Isles of the Forsaken (18 page)

“What do you all want from me?” Goth asked. “Just tell me, and I’ll give it if I can.”

She was gazing off into the arbour. Pointing down the leafy aisle, she asked, “Do you think that apple tree needs trimming?”

“No,” he answered sullenly.

“You’re wrong,” she said decisively; “it does.”

There was a silence as Goth tried to control his frustration. At last Tiarch turned to look at him, assessing. “You ask what we all want, as if we all wanted the same thing.”

“Then I will ask what
you
want, Tiarch.”

Her smile was sad and ironic. “What do I want?” She mused over the words, as if she had never asked herself the question before.

The temptation to touch her was strong, since it would sharpen his vision. Like everyone, she was a pattern of old scars—a complex pattern, since she had had a long and eventful life. But she was a controlled and closed-off person. He could not see deeply enough to know what drove her without some physical contact.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” she said at last. “Before I die, I would like to see the isles united.”

Goth laughed. “Surely you have already united the isles—under Inning.”

“If you call it unity to all pay taxes to the same despised invader,” Tiarch answered.

“You rule more isles now than any Ison for five centuries past.”

“Yes,” she said, “but from time to time I think of being loved.”

So what the tyrant of the isles wanted was not so different from what everyone else did. Goth had spent a lifetime trying to meet that need in people, that urgent, demanding need for love. Sometimes it had scalded him with its heat. But even that had been preferable to the vacant isolation he felt now. His hand moved of its own accord to hover over hers. She noticed it, and looked at him. He swallowed hard, and forced himself to pull back.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Somewhere off in one of the palace towers, a clock began to strike the hour. Tiarch rose. “I must go,” she said. “Will you dine with me tonight?” He nodded, though her question scarcely needed asking; he would dine where her guards took him.

On the verge of leaving, she paused. “Give that note to Joffrey. Don’t say you showed it to me; it will make him think he’s found something, and keep him busy. Young men need to be busy.” Goth had risen to take leave of her, but she waved him abruptly off and hurried down the path toward the palace.

As he watched her go, Goth felt a twinge of regret that he could not befriend this small, determined woman who was the fabled tyrant. He could not afford to think as an actor in these affairs, neither ally nor adversary. Repeating to himself the Lashnura proverb,
surrender is victory
, he infused his thoughts with submission. By the time the guards came to fetch him, he was as gentle and resigned as they had ever seen him.

*

It was twilight on a rain-slick evening before the
Ripplewill
’s passengers went ashore. Torr had brought the boat in at one of the filthiest wharves in Harbourdown, far from the bustling town centre and its new customs house. From the near-derelict dock, Harg eyed the line of dark buildings that teetered on the brink of the oily water, their slimy lime foundations crumbling into the sea. There was a strong smell of sewage and rotting fish.

They had waited till dark because Harg didn’t want many people to know he was here. “I’ve got to keep my head down,” he had said.

“Don’t worry,” Torr had responded. “People here know all about disappearing.”

Harg felt a misgiving as he watched Spaeth step onto the dock, looking at her surroundings with wide grey eyes. He hadn’t wanted her to come tonight, but she had insisted, and Torr had backed her up. There was something of Yora’s innocence about her that Harg didn’t want to see destroyed, especially not in the brutal way it had been destroyed in him.

They set out down the dock with Torr in the lead, Harg and Tway on either side of Spaeth. Soon the skipper plunged into a narrow alleyway whose entrance was almost blocked by a pile of refuse, and they had to go single file. They passed an emaciated woman sitting on a doorstep with a man too drunk to sit up. She ran a hand over her greasy black hair and eyed them hungrily. A man with a hare lip pushed roughly past them, headed in the other direction.

“It’s so strange,” Spaeth said in a whisper.

“What’s strange?” Harg said.

“They’re all in pain.”

Torr gave a short laugh. “That’s
normal
, Grey Lady. It’s Yora that’s strange.”

Deep in the warren of alleyways, they came to a ramshackle doorway with a green-shaded lantern hanging over it. A beefy man lounged by the door, his complexion sickly in the jaundiced light.

“Evening, Bole,” Torr said. “I’ve got three guests here.”

Bole nodded, looking close as if to memorize their faces. Torr jerked the swollen door open, and gestured them inside.

The tap room they entered was a large space lit by lanterns, and simply packed with loudly talking people. They paused just inside the door as Torr scanned the crowd. At last he spied someone at the bar. “Hey, Barko!” he bellowed across the room. “Look who I brought.”

A man paused in his conversation and looked their way. Harg recognized him instantly: Barko Durban, ugly as sin, with a sharp, feral-looking face and thinning black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He looked every inch the pirate. He was one of the men Harg would have promoted to captain, if he had ever gotten the chance.

Barko recognized Harg just as quickly, and yelled across the room, “Harg Ismol, by the root! Hey, Cobb, Birk, look who’s here!” He started pushing his way through the crowd toward them.

So much for staying inconspicuous, Harg thought.

He was soon surrounded by four or five men he only vaguely recognized, but who seemed to know him like a brother. Alert to his surroundings, he was aware that the din of conversation had lost some volume as people looked to see what the commotion was about. Then, as he was touching hands, the background noise suddenly dropped to near-silence. Spaeth had stepped to his side. Barko’s left eyebrow rose at sight of her, and he glanced sharply at Harg. Instinctively, Harg put a hand on Spaeth’s shoulder to reassure her; but when he glanced over, she was looking around with the wide, wondering expression of someone too young to know what danger was.

“Is there a table we could sit at?” Harg asked.

“Sure,” said Barko, shaking himself out of the paralysis the sight of Spaeth had induced in everyone. He started off through the crowd, which parted before them.

“Don’t they have Grey Folk here?” Spaeth whispered to Harg as they followed.

“Sure they do,” he said. “They just don’t show up in bars very much.” Inwardly, he was cursing. Nothing could have made him more conspicuous.

Barko evicted a group of people from a secluded table by the back wall, and the newcomers settled down, eyed curiously by their neighbours. Tway whispered to Harg, “If they stare any harder, we’ll be picking eyeballs off the floor.”

The young woman who sauntered forward to wait on them was vigorously attractive. She crossed her strong, tanned arms in front of her chest and stood staring at Harg and Spaeth in a tough, appraising way. At last, tossing a strand of light brown hair behind her shoulder, she said, “What can I bring you folks?”

“I’ll buy a round of beer, Calpe,” Torr said.

With a last, lingering look, Calpe turned and walked with a swaying gait back toward the bar. Harg only realized he was staring, mesmerized by her ass, when Barko waved a hand before his face and said, “Harg. She’s married.” Everyone laughed.

They spent some time catching up. Barko and the other Navy men had been back for several weeks, and their simmering discontent at the situation they had found was palpable.

Eventually, Barko eyed Harg over the rim of his beer mug. “So are you here just for a visit?”

Harg shifted uncomfortably. “I had to get away from Yora. I got into some trouble there.”

“Does this have anything to do with the fact that someone tried to rearrange your face?”

“Something. Four of Tiarch’s marines gave me this.”

“It took four of them, eh?” Barko said, grinning evilly.

“Yeah.” Harg willed Tway not to say anything about how little fighting back he had done. She didn’t. “Actually, Barko, I need to keep my head down for a while. They’ll probably come looking for me.”

“Assholes,” Barko said. “They ought to be buying you drinks. These Tiarch’s-men don’t really believe the war happened; it’s just a set of stories to them.”

So Harg told them how he’d been accused of theft for having an officer’s insignia in his possession. Though he tried to laugh about it, the outrage of the others made the bitterness come back. Every Adaina in the fleet had known about Harg’s captaincy. To have it denied was a personal insult to them all.

“Well, if you feel like getting a bit of Adaina justice to offset the Inning type, let me know,” Barko said.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Harg said. “I came here to get
out
of trouble.”

Torr spoke up. “I thought we should introduce him to Holby Dorn.”

“Good idea,” Barko said.

“He has some ideas Dorn needs to hear.”

“I bet he does.”

Harg just stared at his beer. He actually had half a hundred questions about the supposed resistance—how organized it was, how widespread, what resources they had, what plans. But he wasn’t about to ask them here. “Maybe we can get together some time, and you can fill me in,” he said.

“Sure,” said Barko. “We’ve got a little problem now that’s right down your alley. Three of—”

He was interrupted by a hubbub at the doorway. A new person had entered—a huge, white-bearded man, dressed in gaudy silks, with a king’s ransom of gold chains hung around his neck. He swept in, surrounded by half a dozen bodyguards. Instead of making way, the crowd surged toward him, yelling out “Dorn! Dorn!” so that the bodyguards had to push and shove roughly to make their way through. Halfway into the room the pirate stopped and tossed a handful of silver coins into the crowd. People fell to their knees, scrambling to pick them up. In the distraction, the pirate and his beefy retinue made it to a door in the back and disappeared through. Two guards took up stances on either side of the door.

“That was colourful,” Harg remarked as the room returned more or less to normal. The Thimishmen were smiling, he wasn’t sure why. The whole performance had seemed tawdry to him.

“Yeah, Holby Dorn’s a character all right,” Barko said. He had caught Harg’s reaction, and was assessing it.

Torr said to Barko, “What do you think, should we wait till Dorn’s drunk?”

“I think it’s too late,” Barko said.

“What’s his power base?” Harg asked.

“You saw it,” said Torr, rubbing two fingers together.

“Money?” Harg said. “That’s it?”

“That’s all there needs to be,” said Torr. “He gets payments from the merchants in town, and in return he keeps a lid on all his rivals. He keeps things quiet, at least, and that’s all most businessmen want—especially now that he’s running raids farther from home.”

“How many men does he command? How many ships?”

The Thimishmen exchanged glances that Harg found inscrutable. Barko said, “It’s not like a navy, Harg. Dorn’s got a boat,
Vagabond
, and he’s got his guys. Other people with their own boats come along when they think there’s profit to be had. They follow him because he passes out spoils. All in all, if everyone came, maybe twenty, twenty-five boats. Between them—what do you think, Torr, how many guns?”

“Counting small arms?”

“No, just ordinance.”

Torr tipped back his chair, rubbing his hair. “Oh, maybe forty, fifty.” He looked at Harg. “Little guns, five-pounders and such. These aren’t big boats.”

“You guys are in deep shit,” Harg said.

There was a short silence as they all took drinks of beer. At last Barko said, “Yeah, we know that. That’s why there’s a big argument going on about the three warships coming here from Tornabay, and what we ought to do about it. Some people say it’ll only provoke them if we take them on, so we ought to lay low and wait. Other people are saying there’s never going to be a better chance, and we ought to strike before they can establish themselves.”

“What side are you on?” Harg looked at Barko. He respected the man’s judgment.

“I’m waiting to hear what you say,” Barko said.

“Me? I don’t know a damn thing about it.”

“Not yet.”

“I told you, I can’t get involved.”

“You can give us your opinion. You owe us that much.” Barko rose. “Come and meet Dorn.”

As Harg rose, everyone at the table followed suit. He turned to Spaeth and Tway. “You ought to stay,” he said.

“No, let them come along,” said Barko. “You, too,” he said to the other navy men.

When they all came to the door into Holby Dorn’s private room, Barko signalled them to wait. He talked quietly to one of the guards, who let him through. After a few minutes the door cracked open again, and Barko waved them in. Everyone gestured Harg to go through first. When they followed him in, it looked like he had his own troop of bodyguards.

Holby Dorn and several of his men were sitting at a large table spread with food, eating. Calpe, the woman who had served their beer, was replenishing cups and clearing away plates as Harg’s group entered. Dorn didn’t rise, or even look up, until Harg stood directly in front of him. Then he set down his beer mug and gave a deliberative belch.

Up close, the old pirate’s face was a patchwork of scars scabbed over with belligerence. One jagged old cut ran up the side of his face, barely missing his right eye. He regarded Harg suspiciously from under bristling, steel-grey brows.

Barko said, “Dorn, this is the man I was telling you about, Harg Ismol.”

“I hear you’re some kind of hero,” the pirate said, picking his teeth with a fingernail. “Won the Battle of Drumstick or something.”

“Drumlin,” Harg said, not getting angry, since Dorn so obviously wanted it.

“Ismol,” Holby Dorn mused. “Any relation to Immet Ismol?”

Surprised, Harg said, “His son.” People almost never asked about his father.