Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (26 page)

“Loyalty,” said Kiel, in Torovan.

Errollyn snorted. “Well may you change tongues,” he told Kiel, in Torovan. “And you accuse
me
of becoming more human?”

“We serve the serrinim,” said Kiel, in Saalsi once more. “The serrinim cannot be disunited, or we shall fall. Such have we decided, and such does our
vel'ennar
tell us. Will the
du'janah
follow? Or do we have to drag you?”

Errollyn gave Kiel a look that was almost…anger. Amongst serrin, in debates, it was rare indeed. “When charging headlong toward a cliff, disunity is no bad thing.”

“When the cliff charges toward
us
,” said Kiel, utterly unmoved, “then disunity will kill us all.”

“And I tell you that debate has saved us in the past,” Errollyn said firmly, “and shall do so in the future, if we are to survive at all.”

“No one doubts your conviction, Errollyn,” said Rhillian, more gently this time. “Your opinions have always been respected.” Kiel, Sasha saw, nearly smirked. “But these are not the councils and teahouses of Saalshen. This is Petrodor, and I lead. We are
talmaad
. You swore an oath.”

“Another foreign concept,” said Errollyn. “You accuse me of foreign thinking, but your own is worse. I learn sarcasm. You learn fear and cynicism.”

“Come down from your lofty mountain, great mind,” Rhillian said more coolly. “You're right, we do live amongst humans and their ways at times dictate ours. I can give an order if I must, Errollyn. Do you say that I must?”

S
EVERAL QUESTIONS TO
D
OCKSIDE RESIDENTS
told Sasha of Kessligh's whereabouts quickly enough. She walked along the dock, with only Liam for company, and listened to the creak and heave of the boats tied along the piers. Some folk wandered in the warm evening, unaware of commotions elsewhere in the city. Here, some wealthy types with a foreign look about them—Ameryn, perhaps, walking with several prominently armed guards. There, some rowdy sailors, singing as they wandered from bar to bar. Some men played a loud game of dice before their doorway. Some others sang songs to the accompaniment of guitars. They paid little attention to a couple of passing Nasi-Keth.

“You did well,” Sasha told Liam as they walked. “Up there, and at Riverside. I was impressed.” Liam said nothing. Sasha thought she knew the cause of it. “You were right about Yulia. She should not have come.”

Liam gave her a hard, suspicious stare. “
Now
you admit it. After Rodery's dead.”

“And what good would it have done to admit it at the time? We were stuck in a situation, Liam. Yulia was there, frightening her further would have only made matters worse.”

“Kessligh should never have selected her for the mission,” Liam said darkly.

“It wasn't entirely his choice. His seconds chose the personnel, Kessligh cannot know the standard of every Nasi-Keth on the dockfront. Besides, her technique in training was not so bad; she should have been all right against mudfoots. But she panicked and her technique deserted her. That's one thing training can never tell. But now we know.”

They arrived at the entrance to The Fish Head where some sailors and locals were having a loud, drunken disagreement, with much shouting and fingerpointing. Sasha and Liam slipped past, down some steps and into the gloomy, lamplit interior.

The space was crowded, with as many Nasi-Keth as Sasha had ever seen gathered in one place. From the stairs, she could see that there appeared to
be three sides to the gathering—a triangle, some fancy, serrin-educated folk called it. Near the middle, men were sitting, tables shoved aside. Further back, men stood, perhaps fifty in all. The air smelled staler than usual, hot and musty. The conversation was loud and animated, and so intense that no one saw her enter.

She left Liam, pushed past men along a side wall and headed for the bar where Tongren the Cherrovan waited and watched, a scowl on his dark face. Sasha nearly smiled. She rapped on the bar and his face lit up. Sasha put a finger to her lips to quiet his exclamation.

“What's going on?” she asked him as he leaned close.

“You're alive!” he exclaimed softly. He clapped her on the shoulder—her sore shoulder—and she winced. Tongren ran a finger on her swollen eyebrow. “What man dared do this to your pretty face?”

“Probably some kid with a rock,” Sasha murmured.

He made a dismissive gesture. “You're always beautiful to me. I worried so much for you! Though not as much as one I could name…” He jerked his head toward the group. Sasha looked, but could not see Kessligh amidst the crowd. “Kessligh's in trouble. Alaine and Gerrold made lots of noise. Now they challenge him, say he made a big mess in Riverside, lost precious men.”

“How many did we lose?”

“One less now we have you back…Who else?”

“Liam and Yulia, two more,” said Sasha. “And one confirmed dead. Rodery.”

Tongren shrugged. “
Sharl
,” he said. “War,” in Cherrovan. One of her small handful of Cherrovan words; the ones every Lenay knew from four centuries of occupation. “That would be thirteen dead, I think five badly wounded and still two missing.” Sasha exhaled hard. It was not as bad as she'd feared. But it was still bad. The whole thing had been bad; there was just no way around it. “Alaine blames Kessligh. Gerrold doesn't blame anyone…he's a good man, sensible. But still, he argues. You'll hear.”

Sasha pulled herself onto a bar stool. “Get me a drink, will you?”

“Ale?” said Tongren, brightening.

“Juice, please.”

“Bloody Nasi-Keth,” Tongren muttered, going to do that. “Take over my bar, scare away my customers, but you don't drink. How can you be real fighting men if you don't drink?”

“I never claimed to be a real fighting man,” Sasha said pointedly.

“Just my point.”

“The plan would have worked,” one of Kessligh's men was saying. It sounded like Bret. From her seat, Sasha could not see him. “I'm telling you,
our plans were sound, we had good numbers for the assault, Steiner's men would have had no chance against us…”

“Would have this, could have that!” That was Alaine, loud and angry. Alaine was always loud and, for a Nasi-Keth, frequently unreasonable. “We hear excuse after excuse from you and your great warrior hero!” Sasha bristled. “Did he make this many excuses when he drove the Cherrovan invaders from Lenayin? You complain like an old woman, and make up fantasies like a child! I don't care what you
could
have done, it only matters what did happen! And this attack was a disaster!”

“Because we were compromised from within,” said Bret, from between what sounded like gritted teeth.

“So you say! How long have we been trying to expand the Nasi-Keth's influence into Riverside? The poor, the hungry and dispossessed are our natural allies, and yet you kill them in their dozens, and set fire to their houses—”

“Rubbish…”

“And now you sit here and declare before us that you have done nothing wrong! Riverside is lost to us now, for years at least…”

“And a great pity,” said someone else, sarcastically, “because you were making such wonderful progress there too. Its inhabitants positively reek of wealth and enlightenment.”

“You make fun,” Alaine retorted, “but thanks to you, now they likely never will!”

“We do what we can for the poor,” said Bret, attempting reason. “The odds against our success are huge, yet we make small progress every year. Not every poor child's blistered feet, nor his mother's hacking cough, is our fault.”

“Normally, yes, I would agree!” said Alaine. “But now, with Kessligh at your helm, you make a bad choice of priorities. The Nasi-Keth has whatever power and support it has in Petrodor thanks to the poor. Most of us are drawn from the ranks of Petrodor's poor. It was the sons of poor families who died in Riverside in this ill-advised attack. They support us because we do good things for them. We give them knowledge, and medicines, and ways to improve their living so they don't get sick. And we defend them from the cruelty of the families.

“
That
is a wise use of force. That is the only use of force we should contemplate. Not this…this brash, dangerous action against the most lucrative arms shipments of the greatest family in Petrodor! Yes, we should help the serrin to defend the Saalshen Bacosh as best they can, but our first priority should always be to our own!”

“If the Saalshen Bacosh falls,” came a retort, “then Saalshen itself is threatened. If Saalshen falls, the Nasi-Keth shall wither on the vine. We
do
fight for our own, it's only that your vision is neither broad nor perceptive enough to perceive it!”

“We have neither the strength,” said Alaine, decisively, “nor the strategy to contemplate this course of action. We are many, yet not so many that we can afford to waste man after man against the power of the patachis. Have you seen the forces they gather from the provinces? The dukes swear their loyalty and they command entire armies. If they attack us here, we can defeat them, for we own these streets and alleys and no force can take them from us. But to waste good men on such foolish diversions is pointless!

“Look at the good people we have lost! Galthraite, one of our best swordsmen. Aiden, a fine leader. My friend Bron, the mason. Even Kessligh's own uma, legend though some claimed her to be…if even
she
cannot survive such folly, what chance do the rest of we mere mortals have?”

“Why, Alaine!” Sasha said loudly. “That's the nicest thing you've yet said about me. Legend? That sounds much nicer than whore, or fool, or pagan barbarian!”

The room stopped, and everyone turned to look. Men she knew, Kessligh's followers, stared in disbelief. One grinned. “Sweet Sadis, girl! I didn't even see you back there!”

Sasha climbed up on the bar and walked across mugs and hands to the thick of the group, her temper at a slow boil. Alaine, further from the bar, stared up in disbelief. “It's nice to know you'll respect me so much more when I'm dead,” she told him.

Nearer the bar, men moved aside to clear a space. And there was Kessligh, risen from his chair, and looking at her with…a look of as great an emotion or relief as she'd ever seen him wear. She struggled to contain her own emotion, and jumped down into the space. And grinned up at her uman. He nearly grinned back, a smile of wry, twisted delight, and took her arms. “You'll be the death of me,” he said, attempting gruffness.

“That seems only fair,” Sasha retorted and hugged him, hard. Kessligh hugged her back, harder. “I'm sorry I'm late, but I got cut off. Yulia is well, Liam is back there…” and she pointed back toward where she'd seen him last, “and our serrin friend Errollyn is also well. Our friend Rodery died with great honour, against formidable odds, and took several of his enemy with him. He shall be remembered with pride.”

Men turned to find Liam and shake his hand, or clap his shoulder. He took it sombrely, with little apparent joy.

“You speak the brave words of a Lenay warrior,” said Alaine as the commotion died. Alaine was a man of memorable appearance and no little charisma. He had shoulder-length black hair in light curls. His nose was big,
his cheekbones pronounced, and his eyes were deep and dark beneath prominent brows. On his pointed chin, he wore a black goatee. “Yet it is not for you, Lenay princess, to speak of how our fallen men shall be remembered.”

“Does honour mean nothing to you, Alaine?” Sasha asked sharply. “It certainly meant something to Rodery.”

“Honour means as much to the people of Petrodor as it does to you!” Alaine retorted, dark eyes flashing with anger. “It is not for foreigners to try to tell us what our honour means!”

Sasha recalled her recent conversation with Rhillian in the alley. “A dear friend of mine told me recently that honour, like most human concepts, has no fixed meaning and should thus be distrusted. I say that
all
human concepts have no fixed meaning, and yet, should we distrust them all, we shall be left with nothing. I am Lenay, yet should you choose to confer Torovan honour upon me, I would be flattered. It would be most
enlightened
of you, Alaine, to accept my Lenay honour in the same spirit.”

“Oh aye,” said Alaine, imitating her accent, “and would it also be enlightened of me to die for your highland honour? If I'll die for any honour, it shall be for the honour of Petrodor, not for the glory of Lenayin!”

“This solves nothing,” said Kessligh, pulling Sasha back before she could advance on Alaine. “Alaine, you say that as Nasi-Keth our primary loyalty should be to Petrodor.”

“And have always said so!” Alaine said proudly.

“Your argument is sound—your path is indeed a path we could follow.” Kessligh spoke with none of Alaine's loud passion. When Kessligh spoke, each word mattered and men listened intently, whatever their personal persuasion. “Yet Petrodor is no island. Neither is any of the powers of Rhodia. Petrodor's current wealth was granted it, unwittingly perhaps, by Saalshen. Lenayin's current stake in Verenthane politics was inflicted upon it by Petrodor. The Bacosh invaded Saalshen two centuries ago, and Saalshen replied with a considerably more successful invasion. Now, the fates of both Saalshen and the Bacosh are inextricably interwoven.