whichever currents held the ship close slammed her back against the drift. Cries floated across from up on deck, said there was nothing to be seen on the other side. Ringil heard the splash of a couple of sailors going in for a closer look.
Good luck with that.
The Lady Quilien of Gris was abruptly beside him, stumbling slightly in the rolling squelch of the drift. She fell against him; he caught her upright, set her back on her feet. Mingled band- and torchlight flickered across the mask of her face.
It was horrible, she said, though he was hard put to hear any trace of horror in her tone. The gap just opened up right beside us. He slipped and he was gone. Do you think he s dead?
And for just a moment, there and gone in the uncertain light as she leaned against him, he had the overwhelming impression that the words were mouthed, like some ceremonial hymn she had memorized in a language she did not know.
Yes, I think he s dead, he said flatly.
They poked about in the water for a while nonetheless, finally got the Famous Victory turned about and away from the drift, sent a pair of wiry, somber-faced divers down to take a look. The selected men stripped purposefully to their breeches, drew sailor s knives and dropped smoothly enough into the ocean swell, but in the dark it was a pointless enterprise, a defiance of truths they all already understood. The two men hauled themselves out a dozen dives later, stood bent over on the dragondrift, hands braced on knees, dripping and panting nothing to report.
Dresh Alannor would not be coming back.
He is one of the men spoke the sailor s formal valediction between deep-drawn breaths at peace. In the Salt Lord s halls.
The other man raised his head and shot his companion an incredulous look. He straightened all the way up, looked right at Quilien and Ringil in the light of raised torches, and then spat into the dragondrift at their feet.
Drowning s a filthy fucking death, he rasped, and took his shirt back from another crew member, and walked away.
Later, Ringil stood at the rail and watched the luminous white splash of waves on the dragondrift as it receded into the dark at the stern. He thought of the man they d left behind, tangled up and caught fast somewhere ten or fifteen feet down on the submerged wall of the drift, eyes wide and staring out into the black. Or perhaps already carried off into the cool gloom by currents or something more toothed and purposed.
Dresh Alannor. Son of Trelayne, Glades noble, commander of men.
There was a chill across his shoulders like a wet towel.
I have been thinking about what you said. Quilien, abruptly at his side in the pallid bandlight, dark hair hanging loose so it obscured her profile. Somehow, he hadn t heard her approach. Why the Dark Court might concern itself with the petty affairs aboard one small vessel. With the fate of that small vessel s captain.
Indeed, my lady?
He wasn t really listening. Most of his attention was on the crew, as they went sullenly about their tasks around him. The first mate had them on a pretty tight leash, but even so, there was a palpable anger pulsing through the shipboard air. Alannor had been well liked. Ringil thought he might be careful walking the deck at night from now on. He thought he might warn the Lady Quilien to take similar care.
Yes, the mistake would surely be to see such behavior as a single act, unrelated to any larger tapestry of events outside that one fireside tale. But is it not more likely that such a captain might in fact serve as a sacrificial piece on a larger board. A piece in a game that the nobles of the Dark Court like to play.
It was such a trite piece of coffeehouse pondering that he almost laughed.
I have heard this suggested before, my lady. Numerous times. It never much impressed me as a thesis. Why would such ancient, powerful beings concern themselves with anything as banal as a game played out among humans?
She leaned out on the rail then, let the wind take her uncovered hair and blow it away from a smile turned oddly wolfish.
Well, she said, without looking at him. Perhaps the game itself is so ancient that they have forgotten how to do anything else. Perhaps it is webbed into every memory they have, into the fiber of their being, and they cannot unlearn the habit. Perhaps, despite all their age and power, they have nothing else.
She tilted her grin toward him in the dark scuffle of the breeze. Raised her voice a little.
It must be difficult, after all, to give something up, when you are so very good at it. Don t you think?
And he thought, with a tiny, creeping unease, that her gaze as she spoke was directed less at him than at the sword across his back.
CHAPTER 28
The went to see Shanta as soon as the sun was up.
The naval engineer was a creature of habit. She found him exactly where she d expected at that hour, taking tea under an awning on the upper decks of his palatial houseboat. The mercenary guardsmen at the gangplank nodded her aboard she was a regular, unmistakable anyway for her skin and the alien distance in her eyes and a liveried slave escorted her up through the ziggurat levels of the boat. More slaves in attendance in the top gallery paneled wooden doors were drawn back with much ceremony, and she was ushered out onto the deck. Shanta was seated there under the awning amid carpets and cushions, surrounded by depleted platters of sweetmeats, bread, and oils. There was a tall samovar at his elbow, and a book laid open in his lap. He looked up, smiled when he saw her. She gave it back, thin. Waited to be formally announced, and for the slave to retire.
My lady Archeth, this is a pleasant surprise. Shanta gestured her to a cushion near his own. How wonderful to see you again so soon. Will you take some tea?
She stalked forward. What the fuck are you playing at, Mahmal?
I? He seemed genuinely taken aback.
You see any other doddering morons in the vicinity? She stood over him, raging. Swept a hand wide to encompass the empty deck. Oh. I guess not. Then it must be you I m talking to. Must be you I spent half of last night saving from an upcoming appointment as a fucking octopod s dinner!
Ah. Gravely. I see.
Do you? Do you really? She kicked the indicated cushion away across the deck. Have you ever seen one of those executions, Mahmal?
She knew he hadn t. Akal had always favored the clean sweep of an ax for his enemies; the slaughter boards in the Chamber of Confidences were an invention of Sabal II, reinstituted only now by Jhiral on his father s death. And since the accession, Shanta had kept pretty much to himself, initially in mourning for his old friend, and when this became untenable as an excuse, pleading age and the pressures of work.
I fear I am not much at court these days. I have not been fortunate enough to witness the ways in which Yhelteth advances into the modern age.
She thought she detected the faintest of tremors in the words, but if it was there, it was layered over with bland courtier calm.
And, she thought, it might as easily have been suppressed rage as fear.
She mastered her own anger. Went to the starboard rail and looked out over the water. Across the estuary, a fishing skiff tacked for the ocean, heeling steeply in the buffeting breeze.
Know the feeling.
She tried for toneless calm.
It s not good, Mahmal. Sanagh gave you up under interrogation. You and half the shipwright s guild, apparently. She looked back at him. I mean, when are you people going to get it through your fucking heads? The horse tribes kicked your asses. There isn t going to be a glorious resurgence of the coastal cultures. It is over. The Burnished Throne is our best shot at civilizing the world now.
My quarrel is not with the Burnished Throne.
The qualifying words hung in the air unspoken. She found herself checking the deck, reflexively, for
