Royal Airs (54 page)

“Well,
they
do,” Rafe said. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. You still won’t move.”

Below him, at the ship’s waterline, he heard the sound of many oars splashing into the ocean more or less at once. Ghyaneth gave him a thin smile. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

Some sailor belowdecks bawled out a command followed by a rhythmic exhortation.
Row! Row! Row!
At each word, the oars swept through the water again.

The ship didn’t travel so much as an inch. The water was so still that the craft didn’t even rock on its hull.

“Ghyaneth!”
came Darien’s bellow from across the water. The lead Welchin boat was close enough now that Rafe could identify the figures standing in the prow. The regent, of course; Kayle and Zoe, as he’d suspected; and Josetta, Foley, and a dozen others. Maybe twenty soldiers massed behind them on the deck, and each of the other Welchin ships carried at least as many troops. “Release Lerafi Kolavar, and you will be free to sail away! But we cannot permit you to take and murder him.”

“This is Berringese business, and none of your affair!” Ghyaneth called back.

“I have made it my affair,” was Darien’s reply. “As you see.”

Indeed, the Welchin navy had surrounded Ghyaneth’s escort, four ships to each of the Berringese vessels. The Welchin soldiers were clearly poised to board, waiting only on Darien’s order. The Berringese soldiers were also preparing themselves for battle; Rafe could see thin streamers of smoke rising from braziers set up alongside the Berringese cannons. He spared a moment to wonder if Nelson Ardelay could damp those fires if he chose to—and another moment to wonder if the sweela prime was among the Welchin contingent.

“We will bring our ship alongside yours,” Darien continued. “Return Lerafi safely to us, then be on your way.”

There was a brief silence while Ghyaneth seemed to think this over. Rafe had a moment’s hope that his bloodthirsty cousin would choose his own safety over an arcane tradition. But suddenly Ghyaneth whirled around and clouted Rafe across the face, driving Rafe to his knees with his head ringing and his bound hands braced on the planking. Ghyaneth had struck him with a weapon of some sort, he realized, probably the hilt of a heavy dagger. At any rate, it left Rafe as dizzy as he’d been when he first regained consciousness.

He heard feminine voices raised in alarm, their bright syllables skittering to him across the water. But he didn’t have time to sort out if it was Zoe or Josetta pleading for his life, because Ghyaneth had crouched beside him, that same dagger now point-first in his hand. The expression on the prince’s face was unadulterated, fanatical rage.

“You
shall
not take the throne of Berringey if I have to die to keep you off of it,” Ghyaneth snarled, and he laid the tip of his weapon against Rafe’s throat.

Rafe threw himself sideways to avoid the thrust, swinging his bound hands up to try to knock the weapon out of Ghyaneth’s grip. He landed hard on his elbow and scrambled awkwardly to his knees, then to an ungainly crouch. As he struggled to keep his balance, he pawed madly at the straps across his chest, trying to find the one that would inflate the chemicals in the flying bag. Ghyaneth whirled around, grabbing a patch of Rafe’s hair with his left hand and jerking Rafe’s head backward to expose his throat. The dagger was still firmly clutched in his right hand.

“This blood should have been spilled long before now,” Ghyaneth panted, and sliced at Rafe’s neck.

With all his strength, Rafe yanked on a cord, and the world exploded.

TWENTY-EIGHT

R
afe shot up in the air so fast and so far that he couldn’t help a shout of alarm, and he was moving so swiftly, so randomly, that he could hardly get his bearings. Sky—ocean—land—ocean—clouds—ocean—he was spinning and tumbling through the air as the flying bag whipped him through a wild and constantly shifting course. He thought that the chemicals were still combining, delivering little bursts of speed that jerked him in one direction or another. Higher. Closer to land. Farther out to sea.

There seemed to be a dozen straps dangling over his chest and he fumbled through them, trying to find the ones that Clay had said would offer directional control. But it was hopeless. He couldn’t tell which one was supposed to do what, and all the cords kept flopping about anyway, as he dipped and dove and shot higher over the water. So he just yielded to the vagaries of the device and concentrated on trying to figure out where he was.

A fresh burst of chemical combustion spun him around again. Now he was facing land and it wasn’t impossibly far away. He seemed to have migrated to a point equidistant from the ships and the shore. That was good, right? Once he came down, he’d be able to swim to the harbor.

Or he might have been able to, if his hands weren’t tied.

And if he hadn’t been attached to this great puffy ball of heavy canvas. Squinting against the sun, Rafe peered up at the flying bag, which, inflated, was about the size of a massive desk, though rather more spherical. What happened when
that
hit the water? How quickly would it drag him under?

Almost as he had the thought, the bag emitted a sour, soughing sound and seemed to collapse in on itself. Rafe felt himself plummeting toward the ocean with an ominous directness. Just as he gathered the breath to yell, he was jerked upward again as some late-firing chemicals gave off their own precious gases, momentarily slowing his descent.

Another terrifying plunge, another head-snapping reversal of course—another drop—another brief ascent. Rafe was so disoriented, nauseated, and terrified that he could hardly monitor his progress, but he could see the great sparkling immensity of the ocean growing implacably closer.

Ghyaneth kills me after all,
he thought.

The flying bag made a sputtering, hissing sound and utterly deflated, settling lumpily over Rafe’s skull and shoulders. Seconds later he went feetfirst into the water and continued downward a good distance under the surface. At first the shock of cold and the inability to breathe left him paralyzed; the water pressed in on him from all sides, eager to crush him.

Then his own natural buoyancy pushed him upward, and he regained both sense and will. He kicked hard for the surface, feeling the strain in his legs, his back, his lungs. His open eyes were slitted against the salt water as he strove for the pale strip of blue above him where sunlight played on the sea. His head burst clear and he gasped for breath, flailing with his hands and feet to try to keep his face above the water. The canvas flying bag spread out behind him like a spill of sewage, half-submerged, half floating, as a few bubbles of stubborn gas still kept it yearning toward the sky. But it was easy to see that soon it would take on enough water to sink toward the bottom of the ocean.

If I only had a knife!
Rafe thought, trying not to panic.
I’d cut myself free!
It was another five seconds before he remembered he didn’t need one.
Buckles. Buckles. The bag is held on with buckles.
He clawed at the straps across his chest, greatly impeded by the waterlogged ropes tying his hands together. His fingers were clumsy with cold and his head kept slipping underwater, making it hard to see, hard to function, hard not to succumb to mounting fear. The last little pocket of air seemed to sigh out through the seams of the canvas, and the whole bunched mass of material drifted below the surface of the water. Down—down—down, slowly but inexorably, pulling Rafe with it.

The top of his head was just fully submerged as he worked the last buckle free, tore the final strap from his shoulders, and kicked his way up to the light again. He took a few deep, shuddering breaths—swallowing more than a little salt water as he did so—and tried to figure out where he was and what he should do next. He was so low in the water it was hard to tell which way was land and which was open sea. He was so cold and his muscles were so exhausted that he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to fight his way to shore even if he knew in which direction to go.

You can’t give up now,
he admonished himself, squinting at the sky, trying to determine where he was by the angle of the sun.
You can’t escape Ghyaneth just to drown!

That way. If the sun was setting toward the west, land had to be northward, straight in front of him. Rafe aimed his bound hands in the direction he hoped was home, laid himself out in the water, and kicked himself forward.

He began sliding backward through the ocean.

He let out another shout of dismay, momentarily convinced he’d become entangled in the heavy canvas, maybe even a thick weave of seaweed, that he was being pulled down as well as backward. But nothing dragged on his hips or ankles; he didn’t slip below the surface. In fact, he seemed lighter all of a sudden, higher in the water—which had heated to a bearable, almost delicious, temperature. He continued to be carried away from land with an irresistible pressure.

Away from land. Back toward the boats. By a warm, vagrant current designed especially for him.

Zoe,
he realized, suddenly suffused with a relief so dazzling it mimicked joy. The coru prime had dipped her hand in the water and commanded it to carry him straight to her side. He was safe. He would not drown after all.

 • • • 

R
afe had never in his life been so glad to see anything,
anything
, as the lead ship from the Welchin navy taking shape against the horizon line. Someone spotted him and began shouting and waving, and then the whole railing was crowded with people shouting and waving, and somewhere there was the small splash of a dinghy hitting the water. Moments later, two soldiers pulled up next to him and hauled him into the little boat, and then it was hardly any time at all before he was being raised to the deck by a set of straps and pulleys, because he was too exhausted to climb.

The minute his feet touched the hard planking, women fell on him from all sides. Josetta, Corene, and Zoe hugged him and chanted his name and hugged him again, heedless of his soggy state and the very real possibility that they would suffocate him. He could tell that the princesses were crying and he thought Zoe might be crying, too. He was laughing, when he could catch his breath, but he thought it wouldn’t take much for him to start weeping as well.

“Enough—give him some room—he needs a change of clothes and a quick update on our situation,” came Darien’s voice, slicing cleanly through the feminine commotion. The women reluctantly moved aside to let Darien through, although Josetta kept her hold on Rafe’s arm and seemed unlikely to ever release him. Which suited Rafe just fine.

Darien surveyed him a moment. “I commend you on both your luck and your quick wits,” the regent said at last. “Kayle explained to us what unlikely invention made your escape possible—further explaining that it was wholly untested. You were brave and smart. And fortunate. We saw that scene playing out and were convinced you were going to die.”

“Stop
saying
that,” Josetta moaned, turning her face into Rafe’s wet shoulder.

He patted her awkwardly with his lashed hands, and Darien made an almost imperceptible gesture. Instantly, one of his soldiers appeared with a knife and quickly sawed through Rafe’s bonds.

“I thank you most gratefully for sailing to my rescue, but I don’t know how many times you’re going to want to save me,” Rafe said gravely, shaking his hands to send blood back to his frozen fingertips. “In the few moments I had to discuss my fate with my cousin, he made it clear that he will
never
forgo the desire to see me dead. Maybe I would be safer in Malinqua, I don’t know. But I am afraid I will always be a hunted man.”

“As to that, Zoe has some ideas,” Darien said. “Once we have found some dry clothes for you, will you be up to discussing a deal with the prince?”

“Discussing—will he treat with you? Will he listen?”

“At the moment, he has no choice,” Darien said. “He is in our possession.”

“He is—” Rafe supposed it was the effect of the stress or the water but he was having trouble comprehending what the regent was saying. “What?”

Darien nodded to something over Rafe’s shoulder, so Rafe twisted around to take in the whole tableau of Berringese and Welchin ships. All three of the big warships were surrounded by the smaller navy boats; it was clear soldiers from both nations were prepared for combat, but all of them were awaiting some kind of signal.

“One of the side benefits of your unconventional escape from Ghyaneth’s hands was that you knocked him into the ocean as you shot into the air,” Darien said. “Naturally his own men went diving after him, but—well. If a man is in the water, he is Zoe’s to command. We brought him aboard our ship and we have him now.”

“It’s his fault I overlooked you for a few minutes,” Zoe interposed. “I was concentrating so hard on bringing him
to
us and keeping his men
from
him that I didn’t pay much attention to you once you went down. You had a bad few moments, I’m afraid, but I promise you were never going to drown.”

“So Ghyaneth is actually aboard this ship?” Rafe said. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Oh, we’re going to send him home again,” Zoe said, “after we convince him that he’s better off leaving you alone.”

 • • • 

T
here was no such thing as a large room on a small boat. Once he had changed into a moderately clean tunic and trousers supplied by the captain, Rafe joined eight other people crowded into a space meant for about half that number. Among them were the regent, the princesses, and four of the primes, for it turned out that both Mirti and Nelson had joined the rescue party.

The other two people in the room were Rafe and his cousin.

Ghyaneth was bound exactly the way Rafe had been: hands tied in front of him and his feet free. Like Rafe, he had gone into the ocean, but no one had bothered to give
him
a fresh change of clothes. He managed to act as if it didn’t bother him to sit upright in a hard-backed chair, his wet garments plastered against his body, his glare falling impartially on everyone in the room.