Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 4

Tu’ala’keth knew Anton had taken a late watch. She found him alone in the forecastle, gazing over the black, silver-dappled expanse of the moonlit sea. Knowing how humans depended on the glare of the sun, candles, and the like, she wondered if he could actually see much of anything.

She joined him at the rail and pointed to starboard. “Do you see the school of mackerel,” she asked, “swimming just below the surface? If the others were awake, we could net ourselves a good breakfast.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t make them out. You should sleep, too, if you want your side to finish healing.”

Beneath the silverweave she’d painstakingly mended, her wound gave her a twinge, as if agreeing with him

“I wished to talk to you,” she said. “You seem troubled.”

He snorted. “I’m trying to act triumphant. I must not be the dissembler I hoped I was if a creature who doesn’t even know humans can see through me.”

“You and I are the hands of Umberlee, sealed to a single purpose. That is why I ken your feelings.”

“Or you’re just shrewd.”

“Tell me what bothers you. Do you fear our charade is taking too long? It has occurred to me that while we play games above the sea, the dragon flight may already have laid waste to all As’arem… perhaps even all Seros.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’d just about decided you never felt doubt or worry about anything.”

“I am mortal and thus incapable of perfect serenity. Besides, Umberlee is demanding. It may be that she has chosen us as her agents but is testing us, too. Or testing me, anyway, as an exemplar of the shalarins. She has set me a challenge, which I must quickly overcome, or she will give the wyrms leave to obliterate my race.”

“That’s a cheery thought. For what it’s worth, I’m told dragon flights run around erratically. They don’t always race from one big collection of victims straight to the next. So chances are pretty fair they haven’t chewed up all of Seros yet. I was actually pondering something else.”

A fish jumped, making a soft splash off the port bow. The deck rose and fell beneath their feet. “What were you brooding over?” asked Tu’ala’keth.

“Just that we’ve done, and instigated, a lot of killing.”

His tone was somber, though she had no idea why. Slaughter was a holy act when the slayer dedicated the kill to Umberlee. “And so?” she asked.

“So nothing, I suppose. The Grandmaster knows, after all this time, it shouldn’t bother me. I’ve stood and watched murders, rapes, and acts of torture, because to intervene would unmask me, thwart my mission, and so, theoretically, allow even more suffering elsewhere in the world. But it still does trouble me sometimes. Of late, maybe more than it used to.”

She groped for comprehension. “But the pirates and Thayans are both enemies of your people, are they not? Was that not part of the reason you bade me point Shandri Clayhill at Saerloon? So that whoever died in the course of the raid, Turmish would be the better for it?”

He nodded. “I wasn’t sure you understood that, but yes. Still, no doubt, the zulkirs are scum, and so are Red Wizards. You couldn’t rise in, or even stomach, the crimson order if you weren’t. But do you think every warrior, sailor, and dockhand we killed was a fiend incarnate? Or were they just ordinary folk doing their jobs and trying to get by? Checkmate’s edge, it’s not their fault they were born Thayan. Some may even have been slaves.”

“They certainly were not fiends. Demons are magnificent entities. Viewed clearly, they afford us a glimpse of the divine.”

Her observation failed to divert Anton from his own chain of thought: “But really, I don’t mind Thayan blood on my knife. It’s the deaths of our shipmates that weigh on me because we knew one another.” He sighed. “When I first took up this line of work, one of my mentors warned me the hard part was befriending the enemy. Not the doing of it, but the consequences. Because when you betray them, you bear the guilt.”

“Your true loyalty is to Umberlee, and in any case, you have not betrayed the reavers.”

“We lied to them.”

The remark reminded her of her own misgivings, but she pushed them aside. “For a sacred purpose! And if that is not enough, the ruse gave them the courage to win glory and wealth.”

“But Harl won’t get a chance to spend his share. He died protecting you.”

“For that reason, Umberlee has taken his spirit into her keeping, as she will one day welcome us if we do not fail her.” She peered at him, saw her words had given him no comfort, and felt a pang of frustration. “Why did you become a spy in the first place, if you are too squeamish for the work?”

Where wise counsel had failed, the exasperated question surprised a smile out of him. “‘Squeamish?’ I haven’t heard that before! In truth, I didn’t start out to be a spy. When I was a boy, I loved tales about paladins. I wanted to grow up to be one and begged my parents for permission to train with the Fellowship of the True Deity.”

“But they refused?”

“Oh, no. They were pious folk and approved of my aspirations. But it turned out that, while I took to swordplay and the rest of the combat training, I had no real patience for the constant prayer, fasting, meditation, and general asceticism an apprentice paladin had to endure, and discipline and self-denial only became more difficult when I started noticing girls. Perhaps because I chafed at them, I couldn’t establish the special bond with Torm his knights must have, nor learn to work even the simplest bit of divine magic. By trying, I discovered a small knack for the arcane, but that was beside the point.

“When it became clear I was hopeless, my masters discharged me, and I enlisted in the Turmian army. If I couldn’t be a mystical hero, I’d at least be a chivalrous one. I imagined myself dubbed a knight on the battlefield, fighting single combats with champions from enemy armies, devising brilliant strategies to turn certain defeat into total victory… suffice it to say, if it was a piece of rubbish from a heroic saga, it was rattling around in my head.”

“I take it that the army, too, was not as you envisioned it?”

Anton chuckled. “Sad but true. My superiors showed a strange reluctance to place a raw recruit in command of his own company, or otherwise reward my manifest talents as they deserved. I grew bored with regimentation and routine and disliked taking orders from fellows I deemed less clever than myself, and certainly less worthy than the paladins back in the cloister. In short order, I turned into a shirker and a troublemaker. Once my impudence even earned me a flogging.

“But occasionally I earned my keep. I always volunteered for scouting, carrying dispatches cross-country, any task I could undertake alone, guided solely by my own wits. Then I did well. In time my checkered career caught the notice of one of Turmish’s spymasters, who convinced me I was better suited for his trade than a life in the ranks.”

He shrugged. “And that’s the tale. I’ve been playing this game ever since. Lies and low blows may look shabby compared to paladin’s miracles and valor, but they, too, serve a purpose. At least when some clerk doesn’t just take my report and stuff it in a cubbyhole unread.”

“You yearned to serve a deity,” said Tu’ala’keth. “Yet now that the greatest of all has claimed you, you find no joy in it. What makes you so perverse?”

He hesitated. “I promised to help youand Umberleeand I will. But your deity stands for cruelty, greed, and destruction. Torm is virtue, honor, and loyalty. It’s scarcely the same thing.”

“You must open your eyes,” said Tu’ala’keth. “You see sharks devouring prey, tempests destroying ships and drowning mariners, victors slaying the vanquishedUmberlee’s reflections in the mundane worldand you cringe. As well you might, for these events are terrible. But so, too, are they sacred and beautiful. They are life expressing and refining itself. Without the urge to feed and to have and to master, what creature would discover its strengths, or do anything whatsoever?”

Anton shook his head. “You may be right, but I can’t feel what you feel. If it’s any consolation, I don’t spend much time contemplating the glories of Torm anymore, either. Of course I still believe in him, and all the gods. I’m not insane. But it’s hard to imagine them stooping to take an interest in the small, grubby lives of people like Harl and me. I suspect that by and large, we mortals are on our own.”

“No,” she said. “The gods may sometimes hate us, chastise, slay, and damn us, but they are never remote or indifferent. I believe that if you are true to our purpose, Umberlee will reveal herself to you, and you will know better.”

“Well, maybe so.” He glanced up at the moon and the trailing haze of glittering motes people called her tears. “Hmm. It’s past time for Williven to relieve me. Let’s go wake the lazy bastard.”