Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) (3 page)

The forecastle's anteroom, by his grandmother's tradition, was as ornate as a wealthy landsman's stateroom, and used to honor individuals of the crew on special occasions. Heavy mahogany cabinets and a massive matching table, all intricately carved with water nymphs and merfolk, were bolted to the polished teak deck, their fixtures hidden by carved clawed feet. A pair of runners covered the deck to either side of the table, patterned in the voluminous chrysanthemum designs peculiar to the continent-island nation of Targuli. Each was of thin but surprisingly soft silk, woven at an astronomical thread count and also stapled discreetly to the boards. Vidarian shut the thick door behind them, cutting off the bustle of the crew's quarters.

Ariadel took it all in with cool aloofness, thick lashes masking her half–closed eyes. She, of course, was used to much greater splendor than this—but Vidarian guessed that the watery theme was not quite her cup of tea.

Speaking of which, he moved to a silver tea service that he'd asked Marks to lay out prior to their journey. Sitting in a polished rack fixed in the center of the lacquered table, the teapot was a tall silver affair rimmed with filigreed roses. Two matching cups sat on silver saucers nearby, and Vidarian deftly measured out portions of dark honey-colored tea for both of them. Ariadel accepted her cup gratefully, exclaiming over the detail and skill of the worked metal. “My mother's,” Vidarian explained, not diffident, and Ariadel turned her attention to the tea.

However, as she took her first sip, she worked quite obviously to avoid spitting the liquid back out. “It's cold!”

Vidarian cleared his throat to hide the start of a laugh. “Your pardon, Priestess. The tea is from Insartia, and intended to be enjoyed chilled. It's been quite warm out.” Taking up his own cup, he swallowed a mouthful of the tea, enjoying its herblike, minty overtones. “We'll be under way shortly, and I'm afraid I must leave you to attend the launch. So if you'll pardon my directness—” he looked over his cup for permission, and continued at her cautious nod, “you are not, of course, obligated to tell me, but why are they searching for you?”

Ariadel stared into her cup as if the answer would rise from its glassy surface. After a long moment she said, hollowly, “I know where they live.”

Vidarian frowned. “You are only one person. Surely others know the location of their operation. They must have spies, staff, orderlies?”

The priestess shook her head, increasingly subdued. “Not that simple, I'm afraid. They migrate, but they have a single unmoving fortress on an island in the Farwestern Sea. I happened to stumble upon its location, and they read the signs of my presence.” She took a quick draught of the tea. “It was not intended that they should be able to do so.”

Cradling his cup between his hands, Vidarian traced the silver roses with his eyes for a moment. “I gather this is somehow Endera's mistake.”

“She knew the risk.” Ariadel abruptly set down her cup. “The knowledge was worth it. And she knew that her sister at Zal'nehara would protect me. The Daughters of the Sea have been searching for the Vkortha fortress unsuccessfully for years.”

Knowing it would be futile to mask his ignorance, Vidarian simply asked: “The sea is their domain, and they could not find the island? And if you have told others, why are you alone hunted?”

“Their domain was their weakness. They are too familiar with the environs of water, and the Vkortha have many layers of telepathic camouflage on the island. It took fire to penetrate them, for they were woven in with the patterns of the ocean itself, with which the Zal'neharans were too familiar. And I have told no one else. Endera has a certain latitude from Kara'zul, but they would not have approved of any such official cooperation with Zal'nehara, and know nothing of my efforts or hers.”

Vidarian shook his head, with a terse smile. “I won't pretend to understand temple politics.” He would have said more, but three tones from a brass bell atop ship cut him short. Setting the cup aside, he offered his hand to Ariadel. “If you'll excuse me?”

Her touch was like fire—not surprising, perhaps, if one had time to think about it. Vidarian hadn't. And like fire, it didn't let go easily. “Captain, I have little doubt that Endera tricked you into this.”

Vidarian laughed softly, dodging her earnestness by dint of a quick step backward and a respectful half-bow. “It was my own folly, Priestess, and I intend to make the most of it. The
Quest
and her crew have no equal on the sea, I promise you that.”

F

No one on a Rulorat ship would be intimidated by ability, but Marks, an old stick of a ship's cook who had served under Vidarian's father, had a certain pronounced discomfort when it came to revealing admiration for the priestess's particular expertise. When pressed, he was a stoppered bottle uncorked—“And her knife skills, Captain—I know chaps'd pay good honest scratch at the academy to watch that woman shred ginger!”—but each admission came with guilt more worthy of an eastern cathedral. Because only Vidarian of all the crew knew that Marks had, in his youth, aspired to be a land chef in one of the imperial courts, he was the sole recipient of the cook's confessions, and so over the course of those first early weeks acquired, not quite willingly, a rather thorough education in the culinary comparison between the Velinese mainland and the sprawling southeastern empire.

When not administering jovial cooking lessons, and instead caught unsuspecting by a knock at her door, the priestess's eyes had a furtive look, pinched as if all the world were pressing down upon her. But by the third week she'd improved significantly, enough to explore the ship in earnest. While making the rounds one morning Vidarian noticed a suspicious amount of handiwork being done aft on the main deck: net weaving, sail patching, minor woodwork—someone had even hauled a barrel up from stowage for recaulking.

He found Ariadel at the eye of the storm, whispering to the lamps. The sight brought him up short, and he only realized he was staring when Calgrath, a spry and time-wrinkled topman who as far as Vidarian knew hadn't actually aged in a decade, addressed him in an awed mutter.

“Somethin’ else, ain't it, Cap'n? She been at it all morning—already fixed the row lights along the port corridor.” Vidarian almost quailed to hear the reverent note in Calgrath's voice; he'd seen the man stoically extract sea urchin spines from a cabin boy's foot, fight a pirate with only a flying jib to his back, and laugh through a storm that sent half a dozen salted sailors back to land permanently. In fifteen years only the moonlit glaciers of Val Morhan had awed him.

As the priestess whispered to each lamp, the cuffs of her velvet robe hiding her raised hands and obscuring her words, the flame within leapt up like a loyal puppy to a long–missed master. She left a trail of bright flames behind her, and yet with every invigorated flame the assembled crew collectively held its breath.

Vidarian cleared his throat sternly, and the spell was broken. Crewmen and –women jumped in startlement, then made a good show of shouting duties to one another as they returned to their assigned work. Vidarian did his part by glaring in dissatisfaction, but he couldn't help being relieved for all their sakes that it was him who caught them gawking and not Marielle. The first mate had been efficient and professional as always, but one swore the skyglass climbed whenever she and the priestess were within ten feet.

Having completed charming the lamps, the priestess was asking Revelle Amberwight, munitions lieutenant, about the location of the stored powder when Vidarian closed enough to make out her words. The officer colored, her high cheeks darkening, and made her apologies as Vidarian approached, claiming urgent duty on a staff inspection, or surely she would be glad to give the priestess a personal tour. It might even have been true. She saluted as she hurried past.

“Something I can help you with, Priestess?” Vidarian asked, to defuse the puzzlement on the priestess's delicate features.

“I'd thought to look over your powder,” she said, courteous but not masking her eagerness. The curiosity of the priestesshood was legendary; few he knew had much experience with the followers of Sharli, but by the priestess's demeanor he assumed they must be much like the Nistrans, endlessly fascinated with poking at their chosen element and documenting how it twitched. Merchant vessels rarely complained—their curiosity was a generous one, and filled many a captain's purse. “My temple has been studying the dwindling potency of firearms enhanced in the last decade. We believe we may have a remedy.”

“I am not, as you might imagine, anxious to see my ship turned into a laboratory,” he prevaricated, thinking of Marielle and swallowing his immediate hope and greed. It was true, what she said: the past two decades, not just one, had seen the accelerating decline of distance weapons. It meant closer battles, when they couldn't be avoided. Uglier ones.

“It could mean a great difference to your defenses,” the priestess argued, echoing his thought. “I am, of course, eager to lend any assistance I may for your crew's welfare, and my own.”

“You'll want a sea test,” he allowed. “A hand cannon would be enough.”

“It would suit perfectly,” she smiled.

The scuttlebutt flew quickly, as it always did. By the time Vidarian had collected a hand cannon and gauge, a collection of observers had gathered at the windward bow. Marielle, by fortune or her own design, was relieving the quartermaster at the helm and thus out of sight.

Ellara Stillwether, munitions officer, accompanied Revelle and the priestess, observing the process carefully. She and her lieutenant took careful measurements, assisted by Lifan, their little windreader. The priestess had been shocked at first to discover a child on board; Vidarian, in turn, had been surprised that she was unfamiliar with the custom. Lifan was Ellara's cousin, and fiercely guarded; Ellara herself had served as windreader on the
Quest,
when she could—the ability faded with the onset of adolescence. Ariadel assured them that no such parallel existed for fire, which typically appeared
after
adolescence if at all. For Lifan's part, she was as brightly intelligent as her protector, and showed a steady knack for figures that made Vidarian sure she would one day follow in Ellara's footsteps, if the land didn't lure her away.

After a full battery of initial calculations was complete, Ellara meticulously loaded the hand cannon, tamped it, laid its neck across a mark on the bow, and fired. The shot echoed over the calm water, and when it finally arced down to splash into the blue, Revelle called out a time and trajectory estimate.

As they prepared for the second shot, Ellara solemnly passed the flask of powder to the priestess. What followed was significantly more satisfying to the attentive eyes of the crew than her earlier performance with the lamps. On the deck she spread a linen cloth, and upon this spread a measure of powder. With her hands just above it, but never touching, she began a rhythmic chant, twitching her fingers to its beat. Vidarian would admit to no one that his own heart lurched when the powder began to glow; the gasps of the crew were enough.

Gradually the glow faded, and the priestess tipped the powder back into its flask by rolling the linen into a funnel. She handed the flask back to Ellara, who accepted it with reverence barely masked by her outward veneer of skepticism, and wadded the linen away into a pocket, of which her robe seemed to contain many.

Without ceremony Ellara directed Revelle and Lifan to take their readings again, and they complied swiftly. Then Ellara loaded the cannon once more, her movements as measured and diligent as if she were at her officer's test again.

The crew erupted in a furor as the shot sailed out across the water, easily a third again the distance of the first. Some whooped with delight, others murmured appreciation or amazement—and above them all, Ellara voiced a strident cry that checked the others. “Captain! Our calculations!” Her dark eyes were flinty with concern, darting as they doubtless racked through the hundreds of adjustments that the priestess's powder implied for their defenses.

“Ms. Amberwight,” Vidarian spoke without turning from the water. “My quarters. You'll find a red leather book on the third shelf. Fetch it, please.” The priestess's head tilted in inquiry as the lieutenant saluted and hurried off. “My grandfather's log,” he explained. “He had a fascination with munitions. The middle section is entirely devoted to trajectory calculation tables. Outdated, we thought, even in my father's time.” He laughed.

In moments Revelle had returned with the requested volume. She offered it to Vidarian, but he gestured instead to Ellara, who looked about ready to pounce. Or explode. She was too professional—narrowly—to seize it from her lieutenant's unprepared hands, but neither did she waste time in finding the page Vidarian directed her to.

“The measurement is quite close,” Ellara said, her eyes intense on the text when they weren't darting to her wax tablet for comparison. “We'll want to run more tests…”

“There should be enough of the new powder for several,” Ariadel offered. She seemed slightly fatigued, but satisfied as a housecat, leaning against the bow.

The sun was beginning to drop over the water to the leeward side, and here the forecastle cast a long shadow that just reached them. Celer, one of the two cabin boys, had fetched a lamp and now bore it up near them, a fine excuse to get a close–up look at the powder that his height had not previously afforded. A glint from the priestess's hands caught Vidarian's eye; a pale blue residue clung to her palms. Vidarian wouldn't have noticed it if not for the flickering lamp, but as she lifted her hand, the residue glittered like powdered graphite. And yet she had not touched the powder.

“The tests, I'm afraid, should rightly wait for tomorrow, and daylight,” Vidarian said, and though both Ellara and Revelle looked as though they'd like to object, they could hardly slow the sun, and quelled their objections. Ellara surely was mentally concocting some way to float lamps on the sea's surface so as to prolong the experiment, but she would have to settle for poring over the elder Rulorat's book into the deep hours of the night, as she doubtless would.

“Priestess, if I may?” Calgrath offered, and Vidarian turned to him in surprise. He gave a little bow, excusing himself, but continued, “Our medical kit? Surely—”

“It would take a trained specialist in the medical arts to adjust those. I dare not risk imbalancing them,” Ariadel apologized, and added, “I'm sure your ship's mender has them in the best condition possible.” This won a smile from the old seaman; the priestess could not know that the mender in question, currently on a watch shift if Vidarian recalled the day roster, was Calgrath's younger brother–in–law; but the keenness in the old man's eye when it came to medicine should have told her enough.

“Priestess, a word, at your convenience?” Vidarian ventured, and Calgrath bowed himself away.

“Of course, Captain.”

Back in the wood–varnish embrace of the forecastle anteroom, Vidarian sat quietly, not speaking, while Marielle, off from her shift at the helm, delivered the familiar silver tea service from the galley, almost certainly prompted by Marks. The grey kitten, which had been confined to the forecastle after three times managing to raid the galley (and nearly losing its life to the cook on the third) slept soundly, curled on a brocaded chair.