Fortress Draconis (64 page)

Will worked in the rigging, helping to get the mainsail furled as they sailed into Port Gold. The passage itself had been relatively quick and even safe, despite making considerable sail during the night. The ketch’s crew knew how to handle the boat very well, and accepted the added help. Will’s role in going aloft was to keep the sailors away from the crow’s nest, where Peri and Qwc had remained until just before dawn; then they saw the island and winged their way to it.

Resolute looked different in his disguise as a pirate, and even acted differently. He clearly knew his way around a ship, wore layered shirts with ease, and anticipated orders about the handling of the sheets. His blue hair appeared black in the night, and there were times when Will forgot who Resolute was. This was especially true when Resolute reeled off a string of nautical terms that could have been Aurolani for all Will could make heads or tails of them.

Make dry or wet of it would be the way sailors would say it, I think.Will shook his head and came down the lines to the deck, then worked forward to the bow. Port Gold, which was located on the northern coast of Wruona, had a natural harbor warded by a spit of land that came out from the east, leaving a narrow but deep channel to the west. The sailors had said that Tagothcha held sway until the bay, then its ownweirun took over.

From the ocean, and in the haze of mist that had not yet burned off by mid-morning, Port Gold looked as if it were a colony of mushrooms growing up the trunk of a tree. The highest hill was to the northeast, with a stronghold built upon it. Curving down and around to the low point at the northwest of the semicircular harbor, the hills slowly shrank and softened. Landward there was no wall to mark the edge of the city, but the hillcrests limited Will’s view beyond that. Further distant, to the interior, a volcano overgrown with jungle commanded the island’s heart, and the smugglers had said a few tiny settlements had sprung up near smaller harbors.

Aside from the castle, which had been built of grey granite blocks, the habitation looked pretty crude. Some buildings had a log construction, but they sagged next to daub-and-wattle hovels that once had been whitewashed. The closest thing to a finished building appeared to be those built out of scraps from hulls.

As could be expected, the best, most solidly constructed thing in the town were the docks. A half-dozen large ships lay at anchor or tied up to the docks. Will didn’t recognize any of them from the siege of Vilwan. But one—the grandest and most beautifully painted, with black from the waterline up to a red stripe and then white on up at the forecastle and afterdeck—that one he knew had to be Vionna’sOcean Witch.

Lombo ambled forward with Kerrigan in his wake. The Panqui pointed past theWitch to a slightly smaller ship painted in brown, green, and white, with a white shark on a red field emblazoned on the stern. “That ship, Lombo’s ship.”

The mage arched an eyebrow. “TheWhite Shark? But the song I heard last night in Ooriz said Tremayne Reach is its captain.”

Lombo snorted. “Put Lombo out for oceanswallow.”

Will wasn’t certain what the Panqui meant by oceanswallow, but it didn’t sound too nice. The Panqui didn’t bother to explain and instead just sat perched at the bow like a gargoyle. The thief figured that if Reach was as superstitious as any sailor he’d seen in Yslin, Lombo’s return would be taken as a fell omen indeed.

The ketch lowered a small boat that came around, took up a bowline, and pulled the ship to the docks. Before the crew could tie her up, Lombo had bounded from the ship and scampered along the docks to the collection of warehouses and taverns beneath the castle. The Panqui ducked into a darkened alley between two buildings and Will marked it well.

As fast as possible the company boiled from the ship and followed Will as he led them on into the streets. Even at mid-morning nothing much stirred, including rats and other vermin. The absence of the same near middens and in other alleys—combined with a few fleeting tracks in mud—marked Lombo’s passage. As they neared his destination, however, sound surpassed sight as the surest way of determining where he was.

It didn’t hurt that he blazed the trail by tossing a sailor out through a doorway and into the alley before them. The tavern had no sign per se, just the bleached jaws of some huge shark. The plaster on the building had that same sort of weathered ivory color, save where urine stained it in little wedges, or the green of corroding copper from the roof sheathing dripped down the walls.

They fought an outrush of fleeing sailors to get into the tavern. The interior made it easy to tell what had happened. A straight line of overturned tables and scattered chairs— with sailors trapped beneath, draped over, or hiding behind them—ran from the doorway to the large round table in the back corner. At the back wall, Lombo had a slender, red-haired man by the throat, and the man had both hands wrapped around Lombo’s left wrist. The man’s feet dangled well above the ground and his face had taken on an unhealthy purple color.

Crow stretched a hand out. “Lombo, you’ll choke him.”

The Panqui nodded as the man’s eyes flashed. “No choke.”

The Panqui’s hand convulsed once and the man’s head jerked up about three inches. Will shivered as Lombo tossed the man aside. The way the man’s head lolled about made Will mindful of the gibberer whose throat Dranae had crushed.

Crow winced. “The late, lamented Captain Reach?”

A couple of sailors nodded, but Lombo barked sharply. “No lament.”

Sailors, unable to determine if that was just a statement or order, did their best to compose themselves and slowly set the tables to rights. The bartender, one-handed though he was, gathered up as many pewter tankards as he could in one go. Some sailors helped him, while others staunched wounds, and at least two of them tried to pop a third’s shoulder back into its socket.

Lombo did his part by setting the big table up again, returning a massive chair to its upright position, then hauling Reach up and sitting him in a chair at the Panqui’s left hand. Lombo even put a feathered cap back on the man’s head, pressing it down so it would stay on. Continued pressure appeared to compact the man’s neck enough that it kept his skull seated solidly.

Will remained in the shadows, with his back to the wall, in the corner nearest the door. He noted with some satisfaction that Orla took up a similar position on the door’s other side. Resolute, Crow, and Alexia appropriated a table toward the middle of the tavern, while Dranae and Kerrigan seated themselves at the bar.

Lombo seated himself imperiously and adjusted his throne, then summoned a sailor with the crook of a taloned finger. “Go, makeShark seanow.”

The sailor, an ugly man whose face had clearly been kissed more by steel than lips, hesitated for a moment, then nodded and headed out. A couple others looked after him, and Lombo dismissed them with a wave of his hand. One or two of the remaining sailors pulled up chairs around peripheral tables, while others just drifted toward the door and out.

The bartender bowed deeply as he approached Lombo’s table. “What would Cap’n Lombo be having?”

“Wait.”

Will wondered what Lombo wanted to wait for, and his answer wasn’t too long in coming. A man strode through the doorway within a half hour of Reach’s death. Hard and lean, the man wore leather bracers on his forearms and a wide, iron-studded belt around his middle. Between knee-high boots and that belt he wore loose pantaloons of blue silk, which would have looked silly save for the deadly earnest in the man’s stride. His head had been partly shaved, and tresses of long black hair had been gathered back into a queue that reminded Will of the warmages on Vilwan. Because he had no shirt, it was easy to see the rainbow-scaled snake tattoo curling around his body. Will couldn’t see where it started, but the head rested on the man’s left shoulder.

The man’s hard-eyed gaze swept over Will and Orla, but they did not register as a threat. Will figured the man was very confident or stupid, since the two steps he took into the tavern left his back open. Will slid his right hand down to finger his bladestar pouch, but a slight glance from the man made him doubt he’d be able to draw and throw without being detected.

The man balled his fists. “Lombo, you shouldn’t have come back. You should have stayed dead. Did you tire of Tagothcha’s company, or did he of yours?”

“Talk, talk, Wheele.” Lombo slowly rose from his chair and planted his fists on the table. “Alone now.”

“And soon dead.” The man’s right hand swept up and began to weave through a complex series of motions. Off to the left, Kerrigan gasped, which brought Wheele’s head around. He started to say something, probably connected to the puzzled look on his face, when a flash of gold hit Wheele on the right. It flowed over him like bowspray, at first contorting his back, then snapping him forward into a little heap.

Will got up to check him, but Orla was there first, waving Will back with her hand. “Stay off him, lad.”

The thief stopped dead in his tracks, and half because of her warning. The other half came as the tattoo writhed and shifted a little. It didn’t move much, but that was much more than Will wanted to see.

Lombo designated two sailors to drag Wheele off to Vionna, then settled back down to wait. The tavernkeeper brought him a huge bowl of ale, then set about making food for the rest of them. Will took his meal with Orla, much preferring her company to Resolute’s.

“That tattoo, Orla, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The old woman nodded as she sopped up the yolk of an egg with a dark crust of bread. “They’ve been rumored for years, but that’s the first I’ve seen.”

“What was it?”

She frowned, then lowered her voice. “When the heroes went to fight Chytrine, a Vilwan-trained mage was with them. He had been sent to work for your grandfather because the elven prophecy was not precisely the first indication that the Norrington bloodline would be important. I don’t think your grandfather had any inkling of how powerful Heslin truly was. Perhaps, in Svarskya, he caught a glimmer of it when Heslin, all alone, undid defensive magicks woven to protect the Vilwanese consulate.

“In that action, Heslin was badly wounded, perhaps even killed.”

Will nodded. “He became one of thesullanciri”

“He did, indeed. He is known as Neskartu.” Her brown eyes focused distantly. “Chytrine, if portents are to be believed, set him to creating a school of magick akin to Vilwan deep in Aurolan. Men like Wheele, men who have some talent but no patience, they go there to learn the easy path to magick power.”

The thief raised an eyebrow. “Easy path?”

“Oh, the avarice in your voice, Will.” She shook her head. “The spells we teach on Vilwan are not the only way to get that effect. As a thief you know a lock can be picked or it can be smashed. Smashing it takes less skill, and might be more effective, but it comes with danger. So it is with magick. The Vilwanese spells are safe and require skill; the magery Wheele knows does not.”

An explosive laugh and a blur of color bouncing into the tavern interrupted any further explanation of magick. A human dwarf, with foreshortened limbs and clad in a motley riot of bright colors, rolled, leaped, and danced through the tavern, then vaulted onto the seat of a chair. The dwarf tipped it over, letting the back rest against Lombo’s table, then boldly strode onto it as if Adrogans himself.

“Captain Lombo!”

The Panqui smashed his palms down on the table, jouncing the dwarf into the air an inch or two. “Pet Nacker.”

The dwarf bowed, then capered around in a circle before resting his fists on his hips. “I am bid by the most terrible Vionna, Queen of Wruona, to welcome you. Word of Reach’s wreck has flowed into her ear and fits well and warmly. She bids you and your companions to sup with her as day bleeds into night.”

“Lombo agrees. Deliver message.” The dwarf laughed aloud, then dropped into a cross-legged seat on the table. “I told her you would. I am to guide you. I’ll wait here and save myself the long walk, so you and I can talk, and I can learn of your life after Vionna ordered it taken away.”

Will shook himself out of a near stupor. As storytellers went, Lombo might have a lot of material to work with, but pulling it out of him two or three words at a time didn’t make for a rousing performance. Nacker kept at it with a tenacity that surprised Will, making him quickly suspect that what the dwarf lacked in height he made up for in intellect.

The dwarf called an end to the day’s chatter as mid-afternoon ebbed toward dusk. Lombo scooped Nacker up in an arm and led the procession that wound up the hill, through alleys and unpaved streets with eroded gullies on either side. The absence of cats and chickens and other animals, save skinny, whiny, quick dogs, made Will of a mind to wonder what sort of meal they’d be heading to in the stronghold.

He saw no sign of Peri or Qwc, but he had no doubt they soared through the night, unseen, above them.

From the bay they’d seen walltowers, but the stronghold itself occupied the entire hilltop, with thick walls supplementing sheer cliffs on the south and east sides. While coming up through the last switchback and the long tunnel piercing the walls, Will could see both how old the stronghold was, and why it would have been tough to take. The hilltop sunk away, so the main courtyard and tower didn’t appear to be very tall when seen from below, but grew as you came up onto the hilltop. It struck Will that some of its levels might have been built into the hill itself.

His guess turned out to be correct, for they entered at the base of the tower and proceeded down tall steps to a vast room with vaulted ceilings and pillars to support them. A spiral staircase worked up into the entryway wall, leading to the tower’s higher levels, but Will had nary a care for them. The large room served as Vionna’s treasury, with gold bars stacked hither and yon, casks of coins filled to bursting, bolts of cloth draped over ornate furnishings, weapons racked, stacked, and piled, and a few works of art hung crookedly from walls or pillars.

In the center of it all a long table had been set with gold plates and cutlery. Multi-armed candelabras grew up like trees in three spots and candles burned at the ends of each branch. Crystal goblets in trios were stationed at each place, baskets laden with bread, platters with steaming heaps of meat filled the spaces between settings and the candles. Pirates in clean clothes stood by the walls as servants or guards, and Will wasn’t certain he liked them in either role.