Once a Princess Page 12

  “You look like an idiot,” Elva retorted.

  “Sure, but I don’t look like me. In case they have wanted posters issued. Oh how I’d love to see one, if it’s really true,” he added longingly. “and how much of a price on my head.”

  “Probably two copper trinkets. Three more than you’re worth,” Elva said with sisterly disrespect.

  Devli grinned, flipping his curls at her. “You’re sour because you don’t get to go. If you acted friendly I’ll wager he’d have you along in a trice.”

  Elva wavered, which surprised me. Then she shrugged. “and have Sasharia counting her toes here? Seems fair enough that somebody stays to keep her company.”

  Devli turned to me. “I wish he’d let you come,” he said shyly.

  “Thanks. I think.” I gripped my hands behind my back. “But no thanks.”

  Brother and sister widened their eyes in surprise. “But you’re good,” Devli observed.

  “Good at practice. I’ve spent years and years at it. That does not mean I want to let somebody try to ventilate my chitins. It only means that maybe I’m ready for it if it happens.” I was desperate to keep my voice even. Ow could I be the only one scared spitless but from all I could see I was.

  Devli’s brow puckered. “You were so good in the fight at the transfer tower.”

  I thought back, remembering only a blur of tiredness that jolted suddenly into a super-powered adrenaline rush...powered not only by inept guards trying to capture us, but by the intense awareness of that derisive pirate whose first word about me had been useless.

  I wasn’t going to say that my main motivation had been to show him how wrong he was. Nope, nope, nope.

  “Accident,” I stated. “I was half-asleep, running on instinct. I am supposed to stay out of sight. Remember” and in a thoroughly cowardly absolutely desperate attempt to change the blasted subject, “Elva would you give me a rundown on what’s happened in the past twenty years?”

  “If you like.” She looked perplexed. “In a general way at least.”

  To keep my hands busy so they wouldn’t shake I began to unbraid my hair and comb it out. One braid at a time, wincing and cursing under my breath at the snags. Back in LA I’d be doing this job after a good treatment with a whole lot of conditioner, but there wasn’t any here.

  “How far back shall I go?” Elva asked, and then her eyes rounding, “if you’ll pardon my saying you have a lot of hair.”

  “Oh yeah. My dad was a frizz-ball too. Made Einstein look bald—never mind who Einstein was. Let’s say that where I come from, big hair is totally uncool.” The word came out in English. There wasn’t anything close. “I made the mistake of cutting it when I got mad at my mom, not long after we got through the world gate and for a couple of years I looked like a walking mushroom. Growing it long at least weighs it down, and I can braid it.”

  She grinned as I yanked out another braid, which sprang into determined curls adding to the mass hanging down my back to my butt. When I pulled it straight, I could sit on it.

  “All right. Well in ’36 two years after you left, there was a strange incident we call the Siamis War, but it wasn’t a war it was more of an enchantment and extended over the world.”

  “Oh yes someone mentioned that. I wondered if Siamis’ was a place or a person.”

  “Someone from Norsunder. An original Old Sartoran, I mean from four thousand years ago.” she hunched her shoulders. “He was young-looking and handsome and charming, and he enchandted people by just thinking at them.”

  “That sounds nasty.” I watched the archery teams climb to the tops.

  “It was. Though nobody remembered much afterward. It was like we all lost a year. I was a toddler, so I didn’t really notice anything, but the adults still talk about it, and they’re worried because Norsunder is on the move, they say.”

  “That sounds even worse.” The clatter of arrows and weapons from outside brought us to the cabin door as the archery teams took their places on the mastheads and readied themselves.

  “Yes Devli says the mages” Elva stiffened, her face blanching.

  I leaped up and joined her, my hair half combed in a curling mass the other half in ratty braids as the deck crew lined up along the rails, weapons at hand.

  Things had changed far faster than I had expected.

  Our pirate schooner lurched toward the navy ship which looked enormous as it loomed steadily closer. The fading light in the west was augmented by lanterns hung. Zathdar’s crew waited motionless except for nervous hands on weapons, quick head turnings. Ah. So they were scared too. I could see it in the tightened shoulders in stiff fingers, shuffling and restless checking and rechecking of weapons.

  For some reason the sight of their tension actually eased some of mine. So I was not the only scared person on board. The proximity of violence deliberately chosen jetted a mingling of emotions through me most negative, but somewhere in there was anticipation. Even readiness, I could feel it in the way my muscles tightened along my spine and through my back, a feeling akin to the moments before a match at a big competition, but at a fuel injected hyper level.

  Zathdar spun the wheel. Sail parties brailed up two sails with lighting speed and the ships thumped together yards and rigging entangling masts creaking. We all staggered, then shadowy figures crouched below the rail jumped up and swung over to the navy ship from ropes. More ran across entangled yards to the other ship, rearing and howling.

  “Inside! Shut the door!” Owl bawled at me as he ducked under a swinging lantern sword raised. He and two others took up station in front of Elva’s and my cabin, obviously on defence duty. Either that or to keep Elva and me from running to the navy guys.

  The mass of surging figures shouted fought leaped to and fro. Annoyed as I was with Zathdar, the name Randart had scared me. I had no intention whatsoever of leaping from Hurricane’s frying pan into the fire of Canardan’s sinister war commander.

  But Zathdar didn’t know that. Where was he, anyway?

  The lanterns shone through the ropes in wild spider-web patterns creating intersecting geometric light patches and shadows, making it impossible to tell the surging figures apart. At least the darkness has to be hiding blood and guts...sure don’t see any, don’t want to see any...

  I peered around the cabin door.

  The tweet of a whistle—a roar of triumph—and twenty or thirty armed silhouettes jumped down from the navy ship’s higher deck. A surprise squad of marines held back as reinforcements leaped over the rail onto our ship and fought their way down the deck outnumbering the defending pirates.

  “They know you’re here,” Elva said flatly, and I threw open the door. Owl twisted around. “you know Randart does not mean safety for you.”

  My jaw was locked, teeth gritted. “I’m out here so I can defend myself. I. Do. Not. Want. To be. Anyone’s. Prisoner.”

  From overhead a colourful figure swung and Zathdar landed on the yard directly above us.

  A quick exchange of glances between him and Owl, then “here!”

  Zathdar flung a cavalry sword through the air toward me.

  One sharp thud of heart against ribs and years of kata training took over. I knew sword forms. I knew how to throw and catch a spinning sword. You don’t take it standing still, but match movement and so I flowed into kata mode and slipped the sword out of the air, bringing it down with a swoosh before the first naval worrior reached us.

  He leaped back joining his companions, who were all in brown uniforms. For a moment they all stared at me, eyes so wide twin lantern flames reflected in them, their heads turning slightly as I swung the saber back and forth, back and forth, trying to get the feel for its unfamiliar weight and shape.

  “That’s the one,” the lead man said. “take her.”

  My heartbeat shifted into overdrive, drumming in my ears.

  Owl two of his sailors, and Elva (who’d ducked into the cabin returned with a knife) formed a line in front of me, all of us keeping clear
of the others’ reach.

  “No kill,” Owl ordered hoarsely.

  Elva sent him a distracted glance. “I thought that was all hot air.”

  “No ture,” he snapped. “Why do you think the bow teams are waiting?”

  I remembered them crouched there overhead. I realized no arrows had been loosed.

  Yet.

  I swung my cavalry sabre, which was much heavier than I was used to. I noted the red tassel on it. This was the one from the weapons locker that on one had touched. Zathdar’s fighting blade! But he was nowhere in sight.

  A short, barked word and the navy guys rushed us. Then time stopped. The univers narrowed to my trembling fingers, my chi breathing, and the cut and thrust of swinging steel.

  No kill? No chance to ask. It made me faster, surer because I fought as I always had in practice, only one step harder. I did not care if I hurt anyone, I didn’t want to kill anyone...

  ... and they were not trying to kill me. Disarm yes. Wound even. But not to kill.

  And so I parried, blocked, deflected, kicked, punched, nicked, thumped (and used my knee once to unfair but effective advantage—sorry guy) but I never stabbed.

  The endless moment stretched into a roaring blur as sweat stung my eyes and my throat rasped raw. Abruptly I swayed there on the deck whooping for breath, peering this way and that for the next target, but there were no more targets. There were only four people lying on the deck, either unconscious or wounded. The rest retreated fast, vanishing over the rail as a mass of gathered pirates, fresh from the supporting ships, chased them aft.

  As the navy guys swarmed back to their own ship, the battle shifted to the other deck. I rushed to the side, Owl next to me, in time to witness the end of a sabre dual between Zathdar and the their captain. The latter’s sword clanged to the deck, Zathdar held his point at the man’s throat and shouted something that was echoed by a woman at the other end of the navy ship. She was one of Zathdar’s other captains.

  The result was weapons clanking and whanging to the deck, hands raised in the universal “I surrender don’t hit me!” the king’s sailors were obviously not going to test the pirates’ willingness to stick to the rules at price of their captain’s life, and I wondered if that was out of loyalty or fear.

  Zathdar flicked a look our way.

  Owl moved with the speed of someone who had received orders. As I leaned on the rail, still breathless, the pirates dragged the unconscious navy guys to the rail and attached them to ropes to be boomed over to their own deck. Meanwhile Zathdar prodded the captain and they vanished into the clipper’s broad cabin.

  The pirates herded the navy below the clipper’s decks, then closed and barred the hatches. After that they moved about some purposeful, most just talking pointing demonstrating with their weapons, the restless rattling about of people shedding adrenaline.

  Devli emerged from the hatch, papers clutched to his orange shirt, his unlikely blond mop bouncing as he bounded toward the place where the two rails ground together on the pitching waves.

  On a sharp whistle pirates swarmed aloft to free rigging and spars others got busy hacking chopping tearing cutting ropes. They were doing enough sabotage to ensure no chase would be made without a lot of repairs first. Some returned to the Hurricane, carrying pretty much anything the navy guys hadn’t nailed down. There wasn’t much to loot on a navy scout, but they’d done their best.

  Elva joined me. “Ow,” she said reflectively binding a length of cloth round one forearm. “I hope that’s the last pirate battle we’re in. No matter what my brother says.”

  “Tell me about this no kill order.” My brain had gone oddly numb, and my hoarse voice sounded far away like someone else.

  “Oh. That. It’s just the fool that is Prince Jehan, who is supposedly in charge or the guard, the navy and I forget what else his father wants to duck the blame for, supposedly issued this command to their forces that in a skirmish they can’t kill anyone until our side that is the resistance does. He supposedly doesn’t want our countrymen killing one another if it can be avoided. It seems to be the same for the pirates too. Anyway, I always thought it lies. Canardan’s people trying to whitewash their rotten reputation. But I guess its true. For the navy and army, I emphasize,” she added, her brow furrowed. “Not for War Commander Randarts private guard.”

  The two ships jolted, staggering everyone on both decks, then parted with a groan of timbers. I wondered if Zathdar had made it back just as a colourful figure emerged from the navy captain’s cabin. He climbed up the shrouds, caught a rope I hadn’t seen in the wavering light from the lanterns (it was quite dark by now) and swung over lightly, landing on the topsail yard just as two arrows hissed through the air from the other ship.

  He caught one of the backstays, slid to the deck near us. A last arrow thunked into the coaming round the fore hatch directly behind him, then someone on the other ship shouted an order and there were no more arrows.

  Zathdar gave us all one coprehesive glance. “all right?” he addressed everyone, but his glance rested last on me.

  “Alive,” I said and Elva echoed me. Then I drew in a deep breath. Keep it neutral. You still have to land.

  But I had to ask. “Was it really necessary this raid? Or just you know your typical pirate idea of fun?”

  “Oh lets just say that this fellow has been doing a bit of piracy on his own.” Zathdar tipped his head toward the ship. “Under orders from the war commander.”

  His manner was too airy, a contrast with that tight gesture. Plainly I was not the only one keeping crucial info behind buttoned lip.

  He grinned at me. “and you think I look strange.” He took the cavalry sword from my unresisting fingers, stepped back and flicked the thing through the air a yard from my head an ironic salute.

  I clutched at my hair, felt the one side ratty braids dangling down, the other a tangled mass of fizzy curls, emphasis on the tangles. Total big hair crisis! I had to laugh the sheer squeaky laugh of a sudden rush of knee whacking relief. It was really over. My muscles turned to Smucker’s finest.

  “Well done.” He flourished the sword as he smiled at us all. But again I had the distinct sense he was talking to me.

  Then he turned away, lifting his voice “captain’s punch for every hand!”

  The sailors responded with a loud hearty cheer as Zathdar bend to yank the last arrow out of the coaming. He straightened up flushed with triumph. “come down in the wardroom to celebrate?”

  Again he did not quite address me, but the air in my general direction. Owl overseeing the last sweep of the deck, raised a hand in agreement. This was a general invitation, not a private one. He’d said it would take place in the wardroom. No harm in that.

  Then Zathdar turned my way “join us Sasharia?”

  “Sure.” And to Owl who was rubbing his hands and laughing under his breath, “Captain’s punch?”

  “Oh its good.” Owl chuckled. “But it’ll knock you back if you’re not careful.”

  The crew divided up into two parties, with off-duty crew members carrying food up to those on duty. The watch captains crowded around with us at the battered table in the wardroom, roaring again as the grinning cook muscled in a huge tureen of something that smelled like citrus, with hard liquor undertones.

  A variety of cups, mugs and glasses passed from hand to hand, everyone dipping into the tureen. Next came the sounds of slurping and sighing. The punch was a blend of berry, citrus, wine and a raisiny liquor that was very smooth going down, with a delicious bite. Warmth rushed through me, smoothing away the aches.

  “Good eh?” Owl dug his elbow in my side.

  “Mighty good.” I slipped again, then realized they were all more or less watching me. So I lifted my glass to the table. “Great job peeps!”

  The peeps came out in English, but no one seemed to care. They gave another cheer. In such a small space, their enthusiasm hurt the ears. I gulped down more punch, feeling hot and a little dizzy as everyone started t
alking, the adrenaline-comedown sort of chatter I remembered from my competition days. “didya see...?” “...and then I took my sword and...” “he was goin’ for Sage, so I grabbed up a stool and...” everyone wanted to air their own bit, to praise the others and be praised, and as the punch loosened tongues more of the compliments came my way.

  I smiled and saluted and returned compliments about skirmishes I couldn’t possibly have seen because the flushed smiling faces and bright eyes surrounding me so plainly expected it. And deserved it too. They’d won, we were safe.

  But as the talk got wilder, the compliments sent my was took on a certain familiarity of expression. “thought you’d finally take action,” the cook said, giving me a friendly nudge with a powerful arm. I nearly fell face first into the tureen.

  “Knew you’d come out fer yer dad,” the forecastle captain boomed from the other side of the table. “he never forgot us that haven’t any titles no he did not.”

  And after a general (if less energetic) “Hear him, hear him!” one of the top hands thumped her mug onto the table.

  Then red haired Robin declared, “When you raise your banner, Princess we’ll be right behind you.”

  I tried to force a smile and shot a suspicious look at Zathdar. He had been watching me. He gave his head the smallest shake, turning his thumbs outward and I knew he hadn’t said anything to the crew.

  They didn’t act like people ordered to drop hints about my princessly obligations, and anyway, it was all coming back to me, how people thought here. When you were born to a title, you had a responsibility along with your title. Your job was politics.

  I left as soon as I could, aware of Elva’s unhappy face over at the side table, where she sat with Zathdar’s navigator and bosun. She followed me in silence.

  I tramped wearily to my cabin, Elva behind me, winching as she flexed her fingers. Titles expectations obligations politics chased round in my head like dizzy mice.

  A long drink of water then I lay down, shut my eyes and firmly told myself that answers were my dad’s job. I just had to find him.