corner him? How many times did you think you had him before he slipped out of your grasp like water from a leaky cup.”
She snarled and slapped her hands down on the table.
“I do what I must, Ghassan. So does Samir. Only you are so weak that you hide behind your flags and regulations as you flounder around, unable even to catch your brother with half the world’s military power behind you.”
She fell silent, staring down at the table. She appeared to focus on something for a moment and then her mood changed like a sudden squall. She glanced sidelong at the stony face of the now bitterly angry captain; the target of her tirade.
“I’m sorry, Ghassan.” She gave him a weak smile. “I’ve had a tough time and life is not very easy for me at the moment. I shouldn’t take it out on you. Forgive my harsh words.”
Ghassan continued to glare at her as she returned her gaze to study the map on the table beneath her hands. An interesting archipelago lay between her thumbs and this, if she was reading this correctly, was looming in her near future. She turned to regard Ghassan again and the captain straightened.
“Thank you for you time, lady Asima. I shall not disturb you again until the evening meal is prepared. Rest well.”
Without a word, he cast the bones and the jewel onto the bunk and, turning, strode from the room, allowing the door to shut with a loud bang behind him. Asima sighed. Had she gone too far? She needed him distant, but not too distant. New plans… new plans within plans. Now where was that archipelago?
In which Asima makes her presence felt
Asima peered from the viewport in the side of the room. She had been alone most of the time since her ‘conversation’ with Ghassan when she came aboard, the only interruption being the delivery of her meals by one or other of the crew. Apparently the captain fell disinclined to join her to eat, but that was better for Asima anyway. It had taken around an hour and all of her considerable mental faculties to fathom the arcane naval charts on the table, plot the distance to the archipelago, estimate the ship’s speed and therefore how long it would be until they reached the string of small islands. Having embarked on the afternoon tide, the Wind of God should pass the archipelago in the middle of the second night.
The interminable hours alone in a small, bare room were then mostly spent irritably tutting as she went through all her packages. It had been galling enough when she left Akkad stripping so many years of her life’s acquisitions down to three large cases. Now she realised it would have to be just one, and preferably the bag, which was easily transportable. Refining what she needed and what she could realistically do without was a task of several hours on its own.
Finally there had been the time spent listening to the orders and the heavy footsteps above and outside, peering out of the door and along the corridor to the deck when she felt she needed more information. To work out routines and schedules by sound alone was a difficult task, but Asima had achieved more during her time in the harem.
The first night had been very informative with respect to the crew’s night time schedule. The second morning, she had braced herself and left the room, ostensibly to stretch her legs. Ghassan had glared at her when she appeared on deck and had assigned one of the oarsmen to escort her. She had made a great show of enjoying the sea air, stretching and relaxing, and had shown an interest in the workings of the ship, as she would no doubt be expected to. In fact, she was very interested, but only in certain aspects. How sails were set or oars were stored was of little value to her. Other parts…
And then she had retired to her cabin once more to settle in for the day and finalise her plans. The hours had passed tensely for her as the naval vessel bounced lightly across the waves on its journey to the great city that was the centre of the Empire and the start of her life of imposed exile in obscurity.
Now, the moon was bright and shining down on the water, making the waves glitter and dance, which worked both for and against her plan, but then she could hardly control the heavens. Squinting out to the horizon, she confirmed what she thought she saw a minute ago. Marked on the charts, ‘eagle rock’ was one of the standard naval navigation markers and stood at the near end of the closest island in the archipelago. She smiled to herself. Predictably, ‘eagle rock’ was identifiable from here, rising aquiline above a low spit of sand.
That eagle marked the arrival of the archipelago and the departure of one prickly passenger.
Hoisting the heavy bag onto her shoulder, she glanced down at the other two, open on the bed and messy and dishevelled.
With a sigh, she tapped the hilt of the knife in her belt with her free hand and gave a last quick scan of the cabin to make sure she’d forgotten nothing. She hadn’t, of course. Asima was nothing if not thorough.
Nodding with satisfaction, she opened the door of her cabin as quietly as she could, the faint creak going unnoticed among the many other creaks and groans of a ship under sail. It was almost midnight and most of the crew would be asleep. The oarsmen were bedded down in their temporary sleeping rolls in the flat space between the benches in the lower deck, their oars up and locked, out of the water. The ship slipped quietly through the sea, rising and falling gently, carried by a light wind, slowly but continually.
The only crew still active on deck would be two or three of the more senior men above her current position, maintaining course and speed, lookouts in the bow and atop the mast, and two or three ordinary crewmen padding around on watch where the oar benches lay empty overnight. The only light kept aflame was at the rear where the officers worked.
Asima peered out into the corridor from her door at the end. The rear of the ship supported what was, in essence, an extra partial deck. Most of the ship consisted of a hold in the bottom of the hull, with a deck of oar seats and ports above, and then the main deck, with two more rows of oar seats. The centre of the ship, however, boasted a raised timber castle-like structure housing the war machines, while the rear held an enclosed section of cabins with the rudder and command section atop it.
There were only seven rooms in the covered area, five occupied by the most senior officers, one for medical use, and one for dining. Asima had been given the captain’s cabin and everyone had shuffled down a room for the duration of the voyage. She frowned at the corridor as she held her breath and listened.
No sound came from the two nearest rooms, while the second door on the left hummed with the sound of gentle snoring. The last cabin and the sick room were silent, but the noise of laughter and activity issued from the dining hall. The door there was slightly ajar, yellow light illuminating the medical bay door opposite. There appeared to be a dice game going on within, along with a lot of drinking.
Taking a deep breath, Asima crept as quietly and quickly as she could down the corridor. Silently, she slipped past the beam of yellow light, catching a momentary glimpse of men at the table within who were paying no attention to the corridor.
Heaving a sigh of relief, she continued on to the end of the corridor. Pausing, she peered out through the doorway. The door itself had been jammed open with a wooden peg, allowing the warm and fresh night time air to circulate in the interior. The sounds of several dozen sleeping sailors rose noisily from the deck below, adding to the creaking and groaning of the ship. If anything, the vessel was actually noisier at night than during the day.
For a brief moment, as she grasped the door frame and prepared to put her plan into action, Asima experienced doubt, a thing that happened so rarely it gave her pause. Was she being foolish? It was possible she could make a comfortable life in Velutio; certainly she would be a great deal more welcome there than in Pelasia or M’Dahz. Could it be that she was choosing the difficult course when she could make a life in the north?
She shook her head, angry at her own weakness. She had no intention of living out her days in exile in a place where the wind chilled the bones and rain was a regular occurrence. And the weather was only a small part of her reasons. The Imperial capital would already be full of people who knew the local game so much better than her. She would stand precious little chance of getting close to the Emperor or his companions and she would likely end her days as some strange, foreign refugee existing on the periphery of court life.
Ashar’s ban or not, Pelasia was the place for her. It was in her blood and in what was left of her soul. And the realisation of that in her first few hours aboard had prompted her new scheme. If three satraps; a vicious one, a greedy one and a virtual nomad, could pull off a coup that almost changed Pelasia forever, imagine what she could
