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  “Really? I wouldn’t think there would be many battles, with no nation to oppose you, and piracy — at least in the Shattered Isles — eliminated thanks to Mistress Flaxal.”

  “Not eliminated entirely, Lady Camilla,” Norris countered, his features more serious. “There have been recent reports of ships vanishing here and there among your islands, though nothing has been confirmed. It is likely that your mistress missed a few corsairs in her purge of Bloodwind’s empire.”

  “Is that the reason for your visit, then?” she asked. Perhaps she had finally gotten to the crux of matters. “If so, let me assure you, Count, that if a ship floats in the Shattered Isles, it is at Cynthia Flaxal’s pleasure. She will not suffer the existence of any pirate in these waters.”

  “That is good to know,” the count said, sounding genuinely pleased, “and that knowledge will put some of Emperor Tynean’s worries to rest. That is not, however, the only reason for my visit.”

  “Oh?” The count’s coyness was becoming tiresome. “Surely you don’t see any threat here. Cynthia has stabilized the entire region by doing away with Bloodwind’s pirate nation. I would think that Emperor Tynean would be overflowing with thanks for that service.”

  “Oh, make no mistake, milady, the emperor is thankful, and that, again, is part of the reason for my visit.” He nodded to his secretary, and the man produced a small flat box, which he handed to the count. “Please accept this small, and hopefully appropriate, gift for your mistress on behalf of the emperor.”

  “Why, thank you, Count Norris,” she said, accepting the thin mahogany case and opening it. Inside lay a simple string of pearls suspending an exquisite pendant of whale ivory, carved in the perfect image of one of Cynthia’s schooners. “It’s lovely, and quite appropriate. The likeness to Cynthia’s design is astounding in its detail. I would not have thought they took that much notice in a city like Tsing.”

  “The craftsmanship is dwarvish, and let me assure you, Lady Camilla, much more than a little notice has been taken of your mistress’ new ships. They are unique in design, and have created quite a stir.”

  “Oh?” She closed the box and put it aside, then signaled the waiter to serve dessert and port. Finally! she thought. Perhaps the schooners are the point of this visit. “With all the varied ships that must pass your harbors, I would not think that such a small and simple ship would be of interest.”

  “Small, yes, but, if the rumors are to be believed, a speedy craft, and able to sail closer to the wind than even the Fire Drake, if you discount the warship’s ability to propel itself with sweeps.” He finished the last of his dinner wine and relinquished his glass to the waiter. “Such a ship, if produced in quantity, could present a significant naval force.”

  “But the schooners are merchantmen, not warships. Their purpose is commerce.”

  “Ah, but a ship may be put to many uses.” He accepted his glass of port and sipped, his eyebrows arching in appreciation. “Your mistress is building these schooners at an astonishing rate. If they were armed…”

  “Count, please,” Camilla said, fixing his too-languid gaze with her own. “Any notion that Cynthia Flaxal is creating a private navy is sheer nonsense.”

  “Yet from these surroundings, and your most exquisite attire,” he smiled and nodded to her, raising his glass, “she is not exactly destitute. She appears to have made her fortune, but her wealth grows with the proceeds of every new ship she builds.”

  “Much of what you see here, Count Norris, once belonged to the pirate Bloodwind,” Camilla said as she gestured at the finery, striving to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “She has put a great deal of that wealth into the production of a merchant fleet, and into the shipyard here, where she employs a shipwright and a small yard crew to design new ships. We produce perhaps one ship a year here, which I would not call extravagant.”

  “Yes, she employs the shipwright Master Ghelfan, a rather renowned fellow. And the Keelson Shipyard in Southaven has produced six of her schooners in the past two years, all financed completely by her, with no lending of monies from outside sources.” He sampled his dessert, a sweet coconut custard, made a faint distasteful grimace and pushed the dish away. “It has also been reported that she bestowed a king’s ransom in reward to the captains who aided in her rescue from Captain Bloodwind, and even gave one fellow one of her ships for his own.”

  “I didn’t say that Captain Bloodwind amassed a small fortune, Count Norris,” she said with her best smile, though she was beginning to feel the strain of maintaining a pleasant demeanor. “In fact, it was quite large; the proceeds of more than fifteen years of unopposed piracy.” Camilla hoped he would pick up on her subtle yet heartfelt indictment of the emperor’s lack of success in this endeavor, but he showed no indication and kept on his single-minded course.

  “Exactly! And she is putting all that wealth into building more ships.” He sipped his port and eased back in his chair. “You must see how this appears from our emperor’s point of view, milady. A powerful seamage with her own fleet of ships, and what appears to be her own army of natives who, by your own admission, hold her in complete adoration. And she controls the entire archipelago, which holds a strategic position between the Great Western Sea and the Southern Ocean.”

  “Yes,” she agreed patiently, meeting his gaze unwaveringly. “But what you neglect to put into your equation, Count, is that Cynthia Flaxal has absolutely no need of a navy.”

  “And why is that, pray tell? Surely if she wanted to strengthen her position here, a naval force would make that task easier.”

  “A naval force would simply get in her way, I’m afraid,” she said.

  “Get in her way?” The count’s eyebrows shot toward the ceiling and he leaned forward. “How could that be?”

  Camilla immediately lamented her lapse. She considered telling Norris of the true alliance of forces that Cynthia worked toward, but reconsidered. If he thought building ships to be an aggressive act, what would he think of an alliance with the mer? She finished her port with exaggerated leisure and pushed the glass aside.

  “As I said, Count, if something floats in the Shattered Isles, Cynthia knows of it, and it does so at her pleasure. Please let me assure you and the emperor, that Cynthia Flaxal intends to let all peaceful shipping pass through the Shattered Isles unhindered and unmolested by anyone. There has been too much piracy in these islands for far too long. She will never allow that type of pillaging to return.”

  “That is reassuring,” he said, though he looked more alarmed than reassured. “Let me assure you, Lady Camilla, that it is Emperor Tynean’s goal to achieve the same. He sent me here to ensure that it is so, and will remain so.”

  “Then we have nothing to fear, milord Count.” She smiled brightly at him, then called the waiter forward to refill their glasses as she stood. “Shall we take our port out to one of the balconies and watch the sun set, gentlemen? I assure you, you have not witnessed beauty until you have admired a sunset in the Shattered Isles.”

  “I fear that its beauty will be mocked by your own, Lady…may I call you Camilla?” The count rose, extending his arm for her to take. He smiled broadly as she acquiesced. “And you must call me Emil. But tell me more of Master Ghelfan’s role here. Surely, one of such renown feels constrained, being so remotely located. His workmen must be mad with longing for the mainland.”

  “Master Ghelfan finds the solitude an asset.” She smiled at her escort and their companions as they strolled from the great hall, grateful that the conversation had shifted away from Cynthia. “He has an affinity for Cynthia’s designs, and his workers, for the most part, are local native folk trained right here by his master foreman.”

  “I would love a tour of the shipyard, if that is permissible.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Ghelfan has accompanied Cynthia on her trip, but we’ll talk to Dura first thing in the morning.”

  “Ah, Dura is Ghelfan’s foreman?”

  “Yes, she is…after a
fashion,” she said.

  “She?” The count’s eyebrows arched again. “Dura is an unusual name for a woman.”

  “Dura is an unusual woman, but let me assure you, her bark is far worse than her bite.”

  “Ah, yes. I know the type.” He spared a meaningful glance at Sergeant Torrance, and the two chuckled at an obviously private joke. The secretary followed in silence.

  Camilla smiled in concert with their mirth and played the gracious host, but her mind spun furiously to discern the real meaning behind the count’s unlikely visit.

  Chapter Four

  Cutthroats

  “Sounding, damn you!” Captain Seoril bellowed from beside the wheel of the King Gull. He swatted at the host of biting insects that were feasting on his blood, but didn’t really pay much attention to the discomfort. He was too occupied with not running his ship aground in this blasted tiny inlet. It was barely big enough to fit his little finger, let alone a galleon.

  “Three fathoms!” came the call from the fore chains. “Sand and mud!”

  “Boat crews, pull ahead!” The two sweating crews, forward of the ship, strained at their oars, pulling the small galleon forward. There was no way to sail up the channel in anything larger than a fishing smack. He often wondered how Captain Parek had ever found this blasted ditch in the first place.

  An overhanging mangrove caught one of the shrouds and showered the deck with leaves and broken twigs before a crewman with a machete hacked the branch away.

  “Blast this blasted ditch to the Nine Hells! Keep the blasted trees out of the rigging or I’ll send you out with the next jungle party!” He had ten men on the ratlines and two on the close-braced foremast yards to fend off the snagging foliage, and still they caught the trees at every turn.

  Finally, after hours of work, they entered a space wide just enough for their ship to turn around. Here, kedged off of the mangroves, sat a sleek-hulled corsair. The peeling golden paint on her transom read “Cutthroat” and a small catboat lay tied to her side like a tender. Two men at the corsair’s taffrail pointed their loaded ballistae away from King Gull’s prow when a voice boomed out to stand down.

  “It’s the Gull, boys!” a shriller voice called out, eliciting a ragged cheer from the deck crew. Captain Seoril recognized the slim form standing upon the poop of the corsair.

  “Ahoy, Cutthroat! Is that you, Sam?”

  “Aye, Captain! Tell me you brung a cask of spiced Scarport rum and I’ll kiss you!” The girl who hopped up atop the taffrail was skinny as a yardarm and not more than fifteen, but she wore a cutlass at her hip and was well acquainted with its use; a pirate as true as any that sailed the sea.

  “By the Nine Hells, I’ll kiss you myself if you brought a cask of Northumberland single malt!” Captain Parek bellowed, joining Sam at the rail. “Why are you late, Seoril? I expected you a fortnight ago! Thought you were sunk, or ratted us out for the price of a cheap doxy.”

  “It’d take more than one cheap doxy to tempt me to rat you out, Parek.” He shouted some orders to his crew to bring King Gull into the north bank and kedge off, then turned back to the captain of the Cutthroat and bellowed, “Maybe two cheap doxies! I was held up at Rockport, tryin’ to unload that rotten load of wool. Didn’t get near what you wanted for it, neither! Seems it got wet and went moldy.”

  “Well, as long as you brought us some stores, I’ll not hang you for it. Bring a cask of rum over when you come. We got business to conduct.”

  “Aye, and I got news you ain’t gonna like, Captain Parek. Best have a tot or two before I unload it on ya.”

  “Aye. Nothin’ makes bad news go down easier than smooth grog, ay lads?”

  The massed crew of the Cutthroat roared in a ragged cheer. They launched their only skiff to help offload the provisions King Gull had bought with their hard-earned plunder.

  ≈

  “Fire boarding hooks!” Feldrin Brelak bellowed as Orin’s Pride came up on the freebooter galley’s beam. The two ballistae mounted on the schooner’s port side cracked in unison, and wrist-thick shafts of iron-tipped hardwood plunged into the galley’s hull.

  “Slack sheets and haul on the capstan!” he ordered, racing forward from the wheel as the sails flapped, and dodging a ragged volley of arrows that flew from behind the shields that studded the pirate ship’s bulwarks. One man screamed and fell, but most had known to take cover. The heavy lines trailing from the imbedded ballistae bolts came taut as five men cranked madly at the windlass, and the two hulls met with a crash of splintering wood.

  “Arrows!” someone shouted, and Feldrin ducked behind a row of lines purposefully coiled and stowed on the shroud belaying pins. A barbed shaft quivered in the wood of the cap rail a hand-span from his knee, and he leapt up before the enemy archers could fire another volley. “Now! Boarders with me!”

  Twenty well-armed sailors lunged up and leapt over the row of colorfully painted shields into the midst of the enemy. One of Feldrin’s boarding axes clove a man’s skull like a melon, even before his feet met the deck of the enemy ship. A shipmate to his left went down with a spear through his leg, but put his cutlass into his assailant’s belly as he fell. Feldrin hacked down a bewildered archer and took a step to cover the fallen man, knocking aside another spearman’s weapon with his right-hand axe and gutting him with his left.

  Something hit his shoulder from behind hard enough to penetrate his thick leather corselet, and momentarily numbed his right arm. He slashed back without looking, and was rewarded with a meaty thock and a horrible scream. He turned to see the swordsman crumple, his hands clutching his destroyed face. He ended the man’s agony with a quick stroke and turned, looking for another opponent, but there were none to be had. The pirates had all either fallen or dropped their weapons.

  “Horace!” he bellowed, looking around for his first mate, then checking the man at his feet. The spear had passed right through the man’s thigh, but looked to have missed the bone. The sailor was staring at the inch-thick shaft transfixing his leg, his eyes wide with pain and panic.

  “Aye, Captain!” Horace came forward, sporting a gash on his forearm but otherwise hale. Horace was the only man Feldrin knew who had turned down a captaincy to be a first mate. He’d commanded the Hippotrin for Cynthia Flaxal for more than a year, then told her he’d rather go back to being mate on Orin’s Pride. Feldrin had never asked his reasons, he’d just welcomed him aboard. “By the Nine Hells! Keefer, yer supposed to knock the damned spear aside before you leap on the man, ya dolt!”

  “I…I missed, I guess,” the young man said dully.

  “Secure their weapons, Horace, and take a squad below decks. Be careful! I don’t want any surprises!” Feldrin knelt at Keefer’s side and drew a heavy knife from his belt. He despaired at the blood that jetted rhythmically from the wound, but kept his voice encouraging. “You did fine, lad! You got him before he could finish the job. Now hold still while I cut the head off this spear and we get it out of your leg.”

  In ten minutes the enemy ship was secured, the surviving pirates were in chains, and the young man Keefer was dead. Even though they removed the spear with the utmost care, Janley, the ship’s carpenter who doubled as their surgeon, could not stop the bleeding. Feldrin had held the man’s hand, assuring him that everything would be fine, even when he knew it was hopeless. A priest or even a simple potion would have saved the man’s life, but they had neither.

  “Nasty bloody business we’re in, Horace,” Feldrin said as he wearily scrubbed Keefer’s blood from his hands. Now that the energy of the fight was fading, he felt the throbbing ache in his shoulder. “Help me off with this corselet, would you? I got nicked.”

  “Sorry about Keefer, sir,” the mate said, loosening the buckles on one side of the stiff leather armor. It was hard and padded thickly enough to stop an arrow, even from one of the strong Marathian horn-bows that the pirates used. It would not, however, stop a sword thrust.

  “Not your fault, and he knew the risk.” Feldrin to
ld himself the same thing every time someone under his command died. It didn’t help much, even if it was the truth.

  “Aye, but hold on, there. You’re bleedin’ a bit under here.”

  “Bloody hells!” Pain lanced through him as Horace stuffed something into the gash in his shoulder. “Easy there. Don’t tear my bloody arm off!”

  “I’m tryin’ ta keep your bloody arm on, Captain! Now hold still! Janley! Bring a hot iron! This bleedin’ won’t stop!”

  “Didn’t think it was that bad,” Feldrin said, taking a seat on the windlass cap as his knees began to shake.

  “What happened?” Janley probed the wound with fingers still bloody from another man’s injuries.

  “Sword, I think.” Feldrin gritted his teeth, concentrating on not fainting.

  “It hit the bone, but your armor took most of the blow. You’re lucky it wasn’t a hand-span to the left. It could have gotten your spine. Now hold still.”

  Burning flesh hissed and Feldrin managed to remain conscious, though he did shout a string of curses that shocked even his crew. The smell of burning meat almost made him retch, more from the thought that it was his meat burning than from the acrid odor itself. When it was done and a thick healing salve and bandage had been applied, he felt much better.

  “What was she carryin’, Horace?” he asked, pushing himself to his feet with only a slight wobble.

  “A mixed load. About twenty bails of good wool, some kegs of somethin’ that are marked in that western script, probably rice wine, and some finery: silks, silver trinkets and such. Might be more tucked away. We’ll know when we tear her apart.”

  “You fit to take her to Terokesh?” he asked, grinning his first grin of the day.

  That was a good load, and the ship itself would be worth a tidy bit as well. Prince Mojani, the new sultan of Marathia, paid well for hulls that were not badly damaged. He was eager to rebuild his navy after more than a year of civil war, and had jumped at the chance to hire Orin’s Pride as a privateer. There were still many pirates working the Sand Coast, most in low xebecs or dhows, others in larger war galleys like the one they’d just taken. Some of the ships were the old Sultan’s former naval vessels, their captains turning pirate rather than face the new sultan’s swift justice. Orin’s Pride, outfitted with two ballistae on each side and the fire catapult mounted on her bow, could out-fight and out-sail any of them.