if so many Forthwegians didn't hate Kaunians.' He gave Vanai a quick kiss. 'You need to remember that not all Forthwegians do.'
She smiled. 'I already knew that. I'm always glad to hear it again, though- and to see proof.' This time, she kissed him. One thing led to another. They ended up eating supper later than they'd intended to. They were both young enough to take that kind of thing for granted, even to laugh about it. Vanai never stopped to wonder how rare and fortunate it was.
Commander Cornelu guided his leviathan out of the harbor at Setubal and into the Strait of Valmiera. The leviathan was a fine, frisky beast. Cornelu patted its smooth, slick skin. 'You may be as good as Eforiel,' he said. 'Aye, you just may.'
The leviathan wriggled its long, slim body beneath him. It was far more sinuous, far more graceful, than its blocky cousins, the whales. It didn't understand what he'd said- he didn't think it would have understood even if he'd spoken Lagoan rather than his native Sibian- but it liked to hear him speak.
He patted it again. 'Do you know what kind of compliments I'm paying you?' he asked. Since the leviathan couldn't answer, he did: 'No, of course you don't. But if you did, you'd be flattered, believe me.'
He'd ridden Eforiel from Sibiu to Lagoas after the Algarvians overran his island. Going into exile in Lagoas was vastly preferable to yielding to the invaders. Without false modesty, he knew Sibian-trained leviathans were the best in the world. Eforiel could do things no Lagoan leviathan-rider could hope to get his mount to match.
But Eforiel was dead, slain off his home island of Tirgoviste. After making his way back to Lagoas again, he'd had this new beast for a while, and he'd worked hard to train it up to Sibian standards. It was getting there. It might even have already arrived.
The leviathan darted to the left. Its jaws opened for a moment, then closed on a mackerel. A gulp and the fish was gone. Those great tooth jaws wouldn't have made more than two bites of a man- maybe only one. Like dragonfliers, leviathan-riders had, and needed to have, great respect for the beasts they took to war. Unlike dragonfliers, they got respect and affection in return. Cornelu wouldn't have wanted anything to do with dragons.
'Nasty, stupid, bad-tempered beasts,' he told the leviathan. 'Nothing like you. No, nothing like you.'
With a flick of its tail, the leviathan dove below the surface. Magecraft, grease, and a rubber suit protected Cornelu from the chill of the sea. More magecraft let him breathe underwater. Without that spell, leviathan-riding would have been impossible. His mount could stay submerged far longer than he could.
Veterinary mages kept promising a spell to let leviathans breathe underwater, too. That would have changed warfare on the sea. Despite endless promises, though, the spell had yet to make an appearance. Cornelu didn't expect it during this war or, indeed, during his lifetime.
One stretch of ocean looked very much like another. Cornelu thanked the powers above that the day was clear: he had no trouble guiding his leviathan north, toward the coast of Valmiera. Along with him, the beasts carried two eggs hung under its belly. The Algarvians thought they could ship more or less safely in the waters off Valmiera. His job was to show them they were wrong.
Every so often, he glanced up at the sky. Ever since Mezentio's men seized Valmiera, their dragons and the Lagoans' had clashed above the strait that separated the island from the mainland. Now one side seized the upper hand, now the other. He'd had too many Algarvian dragonfliers attack him to want to let another one see him before he spied the enemy dragon.
Each time he looked today, the sky was empty. The Lagoans said a lot of Algarvian dragons had flown out of Valmiera lately, headed west. Maybe they were right, though Cornelu had trouble trusting them a great deal further than he trusted Mezentio's men. If they were, the war in Unkerlant was making the Algarvians forget about everything else.
Toward evening, the Derlavaian mainland rose up out of the sea ahead of Cornelu. He tapped his leviathan in a particular way. As it had been trained to do, it lifted its head out of the sea, standing on its tail with powerful beats of its flukes. Cornelu rose with the leviathan's head, and could see much farther than he could while closer to the surface.
Seeing farther, however, didn't mean seeing more here. No Algarvian freighters or warships glided along the ley lines. No Valmieran fishing boats used the ley lines, either, nor did any sailboats scud along without the power bigger vessels drew from the earth's grid of sorcerous energy.
Cornelu cursed under his breath. He'd sunk an Algarvian ley-line cruiser, along with other, smaller craft. He wanted more. With the Algarvians holding down his kingdom with a hand of iron, he hungered for more. The Sibian exiles fighting out of Lagoas were among the fiercest, most determined foes the Algarvians had.
But what a man wanted and what he got were not always, or even very often, one and the same. Cornelu had learned that painful lesson all too well. For this foray, he carried not one but two crystals. Making sure he'd chosen the one attuned to the Lagoan Admiralty, he murmured the activating charm he'd learned by rote and spoke into it: 'Off the coast of Valmiera. No vessels visible. Proceeding with second plan.' He'd also learned the phrases by rote. Lagoan was related to Sibian, but not too closely: its grammar was simplified, and it had borrowed far more words from Kuusaman and classical Kaunian than had his native tongue.
In the crystal, he saw the image of a Lagoan naval officer. Lagoan uniforms were darker, more somber, than the sea-green he'd worn while serving Sibiu. The Lagoan said, 'Good luck with second plan. Good hunting with first.' He'd evidently been briefed that Sibiu spoke his language imperfectly. After a small flare of light, the crystal returned to blankness.
The leviathan twisted in the water to catch a squid. Cornelu didn't let the motion disturb him as he replaced the first crystal in its oiled-leather case and drew out the second one from its.
Again, he murmured an activation charm. He spoke this one with much more confidence. It was in Algarvian, and Algarvian and Sibian were as closely related to each other as a couple of brothers, closer even than Valmieran and Jelgavan. He didn't know how the Lagoans had come by an Algarvian crystal: taken it from a captured dragonflier, perhaps, or brought it back from the land of the Ice People, from which Mezentio's men had been expelled.
However they'd got it, he had it now. He didn't speak into it, as he had into the one attuned to the Admiralty. All he did was listen, to see what emanations it would pick up from other Algarvian crystals aboard nearby ships or on the mainland.
For a while, he heard nothing. He cursed again, this time not under his breath. He hated the idea of going back to Setubal without having accomplished anything. He'd done it before, but he still hated it. It seemed a waste of an important part of his life.
And then, faint in the distance, he caught one Algarvian talking to another: '-cursed son of a whore slipped through our fingers again. Do you suppose his sister really is tipping him?'
'Not a chance- you think she's not watched?' the second Algarvian replied. 'No, somebody slipped up, that's all, and won't admit it.'
'Maybe. Maybe.' But the first Algarvian didn't sound convinced. Along with the crystals, Cornelu had along a slate and a grease pencil. He scribbled notes on the conversation. He had no idea what it meant. Someone back in Setubal might.
After sunset, sea and sky and land went dark. As the Lagoans doused lamps to keep Algarvian dragons from finding targets, so Mezentio's men made sure Valmiera offered nothing to beasts flying up from the south. Cornelu found himself yawning. He didn't want to sleep; he'd have to orient himself again when he woke, for his leviathan would surely go wandering after food.
A fish leaped out of the sea and splashed back into the water. The tiny creatures on which fish fed glowed in alarm for a moment, then faded. Cornelu yawned again. He wondered why people and other animals slept. What earthly good did it do? Nothing he could see.
His captured Algarvian crystal started picking up emanations again. A couple of Mezentio's soldiers- Cornelu gradually realized they were brothers or close cousins- were comparing notes about their Valmieran girlfriends. They went into richly obscene detail. After listening for a while, Cornelu wasn't sleepy anymore. He didn't take notes on this conversation; he doubted the Lagoan officers who eventually got his slate would be amused.
'Oh, aye, she aims her toes right at the ceiling, she does,' one of the Algarvians said. The other one laughed.
