Lance of Earth and Sky (The Chaos Knight Book Two) (24 page)

Their three hosts escorted them to the
Viere d'Inar
. As they ascended the gangplank, Marielle gave commands for meat and whatever else they should request to be given to the gryphons, and food and water offered to the crew of the
Luminous
. An odd crawling feeling spread across Vidarian's stomach as they crossed the familiar deck of the
Viere
, peopled as it was with unfamiliar crew. It felt like an insult to Ruby, and he wondered if it would have felt worse had she remained dead.

Marielle led them to the captain's stateroom, and even before Vidarian saw the relay sphere that now sat at the center of its main table, he recognized it. Someone had changed the decor—gone were Ruby's Targuli carpets, and thin geometric Rikani ones replaced them, likewise the linens. Even as he was cataloging the changes, Marielle turned to her two officers.

“Anglar, Yuril, there are matters I wish to discuss with our guests privately.”

“Your majesty—” Anglar, the bigger one, made it two words into his objection.

“Need I ask you again, sir?” The evenness of her tone was a greater threat than steel.

“No, ma'am.” He bowed stiffly and left the stateroom, stealing a glare like a jealous tomcat at Vidarian as he did so.

When the door was shut behind him, Marielle gestured them to the velvet-upholstered chairs, pouring tea into four cups with her own hand. “If you have need, we have elemental channeling stones you are welcome to,” she said to Iridan, addressing him as she would any other guest. His eyes glowed appreciatively.

“How did this happen?” Vidarian asked, as soon as they'd settled into their chairs.

“It's as unlikely a thing as can be imagined, I grant you,” Marielle said, taking a long draw on her tea. “I was captain of the
Ardent
, you knew.”

Vidarian nodded.

“We hit a squall off the coast of Ignirole—not surprising for that time of year, but its strength was. A wild thing, unnatural. It was all we could do to keep the rig upright. We came out of it, but the
Viere
—” she knocked on the deck with the heel of her boot—“was waiting, looking for easy prey among the jetsam.” Thoughtfully, she rolled her silver teacup between her hands, then took another long pull on it. “We gave it an honorable fight, but 'twere never a hope. They boarded us.”

Vidarian winced. He well imagined the misery she must have felt, newly a captain and her first commission lost to pirates.

“I had a choice. I could fight, and if I won we would all become pirates—citizens of the West Sea Kingdom—or I could refuse to fight, and they'd slaughter us all.”

“They offered you combat?” Vidarian said, surprised.

“Aye. Foolishness. The captain was a young pup named Warrick. Thought himself invincible, thought he'd make an example out of a woman-captain from the landers.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed him,” she said, and in the hesitancy, even regret, in her voice, Vidarian recognized the Marielle he had known. “I hardly meant to, but he was an oaf of a boy had no business on either end of a sword. Ran right into me.”

“Did you…?” The beginning of the question escaped Vidarian before he could think better of it.

In answer, Marielle turned over her wrist and pulled back the sleeve from her forearm. There, just below her palm, was the mark, a pattern inked from reed needles into her skin, a blue dragon, albeit a small one. “Stupid boy,” she said softly, her thoughts far away in a memory.

“You could have gone home,” Vidarian said.

Marielle shook her head. “Not then. If we'd fled, they'd've filled our hull with lead. They don't permit anyone to just pick off a monarch—even a temporary upstart of one, as he was, having successfully seized the
Viere
—and sail away.”

“But you've always hated pirates,” Vidarian said, aware that he sounded plaintive.

Marielle looked up over her cup, a tired glance that Endera would have been proud of. She turned to Lirien and gave him a little deferential nod. “Yer pardon, majesty, but I hope you've enough a head on your shoulders to know what a mess the admiralty has become.” Lirien sighed, but didn't answer, and Marielle took it for agreement and turned back to Vidarian. “To save my crew, I told them I'd take the crown I'd won—and once I saw this place,” she gestured roundly with her cup, “and met their people, I saw what the Sea Kingdoms had become, and how badly they needed leadership. Also how badly the world needs them.”

“On that, we can agree,” Vidarian said, seeing his opening. He told her of their flight from the Imperial City, of the Company's machinations—without mentioning, in Lirien's presence, the imperial debt—and what Ariadel had told him, of the prison camps full of Qui.

Marielle's face grew progressively graver, and then darker, the more Vidarian spoke. When he mentioned the prison camps, she cursed roundly. “It explains other news we've received. Lifan, the
Quest
's little windreader—she's disappeared.”

Vidarian's stomach sank. “How do you—?”

Marielle glanced at the relay sphere. “One thing the Kingdoms learned to do very well from the beginning was to maintain lines of communication. I had gotten wind of Lifan's disappearance some months ago. Thought it odd, especially with Ellara watching over her. They'll have taken her, I'm sure of it.”

A cold anger rolled through Vidarian's veins. He thought about how he would dismantle the Alorean Import Company, if it took his last breath and beyond. “Surely, the West Sea Kingdom has power to bring to this cause. I need to destroy those camps.”

Marielle's expression was grave. “There's little choice, then. I don't have the authority to provide what you're asking for.”

Surprise pulled him out of his reverie of vengeance. “I thought you were the West Sea Queen.”

Marielle shook her head. “Not that simple, 'm afraid. The Kingdoms make it look like their monarchies are absolute, but there are protocols—strict ones, for things like this. It requires a Sea Council.” Vidarian blinked, and she continued. “You think this place is big now, wait until you see it with every pier filled. The last one convened to confirm my rise to Queen.” The word sounded even stranger coming from Marielle. She set down her cup, stood, and went to the door. None of them were surprised when her burly officer, whom she called Anglar, was hovering just beyond.

“Mr. Anglar,” Marielle said, and the big fellow straightened. “I've called a Sea Council. See to it.”

“At once, your majesty.”

When he'd left, Vidarian said, “How do you get used to that?”

Marielle chuckled, her green eyes tired. “I try not to think about it.”

T
he next morning Vidarian ventured out into the floating city, crossing from pier to pier. He carried a mug of
kava
from the ship; its hot bite was sharpened by the heavy, cold air that had come in over the water with the dawn hours.

Far from the sleepy village the place had seemed by late afternoon, by morning it was a bustle of activity. There was some logic to the way that they made use of the narrow raft bridges, but he couldn't make sense of it, and eventually stopped at an unused spar and stood aside.

Across the network of bridges, far from where the
Luminous
and
Viere d'Inar
moored, a pair of familiarly-shaped figures bobbed in the water to starboard of the great Rivenwake structure. They were pelican-gryphons, and as he had only ever seen one before, Vidarian assumed one must be Arikaree—yet, as he squinted at them, it was clear neither was he. The water-gryphon had returned to his people with the opening of the Great Gate, and Vidarian had not seen him since he'd reappeared with An'du. These two, at the very least, must be members of his flight; Thalnarra had never spoken of more than one small group of the pelican-gryphons. Even as he watched, another ship glided between them, hiding the creatures from sight.

When he returned to watching the stream of merchants, tiny delivery carts, and sailors, a passing fruit vendor noticed his confusion and pressed half of a ripe mango into his palm, all while waving away any attempt at payment. In moments the vendor had reentered the trail of passersby and quite vanished.

Vidarian bit into the mango, more out of a desire to free his hand than hunger, but blinked with surprise as the rich, bright, spectacular flavor hit his tongue. The fruit was perfectly ripe, its flavor like pure liquid sunlight, a taste he'd only experienced once before when, in his childhood, his father had sailed to the far southwestern islands where mango trees grew. But those were miles away—these mangoes must be grown here in Rivenwake, miraculously on one of the garden-rafts.

Emboldened by the fruit's tap-dance across his senses, he ventured back out onto the raft-bridges, and this time managed to move with the stream of travelers long enough to come into some kind of trading district.

It was strange to call the collections of rafts “districts,” but they could be nothing else. Rivenwake was a city, with a city's specialization of tasks—the massive flat garden-rafts tended to cluster together, as did the different rafts for cloth-selling, grocery, herbery, and more.

The merchant's-way onto which he'd stumbled seemed to be a hybrid of several raft types, repurposed for small shops like those in the central Val Harlon tradegoods market. And like Val Harlon's, the noise here was deafening, as shopkeepers shouted over the passing travelers and over each other in an attempt to ply their wares. Vidarian moved along with the eddy of the raft-bridges, but at length stepped off onto the quietest of the merchant rafts he could find.

It was an elemental lights shop, or perhaps a curio shop that happened to have a terrible lot of lights. They hung from the steel canopy of the place, bunched up in clusters or spread out in lines, dozens of lights in more colors than he had seen even in Val Imris.

As he passed through one of the two narrow aisles, still taking in the scenery more than genuinely perusing the wares, another kind of sparkle caught his eye, deep red:

A prism key.

The shape, size, and color of it were all unmistakable; what he would have called a “sun ruby” mere months ago. And as then, it should have been nearly priceless.

This fact did not deter him from making an embarrassingly modest offer to the wizened shopkeep tucked into a tiny cubby in the rear of the raft. He expected denial, even derision, but what he got instead in response to the entire contents of his leather coinpurse still came as a surprise.

“Eh? I bain't a-been'n land fer forty year, m'boy! What use've I fer yer shiny bits? Gold fer'ma teeth maybe?” The old man took his silence for confusion—which it was, but at his accent, not the meaning of the words—and made a shooing notion with his hands. “Gitchee tootha moneychanger, lad, they's a'visitin' by sailers what might've use fer Alorean silver.”

Vidarian was taken aback, and tried to hide exactly how much. He'd never met a sailor who would turn down silver, yet the old merchant's point was clear and reasonable. Still, for the sake of appearances he tried to argue him into taking the coin and changing it himself, but the old man would have none of it. Finally, he left the shop, glum about departing without the prism key, but educated in the ways of this strange place that Marielle had roosted.

Time slipped away quickly in the labyrinthine market quarter, and shortly the sun had advanced high in its march, signaling the convening of the council in a few short hours.

Vidarian found Lirien on the
Luminous
's pier, sitting next to Tepeki, who held a book in his hands. As Vidarian approached, the boy set the book carefully aside, gestured to Lirien, and leapt off the pier. Midway through the air, he changed, his body rearranging itself to become the otter. He struck the water smoothly, cutting below its surface with hardly a splash, then bounced up again to whirl and cavort through the water.

“He's remarkably well read,” Lirien said. “His people long ago made translations of many of the Alorean classics, and it seems they've bartered for books for ages.” While they watched, Tepeki spun again in the water, and changed shape as he did so, this time into a strange hybrid form. Vidarian had seen An'du like this—from the waist down, a whale, she'd remained human across the rest of her body, though larger than she was in her full human shape. Similarly, here Tepeki was smaller, half boy and half otter, and kept several otter details, including the tiny black claws that tipped his tiny, clever fingers. A long and powerful tail let him leap high out of the water, performing, before he swam back to the pier.

Lirien was watching the boy, his thoughts transparent: was Tepeki a different race, or a different species? When he appeared to be a boy, did he think like a boy? When he was an otter, were his thoughts human? Were Calphille's, as she slept with branches outstretched in the palace's north field?

Standing up in the water again, Tepeki gave another strong thrash of his tail and leapt, sailing up onto the pier. He landed on human arms and otter legs, and Vidarian was sure he was flaunting the strangeness of his hybrid body to the emperor.

“You're a superb swimmer,” Lirien said, declining the challenge. Tepeki turned boy again, his otter pelt blurring into fur-clothed human legs, and he took his seat again on the edge of the planks, sluicing water from his hair.

And regardless of what they'd spoken of before Vidarian's arrival, it was clear Tepeki intended to steer the conversation straight to what was in his heart. “She's not one of you,” Tepeki said at last. “She is of my people.”

“But yours are sea-folk,” Vidarian said. “An'du told me of your five clans.”

“It is not right that you should be with her,” Tepeki insisted, ignoring Vidarian.

“Perhaps you are correct, my young friend,” Lirien said. Tepeki cast a satisfied look at Vidarian, and so missed the sadness in Lirien's voice. It was not a sadness that faded easily or was forgotten; it gave the lie to his words. All this was lost on the Velshi boy, who grinned with triumph and leapt back into the water, shivering into his otter form and capering through the waves.

“I hope you are keeping your own counsel when it comes to Calphille,” Vidarian said, sitting next to Lirien on the pier.

Lirien turned a glance on him that was purely imperial. “On all things.”

It was not a good place to make his next appeal, but time was slipping away. “On the subject of the Sea Council, my friend…” The emperor's eyebrows lifted, even as he frowned ever so slightly. “All who care for you would prefer that you remain safely in the
Luminous
. I can conduct whatever business there may be.”

“Certainly not,” Lirien said, as mildly as he would have asked for milk in his tea.

“Your majesty,” Vidarian pressed, twisting the irony in the title with deliberate care. “These pirates are dangerous. My family has treated with them for nearly a century, and there's no telling—”

Lirien shook his head, reaching out to clasp Vidarian's shoulder to take the sting out of his disagreement. “I can't let you do everything for me, my friend. And it is idleness that's created all this. You can't expect me to sit by like a closeted princess.”

“You were hardly idle,” Vidarian said, taken aback and again stunned by the strangeness of the entire affair.

“I am also responsible,” Lirien replied. He ran a hand across his sleeve, and the embroidered emblem there. “Perils of the station.”

“And I hope I am not responsible for introducing you into yet more such.”

“Shall we bicker over this? Perhaps ritual combat?”

“I'll bring the gryphons, at least,” Vidarian said at last.

Lirien smiled. “I hoped you might.”

Thalnarra and Altair were not the only two gryphons at the council meeting, as it turned out.

The council meeting was held in the largest stateroom of the
Viere d'Inar
, a chamber so heavy with gilt-chased mahogany cabinets and a monstrosity of an oval dining table—all hailing, if Vidarian's history was correct, from the opulent age of Alorea's third emperor—that it likely served as the ship's primary ballast all on its own. As children, Vidarian and Ruby had never been allowed in this room, and so entering it now was nearly as intimidating as its occupancy of nearly a dozen hardened pirate captains.

Fortunately the stateroom was in the aftcastle, sparing the gryphons the indignity of stairs. The wide stone stairways of the elemental temples were one thing, but Vidarian shuddered to think of what their talons would make of the narrow ladders leading down into even the
Viere
's broad holds.

Vidarian had told Marielle of his intention to bring Thalnarra and Altair, as well as Iridan and the emperor—a tense conversation that had been half request and half negotiation. At first Marielle had resisted the idea of bringing the emperor to the council at all, sharing many of Vidarian's concerns, but at length she had been convinced by its simple expediency. And while she was clearly not much enamored of the idea of two more large gryphons in her grand stateroom, she saw the sense of their inclusion as well. Iridan's presence she accepted with only cordiality, and again Vidarian was surprised by the ease with which she seemed inclined to include him.

The third gryphon was halfway familiar: one of the pelican-gryphons he'd seen out on the pier, here in the flesh, larger than he'd remembered Arikaree being by a good head-height. The knack he'd developed for deciphering gender on the goshawk, kite, and hawk-gryphons was useless here, though he suspected that the creature's sheer size hinted at a “she.”

Lirien had dressed carefully for the occasion, in a partially formal variation on his black silk robes. As he had in the palace, he wore a simple circlet of gold embossed with the imperial insignia. He stood with Vidarian, Iridan, Thalnarra, and Altair far aft of the doorway, around the narrower end of the oval table, as the rest of the captains filed in. Those who did not look with wonder at Iridan stared openly at the emperor with a mix of expressions varying from curiosity to open hostility, but took to their seats without issue.