Twice a Prince Read online

  When I was dry, I was so tired I gave up the spy game and retreated upstairs to sleep. I didn’t even waken when the midnight watch changed.

  I woke with the others at the dawn bell. After breakfast, two of the women led me to the stable, where my mare had obviously had a good night. She was freshly curried, fed and ready to go. Even my weapon in the saddle sheath, which I’d stupidly left to rust forgotten, had been taken out, cleaned and oiled for me. I thanked everyone in sight.

  We rode out into the cool morning air, frost lying lightly on grass and stippling the edges of leaves, drifts of vapor rendering the farmland countryside into a kind of etching. The military road was hard-packed dirt kept by magic as smooth as asphalt. It cut straight through property. But military roads were forbidden to civilians, and so we crossed a couple of meadows, riding under dripping trees, to the regular road—pot-holed, soggy and winding.

  The women pointed to the northwest, saying loudly, “Zhavlir that way.” I nodded, thanked them, they wished me well in words of one syllable, and I departed, delighted that I’d managed to get out of what could have been major danger. It had not only been easy, it hadn’t cost anything!

  While behind me, as part of the routine, my hosts wrote me into the daily watch report: Civilian sailor strayed off the civilian road during storm, female, tall, blond, hazel eyes, name Lasva, from Tser Mearsies. Carrying only personal gear plus a letter from one inn to another, the only item of interest a silken banner in the old Zhavalieshin style.

  Chapter Ten

  The next few weeks brought bands of rain, nothing as spectacular as the storm that broke the summer. The air was much cooler, and all over the kingdom, harvesters were anxious to get the crops in before another storm came, maybe a worse one, to destroy everything.

  So while people concentrated on harvest and storage, and the military were converging on the castle chosen for the siege game, out on the ocean, War Commander Randart’s navy chased elusive ships while the war commander cursed.

  For several days he’d mostly caught up on his sleep. But after that, time seemed to wear with excruciating slowness. Though he had his magical message case, he hated using it because he was convinced the mages read his messages, though they swore they didn’t. It was, after all, what he’d do if he possibly could. Including lie.

  That was the worst of it. He didn’t really know what magic could and could not do. Even if he asked, he wouldn’t believe the answer. Yet Canardan insisted he cooperate with the mages, and even include one on the flagship. “Show good faith,” the king had written in a final order. “Who knows? They might even be useful. By whatever means it takes, I want that pirate hanged!”

  Randart had obeyed because he must, privately resolving that he would call upon the mage only if there was no other way around it.

  That was before several weeks of frustration and incompetence from everyone around him. The merchant ship he’d chosen as the flag seemed incapable of running with proper military order, and the second fleet was always reporting sightings of possible pirates, but no catches. If Bragail wasn’t lying, that had to mean the pirates were playing catch-me-if-you-can.

  Finally Randart issued the order for the entire fleet to converge. He would stretch the fleet in a net and sweep the entire coast of Khanerenth, as far out into the sea as they could reach, and burn everything that had no proper papers.

  At dawn a few days later, a scout craft appeared with crowded sail, signals flying. The pirate was on the horizon. Not one of his many underlings, but the Zathdar, bold as the sun, riding just within view of the spyglass.

  The pirate matched the fleet’s speed, keeping the same distance between them.

  Randart summoned the merchant captain and ordered him to catch the Zathdar, packing on as many sails as needed.

  The captain said shortly, “He has the wind. Sir.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means he can sheer off any time he wants to, or he can sail down and engage us. He’s faster. We can only catch him if the wind shifts.”

  “Is it likely to do that?”

  A shrug was the answer. Irritated, Randart waved him off of his own captain’s deck as he stared through his glass at the pirate vessel etched against the morning sky. At last he said without losing sight of the ship, “Get the mage.”

  Rapid footsteps thumped down the stairs to the companionway and below. Randart watched sailors form a line along the companionway, holding long ropes in order to do something with the sails. He listened to the patter of bare feet around him, the creak of rope and wood, and the whappita-whap of sails being lowered or raised or changed. Somewhere on the other side of the ship, the sailors talked incomprehensible slang as they prepared for an approaching boat. His orders were to chase and close. The sailors were doing the best they could, he could see it, but ships were so slow. With a horse under you, you at least moved, and even better was…

  A quiet step behind and he looked down at the short, stout woman the mages had sent him. She was probably thirty or forty, her expertise was in preserving wood (useful on a ship) and if she’d ever expressed the slightest interest in political power, no one within Randart’s extensive spy net had heard it.

  He had forgotten her name. “Do you see the pirate?”

  She narrowed her gray eyes, pursed her lips so her double chin tripled, and gazed out to sea. He did not offer his glass, nor did she ask for it. They stood there in silence for a moment as the ship rose on a swell, then thumped down, and behind, the thumps, cries and knocks indicated the approaching boat was hooking on.

  The mage finally said, “Just barely.”

  “Tell me in plain language why I cannot transfer my force to it by magic, since we can see it. I know that magic requires a clear destination. That ship seems clear enough to me.”

  “First, we can only transfer one or two at most, and the transfer spells must be prepared for. Second, yon ship is not clear enough for transfer,” she said.

  “Then I’ll give you my glass, which I assure you brings details close. I can make out the damned pirates doing whatever it is they do to sails. I can see the planking along the side of the pirate ship. I can see the ropes at either side of each mast.”

  “But that does not constitute a proper Destination.”

  “Plain language,” he snapped. “I want a concise field report. And if you don’t know what that is, I am going to suggest that Perran and Zhavic include basic skills in whatever it is they teach you people before they let you out in the world.”

  Her cheeks flushed, but her tone was steady, and her gaze stayed on the pirate ship. “You can see the details of the sides of the ship. You can see sails. You can see masts. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you cannot see the details of the deck.”

  “No.”

  “If you wish to be transferred”—her tone totally devoid of irony—“you would wish to appear on the deck. And not halfway through a mast, a sail or the side.”

  Randart thought of the tiled Destination chambers, and nodded. Now he remembered something of an explanation Mathias Zhavalieshin had given him many years ago. Mages memorized the pattern of the tiles, or you could get lost in whatever-it-was between physical spaces. Forever.

  “So either you need Destination tiles, or the equivalent on that deck, or you need transfer tokens. And I remember what transfer tokens do: act as a beacon.”

  “We call it a focus, but yes. However, there is another very important consideration. Destinations must be kept empty. If someone, or something, is already in the space where you transfer, bad things happen. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”

  Randart grimaced. He’d never been able to bring himself to ask Zhavic these questions, and give Zhavic the pleasure of exposing his ignorance. “They don’t…melt together, do they?”

  “No. That would call for a very strange magic indeed. Transfers are just that, but between spaces, so the newly arrived thin
g impels itself into the new space. It is the impact with air that hurts so much. If the arrival collides with any object it is thrown aside at violent speed. Things break, people are killed.”

  “It’s the same with transfer tokens?”

  “Yes, pretty much. They must always be left on floors or open spaces, or on tables next to open spaces.”

  So much for salting ships with transfer tokens and sending a force by surprise, Randart thought. And, with a brief spurt of self-mockery, I wonder how many kings thought they invented that idea first, to find themselves at this same impasse.

  He collapsed the glass with a smack. “Back to the crawling pace of the chase.” And, because he had to work with the woman and she’d been prompt and informative, “Thank you, Magister.” He still couldn’t remember her name.

  She bowed and withdrew; at once the aide-de-camp on duty stepped to his side. “Commander, Patrol Leader Samdan is here to report.”

  Samdan. Randart remembered that name. Samdan was the idiot whose entire patrol couldn’t stop a pirate, a girl and a couple of brats belonging to that traitor Kreki Eban. Randart had wanted Samdan and his fools put up against a wall and shot as an example of what to expect for incompetence, but the king himself had pardoned them, reminding Randart that they were a scratch troop, scarcely trained, culled from road-patrol duty when the best warriors had all been shifted to the coast against pirate raids.

  Randart remembered quite clearly that he’d concurred on the orders to reinforce Prince Jehan’s small honor guard when he was sent to the old World Gate tower. Randart had also agreed to send the prince to the old castle as he himself was busy hunting the pirate, and hadn’t those two fool mages made the world transfer once before, to return empty handed?

  But that did not excuse the sheer incompetence of an entire troop, however badly trained, defeated or driven off by four people.

  By two, really: the pirate Zathdar and the Zhavalieshin girl.

  Randart turned back to glare at that distant ship, now a silhouette against the rising sun. On that thing Zathdar now stood, presumably with Atanial’s girl. He also knew Bragail of the Skate’s secrets, all of them on Randart’s orders. Why hadn’t the pirate brandished either the girl or the threat of Bragail’s exposure yet? No one could accuse him of lacking in arrogant boldness. What did he want, this pirate bestirring himself in the matters of kings? The very idea of pirates and politics did not make sense.

  Randart became aware of the aide still standing there. “Well? Cannot Samdan report to his captain on his own ship?”

  The aide lowered his voice slightly. “Said he ought to speak directly to you.”

  Sharpened interest caused him to nod. “Very well.”

  Samdan, meanwhile, stood against the rail on the weather side of the ship, watching Randart’s back. He’d been living with disgrace for weeks, all the more telling because it was unspoken since the king himself had ordered pardons all round. The looks and whispers and avoidances resulting were, he’d decided bleakly, far worse than the floggings War Commander Randart handed out. At least those, if you lived through them, were then over. And people didn’t hold your mistake against you.

  Now he limped forward. His knee where the pirate had stabbed him still hurt. As it should.

  Maybe he could retrieve some of his old standing, so easily taken for granted before most of his old cronies began turning their backs or not being around when he slipped away from his mother’s place in Ellir, where he’d been sent to convalesce. Ever since the king’s pardon, he didn’t feel welcome in any of the guards’ regular haunts.

  That lack of welcome as well as the wish to retrieve his honor had caused him to volunteer when the word went out for supply duty on this pirate expedition.

  Now the war commander’s dark eyes flicked from his bound knee to his face, his lips curled in contempt. “You had a report you thought I should hear?”

  Samdan’s heart thudded against his ribs. This was it. He licked his lips. “The navigator. On our boat. I’ve seen her before. She was one of those with the pirate and the princess, in the old tower.”

  And watched the contempt in Randart’s face clear to surprise, then question. “Are you certain of that?”

  Samdan licked his lips again. “I made sure of it. They’ve had her on night duty, see, or I’d have noticed before. But yesterday she had to do a day rotation, I don’t know why. And so when Captain Dembic had us out on deck doing our morning drill, well, there she was behind the wheel, and I knew I’d seen her before. It wasn’t until I heard her speak to one of the sailors I got it. She was in the court that day, along with the mage-boy who transferred ’em out.”

  “Did you say anything to anyone?”

  “Only Captain Dembic. She said by rights I should report to you myself.”

  Randart turned around. Captain Dembic stood at the rail. He beckoned her over, and watched the sturdy, gray-haired woman tromp across the deck. She was his head of supply on the coast. She’d been trustworthy for decades and also close lipped.

  With marked approval, he said, “Does anyone on your ship know about this matter?”

  Dembic shook her head. “No, War Commander. Patrol Leader Samdan reported to me, and I gave orders for a boat to the ship captain, but told him it was to make my regular report on your orders.”

  Randart nodded, recognizing the implication: the use of his name guaranteed no questions, even if the explanation was not strictly true.

  “Well done,” he said, to both of them. What the king had said about Samdan—It’s our fault, not his, that his training has been so slapdash. If they’re lazy, it’s because we’ve let them become that way—now sounded different. Good material, slapdash training. Yes. The words were different, the morning light looked different, the cold air felt different—full of promise. Randart felt his sour mood lift for the first time in weeks.

  He almost smiled as he began issuing a rapid stream of orders.

  On board the Clam Dancer, the mess bell had rung. Elva yawned as she gladly handed off navigation to the afternoon watch. Two yawns punctuated her repetition of the standing orders; the man taking her place grinned in sympathy, but said nothing. Everyone knew what a middle-of-the-night-till-noon watch was like.

  She followed the slumping, shuffling sail crews down to the galley, where, according to universal ship rule, the off-coming watch had first serve on food. She loaded her plate, thumped down at a table and picked up the square-bottomed mug full of soup. Holding it in tired hands, she sipped, so intent on drinking without slopping as the ship swayed around her she didn’t quite notice the sudden silence until the fast tramp of booted feet caused her to frown. Sailors never wore shoes unless it was freezing outside—

  Hard hands gripped her arms, yanking her to her feet. Her soup went flying, she tried to twist and fight but was shoved violently face-first onto the table. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and rope bound around them while she struggled to breathe.

  The brown uniformed guards muscled her past her astonished mates. At first she was stunned. It wasn’t until she was flung down into the boat that it occurred to her that she’d been betrayed. By who? All she could think was, Prince Jehan.

  Anger replaced the sick horror, fury so hot she could hardly wait until she saw the enemy. And could tell her side of the story.

  No one spoke on the trip to the flagship, either to one another or to her. The sound of the oars, the jerking rhythm, the wind and the choppy sea, all of it she noted with a remote part of her mind while righteous anger streamed and streamed, helping her shape what she’d say about the Pirate Prince of Liars.

  Everyone aboard the flagship watched their approach, the sailors from the relative safety of the upper yards. Randart had told them nothing, but no one could miss the way he’d suddenly ordered up a patrol of heavily armed warriors from his own personal guard and sent them to the Clam Dancer as fast as the rowers could pull them.

  No use asking questions. The army didn’t talk to an
yone except one another, and no one wanted to approach Randart, who during the first day out to sea had had four sailors rope-flogged at the foremast for not taking orders from the warriors, or not getting out of their way, even if the sailors were on duty and the warriors not. It had been made abundantly clear that sailors and ships existed to serve, were in no way equals, had no rights. Even aboard their own ship. The captain had reminded them in a private meeting down in the hold that they were getting a year’s pay if the pirate was apprehended, and to think on that if they didn’t want to end up dead.

  So the sailors invented reasons to be watching from above, and the warriors from the deck as the boat came back, and what they saw instead of a slinking spy or a glowering traitor among their own kind was a slip of a young woman barely out of girlhood, blood trickling down into one eye from a cut on her scalp, the other side of her face bruising fast from where she’d landed after being thrown into the boat with her hands tied.

  Samdan’s good mood ended the moment he saw that pale face with the obscene trickle of red dripping down.

  Randart clapped him on the back, laughing. “Excellent work, excellent. You shall be in at the kill.”

  The kill?

  Samdan watched from his place of honor behind the war commander as the girl was summarily hauled to the deck, and muscled into the spacious cabin that Randart had taken for his own. He was thinking, I don’t want to see any more, when the war commander gestured for him somewhat impatiently. He’d regained his honor. He’d done his duty. Hadn’t he?

  Yes. So it was probably fair for him to see the results. Grimly he limped after the war commander, the rest of the guard falling in behind. His knee was throbbing by now; he leaned against a bulkhead as the men found room to stand.