Spy's Honor

too much for easy walking. To get some slack into his chains and reach the wall, where he’d have something to hang on to or at least brace himself against, he grabbed the chains and climbed up them.

Cold droplets spattered his face, and he looked up. Water gushed through a hole in the side of the ship. As he stared, the ship began to list to the other side. The crate that had smacked into him began to slide again, in the opposite direction.

Sashi was close. Clinging to his chains with one hand and pressing himself against the wall, Janto grabbed his familiar with the other hand and stuffed him into his shirt. We’re getting out of here. He reached into the bag and searched for the ring of keys.

The hatch opened above him, and a crowd of sailors hurried down the ladder.

“Who’s attacking us?” Janto called to them.

They ran past as if they hadn’t heard, struggling through the bilge water toward the hole with hammers and canvas and a ship bung. Some of them began rigging the pump.

Janto wrapped the chains several times around his wrists so he wouldn’t slide around, extracted the proper key, and snapped his manacles free. Ready? he called to Sashi.

The ferret trembled inside Janto’s shirt. Ready.

He let go of the chains and staggered toward the ladder.

There was another terrible impact—a great lurch and the sound of splintering wood. The sailors shouted. Janto’s feet slipped out from under him, and he splashed into the water. His hand found the base of the ladder, and he hauled himself up.

All right? he asked his familiar. Sashi was sodden and gasping against his chest, too stunned and terrified to answer. Weighed down by his dripping clothes, Janto struggled up the ladder to the upper deck and from there to the quarterdeck.

He emerged into the night air, which smelled of blood and gunpowder. Another splintering crash brought down the foremast, spilling ropes, sails, and men into the water. The deck beneath his feet was a horror, slippery with gore and seawater, littered with ropes and pulleys and shards of wood. An enormous warship loomed on their port side while another rode at their stern. Strangely, both seemed to be of Kjallan make. Beyond them were many more vessels, an entire fleet bearing Mosari and Sardossian flags.

“Why haven’t we struck our colors?” cried Janto, searching for the captain or anyone with authority. His eyes went to the flag mast. The ship had struck. The Kjallan flag had been lowered and replaced with the Sage, but the enemies seemed not to be accepting their surrender.

An authoritative voice boomed nearby. “Clear away the after bowlines! Up helm!”

Janto turned and ran toward the man issuing the orders. “Why aren’t they accepting our surrender?”

“Don’t fucking know. Get to work.” The captain shoved him away, looked into the tops, and cried out, “Clear away the head bowlines! No, not there, can’t you see it’s been shot through? Use the ratlines!”

“Sir, I’m your Mosari prisoner. I’m an important man among the Mosari. If we signal to those Mosari ships out there and tell them who I am, they may help us.”

The captain turned and looked at Janto as if he hadn’t really noticed him before. He called, “Signaler!”

A pale adolescent boy ran up. There was a splinter, thick as a man’s thumb, embedded in the boy’s arm. Janto gaped at it. “Yes, sir?” said the boy.

“Signal whatever this man tells you,” said the captain. He turned back to his crew. “Lay the headyards square! Shift over the headsheets!”

The boy looked at Janto expectantly.

“Signal Jan-Torres,” said Janto. “Spell it out. J-A-N-T-O-R-R-E- S. That should work in any language. If you have a signal for valuable information, add that.”

The boy summoned an enormous magelight ball and began to signal letter by letter. When he reached the N, the nearest ship’s cannons blazed orange. Janto and the others dropped belly-first into the wreckage on the deck. Debris rained down on them from above.

They staggered back to their feet. “Finish,” commanded Janto. The signaler continued.

When the signal was complete, he and the boy watched, trembling in anticipation.

One of the Mosari warships threw up a signal. It was no poor man’s magelight signal, but a blast of colors and shapes of the sort that only a pyrotechnic could produce. The signal was repeated down the line from ship to ship, a rolling wave of fireworks that lit up the black sky. Answering signals rapidly followed. They rolled their way back through the fleet, finally reaching the two attacking ships.

The cannons stopped firing.

28

The small boat plunged down the crest of a wave, splashing everyone within. Janto wiped the spray from his face and looked up at the rapidly nearing Mosari ship he’d insisted the Kjallans deliver him to as a condition of their ship being spared.

“All right?” one of the rowers called to him.

“Quite all right,” said Janto. Was it obvious he wasn’t a sailor? His stomach, which had calmed considerably since the start of the voyage, was voicing its displeasure at the rolling waves. He hoped it didn’t show. This was a bad time to display weakness.

Soon the Sparrowhawk, Janto’s brother Kal-Torres’s flagship, loomed above them. Sashi wriggled out of Janto’s shirt and perched on his shoulder, virtually proclaiming Janto to be a shroud mage. Janto had finally allowed his ferret to become visible, and the rowers took turns gawking at the creature. Sashi eyed the ship as they approached it. The hackles rose along his neck and shoulders. This task will fall to me, he said.

What do you mean? asked Janto.

But his familiar was quiet, as if preoccupied.

The rowers turned the boat neatly until it thumped against the hull. Kal’s men dropped a rope ladder down the side, and Janto climbed up. Not wanting to make a poor first impression on these countrymen he hadn’t seen in months, over whom he intended to rule, he mustered his strength to spring over the rails at the top.

Kal-Torres stood before him with his familiar, the seabird Gishi, perched on his shoulder. He’d matured astonishingly since Janto had last seen him, more than nine months ago when the war with Kjall had begun. He’d be twenty-two years old now, to Janto’s twenty-five.The soft lines of his once-boyish face had hardened, becoming angular and masculine, while the sun had bronzed his skin to a deep copper and lightened his blond hair. Still the lady-killer, thought Janto, but in a different way. Faint lines on his brother’s face suggested stress and worry.

Flanking Kal were his zo officers and their menagerie of familiars. Behind them stood the ordinary sailors, men who did not belong to the ruling zo caste and did not possess magic.

After a moment’s awkward hesitation, Kal stepped forward and embraced him. “Brother. We feared you were lost to us forever.”

Janto returned the hug, thumping him warmly on the back. “It’s good to see you again, Kal.”

They separated, and Kal studied him from arm’s length. “You’ve seen rough treatment, kali. Sapo!”

A Healer stepped forward from the line of officers. “Yes, sire?”

Janto started at the title. Sire?

Of course. In Janto’s absence, Kal-Torres had crowned himself king. He wasn’t wearing the royal carcanet, but only because that symbol of kingship was back on Mosar, if it had survived the war at all. Would Kal renounce the title now that Janto had returned? Janto studied his brother. Kal’s expression was friendly and his manner easy, but the set of his jaw and the intensity of his gaze suggested more complicated feelings. When they’d last parted, the war had been everyone’s foremost concern, but Kal’s jealousy still simmered beneath the surface, awaiting only an opportunity to boil over.

“See to his injuries,” Kal ordered the Healer.