Princeps Fury

He walked toward the stairway leading down into the fortifications within the Shieldwall itself, where a heated chamber and a cot waited for him. He’d gone perhaps ten paces when a scream of wind, the windstream of an incoming Knight Aeris, howled in the distance.

Raucus paused, and a moment later, a Knight Aeris soared in, escorted by one of the Third Aleran’s Knights who had been flying patrol. Night had fallen, but the snow always made that a minor inconvenience, particularly when the moon was out. All the same, it wasn’t until the man had landed that Raucus spotted the insignia of the First Antillan upon his breastplate.

The man hurried to Raucus, panting, and slammed his fist to his heart in a hasty salute. “My lord,” he gasped.

Raucus returned the salute. “Report.”

“Message from Captain Tyreus, my lord,” the Knight panted. “His position is under heavy attack, and he urgently requests reinforcements. We’ve never seen so many Icemen in one place, my lord.”

Raucus looked at the man for a moment and nodded. Then, without another word, he summoned his wind furies, took to the air, and headed west, toward the First Antillan’s position, a hundred miles down the wall, at the best speed he could manage for the distance.

His men needed him. Rest would have to wait.

It was what one did.

* * *

“And I don’t care how hungover you are, Hagan!” said Captain Demos, in a perfectly conversational voice that nonetheless carried the length of the ship and up and down the dock. “You get those lines coiled properly, or I’ll have you scraping barnacles all the way across the Run!”

Gaius Octavian watched the surly, bleary-eyed sailor turn back to his work, this time performing more to the liking of the Slive’s captain. The ships had begun leaving the harbor at Mastings on the morning tide, just after dawn. It was near to midmorning, and the harbor and the sea beyond looked like a forest of masts and billowing sails, rolling over the waves to the horizon. Hundreds of ships, the largest fleet Alera had ever seen, were now sailing for open sea.

The only ship still in port, in fact, was the Slive. It looked stained, old, and worn. It wasn’t. Its captain simply chose to forgo the usual painting and piping. Its sails were patched and dirty, its lines dark with smears of tar. The carved female figure on the prow, so often made to resemble benevolent female-form furies and revered ancestors on other ships, looked more like a young riverfront doxy than anything else.

If one didn’t know what to look for, the sheer amount of sail she could hang and the long, lean, dangerous lines of the Slive might go completely overlooked. She was too small to be matched squarely against a proper warship, but she was swift and nimble on the open sea, and her captain was a dangerously competent man.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” rumbled Antillar Maximus. The Tribune was of a height with Tavi, though more heavily muscled, and his armor and equipment were so scratched and dented by use that they would never have passed muster on a parade ground. Not that anyone in the First Aleran Legion gave a bloody crow’s feather about that.

“Whether I’m sure or not,” Tavi replied quietly, “his ship is the only left in port.”

Maximus grimaced. “Point,” he growled. “But he’s a bloody pirate, Tavi. You have a title to think about now. A Princeps of Alera shouldn’t have a vessel like that as his flagship. It’s… dubious.”

“So’s my title,” Tavi replied. “Do you know of a more competent captain? Or a faster ship?”

Max snorted out another breath and looked at the third person on the dock. “Practicality over all. This is your fault.”

The young woman spoke with perfect assurance. “Yes it is,” she said calmly. Kitai still wore her long white hair in the fashion of the Horse clan of the Marat people, shaved to the scalp along the sides and left long in a swath over the center of her skull, like the mane of one of the Horse clan’s totem mounts. She was dressed in leather riding breeches, a loose white tunic, and duelist’s belt bearing two swords. If the cool of the mid-autumn morning disturbed her in her light dress, she showed no signs of it. Her green eyes, upturned at the corners, as were all of her people’s, roamed over the ship alertly, like a cat’s, distant and interested at the same time. “Alerans have a great many foolish ideas in their heads. Pound on their skulls often enough, and some of them are bound to fall out eventually.”

“Captain?” Tavi called, grinning. “Will your ship be fit to sail at any point today?”

Demos came over to the ship’s railing and leaned his forearms on it, staring down at them. “Oh, aye, Your Highness,” he replied. “Whether or not you’ll be on it when it does is another matter entirely.”

“What?” Max said. “Demos, you’ve been paid half the amount of your contract, up front. I gave it to you myself.”

“Yes,” Demos replied. “I’ll be glad to cross the sea with the fleet. I’ll be glad to take you and the pretty barbarian girl.” Demos pointed a finger at Tavi. “But His Royal Highness there doesn’t set foot aboard my ship until he settles up with me.”

Max narrowed his eyes. “Your ship’s going to look awful funny with a big hole burned straight through it.”

“I’ll plug it with your fat head,” Demos retorted with a wintry smile.

“Max,” Tavi said gently. “Captain, may I come aboard to settle accounts?”

Max growled under his breath. “The Princeps of Alera should not have to ask permission to board a pirate ship.”

“On his own ship,” Kitai murmured, “captain outranks Princeps.”

Tavi reached the top of the gangplank and spread his hands. “Well?” Demos, a lean man, slightly taller than average, dressed in a black tunic and breeches, turned to lean one elbow on the rail and study Tavi. His free hand, Tavi noted, just happened to fall within an inch or two of the hilt of his sword. “You destroyed some of my property.”

“That’s right,” Tavi said. “The chains in your hold you used to imprison slaves.”

“You’re going to replace them.”

Tavi rolled one armored shoulder in a shrug. “What are they worth to you?”

“I don’t want money. It isn’t about money,” Demos said. “They were mine. You had no right to them.”

Tavi met the man’s eyes steadily. “I think a few slaves might say the same thing regarding their lives and freedom, Demos.”

Demos blinked his eyes, slowly. Then he looked away. He was quiet for a moment, before murmuring, “I didn’t make the sea. I just sail on it.”

“Here’s the problem,” Tavi said. “If I give you those chains, knowing what you’re going to do with them, I become a part of whatever those chains are used for. I become a slaver. And I am no slaver, Demos. And never will be.”

Demos frowned. “It would seem that we are at an impasse.”

“And you’re sure you won’t change your mind?”

Demos’s eyes flicked back to Tavi and hardened. “Not if the sun fell out of the sky. Replace the chains, or get off my ship.”

“I can’t do that. Do you understand why?”

Demos nodded. “Understand it. Even respect it. But that doesn’t change a crowbegotten thing. So where are we?”

“In need of a solution.”

“There isn’t one.”

“I think someone’s told me that once or twice before,” Tavi said, grinning. “I’ll replace your chains if you’ll make me a promise.”

Demos tilted his head, his eyes narrowing.

“Promise that you’ll never use any other set, any other restraints, but the ones I give you.”

“And you give me decrepit pieces of rust? No thank you, Your Highness.”

Tavi lifted a placating hand. “You’ll get to inspect the chains first. Your promise will be contingent upon your acceptance.”

Demos pursed his lips. Then he nodded abruptly. “Done.”