Red Tide (51 page)

Amerel did not deny it. “We can't let the blood fall into the stone-skins' hands. You hit three ships tonight. Someone needs to finish the job.”

“Take it, then,” Karmel said. If she'd refused, the Guardian would just have taken it anyway.

Noon rooted through Caval's pack. He withdrew the flask and stepped back.

Caval stirred. “She's right,” he said to Karmel. “You should go. I'll catch up to you at the boneyard.”

Karmel shook her head, numbed.

“You have to go with them.… You have to go on.”

She sensed a double meaning to his words, but she shook her head again. She couldn't have left him any more than she could have struggled on farther under his weight.

Amerel watched her for a time, her shattered eyes unblinking. Whatever she was feeling—if indeed she felt anything at all—was hidden from view. Karmel wished she had a fraction of the other woman's control.

Then for a heartbeat the Guardian's features shifted, and Karmel caught a glimpse of something new. Pity, she might have said if she didn't know better.

Amerel turned her face away.

A gesture to Noon, then she strode through the gate and into the night.

*   *   *

As the fireship drew closer, the vessels in Galantas's fleet retreated. All except the
Fury,
of course, because while Barnick was engaged in his struggle with the Augeran mage, he couldn't also summon a wave to carry the devilship away. Galantas scanned the other Rubyholt ships. Sender's mercy, did their captains really need a signal to know that their help was required?

“Where are those lanterns?” he shouted to Qinta.

At that moment, the sorcerous wave beneath the fireship reared up tall.

And bore the craft back toward the stone-skin line.

Galantas glanced at Barnick. “Seems our mages have finally woken up,” he said.

Barnick nodded. “About time.”

Beyond the islets, Malek's sorcerers were gaining control of the waters between the fleets. Waves buffeted the four Augeran vessels, driving them toward the rocks. And all the while, the fireship was getting nearer. Higher and higher it rose as each mage in Galantas's fleet added his will to Barnick's. The sight sent a tingle through Galantas, for it was a reminder of the power the Islanders would wield if they acted together.

A second bolt of sorcery from a stone-skin vessel hit the fireship, but it did no more to slow the craft than the first had.

The fireship moved to within twenty lengths of the enemy.

Ten.

The Augeran line broke, two ships bolting north along the coast, two south. Cheers sounded from the
Fury
's main deck. Some of the crew were even shouting Galantas's name—and not just his own Spears, either. A Needle dropped his trousers and presented his backside to the stone-skins for inspection. The fireship, its purpose now fulfilled, was abandoned by the Rubyholt mages. As the wave carrying it dissolved into foam, it crashed into one of the islets with a belch of smoldering embers.

A black fog of blayfire fumes hung over the water. Through it Galantas could see the seas beyond the islets, now settling to a ruffle. Malek's ships had turned about. Should Galantas try to link up with them? At the Hub it had been agreed he would head straight to the meeting point at Clinker's Bay, but that plan had assumed that Malek would be running from the stone-skins. There seemed little prospect of that now, since it was the Augerans who had been put to flight.…

Galantas's thoughts trailed off.

Because the two pairs of enemy vessels had curved away from shore on courses that would see them reunited. They came together in an inverted Y formation and went speeding off east on waves of water-magic.

Straight for Malek's fleet.

Galantas sighed. You had to hand it to the stone-skins. Whenever they were forced to take a step back, they always followed it with a larger step forward.

“Orders?” Barnick said.

Galantas hesitated. Malek's ships were slipping south into the night. Galantas's first instinct was to support them, but he doubted the stone-skins would chase them far into unfamiliar waters. Moreover, he had no idea what sort of reception Malek had arranged for his pursuers. If Galantas followed, he might blunder into a trap meant for the enemy.

Stick to the original plan; no one could criticize him for that.

“We sail for Clinker's Bay,” he said.

*   *   *

Amerel peered around the corner of the alley. Thirty paces away, five red-cloaked Augerans fought a ragtag band of Rubyholters, fourteen strong. Thirteen strong, make that, for one of the stone-skins had just punched his sword through his opponent's parry and sheered his jaw away. The Islanders' superior numbers should have carried the day, but they were contriving to make of them a liability. One man nudged the sword arm of his female neighbor as she tried to block an Augeran's decapitating cut. The woman lost her head to an enemy stroke.

Twelve strong.

“What are we doing here?” Noon asked from behind.

“Making new friends,” Amerel replied. If she was going to finish the work they'd started at the harbor, she would need the Rubyholters' help.

Noon scratched a spider bite. “Missing the Chameleons already, are we?”

Amerel regarded him coolly. She'd been trying to put them from her mind.

The stone-skins had formed a circle and fought with remarkable unity of will. The instant a female Augeran found herself confronted by three Rubyholters, one of her kinsmen came to her support, with no call for aid given. Their enemies, by contrast, continued to be more of a danger to each other than their foes. A Rubyholt spearman made a wild lunge at a stone-skin that was deflected into the path of another Islander. The spear took the hapless man in the gut, and he folded with a scream.

Eleven.

“So what are we waiting for?” Noon asked.

“For more of our friends to die, of course. Now be quiet. I'm concentrating.”

This would take fine judgment. Amerel needed the Rubyholters grateful if she was going to secure their cooperation. Go to their help too soon, and they might think they could have defeated the stone-skins without her. Leave it too late, on the other hand, and they might break before she stepped in. She couldn't afford to wait much longer, though. The noise of the fight would draw every Augeran in the city—as it had drawn Amerel herself.

Another Rubyholter went down, then another. Nine left now.

The end was close.

Amerel unsheathed a throwing knife. “I'll take this side of the street,” she said to Noon. “You go left.”

The Breaker gave a mocking salute.

She slipped into the gloom, Noon a step behind. They made their way toward the fighting, the Guardian hugging the wall to her right, her companion veering away. The skin of Amerel's lower legs felt tight from the crust of dried blood. As yet no one had noticed her.

Another Rubyholter fell, leaving just eight alive.

Perfect. My lucky number.

To business.

Amerel chose an Augeran wielding two shortswords and sent her knife spinning end over end toward him. Not easy to pick out a target in the melee, but it helped when you could use the Will to correct the course of your blade in midflight. The weapon took the stone-skin in the neck, and he toppled sideways into the legs of a neighbor. That second Augeran staggered forward, half parrying a spear thrust from an opponent before taking a swing from an ax that shattered his ribs. Down he went. One of Noon's blades, meanwhile, had found its mark in the chest of a third stone-skin, and the woman was now on her hands and knees. That just left two Augerans on their feet.

Odds of eight to two in their favor represented an advantage even the Rubyholters couldn't squander. But they tried their best, bless them. Another Islander fell to a sword across the throat before the last stone-skins were cut down.

Silence.

Noon crossed to stand beside Amerel.

The Guardian stared at the huffing Rubyholters. The Rubyholters stared back. No shouts of thanks, no tearful adulation. Just suspicious looks, as if she hadn't made her cause clear with her intervention.

A Rubyholter on the ground groaned. Two Islanders knelt beside the man and peeled back his shirt to reveal a gaping chest wound. No way he'd be walking away from that, but his friends seemed intent on lugging dead meat around, for they hauled him up and carried him away. Another Rubyholter crouched beside a female comrade. Checking for life signs, Amerel assumed. Then she saw him pry a ring from the woman's finger. One of his kinsmen barked an order, and he rose and trotted after the others. They made their way toward a side street leading east.

Heartbeats later, the two Erin Elalese were alone.

Amerel looked at Noon, who shrugged.

They retrieved their throwing knives and set off after the Rubyholters.

The alley they followed was crisscrossed with red footprints and cluttered with gold-inlaid furniture, patterned tapestries, and ebonystone statuettes, together with all manner of other dross. After a hundred paces the Rubyholters turned into one of the houses. Inside, the main room was decorated in an opulence out of keeping with the squalor of the house's setting. Elescorian rugs, Metiscan dream-paintings, and Mellikian clawbone furniture were all thrown together in a riot of styles and colors only a thief could think appealing. The Rubyholter with the chest wound was lowered into a chair. He moaned. Should have been dead already, but there was nothing more stubborn than a man with one foot through Shroud's Gate.

Amerel addressed his kinsmen. “Are you going to shut him up, or do I have to?”

A shaven-headed spearwoman stepped toward her, only for one of her male companions to lower an arm in her path. The man's cheeks were pierced with a dozen metal studs, and his face was streaked with soot. There was no sigil on his clothes to suggest which tribe he belonged to.

“Who are you?” Pincushion said to Amerel in an accent so thick it took the Guardian a moment to decipher it.

“We're the people who saved your lives.”

The spearwoman said, “We didn't need your help.”

“Right. You were just letting the stone-skins even the numbers so they had a sporting chance.”

The woman scowled. “If you'd missed with those pretty knives o' yours, we'd have been the ones wearing 'em.”

Pincushion waved her to silence. “Set a guard,” he said, his gaze still on Amerel. “Now.”

The spearwoman glared at the Guardian, then shouldered past and went outside.

“Are you in charge?” Amerel said to Pincushion.

“Ain't no ranks here, missy. We ain't soldiers.”

You don't say.
“But you were part of the attack on the harbor?”

He nodded.

“Is Dresk alive? Galantas?”

“Could be.”

“I need to see them.”

No response.

Amerel tutted her frustration. “You don't trust me? Does my skin look stony in this light?”

Pincushion was a long time in answering. “Galantas was at the harbor. Maybe he made it onto one o' them ships that got clear, maybe he didn't.”

Those were the options, yes. “And if he did?”

“Then he'll be with the others at the meeting point.”

“Let's go.”

Pincushion crossed his arms. “Ain't on this island they're meeting. Ain't even close. So unless you got a boat in your pocket, along with a water-mage strong enough to dodge them stone-skin ships, we ain't going nowhere.”

Amerel paused, considering.

Then she smiled.

*   *   *

Karmel sat beside Caval, listening to his breaths become shallower. He shivered. About them the city was still, save for the occasional shout or the clash of swords from somewhere to the east. Survivors from the Rubyholt raid on the harbor, perhaps? Or had Amerel and Noon run into trouble?

The priestess couldn't find it in herself to care.

When Caval coughed, blood bubbled to his lips.

“Let me see where you're hurt,” Karmel said.

He didn't move.

“We need to take the bolt out.”

“Actually,” he said, “I think we should leave it in. It might be the only thing holding me together just now.”

Karmel didn't have the strength to argue. Or to pretend there was hope when there wasn't. A part of her had always known she and Caval wouldn't escape this cursed city; all the clues had been there in her conversation with Mokinda Char. The only surprise was that she wasn't dying now with Caval. So why had she allowed so many things to remain unsaid between them? Maybe they'd both been guilty of letting the wounds of Dragon Day fester. Of pushing Caval's betrayal to the back of their minds, as if by not talking about it they could somehow make it not have happened.

Caval ground his teeth against the pain of his wound. Karmel's own pain was a throb at the back of her skull. Blood ran through her hair where her cut had reopened.

“I forgive you,” she said suddenly, the words tumbling out before she could stop them.

Caval gave a half smile. “Liar,” he said. “But don't be hard on yourself. I wouldn't forgive me either.” And he hadn't, she realized. Forgiven himself. Maybe he couldn't until she did. “If it makes you feel better,” he went on, “I wouldn't have taken that crossbow bolt for you if I'd known how things would turn out.”

“Liar.”

He chuckled. “Still, it's not all bad. At least we have our faith to take comfort in, right?”

Karmel said nothing. Those last words had been laced with irony, yet she sensed a note of yearning in them.

“Do you think the Chameleon is watching?” Caval asked. “Do you think he's watching over us?”

With a smug smile, perhaps.
Karmel took her brother's hand and grasped it tightly, as if by that contact alone she could stop him slipping away. A stone from the wall behind dug into her back, and she shifted her weight. From across the courtyard, the empty windows of the houses stared back at her. To the east a crackle of sorcery sounded, and the skyline flashed crimson. The clash of swords Karmel had heard earlier was escalating into a larger engagement. And judging by the frantic shouts in the common tongue, the Rubyholters were getting the worst of the exchange.