Wrath of the Blue Lady (19 page)

“I’m not a warrior,” someone muttered.

“Aye, and as far as comfort goes, there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t broken my back working on this ship.”

“Gorrick is a hard taskmaster.”

The ship’s mage glared around. “Who said that? Who dared say that?”

No one owned up to that.

“Think it over,” Shang-Li encouraged. “What we plan on doing—”

“Is getting killed,” someone interrupted.

“—is important to our safety. The battle you flee from by not coming with us will only be fought at some later date. And it will be worse. Much worse.” Shang-Li was convinced of that.

Chiang stepped forward. “You’ve known me as your captain for a long time, most of you. I’m going with these men to try to find that ship. I would like you to go with me, but I’ll understand if you choose not to.”

“Because they’re a cowardly lot,” Iados muttered. Then he let out a painful breath when Thava elbowed him.

Chiang dismissed the crew and it was the most somber leave-taking aboard Swallow Shang-Li had ever seen.

ŚŠŚ Ś€>Ś ŚŠŚ

That night, Shang-Li woke once more in a dream and trapped at the bottom of the sea with the Blue Lady. He floated in the water as the sharks danced around him.

“Your crew is going to abandon you,” she said.

“Possibly.” Shang-Li tried to draw his sword but found that his hand passed straight through the weapon.

“Come with me, manling.” The Blue Lady arrowed to the surface where a ship was held in the thrall of a storm. Canvas snapped yards and flapped in the powerful winds that keened over the decks. The crew tried to put lifeboats out as the ship started breaking up. One lifeboat did reach the sea, and even filled with crewmen, then a large wave rolled over them and they disappeared.

Shang-Li struggled to be free of the dream. He couldn’t bear to watch men dying.

“Do you see them?” the Blue Lady demanded. “Do you see how weak they are in my power?”

Shang-Li said nothing.

“That is you, manling. That is how weak you are. No’ matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will find you.”

Steeling himself, Shang-Li strode toward her. “Are you trying to scare me away? Is that what this is about?”

Light blazed in the Blue Lady’s dark eyes, and she smiled. “No. I don’t want you to go away, manling.”

“Because I’m coming for you.” Shang-Li spoke calmly despite the fear that raged within him.

“Because of the books?”

“Because you’re an abomination and I won’t suffer you to live. There will be an accounting.”

The Blue Lady laughed in his face. “And you think you’re strong enough to give that accounting? Then come,

manling. Come and die.” The Blue Lady gestured at the ship and it broke in half. She turned back to Shang-Li. “There were others that thought they could kill me. My own kind exiled me here. But they’re going to regret that because I’m going to come back stronger than I was. And when I do, I’m going to have an army at my back. I will invade those lands and take what is rightfully mine. I will take more than that. They will beg for my mercy. And I will not give it.”

Horrified, Shang-Li watched as the ship’s crew died by the dozens.

“I promise you this, manling. If you come to me, your death will be quick. I will not prolong it. Your foolish courage will be rewarded. But in the end you will still die.” The Blue Lady gestured again.

This time a waterspout licked up from the heaving sea surface and curled around Shang-Li like a python. It pulled him beneath the sea, and this time he couldn’t breathe. He fought and fought but couldn’t escape.

Then he woke in his hammock sucking in wind and covered with feverish sweat.

ŚŠŚ

“We have a problem.”

Shang-Li looked up from where he’d been fitting a plank into place on Swallow’s port side. He hung in a rope harness with tools at his waist. Cool wind sweeping in from the sea warred with the hot sun overhead and his skin was alternately warmed and cooled. He’d sweated so much that his shirt and pants stuck to him.

“If it’s about Thava …” Shang-Li said.

“No. The crew, what we have of them, seemed to be more pleased about the prospect of having the dragonborn aboard than fearful. They’re more afraid of the Blue Lady.”

Shang-Li couldn’t blame them. “We haven’t lost any more crew, have we?” Nearly half of the original crew had fled in the night.

“No. But we have lost our ship’s mage.”

“Gorrick left?”

“He … found more profitable employment.” Chiang pulled a folded note from inside his blouse.

Shang-Li took the note and quickly read it. Gorrick’s tone was apologetic throughout. But he also pointed out that they were all fools soon to be dead. Finished, Shang-Li returned the note.

“I suppose there’s no getting him back?”

Chiang shook his head and put the note back under his blouse. “The ship he took berth on sailed this morning. I was only just given the note by a boy Gorrick hired for the task.”

Shang-Li thought about that. Losing the ship’s mage wasn’t something he’d even remotely considered. And sailing back in the Sea of Fallen Stars without one, even without looking for the Blue Lady, was a foolhardy proposition. “Does my father know Gorrick is gone?”

Chiang hesitated.

“He doesn’t, does he?” Shang-Li asked.

“I thought maybe he might take the news better from you.”

“No.” Shang-Li leaned into the harness that supported him on Swallow’s side. “He won’t. He’ll blame me.”

“I know your father is committed to recovering those books—”

“Very committed. As he explained to you, the spells contained within those books could allow the wrong person to change all of the Sea of Fallen Stars.”

“—but I don’t feel comfortable sailing back out there to face what we have to face without a ship’s mage.”

“I agree.” Shang-Li hadn’t thought about trying to recover the lost books without a ship, but he knew his father would have him out on the sea in a rowboat if it came to it. That wouldn’t have appealed to Iados’s larcenous heart at all.

Shang-Li sighed and stared at the plank. Only moments before, he’d felt the carpentry had been hard. Now he knew how easy it had truly been.

“Ship’s mages, good ones, are as hard to find as hen’s teeth,” Chiang said.

“Much harder than that.” Shang-Li gave the plank he’d fitted into place a few more taps. Everything seemed water tight. “Are Iados and Thava around?”

“Thava has busied herself helping around the ship. I don’t think Iados has made it up from bed yet.”

“Manual labor isn’t one of Iados’s interests.”

“No. I surmised as much last night when he wasn’t impressed with his lodging aboardship.”

Shang-Li hauled himself up the harness and flipped over the railing to land on his feet. He glanced at Westgate.

The city had come to life, filling the streets with pedestrians and carts. Hawkers called out their wares. Hoarse orders, frustrated yells, and curses floated over the placid waters around the docks. Reefed sails snapped and popped in the wind.”If there’s a ship’s mage to be found in Westgate, Captain Chiang,” Shang-Li promised, “we’ll bring one back to you.”

“A good one,” the captain said. “Gods know where we’ll be going, we’ll need a mage that knows his business.”

Y)u know, you could have left me back at the ship,” Iados pointed out as he matched Shang-Li’s pace. Thava and Kwan Yung trailed behind, lost in one of their increasingly frequent philosophical discussions of the differences between a paladin’s calling and a monk’s.

“Then we would have missed out on all the complaining.” Shang-Li walked the streets of Westgate easily but remained watchful. During his travels, he’d made enemies in the city as surely as he’d made friends, and enemies tended to run in packs in the city these days.

“I could have complained back at the ship.”

“You were.”

“Not as much as I’m going to complain now.” Shang-Li knew that was probably true. “You

don’t have to feel compelled to excel on my account.”

“I told you where the ship’s mage could be found,” Iados protested. “You could have come here yourself.”

“She’s an unemployed ship’s mage in Westgate. I have to wonder why that is.” Shang-Li shot the tiefling a glance, then checked to make certain Thava and his father were keeping pace.

Iados chose to ignore the look. “She’s a good ship’s mage on all accounts.”

“Where’s the cynicism I’d hoped for? Something to balance out the desperation I’m feeling?”

“It’s concentrating on this long, boring walk through the heat of the day.” Iados sidestepped a couple of sailors sprawled in the alley sleeping off rough nights.

“You shouldn’t have slept so late. We have a job to do.”

“I’m in for a percentage. That, at the very least, makes me a partner. As such, I’m entitled to privileges.”

“Like sleeping late?”

“Definitely.”

Shang-Li turned the corner by a bakery that filled the immediate vicinity with the pungent aroma of yeast. “Why doesn’t this ship’s mage have a ship?”

Iados hesitated a moment. “Do you really wish to know?”

“I’m really desperate. I keep seeing images of you, me, Thava, and my father in a rowboat in the middle of the Sea of Fallen Stars if we don’t find a ship’s mage.”

Iados shuddered. “There’s not enough ale in all of Faerun to supply that voyage.”

“My point exactly. The ship?”

“It sank.”

Cautiously, Shang-Li glanced over his shoulder at his father. Kwan Yung remained contented with Thava’s company. Thinking back on it, Shang-Li believed the paladin was the first dragonborn his father had ever spoken to.

“Where did the ship sink?” Shang-Li asked.

“In the harbor.”

“That doesn’t sound very comforting.”

“It could have gone down in the middle of the Sea of Fallen Stars.”

Shang-Li shrugged. “When you put it that way, sinking in the harbor does sound better.” But he didn’t look forward to his father discovering that tidbit of information.

“No one died and the cargo had been offloaded. The vessel had come through serious storms and a sahuagin attack.”

“So it wasn’t her fault, but they blamed her anyway?”

“Captains and crewmen do like to blame others for their misfortunes. And she was the ship’s mage. It was her job to hold the ship together.”

“Evidently she held it together long enough to reach safety and get the cargo unloaded.”

“Which is why I recommended her,” Iados agreed.

“That and the fact that she’s the only unemployed ship’s mage you know of at present,” Shang-Li said.

“Yes.” Iados lowered his voice. “There is some talk of her being cursed as well.”

Shang-Li swiveled his head around to look at his companion so fast that he tripped over a pothole in the crushed oyster shell street.

“The captain had to blame his misfortune of getting hit by a storm and the sahuagin on someone,” Iados said.

“I’m supposed to go back to Swallow and tell Captain Chiang I’ve brought him a cursed ship’s mage?”

“I definitely wouldn’t do that unless you intend to never lift anchor from that harbor.”

Shang-Li walked in silence for a moment. “Maybe there’s nothing to the curse rumor.”

“Probably not.” Iados shrugged. “You know how sailors like to talk.”

ŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ <§>Ś

According to the gossip Iados had overheard, the “cursed ship’s mage” was currently rooming at the Splintered Yards, an inn so-named because it had gotten hit several times by storms in the past. A patchwork of timbers covered the exterior and the building held no illusions of pride or grandeur.

A dour old woman with her hair pulled back and a shapeless gray dress stood at the counter . Anxiously, she peered down the hallway and shuffled a deck of cards.

“Need a room, a meal, a drink, or your fortune told, gentle sir?” The old woman awkwardly spread the cards across the scarred countertop. Some of them fluttered to the floor.

“We’re looking for someone.” Shang-Li picked up her cards and put them back on the counter, then slid a small silver coin onto the counter.

The woman captured the coin with a withered claw and made it disappear as easily as she worked the cards. She swallowed hard and glanced at the hallway. “Who?”

“The ship’s mage,” Iados said. “I was told she was here.”

A scowl darkened the old woman’s face. “Have you come to collect from her as well?”

“As well?” Shang-Li asked.

“The captain took her wages and her savings,” the old woman said tremulously. “The old flintheart left her here with no prospects and no way of paying her way.” She nodded at the rooms above. “I gave her a place to stay in return for cleaning rooms. But there are others that insist she owes them. They went up after her only moments ago.”

“Who?” Shang-Li asked.

“Murderous vermin.” The old woman spat in displeasure, then quickly checked to see if anyone had overheard her.

“There are a lot of murderous vermin in Westgate,” Iados said as he reached to his hip and freed his sword.

“These are particularly offensive.” She looked at Shang-Li with wide eyes. “That’s who I thought you were. Until I saw your ears and recognized you as elven. They wouldn’t let a half-breed among them.”

“The Nine Golden Swords?” Shang-Li asked, understanding the mistake that was made because of his Shou heritage.

A woman’s scream, filled with fear and rage, ripped from upstairs.

Shang-Li sprinted toward the staircase to his left and ran up the steps three and four at a time. Iados followed at his heels. By the time Thava joined them, Shang-Li held his fighting sticks in his hands. The paladin’s massive weight combined with the armor caused the stairs to shudder and quake, and for a moment Shang-Li feared they might collapse. He gained the landing with his sticks held before him.

The dim hallway ran straight and narrow. Doors to rooms sat off to either side. Scars from scrapes and drunken sailors adorned the plain wooden walls. Weak light from outside the building entered the hallway from windows at either end.

A large group of Shou men bearing tattoos that marked them as members of the Nine Golden Swords surrounded a young woman with copper hair at the end of the hallway. She fought against them, but the Shou held her easily. Shang-Li was surprised at how many men had been sent.