The Lascar's Dagger (65 page)

The first person to react was the man with the peg leg. He kicked at the catch on the chicken coop beside him, knocking the lid open and spilling the coop on to its side. The hens, in a swirl of feathers and cackling hysteria, shot out of their prison. Some flew, some ran off, flapping their wings and squawking.

Saker pushed Sorrel behind him and called up as many birds as he could, not just the chickens, to attack the wardens and the man in black. Other people on the wharf – and there was still crowds of onlookers come to see the ships sail – squealed and scattered.

Within a blink, the air was thick with estuary birds: gulls, terns, cormorants, herons, even a sea eagle. The latter, at Saker’s instigation, plunged at the cleric, who took one horrified look and jumped off the wharf into the water. Sorrel’s band of thieves melted away.

The only person who didn’t appear to be intimidated, who hardly seemed to notice the birds, was the Dire Sweeper.

“I might have known the birds were your doing in Dortgren,” he said as he drew his sword. His face was still muffled, but Saker knew he was smiling. “A witchery, eh? Hello again, Saker. This time I’m going to make sure of you.”

It was the man who had called himself Dyer.

Saker already had his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other. “Oh? So certain?” He flexed his knees slightly, ready for the man’s first move. Behind him, the birds had already put the wardens to flight. He debated whether to bring them in for an attack on Dyer, but hesitated. There was something about the amusement in the man’s eyes that told him he would relish such a move.

“Send your birds away,” Dyer said. “Let’s fight this man to man, skill to skill.”

“How would that be fair?” he asked. “An assassin versus a cleric? Hardly an even fight!”

“I’ve made some enquiries about you.” They were circling each other and Dyer’s gaze never left Saker’s. “And you know what I think? You’re a spy for the Pontifect. A master swordsman, a worthy opponent. And of course, an Ardronese witan with a witchery.”

Saker was still trying to place him. No one he’d known well, he was sure of that, but he was just as certain they’d met some time in the past. At one of the Lowmian universities when he’d been a student. Grundorp, if he wasn’t mistaken. This man hadn’t been a student, though, or a tutor.

“I’ve already made sure that you won’t use those birds against me,” the man said. “You Shenat folk have a weakness … Bren! You there?”

“Yes, m’lud!”

Saker’s gaze didn’t shift. The answer came from somewhere near one of the warehouses abutting on to the boardwalk. Bren, the Dire Sweeper who’d kept the accounts for Dyer. Accounts of who’d died of the Horned Death, and who’d lived.

M’lud?

“Bren, tell my friend here what my orders are with regard to birds, if he sends his feathered friends my way right now.”

“We are to wipe out all birds within twenty miles of Ustgrind, destroy every heronry, every gull colony, every eagle nest, every rookery, every roost, every year for the next ten years until there are no birds…”

Dyer, still watching Saker, added, “Your weakness: you care.”

Blast the haggardly lout, he was right. He did care. Inwardly cursing, he sent the birds on their way.
It’s not a weakness, you leprous worm. It’s my strength. The love of a Shenat witan for our world.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s fight.”

They clashed, disengaged, and clashed again. Dyer was a head taller, with a longer reach and a heavier sword. Pox on’t, this wasn’t a match of equals, but a meeting of two different styles. It wasn’t going to be enough to be fast and clever, attacking swiftly with speedy retreats.
Not enough to be lighter and quicker on my feet. I’ve got to get under his guard, or he’ll wear me down
.

And time would be on Dyer’s side. The man’s lunges were strong and dangerous, his parries vicious. Hell, his right arm was aching already. When he blocked Dyer’s attacks, the heavy blows rattled up his arm to his shoulder. It was like trying to wrestle a bull.

He dared a quick lunge and tore a hole in Dyer’s tunic over his ribs, then brought his dagger up unnoticed to slice a thin red line across the man’s forearm on the underside. Pinpricks, dammit. And what if he defeated the fellow? He’d be up for murder! If he lasted that long. The scurvy scut’s friends were watching like vultures, ready to run him through if he won the fight. Blister this for a battle lost before it began!

Another lunge from Dyer.

He stepped back to dodge and tripped over the remains of the chicken coop. Dyer’s sword whistled past in a slashing swing, missing his chest by a whisker. He somersaulted away and snatched a brief look around.

The launch from the
Spice Winds
had already reached the quayside. Ardhi was in the stern, holding the boat steady by clutching the metal ring on the lower landing. The two other seamen had shipped the oars, but were still seated. All three men were gazing up at him. A goat stood in the prow and a chicken was perched on the gunwale. The wet and bedraggled cleric was hauling himself up on to the steps of the landing, struggling to overcome the weight of his sodden robes. On the fluyt, sailors were lined up along the railing to watch the fight, some yelling encouragement.

His swift glance failed to find Sorrel anywhere.

In Va’s name, where had she gone? His mouth went dry. They didn’t get her, did they?

Out of the corner of his eye, all he could see on the boardwalk were the wardens, scratched and bloodied, regrouping now that the birds had gone. There was no way he could emerge the victor here.

He had to flee, and there was only one way to go.

But what about Sorrel and the baby?

Nothing suggested itself. Dyer attacked again. This time they went into a clinch, swaying back and forth as each fought for the upper hand. The cloth over Dyer’s face dislodged and he saw the man’s full face in good light for the first time. He remembered him then. One of the university’s patrons, a nobleman’s son and rumoured to be rich enough to buy the university several times over. His father was a lord … and his name was certainly not Dyer.

His extra weight won the day, and he pushed Saker away, sweeping upwards with his dagger in his left hand.

Saker staggered backwards towards the wardens; no way to flee, no way he could escape the wicked jab that was going to push through his ribs. There was no time to feel anything: not terror, not regret, not despair. Just an inward cry of denial that burst inside his chest, that only he could hear.
Noooo … not like this. Va, not like this.

Then sheer amazement. Not only was he still alive and unhurt, but it was Dyer who was staggering, Dyer who dropped his sword with a grunt of pain, Dyer who fell to the ground on all fours with a dagger in the back of his right shoulder.

Ardhi’s Chenderawasi kris.

No time to wonder. With one fluid movement he dropped his own dagger, yanked out the kris, booted Dyer in the backside and raced for the launch. At the bottom of the steps he took a flying leap to clear the cleric, now on all fours on the landing. He alighted precariously on the gunwale. The hen squawked, panicked and flew back to the wharf. Ardhi pushed the boat away from the steps with a boat hook, and Saker wobbled alarmingly, arms flailing. One of the seamen pulled him into the launch, just saving him from a ducking.

He plonked himself down next to Ardhi, dropped the kris on the seat and sheathed his sword. The seamen put their oars in the water and began to stroke towards the
Spice Winds
. “You missed,” he said to the lascar. “You should have got the bastard in the jugular.” He hoped the seamen did not understand Pashali.

Ardhi shrugged. “Next time.”

“There will be a next time. That fellow is trouble. You owe me a dagger, by the way, dammit. What the fobbing hells happened to Sorrel? Did you see where she went? Did they get her? Is she hurt? What happened to the baby?”

“The goat,” muttered Ardhi. “Take a look at the goat.”

He did, and it wasn’t Sorrel’s goat. It was Sorrel, glamoured, crouching in the bow of the boat, clutching Piper to her chest. The look she gave him would have soured a cask of beer.

“G
et – me – off – this – ship!”

Saker winced as Sorrel growled at him, emphasising every word as she glared from him to Ardhi.

“I can’t stay here! Piper is going to want to eat any time soon, and I can hardly milk an imaginary goat. Nor glamour away a baby’s howls, either.”

They had managed to get Sorrel up on the weather deck undetected as anything except a nanny goat, but were now left with the problem of what to do next. Ardhi wasn’t supposed to be there, doing nothing, and it was only a matter of time before one of the officers noticed and took exception to his idleness. Sorrel had banished the goat and blurred herself into her surroundings instead. Saker appreciated her problem, but was at a loss to know how to deal with it. He didn’t even know how to explain to the bosun the absence of the extra goat that had apparently come aboard.

“
Spice Winds
got she-goats,” Ardhi remarked, abandoning Pashali to include Sorrel in the conversation. “Two. Tie up on deck near chicken. Ship officers drink milk.” He pointed, then looked around uneasily. “I go aloft soon or big trouble. No one send boat to shore now.
Spice Winds
sail soon.”

Sorrel looked close to weeping. “Saker,
please
. I can’t sail all the way to the Va-forsaken Hemisphere! The only woman on the ship, with a baby that’s only a couple of days old!”

“The only way to get you ashore now would be to tell the captain we have a stowaway,” he said, worried, “but that would mean being rowed back to the same wharf and into the hands of the wardens or worse, the Dire Sweepers.”

“More big problem,” Ardhi said, pointing. “Look! They come!”

Saker forgot himself long enough to swear richly. A pinnace had put out from the wharf and was already halfway to the
Spice Winds
. It was easy enough to make out the uniforms of the Castle Wardens, interspersed with people in black. “Oh, Va,” he whispered, “they mean business.

“Listen, Sorrel, there’s only one way we can save us both. And it means you have to stay on board when the ship weighs anchor. We can get you off later when we’re sailing down the Ardmeer estuary, but for now you have to stay here. We’re going to see the captain, but first I have to pick up something from my luggage. Stay here; I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Saker do what?” Ardhi asked, a look of alarm on his face.

He reverted to Pashali, to make sure the lascar understood what he intended to do. “I’m going to gift the captain my feather.”

“No! No! You can’t!”

Saker grabbed him by the arm. “Show me where my luggage is, right now.” He dragged Ardhi away from Sorrel towards the companionway, speaking urgently into his ear. “Listen. If those men on the boat persuade Captain Lustgrader to surrender us to them, which they will, you won’t get me to go to Chenderawasi, because I’ll be dead. You need me alive. And this is the only way to keep me alive.” He gave Ardhi an unpleasant smile. “This, I think, is the one thing that you can’t force me to do, or not to do. That plume you gave me is mine, and whom I gift it to is my choice and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it, is there?”

Ardhi stared at him, his dismay comical.

When Saker returned to the deck, the ship was like a waking behemoth; the closer to the moment of sailing, the more the activity. Sorrel, blurred into little more than a shadow near the mast, was the only person doing nothing.

Ardhi, following Saker up the companionway, was blasted with a roar from one of the ship’s officers the moment his feet hit the deck. “Hey you, you scurvy son of a cur! Get your skinny arse aloft
now
!”

He fled up the shrouds.

“He thinks his precious fobbing magic will solve all our problems,” Saker muttered to Sorrel. “A pox on it, it’s more likely to kill us.”

“I don’t understand what you’re going to do!” If Sorrel was trying to contain her trepidation and curb her rage, she’d failed.

“We gamble everything. We can’t hide you and the baby, not on board a ship. Not even with a glamour.” His piece of bambu containing the feather in his hand, he seized her by the elbow and propelled her towards the quarter deck at the stern, where Captain Lustgrader was standing with several of his officers behind the two helmsmen, eyeing the activity aloft as the sail unfurled from the spars in a slap of canvas. Around them were all the sounds of a ship about to get under way: the groan of the anchor chain being winched through the hawse pipe, the grunting of sailors as they hauled on ropes, orders repeated the length of the ship like an echo.

Before approaching the Captain, Saker drew Sorrel into the shelter of one of the deck cannons, eyeing her critically. The ragged garments she wore were more those of a homeless ruffian than a woman of substance. He said, “Glamour up some decent clothing. A woman’s. Neat, good quality. Make yourself look respectable and clean.”

“There might be someone on board with a witchery who can see through a glamour.”

“I haven’t seen anyone yet.”

“Do you know what you’re doing, Saker? Because it doesn’t sound like it,” she said as she adjusted her appearance.

“I think a sailor would say making any port in a storm is better than hitting the rocks. I think I’m doing the only thing that will save us both.” He paused to look her over. “That’s better. Now let’s present ourselves to Lustgrader.”

He marched past the helmsmen, pulling Sorrel behind him, and bowed to the Captain. “Sir,” he said, “Factor Reed Heron reporting. I’ve found a stowaway on board. A lady.” He indicated Sorrel and before Lustgrader could react, he added, “And this is for you. Both a personal gift and a matter of considerable urgency, sir.” He thrust the bambu at him and Lustgrader took it without thinking.

“Captain,” a midshipman said, interrupting them, “pinnace off the portside, a Castle Warden requesting permission to come aboard. Flying the Regal’s standard, sir.”

“Before you grant them permission, sir,” Saker said hurriedly, “please look inside the bambu.”