Sasharia En Garde (29 page)

Owl turned away, one arm gripping the other arm. He was
trying very hard not to laugh. I
felt
the riveted gaze of the fellow at the helm.

“You look better in that tunic than I do,” Jehan said,
assuming courtly manners, but his tone was genuine. Even enthusiastic. “Come
into the cabin. Supper is ready.”

It was a relief to follow him down the broad stairs into the
stern cabin. As he stepped with his characteristic quick stride I couldn’t stop
myself from sneaking a peek at him from behind, that long, slim line from shoulder
to—
Stop that!

I turned my attention to the captain’s cabin.

Wow, talk about a sybaritic delight. Whoever had designed
this yacht didn’t have a rough sailor’s life in mind. There were two of
everything in the fine wood carvings, shining rich gold in the light of leaded
glass lanterns set in graceful golden holders. Two roses, the leaves suggestive
of entwined bodies. Two lilies, same. Two dolphins leaping and sporting in
repeated motif all round the bunk frame. And what a bunk. Built directly under
the broad, slanting stern windows, it enabled one—or two—to lie there and look
directly out at the wake glowing in the reflected golden light, foaming away
and away under the glimmering stars. I leaned to look—

And felt that neon sensation again.

I whirled around, and crossed my arms when I caught Owl and
Jehan staring. Not just staring but checking out my butt in that snug tunic.

Owl looked up at the ceiling as though his future lay
written there. Jehan grinned, a laugh barely suppressed in the slightly husky
undertone to his voice as he said, “Please sit. Tell me about your day.”

Since I’d been doing my own butt-checking a minute previous,
I didn’t say anything. Just plunked down and thumped my elbows onto the carved
table. The chairs were lyre backed, cushioned and comfortable.

“Let me see,” I said cordially. “What part would that be?
The nice long morning when Owl nearly suffocated me? Or would that be later,
when I was still suffocating? Or, maybe after you left, when everyone was busy,
the sun sinking. I thought, great time to dive overboard. Straight into an
out-flowing tide. Oops.”

“What did you plan if the tide had worked for you?” Jehan
poured out some wine into three goblets. “I ask because I’ve made a couple of
ship dives myself.”

“Yours being successful, of course.”

He grinned over his goblet at me. “I’ve had more experience
with remembering the flow of tides.”

“Well, I didn’t think I could make it all the way to shore.
My idea was to reach another boat. Any boat. I could see them, or rather their
running lights, or whatever they are called here. Pretend, if they pulled me
out, that I’d fallen overboard on a pleasure cruise, no one noticed because of
all the noise, and would someone set me ashore?”

“Except those between us and the harbor are all Randart’s
fleet.” Jehan swept his hand all around us. “Gathering to search for the wicked
pirate Zathdar.”

“Oh.” I sipped the wine, which was perfect, not too sweet,
not too tart, a Shakespearean sonnet of subtle flavors. I took another sip,
this time pausing long enough to savor it. “Wow, that’s good.” My annoyance
melted away. “All right, so that concludes Sasharia’s stupidity for the day.
What about you? How did the games go? Was it boring and predictable?”

“No. It was neither.” Jehan began with meeting the mystery
guys on the walk up to the castle. He ended his report when David and the
others vanished through the back of the tent just as the searchers came through
the front.

“So I made my way straight to the boat and here I am.” He
said to Owl, “That tall one. I know I’ve seen him before.”

Owl hunched over his wine. “Really good with his hands?
Lean? Eyes a strange shade of pale brown, almost orange in the right light?”

“That’s the one.”

“Didn’t use a name, as I recall. Initials. MV? I think they
were MV. Robin was the same age. She said she and the other sprats used to try
to guess what they stood for. I remember him during that tangle with the
Chwahir and those pirates out of Ghanthur, our very first cruise. Knew nothing
about boats when he came aboard us, but he could fight. Don’t you remember?”

Jehan leaned tiredly back in his chair, staring out at the
sea. “We’ve had so many brushes with the Chwahir . . . Ghanthur . . .
not to mention crew coming and going. That goes way back. Why, it must have
been when I met you.”

Owl grinned. “Just about. Yes.”

They exchanged one of those looks people use when they are
thinking of Past History, but before anyone could say anything the Colendi cook
appeared, and with a flourish set out the dishes, delicate poached fish with
fresh herbs and a dash of wine sauce, steamed carrots with a dash of another
herb, and roasted little potatoes, so savory and tasty I could have eaten a
plate of them.

Kaelande served more wine. His style of serving was like
what I’d been taught, I noticed idly, in the more hotsy-totsy dinner houses I’d
worked at, back in L.A. The same even pouring, the flick of the wrist when
bringing the bottle up so there were no splashes.

I was beginning to feel a slight buzz, so I shook my head. I
really did not know who was friend and who enemy, or how both could manage to
be embodied in the same person. I didn’t need a wine-glow to further befuddle
me.

Jehan said, “That was splendid, Kaelande.” He sighed. “I ate
well at the tent, but that rowing seems to have woken my appetite.”

“You were a few meals behind,” Owl commented. “So, what
now?”

Good question
, I
thought.
And that goes for me, too.

Jehan frowned into his wine. “Those questions Randart asked
me. I am trusting to the overwhelming number of tasks that launching a fleet
entails to keep him from thinking much about what those boys saw from the
barracks window. You had better vanish, all of you—”

“Wait!” I slapped my hands flat on the table. “What exactly
does that mean? I’m a prisoner?”

Kaelande flicked me a look from under straight brows.

Jehan pressed his thumbs into his eyelids under his brow
ridge. “You are. Not. A prisoner. But—”

Zel, Kaelande’s wife, appeared in the door, her short, wispy
reddish curls flying. “Biski says the fleet’s getting signals.”

Jehan was out of his chair fast, pausing only to pluck his
spyglass from a holder. By the time I made it out the door behind Owl and
Kaelande, Jehan’s white hair had already vanished behind the long, elegant
curve of the main sail, what we on Earth would call a Bermuda sail. He
reappeared in the top next to the younger of the two men whose names I hadn’t
heard.

They exchanged a few quick words, snapped their glasses out,
training them west on the glimmering lights barely visible to us at sea level.

Then Jehan slid down a backstay and landed lightly near us.
“They’re flanking us. Boats. It’s got to be Randart, and he’s got some excuse.”

“We run?” Owl asked, but almost immediately he sniffed,
looked into the direction of the breeze and shook his head.

“We fight?” Kaelande asked, and Zel rubbed her knuckles
against her lips. She was a bit older than I, small, weathered, the yacht’s
bosun. Everyone worked the sails when needed, and obviously fought when needed
as well.

Jehan sighed. “I would rather avoid loss of life. He
despises the first-blood rule. If he commences a fight, it’s going to be to the
finish. He won’t want any witnesses to tell my father the truth.”

Owl grimaced. “So you think he’s sprung us at last?”

“Possible. Not for certain. If he’s suspicious, he will be
looking for the mystery thief the boys will have described. That means the
fisher’s hat and the forest green tunic. The cadets saw our encounter from the
barracks window, and I said I’d tried to catch a thief. Randart brought that up
at the games.”

Attention zapped my way.

Jehan said to me, “Well? If you want to fall into his hands,
here is your chance.”

“No. The only thing I am very sure of is this. I do not, and
never will, trust Dannath Randart. Especially now that I know he caused
Magister Glathan’s death.”

Jehan let out his breath in relief. “Get out of those
clothes. I have to be in livery.”

“Hers are wet,” Owl said. “And the green will have to go
over the side. If any of us wear it, we might be taken as the thief.”

Zel measured me with her eyes, and slowly shook her head.

“She’s a size one in the juniors, and I’m a size twelve in
the Tall department.” I pointed to Zel, then myself. “I can’t borrow hers.”

Kaelande dusted his fingers together. “But you are close to
my size. Very close.”

Jehan snapped his fingers. “I’ll have that Zhavalieshin
banner on my own bed. I don’t care how wet it is, it won’t look wet. The rest
of whatever it is you have in that bag is innocuous enough, right?”

My heartbeat had gone into sprint mode. “Mementos collected
when I was little.”

Owl said to Jehan, “What’s the excuse for you being here?”

“Too hot to sleep on land?”

“Stupid,” two voices said at once, and Owl shook his head.

Zel sighed dramatically. “Oh, come along, I always wanted to
be the girl. Can’t I be the girl?”

“When’s the last time there was a real girl?” Owl asked the
sky.

Jehan laughed. “It seems a thousand years ago. Zel, do
whatever you can to become the girl. But you have to be a painter. I told him I
was visiting a painter . . . something with Lasva Sky Child. I
don’t know if he’ll remember that.”

Zel turned to her husband and said cryptically, but in a
triumphant voice, “Told you they’d some day be useful.”

“They?” came from three directions.

“Painted fans from Colend. How I met him.” She patted her
husband on his shoulder, sped by, and vanished down the companionway to the
lower deck.

Jehan faced me. “Sasha. Do you mind being a cook?”

I shrugged, feeling about five steps behind. I couldn’t find
the words to say I knew zip about cooking.

But he took my hapless shrug as agreement.

“Let us get ready to be taken by surprise,” Jehan said.

War Commander Randart stood with one boot propped on the
rail of the lead boat’s bow, elbow steadied on his knee, his glass trained on
the lonely craft until its elegant lines emerged from the darkness and resolved
into the familiar
Dolphin
.

“That’s his yacht. Close in,” he said with the first
evidence of satisfaction he’d shown since his arrival. His personal guard, kept
on short sleep and shorter meal breaks, put their backs into their rowing, the
outer boats circling outward to surround the yacht as ordered.

Not that anyone expected anything like a good fight. Not on
a yacht crewed by half a dozen, if that. And captained by a prince who chased
rare butterflies—ones with good figures.

The commander went back to watching through his glass. He
would learn a lot by how they reacted when they discovered they were being . . .
met.

Mentally veering between suspicion and disbelief, he’d
figured that a trained military scramble after the lookout spotted the boats
would at least be cause for investigation. The Prince Jehan he knew—he assumed
he knew—would never remember to give that kind of order.

However, that possibility diminished with every silent lift
of the oars. He could distinctly make out a couple of sailors standing at the
helm, drinking from elegant goblets as they chatted. No one else in view,
though there was a jerking at the single upper sail, no doubt deployed to keep
the yacht pointed up into the wind instead of rolling. Randart applied his
glass to the masthead. He saw starlight glinting on red hair, the silhouette a
scrawny male. Sailor, nothing military. He certainly wasn’t alert.

A movement below caught Randart’s attention and he brought
down his glass. One of the two at the helm shook an empty wine bottle, and
actually peered into it. Then he lurched drunkenly around, and started. Was
that
the lookout instead? Probably. The
one up on the mast was apparently asleep.

Randart smacked his glass against his thigh as the now-tiny
figures ran about on the deck of the yacht in a manner no proper captain would
ever tolerate, as, gradually, lights glowed to life in the open scuttles along
the side, revealing a figure or two bobbing about to no apparent purpose.

No white heads in view.

His boat hooked onto the yacht, his guards not even touching
their weapons. Damedran sat in the sternsheets scowling. Randart turned his
way, gave him a sharp flick of the hand in command, and his nephew rose,
wincing. He was probably sore, but mere physical discomfort did not matter in
command. He was also tired, but so were they all.

The important thing was, if Jehan turned out to be a
traitor, it had to be Damedran to defeat him.

Randart climbed up, followed by Damedran, whose breath
wheezed with his effort. The war commander stepped over the rail just as the
idiot emerged from the main cabin, his clothes awry, his arm around a petite
red-haired woman whose clothes were also awry.

Disgust wrung Randarts innards, followed by anger. He
clamped down on a reminder of the orders he’d given this brainless fool not two
watches ago. But then one couldn’t order a prince. Everyone here knew it.

He must not misstep. He could not be in the wrong in the
eyes of the men. The cost was not lives. All except Damedran were expendable.
The cost was the kingdom.

“Commander Randart?” the idiot said with his usual
vagueness. “Did you want a fan, too?”

Randart fought against the headache he had refused to
acknowledge. The pang increased to a hammer. “Fan?” he repeated, striving to
keep his voice even. “What are you blather—that is, I fear I do not understand.
Honor me with an explanation, your highness?”