The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (7 page)

T
he house had four rooms and Krothair's bedroom was one of
them. He had a bed that was almost too small for him, a table, and
a trunk. He had hung his sword on a peg and put his clothes in a
trunk. Moving in had been an easy task.

Supper had consisted of sourdough bread,
crab meat, and coconut milk. He had never had any of these things
before and had felt like a king dining there with Ti'Shed. The old
sword master had turned out to be something Krothair never would
have expected. He was wise and solemn, but trickery danced just
behind his eyes. It was hard to see it through the scowl that
seemed to have frozen itself in place, but Krothair still noticed
the jester within his master.

Now, under the thin sheets
of his bed, Krothair shuddered, excited for his training and
excited that he had passed the tea kettle test. But he was on
guard.
Are there going to be tests in the
middle of the night?
He shifted under the
blankets and they made a soft swishing noise. He could hear the
faint noises of the city outside. Its never-ending bustle would
take some getting used to.

A knock at the front door.

Krothair froze for a moment and then got
lightly out of bed, but before had taken two barefooted steps
towards his bedroom door, he heard Ti'Shed open the front door. Had
the old man even been asleep or was he just that fast?

Krothair sneaked over to his door and opened
it silently. He could see out into the larger room where the tea
kettle still lay on the floor. Ti'Shed held a candle, and the light
it threw gave the scene a sinister look. Had Ti'Shed been expecting
the door-knocker?

No. He's wearing
nightclothes. He looks half asleep.
His
white hair – what little was left – was disheveled. He had either
been asleep or was going to great lengths to look like he had been.
Krothair was jumping to conclusions.

This isn't a test,
Krothair. Just the odd midnight caller.

He had a hard time hearing what was said, if
anything. The person outside the door held something through it on
his upturned palms. The slant of his arms told Krothair that the
person was kneeling. Ti'Shed reached out and grasped the long thin
object: a sword in a beautiful scarlet sheath.

Ti'Shed stood perfectly still, the candle in
one hand, the scarlet sheathed sword in the other. All was stone
for a moment. Only the candle flame danced, seeming more like
liquid than flame. The door-knocker's arms withdrew out the door
and it closed with a click.

Krothair saw the candle flicker and heard a
slight hiss. Had water fallen onto the flame? He traced a vertical
line up, but directly above it were Ti'Shed's eyes.

Not water.

Tears.

The sword master was crying.

“H
ere it is!” Halimaldie shouted, running down the
beach.

The ocean breeze whipped his long brown hair
into his face, pieces of it tangling in his close-cropped beard.
Was there a storm coming? He scanned the horizon, but it was too
dark to tell anything much. He liked to make it his job to know
everything, but sometimes that just wasn't possible.

But he had found the ship just where the
scout had said it would be.

The
Lucky Maid
wasn't supposed to be
washed up on some faraway beach. It was supposed to have been at
the Haroman docks three days ago. Halimaldie had been there waiting
for it. Normally he didn't show up for the loading and unloading of
his vessels, but this was quite possibly the largest and most
profitable shipment he had ever been a party to, and when it hadn't
shown up he had feared for the worst.

Now he stood on the beach
in the wavering torchlight. Twenty sell-swords stood behind him. He
had hemmed and hawed briefly on the correct number of people to
bring. He wanted as few eyes as possible on this debacle. Rumors
were dangerous, and a botched operation could undermine his
empire.
Especially an operation of such
importance.

The gangway lowered to the beach, slamming
down with a loud thud, causing Halimaldie to jump. It was too dark
to see much else so he grabbed a torch and moved farther forward,
the sell-swords walking slowly behind him, their weapons clinking
quietly.

“Tell yer boys to stay back,” a voice
hissed, making Halimaldie jump again.

Halimaldie squinted into the darkness behind
him.

Telin Fucking
Lightbearer,
he thought with a silent
groan.

The Kingsguardian stood
just a few steps behind Halimaldie, but even in the torchlight it
was hard to pick him out. Something about him wavered and seemed to
reject the light. Halimaldie had heard that Telin was a Servitor,
but had to admit he really didn't know much about those powers, or
even if they were real.
Some Servitors
have the ability to bend time? Is that true? Seems like an
exaggeration.
In Halimaldie's business he
had always appreciated the benefits that exaggeration could bring
to the table, and certainly didn't begrudge others the same
luxury.

But now the Kingsguard was
involved in this.
Damn. What interest does
the crown have in this shipment other than skimming their taxes off
the top? And how did he find out, anyway?

“You have authority here?” Halimaldie asked.
Now he was rubbed completely the wrong way.

Telin nodded. “Aye, D'Arvenant.”

It rankled him that Telin had addressed him
by his surname, but Halimaldie turned to his sell-swords and gave
them the signal to back off. A few of them looked confused, but
they obeyed.

The water rolled along the shore in its
rhythmic pattern as the men retreated into the night.

Shh shh shh.

Shh shh shh.

Shh shh shh.

"I don't understand. I hired the best crew
for her," Halimaldie said, looking at the ship.

“Ah, yes,” Telin said. “The best crews are
always running ships aground.”

Halimaldie actually found himself getting
nervous as he waited. It was a sensation that he didn't feel often.
Nothing was happening. He feared the worst. There should be
someone. Anyone. A person from the crew should be coming down that
sloping gangway.

“The hell,” Halimaldie
muttered. He heard Telin sniff the air behind him. “Telin, do you
see anything?” As long as the Kingsguardian was here, Halimaldie
might as well use him. But when he looked where the man had been,
Telin was gone.
Silent as a shark in the
water.

The gangway creaked as
Halimaldie stepped onto it. He wore two daggers - one on each hip -
but he rarely used them. He wasn't even sure if he
knew
how to use them.
His plan had always been to thrust them at whatever he wanted to
die, but he knew there was much more to it. One dagger had an ivory
hilt with a silver blade, the other had an ebony hilt with a gold
blade. He was convinced they had saved his life on one occasion,
but mostly he wore them because they were from his
father.

They didn't look half bad either.

At the top of the gangway Halimaldie had to
resist the urge to vomit. Body parts lay scattered about.
Halimaldie couldn't really think of them as corpses. The scattered
limbs and torsos would have to have been attached together for
these things to be corpses. The remains were definitely human. The
breeze blew the smell directly into his face.

Halimaldie paled and turned around, waving
his torch and calling his sell-swords back to him. He didn't care
what Telin Lightbearer had told me. This wasn't something he could
deal with alone. “Search the ship," he said to them as they
approached. "Make sure it's safe. This reeks of pirates.”

“This is probably something to report-” one
man started to say.

“Do as I say!” Halimaldie
snapped. He'd already gone to great lengths to keep this a secret.
He wasn't reporting to anyone. “In the morning you go back to doing
whatever it is you wish, but for tonight I'm paying you and if you
don't do as I say you'll
wish
you were these people.” He indicated the body
parts. “Start with the deck and work your way down. Find the cause
of this.”

Halimaldie had many
questions. His brain always surged with questions.
Who did this? What happened? Why? How can I cover
this up with a Kingsguardian poking his nose around in it?
But most important to him:
is my shipment still intact?

“N
o one?” Halimaldie asked.

“There's nothing alive on this entire ship,”
the sell-sword said. “Most of the . . . er, mess . . . is up here
on the deck, but there are a few corpses in the cargo hold as
well.”

Halimaldie scowled. He took a handkerchief
out of the pocket of his heavy jacket and held it up to his face.
“Stay up here and don't let any of the men off the ship yet,” he
said from behind it. The smell was getting to him. “I'm going to
check the cargo hold myself. If the manifest is undamaged we'll
need to transport it ourselves.”

“But these people . . .” the sell-sword
began to say.

“They're not going anywhere.”

Halimaldie started down the stairs to the
hold, passing a few sell-swords coming up. He said nothing for now,
but gave them a look. He didn't trust other people to do a good
job, especially not this sort, but he had hired who he could on
short notice.

Everything beyond the reach of Halimaldie's
torch was menacing darkness. He felt claustrophobic. Storerooms and
basements were tight quarters and as he walked he felt as if the
walls were a thousand bands thick on each side of him. If he would
have thought about it he would have realized there was open air
just twenty feet in any direction. But here in the belly of the
ship his chest tightened.

He knew the layout of the ship. Despite
almost never unloading these things, Halimaldie always made it his
business to know everything he could about his operations. He knew
the dimensions of each ship by heart, planning routes and cargoes
using raw math and logic. Sailing was for the men who loved it. The
details were for Halimaldie.

In two more corners he would turn into a
cargo hold that would contain tens of thousands of crown notes
worth of gems. The war was over, trade with Shailand was open. Many
merchants had jumped at the opportunity. Halimaldie had been one of
the ones who had jumped highest, using his family's name and
resources to buy, convince, and connive his way into his current
position.

He walked into the tight cargo hold. It held
many things: food, wine, beer, lumber, supplies for sea journeys.
It held other crates of trade goods as well, but these were far
less important than the gems. He quickly located these most
important crates. They were stashed near the back under an
unassuming tarpaulin.

He set his torch in a
sconce on the wall and hauled the massive tarpaulin off. The top of
the nearest crate fell just below his chest. It was then that
Halimaldie knew even
he
had underestimated this shipment. It was the
first of many, but it was the largest by far. It was important to
flood the market early to deal with the ravenous demand of the
people, then keep the flow maddeningly underwhelming as the demand
burned like embers just below the surface of peoples' hearts. That
was his plan anyway. But the volume here . . . how had the workers
mined so
much
? He
would have to see their pay increased slightly.

It would probably take a
crowbar to open the crates and Halimaldie didn't have one on him,
but a quick inspection told him that nothing was out of
place.
Well, except this corpse
anyway.
How the hell did manage to wedge
himself under the tarpaulin? Did he run here for cover?

Moving the corpse was difficult; not
physically but mentally. Grabbing the dead flesh felt awful, but
Halimaldie was able to tip the poor fellow (who was missing a good
portion of his head) forward. The corpse ended up slumped over in
an incredibly unnatural position. Something squelched out of some
orifice, but Halimaldie wasn't going to check exactly what.

Something wasn't right about the section of
the crate that the dead man had been covering. The wood was broken
away and Halimaldie could see inside. He reached his hand in and
felt around for what should have been his precious cargo, but
instead was so slimy that Halimaldie almost retched. He forced
himself to grab a handful of the stuff anyway.

He withdrew his hand from
the crate and looked at it in the torch light. The things he
held
looked
like
gems, but they were black and oily, not red and lustrous like they
should have been. They also stank. He could almost see the
impurities swimming in them, as if the stones had been tainted by
something.

Halimaldie had never heard of anything that
could cause gemstones to react this way, but he suddenly had a
feeling in his gut that this had not been a routine pirate job.

A thought occurred to him.
Halimaldie had heard stories of magics – even of magic that could
be wielded by rich men, somehow - but the stories were so
contradictory that he hadn't really believed.
But this isn't natural.
For
Halimaldie, seeing was believing.

And now he was seeing. And smelling. And. .
.