The Fox Page 8

  Her hand moved, doffing an invisible hat, as if she had just stepped aboard the deck of his flagship. The severity of Dhalshev’s expression eased for a moment as he returned the gesture.

  Jeje gave her report in the manner Inda had trained them to use: outcome, general survey, details.

  Dhalshev and Woof were impressed with Jeje’s succinct descriptions of Walic’s vessels, what she’d seen of their tactics. She then repeated her conversation in Tchorchin Harbor. They exchanged a glance, remembering the harbormaster there.

  Dhalshev said, “What do you intend to do now?”

  Jeje drew in a deep breath, studying Woof’s scrupulously blank expression and the harbormaster’s grim one. The fact Jeje was up here, where no one but Dhalshev’s own people were allowed, testified to the importance of this conversation to him, though as yet she did not know why.

  So talk about what you do know, Jeje sa Jeje! As she had with Testhy, she felt that sense of the wind, or the world, changing. “I want to try to rescue them,” she said firmly. “If they are still alive.”

  Woof knuckled his chin during the silence that followed her words. Dhalshev’s face didn’t alter, and Jeje discovered she’d been holding her breath. She was braced for what? Scoffing? Disbelief? Dhalshev said, “In the old days I could have sent a fleet in the time it took to write the orders. Those days are gone. Khanerenth couldn’t send anyone. I didn’t leave them enough ships to do more than guard the coast.”

  A pang of disappointment forced Jeje to realize she’d unconsciously expected him to take her problem as his own, to tell her what to do. Maybe give her the means to do it.

  So command yourself, Jeje. What would Inda do? “I need volunteers. Supplies.”

  The harbormaster lifted his hand toward the south window. “If you go down to Anki’s, you’ll find a list of those who have been waiting for Kodl’s return.”

  “Those are recruits,” Jeje said, fighting back the cloud of questions. “I need supplies, if not ships.”

  “You won’t get a fleet,” Dhalshev warned. “Everyone on the island knows that there will be an attack here, that it’s only a matter of time. The pirates lost this harbor to me, and they want it back. They no longer have a good base here in the east, and they want the independent trade I’ve been building up.”

  So that explained their tension!

  Woof put in, “Walic wants Brotherhood alliance. Boruin is already Brotherhood. She wants command of the Brotherhood’s eastern arm, which has been up for grabs ever since Captain Ramis of the Knife sent the last fleet commander to Nightland.”

  That name was like a jab. “Is Ramis coming back?”

  Dhalshev said grimly, “No idea what his plans are. I only had one conversation with him, and it was the strangest one I have ever had.”

  “Did you ask him his plans?”

  Dhalshev’s mouth tightened in a bleak almost-smile. “He answered every question with a question. He exhorted me to treat fairly with trade, which I have done, but that was a promise I’d made before he arrived. Not all of our traders want to keep it.”

  “Will Boruin and Walic ally, you think?”

  “No. They did once, then argued over the division of spoils. Or rather, she denied him his share, he complained about her up and down the coast, and word got back to her. Both know the other will double-cross them in a heartbeat. That’s one advantage to us. The other benefit is the massing of the Brotherhood under Marshig the Murderer, out west. It’s inevitable that they will be back when the Iascan war is over, whoever wins, but at least that war buys us time.”

  Jeje scowled at her brown feet on Dhalshev’s patterned tile floor. His distant, convenient war was her family fighting for their homes.

  Dhalshev waved a hand toward the window. “You can spend a lifetime resenting the orders of a bad king, but when that king is gone and no one is issuing orders, once the first sense of freedom fades into everyday matters, you’ll find that someone or other wants to step into that gap.”

  Jeje moved to the window. The entirety of the King’s Saunter was visible from this vantage: a broad semicircle paved with pale stone, colorful shops vying with banners and brightly painted shutters and awnings to catch the eye of privateers and sailors strolling by in their best shore-going rig. Everyone was armed. The mistress at the Lark Ascendant pleasure house had been open about how much she liked the marines living there, because if there was trouble she expected them to defend her house.

  Jeje realized what it meant to have no king or queen ruling from a distance. Whose law prevailed? One could say the harbormaster’s, except who was to enforce his law if his fleet was out defending the harbor and someone decided to make other laws?

  Jeje swung around, staring at the map of the main island. “You sent all your fleet out to guard the harbor against a pirate attack?”

  Dhalshev stepped forward, raising an arm to block his island map, then as abruptly stepped back. “What do you mean?”

  Jeje remembered how he’d deflected her on her entry. Ah! “You’re not defending the entire island,” she said.

  Dhalshev said slowly, “I thought I was. But I admit that I have always fought at sea. I know little about land battles. What do you see that I don’t?”

  Jeje scanned those markers on the mountaintops: a few at the northern and southern ends of the island, heavy along the west above and below the harbor, but nothing on the east. The detailed chart symbols showed tall cliffs on the east, a lethally rocky coast, riptides, and a nasty current. There were even dated red marks for big wrecks. People trained to sea would consider that coast a natural barrier; she remembered Inda saying after the Toola attack, What we’ve learned is where we think we’re strongest—and loosen our watch—that’s where the smart ones will infiltrate.

  Boruin, Walic, all the worst pirates are smart, she thought, and easily imagined them landing not ships along that lethal rocky coast, but lots of smaller boats. And climbing up the cliffs to attack from behind . . .

  The fog had lifted, the wind was on the beam. Jeje knew where she was. Hooking her thumbs in her sash and rocking back and forth on her bare feet, she said, “How about this. You give me supplies. Crew. And I tell you how Inda would defend your island.”

  Dhalshev frowned at Woof, who just whistled.

  Dhalshev hesitated for five heartbeats—Jeje counted. Then he said, “Talk.”

  When she was done, the harbormaster said, “Woltjen, see that she gets what she needs.”

  Jeje and Woof left. As soon as the door was shut, Woof grimaced like a boy. “When he uses my real name, I know he’s . . .” Woof waggled his hand beside his head.

  Jeje gestured. “Why? It’s just something Inda’s taught us. You don’t think it’s a fair trade?”

  Woof shook his head. “You don’t realize. I guess that’s a good thing. But if you wanted you could have taken away the knowledge of the map and used your pirate plan yourself. Taken the island.”

  Jeje’s face and neck burned. She made a noise of disgust deep in her chest, and then, to get away from the subject, “Why worry about pirates? Didn’t the king you wanted take over? Can’t you go back and be a navy again, especially if they need one?”

  Woof leaned against one of the wind-battered lyre carvings that masked the structure supports. “The civil war happened because the old king thought he was above the laws. The new king swore to uphold the laws.”

  “Yah. So?”

  Woof shook his head. “You really are a sea rat, aren’t you? If we go back, then we have to submit to the law, see? And right near the top of the list is what happens to a fleet commander who takes most of a kingdom’s fleet and leaves the kingdom, though he’d sworn to protect it.”

  “Even though he did a good thing? And everyone knows it?” Jeje stopped, hands on hips. On Woof’s nod, she threw her hands out wide and snorted her disgust so hard her nose tingled. “That’s just why I hate kings and politics. It’s all fart stinks, and kings are the biggest stinks of all.”<
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  Woof laughed. “Come on, let’s get busy.”

  Chapter Six

  ONCE before an internal awareness changed the course of Inda’s life, though he did not know it at the time: when the twelve-year-old Evred Montrei-Vayir discovered that the ten-year-old Inda Algara-Vayir trusted him unconditionally—without ambition, calculation, or even awareness.

  Here is another internal decision that changed Inda’s life, and again he was not aware of it at the time: Coco’s demand for cinnamon rolls.

  The runaway Chwahir boy Uslar was too small to be a pirate; the first mate would have killed him outright had not the cook mentioned needing extra hands. They ate well on the Coco. Captain Walic had declared that if Cook wanted extra hands, extra hands he would have, so Uslar and the other boy, Mutt, were assigned to him.

  The cook, who was not a bad sort, though he drank heavily (he drank heavily because he was not a bad sort) muttered to Uslar late one night, “If you have somethin’ they want, it makes you valuable, see?”

  Uslar had taken that advice, offering one morning, when there was extra pastry crust, to make a cinnamon roll the way Rig had taught him. The result was an instant success.

  Now, two months afterward, Coco herself came into the galley, her wide skirts brushing the edges of the tiny space. The cook, instantly anxious, set down his mixing spoon.

  “Cook.” Coco’s small mouth downturned. “There wasn’t a single cinnamon roll at my breakfast. I thought I gave orders for two every day.”

  She held up two fingers, and waggled them coyly. Nobody mistook that for a humorous gesture.

  “Yes,” Cook said, sending an anguished look at his cook-mates. “You did, Mistress Coco.”

  Uslar stood at the chopping board, trying to be invisible. Mutt, perched behind him on a stool so his almost healed ankle took no weight, hunched down. His face blanched, making his freckles stand out.

  Uslar watched Coco’s profile with the unwavering intensity of the prey when the predator is near; she resembled a pastry: with her little upturned nose and her soft second chin, bits of unconfined doughy flesh jiggling around her otherwise tight dress. She looked young and merry in lamplight, but when she stepped out in strong sun she appeared closer to her age, which was near forty.

  “And?” Her voice was strident as she tapped the nails of those two fingers against the breadboard.

  Uslar’s mouth dried with fear. He’d heard whispers about Coco and her penchant for knives and blood.

  “We haven’t a walnut on the ship.” Cook spread his hands. “Not one o’ the prizes we took had any nuts at all, not the smallest walnut, or even an almond. It’s the shaved nuts, see, that makes them rools what they are. I tried, but all I got was a tasteless mess, no rool you’d want to eat.”

  The ribbons on her flounces quivered, but all she said was, “Walnuts, is it? Then we shall have to get some.”

  And she rustled away. Mutt sighed in relief. Uslar was too frightened to make even that much noise; he watched the Cook’s strong right arm stiffen at his side, his left hand flipping backside-up in Coco’s direction, the tendons and muscles so taut his fingers trembled. But the next heartbeat the cook was back at his chopping, and so Uslar resumed his steady mixing, around and around and around.

  Walic sat in his comfortable chair on deck, considering his next move. His mates each wanted something different, which he ordinarily would have ignored except that he liked each of their plans. Which first? Which first?

  All three were sweating, the captain’s good mood from the night before rapidly evaporating. When Coco bustled up onto the captain’s deck, hips swinging, harsh sunlight glaring off the brilliant yellow of her silks, a jet of irritation scorched his temper.

  “There are no cinnamon rolls because Cook is out of nuts,” she stated with dramatic petulance, ignoring the mates, who backed out of her way.

  Walic massaged his jaw. She did not look the least bit appetizing in the strong light. Sweat marred the bodice of her gown, her skirts swept over half the captain’s deck as if claiming it for her own, and the brilliants in the embroidery threw out pinpoints of reflection strong enough to bring tears to the eyes. When he regarded her under the shade of his hand, she looked no better: her face and the neckline of her low gown had gone blotchy in the heat and her fat jiggled when she tapped her foot.

  The irritation flared into anger. But then she tilted her head, smiled wistfully, and said with a girlish pout, “Coco is so, so sorry, sweeting. It’s so horridly hot and Coco was so, so disappointed.”

  He let out his breath, looking at the small hands clasped meekly under her rounded breasts so cozily squashed into the gown. He thought about unlacing the front of that gown, and what she’d do then, to make the fire run like it had last night, after her imperious demands on her pet.

  Best of all, she couldn’t see how Prettyboy hated her. Walic chuckled. Coco thought everyone was in love with her. Well, let her think it—it made for more fun in the cabin and it also meant no one was likely to conspire with her. If her new toy ever showed the least sign of real desire for her, it would be his death warrant. There would be no conspiracies aboard his ship.

  “Can’t have you going without, can we?” He chuckled again when he thought about what he’d do to Prettyboy in front of her if he ever sniffed any hint of mutiny.

  “No, love,” Coco said, running her fingernails along his jawbone. “No, and you won’t go without either. You wait and see what fun Coco and her pretty-pretty cook for youoo-oo, ” she crooned, and then left the deck with a last twitch of her hips and a coy over-the-shoulder glance.

  No, she couldn’t go without walnuts, not Coco, who managed to be amusing even when acting stupid. He considered his mental map of the islands to the north. His first mate wanted them to cruise in Widowmaker’s old territory.

  The second mate shook his head, muttering: “I can’t get it out of my head that Ramis o’ the Knife is also here-abouts. I say we go south, because the big guild convoys aren’t due round Chwahirsland for at least a month—”

  “If, by some chance, they avoid Boruin,” the first mate pointed out sarcastically.

  “They been sending fleets of warships,” the second mate retorted.

  They had their exchanges choreographed by now; they argued so the captain would not sniff an alliance, which he’d see as conspiracy. They took opposite points of view and never joined against Walic.

  The second spat over the rail—not quite in the first’s direction. “Captain o’ the schooner even said so, before I killt him. And the big Sartoran silk merchants have yet to come north. If we go south and squat on a point off Lands End, we’re sure to catch something good from either direction.”

  “And the Khanerenth navy? They’ll be playing cards, no doubt.”

  Walic liked them to seem on the verge of fighting.

  The second mate appealed to Walic, hands open. “We can take ’em, they’re spread so thin, long ’s they don’t have time to pull together.”

  Walic shook his head. “They’ve got more scouts than we do, after Stupid and Prettyboy’s Marlovan burned so many of ours. Northeast. Inglenook Islands lie there. We’ve all seen the nut trees growing wild.”

  The mates flicked their fingers to their foreheads— Walic liked the niceties of naval salutes to captains—and because the captain was watching, First Mate gave Second Mate a sneer, and Second smirked, rocking on his heels, his hair-chimes jingling. No conspiracy here, captain!

  They tacked for five days north by east through fitful seas until they sighted the islands bumping up on the horizon.

  The heat had mounted steadily, intensified by the fretful winds that too often died away in the middle of the day, leaving them to wallow and roll, sails sagging, until even the hardiest was feeling sick.

  “Everyone wants a squall,” Thog whispered to Mutt after she clambered down from helping set staysails once again. “Everyone wants one so much I am afeared they’ll knife Sails if she says she feels it comin
g once more.”

  The Sails aboard this pirate vessel had been taken off a capital ship years ago, and was quite kind to the young ones, giving Mutt easy chores when Cook didn’t want his unpracticed hands in the kitchen. Uslar had been learning from Rig, which meant he was in the kitchen for full watches, making pastry. Cook and Sails made certain that both boys were seen to be useful.

  Thog promised herself she would remember that.

  They returned to working on the stiff storm-sails, dyed bloodred, that Captain Walic wanted ready for the day he would be invited into the Brotherhood. The red canvas usually upset Thog, but today she refused to think about what she would do that day. Her head ached enough.

  “We’ll be doing sails, same ’s always,” Mutt said. “But maybe you won’t be pulled up during your off-watch to sew ribbons for her.”

  “That won’t change,” Thog retorted. She added in Chwahir—which Mutt had begun to understand—“I’ll be sewing her ribbons back on her clothes even if a gale blows every sail out to sea.”

  She and Mutt smothered their laughter.

  On deck, the first mate sat under the awning the hands had rigged on the captain’s deck, wearing only a vest and a pair of cotton deck trousers, and rapped out orders.

  The two mates had been relentless in trimming the ship instantly to catch the fickle breezes, which meant the hands had spent more than their watches hauling rope and tending sail in the miserable heat.

  At sunset the second mate appeared, his hair-chimes faintly ringing as he yawned.

  “Who do we send? Feegy wants to go, and that means his cousin. Says he knows nut trees.”

  The first mate snorted as he propped a broad bare foot on a barrel. “And you believed him? He just wants to get out of the sail-making party.”