“To Blood Bay, eh?” Her neckline all but bared her breasts as she knelt to loosen the lines and Draken had to concentrate past Bruche’s low, knowing chuckle to listen. “I’ll find you the quickest currents to Brîn.”
Draken said, “We’ll need to stop at Reschan along the way.”
The rafter fixed him with an appraising stare. Despite the bright daylight, her pupils in her green eyes stretched wide, giving her a curious, childlike appearance. But her tone was all business. “No one stops there without good reason. Dangerous, thieving place—worse than Blood itself.”
Tyrolean rattled coins in his palm. “If you’ve issue with our plans we’ll find another drogher.”
She finished her assessment with the pendant hanging on Draken’s chest. “You’ll guarantee my safety?”
“My lord carries a sword, does he not?” Tyrolean said. “As well the seal of our Queen. You’ll be safe enough.”
But Draken’s attention was drawn back to the bridge. A familiar, silvery shape tread the structure.
“Osias!” Setia called.
The Mance smiled in greeting as he approached, but his features were drawn. “Thank you for waiting. Setting wards on our trail took time.”
“But worth it if they won’t find us,” Draken said.
Osias reached for Draken’s hand to greet him as he stepped aboard, but Draken didn’t take it. “You didn’t think to tell me you could control me through Bruche?”
Osias glanced at the rafter. “Not just now, friend, but know I am your friend.”
“Mance never tell all,” Tyrolean said, his tone tight. The color had washed from his face.
The driver nudged Draken aside. “To the center,” she said. “I need to sort the lines.”
Feeling somehow bested, Draken moved toward the middle of the raft and dug in his pack for bandages. “I’m called Draken. What is your name?”
“Lord Draken,” Tyrolean muttered.
The rafter rose from coiling the ropes, glanced at Tyrolean, and pushed off with her pole. “I’m Shisa, my lord.”
She did not offer more conversation, but as promised, she found a swift current. The banks slid by with surprising speed. Osias, still hooded and cloaked despite the sun, took a position at the back of the raft, an arrow nocked. Though they passed several rafts, none of the people looked interested in anything but their own business. Enough of the rafts had bowman positioned on them that no one gave Osias a second glance.
As the bridge disappeared from view, Draken saw to Tyrolean’s cut. More blood kept seeping from under his armpit.
“It’s no use, I’ve got to remove your armor, Ty.”
Tyrolean leaned away. “I won’t disarm under threat.”
“You’re not the only one with experience with wounds, Captain, and I’m not asking.”
Tyrolean assented with a nod and allowed Draken to help him out of his leathers and mail. Shisa watched, no doubt resenting the blood dripping on her spotless deck.
Once the captain had stripped to the waist, Draken found the side of his chest bore a deep puncture, which was where most of the blood was coming from. “This is worse than I thought.”
“Bastard slipped his point under my plate,” Tyrolean muttered, his expression taut and his lips white. “Just before you took his head.”
“Try to relax. Setia, do you have any wine?”
“I’ve got the Gadye stuff,” Setia said, pulling a flat leather bag from her pack.
“Drink the pain remedy and follow it with the wine,” Draken said. He produced the small bottle from Galene, and Tyrolean swallowed it, grimacing. While he was distracted, Draken poured some wine over Tyrolean’s wounds.
“Seven bloodied gods,” Tyrolean gasped, swaying. Setia caught his shoulders and eased him back. “You might warn a man.”
“It’s all I’ve got to clean it.” Now Draken could better see the jagged tear in Ty’s sizable bicep and where the point of the blade had cut his pectoral.
“Look in the crate at the back of the raft,” Shisa said. “You’ll find what you need to stitch it and something to stop the rot.”
As she said, Draken found a neat packet of bone needles, waxed thread, and a small bottle of thick liquid.
“Smear it on when you’re finished,” Shisa added.
“Thanks,” Draken said. “You might as well relax, Ty, this will take a bit.”
While Draken stitched the gash, he noted rows of raised scars organized across the Captain’s broad, pale chest. “Were you tortured?”
“My kills.” Tyrolean hissed curses as Draken tugged on a stitch. “Moons be damned.”
“Breathe,” Draken advised. “Almost finished.”
Tyrolean drew in a breath with some difficulty, and Draken paused the stitching to allow him to take a long draught of wine. Setia held the bag to his lips as he gulped, and his head sank back into her lap. The wound was deeper than he’d thought and required several stitches.
“Haven’t you such a custom at Brîn?” Tyrolean’s voice was a husky whisper.
“Not that I know of,” Draken answered, truthfully enough.
“A disgusting custom it is, too,” Shisa said, almost under her breath. Draken glanced up at her but said nothing. Her back was turned.
Why the hostility?
Draken asked Bruche.
She was kind before, about the needles and medicine.
A proper Gadye will help those in need, but there’s no love spent between the drogher folk and the Escorts,
he answered.
Why not?
The Akrasians used the droghers for the assault on Blood Bay. A company of disguised servii took the Bay by the Erros and paved the way for the larger invasion.
It seemed reasonable to Draken. An army would use whatever means of transport available.
Ah, but a rafter likes to know what her
—Draken felt his eyes drawn back in an appreciative, if not quite willing, glance at their rafter—
passengers are about. The soldiers did not tell of their plans.
“I’ve finished,” Draken said, wrapping a bandage around his arm. “Not pretty, but the bleeding has stopped. We’ll remove them in a seven-moon.”
If he’s not dead of sword-rot by then.
Draken sat back, ignoring Bruche, and turned his attention to Osias. “What about the inn? And Galene?”
Osias shook his head.
Draken dropped his gaze to the raft deck in defeat. He’d done nothing to help her, and he had to fight back fresh anger that the Mance had kept him from it. “Were they Va Khlar?”
“Va Khlar?” Shisa said sharply. “What do you want with them?”
Draken tested his sore shoulder with a stretch. It ached deeply from using his sword and concentrating on the fine work with the needle. “We don’t want anything with them. They’re chasing us.”
“And you said nothing to me of it?”
“We’ll double your fare,” Tyrolean mumbled.
Shisa looked doubtful, but she didn’t say any more. Draken settled back next to Tyrolean, his head on his pack, but he was uncomfortable in his armor. The stiff leather wasn’t made for sleeping and his shoulder pulsed with pain. The breeze picked up and the raft skimmed along the top of the water like a piece of dried bark. Finally, he sat up to keep watch, but no one appeared on the banks. They soon left the other, more heavily laden rafts behind. Sweat soaked his undertunic beneath the tight armor.
Osias waved a hand as Draken shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. “Disarm. We’ve left them well behind. Tyrolean’s mercenaries and my wards will hold them long enough for us to disappear into Reschan. Besides, we move quickly, do we not?”
“You’re doing something to the currents,” Shisa answered. “I know this section, and it’s fair slower than this.”
Osias smiled at Draken, who looked away. He still wasn’t ready to speak civilly to the Mance. Trying to control him through Bruche was the worst sort of betrayal: lying by omission and then using it against him. However, the Mance had a point about disarming. The sun was hot and the air hung damp over the river. With Setia’s help, Draken unbuckled his armor and stripped off his sweaty shirts.
“You’re a dark one,” Shisa observed. “Fullblood Brînian, are you?”
Draken nodded, feeling resigned. He’d claimed Brîn and fullblood anything was better than half. At home he was considered well-tanned against the sun-loving Monoeans, but next to him, Tyrolean’s Akrasian skin gleamed like mountain lion tusks.
A ghost of the first moon had risen in the blue sky, signaling the coming end to daylight. It seemed but half a day since they had raced from the inn that morning. Soon the moons would rise, creeping their way each night toward fullness, toward Sohalia and whatever secrets Galene had claimed the Eyes would reveal.
By nightfall Shisa found a reliable current, unencumbered by rocks or fallen logs, in a lengthy straight section of the Erros. For an hour or so she was able to sit, relaxed, and give the river bottom an occasional prod with her pole.
Draken leaned back on his elbow, giving up his close watch. The night was balmy for once, the first of the moons had broached the sky, and the air cooled his hot skin, if not his worries.
“What race are you?” Tyrolean asked Shisa, stirring enough to reach for the wineskin again. “I can’t place your face.”
“I’m a Gadye-half.”
“Tall for a Gadye.”
“The other half is Akrasian.” She spat the word. “My father was a pureblood Escort, just like yourself.”
Draken narrowed his eyes. Was she rape-get? It would account for her bitterness.
Tyrolean sat up and leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees. A muscle quivered near his stitched wound. “Without your father you’d not be here at all, would you?”
“Admitted,” Shisa said. Her gaze again passed over Draken.
Bruche wondered in an internal murmur if she were as perceptive as Galene had been.
Gadye blood will do it.
Not like she seems in the mood to share her thoughts, at any rate,
Draken replied.
No. But then, nor do you.
“Sometimes you seem lost,” Setia said, sliding nearer to Draken. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine, Setia. Just thinking.”
She leaned close and asked softly, “You’re content?”
Content. Not happy, but content. He thought back on his old life, losing his wife and his self-respect after she died, only to come here and find out it had all been for nothing. Lesle’s killer was still free. For the first time, he was tempted to let it go entirely.
It’s not right though,
Draken thought with a pang of guilt.
I cannot forget her.
Even if the only way to honor her memory was revenge, it was all he had left of her. His gaze passed over Osias. This was one of those times when Osias’ menace lingered very near the surface of his beautiful façade, though his pose was relaxed enough: arms resting on his knees as he stared at the river. But under the dark skies his hair looked like a black shroud and the tattoo on his forehead looked more like a gash than a moon.
Setia was still waiting for an answer.
“I suppose I’m as content as I’ll ever be,” Draken said.
“And you wish to stay here?”
“I am staying here,” Draken answered. “Truth? I don’t think much of it any longer.”
Liar,
whispered Bruche.
Shisa was carefully looking away.
“What news have you got?” Draken asked her, trying to sound friendly and steer the subject away from himself.
“I know the doings of the river.”
Draken summoned patience. “And what stories do the waters carry?”
“The Mance are absent,” Shisa answered with a glance at the stoic Osias. “You’re the first one I’ve seen in many nights.”
“Truth,” Osias said, sounding thoughtful. “We fear ordinary concerns are overtaking that which should be greater.”
Shisa gave the river bottom a vicious poke. “And I hear the Queen has taken a lover.”
Draken worked to still his features. “Gossip from the Bastion doesn’t concern me.”
“No, do speak on.” Tyrolean was fighting a smile and losing.
“Akrasians speak of a Brînian lord who has captured the heart of our beloved Queen.” Shisa’s quick brown eyes dropped again to the pendant hanging against Draken’s bare chest.
“I’ll thank you to keep a fair tone when speaking of her,” Draken said.
“Seven pardons, my lord,” Shisa replied, clearly not sorry.
“Are you loyal to the crown?” Tyrolean demanded, his smile gone.
Draken said nothing, but his hackles, too, were raised by her attitude. He didn’t like to admit his indignation was more from his resentment toward his own responsibilities and the distraction from the grief that was his wife’s due. He told himself Shisa was rather brusque. But, despite his annoyance with her, he couldn’t help but appreciate how her clothing left so little to imagination.
She’s a sweet one, all right,
Bruche whispered.
“My loyalty follows currents and coin,” Shisa replied.
Tyrolean coughed out a guffaw. “She’s a caution, eh, Draken?”
Draken gave him a sidewise glance, not knowing if the comment was an insult, but Tyrolean had relaxed again, one arm behind his head.
“Reschan is still a distance, even with Mance magic. I advise sleep.” Shisa turned her back on them, staring downriver.
Draken relented by laying back with his cloak under his head as a pillow. After a few moments the others settled as well. Setia nestled in between Tyrolean and Draken, pressed against the Escort’s back. Tyrolean either didn’t care or already slept. Osias remained standing, staring out over the black river from the front of the raft, his gray tunic fluttering in the small breeze over the water, his long fingers holding arrow to string.
Draken turned his head to find Shisa watching him. Without acknowledging her or changing his expression at all, he closed his eyes.
***
When he woke in the night, he found Shisa still standing at the rear of the raft, her pole loose in her hands, her gaze resting on his face. Draken rose and looked down at his sleeping friends. Osias lay next to Tyrolean, closer than the captain might have allowed in consciousness. Setia’s bare arm had slipped around Tyrolean’s middle, and the dapples on her skin glowed in the dark.