Treason's Shore (104 page)

“If giving our navigation to the world is not a betrayal, it is at least a judgment against us. But I accept it as our due. What about your reward? I keep hearing a ‘but’ in your voice.”

Valda clasped her hands. “I do not want riches, and you cannot give me youth. If you were to give me a reward, it must be large, or none at all. So large . . . that you might not be able to compass it.”

“Speak your mind.”

“It is no less than this: that we set aside one of our oldest customs, the born thrall.”

To Valda’s surprise, Rajnir began to laugh. He shook all over, shading his eyes with one hand, and she frowned in affront until she realized that he was weeping.

“Oh, yes,” he said finally. “Oh, yes.”

As dawn’s light smeared the east under the incoming oppression of heavy cloud, Inda’s mood was low.

The
Vixen
emerged into the widening gap between the Venn and the alliance. Viac stayed at his post, but his tight breathing prickled Inda’s nerves. They’d Disappeared Loos as soon as the last Venn ship vanished hull down, all of them together while the sail flapped and the scout rocked on the increasing waves.

Then Jeje passed out her small store of bandages—and ripped cloth when she ran out. They set sail again in the strengthening wind, heading straight toward the faint gray in the east under a cloud-blackened sky as to the north, the Venn pulled together into an arrowhead, also sailing east.

Not all ships disengaged from battle. Inda spotted distant clusters of winking lights emphasized by tiny glimmers of arcing flame as embattled ships fought to take the other ship, or to kill, or just to see the enemy burn.

But most of the hard-pressed alliance moved in a mass southward, some in formation as they paralleled the Venn, others in chaotic swarms as their captains tried to figure out what was happening. Why had the Venn abandoned their lines of attack and pulled back into the arrow? Was it time for the terrible magic attacks everyone had warned about?

Vixen
was alone—and when the capital ships saw it, with its white flag at the foremast, signals flew out:
commander in view.

When Vixen rounded to under
Death
’s lee, Fox himself appeared at the rail, his expression changing from a hard expectancy to relief, and then amazement. “Why are they back in the . . . You did it?” Then, in blatant disbelief, “You did it!” He gestured for hands to leap down to the
Vixen
’s aid.

“No, no, let me be,” Jeje snarled. “Take Viac. He’s covered with cuts. No, Loos died. Yes. Nugget? You go aboard
Death,
so I can get
Vixen
cleaned up.”

Fox shut them out. “Inda, want a lift?”

“Of course not.” Inda made himself leap up the side at something like his old pace, though he could only hang on with his left hand.

It took all his remaining strength to walk into the cabin, stared at by the entire crew. Somewhere in the distance he was briefly aware of Nugget talking rapidly. Fox lingered behind Inda, listening to the gist of things, practiced after years at sorting Nugget’s enthusiastic embellishments.

Inda flopped onto the bed, arms out, one leg hanging over the side.

“You really fought hand-to-hand with Erkric?” Fox asked as he took a seat where he could keep an eye down the deck through the open door.

“Naw. But that’s what we’re telling everyone.” Inda grimaced. “Did Nugget say she bopped Erkric on the head?”

“She claims that you defeated him, after a terrific one-handed battle, one of the twenty or thirty Erama Krona having buried his ax in your back first. The ax, I gather, is true.” He pointed to Jeje’s good cotton-silk ship visiting shirt, ripped and twisted around Inda’s chest and shoulder.

Inda gave a short but succinct report.

Fox listened in silence, then said, “Brit Valda . . . and your Dag Signi. It never ceases to amaze me, how you manage to find just the right person at the right time, always sympathetic to your cause.”

“I didn’t plan for any of that. I just . . .”

“Just went on a suicide mission, because it was the only way out of an impossible situation. I know. It seems to me you’ve done that before. At Andahi, from what I hear. At The Narrows, from what I saw. The day we took
Cocodu
from Gaffer Walic. Each time you were the means of change, yet you would have failed but for these other people who saw in you their salvation.”

“It’s not me, it’s them.” Inda sighed. “They do what they’re going to. I didn’t have anything to do with Dag Valda. Never saw her before in my life. Ramis, same thing, at The Narrows. And at Andahi Erkric and Durasnir called the cease. No friends to me.”

“The day you took Dag Signi, you set this day up. I would have kept her a prisoner, you set her free. Made her a partisan. And she made this Valda a partisan. Erkric’s action at Andahi is tougher to explain, but do you see how it all connects?”

“Tdor would have it all humans are connected—now and through time—though we don’t see the knots. What we did today is important to something going on in, say, Colend, though none of us know it. We might never. And that will be important to somebody in Toar . . .” Inda was taken by a fierce yawn.

“Yes, everything will matter later.” Fox looked amused. “Go to sleep. No, stay there. I’d have to change the bedding anyway, I can smell you from here. Sleep, and I’ll deal with the detritus. There’s bound to be plenty.”

Inda could not have moved if all the Venn had charged the ship with fire and sword. Every bone and sinew loosened. Even his right arm had ceased to ache—had ceased to feel. With each breath he sank down and down, past scraps of memory, and down farther into infinitely yielding oblivion.

Fox tossed the blanket over Inda. He could feel the roll and pitch of the ship changing. That storm was near and would probably bring cold air.

He went out on deck, fighting his own fatigue. Despite the rain he did a sweep, and was not surprised to spot one of the Ymaran ships’ stern boats skipping over the waves, its sail quivering in the rising wind, Taumad at the tiller.

Tau rounded to abaft the
Vixen
and leaped across to reunite with Jeje. Fox shifted his attention elsewhere, dismissing them from his mind; when he turned away from his attempt to descry the Chwahir and the eastern flotillas in the thick slant of gray rain to the southeast, he was surprised to find Tau on the companionway.

“Ymar is in a panic.” Tau gestured northward, to where distant, fading twinkles indicated the Fleet Guild ships. He continued in Marlovan, “I promised to get a report. Saw
Vixen
. Where’s Inda?”

“Asleep. Report? As you can see, we took little damage.”

Tau’s station aboard Deliyeth’s flagship at the alliance’s northern wing, closest to their homeland, had prevented him from seeing anything southward.

“Delfs engaged hard on the south flank, driving the Venn back toward their own force,” Fox said, leaning on the rail. “As for us, we had the wind, and the speed, so we harassed their front lines with fire arrows, trying to draw their lines apart enough for the Chwahir to engage ship to ship . . .”

He gave Tau a rapid report of a battle that lost immediacy with every successive heartbeat. The rain sheeted at a wind-driven slant; the cold drops felt good after so long a stretch of sultry summer. But the rain was the first hint of winter on its inexorable way and the shifting of the winds and current to the east.

Ready for Inda to sweep back down the strait,
Fox thought.

He’d finished his report. They stood at the rail, heedless of the rain. Fox permitted himself to consider the future for the first time.

There was the pleasure of survival. Amazement, too. But that was already fading, leaving anger and frustration at Evred Montrei-Vayir’s typical, rock-solid Montrei-Vayir greed, which would get his boyhood friend killed after all. Probably not in battle. Fox suspected the entire strait would melt away before Inda’s combined force. Maybe some would fight desperately against their old friend. And though Inda would win those fights, the day he stood over Chim’s bleeding body would kill him, too, in all the ways that mattered most.

But freely given loyalty never meant anything to the Montrei-Vayirs in days of old, Fox thought. Only gaining the crown, and land, and more land, until they ruled all of Halia now.

Tau had been speaking. Fox caught the end: “. . . and on my way here I noticed that the military are all on station, the trade volunteers in a knot.”

Fox snorted. “The navies all know this business is far from over. What do you want to wager as soon as yon Ymarans find out that Rajnir ended the battle they’ll think they’re done, let’s go home, and who gets to sit where at the banquet?”

Tau gave a soft laugh. “I think they’re more concerned about the coast of Drael.”

Fox said, “My guess is that Durasnir will keep the Oneli moving. He has to know that every man, woman, child, and dog that has a stick to wave or teeth to bite will be ranged along the Ymaran coast right this moment, waiting to fight the first Venn to set foot in Jaro.”

“You would be right,” Tau said, thinking of what the king had let slip.

“Venn are probably on their way to Geranda. They must still have some ties there.”

“Trade agreement. The last governor was cousin of the previous Venn king. Daughter married the king of Sarendan, and now there’s some kind of interim government until their second child grows up.”

Fox said skeptically, “Won’t there be trouble if Durasnir just takes what he wants? That’s not trade.”

Tau grinned. “If the regency is smart, they’ll close their eyes and see Durasnir’s back that much quicker.”

Fox snapped up his hand, palm out. “So they refit and resupply there. Inda will ride their tail to make sure Durasnir keeps going. If the Venn round the southern tip of Toar before the ice sets in, then we’re rid of them.”

Tau sat on the rail, turning his face up into the rain. After two days of no sleep, it felt good—soothing and bracing. “So, how did Inda manage it this time?”

Fox gave an even shorter version of Inda’s report, ending with, “So Rajnir ordered them to go home.”

“Just like at Andahi.” Tau whistled a low note.

“Only this time, the fellow actually has his mind.”

“As well.” Tau peered seaward in the strengthening light. “My guess is, he’s going to need it.”

At first Durasnir was so busy with the most needed repairs on his ship, the necessity of proper death rites for the many who had been killed by Erkric, and the reorganization of the fleet, that he did not have time to do more than smile at Halvir, who stayed resolutely close to his side, tired as he was.

Halvir understood he could not interrupt the flow of dispatches, and so he remained a breathing, wide-eyed shadow, watching everyone and everything. Durasnir was inclined to assign him to an ensign, if nothing else to free him to be able to speak without reserve to his most trusted aides. But within moments of the boy’s falling asleep on Durasnir’s own bed, Halvir dropped into nightmare, thrashing and crying out. Durasnir dropped a pile of reports and stalked to the inner cabin to sit with Halvir, though the press of urgent decisions was just about overwhelming.

The imperative triple knock of the Erama Krona was the only warning Durasnir had, then in came the tension-heightened Erama Krona, clearly deeply disturbed over the summary slaughter of their number aboard the
Cliffdiver
. There was no one to tell the truth of events but the king, and they could not question the king.

The three thoroughly checked the cabin, each noting Durasnir sitting empty-handed beside his bunk where Halvir lay loose-limbed in the reckless slumber of childhood, as his father slowly stroked his bright hair.

When the cabin was deemed safe Rajnir entered, leaning on a cane, and dropped into the chair Durasnir had just risen from, as it was the only one there. “Nightmares?” he asked, indicating Halvir.