Treason's Shore (34 page)

“It’s his fault!”

“Now.”

“But he keeps—”

“You want to sweep all the barracks, too, Tya-Vayir?”

Keth had run off in the direction of the storage shed. The Tya-Vayir boy flung himself after, cursing under his breath.

Inda started back in the direction of the headmaster’s office, where he knew he’d find a gathering of the masters who had liberty.

Askan dashed around the corner of the wall of the senior courtyard, and stopped him. “Another fight?” he asked. “I walked them all over to Daggers Drawn myself.”

Inda said, “As soon as you were gone a dozen of ’em slithered back to have their fight, just like they see the big boys doing.” He told Askan what he’d done. “You know what they were fighting about?” he asked. “I didn’t let ’em tell me. I wanted Tya-Vayir to see that they were getting the same treatment.”

Askan flung out his hand as he fell in step with Inda, palm down. “Tya-Vayir will have convinced himself that you gave Arveas-Andahi preferential treatment by the time we gather for Restday Drum no matter what anyone says. He arrived convinced that he’d be unfairly treated, and everyone else favored.”

Inda smacked the seniors’ wall. “Horsebutt.”

Askan flipped up the back of his hand, then looked around guiltily.

Inda also looked around. They were alone. “At least the scrubs aren’t putting one another in the lazaretto.”

“Not like our year, eh?” Askan said, rapping his knuckles lightly against Inda’s ribs with one hand, and with the other, touching his eye where Cama wore his eye patch.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be teaching any of the boys the Fox drills. Only if I don’t, when do they learn? What is it I’m doing wrong?”

“Nothing,” Askan exclaimed, hands outflung. “They’re just a pack of brats. Not a brain to share between ’em.”

Inda didn’t make any response, but he asked the same question of Headmaster Gand later on, after the boys had been dismissed from Restday Drum. The cubs and ponytails, tired from running around in the hot sun chasing flags, retired to their barracks to while away the time until the Daylast bell; the scrubs were turning out their barracks to scour it down and restore everything before sweeping their court on Askan’s orders.

“They all knew what was going on, even if they didn’t get into it,” Gand said. “In the meantime, they see that everyone gets equal punishment.”

“Because of Horsebutt,” Inda said.

Gand opened his hands. “His father was just the same, and the old Randael almost as bad. Grandfather rumored to be worse. Are you certain you don’t want to thrash those boys?”

Inda grimaced. “You can, if you want. I just can’t do it.” The thought of thrashing anyone always brought nightmarish flashes of Wafri and his tortures, something he never told anyone. Fighting, that was different. Someone tries to kill you, you kill him first. But thrashing some small boy who can’t defend himself?
Fox does it, and they don’t come out the worse for it,
Inda thought bleakly, feeling even more incompetent than he had earlier.

Gand took in that lowered gaze, the unhappy mouth, Inda’s loose hands, and said, “Another thing about the Tya-Vayirs. Not all, but most. They had a knack for making everyone seem smaller and meaner and worse than they actually are.”

Inda pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I thought there would be some Cama in that boy.”

“There might be yet.”

“He just looks at me with that sneer. ‘The King’s Claphair.’ I know what caused that first fight. Keth trying to defend my honor. It’s . . .” He kicked the wall. “It’s funny, but it’s not funny. The worst of it is, when I asked him, that boy didn’t even know what a claphair is! Seems to think it’s what we used to call a bootlick!”

“Horsebutt has that much of a sense of what’s right,” Gand said, unperturbed.

Inda got to his feet. “And I was going to reorganize the entire academy, from dawn to dusk, turning out . . .”
Turning out boys as tough and trained as Fox’s boys and girls in the fleet
. Inda left, feeling like a failure.

While he was trudging back toward the pile of work awaiting him in the Harskialdna office, his sister Hadand entered Tdor’s office with a paper in hand.

Tdor looked up from a pile of exasperating tasks she’d put off for days. How many mattresses to reorder against next year and how many to try to repair in order to coax them through another year, shifting the night patrol around for three women who’d got sparring injuries, squabbles between two they’d intended to send north to reinforce Ndand-Jarlan’s women. Would they grow out of it, or would they be another problem if both went?

Tdor threw her pen down. “I saw your northern Runner ride in through the gates when I was going down to drill this morning,” she said. “Good news, I hope?”

“Good, and . . . odd. So far, Honeytongue—er, Starand has been on her best behavior up in Idayago,” Hadand said. “She loves Idayago and has taken to wearing their dresses. Eating their food. Some of the local women have been courting her favor, for whatever reason, and you know she’d love that.”

“If courting her favor turns her sweet, I hope they court her forever,” Tdor said. “Odd?”

“Fnor writes me that recently Mran started having nightmares about children and Venn and getting lost.”

Tdor was taken aback. “Mran? Children? So Buck and Fnor have given up on having an heir?”

Hadand stared out the window. “No, Fnor says they don’t talk about that at all, not even the prospect of trying the Birth Spell. But Mran asked if Inda got any letters, or messages, from Dag Signi the Venn.”

Signi.
Tdor’s fingers busily straightened the already straight pile of papers as she remembered Inda’s occasional wistful questions about where Signi might be, what she might be doing, why didn’t she send a letter. It didn’t happen often, but each one made Tdor struggle against envy all over again. She was ashamed of that.
I know Signi went away because of me.
“Dag Signi? What could it mean?”

“I don’t know, except the Cassads are strange—they have dreams that turn out to be true—some even say they see ghosts. But you know that.”

Hadand stood in the doorway, looking down at the paper, her profile so unhappy Tdor stared in dismay and wonder. “Speaking of heirs, I stopped chewing gerda,” Hadand said at last. “It turns my stomach, and Evred seems to work through all watches, except when he falls asleep in his chair.”

Tdor tried to think of an answer, but Hadand walked out.

Chapter Twenty-two

T
HE fierce summer sun was just setting when Fox’s fleet spotted the jagged teeth of Ghost Island on the horizon.

Exclamations of relief sounded around the ship, for they’d had to navigate by the sun-tracker, always dangerous.

Barend, at his place behind the binnacle, stayed silent as he swept the glass over the horizon.

Two days after Barend’s arm was broken the fleet touched land, where the
Skimit
awaited them, having arranged for supplies. Barend lay in his hammock unable to move.

Over the following half year, as the fleet made its way west, practicing ship maneuvers to integrate Fangras’ independents under Fox’s exacting eye, they touched land once more, at Llyenthur, on the other side of the strait.

During those months, as the sun steadily regained its southern heights, Barend’s arm healed without mishap—it had been a clean break—and he took up his job as ship master as if nothing had happened. As soon as he could, he resumed deck drills, and by the time they were sailing west into open ocean, he no longer favored that arm.

Now Ghost Island’s dragon teeth resolved into separate islands. Under an azure sky rapidly darkening into night they were met in Halfmoon Harbor by a stone-faced contingent of armed islanders, their fast little boats covered by steep-roofed structures with leddas mats laid over them. They could shoot fire arrows from behind those and stay out of harm. They might not defeat a fleet of twenty-odd capital ships and racing schooners, but they could inflict a great deal of damage. And the only place to resupply within months of sailing was right here.

It did not take much to imagine the harbor, now slowly lighting up with twinkling glowglobes and lamps, full of armed citizens determined to protect their freedom.

The same old woman who had met them on their first arrival, half a year after their defeat of the Brotherhood of Blood, stood in the bow of the first boat. Her challenging frown was accentuated by ruddy flickers of lanterns. “Why are you here?” she called up. “We only trade with the Delfin Islands. We will not trade with you.”

“We’re pushing west.” Fox leaned over the
Death
’s stern rail. “Looking for trade. Need to resupply, repair. A little liberty.”

“You may have three days, and you will be permitted ashore only if you are not armed.” The old woman’s voice rasped with distrust. “We permit that much because you did nothing untoward before. But we see that your former captain is no longer with you.”

“He retired from the sea—”

The woman cut across Fox’s speech. “Do not trouble us with what may be lies. We cannot prove your words either way. We liked this Inda Elgar. He kept his promises. You must prove to us you will keep yours. Three days. Without weapons. Without any trouble from your crew, or we will rise against you all.”

Lanterns had been lit on the
Death
by the deck crew. At the wheel, Mutt watched a muscle in Fox’s jaw jump.
Ooh, trouble,
Mutt thought. Fox had been nastier than ever these past few months, ever since he’d decked Barend. On the other hand, the entire fleet was in the best fighting shape it had ever been.

But Fox only said, “Three days it is. And there will be no trouble from my crew.”

“Fox will kill ’em if they sneeze wrong,” Jeje observed to Dasta. She’d sailed the
Vixen
up the side of
Cocodu
away from the
Death,
then climbed stealthily aboard to observe with its captain.

“How d’ya sneeze right?” Dasta muttered out of the side of his mouth.

She snorted. “Ask Tau that. If we ever see him again. Me, I figure it’s right if you don’t sneeze into my soup.”

From the
Vixen
’s deck Nugget stared up impatiently. Jeje had left her at the tiller, which meant Nugget couldn’t hear the talk. That annoyed her. She just
knew
something was going on, but no one would tell her
anything
.

She yanked up the glass, balanced the tiller against one thigh, and glared through the lens at Mutt, there at the wheel on the
Death
. They still were Not Talking, even though she’d made sure he saw her kissing Captain Eflis. So much for his vows of friendship, and how Inda’s ship rats would always be together, just like Inda and his original ship rats.

While Nugget brooded, Dasta said through stiff lips, “What’s he going to do about Barend?”

He and Jeje turned their attention away from the island boats, which were retreating rapidly in the capricious breezes, leaving the capital ships to wallow more slowly behind the
Death
. From where they couldn’t see Barend.

Jeje kicked a barrel with her bare toes. Once Barend had got out of his hammock, a sling all fixed up for his arm, Fox had refused to let him make ship visits.
Your friends can visit here. Anything they have to say can be heard by me. There will be no misunderstandings that way
.

It hadn’t taken much effort to guess what problem lay between Fox and Barend, not when Ghost Island was mentioned.

Treasure.

Jeje and Dasta had talked aboard the cutter, figuring that Inda had told Barend about the treasure and maybe sent him to get some of it to help back in the Marlovan kingdom. Jeje told Dasta how worn out everything there was—and that was before the big battle with the Venn.

Dasta muttered, “I hope Fox isn’t going to kill Barend. Throw his body to rot in that damned cavern alongside the pirate skeletons.”