age.
Watching Aliver’s face as he treaded water, Barad saw the vague motion beneath his skin again. Aaden could not see it. Nobody could. Only he with his accursed stone eyes. Not even Aliver knew. He doesn’t know that he is trapped inside himself, and I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anybody.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Melio Sharratt watched Clytus exit the tavern. The thatch hanging from the roof brushed his hair as he emerged, leaving him no more or less neatly coiffed for it. Clytus strode over and stood beside Melio. With his thick arms crossed and shoulders bunched with muscle and his weathered face one notch down from a full scowl, he seemed more like a figure to fear than like one who needed to be cautious. Once he had been one of Dariel’s close friends, a brigand then and still now. He said, “He’s here.”
Melio asked, “Will he talk?”
Clytus cleared his throat and brushed the hard knuckles of one hand along his chin. “Yeah, he’ll talk,” he answered, sliding his gaze over to study a group of children playing a betting game with seashells.
Melio nearly said that nobody on the street was paying them the slightest bit of attention, but this was not his territory. He had been out of that since Corinn sent him south on the Ballan, all the way around the Far South and back up along the western coast of Talay in the company of some of Dariel’s old brigand crew. Clytus captained the ship now, with old Nineas still as the chief pilot, and Geena in command of the crew. Strange the way the passing of time made enemies friends, folding one thing in upon another so that it was hard to imagine the old order of things. Dariel, going by the name Spratling, had once pirated the coast south of here, a criminal in the eyes of Hanish Mein’s authority. Now he was a prince of the empire, and the brigands who had once been his lawless crew sailed in service to the crown. Although now he was an absent prince, missing in a faraway land, perhaps no longer among the living…
“All right, come in,” Clytus said grudgingly, as if it were against his better judgment. “Let’s get this over with.”
As he slipped beneath the overhanging thatch, Melio reflexively grasped for the hilt of his sword, to rest his hand there and feel the tilt of the sheath trailing him like a tail. He had to settle for gripping his leather belt instead. His sword was back on the Ballan with the rest of his things. Prominent weapons were not allowed in the taverns of the Coastal Towns. He did, however, carry a smaller one, unseen by the eyes of the tavern guard who looked them over as they passed.
Melio followed Clytus back through the dim room, lit only by the candles at each table and torches along the rear wall, where young men poured ale. The air oozed with the scent of it, mixed with pipe smoke and the pungency of garlic.
The table they stopped at was no different from the others, a circle centered around a thick-wicked candle. The yellow glow lit two men in sharp highlights. One of them rose and moved away when they arrived, without so much as a glance up. Clytus turned and followed the man, only turning back when he had seated himself at another table. The second man had stayed put. Large bone earrings, shaped like primitive fishhooks, dangled from his ears. His beard covered only his chin and had been oiled to a curving tip, something he kept shaped with caressing fingers. His face, behind all that, was forgettable. If Melio had turned away and had to describe him, he would only be able to recall the earrings, beard, the oily fingers.
“This is Kartholome Gilb. Formerly a small ship pilot for the league. Now… what are you now?”
“I’m between employers at the moment. Working for myself.”
“A brigand, then.”
Kartholome dipped his head in acceptance of the title. “Clytus already told me who you are, Sharratt. If you want a drink you’ll have to get it yourself. Ale only. We don’t drink the league’s wine here.” When neither man moved, he leaned back on his stool and motioned with his hand that they should feel free to sit.
“So… Clytus says you’ve come all the way from the monkey’s pucker itself. What brings you to Tivol? If it’s whores you want, you’ve come to the right place. Though I’m disappointed. I take it the princess doesn’t do the… interesting things. Royalty can be like that. With a little coin any girl in town will play the princess for you, though.”
Melio threw an angry look at Clytus. “I thought you said he was ready to talk.”
“He is. Kartholome, stop shifting crap with your tongue and let’s get on to what we discussed.”
“But it’s not every day one meets the mighty steed a princess rides. He doesn’t look so-”
Melio lunged across the table so quickly that he had completed his attack and sat back in his seat before Kartholome knew what had happened. Kartholome touched his nose, the tip of which bloomed with a thin line of blood that quickly began to drip onto the table. He murmured a curse, but seemed more impressed than angry or pained. Melio’s hand lay on the wood, resting over the hilt of the short knife he had just cut Kartholome with.
Clytus glanced around the tavern, and then broke the short silence. “Calm heads. Calm heads. Look, Kartholome, Melio Sharratt isn’t only a Marah; he trains Marah. Understand that? He moves different, yeah? Walks upright and is… a little delicate with his hands.” Melio cocked an eyebrow. “But don’t think that just because he talks like a toff that he couldn’t remove your liver, cut it up, and feed it to you before you knew what you were eating. He’s not to be trifled with, and the princess is not a topic he’s interested in discussing.” Clytus leaned forward. Through gritted teeth, he said, “He’s here in the service of the queen.”
Kartholome shrugged. “I was just making conversation.” He pinched the tip of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and seemed, if anything, more curiously amiable than he had been before receiving the injury. “All right, assuming you let me keep my nose hairs, let’s talk about what you want to.”
“I want to know what happened to Prince Dariel in the Other Lands.”
“You don’t ask much.” Kartholome let go of his nose and dabbed it a few times, then put pressure back on it. “What I heard is that the prince was an offering. A deal sweetener. The Auldek just weren’t in the mood for making nice. Grouchy buggers they are.”
Melio stared at him. “What in the Giver’s name are you talking about?”
Kartholome rolled his eyes and began again. “Fine. Try to follow, though. Sire Neen didn’t care a pear about Dariel, or about the Akarans. No leagueman does. He also didn’t give a pear about the Lothan Aklun. Hates them, truth be told. Neen came up with a grand plan to get rid of both of them. Kill the Lothan Aklun with some poison or something, and then he would go direct to the Auldek. You see it? Figured he would control both sides of the trade-quota or mist or whatever it was going to be. But, like I said, the Auldek didn’t like the look of him. Their chieftain chopped Neen limb from limb and took a bath in his blood. Wouldn’t have minded seeing that. You?”
“You see any of this with your own eyes?”
“Nah. I never went across. I worked the Outer Isles, the Thousands, mostly. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. Thing like that, people talk.”
“And Dariel?”
Kartholome, finally satisfied his nose was no longer bleeding, released it and sat back. “The prince. He was there when it happened. Neen was offering him to the Auldek, sort of a token of good faith. ‘Here, have a prince. Do with him what you will.’ He’s probably dead. Though-mind, I don’t really credit this-one of the Ishtat who survived claimed to have seen someone grab Dariel. Not Auldek. Not Ishtat. Just someone. Guy that looked like a boar. He was standing near the prince, he said, and the guy knocked into him as he passed.”
“Do you believe this man?”
Kartholome dipped his eyes toward the table for a second. “You going to cut me again?”
Melio realized he had tightened his grip around his knife’s small handle. He released it, lifted his palm, and tented his fingers over the blue metal of the blade. “Can I speak to him?”
“Not a chance. He’s Ishtat. He talked too much even talking to me, but they were all spooked. Pretty big to- do if you ask me. I wouldn’t know where to find him even if I wanted to, and he wouldn’t talk to you anyway. Not a chance.”
“How do you come by this information? I thought the league never let anyone get out of their fold. You shouldn’t even exist to be here talking to me.”
“The league scrubs their own decks. No doubt about it. The league used to use contractors for interisland
