The Fox (5 page)

Jeje said numbly, “You won’t go after those pirates?”

“Can’t send a rescue,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head. “Only a war fleet. We can’t rescue pirates fighting pirates. Especially a big fleet like Gaffer Walic’s. It would take most of our navy to find and fight him. Then all pirates on both sides get it.” He drew his finger across his neck.

“But your captain knows we’re not pirates, we’re marines, on a legitimate hire.”

“Except the names of your commanders are on the capital list.” Voices outside in the hall caused the lieutenant to jerk around. “Look, I gotta run, and you better, too.”

“Wait,” Jeje said, and the young man looked back warily. “This Gaffer Walic. Does he follow Brotherhood custom? Kill ships?”

He grimaced. “Sometimes. Though word is he’s been on the recruit. Building a fleet. He wants into the Brotherhood, which means he has to win a big action. That means taking on good ships and crew.” He slipped out and shut the door.

“Then they might be alive. But what’s all that about lords?” Jeje asked. She wanted to stomp and smash everything in sight. “That part makes no sense!”

“I’ll explain, but not here,” Testhy said.

Jeje nodded, heartsick and weary.

Testhy led the way into a narrow stone warren of streets.

Questions surged about in Jeje’s head like flotsam on high tide, nothing reassembling into answers.

Rain, sudden and warm, shocked her into awareness of her surroundings. They passed the glowglobe-lit official buildings (many still under construction from the burnings of the last civil war) to the older shops and eateries and doss-houses used by the seagoing trade. It was so late most shops were closed up, but light emanated from a low-roofed sailors’ place—the sign bore a crudely painted schooner on the side of a beer mug—at an intersection lit by hanging lanterns.

The stuffy interior smelled of brine, sweat, stale beer, and boiled cabbage, a tang too familiar in every port they’d ever visited to be noticed. Testhy, still shocked at how close he had come to being arrested—or maybe killed, or given over to the Venn—plopped into a chair at a corner table near an open window, where they could see the door and the other patrons, and where they had a second exit; so much of Inda’s training had become habit. He thrust trembling fingers through his hair to his scalp, pressing hard as if to hold his head together.
And some Toaran with a name that sounded like a snake’s hiss
. His breath chuffed out.

“Talk,” Jeje said low-voiced, in Iascan.

Testhy had learned that language over the past five years. “Inda is a Marlovan. Son of a prince. Ryala Pim showed up at Freeport Harbor right after we were on the
Dancy,
remember? About to winter over?”

Jeje nodded. “And you didn’t tell any of us?”

“Kodl ordered us not to. Said Inda didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t make any difference any way I could see, so I forgot about it. Anyway, she accused us all of being pirates. Wouldn’t listen, accused
us
of Leugre’s mutiny! Demanded the money for her ships. Then when Inda tried talkin’ sved, she spouted all that—even said his real name—and some gabble about how some other Marlovan had accused him of being a coward or killing some other boy or something, where those Marlovans do their war training when they’re young. Didn’t make any sense. What did make sense was the threat Ryala Pim made: she was going to report us in every harbor. And then she disappeared—by magic token!” He snapped his fingers. “Like that!” He scowled. “We saw her signed-sealed sved today. She musta reported us right here, in this harbor.” He jerked his thumb down at the unswept floor.

Jeje shrugged off the existence of the capital list for a moment. Inda?

She glared at Testhy, jaw jutted, her brown eyes so wide he could see the whites all the way around.

“I can’t believe Inda is a coward, or whatever it was those stupid Marlovans said. It’s impossible.” Her voice was already low—she sounded like one of the fellows if you didn’t see her speak—but now it was so husky she seemed to be growling. “But I guess I’m not surprised he’s some sort of lord. He knows too much. I mean about reading and history. You hear about how princes and princesses get armies of tutors and servants and things. But none of that matters now. What is important is if the Khanerenth navy did send ships, they’ll kill our friends. Except Inda, who will be a prisoner given to the Venn.”

“That seems to be it.”

“Based on the lies Ryala Pim told.”

Testhy scratched his head again, tiredness and the flood of giddy relief after the shock of his near escape making his mind foggy. No one had bothered to come out of the back room to wait on them. The few other mariners at the other plank tables sat drinking or talking in low voices. “Seems to me that the Venn won’t care about the ships. They want Inda. Rank. Marlovan. It would mean something if the Venn tell the Marlovans they have him.”

“That’s politics, all right,” Jeje said in disgust. “You know it as well as I do; Inda’s been with us since our rat days, and he was too small to have fouled the hawses of kings and land battles and the like. Not on his own. The whole thing sounds like an excuse for politics of some kind, and it makes my gut boil!”

“But that’s in Iasca Leror, clear on the other side of the world.” Testhy turned up his palms. “It hasn’t anything to do with you or me here and now. Seems to me our first job is to find a new berth somewhere. New name—at least for me.”
Snake’s hiss . . .
He winced. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“And give them up as dead?” Jeje muttered in that low growl. “You heard what that first mate said. They could be alive. Alive, and forced to act as pirates.”

Shock, relief, now anger. “He’s a lieutenant. In navies they have ranks.” Testhy twisted his lips. “You’re still trotting behind Taumad’s shadow?”

Resentment made Jeje hot. She struggled against a nasty retort. “No. I’m not. It was Inda I was thinking of. And Tau, too. Mates—they are our mates, all of them. Kodl, who’s been a good first mate since we were all rats on the Pim ships—he looked out for us, always. Dasta who never wears a jacket. Dun the carpenter, too, even though he didn’t talk much. And the new crew—Rig making us those cinnamon rolls as long as we don’t expect him to ever be a baker for real. Thog, always quiet. Ready to work. Wumma and his carvings. Don’t
you
feel like they’re a-a—” She groped, fingers poking the air. Family wasn’t the word. She had that at home. Lovers wasn’t right either, though she’d had only one tumble with dear Yan, but that memory would stay secret and precious.

Testhy actually met her eyes for a moment, but in the way his eyelids lowered and his shoulders hitched up, Jeje understood that he didn’t believe her about their being mates. Again she felt resentment flare, hotter than fire and as destructive, but she could see in his face, in his hunched posture that he expected to be attacked, and her anger cooled enough for her to say, “You don’t need to know what happened to them?”

Testhy dug his fingernail into the rough board of the table. Jeje’s straight black brows were quirked, furrowing her high brow—she looked hurt. She was probably the most popular of the entire band outside of Inda, yet she hadn’t the least idea of it. Testhy had thought a lot about the strange phenomenon of popularity because he wasn’t. People hardly noticed him; it had always been that way.

He shook his head once. “I think I know,” he said to the table, so softly she almost couldn’t hear him.

“But we don’t. And I have to find out.”

“Why? What can you do if you do find out they are alive?”

“I can try to—oh, I know it sounds stupid. Like some strut-rump trying to be a hero from a ballad, and maybe I’ll end up sunk, or dead, or laughed off the docks. But I know I have to find out. And do something. It’s because I know Inda would do it for me, if he’d been on the
Vixen
.”

Testhy’s brows rose. Then he shook his head. “Maybe for you. You all were mates. Like you said.”

“You were, too,” she retorted, and when she saw his lips twitch in denial, she said, “you could have been.” But as she said it she realized he couldn’t have, for whatever reason. She knew his likes and dislikes in food, because you can’t share a wardroom without discovering that, but where he went on liberty she had no idea. She’d never thought about it before—hadn’t been interested enough to ask.

So she was trying to make him a mate now because she needed one, not because she wanted him as a mate. Regret, sharp and fierce, seized her. Everything had changed, and not because of the pirate attack. Things had changed inside her head.

She said slowly, “Inda would go after you.”

Testhy grimaced, then shunted one shoulder up under his ear, a sharp movement. “Maybe. But he’s better at fighting. If he lives, he might survive. I wouldn’t, not against pirates out at sea, not against the lawful authorities here.
Your
name isn’t on that list! Makes sense to find a new berth. Get on with my life.”

“No, my name isn’t. I guess your way makes sense. But I don’t think it’s right.” As she spoke, she groped mentally toward a new discovery. “I have to find help. Fast, before those navy ships do anything. And if
they
won’t help because they think we’re pirates, then it’s to pirates I will go. Well, privateers.”

Testhy sighed. “Privateers don’t run rescues.”

“Sure they do. If there’s a reward.”

Testhy stared at her, mouth turned down at the corners.

Jeje’s face heated. “All right, so privateers might not help me. But just the same I’m going to sail back to Freedom Islands. Find someone there. Because I sure won’t here.”

That’s it,
she thought,
that’s it. I’m not just following orders. For the first time it’s me who’s making the decisions.

Testhy said, “You will never get the old life back.”

Jeje clamped her teeth together.
Is that what I’m doing after all?

They sat there staring at one another, both realizing the conversation had shifted from “we” to “you” and “I.” Shared purpose had vanished like fog between the harbormaster’s office and here; they both knew that when they got up from that sticky old table they would part, probably forever. And both felt enough regret to keep talking.

Testhy said, “We have good skills. We’re alive. Let’s stay that way. Move on.” But his sky-blue gaze was again on his calloused hands.

“I have to know for sure. It’s right. Even if it’s not sensible.”

Testhy shook his head, and would not look up.

“Fare you well, then.” She got to her feet.

She half expected him to follow, out of habit if nothing else, and she hoped he would, but his fear of pirates was too strong; he watched her go, and then comforted himself by thrusting a hand into his pocket to check the little stash of coins he’d always kept by him, ever since their first cruise. He left, walking away from the docks.

While Nugget and the brothers sat aboard the
Vixen,
munching stale berry pastries that Nugget had bought from a dockside tavern before it closed, Jeje walked alone through the rain back to the dock. She was captain of her own life now; she was giving the orders. There was no pride. Or joy. Or triumph. She felt tired and heartsick and full of questions that had no answer.

Chapter Three

ON a sultry night two weeks later, far to the southeast of Choraed Elgaer, the Sierlaef—heir to the kingdom of Iasca Leror—downed more sweet wine, chilled in high mountain streams and brought down by Runners during the night. It was special wine, imported at great cost, but he drank it like water as he watched two young women dancing a slow, undulating dance completely unlike the girls’ dances at home. Instead of the long robes he was used to, these girls wore tight blouses cut low, silky skirts that clung to the body, and sashes made of small bells around their hips that jingled and caught the eye in a way he liked very much. The Sierlaef saw the one with the biggest hips sending him speculative glances from heavy-lidded dark eyes, and he swallowed more wine, trying not to let anticipation heat up into urgency. There was still the after-dinner poetry to get through, and then meeting with that old bore Horseshoe Jaya-Vayir to plan the next day’s patrol of the eastern mountains.

Noise from behind brought him to his feet, the wine cup crashing down to the table. The Jarl’s heir looked up, puzzled. The Sierlaef frowned toward the side entrance, from where a buzz of excitement spread through the room. Everyone crowded up, staring, turning and talking to those behind, until liegemen in crimson and gold came striding in.

“Shit.”

Did the Sierlaef really say that?
The teenage heir exchanged a startled glance with his cousin, who would be his future Randael, or Shield Arm.

Neither understood the royal heir, and truth to tell they didn’t much like him either. But he was here, seemed to want to stay, so they’d had to drop everything and entertain him for long, weary weeks of waiting for possible attack over the border.

They watched in relief as the Sierlaef began shoving his way past servants bearing more wine and food, toward—

The Harskialdna himself! The boys scrambled to their feet, the musicians paused, the dancers stopped. They could have been invisible now—everyone pushed toward the new arrivals, leaving them alone at the far end of the room. The dark-eyed one who had been hoping for a night with a prince—and the resulting favors—threw down her hand drum and marched off in disgust.

The Sierlaef’s attention had shifted to the tall, dark-haired man who stood in the middle of a crowd of men, all deferential to him. His host, the Jarl of Jaya-Vayir, was finishing his formal greeting to the Sierlaef’s uncle, the Harskialdna, brother to the king.

The Sierlaef pushed forward, and the men gave way. He practiced the words soundlessly first, making sure his stuttering tongue would not falter; when he reached his uncle he said, “My father sent you?”