Knights of the Crown

Chapter 8

Haimya might not have the greatest head for heights or skill in climbing equal to Pirvan’s, but her desire to be well clear of the water before the naga revived or summoned its friends worked well enough. She was on the first ledge before Pirvan, and reached the bollards at the same moment.

On that ledge, they at last had time to regain their wind-and discover that Pirvan’s line had snapped somewhere in the fight with the naga. Pirvan looked down into a churning waterscape that had swallowed the rope like a chicken snatching a grain of barley. Diving back in would be futile; how dangerous as well depended rather on what had happened to the naga.

Haimya’s face was a study-gratitude to Pirvan for saving her, fear for her lady and shipmates if the one line wasn’t enough, and what seemed to be doubts about her own honor. Her sense of honor was the sort, Pirvan knew, that would make her think he should have let the naga take her if only he could have saved both lines.

Soon she would realize that this was fretting herself over an impossibility, and be calm. Meanwhile, the less Pirvan said, the better.

They tied the remaining line comprehensively around the bollards and signaled. Then they started hauling in the second line, for the raft.

They were streaming with spray, sweat, and blood by the time the second line was secure. Pirvan’s hands were in better shape than his companion’s, who clearly felt the salt water stinging her blisters and raw spots. She had also gotten wounded climbing up the rock.

They were wiping the spray out of their eyes for the tenth time when the raft went over the side of Golden Cup. Squinting, Pirvan saw it carried the promised six men and the end of the heaviest remaining chain. All six men were also armed with boarding pikes, fishing tridents, or axes, and the ship’s side was lined with more spearmen and a few archers.

Pirvan doubted there was a dry bowstring within a day’s sail of the Flower Rocks, but the sight was reassuring nonetheless. It might even mean something if the naga came back-it seemed to have no power to bespell more than one human at a time. Young, old, sick, or merely stupid? Tarothin would know, if they ever spoke to him again.…

Pirvan realized that cold and exhaustion were clouding his mind. Haimya’s eyes were glassy, and she was beginning to shiver. He shook his head, thought of brandy-laced tea, and hauled in a double-sized portion of the line. Haimya tightened her grip, though even her sword-callused hands were beginning to weary, and threw her weight on the line, too.

At some moment, Pirvan became aware that he and Haimya were no longer alone on the rock. They seemed to be surrounded by sailors, all as large as heroes of legend or even Grimsoar One-Eye. One of them was Grimsoar, and he wrapped a blanket around Haimya. Except that there was only the one blanket, and she quickly stepped close to him and let him wrap them both up in the scant but welcome warmth of the tar-smelling wool.

They sat down, and Pirvan remembered hearing someone growl, “Lucky man, cuddling that sword-wench.” He remembered somebody else suggesting that the first speaker keep his tongue between his teeth if he wished to have either.

Then, for quite a long time, there didn’t seem to be anything worth remembering.

* * * * *

By the time Pirvan and Haimya were asleep, wrapped up in the blanket and each other, Golden Cup was safe. The heavy line came ashore with a rush, as six stout sailors heaved on it. The moment it was secured to the bollards, everyone who could lay a hand on the slack of the line did so and hauled the ship around until its bow pointed north and most of the strain was off the anchor.

In that fashion the ship rode out the rest of the storm, with no more rigging lost and no more leaking than manning the pumps every other hour could handle. The raft even made a second trip, bringing jugs of hot tea (as Pirvan had hoped, laced with brandy) and porridge loaded with raisins and salt pork.

The food was even more welcome than hot drinks; Haimya and Pirvan both awoke ready to slaughter and cook one of their comrades on the rock. By the time the pots were empty, the wind was dropping so fast that even Pirvan could notice it. Soon afterward, the flag signal for everyone to return aboard rose on the stump of the foremast.

“I wager we’ll be upanchoring and heading for Karthay the moment they’ve rigged a foremast,” Grimsoar said. He pointed at a crowd on the forecastle. “They’ve got a spare bowsprit already out, ready to be lashed in place.”

Pirvan’s curiosity about the whys and wherefores of this operation was not easily answered. Grimsoar was explaining a process that he understood tolerably well (two years at sea teaches a man much about the sailor’s arts), but his listener not at all.

About Tarothin and the naga, Grimsoar was able to offer more to satisfy Pirvan’s curiosity. At least he was, after he’d led the smaller man farther up the rock and out of earshot of both the wakeful Haimya and the other sailors preparing to cast off the lines.

“What he said he did-and all this was to the lady, and I was overhearing-”

“Without being seen?”

“Am I invisible?”

Pirvan smiled. “You will be, if you’ve offended either of them. I will push you off the rocks.”

“You and which regiment?”

“So what did Tarothin say?”

It seemed that he had used a single spell, potent and thoroughly neutral, to reverse the paralysis of Haimya and Pirvan and inflict the same on the naga. It would not die unless something large and hungry came along before it regained its senses enough to flee.

Meanwhile, it was sending out cries of distress, inaudible to human or most other ears, but painful to its fellow water nagas. Any such who heard the cry would flee the area of the Flower Rocks as if the sea had begun to boil.

“Nagas have a place in the gods’ balancing of things,” Grimsoar said. “Or at least that’s what neutrality makes our friend believe.”

“I don’t dispute that,” Pirvan said. “As long as that place is some ways from where I am.”

“He said that, too,” Grimsoar replied. “Just before he fell to the deck.”

“He is-”

“Sleeping it off, I judge. So does the ship’s herbalist and the merchant princess, who know a deal more of this than I do. I reckon casting the spells left him in worse shape than you or Haimya.”

There was a bright side to that, Pirvan realized. Tarothin would be some while recovering his strength. During that time he could hardly teach Eskaia much about magic. He had won the goodwill of Golden Cup’s crew, but if he had the plans Haimya had mentioned, he might lose that of Josclyn Encuintras. What might come of that looked no more encouraging now than the first time Pirvan had heard of the games of the lady and the wizard.

With no fitting reply ready to hand, Pirvan scrambled down the rocks to join the raft party.

* * * * *

A slow voyage from the Flower Rocks (if one was unfortunate enough to enter those waters at all) was normally three to four days. Golden Cup took seven and the better part of the eighth.

It was sailing through contrary winds, with two and a half masts, rigging that was more knots and splices than rope, and sails that looked like garments a beggar would have scorned. The hull was strained, the leaks seemed to be gaining, and between repairs, pumping, and the ordinary duties of a large ship at sea, the crew got little rest and less sleep.

The one consolation was generous rations. No one could doubt they were going to have to put in at Karthay, to repair and replenish. Stores that had been intended for the whole voyage to the Crater Gulf and back were now distributed at every meal, and often at other times and less formally as well. (“It would only spoil if we don’t finish it off,” Grimsoar said one night, speaking of a large jar of pickled and spiced vegetables.)

The generous diet helped bring back the strength of the hurt and the weary, Tarothin among them. When he walked the deck now to take the air, men who had crossed to the other side now crowded around him, asking his advice or simply kneeling in thanks before him.

He was polite about the counsel but, to Pirvan’s eye, seemed sorely tried by the worship. The thief wondered if it was genuine modesty (something not unheard of in wizards, but rare) or merely the good sense to realize that adulation could turn into blazing hostility the moment he disappointed one of his worshipers.

There was also little enough that Pirvan could do if Tarothin was wanting in judgment. Readily taking the advice of commonfolk was almost unheard of, even in the most moderate of magic-workers.

There was even less he could do about Haimya’s moodiness, which disturbed him rather more than anything that could have come to Tarothin. The guard-maid kept her distance even more than she had before the storm, and not only from Pirvan. Any man who approached her, even to thank her for saving him, met a glare and sometimes words that nailed his feet to the deck and his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Pirvan’s only consolation was that no one thought he and Haimya were lovers, and he was not, therefore, in any measure responsible for her mood. As to learning what kept her so uneasy, he could as well have learned the landscape of the Abyss. It would not have been harder, and it might have been less perilous.

Before he forced himself to feign indifference to Haimya’s mood (from which she suffered as much as anyone, he could not help noticing), Pirvan had seriously contemplated asking Lady Eskaia. But the contemplation was brief and ended in silence. The mistress was as protective of her maid’s secrets as the maid was of hers; Pirvan would be on the shore in Karthay when the ship sailed if he even hinted at such a breach of confidence.

Thus matters stood, when on the eighth day, toward sunset, Golden Cup crept into the west harbor of Karthay.

* * * * *

Like the greater part of Ansalon, Karthay, city and surrounding lands alike, owed nominal allegiance to Istar the Mighty. Like more than a few of the more notable lands, states, and powers, the word “nominal” spoke louder and more truly than the word “allegiance.”

It was a rebellion or at least a manifesto of pinpricks, rather than any overt acts of defiance. But there was a long history of fraudulent money changings, shoddy merchandise (though not where it would endanger life, merely digestion, marriage, chastity, or profit), and suspiciously well-timed tavern brawls.

“One of these days,” Kurulus confided to Pirvan, “Istar’s going to pull together a decent fleet of her own. Then we’ll sit across the mouth of the gulf, get our own ships in and out, and lock up Karthay’s like a lot of temple virgins.”

“Um,” Pirvan said, or something like it. This was the third day in Karthay, and apart from two visits from port officials, they’d had no contact with the shore. The harbor seemed as busy as he’d been promised it would be, even more colorful than Istar’s with a good strength of sea barbarian ships, but not at all welcoming.

They hadn’t even been allowed to refill their water casks, and that threatened to become serious. A number of casks in the bottom tiers had sprung leaks or been ruined by sea water. Golden Cup had to not only replenish the sound casks but repair the damaged ones before it was fit for the open ocean. The prospect of dying of thirst two miles from Karthay’s bustling waterfront would have been ludicrous had it been less real.

Indeed, the prospect of anything unpleasant seemed absurd on a day like this, when they were snug in harbor after their ordeal in the storm. The sky was a patchwork of shimmering blue and fleecy white, a light breeze cooled the skin and filled the sails of small craft, and the white walls of the port fortresses and warehouses blazed brighter than the foam on the waves. (Farther north than Istar, Karthay was hotter and mostly whitewashed its buildings to repel the heat.)

But dark undercurrents flowed beneath the still more splendid facade of Istar the Mighty. Pirvan knew that well-and like any wise thief, knew that no one man’s knowledge reached far. Doubtless the same flowed in Karthay-but here he was as ignorant as a newborn babe.

He could only wait, swallowing his frustration, until either Golden Cup’s folk were allowed ashore or the Karthayan axe fell.

The Karthayan axe fell two days later, after a water barge met the ship’s most urgent need. The hammering of carpenters at work repairing or replacing the water casks crept even into the captain’s cabin, as the Mate of the Hold (who acted as the captain’s deputy in matters of business) explained the situation.

“Thirteen thousand castles!” Lady Eskaia exclaimed.

“To be precise, twelve thousand, eight hundred eighty four, seven towers, nine staves,” the mate said. “This is exclusive of the cost of ship repairs.”

“Be quiet,” the captain said.

“No,” Eskaia said. “I want to hear the worst.”

“You already have,” the mate said. “There’s the consolation that we won’t have to pay for the repairs until after we’ve paid for the rest. They won’t allow us anywhere near the dockyards until-”

The captain muttered something rude, loudly enough for everyone to hear, not so loudly that anyone had to take notice. Eskaia’s face hardened. Pirvan risked a quick look at Haimya.

The guard-maid seemed to be trying to do the same as Pirvan-imitate a statue, with neither power of movement nor any senses. The captain had not been happy about Eskaia bringing her guards to this private conference. If they called themselves to the captain’s notice, they would find themselves out the door even at the price of a quarrel between Eskaia and the captain.

They had always agreed on the importance of avoiding that. Even though Haimya was still marching in silence across her private battlefield, she seemed to believe that still.

“Captain, the gold is there,” Eskaia said. “Even to pay Karthayan prices for repairing Istarian ships. But it is the principle of the matter, not the price. They seek to shame Istar through shaming one of the great merchant houses.

“Allow them to do this, and who knows what they will try next? It would be a sorry day for both cities, if Istar must subdue Karthay and garrison its lands, citadels, and ports.”

“Also a costly one,” the mate of the hold muttered. “The taxes we’d have to pay-”

This time the captain imposed silence with no more than a rude gesture of his left hand.

“Very well, my lady,” he said. “This voyage is your conception. I but serve to execute it. If you will suffer no harm through a few days’ waiting, neither will I or my men. Perhaps the Karthay ans will relent.”

“Perhaps sea trolls will become priests of Paladine, too,” Eskaia said. “I was thinking more of finding ways to repair Golden Cup for the remainder of the voyage without Karthayan help.”

“You ask much of me and my crew-”

Eskaia held up a small hand, which now showed a few calluses of its own. “Only patience. Not facing needless danger. Patience-oh, and any knowledge of Karthayans who may not honor their rulers’ writs in such matters.”

“Such wouldn’t come for’ard without a pledge of secrecy,” the mate said. “No sailor likes to be shipbound in a port like Karthay, for fear of a flogging or a work camp.”

“No one will be leaving the ship before this matter is settled anyway,” Eskaia said. She looked at the captain, and he nodded reluctantly. “So no one’s secrets will reach Karthayan ears except by treachery, and I judge the sailors can deal with that themselves.”

The two mates exchanged looks which Pirvan had no trouble translating: If the traitor’s friends don’t do the job, we will.