So now they traveled the coast, trading and stealing where necessary. Some might call it piracy, yet it was essential for them to keep moving. Even being this long on dry land made Raed a little nervous. He found himself down the cliff path to get to his crew, despite knowing that he bore bad news.
Aachon, his first mate, was watching him with the eagle intensity the older man gave to everything. His clothes were as ragtag as everyone else’s, but somehow he pulled it off better than even Raed did. His olive complexion and dark hair could have made rags seem noble. Aachon had been looking after Raed for years, given the care of the Pretender by his father the Unsung. It was a duty that he took incredibly seriously.
“How was your request received, my prince?”
Raed had tried getting Aachon to call him by his given name; the request, or even the order, never seemed to stick for very long. He felt his stomach tense but he tried not to let any of it appear in his stance. “We have been given permission to berth in Ulrich.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” Byrd, the youngest member of the rowboat crew, had none of his elder’s respect for the name and supposed title. Raed was often glad of it.
Aachon’s head, however, jerked in his direction. Byrd took the hint and was silent. “Ulrich, my lord,” the first mate whispered under his breath, his expression dark. “Such a place is a deliberate insult.”
The rest of the crew looked away, probably as embarrassed at Aachon’s feeling of dishonor as Raed was. Sometimes he felt his first mate should have been born the Pretender. He could certainly recite the whole family tree of the Rossin and name all the major battles in their history.
Raed sighed and clapped a hand on his friend’s back. “We are starting to run out of sway in this neck of the woods. The new Emperor is gaining support every day. Some are saying he is a better ruler than any in my family ever were.”
“But he is a usurper,” Aachon spluttered. “He has not the right to the throne that he sits on—they should remember their place!”
“That is not what the Assembly are concerned with, and it was their choice, after all. Let’s keep our eye on the positives. For right now, we have to be able to keep on sailing. As long as we do, there is hope.”
The two men held each other’s gaze for a moment, and it was Aachon who finally looked away. With a shake of his head he seemed to suddenly lose a few inches in height. “You are right, my lord—excuse my rash words. It matters little where we make repairs, as long as we do.”
They quickly scrambled into the boat and pushed off. The feeling of water under him was soothing. He was glad to find that the Curse had not activated in the middle of Felstaad’s court; that would have put the cat among the pigeons, and would most likely have ended rather badly. He shot a look across at Aachon and guessed the same thought was probably in his head too.
It had been nearly a year since he’d dared set foot on land, but it had been worth the risk. Felstaad would not have dealt with any of his crew, even the charismatic Aachon. Now at least they had a destination.
Raed turned his head toward the mouth of the bay, and there moored in the gentle currents was home.
Dominion
was a small, fast brigantine, with a nice shallow draft that allowed her into shallow harbors that many could not travel. She was the one thing his father had ever given him, apart from an unwanted heritage, and now she was the only vessel in all the seas that still flew the flag of his family; a roaring lion with the tail of a mer-creature, the Rossin. It had once been a creature of magic. Now it made Raed shiver. It was a warning from the Ancients, one that none had believed until his birth.
“My lord.” Aachon touched his shoulder, no doubt noticing the direction of his gaze. His first mate had the observational skills of the Sensitive Deacon he’d so nearly become. He lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the crew were busying pulling for the ship and bantering among themselves. “There was a little trouble while you were gone.”
He opened his right hand to reveal the weirstone that had cost almost a chest of gold to obtain. The polished orb was cobalt blue, but every few moments a sheen of white gleamed over the surface. This had nothing to do with the light. Raed knew it was heavy but Aachon carried it as if it were a child’s toy—that, it most definitely was not.
Deacons were not the only ones to commune with the unliving; they were just the best trained. Aachon’s family had always been seers; hence the Unsung’s choice of him as Raed’s protector. But Aachon’s skill was not of the first order, and it was only with the acquisition of the weirstone that he was able to See into the ether.
Raed dared a glimpse into the orb. The stone thinned the barrier between the beyond and the real world. It was a very dangerous thing, and it made the hair on his arms stand up, but it had saved them all on numerous occasions. “What sort of trouble?” he asked through a dry throat.
“A couple of shades on top of the cliffs. Probably the souls of people lost in a wreck of some sort.”
Raed concealed a shudder as best he could. As always the image of his mother’s horrified face flashed in his eye, the taste of her blood in his mouth. Not for the first time did he wish that suicide was an option. If only his sister, Fraine, wasn’t next in line for the title Pretender and the Curse that went with it.
He just had to do his best by staying on the ocean. It would have almost served Felstaad right if he’d run across a geist in his court . . . almost. That was the danger of dry land: the constant threat of geists. If they had crossed his path on the cliff tops . . . He pulled his mind away from that possibility.
And now they would be sailing toward another port, and with
Dominion
being pulled from her native environment, he would have no choice. “Well, maybe if I just stay on the beach with my feet in the water while we’re in Ulrich, everything will be all right.” He chuckled.
Aachon frowned, never a connoisseur of Raed’s sense of humor at the best of times.
The Pretender shook his head with a little sigh. “What other choice do we have, old friend?
Dominion
needs to be repaired and scraped down. She’s slow in the water and we’re leaking every time the sea gets rough. We can only survive if we can run.”
It was actually possible to hear Aachon grind his teeth in frustration. Most people just used it as an expression; the first mate used it as a method of communication. He nodded reluctantly.
They had reached the heaving sides of their ship. Raed scrambled up the side with the others while the rowboat was tied in close to her stern. He hadn’t been born to life on the open seas, but after so many years he was as nimble on deck as those who had been. Aloft in the rigging he might not be the fastest, but he had been known to climb up if an emergency called. He might be captain, but he was all too aware that it was a title he sometimes had to work at.
Up on deck, the rest of the crew waited. They were a collection of every ethnic group on the continent, with a slight majority from the warmer southern climes where the legend of the Unsung still might mean something. Most were male, though several women had also tied their fortunes to the Pretender. Now all were looking at him and waiting for the word on how his petition had gone.
“Well”—he grinned at them—“as I remembered, Felstaad is a bastard.”
They snickered at that, but held back the belly laughs until certain of the outcome.
“But I finally convinced him that he might want to at least cover all the angles and give us brief sanctuary. He’s allowing us to make use of Ulrich harbor.”
As expected, his announcement wasn’t greeted with uproars of delight. Several whispers murmured through the crew as some of the assembled turned to their neighbors with quiet questions about the unfamiliar port. Raed managed not to take it personally. He didn’t hold it against them, but he knew it was a reflection of his standing in the world; once, the mere mention of his distant father would have brought a bushel of princes rushing to his aid. Since the Assembly at Briet had brought the Delmaire man over, life had gotten harder and harder. If he thought about it too much, he might just stop running altogether.
Bless them, though; none grumbled about the distance to get there, or the isolation of the place. Raed was just about to express his gratitude in some joke or other, when a call came from above. High in the crow’s nest, Aleck called out the one word none of them wanted to hear. “Warship!”
Everyone scattered to their stations. Aachon slapped a spyglass in Raed’s hands and he trained it in the direction Aleck was pointing. To the north was indeed an Imperial warship:
Corsair
. They’d had repeated run-ins with that very same vessel for the past three months. It was patrolling the northeast shore with a disturbing new show of interest in the area. They’d made a successful run for it each time that
Corsair
had shown up before. However, they were in a sheltered harbor with light winds, and their anchor was down. Raed didn’t like the odds.
Bringing the warship into focus, he tried to make out whether her gunports were open. They weren’t, but as he looked he noticed two very odd things: there was no one visible on the deck and, more important, no hand was at the wheel.
“By the Blood,” he whispered to himself and swung the spyglass backward and forward over the ship’s length before raising the glass toward the rigging. This too was bare of any sign of life, and the sails themselves were tied in as if for running before a high wind, rather than for today’s light conditions. Captain Moresh ran a tight ship, from what Raed had heard. A knot of tension began to form in the Pretender’s neck.
“She’s coming in slow.” Aachon, without the benefit of the spyglass, had a hand raised over his eyes as he squinted at
Corsair
.
“Prepare to board,” Raed said evenly.
“But, Captain . . .” Aachon protested, until he was handed the spyglass. His argument died on his lips. When he lowered the glass, sweat beaded on his forehead. He wiped it off with the back of one hand and wrapped his other around the hilt of his cutlass. “Mistress Laython, prepare your party to board and offer assistance.”
On the lower deck, the battle-scarred quartermaster grinned. They had seen little action lately, and her skills had not been in much demand. She began shouting at the crew in a voice like a foghorn.
“Seems as if you put that weirstone away too early, old friend,” Raed said to Aachon under his breath.
Despite the ship’s sad condition,
Dominion
’s crew knew her intimately and were quickly under way. With expert ease, Aachon set them to their work getting her out into open waters. Within half an hour, they had turned about and were matching speed with the warship. As they neared, it became apparent to all that she was, in fact, in worse state than their own vessel. Coming up on the port side, they could see that sails were ripped as if from a terrible storm. The hull damage only a little above the waterline looked nothing like the impact of cannon; instead it looked as if something had blown out from inside, though it was nowhere near where the powder room was located. The Pretender’s hand clenched on his cutlass.
Even though
Corsair
had pursued her for so long, Raed felt real pity for the once-magnificent warship. She was a sad remnant of the pride of the Imperial Navy.
Their own party was ready; he and Aachon were in the lead with weapons drawn. Laython and her grinning party were at their backs. Yet as they drew up alongside and the boarding hooks were thrown across, Raed knew that there would be no fight.
The deck was covered in bodies, all wearing the dark green of the Imperial Marines or the sky blue of the Navy, though both shades were much darker than they should have been. The sharp smell of blood wafted from
Corsair
in a palpable cloud.
With a glance over his shoulder, Raed saw that most of his crew had turned very pale. They were sailors in the main, not used to battle and blood.
“Aachon, is the weirstone showing anything?” he asked quietly over his shoulder.
His first mate should have protested, perhaps reminding his captain that they were in open water, but with one look at the carnage on board
Corsair
, he mutely removed the heavy orb from his pocket.
Aachon’s eyes changed when he looked into the orb, going to a clear milky white as if he were blind. He kept his back to the crew whenever using his Sight; he knew it disturbed them. When he’d been cast from the Order, Aachon’s pride had taken a deep beating. Now he cosseted what little talent remained.
After a moment, his eyes cleared. “I see nothing aboard but death and the memory of it.”
“Very well.” Raed clapped him on the shoulder. “The rest of you, wait here.” For once they followed his orders mutely. He and Aachon leapt across to
Corsair
’s deck.
The first step and Raed nearly slipped. Ships were cruel like that: they held on to blood once the scuppers were blocked. And this was very, very fresh blood, and the drainage holes were indeed blocked by masses of bodies.
It was hardly the first time that either he or Aachon had faced such a sight; there had been plenty of battles with princes when he was younger. Many had come to the Unsung’s place of exile to kill him, and Raed had fought on his father’s behalf. However, this was different.
His senses were only mortal, so he could hardly bear to imagine what his first mate was going through. The stenches of spilled guts, blood and fear were thick over the deck. They both took a moment to steady themselves physically and mentally.
It looked, at first sight, as if every soldier and sailor had died on deck. As Raed and Aachon began to pick their way down toward the quarterdeck where Captain Moresh had presumably once stood, they rolled the occasional body over to see what had caused their death.