peninsula toward us?”
“If there is, they might be coming to support Koschei himself. Perhaps they heard about his capture, and they’ve come to save him.”
“Maybe. I don’t like it, either way.” The Italian quickened his step. “There’s far too much strangeness in the world these days for my taste. In Italia, there are no cults or immortals or secret armies. Just lies and murder and conspiracy and court intrigue. King versus pope, as it should be. Clean and simple. One wins, one loses, and the rest of us drink and wench the night away, to prepare to do it all again the next day.”
Tycho chewed his lip. “I admit, there’s a certain appeal in that. The politics in your country may be vicious, but at least they’re straightforward. Greed. Lust. Fear. But here, every time I turn around there’s some damn ritual or custom or law that makes everything grind to a halt. Festivals, feast days, mourning days, supplications. Every day, the church complains, the guilds complain, the nobles complain. We have drunken Vlachians and Rus and Raskans brawling in the streets. I can’t understand how Lady Nerissa manages it all.”
They reached the top of the stair and Tycho signed the log book again before they stepped out into the brisk night air.
“Where to now?” the Italian asked.
“Well, we have a thousand Vlachian mounted archers just loitering about the north gate,” Tycho said, rubbing the stitch in his side. “They could be in Saray by dawn. And a messenger could be back here again by noon tomorrow.”
“And then we would know what’s really going on out there.”
“Precisely.” Tycho climbed into the waiting carriage and told the driver to take them to the north gate. Then he leaned back into the padded seat and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Dreaming of raven tresses and long white legs?” Salvator asked.
“Dreaming of bed,” Tycho said.
“Hm. Whatever happened to that girl, anyway?”
Tycho sighed. “She went back to Athens months ago.”
“Oh, I see. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Tycho said. “She left before I could make a fool of myself.”
Salvator laughed. “You’re hopeless.”
Tycho stared out the window at the dark streets of Constantia rattling past. He saw narrow brick row houses huddled shoulder to shoulder, and several shops with huge glass display windows, and a stable full of sleeping draft horses. They passed a small band of men with rifles slung over their shoulders, but they wore no uniforms. Tycho rubbed his eyes and said, “She told me that very same thing herself.”
Chapter 6. Fog
Wren sat up in her hammock with a sharp gnawing hunger in her belly. The Espani caravel rocked gently at anchor in the Strait and a sickly gray light fell through the cracks in the deck overhead. Boots paced lazily above her, and in the distance she could hear the wooden creaking of other ships nearby. Wren frowned as her fox ears twitched.
“Omar? Are you awake?”
The old man snorted loudly in his hammock and mumbled, “No.”
“I hear something. A ship.”
“We’re in a ship,” he muttered.
“No. Out there. Another ship. It’s coming this way.” She slipped down to the floor and crept along the curving wall toward the stairs that led up to the main deck. The watery rippling sound grew louder, a steady rushing like the distant roar of a waterfall undercut with the heavy thrumming of an inhuman heart beat.
A steam engine!
“Omar? I think you should get up.” She jogged up the steps and emerged into the foggy gloom of a cold morning mist. Beyond the dark brown rails of La Rosa floated an endless white cloud that hid the water and the shore. Only the sharp tips of the neighboring ships’ masts could be seen swaying in the fog, and beyond them the blunt walls of Stamballa stood still and silent in the distance.
Dammit Woden, why did it have to be fog? Not aether, just fog. Here I am, thousands of leagues from your holy Ysland, lost in a strange land, the lone voice a reason in a mad world of walking corpses and metal ships, and you have to give me fog? What sort of god does this to his most loyal daughter?
Beside her, a handful of the Espani sailors lingered by the starboard rail, peering into the mist and whispering to each other. Up on the quarter deck, Captain Ortiz gave the heavy brass bell beside the wheel a single clang. A moment later, Omar trudged up the steps and stood beside her. He yawned.
“Something’s coming,” Wren said. “And I think it’s big.”
“Impossible to tell,” Omar said. “Sound bounces around in a fog like this. It carries over the water, it echoes off the walls. I’ll bet you a million darics it’s just a little fishing boat puttering past the anchorage.”
A huge dark shadow formed in the fog, and Wren backed away from the railing. “A million darics?”
The mist parted and the iron-bound prow of a Turkish gunboat slammed into the side of La Rosa. The deck shook beneath her feet and Wren stumbled to her knees, but she scrambled up and away from the starboard rail and grabbed hold of a rope lashed to the mast in the center of the deck. To her right she saw Omar running back toward the captain at the wheel, and to her left she saw the Espani sailors pouring up from their bunks below decks with clubs and knives clenched in their fists.
The starboard rail of the caravel cracked and splintered as the gunboat turned hard against it, and the Turkish ironclad swept around and crashed its side against La Rosa ‘s. Wren peered into the fog, at the dark figures running along the gunwales of the other ship, and suddenly there were men leaping from the gunboat onto the caravel with wide-mouthed pistols and single-edge swords.
The blood thundered in her ears as the Espani sailors crashed into their attackers, and Wren dashed across the deck to the port rail and then back to the quarter deck where Omar and Ortiz stood shouting orders at the crew. As she pounded up the steps, she heard a woman’s voice echoing through the mist and she turned to stare at the deck of the Turkish gunboat.
A woman stood on the iron-bound deck with one foot planted on the back of the small cannon there. She wore a pale blue tunic under a dented breastplate that looked as though it hadn’t been polished in a century. There was no helmet on her head, and a short crop of black hair fluttered over her forehead. Wren almost mistook her for a man, but the woman called out again in Eranian as she pointed her long silvery saber at the Espani ship. Wren grimaced, trying to remember her lessons in the southern tongue, but the woman spoke too quickly for Wren to understand.
What does she want? We passed their check point. This ship doesn’t even have any guns!
Wren bolted to Omar’s side and when she saw that neither he nor the captain was holding the wheel, she grabbed it with one hand as she said, “What’s going on? Who is that woman? What does she want?”
Ortiz muttered something in Espani and then jogged to the steps to fend off one of the invading sailors.
Omar glanced back at Wren. “That woman… She…”
“What? Can you tell what she said? What does she want?”
Omar’s expression hardened. “She wants me.” He gripped his seireiken tightly, but did not draw it out.
“You? Why? Do you know her?”
Omar nodded. “That’s Nadira.”
Who the devil is Nadira, you old fool? Can’t you ever just answer a question without making me ask another one?
But Omar was already jogging away to help Ortiz. Wren frowned at the wooden steering wheel before her and then gazed out over the deck of La Rosa where a dozen Espani sailors were grappling and stabbing a dozen Turkish sailors. Above the fray she peered into the mist, seeing nothing but knowing that somewhere out there was the southern shore of the Strait and the walls of Stamballa.
Well, my good lord Woden, if the Turks aren’t going to play nice, then there’s no reason to give them what they want, is there?
