Reaper's Gale

‘Well, you have a point there. If they were truly scattered by that storm, a few of them could have come up on the wreck before it went under.’ She thought for a time, then said, ‘Tell you what. We’ll sail past the mouth. And if they ignore us and head upriver, we can come round and follow them in. But that means they’ll offload before we will, which means we won’t make as much-’

‘Unless their haul ain’t going to market,’ the first mate cut in. ‘Could be it’s all to replenish the royal vaults, Captain, or maybe it goes to the Edur and nobody else. Blood and Kagenza, after all. We could always find a coastal port and do our selling there.’

‘You get wiser with every body part you lose, Pretty.’

He grunted. ‘Gotta be some kind of upside.’

‘That’s the attitude,’ she replied. ‘All right, that’s what we’ll do, but never mind the coastal port-they’re all dirt poor this far north, surrounded by nothing but wilderness and bad roads where the bandits line up to charge tolls. And if a few Edur galleys take after us, we can always scoot straight up to that hold-out prison isle this side of Fent Reach-that’s a tight harbour mouth, or so I’ve been told, and they got a chain to keep the baddies out.’

‘Pirates ain’t baddies?’

‘Not as far as they’re concerned. The prisoners are running things now.’

‘I doubt it’ll be that easy,’ Skorgen muttered. ‘We’d just be bringing trouble down on them-it’s not like the Edur couldn’t have conquered them long ago. They just can’t be bothered.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. The point is, we’ll run out of food and water if we can’t resupply somewhere. Edur galleys are fast, fast enough to stay with us. Anywhere we dock they’ll be on us before the last line is drawn to the bollard. With the exception of the prison isle.’ She scowled. ‘It’s a damned shame. I wanted to go home for a bit.’

‘Then we’d best hope the whole damned fleet back there heads upriver,’ Skorgen the Pretty said, scratching round an eye socket.

‘Hope and pray-you pray to any gods, Skorgen?’

‘Sea spirits, mostly. The Face Under the Waves, the Guardian of the Drowned, the Swallower of Ships, the Stealer of Winds, the Tower of Water, the Reef Hiders, the-’

‘All right, Pretty, that’ll do. You can keep your host of disasters to yourself… just make sure you do all the propitiations.’

‘Thought you didn’t believe in all that, Captain.’

‘I don’t. But it never hurts to make sure.’

‘One day their names will rise from the water, Captain,’ Skorgen Kaban said, making a complicated warding gesture with his one remaining hand. ‘And with them the seas will lift high, to claim the sky itself. And the world will vanish beneath the waves.’

‘You and your damned prophecies.’

‘Not mine. Fent. Ever see their early maps? They show a coast leagues out from what it is now. All their founding villages are under hundreds of spans of water.’

‘So they believe their prophecy is coming true. Only it’s going to take ten thousand years.’

His shrug was lopsided. ‘Could be, Captain. Even the Edur claim that the ice far to the north is breaking up. Ten thousand years, or a hundred. Either way, we’ll be long dead by then.’

Speak for yourself, Pretty. Then again, what a thought. Me wandering round on the sea bottom for eternity. ‘Skorgen, get young Burdenar down from the crow’s nest and into my cabin.’

The first mate made a face. ‘Captain, you’re wearing him out.’

‘I ain’t heard him complain.’

‘Of course not. We’d all like to be as lucky-your pardon, Captain, for me being too forward, but it’s true. I was serious, though. You’re wearing him out, and he’s the youngest sailor we got.’

‘Right, meaning I’d probably kill the rest of you. Call him down, Pretty.’

‘Aye, Captain.’

She stared back at the distant ships. The long search was over, it seemed. What would they be bringing back to fair Letheras, apart from casks of blood? Champions. Each one convinced they can do what no other has ever managed. Kill the Emperor. Kill him dead, deader than me, so dead he never gets back up.

Too bad that would never happen.

On his way out of Letheras, Venitt Sathad, Indebted servant to Rautos Hivanar, halted the modest train outside the latest addition to the Hivanar holdings. The inn’s refurbishment was well under way, he saw, as, accompanied by the owner of the construction company under hire, he made his way past the work crews crowding the main building, then out back to where the stables and other outbuildings stood.

Then stopped.