Red Tide (10 page)

A nod.

“On the
Lively
?”

Another nod.

“I've seen the stone-skin ship you attacked. It's a warship. Why would Yali take on a warship?”

Allott made to spit on the deck, then stopped himself. “He wanted its pretty colored sails, 's why … Cap'n. Didn't matter if there were no loot below, he said, so long as he got them sails. Said it would be easy pickings. Ship couldn't have a mage on board, the way it came tiptoeing through the ruins. And when we trained the glass on her, there were just a few men on deck. Yali had us ready to veer off late if more appeared, but they never did.”

“So what went wrong? Another stone-skin ship?”

The boy shook his head.

Galantas waited. The Augerans in Ostari's boat were fishing the body they had passed earlier from the water. “What went wrong?” he repeated.

Allott's voice was barely a whisper. “Bastards used sorcery.”

“Water-magic?”

“No.”

A pause. “Is this the part where I keep guessing, and you tell me when I'm getting warm?”

Allott was a long time in answering. “It happened after we'd thrown the grapnels and made her snug. Stone-skins didn't do nothing to stop us boarding, just stood there like they knew they was done for. But before we could attack, our rigging … came alive.”

Galantas stared at him.

“The lines tore loose like we was in a hurricane. Slipped their knots and started uncurling from the pinheads. Some of the lads got throttled. Others were lifted off their feet and left swinging from the spars. Yali himself got lines twisted round his arms and legs.” There was a tremor in Allott's voice. “They pulled him apart. And all the while, there was this screaming coming from belowdecks, and this stomping, like the Sender himself were walking around down there.”

A few of the
Eternal
's crew sniggered, but Galantas could see from Allott's eyes that his fear was real. It was a fear that knew there were worse things in life than the cut of Shroud's blade. What manner of sorcerer, though, could do what the youth described? Not an elemental mage, for sure. “Did the same happen to your other ship—the two-master?”

“Shit if I knows. I weren't staying around to watch.”

Qinta's voice had a note of scorn in it. “You jumped.”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do? Draw that sword o' yours, show me how you'd have fought a Shroud-cursed rope!” The boy's shoulders hunched. “Some of the lads tried to escape onto the stone-skin ship, but the bastards cut 'em down. Only place to go was over the side. Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same if you was me.”

Ostari's boat had fished the last bodies from the water and now pulled up beside the
Lively.
Above the squawking of the starbeaks, Galantas heard Ostari shouting orders in his native tongue.

“How did you survive when the others died?” Galantas asked Allott.

The boy's look suggested he was wondering the same. “Just lucky, I guess. I were swimming, and these crossbow bolts were splashing all around me. So I grabbed one and flipped onto my back and held the bolt over my chest so it looked like I were shot. Then I let the current take me till you showed up.” His face twitched. “Stone-skins cut their eyelids off, man—the ones that were crucified. Left 'em nailed there while the sun blinded 'em or the starbeaks took their eyes. I could hear 'em screaming. My ears were in the water, but I could still hear 'em.”

Galantas regarded him impassively. What did the boy want? Sympathy? Would Yali have shown the stone-skins any more kindness if the raid had been successful? The Augerans had wanted to send out a message, and fear was a powerful statement in any language.

“Captain,” Qinta said, “the stone-skins are pulling out.”

The Augerans from one boat had joined their kinsmen in the other, and the workers on the
Lively
were climbing in too. After the last man jumped down, the boat rose on a wave of water-magic and set off north in the direction of Bezzle. Ostari was visible at the prow in his red cloak. Were they leaving the two ships behind? Together they'd be worth a lot of money. Galantas might even return them to the Falcons and add to the goodwill he'd earn from saving the boy.

Then he remembered the blayfire oil he'd smelled earlier.

The Augeran boat halted a short distance from the ships. A flame sparked to life, and a burning arrow arced toward the
Lively.
When it struck, the ship went up in a
whoof
of blayfire flames. Purple flames—as if they were so hot they needed another color. Fire crackled along the rigging. The starbeaks on the lines tried to take off, but the blaze caught them. They flapped about on incandescent wings before falling to the deck, their shrieks mixing with the screams of those still alive among the crew. Allott covered his ears.

Clouds of smoke boiled into the sky.

“Damned waste,” Qinta said.

Galantas nodded.

Critter gestured at the boy. “What do you wanna do with him?”

“Take his fingers!” someone shouted.

“Burn him with the others!”

Galantas's gaze found Allott's. “No, he comes with us.” He raised his voice to carry. “I know we've had our differences with the Falcons. They're bastards, I'll not deny it, but at least they're Rubyholt bastards.” Laughs from the men, while Allott seemed close to tears. Galantas let his expression soften. “And right now I'm having difficulty remembering what it was we fell out over all those years ago.”

 

C
HAPTER
4

“W
HAT IS
the meaning of this?” the woman said. “Who are you? How did you get in?”

Ebon drew up a handful of paces away, Vale beside him. The woman's accent marked her as a woman of breeding, yet there was a coldness to her eyes that hinted at something else. She'd drawn a dagger at Ebon's arrival, and her grip on it was unwavering. She tried to stare him down. There were few people, though, who could hold his gaze now. If you stared too long, Vale said, you started seeing the marks the Vamilian spirits had left behind. Sure enough, it was the woman who looked away first.

Alongside her, the elderly Galitian ambassador to Mercerie, Silvar Jilani, stood naked but for his sandals. Down his right leg, Ebon saw the scar he'd earned in service to Ebon's father during the Rook War. There was no glint of recognition in his eyes. They'd met only once before, though, and Ebon now looked more like a beggar than a prince in his travel-stained clothes and with his chin and jaw covered by three days' worth of stubble. Silvar glanced over Ebon's shoulder to the doorway through which the prince had entered, no doubt wondering what had become of his bodyguards—the bodyguards Vale had incapacitated moments earlier. Then Silvar shuffled behind his female companion like a child hiding behind its mother's skirts.

“Please, Ambassador,” Ebon said, “there is no need for that. Your Honor is safe with us.”

Perhaps it was his voice that Silvar recognized at last, for the old man's eyes widened. “Your Majesty?”

Ebon's gaze flickered to the woman. Her look of challenge had been replaced by one of appraisal.
Great.
All the work Ebon had put into keeping his coming here a secret, and Silvar had undone it in the space of two words. He should have known better.

Ebon bowed to the woman. “Madam,” he said. “Forgive me, but I need to speak to the ambassador alone. I trust you will not hold it against me if I ask you to step outside.”

Vale crossed to a door on Ebon's right. He opened it and looked through before gesturing to the woman. She sheathed her knife and stalked toward the timeshifter, her heels clicking on the mirror-bright floor.

Vale shut the door behind her.

Silvar's trousers lay discarded on the ground. He reached for them and started dressing. Ebon looked about him. The ambassador's house seemed too pristine to be a home. Most likely it was an oversized trophy cabinet to show off the man's collection of ebonystone statues and patterned vases. Even the furniture was trimmed with gold.

“Your Majesty?” Silvar said.

“Majesty no longer,” Ebon replied. “My father has been reinstated to the kingship.”

“But … I thought his ill health—”

“Was overstated by the Royal Physicians. They now expect him to make a full recovery.” But only when Ebon returned to Majack to complete the task of healing him—a task he had started a week ago with the powers he'd inherited from the Vamilian goddess Galea.

“And your mother? She is well, I hope?”

Ebon ignored the question. He'd come here to get information, not give it. “I'm looking for my brother,” he said.
And for Lamella,
he almost added, but there was no need to complicate matters by mentioning her. If he tracked down his brother, he would doubtless find Lamella too. “Is he here?”

Silvar hesitated.

Ebon stepped closer. “It's a simple enough question, Ambassador. Or do I have to describe your own prince to you?”

“Rendale was here.”

The relief that broke over Ebon was like a breath of wind on a hot day. Up until now, he'd had no reason to believe his brother was alive, save for a single sighting of him fleeing Majack by boat on the day the city fell to Mayot's hordes. A week ago Ebon had left the capital seeking news of his brother in the villages along the River Amber. He'd drawn a blank, but then perhaps Rendale had feared to disembark close to Majack in case he encountered more of the undead.

That reasoning had sustained Ebon as far as the city of Mander on the edge of Galitian territory. Mander was sixty-five leagues from the capital. No Vamilians had traveled here, and thus there was no reason for Rendale
not
to stop in the city if he had come this way. But Ebon had been unable to find any word of him. It had been mere desperation that had made Ebon take his search to Mercerie on the shores of the Sabian Sea. In his darker moments, he'd acknowledged his brother's death as inevitable. Now it seemed his stubbornness would be rewarded.

There was something in Silvar's look, though, that told him to keep a check on his relief.
Was
here, the ambassador had said. “Where is he now?”

Silvar had finished lacing his trousers. He took a breath as if gathering his resolve. “There is no easy way to say this, Your Maj—Your Highness…” Another pause, and Ebon had to resist an urge to grab him by the throat and shake the words loose. “Your brother left Mercerie nearly two weeks ago—on a ship to take part in the Dragon Hunt.”

Ebon stared at the ambassador, hardly able to comprehend what he was being told. In Mander he'd heard stories of what had happened on Dragon Day. Stories of treachery at the heart of the Storm Lord empire, and of dragons on the loose in the Sabian Sea. Each tale had been more outlandish than the last, but there had been one thing on which they had all agreed: the Hunt had been routed, the ships smashed or scattered. Ebon's thoughts were a whirr. But the Hunt took place at the Dragon Gate, many leagues to the south and east. Rendale shouldn't be there. He'd come to Mercerie as a refugee, and he would have known well enough to keep his head down in what was tantamount to enemy territory. He had no ship, no crew, and no reason to go looking for either. Silvar had to be mistaken.

When Ebon met the ambassador's gaze, though, there was no doubt in his eyes. Just disquiet … and something else the prince couldn't place.

Ebon suddenly felt his exhaustion. Moments ago he'd been offered a glimpse of hope, but now it was snatched away again. His legs wavered. How long had it been since he'd last slept? Two days? Three? He sat down on a divan and looked across at Vale. There was no comfort to be drawn from the Endorian's expression, but when was there ever? He ran a hand over his shaved head.

“Tell me everything,” he said to Silvar.

The ambassador collected his thoughts. “Your brother arrived here twelve, maybe thirteen days ago. Unlike you, he didn't think to approach me privately. He came to the embassy.” From the censure in Silvar's voice, it was plain he considered that to be the cause of everything that came after. “He hadn't eaten for days. And he told me stories about undead armies that I confess I had trouble believing…” He left the statement hanging as if inviting Ebon to confirm or deny the truth of those stories. But the prince kept his silence, and so Silvar continued, “He said he managed to find a boat before Majack fell. Once he was clear of the city, he tried to disembark, but there were others on the boat with him, and they wouldn't stop. Eventually they reached Mander and tried to go ashore there. But they arrived in the dead of night, and no one answered their calls for help. One man tried to swim for shore, only for the current to take him. No one else risked it after that. And once past Mander, the country is practically a wasteland, so they let the river bring them to Mercerie.”

“Was anyone with him when he came to the embassy?”

“Just some woman with a twisted leg. Miela, I think he called her.”

Miela?
Either Silvar had mistaken her name, or Rendale had deliberately given a false one. That surge of relief was back in Ebon, but it quickly faded. An image came to him of Lamella aboard a ship, a dragon bearing down on her. It felt as if a weight had lodged in his chest. “Where is she now? Did she go with him on the Hunt?”

“I believe so. I thought that strange at the time.…” Silvar paused again to give Ebon a chance to explain, then went on, “When Rendale arrived at the embassy, he was in poor shape. I told him to stay here until he recovered, but he wouldn't listen. He wanted to go home—at least as far as Mander. So I made arrangements to smuggle him out of the city.”

Smuggle?
“Did the Merceriens know he was here, then?”