Red Tide (77 page)

Amerel did not respond. No point in trying to argue her innocence any further. There were too many details working against her.

Blood ran into Galantas's eyes from a cut below his hairline. When he wiped it away, he left a red smear across his forehead. “You can't win here,” he said. He glanced at Noon. “Even if your friend is a Guardian, too—and I'm guessing he's not—there are only two of you against twelve.”

“You're forgetting this,” the Breaker said, raising the remaining sorcerous globe between thumb and forefinger. “Maybe you saw me throw one of these at the dragon before the explosion.”

Galantas stared at him.

Amerel said, “Come on, Galantas, work it out. We used water-magic at the Rent, air-magic against the stone-skin ship, earth-magic against the dragon. Guardians aren't elemental mages. And even if my
friend
here were”—the word “friend” tasted unpleasant on her tongue—“three different elements from the same mage? That's impossible unless you're a Fangalar.” She gestured with her head to the globe. “Except it isn't, with these.”

“If you throw that thing at me, you'll die as well,” Galantas said.

“Whereas if we surrender to you, we're sure to live forever.”

His expression did not waver. “You're bluffing.”

“Am I? If I'm dead anyway, might as well take you with me. And if I choose to fight, I might not even need the globe. There are just three of you on this deck. How long do you think you'll survive once the swords are drawn? How many of your crew will come running when you call? It's been a whole quarter-bell since they survived a scrap with the stone-skins. I'm sure they're just counting the breaths till they can spit in Shroud's eye again.”

Galantas made to speak, but Amerel talked over him. “There's another way to resolve this,” she said. “You lend us a boat to get to shore, we wave our good-byes and part as friends. You even give us your water-mage to man the boat—just in case a sudden squall blows in before we get to land. Then afterward you forget this conversation ever happened, and you sail back to the Isles in glory.” The time had come for her to employ her Will. “You'll be the man who destroyed the stone-skin fleet. The man who survived Liar's Crossing. A hero, some will say. Who better to lead the Isles when the stone-skins next come calling? Who better to take the throne that has been so tragically vacated by his father? Seems a shame to risk all that on whether I'm bluffing. But if you're
sure
I won't use the globe…”

Galantas's face was blank, but she knew she was winning him over. He wanted to live more than he wanted vengeance against her. Vengeance only mattered if you'd lost something you cared about. And what had Galantas lost except his father and a few hundred of his kinsmen? The real problem, Amerel knew, was the
Fury
's crew. More particularly, what they might have seen of the confrontation taking place here. Galantas looked down at them on the main deck. A handful still stared east toward Gilgamar, but the majority had moved on to relieving their kinsmen's corpses of valuables.

“I don't think you need worry about them,” Amerel said. “They were too busy celebrating to see your man here”—she nodded to Tattoo—“trying to take me down. And they're too far away now to hear what we're saying. Which means you won't lose face if you let me go. As for my part in today's events … Let's just say it would serve both our purposes if I were to be written out of the tale.”

Galantas continued to look at his crew. Two men were dragging out a spare sail to cover the dead. If anyone felt their captain's gaze on them, they didn't turn to meet it. Maybe they really hadn't seen Tattoo attack Amerel. Or maybe they knew they were only useful to Galantas if they returned home with a happy story. A story that didn't mention him being outwitted by the woman he'd tried to incapacitate moments earlier.

Amerel rubbed a hand over her eyes. After another night without sleep, the only thing that had sustained her through the fight with the stone-skins was adrenaline. Now her limbs felt like mud. A cut to her left arm stung as if someone had rubbed salt in it. She leaned back against the rail, tried to look like she didn't much care what Galantas chose to do, provided he did it quickly. He fiddled with his shark-tooth necklace. Amerel treated him to a last touch of her Will.

“Take your time,” she said, keeping her voice light. “If you can't decide what to do, I'm sure another dragon will be along soon to offer an opinion.”

*   *   *

Galantas watched Barnick steer the boat up onto the pebble beach. The wave of water-magic deposited the craft just short of the ridge of shells and seaweed that marked the height of the winter tide. Then it melted away. The two Erin Elalese clambered over the gunwales before staggering up the beach as if the ground pitched no less than the boat had done.

“You had no choice,” Qinta said from beside Galantas.

Was that true? Galantas replayed in his mind his conversation with Cayda. Was there anything he could have done differently? He'd hoped to catch her by surprise with that attack, but the woman had expected his betrayal. Should he have called her bluff over the globe? With his crew's blood still up, he reckoned they'd have been happy to attack her and add another coat of red to the
Fury
's deck. But they wouldn't have reached her before Noon threw that glass globe. The Erin Elalese could have jumped overboard as the thing shattered. Maybe they would have survived the resulting explosion, and maybe they wouldn't. But Galantas himself would have died, that much was clear.

No, he couldn't have played things differently. Yet that knowledge didn't ease the sting of his humiliation—a sting that was made all the sharper by the fact the confrontation had been played out in sight of the
Fury
's crew. Galantas looked again at his men on the main deck, all busy with their tasks. Had anyone witnessed what happened? Perhaps it was his imagination, but the Raptor, Toben Stark, seemed a little too anxious to keep his gaze from meeting Galantas's. Could Galantas afford to take a risk on the man's ignorance? It wasn't just Galantas's own future at stake, after all. Everyone in the Isles stood to lose out if they were robbed of the unity that would come from his leadership. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one, and all that. Unless that one was Galantas himself, of course.

“What now?” Qinta said.

Good question. Galantas opened his telescope and looked east. The stone-skin fleet was in full flight, the dragons in pursuit. Three ships remained beneath Gilgamar's wall, including the two vessels that had collided at the entrance to the Neck. Both were studded with arrows. Those missiles must have accounted for the ships' water-mages, because the vessels weren't trying to flee. A third craft lay on its side to the west of the Chain Tower, a hole in its hull. What remained of its crew climbed onto the stones at the base of the seawall, or swam for the safety of the Neck while a bronze dragon glided among them through the debris-covered waves.

Galantas reached a decision. “We go west. Find a bay where we can lie low and wait for nightfall.”

“And after?”

“After, I thought you and I might pay a visit to Gilgamar with Barnick.”

Qinta regarded him skeptically. Then understanding dawned. “The
Eternal.
”

Galantas nodded. It was possible Gilgamar's Ruling Council might give him the ship as a reward for his role in defeating the stone-skins, but Galantas wasn't going to ask for something that was his by rights. More important, after what had happened with Cayda, he needed more than ever to score a victory over the Storm Islanders. Stealing the
Eternal
from under the Gilgamarians' noses surely counted as that.

Reaching the ship would be the easy part, he knew, for the Gilgamarians would have more important things to worry about than guarding a vessel in their harbor. The hard bit would be escaping the city. It might be some time before the chains were lowered to allow ships to pass through the Neck. Galantas, though, would have surprise on his side. No one would expect someone to try to break out of the harbor, especially when the dragons, and what remained of the stone-skin fleet, were at large in the Ribbon Sea.

He swung his telescope south.

And stiffened. A ship with black sails was visible on the horizon. The
Karmight
? Alongside it was a three-masted vessel that looked like the
Scion.
A Falcon ship. Maybe they'd hung back in the hope of arriving late to the piece, or maybe their mages had genuinely been unable to match the
Fury
's pace. Either way, they would now find themselves in the path of some stone-skin ships and their pursuing dragons. A thought came to Galantas. Might his kinsmen's slowness work to his advantage? If the two ships' captains survived their brush with the enemy—and even now they changed course to take themselves out of the Augerans' way—they would know nothing about Cayda destroying the three stone-skin ships, or driving off the dragon. All they would know was that the Augeran fleet had been put to flight. That Galantas's plan had worked. In other words, all the good bits, with none of the inconvenient qualifications.

Assuming, of course, they heard nothing to the contrary from the
Fury
's crew.

Galantas closed his telescope and looked again at Toben Stark. There wasn't a crewman on board who had escaped the fight with the stone-skins without a scrape or three, and the Raptor had a gash to his chest that had stained his shirt crimson. “Nasty cut our friend has got there,” Galantas said to Qinta.

“Gonna sting,” the Second agreed.

“Still, a few stitches, and he'll probably be good as new.” He paused. “Though it never ceases to amaze me how the most innocent of wounds can go bad. Be a shame if that happened to the krel's cut.”

“Damned shame,” Qinta said.

He actually sounded like he meant it, too. Oddly Galantas found a part of him sharing the Second's regret. But being a leader brought responsibilities, and one of those was to take hard decisions when they had to be taken. Harder on Toben than on Galantas, perhaps, but there it was. “Before you call on the Raptor,” he said, “maybe you could listen to the rest of the crew's chatter, see what they're saying about Cayda.” If anyone
had
seen her clash with Galantas, the
Fury
's stores of Elescorian brandy were sure to loosen their tongues.

Qinta made to say one thing, then seemed to change his mind. “There'll be eyebrows raised if we get home without a single survivor from the other clans on board.”

“Then let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

Qinta's gaze strayed to the sky as if seeking confirmation of the wisdom of Galantas's command. Galantas wondered what the birds would have to say about the sense in questioning his orders. Nothing, it seemed, for the sky was empty.

Barnick was on his way back to the
Fury
now, his long hair streaming behind him as the barge swept over the waves. Cayda and Noon remained on the beach.

Qinta followed Galantas's gaze to the Erin Elalese. “This spells trouble, don't it? The emperor and the emira working together.”

Galantas nodded. It also made it all the more important that he become the next warlord, for what chance would the Isles stand against the twin threats of the stone-skins and an Erin Elalese–Sabian alliance if the divisive figure of Kalag was at the helm?

“The Storm Isles' part in this, I get,” Qinta went on. “They've got a score to settle with the stone-skins after Dragon Day. But what about Erin Elal? What's their interest here?”

“Perhaps they feared they were the Augerans' true target, and not the Storm Islanders.”

“But why? Stone-skins attacked the League on Dragon Day, not Erin Elal.”

Galantas had no answers, but he meant to find out. Maybe there was something between the Augerans and the Erin Elalese he could use when he next crossed paths with them. Bad blood, perhaps. Maybe even old blood.
The sharpest kind.

“And what about this Cayda woman?” Qinta added. “Why'd she pretend to be from the Storm Isles if she was really a Guardian?”

“To hide the fact Erin Elal and the League were working together.”

“You still think she was the one who took down the stone-skin commander?”

It made a certain sense, yet it left a host of questions unanswered, not least of which was how she had managed to kill Eremo without being near him. And how she had known the stone-skins would be returning to the fortress at precisely the hour they did. An inside source, perhaps?

Galantas shrugged the questions aside. His priority for now was retaking the
Eternal,
and then launching his bid to become warlord. Later there would be time to consider the implications of the partnership between Erin Elal and the Storm Isles, as well as Galantas's response to it. Who knew, perhaps there was still a deal to be done with the Augerans. Perhaps when they learned who had been responsible for Eremo's death, they would be willing to resurrect the pact they made with Dresk. The events of the past twenty-four bells would surely have taught them the folly of picking a fight with the Rubyholters. True, Galantas would still have to sell any possible deal to his own people. But if any of the clans had cause for grievance against the Augerans, wasn't it Galantas's own Spears? If Galantas could find it in himself to forgive their transgressions, doubtless the other tribes could do so as well.

And he suspected that, given time, he
could
forgive the stone-skins for the killing of his father and Galantas's subsequent rise to the leadership of the Spears.

The sacrifices I make for my kinsmen.

*   *   *

Amerel watched through spirit-eyes as Barnick hooked the boat onto the
Fury
's chains and climbed to the main deck before crossing to join Galantas and Tattoo. If she'd been minded to, she could have listened to their conversation, but it didn't matter now. She floated for a time, staring at the Islanders but not seeing them, as if they were but a memory of something that had gone before. A memory that would plague her like all the others when this day was done.