The Usurper's Crown (65 page)

Eventually, Ingrid and Avanasy were able to loosen their hold on each other, and turn toward the others. The first thing Ingrid saw was the utter shock on Medeoan’s face. Suddenly ashamed she took another step back. She could not read the look on Avanasy’s face, and did not at this time care to try. Instead, she looked up in the direction from which they had come.

The bridge of moonlight was already gone. No trace of it lingered to shine against the night sky.

“Was it a dream?”

Avanasy shook his head. “No dream, but a working of great skill.” Pride filled his voice. “Imperial Majesty, may I make known to you our host, Lien Jinn, and his niece Cai Yun Shen.”

Lien and Cai Yun bowed deeply. The empress blinked dazedly in the lantern light. She seemed reluctant to take her gaze from Avanasy’s face. Her bewilderment tightened Ingrid’s throat. But at last, she gestured to Lien and Cai Yun to stand.

Something was wrong with Lien, but it took Ingrid a moment to realize what it was. Instead of his silken robe, the old sorcerer wore only a short coat of unbleached cotton with dark cuffs and short trousers to match. A dark cap covered his hair and he wore sandals on his feet instead of his soft shoes.

“I thank you for your hospitality to my advisor … advisors,” the empress was saying. “And now to myself. I am in your debt.”

“Your Imperial Majesty honors my home with your presence.” Lien bowed. “But I fear we may not stay. The Nine Elders have many ways to track such sorceries, and may already be on their way here. We must be gone as soon as possible.”

Ingrid swayed on her feet. As bad as she felt, Medeoan looked close to collapse. Avanasy hurried to the empress’s side and held out his arm so she could steady herself against him.

“Of course,” said Medeoan. “Is conveyance ready?”

“This way, please.”

He set off into the depths of the garden at a pace Ingrid felt she could not possibly match. She was damp, cold and filthy, she had been dragged through dark tunnels by soldiers, shot at by sorcerers, and now her husband was back together with the woman he … she could barely bring herself to think of it at this moment. She wanted to stamp her foot, to screech her disapproval, to refuse to move until she could get some sleep in a bed. Any bed.

She did none of these things. She gathered up the hems of her ridiculous silken robe and set off after Lien as best she could. Avanasy shot her a worried glance, but did not reach for her; both his hands were occupied in supporting the fainting empress and keeping her moving forward.

The garden passed them in a blur of shadows with flashes of lantern light on pale leaves and silver pools. They reached the back wall, and Lien paused at the arched gate. He laid his hand on the latch and spoke three words Ingrid could not understand. The latch snicked open, and Lien led them out into a tiny back lane. Moonlight and lantern light showed Ingrid a black canal and a sharp-prowed boat moored to an iron post.

Lien blew out the lantern, leaving them only moonlight to see by. It took Ingrid a moment to realize the old man standing at the long steering oar was Jiu, and Shien hunched by the high gunwale.

“Go below, please. Shien will show you where.”

As Avanasy and Shien helped the unsteady empress aboard, Lien turned to Cai Yun and grasped both her hands, saying something soft and urgent that Ingrid could not make out. She had just time enough to see the young woman nod before Avanasy motioned to her, and she had to clamber over the rail and onto the deck. There was no time to survey the little craft. Shien was already leading them to the stern ladder and down belowdecks.

Only one covered lantern lit the hold. Ingrid could make out nothing but bundles and stacks of shadow. Shien stepped nimbly between them and beckoned that they should follow.

They obeyed, with considerably less grace. Ingrid barked her shins several times against unidentifiable objects, bit her tongue to keep from exclaiming, and wished for her usual thick skirts and petticoats.

“In here, please, master, mistresses,” whispered Shien.

She gestured down. It took Ingrid a moment, but she realized the old woman was gesturing toward a hole in the lower deck. It was a smuggler’s hold.

Ingrid saw at once what she was to do, and she balked. They had done enough, and all her nerve had left her. She felt hollow and her limbs began to shake. The idea of being shut up in the tiny, black hold, even with Avanasy’s presence for support and comfort, filled her with revulsion.

But there was Avanasy, helping Shien to lower the empress, whose skin glowed white as a ghost in the faint light. Ingrid heard her bumping and shuffling below. Avanasy stretched his hand out to Ingrid.

What was there to do? She took his hand, and felt how warm it was, even though her own was so cold, and let herself be lowered into the smuggler’s hold.

It was pitch black inside. She put up her hand and found the upper deck barely three feet above the lower. She had to lie flat on her back in the straw that had been strewn on the hull boards in order to fit. She heard the empress’s echoing breath off to the right, so she shifted herself to the left to make room for Avanasy to climb down and stretch himself out. Shien laid the planking back into place. Ingrid had just time enough to see the planks had padded backs, both to muffle any sound from below and so they would not sound unusually hollow if thumped, before Shien settled them down, cutting off all light.

Ingrid lay where she was. Overhead, she heard Shien’s soft footsteps and the sound of something heavy being dragged and thumped into place. They were sealed in now. She swallowed against the panic that tried to rise in her throat. More soft footsteps crossed the upper deck. Then that sound was gone. The straw was rough against her back, and the cold and damp began to sink in, raising goose bumps across every inch of her. The hold smelled of old seawater and mildew. The breathing of all three of them sounded far too loud in the confined space.

“Well.” Ingrid drew a deep but shaky breath to prove to herself that there was plenty of air, and to help pull her tattered nerves back together. “They do say there’s nothing like traveling first class.”

“And this is nothing like,” answered Avanasy gravely. “Majesty? Are you well?”

“As well as I can be,” the empress whispered in reply. “Although I am beginning to have second thoughts about Hung Tse’s reputation for hospitality.” The lightness of her tone quickly faded. “Avanasy, do you know where they will take us?”

As if her words were a signal, the boat rocked sharply under them, and began to slide through the water, in the direction of Ingrid’s feet. She tried to remember which way that was, and failed. Little waves slapped the hull underneath them. The cold seemed to deepen, but perhaps that was only her imagination.

“We’ll go down to the river docks, I think,” murmured Avanasy. Their confinement seemed to forbid speaking in normal tones. “Lien has access to … grander ships there. It is my hope he will be able to sail us directly back to Isavalta.”

“Vyshemir grant your hope is correct.”

There was no more to be said. They lay still in the darkness, packed like sardines in a strange, cold tin. The boat rocked steadily, the waves and the slow creaking of the boards making a gentle counterpoint to the steady splash of the steering oar. Were it not for the fact that she was now soaked to the skin from bilge water, Ingrid believed she might have fallen asleep. As it was, she just fell into a kind of waking doze, her mind trying to sense something of the boat’s speed, and trying in vain to measure time to guess how far they had come, and how far they might have to go.

Avanasy’s hand brushed hers, ice-cold now, but Ingrid grasped it gratefully anyway. A small traitorous part of herself wondered if he held onto the empress with his other hand, and then she wondered why it should matter, which brought back the strange sadness she had felt in the tower room.

Time must have passed, but how much of it, she could not tell. Her skin went numb. She could barely feel Avanasy’s hand now. She tried to wriggle her toes to get some blood flowing, but it was no good.

Then came the sounds of footsteps, and Ingrid almost cried out in relief, but fast on the heels of the footsteps came the tramp of boots. Ingrid choked herself off. She had enough sensation left to her to feel Avanasy tense beside her. Her bloodless fingers gripped his hand.

Scraps of sound filtered through the padded boards. A woman’s voice, high and querulous. That must have been Shien. A man’s baritone that might have been Lien, or Jiu, or a stranger, answered. The boots clumped up and down the decks, shoving heavy burdens this way and that. Something that might have been a spear butt thumped against the deck above Ingrid’s right shoulder.

They were going to hear her heartbeat. They were going to hear her breathing. She tried to hold her breath, tried to quiet her heart, to be wood and stone here in the cold.

Something heavy was shoved aside directly overhead. Ingrid bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. The boots clomped, the spear butt thumped. Shien spoke again, and a stranger’s bass rumbled answered. The baritone that might have been Lien or Jiu spoke, and the bass barked out a sharp reply, and the spear butt came down right over Ingrid’s face, making her whole body jolt. She squeezed her eyes shut like a child desperate not to be seen.

The baritone said something else, and the words were followed by a faint, new noise. After a moment, Ingrid recognized it — the chink of metal, possibly of coins. Was Lien paying a tax, or perhaps a bribe? Would it work? Her throat closed. All was silent for a moment. Then, the baritone rapped out some order, and more burdens were dragged across the deck. Tears leaked out of Ingrid’s eyes and she began to shake again.

But then, miraculously, the boots all trooped away toward her head where the stern ladder was. Footsteps padded after them, and blessed, blessed silence fell around them again.

Tears of gratitude ran down Ingrid’s cheeks to mix with the bilgewater, and she did not care. She wept in silence as the boat started to move again, and the steering oar splashed once more into the water.

It was too much. The sudden release from terror robbed Ingrid of consciousness. Whether she fainted or simply fell at last into sleep, she could not have said. For a time, however, the world went away.

Light struck Ingrid’s eyes. She would have cringed but she could not move. Shadows moved overhead. They reached down long arms, grabbed Avanasy and hoisted him out of the smuggler’s hold.

“Careful, you wastrels!” shrilled Shien’s voice.

Then the arms reached out for Ingrid. Powerless to resist, or even to question, Ingrid was lifted like a sack of grain and set upright on the deck. She could not even feel her knees, let alone stiffen them to stand, but fortunately Shien seemed to guess her condition and the old woman was there beside her, wrapping an arm around Ingrid’s shoulder to support her weight as she slumped down.

“Carefully!” Shien barked again.

Ingrid could see at least a little now. Two men in loose shirts and short trousers bent down and raised the empress up from the hold. Avanasy sat on a bench nearby. As she was lifted, he struggled to rise, and failed.

“Bring them with me,” snapped Shien. “And
gently
, you louts, that lady is of quality.”

One of the two men began to snigger, but his companion stopped him with a glower. Shien moved toward the ladder, and Ingrid had no choice but to stumble along with her.

Climbing onto the upper deck was a nightmare. Sensation came back to Ingrid as pins and needles stabbing her skin from the inside. Shien, stronger than she looked, hauled Ingrid bodily up the ladder to stand blinking stupidly in the first gray light of dawn.

They were back at the docks. There was no mistaking the noise or the smell of the place. Shadowy sailing ships rose up on either side of the small boat. Shien steered Ingrid toward the starboard rail, where Jiu was helping Avanasy to a rope ladder lowered from the side of one of the larger vessels. His hands shook badly, but he managed to hang on while sailors at the top hauled the ropes up, pulling Avanasy with them.

To her shame, Ingrid whispered, “I don’t think I can.”

“You will,” said Shien with gentle practicality. “Because you must.”

The sailors let the ladder slither back down over the side. Shien guided Ingrid up to it and folded her hands around the rungs. Ingrid made her left foot step up and rest on the rope, then her right. She dangled there for a moment, and her hands clamped down reflexively. The sailors began to pull, and she gasped, but did not scream.

In less time than she would have thought, she was on the deck of the ship, being helped over the rail, and stood next to Avanasy so the ladder could be let down once more for the empress.

Somewhat more composed, and at least able to stand on her own, although the pins and needles still plagued her, and the ruined, sodden silk clung to her back like a wet rag, Ingrid was able to look about her. The ship was a big one for its kind; a four-master, and elaborately rigged. The quarterdeck rose up proudly from the stern, and even in the dim light she could see the long arm of the tiller. Shouted orders filled the air. Men and boys swarmed up the rigging, loosening furled canvas, which came down like a snowfall. Others lashed it into place on the yardarms, plainly getting ready to sail as soon as the captain gave the order.

The sailors lifted the empress over the side, and set her swaying on the deck. Avanasy moved toward her, but Shien came over the rail under her own steam a moment later and caught the young woman before she could fall. She looked dazed. However bad the recent trip had been for Ingrid, for the empress it had obviously been worse, and Ingrid felt a stab of pity for her.

A man ran down from the quarterdeck, and as he approached, Ingrid recognized him as Lien, still in his short coat and sandals. The sorcerer bowed hastily.

“I apologize for the mode of bringing you here, but it was necessary. Let my men conduct you below. We will be under way in moments.”

He signaled for a sailor, an officer in all probability. The man was slender and taller than most she had seen in Hung Tse. His coat was short and practical in cut, but brilliant green in color and its buttons sparkled silver. He bowed and led them all, with Shien supporting the empress, to a ladder beneath the quarterdeck, and down past the second deck to the third. By Ingrid’s mental measure, they were only just down to the waterline, and she saw the ladder went farther down yet, so there must be at least one more deck beneath them, possibly two.