've had to do to make sure they didn't starve. But that's not what I'm here for this time. You're doing evil, mistress. You know it, I know it. If you were just breaking the law I could maybe look the other way, but this has got to stop.”
She faced him. “You've said what you came to say,” she said icily. “Now leave.”
“Mistress,” Voder said. “I came up the hard way. I guess you did too so you understand what I'm saying: either you stop this or I do. I'm as sorry as I can be, but that's just what I mean.”
Their eyes locked: hers brown, his gray, and as hard as pairs of millstones.
“Mistress,” Voder said, “I live here. I've lived in Erdin all my life.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “I guess I
love the place, fool though I sound to say that. I won't let this go on.”
“Good day, Master Voder,” Ilna repeated without inflection.
Voder nodded. “I'm sorry,” he said. He opened the door and closed it behind him, firmly but quietly.
Una walked over to the loom on which she was weaving a portrait. She looked at the image in the shimmering fabric for some moments, then returned to the door and opened it. The maid was waiting in the hall, as stiff as if she expected a sentence of death.
Ilna smiled in disdain. “Send a courier to Beltar or-Holman at his shop,” she said. “I need him at once.”
“Master Beltar is in the reception room waiting for you to finish your work, mistress,” the maid babbled. “Shall I—”
Ilna shooed the girl off with a silent wave of her hand. It angered her to be treated as though she was some sort of capricious monster. She'd never harmed anything without a reason … and the cosmos gave her reason for much greater harm than she chose to do.
Beltar came up the hallway, forcing a smile when he saw Ilna. She ushered him into the workroom. The draper now dressed expensively though in conservative colors: his tunic had thin stripes of brown and olive green, and the toes of his black leather slippers curled up to end in horsehair tassels.
He'd lost weight and his face had the gray sheen of an image in a zinc mirror.
“A problem's arisen,” Ilna said as she closed the door. She walked between a pair of her looms. The largest, the double-span giant, was covered with muslin to conceal the work upon it. “Come here. You know the woman Leah os-Wenzel? The chancellor's mistress?”
“I know of her,” Beltar said cautiously. He'd never been invited to see the looms from the front, where the patterns being created were visible. “Leah bos-Zelliman, she calls herself now. She's been a customer.”
There were several ribbon looms. The patterns of the works
in progress were subtly modified from one to the next; nothing that Beltar could see, but he could recognize the variations by the different effects the pieces had on him.
“As if a name mattered,” Ilna sniffed. Her lip curled. “As if noble birth meant anything!”
That was as much emotion as the draper had ever seen her display; he blinked. Ilna grimaced at her failure of control and stepped to the loom on which she'd woven a panel—a shawl, it might be—a full yard wide and some eight inches deep. The thread was a mixture of wool and goat hair, both of them black, so that the pattern showed in the texture rather than the color of the fabric.
Beltar looked at the panel, gasped, and averted his eyes. Ilna smiled coldly as she clipped the piece out of the frame.
“I want you to take this to Mistress Leah,” she said as she carried the cloth to her worktable. “Tell her that it's a gift from me. A free gift.”
Ilna laid the piece flat on the table, smoothed out the wrinkles, and picked up her uncased knife; another weaver would have used shears. She held the upper left corner of the fabric to the table with her free thumb and forefinger.
“Tell Mistress Leah,” she continued as she drew the keen steel diagonally down across the fabric, severing it into two perfect triangles, “that she'll get the other half of the panel when a police official from the central office, one Voder or-Tettigan, is arrested.”
She looked at Beltar. He winced back from her expression. “A charge of accepting bribes should do,” she said. “I can't imagine a policeman in Erdin that the charge couldn't be truthfully brought against.”
She smiled. The heart of a glacier had more warmth. “Not that I require the charge be truthful, of course,” she said.
Ilna set one of the neat triangles on a strip of the baize she kept for wrappers. She rolled it so that the coarse cloth concealed her own creation.
Beltar cleared his throat. “Ah—is there something I should know, mistress?” he asked.
“You should know better than to get in my way!” Ilna snapped. She grimaced again; in contempt for the draper, and with contempt as well for her own loss of control.
“But you already know better than that, don't you?” she added mildly. “You wouldn't dare cross me.”
Beltar's throat worked as he swallowed, but he didn't say anything. Ilna looked at him sharply as another thought struck her. “Why were you waiting to see me?” she demanded. “You came to tell me you weren't going to work for me anymore, weren't you?”
The draper swayed as though she'd stabbed him through the heart; his face was sweat-slicked and blotchy with fear. Ilna laughed with the amusement of an adult for a child's misguided efforts.
“I didn't …” Beltar whispered hoarsely. “I never said …”
“No, well, it doesn't matter,” Ilna said with good-natured scorn. “You're not going to quit, because I still have use for you.”
She held out the rolled fabric. “Get this to the lady at once,” she ordered. “She'll be quite pleased with the result; the chancellor hasn't been coming by as often as he used to. If he drops Mistress Leah, she goes back to selling oranges to the spectators at stage shows, doesn't she?”
Beltar took the packet. The remaining triangle lay on the worktable. Seeing it was like hearing the sound of a beast breathing in pitch darkness: there was nothing fearsome in what was visible, but something hugely powerful lurked just beyond the realm of vision.
“That may well be the case, mistress,” Beltar said in a gray voice. She'd crushed his rebellion before he'd even had the courage to voice it. He knew—as he'd known from the first—that he was Ilna's tool and that she would use him until he broke. “Voder or-Tettigan is to be arrested immediately for taking bribes.”
Beltar's eyes fell on the panel being woven on the other
standard loom. It was a full-length image of the Lady, woven in silk and threads of precious metals.
It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.
“Mistress!” Beltar said in awe and wonder. He fell to his knees. The image was about three-quarters complete. A ram and a ewe rose on their hind legs to kiss the Lady's hands; the mists of heaven surrounded Her head in supernal glory. “Mistress! So beautiful!”
Ilna looked at the panel critically. “Yes, isn't it?” she said. She gripped the top of the fabric, stretching the warp threads, and twisted. The cloth was thin but silk and therefore strong; Ilna's face was stark and terrible as she ripped the image nonetheless.
Beltar screamed. He lurched to his feet and put out a hand to stop her, but it was already too late. Ilna tossed the shreds of fabric aside; they hung from the loom like the husks of butterflies drained in a spider's web.
“Go take care of my business, Beltar,” she said hoarsely. “And be thankful that you're not man enough to oppose me.”
Ilna took the draper by the hand and led him, sobbing and tear-blinded, to the door which she closed behind him. She walked back to the rank of looms.
Mistress Leah would take care of the matter, of that Ilna had no doubt. If the chancellor himself hesitated to do Leah's will, she'd give orders to subordinates in his name. No one would question the matter until it had happened and then—well, it would be too great an embarrassment to undo. Voder had been dealt with before he could damage the pattern Ilna wove.
Ilna resumed work on one of the ribbons she'd begun before Voder's arrival; a simple thing, barely an hour's work for fingers that never made a mistake. After a moment she paused and started to fold the part of the divided shawl still on her worktable.
Ilna put the triangle down, half folded. She stretched out her hands to the panel she'd just torn from the frame, caressing the gleaming tangles with her fingertips. She had been
weaving the panel to prove to herself that her talent was just that: a talent, not a manifestation of evil.

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