Channel.”
Tilda blinked. “When does it leave?”
“Today. She is already aboard.”
“What?” Tilda was surprised to feel something like a loss at the thought that a member of the party was leaving the others so soon. She scarcely knew these people at all, it was true, yet after the last several days she felt close to each of them. Even the Zantish sorceress, Dragon Cultist, man-eating-monster.
“She says goodbye to everyone,” Zeb said, and Amatesu frowned at him as she stirred her own coffee.
“Madame Nesha-tari did not say this.”
Zeb sighed. “Well, it would have been nicer if she had, correct?”
“Doesn’t she still owe you all a great deal of money?” Tilda asked. She attributed the return of her Miilarkian interests to her proximity to the sea.
Amatesu looked unconcerned but Zeb sagged back in his chair and groaned at the ceiling.
“We had this out on the docks. The Madame feels we were paid, as the Shugak set aside big chests of money for us. Of course, the little blighters will kill us if we go back to collect, but the Madame seemed to feel that was our problem.”
Zeb rocked forward in his chair and looked miserably at Tilda.
“I was a rich man, Tilda. For about thirty seconds. The hobs opened a chest with two hundred and fifty gleaming pieces of gold in it, with my name on them! Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean? I just stared at it, and nodded okay. If I knew I was never going to see it again, I at least would have touched it. Actually, I would have stripped to my skivvies and rolled around in the pile, tossing coins in the air and singing tra- la-la!”
“That would have impressed the hobgoblins, I am sure,” Amatesu said solemnly, and Tilda laughed at them both.
“So what are you going to do now?” Tilda asked, holding out a hand to include Shikashe at the bar, who was now tucking into a plate heaped with enough fish to stock a small pond. The sight made Tilda even hungrier.
Zeb and Amatesu just looked at each other.
“No idea,” Zeb said, and Amatesu gave a small shrug.
“Something always comes along.”
“Aren’t you part of some military unit in Larbonne?” Tilda asked Zeb, who smirked.
“Sure, a mercenary outfit that sold me to a lion-monster and these two crazy Westerners. I don’t think they will miss me.”
“What about you…Tilda?” Amatesu asked. Tilda smiled at her, though she felt a qualm at the question.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I should talk to John.”
Zeb jerked his thumb at the window again. “On the porch.”
“What?” Tilda blinked, and looked outside. John Deskata was sitting alone at a table at the end of the wide, covered porch, facing the street with his back to the window.
“He came with us to the docks,” Amatesu said. Zeb cleared his throat and his smile faltered.
“I think he found a Miilarkian ship.”
A serving boy was almost at the table with Tilda’s coffee, but when he set it in front of her she excused herself from Amatesu and Zeb, and walked outside.
She did not step loudly, but John looked over his shoulder as she came. She passed him and turned to stand across the table. He had an inkpot and quill, and a few lines written on a parchment square. He did not meet Tilda’s eyes, but she saw that his were brown again. His tower shield, covered by a cloth, leaned against the porch railing with his small pack bundled against it.
“You found a ship?” she asked.
“Yes. Fast cutter of House Tagalai.”
“How fast?”
“Not fast enough. If we make good time I will still be late by two weeks.”
John had still not looked up at her, so Tilda sat down across from him.
“How much do they want for passage?”
“They are short a hand. I’ll work my way across.”
Tilda blinked. “What about me?”
John gave a sigh instead of an answer. Tilda reached across the table and snatched the parchment, rattling the inkwell. John made a grab for it, but stopped himself and let her take it.
The ink was already dry. It was dated at the top and written in formal Miilarkian in a surprisingly delicate hand. That actually made sense, Tilda realized, as of course John Deskata had been for all his early life the privileged son of a Great Island House, trained in calligraphy and other noble pursuits. The stilted words were bland, a dismissal of Matilda Lanai from all services and interests pertaining to the House of Deskata.
Tilda stared at John over the paper, and he sighed again.
“I was going to write more, to mitigate that. I have been sitting here for half an hour trying to think of something to say.”
“What is this?” Tilda hissed.
“Just what it says. You’re fired, Tilda. I’m kicking you out of the House.”
Tilda stared, both her hands on the paper.
“You can’t do that,” she said. “You don’t have any real authority.”
John met her eyes, and green or not his flinty stare was as much authority as he needed.
“I am Jonathan Malohan Deskata, the last man of the Deskata blood, and I am putting you out of the House, girl. Not that there is still a House to speak of.”
John leaned across the table and held Tilda with his eyes.
“It is over, Matilda. The Assembly will carve up the House, and all the assets will be divided. That includes the Guild, and the Guilders. If you return to Miilark as a Deskata Guilder in good standing, you get assigned to another Guild of another House. Is that what you want?”
“I want to fight for my own House!” Tilda said. “My family has served yours for three generations.”
John waved a hand. “They’ll be fine. The merchants always go smoothly.”
“But the Guild will fight. As will the fleet!”
“Not if nobody asks them to,” John said. Tilda stared.
“Even if you don’t make the Assembly, there will still be time…”
“Tilda, you are not listening. No one is going to fight for Deskata if no Deskata asks. And I won’t do that. I won’t.”
“It is your House!”
“The hell it is!” John said bitterly, banging a hand on the table so hard that the inkwell jumped and tipped on its side, drops of the viscous black fluid burbling out onto the wood. The two Miilarkians sat there with neither making a move to right the pot.
“Then why go back?” Tilda asked. John stared at the inkwell.
“Personal business,” he said. He held out a hand toward Tilda, and she slowly handed him back the note. He wet the quill from a blob on the table and signed the note in a flourishing hand. He put it back on the table in front of Tilda and stood, hoisting his shield to his back.
“I want to go home too, John,” Tilda said quietly, keeping her voice still.
“Wait a few months,” he said as an order. “Things will be quiet by then. Business will be back to normal.” He looked at Tilda, though now it was she who did not lift her eyes to meet his.
“You are good at what you do, Matilda Lanai. You can have your pick of another Guild if you want it. Or do something else. Your life is your own. Goodbye.”
John turned and walked with his long, legionnaire stride for the porch stairs. Tilda stopped him at the top of them.
“Captain Block did not die for you, you know,” she said. “He died for the House of Deskata.”
John froze, but only for a moment. He stepped down the stairs and moved onto the street, soon losing himself among many others making their way to someplace else.
*
