"This Forsaken Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

A MATTER OF SHIPS

The sea-breeze, the rush of the patient waves-these things calmed his spirit now as always. He stood on the lip of the sea-cliffs and watched the long swell of the waters roll in from the east, like the heralds of a different tomorrow. The sun rising fast behind them.

“Quite a little show you put on last night.”

Rol did not turn round. “I thought Miriam had her lads guarding you.”

Canker joined him on the edge of the cliff. Two hundred feet below them the Inner Reach beat upon the stone in a long belt of foam. The climbing sun was bright, but there was a coolness in the air, borne off the white heights of the Myconians in the west.

“I was not once a Thief-King for nothing.”

They stood side by side and watched the sea, almost companionably. There were three fishing yawls out close to the horizon, performing the dual functions of gathering in their catch for the Ka and keeping a lookout for Bionari cruisers.

“There may indeed be a freedom in the sea-for such as you, that is. On a morning like this I can almost fathom it.”

“It’s clean,” Rol said. “It has no memory.”

Canker seemed about to speak, then held his tongue. He smiled instead, the first genuine smile Rol had seen him make.

“What does she want with me, Canker?”

The smile left his companion’s face. “I can rely on your discretion?”

“About as much as I can rely on yours.”

“Rumor will out in the end, I suppose. We’re losing, Rol.”

Cortishane stared at him. “The war?”

“What else? Phidon had fallen to the loyalists before I left Myconn, and Myconn was on the point of falling back into their hands. We rebels are being driven back into the mountains.”

“You’ve been on the road three months, you say. This is old news.”

“Yes. Many things, both good and bad, may have happened since. Rowen was trying to regain diplomatic contact with Perilar and Oronthir-last summer they were on the point of granting her official recognition as Bionar’s Queen.”

“And now?”

“Now they hold their hand, waiting to see how the tide will turn. They may even invade on their own account, seeing opportunity in Bionar’s chaos.”

“How did she do it, Canker? One woman alone-how did she start such a storm?”

“She is extraordinary, Rol. You of all people should know that.”

Rol stepped back from the cliff-edge, glimpsing as he did an odd look in Canker’s black eyes. “So what is her plan, and why is she so keen for me to figure in it, after all this time?”

They strolled away from the sea, to where Ganesh Ka’s ruins were strewn in cyclopean walls and arches about the feet of the soaring towers. On the forested slopes above them, work-parties were trudging uphill to the logging camps in the depths of the trees. Charcoal was created there in vast earthen kilns, to provide smokeless heat for the inhabitants of the city below. Faint over the wind, there came the hollow clanking of goat-bells, a dog barking.

“Even before our recent reverses, she was thinking of you,” Canker said at last. “I have watched over her these last several years, and have seen the strain that bends her.”

“Ambition will do that.”

“Indeed. It does strange things to people. And hers is the highest ambition of all. She can afford to trust no one, and this has made her task almost insupportable. Phidon did not fall through battle and siege, but through treachery. Bar Asfal is suborning our generals with bribes and titles and amnesties.”

“Artimion has always thought you will win, in the end.”

“Artimion has a mind as sharp as a pine-needle, but he is not on the spot-he has not seen what I have. We are losing; and if we lose, Rowen’s life will be forfeit.”

Rol smiled, but there was bitterness in his voice. “Queen or corpse, is that it?”

“You know her, Rol. She could do nothing else.”

“Oh, I knew her, Canker. Once. What is she to me now?”

“Your sister. The woman you loved-the woman I see that you love still.”

Rol’s breath sucked in sharply. When he exhaled again the words rushed out with it. “It was-it is-a thing of sickness, this love. I’d be better off without it. My soul would be that much the cleaner.”

“We cannot choose who or what we care for. Your feelings for your sister do not rank that high in the list of this world’s perversions. Believe me, I know.”

Rol collected himself. His voice hardened. “Those feelings were not enough for her eight years ago. She holds me cheap if she thinks she can play upon them now.”

Canker laid a hand on Rol’s arm, halting him in his tracks. “She is tired, Rol, and she’s surrounded by traitors and fools and greedy men. I would not have her end her days on an impaler’s stake.”

“So she has set her charms about you, too, eh, Canker?”

The Thief-King frowned, and looked away.

“If you want my help, you’ll have to be a damn sight more honest than this. Maybe I do still love her, but what of it? I am not some starstruck boy anymore, ready to uproot my life for the snap of her fingers.”

“If I thought you were, I would not be here,” Canker said with some asperity. “Do you have no interest in the world beyond this half-baked little kingdom of yours? You have a ship, yes, but you could command whole fleets. What are you here but some floating brigand, living from one day’s plunder to the next? The blood that is in you deserves better.”

“The blood that is in me. I wonder, Canker, has Rowen told you the whole story of our shared parentage? We came out of the same womb, that’s true; but Psellos told us before he died that we had different sires. Your mistress is indeed the Lost Heir of Bionar, but my father was not hers. He was someone else entirely. Did she tell you that?”

Canker blinked, taken aback.

“So don’t prate to me of blood. My mother was a witch out of the Goliad, my father someone known only to the gods. I have no stake in the future of Bionar, and no wish to marshal fleets and fight for the destiny of nations. All I have ever really wanted, I have.”

“All except Rowen,” Canker said, collecting himself.

“A man must learn to live with his disappointments, or else he is not much of a man.”

“And what manner of man are you anyway, Cortishane? Did you see the looks on the faces of your friends last night, when the other thing came blazing out of your eyes? They wonder now what kind of creature they are sharing their precious little pirate camp with. Your welcome here is wearing thin, I fear.”

“No thinner than yours.” But Canker’s gibe had hit home. “You were not surprised by it, were you? Not completely.”

“They have a library in Myconn, the greatest in the world, it’s said. Rowen has had scholars working for us there, in the Turmian, ferreting out secrets and lore, anything that might aid our cause. They have dug up quite a few bones, my boy.”

“Explain.”

“No. Rowen will tell you herself.”

Rol laughed. “Gods in heaven, is that the sweetest you can make your pill? Psellos did the same, as I recall, dangling knowledge before me like it was a carrot for an ass.”

“Laugh if you will,” Canker said, smiling himself now. “But would you not like to know what is happening to you? These rages, the transformations, the visions of another world beyond our own…”

Rol turned to seize him, but the Thief-King was out of his reach, darting away like a dragonfly. “Well, now, have I touched a nerve?”

“I’ll kill you,” Rol choked.

“Aha, the starstruck boy is back. Use your head, Cortishane. Do you think you can sit here forever and play at being a pirate, while the world burns down around you? People are looking for you; it just so happens I found you first. If you do not come with me by choice, sooner or later you will be forced to go somewhere against your will.”

“Lies.”

“No, simple truth. It is not just the Bionese who are looking for this Hidden City of yours-there are a hundred ships scouring the Reach alone. Stay here and you are doomed.”

“And your old friend Artimion-have you told him this?”

“No. I care not a damn for Artimion, or any of these other vagabonds. The truth is, I was sent here for you, pure and plain. Whatever you say about your father, or lack of one, I know that you and Rowen are connected, and together you will decide the fate of this continent. Now put aside your distrust, your anger. Come with me to the Imperial City. Face Rowen again. She needs you. She loves you yet, Cortishane, I know it. I swear it.”

If Canker was not being honest now, then his dissembling had been raised to the level of art. Rol found that he had no other words to say. He walked past the Thief-King blindly, his feet picking their way between the stones, guided by the comforting rush of the sea.

On first coming to Ganesh Ka, Rol had laid claim to a series of rooms high up in one of the city’s weird towers, close to the tunnel that led down to the docks. It was a stark eyrie, hewn out of solid rock, but he had softened its austere lines somewhat with the pickings of piracy, gathered over the course of a dozen cruises. When ashore, he was singularly indifferent to his surroundings, but when he had had occasion to bring a girl or two up here, they had one and all complained about the bare stone, the wind that hissed through the window-slits. So he had furnished the place, after a fashion. It had chairs and a table, hewn out of wood so fresh the resin still oozed out of them. There were bright rugs on the floor, woven in Aringia or Tukelar and brought out of the holds of captured merchantmen. An ancient, exquisite bronze lamp in the shape of a dancing girl with an enigmatic smile, and a rope-bottomed bed to support his mattress.

Creed had lit the fire again. He lived next door, Gallico close by. The three of them ate together most evenings, much as they did at sea, and when they were gathered about the sticky table, the fire blazing and the girl of the lamp smiling her thousand-year-old smile, it seemed to Rol that he had found a home at last, and two men he would gladly have claimed as his brothers. For that reason alone, Ganesh Ka was worth fighting for.

“There’s a nip in the air,” Elias Creed said, entering without ceremony and dumping an armful of wood on the floor.

“You soak up heat like a lizard, Elias,” Rol told him. He was sat in an elbow chair, scanning a list of provisions which the city quartermasters had grudgingly deigned to part with. Canker’s words were still running through his head, as insistent and annoying as a half-remembered song.

“Aye, well, we’re not all cold-blooded as frogs. Gallico got himself a haunch of venison off one of the hillmen, and is roasting it down in the square. Will you eat there, or have it brought up?”

Rol raised his head and looked round at the room, tawny with firelight. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll have him bring it up, then. Some of the good wine too…How’s your face?”

Rol touched his mouth. “Still bearing the mark of Gallico’s knuckles, I fear.”

“You saw Canker this morning?”

“Yes. He does love to talk.”

Creed hesitated. He seemed about to comment, then shrugged. “Well, if you want to come down to the square tonight, there’s many would be glad to see your face, knuckle-marks or no.”

“You think so, Elias?”

“Aye. And most of them are prettier than me.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

It was in many ways the heart of the Ka, the square-or so they called it. It was a place to gather around the cooking fires and talk over the day’s labor with friends and acquaintances. It was never empty, often crowded, and the woodsmoke that hung under its cavernous roof was a permanent fixture. The smoke smarted the eyes and soaked into clothing, and everything they ate was tainted with it. Rol found a place at one of the fires, people making way for him, nodding, staring. TheRevenant ’s captain was seldom seen here, except when drunk and looking for some nocturnal companionship. But he was stone-sober now, and withdrawn, and was handed venison and a wooden mug of birch-beer without comment. He sat cross-legged on the stone floor to enjoy them.

Easy to lose oneself here, in the close-packed crowds about the fires. The gabble of a hundred conversations and arguments, the leaping shadows, the jostling bodies; they were a fine curtain of anonymity to sit behind. Rol wiped grease from his lips, wincing at the scab there, and listened to the people milling around him as they talked through the minutiae of their lives. A more tattered, patched, and filthy crowd it would be hard to imagine, but under the grime there were people of all stations in life, from scholars to cutthroats, and they rubbed along surprisingly well with one another. There was a little recreational thievery, but no violence. In many ways, women, in particular, were safer here than walking the streets of Urbonetto, or Myconn itself. Another of the Ka’s peculiarities. Was it unique, or could it be duplicated elsewhere?

“I’ll have a sup of that beer, Captain, if you’re to do nothing but stare into it,” a voice said beside him.

He looked up. “You’re welcome to it, Esmer.”

The woman took a seat beside him, close enough for her elbow to nudge his ribs. She was a pretty thing, past the first flush of youth, with black hair and eyes to match. As she took the beer from Rol her shawl slipped to reveal a Kassic slave-brand on her left shoulder. He had kissed that brand in the past, and supposed he might well do so again. Esmer and he understood each other, in many ways.

“A short cruise, but profitable, I hear,” she said.

“We picked up a slaver.”

“Yes.” Her jawline tightened. “What of its crew?”

“Threw them overboard.”

She leaned into him, a smile lighting her face. “So? Then you have made the world a little better.”

“With what, murder?”

“Justice.”

Rol nuzzled her hair. It was musky as a cat’s fur, and full of woodsmoke. “It’s a fine line between them, Esmer.”

She cupped his face. “Lonely tonight, my captain?” And she looked up at him with the firelight burning in her black eyes. Rol leaned and kissed her on the lips.

“Always lonely, Esmer. You know me.”

In the morning he pulled back the deerskins from the windows and let the sunlight slot through them in long bars of honeyed warmth. Esmer stretched in the bed, her white limbs stark against the furs. “Can’t you keep the morning out for a while longer?”

Rol kissed her absently. “I have things to do, ships to attend to.”

“You and your ships,” Esmer drawled. “The only woman men like you ever take to wife is that bitch widowmaker Ussa.”

Rol walked downhill, a corkscrew progress into bowels of stone, the searching rays of the sun cut off. TheRevenant was in the dry-dock where he had first encountered her almost a year before, propped up by a maze of timber frames and baulks, her topmasts lying on the quay amid a welter of stores and cordage and all manner of naval supplies. A mere abandoned carcass she had been back then; now she was aswarm with life. Working on her were most of the artisans that the Ka possessed: shipwrights, blacksmiths, caulkers, riggers, sailmakers; they swarmed over the Black Ship’s hull like maggots taking apart a corpse.

Elias Creed stood on the quay consulting lists of work-rotas and supplies, and having a shouted argument with Gallico, who was invisible somewhere under the bulk of theRevenant ’s hull.

“How goes it, Elias?”

“More heat than light, but we’re getting there. Kier has replaced half a dozen of her bottom timbers, and a couple of her transom planks which had been battered loose.” Creed had something of a smirk on his face. “You slept late?”

“I had a busy night. How long before she’s ready for sea?”

“Have you a piece of string?”

“Answer me, damn it.”

Elias raised an eyebrow, looking closely at his captain. “Kier thinks another three days of fine work.”

“What kind of fine work?”

“Well, he has yet to glaze the stern-windows, and there’s the headrails to look at.”

“That’s just prettying nonsense. Tell him to make her ready for sea and forget the other bullshit. Now, what of theAstraros?”

“She’s still none too sweet-smelling, but we’ve ripped out the slave-deck and repainted her below. You said you wanted her foremast converted to square-rigged-”

“Forget about that too. Get those nine-pounders into her and rustle me up a crew. I want her ready to sail within a week.”

“What’s the sudden hurry, Rol? We only just got in.”

“We must put back out to sea, Elias, as soon as we can. Now, see to it. And tell Gallico he’s going to be master of theAstraros whether he likes it or not. She needs an experienced skipper, not some half-baked merchant pilot. That’s an order-these are all orders.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Creed said quietly.

Rol paused. “Humor me, Elias,” he said. He touched his second mate on the shoulder, frowning. His frown deepened as his eyes traveled over the beached carcass of his ship.

“What’s that old man doing working on theRevenant?”

“Who? Oh, Aveh. He’s one of the slaves we freed. Turns out he’s a carpenter, and a damned good one. Kier wants to take him on as carpenter’s mate.”

“Very well. But he has a son, a half-witted boy. There’s no place for the child on a warship-you make that plain to him.” Creed said nothing, but his gaze shifted to the crowded wharves beyond the dry-dock. Following his eyes, Rol saw a pack of the Ka’s youngsters engaged in horseplay, running along the waterfront and hooting with laughter. One of their number was being herded up and down with brisk welts of a switch; they had put a goat-collar about his neck, and its bell clanked hollowly as the boy scrambled and stumbled in a middle of a jeering crowd of his peers. The boy with the goat-collar was Aveh’s son, the half-wit. He was crying and holding his hands over his ears.

“He’ll not do so well, if he stays here alone,” Creed said.

“That’s his father’s problem,” Rol retorted.

They worked twenty-hour days on the two ships, at Rol’s insistence, and Gallico canvassed up and down every passage and tower in Ganesh Ka for volunteers to crew theAstraros. These were young, for the most part, bored with fishing or logging or herding goats. Most had seen service of one kind or another at sea, but some were landsmen who merely seemed willing and able and quick-witted enough to make some use of themselves. When Gallico had gathered some sixty altogether he set them to work alongside the Revenants, cutting gunports in the sides of theAstraros and setting up the tackles and ring-bolts that would hold the nine-pound cannon in place.

Rol saw nothing more of Canker for several days; the Thief-King seemed to have disappeared. But Miriam managed to have a party of her musketeers loitering about the dry-docks most hours of the day and night, ostensibly to keep an eye on the mountains of marine stores that were building up there (the Ka had its fair share of larceny), but in reality, Rol thought, to keep an eye on the apparition she had seen a few nights before.

They refloated theRevenant six days after their return to the Ka. The Black Ship was towed to the outer wharves and there moored fore and aft while the heavy but mundane work of restowing her hold got under way. Alongside her, theAstraros floated as trim as a lady’s maid. She had been scrubbed and repainted several times over, and the vile usage she had suffered was now but a memory. If theRevenant was a battle-scarred old destrier, the xebec was a racehorse. She would not take much punishment, Rol thought, but on the other hand, she would outrun most of her punishers.

“Two more days,” Gallico said as he stood at Rol’s side on the wharf and surveyed the two vessels with an air of vast satisfaction. “I never would have thought it possible. Kier and his new mate-what’s his name-they’ve done wonders.”

“Aveh. You’re short a chips, Gallico, so Aveh will move into theAstraros. Let him-let him take his son aboard with him.”

“The half-wit?”

“It’s not much of a mouth to feed.”

“His father will be happier, I suppose. Very well. I had to cuff half a dozen of the local scallywags off him this morning anyway. Evil little bastards, children.”

“Aren’t we all?”

They stood and watched their crews at work about the two ships. One hundred and fifty-odd men and women; the Revenants a tightly knit band who were in many ways the elite of Ganesh Ka, and knew it. The Astraroes, still raw, but keen to prove themselves, and happy to have Gallico as their captain.

“My own command,” Gallico said. “Well, she’s a flyer, and good-looking to boot, but I’ll miss that old black bitch of ours. I’ve put my blood into her.”

“The command of one’s own ship, the company that sails her. That is the finest thing in this life, Gallico. Wait until you’ve been at sea in her a month or two, and you’ll wonder how you ever took someone else’s orders.”

“You may have a point there. I’m itching to see what this filly can do, I must admit.”

“The guns will take the fine edge off her speed.”

“Exactly. And those lateens will be hard to get used to.”

“Alter the sail plan if you like. She’s yours now, Gallico, to do with as you please. As soon as we put to sea we’ll-”

“Cortishane.”

Rol turned. It was Miriam, and four of her musketeers. Her face was set and pale. “You’re to come with me, Cortishane. Artimion wants to talk to you.”

“Artimion knows where he can find me.”

“A private word, he wants, in his chambers. Now.”

Rol looked at the men behind her. Their muskets were all at half-cock, in their hands, not slung on their backs as usual.

“Are you arresting me, Miriam?” he asked lightly.

“No, but I’m not taking no for an answer either. You’ll come with us, one way or another.”

Rol shrugged. “Very well. Gallico, carry on here, but do me a favor.” He smiled. “If I’m not back by tonight, start looking.”

The halftroll nodded.

Artimion kept to his rooms more and more these days. Pierced by a Bionese bullet some seven months before, his lungs now fell prey to a series of infections and fevers which flared up sporadically, and just as quickly passed again. One of these lung-fevers was running its course through him as Miriam and her unsmiling comrades escorted Rol into his presence. Artimion was propped up in bed, his black face running with sweat, the whites of his eyes shot through with blood. He coughed into a sodden rag and gestured for Rol to sit by the bed, then waved a hand at Miriam. Face twisted with concern, the red-haired woman left, and the two men were alone.

“They get worse,” Artimion rasped. “Rol, pass me that water, will you?” There was a jug and cup by the bed. Artimion slurped greedily, then cleared his throat. It sounded as though he were breathing through slime.

“You need a physician,” Rol told him. “A real one, not some highland quacksalver.”

“It’ll pass. It always does. I’ve been too long on land, is the problem.”

Rol nodded. “The land is a dirty place. You’d breathe freer if you were at sea again.”

Artimion shot him a strange look. “Tell me about your ships-how goes the work? Miriam tells me you have your men working like things possessed.”

They talked of things naval, the hard-edged, precise nomenclature of all things pertaining to ships and the sea. The light came back into Artimion’s bloodshot eyes, and he straightened in the bed as if even talk of ships was a tonic for his fevered frame.

“The crew of theAstraros -how raw are they?”

“Oh, they’re seamen of sorts, in the main. Small-craft sailors, inshore fishermen. Perhaps a dozen have blue-water experience. Gallico will soon knock them into shape of some sort. It’s gunnery experience they’re really lacking; I doubt more than half a dozen of them have ever pointed anything bigger than a swivel.”

“How are you for powder and shot, provisions?”

“We’ve dried out theRevenant ’s powder that got wet in the last fight. Nine-pounders take a much smaller charge. Kier Eiserne has made a powder-magazine in the hold, though it’s not tin-lined. Fighting one side, she could give forty broadsides.”

“Good, good.” Artimion’s attention trailed away. Rol saw there was blood in the balled-up rag he held in one fist.

“Rol, we have rubbed along together well enough, these last months. At one time, I wanted you gone from the Ka as soon as you had something that could float. But you have stayed, and had you not, this city might well be a smoking ruin by now. For that I thank you.”

Rol watched Artimion warily. “Think nothing of it.”

“But my misgivings remain-they are stronger, in fact, than they ever were. What are you, Cortishane? I know the Blood is in you-it is in me also, else I’d be dead by now. But what is this thing you have shown us? Be honest with me now. What are you? ” Artimion’s face glistened with sweat. Rol could not meet the appeal of those thread-veined eyes.

“I don’t know, Artimion, truly. I wish I did.”

Artimion slumped back in the bed. His fist kneaded a goatskin bolster. “I have been talking to Canker.”

“I’m sure he’s been a veritable fount of knowledge.”

“He is that. I’m not a fool, Rol; I know he has a mission, a play of his own to stage in which I have merely a bit part. He has been digging up legends in Bionar, looking for I’m not sure what. He wants you for this so-called sister of yours. He believes he knows more about you than you do yourself.”

“That is the impression he likes to give.”

“He was always a good liar, it’s true. But I sense truth in there now. He’s afraid.”

“Of what?”

“He is afraid of you.”

“Good. May that fear speed him on his way back over the mountains.”

Artimion’s sigh turned into a cough. When he got his breath back he expended it again in a vicious series of curses. Rol knew that behind his back the skin flap that covered the doorway had twitched, but he did not turn round. Once, he would have been able to tell who it was that eavesdropped there, but Psellos’s training was being slowly forgotten. His hand strayed to Fleam’s hilt, and he felt the warmth there, the minute tremors in the steel.

“I want you to go with Canker to meet this Rowen Bar Hethrun, this rebel Queen,” Artimion rasped. “Go by sea; it’s quicker. Find out what it is she wants, with you and with us.”

“The fever has boiled your brain, Artimion,” Rol said icily.

“Canker is not the only person who is afraid of you. Your secret is leaking out even as we speak, Cortishane. I’d heard rumors these six months, as had everyone, but they were dismissed as the tall tales of your mariners. Now they have been confirmed.”

“Indeed. And who’s been spreading that night’s glad news?”

“Miriam.” Artimion raised a hand as Rol made as if to leave. “Don’t blame her. She doesn’t hate you, but she loves this place, and-”

“She loves you, Artimion,” Rol said. “She always has.”

“Perhaps.” Artimion’s brows furrowed. “In any case, she has warned all her musketeers about you. Another little incident like the last, and they’ll do their best to kill you.”

“Still, it’s a comfort to know she doesn’t hate me.” Rol knew now who was outside the door. “Canker, I think you can make an appearance.”

The King of Thieves ducked under the flap. “Impatience made me fidget. I must be getting old.”

“So you have suborned Artimion, have you? What addled moonshine did you dream up to convince him I must be your ferryman?”

“I told him that he has too many enemies already to go making more.” Canker’s face was grave.

Rol spoke to Artimion without taking his eyes off the Thief-King. “Have you ever thought that we might do well by ourselves in handing this fellow over to the Bionese? There are two horses in this race, after all.”

“That has occurred to me,” Artimion admitted. “But our choices are not all you might think, Cortishane. Bar Asfal will never stop hunting for this place no matter what we do, if only because Ganesh Ka was his brother’s foundling. And if he hears the rebel pretender has a brother, he will never stop hunting you either.”

“And besides,” Canker added, “Rowen will win, in the end. Especially if that brother is by her side.”

“I see your minds are in accord,” Rol said. “Canker gets me, whatever good that does him, and Artimion sees the back of me. Everyone’s a winner.”

“Take theAstraros, ” Artimion said. “She’s the fastest vessel we have. Go with Canker.” He paused. “You must leave theRevenant here to defend the Ka.”

“Leave theRevenant. I see. And who will captain her?” Rol asked.

“I will. As you said, I need sea air in my lungs again.”

Rol laughed. “Give up my ship, for you to sail? Never.” He stood up.

“TheRevenant must stay here,” Artimion said. “Call it a loan. You will see her again.”

“I refuse. What now?”

“Miriam has forty of her musketeers waiting in the passageways outside,” Artimion said wearily. “If you leave this room without Canker at your side, they have orders to shoot you on sight.”

Rol blinked. “You’re bluffing.”

“I’m too tired to bluff, Cortishane. Grow wings and light fire in your eyes if you will, but at least one of them will find a way to put a bullet in you.”

For a moment, Rol actually tried. He closed his eyes and attempted to summon up the rage, the desperation, whatever it was that brought out the other thing in him, that fire in his blood. But nothing happened. Fleam was cold and unresponsive in her scabbard, as inanimate as steel should be.

He opened his eyes again. Artimion and Canker were staring at him as mice might eye a snake.

Psellos was right, he thought. They are all cattle, in the end.

He would see Rowen again. That was something. She and Canker might even possess in truth some of the secrets they dangled in front of his nose like bait. But to leave his ship behind, in another’s hands…

“All right,” he said at last. “Let’s lift the curtain on this little performance, and see where it takes us.”

It had been no bluff. The musketeers were there, in white-faced ranks. He walked through them as though he were a condemned man, Canker beside him like the jailer, which in a way he was. Miriam’s handsome face was blazing with tension and dislike. Rol smiled at her. “I’ll see you again, Miriam.” She did not reply, but all around, her musket-bearing minions looked down the barrels of their weapons and followed the track of Rol’s heart.

On the wharves, word had gone round that something was afoot. A great, silent crowd stood there in the ship-cavern and watched as Rol was escorted to the quaysides.

“Quite a send-off,” Canker murmured.

Gallico and Elias Creed and most of the Revenants were there also, standing in a compact body with cutlasses and ship’s pistols in their fists. They made a wall which brought Miriam and her cohort to a halt.

“What’s this, Miriam?” Gallico called. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so many of your lads in one place at one time.”

It was Canker who answered. “We’re to board theAstraros, bound for Bionar. Rol has agreed to come with me for the war there.”

“And theRevenant?” Creed asked. His voice echoed off the cavern walls along with a gathering murmur, the muttered whisperings of the attentive crowd.

“TheRevenant stays here, to defend the Ka,” Canker said calmly, though sweat had come out on his brow.

“Why will the captain not speak for himself?” a woman’s voice called out. It was Esmer, her face white and hostile.

“Who commands theRevenant, then?” demanded a one-eyed mariner who had once worked on the ship.

The murmurings rose, like a sea-storm seen off on the horizon that might presently draw close. “Talk to them,” Canker hissed in an undertone.

More shouts, the crowd growing restive. The Revenants and Miriam’s musketeers faced one another with growing hostility, while about them the temper of the multitude gathered form like a cloud.

“Cortishane.” It was Miriam, at his shoulder. “Cortishane, say something. Do you want to see what will happen next? There will be blood on the ground-and who will be the winner then? Don’t do this, do not destroy this place to get your own way.”

Rol stared at her. Miriam had been a household slave, freed by Artimion some eleven years before. Ganesh Ka and its lord were her life, as this place was life for many thousands of others. Rol had never before seen such desperation written across that proud face of hers. At the same time, he knew that there was a loaded musket pointed at the small of his back. He smiled at Miriam, and then raised his voice to shout across to his ship’s company.

“Revenants! Stack arms, and finish this foolishness. For shame, Gallico-did you think I walked down here like some kind of hostage? Make theAstraros ready for sea. We set sail on the evening tide. The Revenants will stay here for the time being, and will try to help Artimion remember how to steer a ship. Do you hear me there? Make a lane for us and stop standing about like a bunch of moonstruck sheep. Gallico, Creed, set these men back to work.”

And it was done.

Six