The Fox (68 page)

“That’s why I want it,” Inda had said when they were discussing the best place to land.

They sailed slowly up the channel. Fox had been silent since they sighted the harbor. “The Port of Jaro has got to be too well guarded, even if the news would be firsthand there,” Inda said.

“Firsthand,” Fox repeated. “Rajnir is probably crouched on a rock right now, glass to his eye, watching for you. He’s got to figure we survived the blow.”

Inda flicked his hand up. “That’s what I’d figure, too. But surely he’d think we’ll stay safely on the Sartoran side.”

“Surely?” Fox mocked.

Inda ignored him. “So we try this coast. I’ll take Beila Lana, you go up the coast a way.”

Fox crossed his arms. “What ‘news’ is it you have to find on your own?”

The crew shifted uneasily, all except for Fibi, who watched Fox without any change of expression. As always Inda took Fox’s sarcasm as an honest question.

“If I knew I could send someone. I want to see them. See their ships. See them handling the ships. Hear them talking. Hear their gossip, especially if they talk about home, or land, or their marines. Ramis said they are far from united. That usually means talk, doesn’t it? If so, I want to be around to hear it.”

“Speaking Venn so well,” Fox said, gaze skyward.

Inda sighed. “It’s supposed to be a lot like Marlovan. If I can’t puzzle it out after I hear enough of it, I’ll give up.” He jerked his thumb back. “But first we sell this load of fish!”

Fox peered under his hand at the sea.

Fibi chuckled as she squinted through the spokes of the wheel at the two commanders, standing side by side at the rail. Inda was convincing as a fisher mate, with his wide-set, mild gaze, his curly hair escaping his sloppy four-strand queue. His powerful chest and upper arms were common to forecastlemen all over the world; his old shirt, stitched by his own hand, had no laces, his deck trousers were baggy at seat and knee, his brown feet bare and tough. “But change you them rubies, first,” she said, and chuckled again.

Fox and Inda both looked up, clapping hands to ears. Only pirates wore these big hoops; Brotherhood wore them large enough to support diamond drops. And by now everyone knew that Elgar the Fox’s pirates who’d killed pirate ships wore rubies.

“Glad you reminded me,” Inda said, letting out a breath. “Sailor rings.”

Sailors who wore earrings kept them modest to avoid being accused of strut—or piracy. Gold at your ear was a good way to guarantee at least some money if one was shipwrecked and made it alive to a foreign shore. Or if one left a ship without pay for whatever reason or drank up one’s earnings and slept through the ship’s departure. You could always sell gold. But those rings were always finger-sized, to differentiate from the swinging hoops of pirates.

And so, as the schooner sailed the rest of the way down toward the long dock extended out into the channel, Inda sat in the cramped cabin below. He pulled out his earrings, removed the stones, and cut one golden hoop in half, then hammered each into a finger-sized circle.

Jug dropped down through the hatch. “Fibi said you wanted me?”

“Yes.” Inda worked the golden wire, twisting one end into a loop. “Tell me about your uncle. What kind of mage is he?”

“Illusion,” Jug said.

“Illusion?” Inda repeated, looking up.

Jug wriggled. “Don’t you know anything about mages?”

Inda sat back. “I know something about the spell renewal mages,” he said. His mother had taught him a great deal about them.

Jug deflated a little. “Oh. Well. Illusion mages work at the playhouses.”

Inda thought about that, remembering Tau telling him a long time ago about actual places where people paid to see plays. When small Inda had read Old Sartoran historical plays without knowing that they had ever been performed.

He frowned at Jug. “What do you yourself know? Can you do magic?”

Jug shook his head vehemently. “No! The basics are boring, and it takes forever. Illusions are easier to learn, my uncle said, but the magic doesn’t last. It fools the eyes and ears, and then is gone. So they make illusions for plays.” And, seeing Inda’s puzzled brow, he said, “You know, in the play it rains, so he makes rain. There’s no wet, but the audience sees rain. There’s a banquet, so he makes it look like there is food on a table, and as long as the players don’t forget and put their hand through, it looks real enough.”

“Illusion.” Inda’s brow cleared. “Is this akin to natural illusion, like the shimmer above flagstones on a summer’s day?”

“Yes. Because they don’t change anything, it’s easier to be an illusion mage. But it’s not good for much else. In fact, you’re not allowed to use it for much else. If you use it for crime, for example—” Jug drew a finger across his neck. “The rules are strict. Why, you can’t even play jokes! Not really. No fun in that!”

Inda said, “Two kinds of mages. So . . . what type would a navigation mage be?”

“Oh, the real one,” Jug said, extracting the maximum out of his pose as expert, though in truth he wasn’t sure.

And Inda, experienced with the young if not with magic, suspected as much. “Thank you, Jug.”

The boy swarmed up the ladder to the deck, and Inda heard the quick smack of his feet running forward as, from aft, came Fox’s familiar step.

Shadow obscured the sunlit hatch, and Fox dropped down a moment later. Inda was fixing the earrings into his ears.

Fox whacked the fold-down table up with a careless swipe, latched it into place, and dropped onto the bench facing Inda, hands on his knees.

“Inda,” he said. His expression was always sardonic to a lesser or greater degree, but when he was angry he seemed to take up all the available space. “Inda. You are not even twenty. Why in damnation are you determined to take on the world’s most powerful empire?”

“Because no one else will,” Inda said, meeting Fox’s angry gaze.

Fox cursed as he made a sudden gesture, as though back-handing Inda’s words. Then he said, “So why don’t you take that misplaced impulse and raise me an army to retake Iasca Leror?”

“Why?” Inda retorted.

“Why,” Fox repeated scornfully. “You don’t think any one of us would be better than those damned Montrei-Vayirs? ”

“Only one I hate is the Harskialdna. And the Sierlaef. But that was personal. What matters is that the Harskialdna couldn’t be too incompetent if he’s managed to take and hold Idayago. And Olara. Despite everyone around Halia being against him. Can he?”

Fox flipped up the back of his hand. “Go chase your Venn. I hope they kill you.”

Inda snorted in amusement, pushed past Fox, and climbed to the deck, leaving Fox to reflect on how seldom anyone had seen Inda laugh. Quite different, in fact, from the ten-year-old Inda who’d stopped at his home for a couple days on his way to the academy for the first time, trading cracks with his sister Shendan, and laughing at all their funny stories.

Rajnir had taken the building at the highest point on the ridge overlooking Jaro. It had once belonged to the Ymaran harbormaster, and was—most Venn thought—an inconvenient building in all ways. But it did boast one feature absolutely unknown in their homeland, a tower with windows all the way around. Including in the west. No building had doors or windows in the west in Venn, or not for long: the endless killing ice storms that scoured the western part of the Venn homeland had created cities blind on one side.

In nearly ten years Rajnir had never tired of watching sunsets from this tower. In fact he liked the small room so well during the balmy summer months that he conducted most business there, causing inconvenient jams on the narrow switchback stairways leading up and down, tirelessly guarded by the Erama Krona, the Arm of the Crown.

Stairs he did not have to use. Dag Erkric had fashioned him a transfer square. If one could bear the transfer magic—which was not too gut-wrenching just from the top of the building to the government center at the foot of the ridge—it was considered a mark of distinction to be granted the Access Spell.

Durasnir had never asked for the Transfer Spell, partly because he felt the exertion of the long climb was good for his body, but mostly because the long climb and descent gave him time to think uninterrupted.

He reached the top, found the expected pair of armed Erama Krona on guard, dressed in white and wearing the Tree as their device. They saluted him, a salute he returned with grave respect.

He passed inside. The tower room was unchanged since he’d left. This was not always the case. Nine years ago, after having negotiated the trade and protection treaty with the elderly queen of Ymar, he’d sailed for the homeland on the order of the king, leaving Rajnir behind to settle the details that should have brought north all the goods they so desperately needed. The king had been so pleased with his new heir!

But on Durasnir’s return everything had changed: the queen had recently been found dead in her summer palace above Beila Lana, and out at sea Rajnir was losing a battle against a combined force of Everoneth and Chwahir—usually each other’s deadly enemies—that Durasnir just barely kept from being a far more spectacular defeat.

Then the very day he returned from that disaster, ahead of the limping fleet, he found winding down to flower-bedecked barges the strangest funeral procession he had ever witnessed: the queen’s entourage moving slowly in a fluttering shower of white flower petals tossed by locals, led by white-haired morvende who sang and chanted complicated threnodies that haunted his dreams. They had all entered the barges and sailed away—without returning.

He still did not know the import of that day, but he sensed he would one day find out.

After that it had taken a year to rid Ymar of the Everoneth who had overrun the kingdom of Ymar on the pretext of defending it and to settle the old nobles on their estates and keep them out of trouble. Except for one.

Who was standing with Rajnir at the window. Next to the prince’s bright head and long body was a short, slim figure, also fair-haired, well-dressed. They were talking low-voiced; then came the quick, almost breathless laugh of Lord Annold Limros, the Count of Wafri—the only Ymaran noble to ally with the Venn.

“Greetings, my prince,” Durasnir said, and bowed to Rajnir, hands together, then opening.

Rajnir turned, smiling, his lips shaping the words “Uncle Fulla,” but a quick look and he retreated, as he always did in the presence of others, into protocol. “Hyarl my Commander, ” he said, palms touching together briefly.

“Greetings, Count Wafri,” Durasnir said, with a short bow.

Wafri bowed to exactly the same degree. “Commander Durasnir,” he said, his smile wide.

A small anomaly. Wafri had claimed to be Rajnir’s age exactly—he even looked younger than Rajnir—but he was five years older. Durasnir had discovered the fact during an examination into the count’s background, done as a matter of course with any foreigner the prince invited beyond the formal interview chambers. He’d attributed the anomaly to vanity, and so had never troubled to tell Rajnir, who wanted an age mate after he lost so many at the disastrous Chwahir battle. Wafri certainly was a handsome fellow, who spent a great deal to secure the latest Colendi fashions, all velvet and lace. He looked barely twenty, being short and slender, his hair clipped in the Colendi fashion so that it curled on his brow and over his ears, which made his head look rounder.

“I am sorry you did not capture Elgar the Fox.” Rajnir returned restlessly to the window. “But tell us what you did discover.”

“Little,” Durasnir said. “We reached the Ghost Isles a week after his departure. I stayed just long enough to gather information. He was there a month, and he did indeed meet and talk with Ramis. They were seen together walking through the harbor town.”

Rajnir frowned. “So which one commands? More to the point, is Elgar the red-haired one our contact in Lindeth reports, or is he the Marlovan prince’s son who led the mutiny in eastern waters? Or are they one and the same, as Erkric surmises?”

“That I could not discover.” Durasnir hesitated, then decided not to share his theories, at least not yet.

Durasnir still did not know how Wafri and Rajnir had met; one of the questions concerning the events of nine years ago was the fact that the old queen had died under problematic circumstances—some said smothered—in her summer palace, which was the gift of the Limros family. Wafri’s own family. And when Durasnir found Rajnir out at sea, he had this young count with him, as they’d become not just allies but friends. It seemed impossible that so vain and pleasure-loving a little man could be any way connected with any of these events, but Durasnir was by nature cautious.

So he kept his report general, omitting his surmises. “Elgar the Fox spoke with no one other than Ramis during his stay. His people said nothing of import. Mostly wild talk about their battle against Marshig’s forces. But they all said the same thing: the battle ended when Ramis rent a hole out of the world and send Marshig and his five consorts to Norsunder.”

Rajnir frowned. He was angry that the fleet had pulled away from the pirate battle, but it had been on Erkric’s insistence. “Ramis is a Norsundrian mage,” he’d said, standing on Durasnir’s deck. “None of us can withstand his magic.” And Durasnir had had to obey as the prince had given Erkric precedence in any matter pertaining to magic. Rajnir therefore had himself to blame, as they’d both obeyed his orders.

“So we returned, our raiders sweeping both coasts, but discovered nothing before the storm was upon us.”

Rajnir whirled around, pacing the length of the small room. “We need that Transfer Spell. Surely Norsunder’s mages, though formidable, are not the only ones who can command it. Entire ships! We need it. I told Erkric if he finds that spell, he will be the Dag. Not only Dag of the Venn, but of the world.” He whirled again, stared anxiously out the window as Wafri’s dark eyes flicked from one to the other, his smile never diminishing.