Sasharia En Garde (42 page)

That lack of welcome as well as the wish to retrieve his
honor had caused him to volunteer when the word went out for supply duty on
this pirate expedition.

Now the war commander’s dark eyes flicked from his bound
knee to his face, his lips curled in contempt. “You had a report you thought I
should hear?”

Samdan’s heart thudded against his ribs. This was it. He
licked his lips. “The navigator. On our boat. I’ve seen her before. She was one
of those with the pirate and the princess, in the old tower.”

And watched the contempt in Randart’s face clear to
surprise, then question. “Are you certain of that?”

Samdan licked his lips again. “I made sure of it. They’ve
had her on night duty, see, or I’d have noticed before. But yesterday she had
to do a day rotation, I don’t know why. And so when Captain Dembic had us out
on deck doing our morning drill, well, there she was behind the wheel, and I
knew I’d seen her before. It wasn’t until I heard her speak to one of the
sailors I got it. She was in the court that day, along with the mage-boy who
transferred ’em out.”

“Did you say anything to anyone?”

“Only Captain Dembic. She said by rights I should report to
you myself.”

Randart turned around. Captain Dembic stood at the rail. He
beckoned her over, and watched the sturdy, gray-haired woman tromp across the
deck. She was his head of supply on the coast. She’d been trustworthy for
decades, and also close lipped.

With marked approval, he said, “Does anyone on your ship
know about this matter?”

Dembic shook her head. “No, War Commander. Patrol Leader
Samdan reported to me, and I gave orders for a boat to the ship captain, but
told him it was to make my regular report on your orders.”

Randart nodded, recognizing the implication: the use of his
name guaranteed no questions, even if the explanation was not strictly true.

“Well done,” he said, to both of them. What the king had
said about Samdan—
It’s our fault, not
his, that his training has been so slapdash. If they’re lazy, it’s because
we’ve let them become that way
—now sounded different. Good material,
slapdash training. Yes. The words were different, the morning light looked
different, the cold air felt different—full of promise. Randart felt his sour
mood lift for the first time in weeks.

He almost smiled as he began issuing a rapid stream of
orders.

o0o

On board the
Clam
Dancer
, the mess bell had rung. Elva yawned as she gladly handed off
navigation to the afternoon watch. Two yawns punctuated her repetition of the
standing orders; the man taking her place grinned in sympathy, but said
nothing. Everyone knew what a middle-of-the-night-till-noon watch was like.

She followed the slumping, shuffling sail crews down to the
galley, where, according to universal ship rule, the off-coming watch had first
serve on food. She loaded her plate, thumped down at a table, and picked up the
square-bottomed mug full of soup. Holding it in tired hands, she sipped, so
intent on drinking without slopping as the ship swayed around her she didn’t
quite notice the sudden silence until the fast tramp of booted feet caused her
to frown. Sailors never wore shoes unless it was freezing outside—

Hard hands gripped her arms, yanking her to her feet. Her
soup went flying. She tried to twist and fight but was shoved violently
face-first onto the table. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and rope
bound around them while she struggled to breathe.

The brown uniformed guards muscled her past her astonished
mates. At first she was stunned. It wasn’t until she was flung down into the
boat that it occurred to her that she’d been betrayed. By who? All she could
think was,
Prince Jehan
.

Anger replaced the sick horror, fury so hot she could hardly
wait until she saw the enemy. And could tell her side of the story.

No one spoke on the trip to the flagship, either to one
another or to her. She noted the sound of the oars, the jerking rhythm, the
wind and the choppy sea, with a remote part of her mind while righteous anger
streamed and streamed, helping her shape what she’d say about the Pirate Prince
of Liars.

Everyone aboard the flagship watched their approach, the
sailors from the relative safety of the upper yards. Randart had told them nothing,
but no one could miss the way he’d suddenly ordered up a patrol of heavily
armed warriors from his own personal guard and sent them to the
Clam Dancer
as fast as the rowers could
pull them.

No use asking questions. The army didn’t talk to anyone except
one another, and no one wanted to approach Randart, who during the first day
out to sea had had four sailors rope-flogged at the foremast for not taking
orders from the warriors, or not getting out of their way, even if the sailors
were on duty and the warriors not.

It had been made abundantly clear that sailors and ships
existed to serve, were in no way equals, had no rights. Even aboard their own
ship. The captain had reminded them in a private meeting down in the hold that
they were getting a year’s pay if the pirate was apprehended, and to think on
that if they didn’t want to end up dead.

So the sailors invented reasons to be watching from above,
and the warriors from the deck as the boat came back, and what they saw instead
of a slinking spy or a glowering traitor among their own kind was a slip of a
young woman barely out of girlhood, blood trickling down into one eye from a
cut on her scalp, the other side of her face bruising fast from where she’d
landed after being thrown into the boat with her hands tied.

Samdan’s good mood ended the moment he saw that pale face
with the obscene trickle of red dripping down.

Randart clapped him on the back, laughing. “Excellent work,
excellent. You shall be in at the kill.”

The
kill
?

Samdan watched from his place of honor behind the war
commander as the girl was summarily hauled to the deck, and muscled into the
spacious cabin that Randart had taken for his own. He was thinking,
I don’t want to see any more
, when the
war commander gestured for him somewhat impatiently. He’d regained his honor.
He’d done his duty. Hadn’t he?

Yes. So it was probably fair for him to see the results.
Grimly he limped after the war commander, the rest of the guard falling in
behind. His knee was throbbing by now; he leaned against a bulkhead as the men
found room to stand.

The Eban girl was thrust into a chair.

Randart said, “Don’t even bother lying to me.” He gestured
toward Samdan. “He positively identified you as having been in the courtyard
with the pirate the day Atanial Zhavalieshin’s daughter appeared through the
World Gate, attacked the king’s guards sent to meet her, and vanished. Using, I
understand, magic done by your renegade brother.”

Samdan saw the girl’s eyes widen and her lips part in
surprise. Then a flush of—relief? No, it couldn’t be.

Relief it was, followed by sorrow, and anger. Elva, her head
aching, her muscles trembling over watery bones, recognized how close she’d
come to betrayal.
It wasn’t Prince Jehan.
He kept his word.

She hated his guts, but he had kept his word.

So she had to keep hers.

“I don’t know anything,” she said shortly.

Randart stepped forward and struck her across the face so
hard he knocked her out of the chair. He gestured for the guard to pluck her
off the floor and plunk her back onto the chair.

She blinked, her cheek now smeared with blood.

“Let’s begin again,” Randart said pleasantly. For the first
time in weeks, he was enjoying himself very much. “Where were you transferred,
and where, exactly, did the pirate take the Zhavalieshin girl? What was your
part in all that?”

“He dumped my brother and me as soon as we transferred,” she
said through rapidly swelling lips. “Didn’t want us. Only her. For ransom, he
said.”

“She went willingly?”

“No.”

“What happened next?”

“Left us behind. Took her away. Pirate escort.”

Randart leaned forward. “You mean I am supposed to believe
that the pirate Zathdar happened, without any previous communication with you
or your brother, to pop up at the tower the very day your brother crossed to
the other world, and you had no idea he’d be there?”

“He had spies. Following Devli.”

“Spies, is it? But you fought alongside him anyway, against
the king’s own? Did the pirate have a knife at your back?”

Elva flushed. “We wanted to save her from
you.
You already know we’re fighting to
restore Prince Math to the throne—”

Randart struck her again, so hard she lay stunned, gazing up
at the bulkhead above.

“Prince Math,” he stated in a soft, deadly voice, “is dead.
Or gone, living it up somewhere far away. There is, you may have noticed, a
legally crowned king.”

Randart was aware of stirrings and shufflings around him. He
would have loved to beat some sense into this arrogant scrub, but not here, not
now. Some of these fools were young enough to be sentimental, obviously.

“Get the mage. Tell her to bring kinthus. We’ll get the
truth without any further exertion. After that you may take this traitor out
and hang her from one of those poles, good and high so all can see. I think our
friends working the sails need a reminder of who the lawful king is, and what
upholding the law means.”

Below, Magister Lorat was expecting some sort of summons.
Randart’s voice had carried through the scuttle quite clearly, and she had been
writing his words as they were spoken. She had enough time to twist the tiny
paper up, drop it into her magical transfer case and send it to Magister Zhavic
by the time the banging came on her door.

She slid the case into the pocket in her robe and turned to
fetch her herbs, including her vial of the powder made from the kinthus plant,
carefully dried and ground into a concentrate of dangerous power that could so
easily part spirit from body.

There was no time to wait for orders from the king’s mage,
but then he could not countermand the king’s war commander. She would have to do
as she was told.

She trod up to the captain’s cabin, and said nothing when
she found her victim lying on the deck where she’d fallen. She said nothing
when she saw the look in the girl’s eyes, not dazzlement, but a single-minded
concentration.

Her brother is a mage
student
, Lorat thought. Her own observations had not been commanded and
would not be offered. She would do as she was told.

While she slowly and steadily poured water into a waiting
cup, and then measured out the fine powder whose smell was so strong she had to
hold her breath—and every man in the room moved back an inadvertent step—she
gave the girl as much time as she dared.

o0o

On the third ship out, Captain Tham watched his boat
return from the
Dancing Clam
and his
trusted first mate clamber up.

Closed in the cabin, the young men stared at one another in
dismay—both big, strong, smart, and very loyal to Zathdar. Tham knew his secret
identity. The mate hadn’t been told, but suspected enough
not
to ask questions.

The first mate said, “Word is, they arrested the daughter of
old Steward Eban. Randart is putting her to the question right now.”

Tham was writing as the first mate spoke. He sent the
message off, and sat back to wait, case in hand. Either the prince got it now,
or he wasn’t there to get it.

An answer came back almost immediately.

Send notice to Robin:
attack, full force. I am on my way.

Elva lay on the deck, grateful not to be moved. The
commander and all his men stood around, looking like brown, frowning statues
from this vantage, and maybe it was supposed to be humiliating, and it did hurt
with her arms doubled so unnaturally behind her, but lying flat she could fight
better against pain, nausea, and fear.

Kinthus.
Focus on the
present.

She stared up at the wood curving overhead. Devli’s face,
long ago, when he came home on a visit. Took her to the woods, and said,
Did you know there’s a trick to getting
round green kinthus? The mages taught us, but not all of us can do it
.

Her own voice.
A
trick? Teach me.

She never thought she’d need it, or maybe she did, the way
her mother worried every time a messenger came and went. But it seemed fun, it
seemed a way to fool
them
, the king’s
people, and they practiced keeping their thoughts strictly on the present.

Don’t think of the
past
, Devli had said,
or it opens the
door to memory. The trick they showed me is to run through all the senses, what
you’re seeing, hearing, smelling. Right now. If you do it and keep doing it,
memory stays locked away. Your mind runs along in the present, and there’s
nothing they can do.

She concentrated on the present moment, each sense in turn.
When a mage appeared, kneeling down beside her, Elva kept her thoughts on the
now.
She’s my mother’s age, maybe, moving
slow—light on the glass—oh, that was a good wave, the lamp swinging, is the
wind north by northwest—what grain of wood is that?

The woman finally slid her hand firmly under the back of
Elva’s neck and lifted her head enough for her to drink. And she did, because
she knew there was no other choice,
Taste—it’s
actually like chidder-weed and mint, but it makes my nose feel like a sneeze,
ugh, ugh, cold, I’m thirsty—

A blanket seemed to settle over her mind, but she did not
examine it. She kept on looking, listening, sniffing, taste, touch, the touch
of her fingers bunched behind her, the grit on the deck boards—

“Can you speak?” the mage murmured.