Of
course
not
, Connor thought.
I
don’t
own
a
crown
,
and
I’ve
never
sat
on
a
throne
.
He didn’t say that either, as he swept the dark skyline once more, impatient for the sun to rise higher. He never talked about his family at all, or he might have pointed out that when you’re the last of eight children in a land where the royal budget is always on the brink of trouble, there aren’t a whole lot of crowns to be had.
Longface continued in his even-toned rumble of a voice, “Said something about an old friend. Mage.”
A snap of the fingers, followed by Captain Tebet’s squawk, “More mages! What is it with Black Hood and mages? Rumors flyin’ all over every harbor from here to Beshair. He’s chasing mages. If he is one, why’s he want more?”
Longface gave a low chuckle. “Well, seems to me that’s what we’re on the way to find out.”
“And that’s another thing. Why’s Red even with us, and not ridin’ high with the Admiral over there on the flagship?”
Connor’s spyglass took in the silhouette of the huge four-masted flagship, sailing at the head of the arrow-shaped formation of eight Okidaino naval frigates. The rising sun painted the edges of the masts with golden color and the sails with the pale blue of dawn.
The
Piper
and another small schooner stayed well back, as ordered.
“We can ask. He’s standin’ right there,” Longface observed. “But if it were me offered a choice, I’d be right here, too, where a body can actually talk, and not trip over one of them everlasting military rules and regs.”
Captain Tebet’s laugh sounded like a fight between angry parrots. She was small and scrawny and so sun-browned she looked a lot older than her sixty years, but she was full of stories about the sea—stories that occasionally included the Iyon Daiyin.
Connor had asked more one night. Captain Tebet had shaken her grizzled head.
Truth is? I don’t like talkin’ about ‘em much. I told me children that there was a rumor we were descended from ‘em. My daughter went t’find out, and hasn’t been seen since.
She came forward, thumping Connor in the arm with a hand made strong with years of pulling ropes and tending the wheel during storms. “Red, now that we’re a long way from the harbor busybodies, and no one can hear us but us, what’s the inside word?”
Connor kept his glass sweeping. The light was getting stronger. Was that something way out there? “What word? I told you everything I knew in that council session yesterday. Black Hood is Andreus, former king of Senna Lirwan. Killed the pirate brought in. Sent ships to chase the
Sandskeet
, which seems to be carrying my friend Wren. Admiral wants to catch the pirates in the act. I hired you to carry me out.”
“Yes, it’s that part, me boy, I want to ask about. I assumed there was some treasure in it, or reward o’ some kind. Now, spill.”
Connor laughed. Captain Tebet was never subtle about the prospect of gold, but she was so fair-minded and good-hearted she somehow had never ended up rich. “If there was any treasure, the Admiral would have gotten sniff of it first thing. And I wouldn’t have to hire you, would I? Seems to me treasure would be its own hire.”
“So why did you hire us?”
“Us?” Longface added in. “I came along o’ my own free will. Like a nice fight with a pirate now and then. Keeps my hand in.”
Connor said, “Now that we’re well away from the good Admiral, I’ll tell you. I’m pretty sure that the mage those pirates is after is a friend of mine. If we are in time, if we do rescue her, and she doesn’t want to be swept inside the naval net the Admiral is laying for the good of his kingdom, I wanted an out. We could just sail off, and no fuss.”
Tebet squawked. “Red! And you’re hiring me for
that?
What an insult! Of course I’d sail anywhere to keep a mate, or a mate’s mate, outa the sticky hands o’ them land lubbers. Sail they might, those naval fellows are really landrats. Or at least, their commanders are.”
“How you figure that?” Longface asked. His voice was exactly as flat and growly as ever, but Connor knew he was getting ready for a punchline of some sort.
“Well, ain’t it obvious? They take you up into their castles, and months go by with questions, and forms, and this and that. Rules and regs, like you said, until there’s no turning around without some scribe tellin’ you this or that law keeps you right in place. No, give me the sea and freedom.”
“And that’s why I hired you,” Connor said.
Captain Tebet said shrewdly, “And where does your gold come from? My guess is, prince or not (and I’m not sayin’ I don’t believe it, but if I could get those fools in charge o’ that harbor to move faster than a stone, I’d be queen o’ the universe) you ain’t exactly sleepin’ on gold. Else why was you crewin’ for me last fall?”
“I saved all my earnings from the caravan last summer,” Connor said. “And they pay me really well to tend the Eye, there in the harbor. . . Say. Is that a fire out on the sea, or is it only my eyes playing tricks?”
The other two joined him at the rail, one to either side, the captain snapping out her more powerful spyglass, and Longface just squinting.
“Fire,” Captain Tebet said. “Ship on fire. At least one.”
A cacophony of whistles and shouts rose aboard the naval vessels.
“Lookouts spotted it, too,” Longface offered.
Captain Tebet sniffed. “Steady wind risin’ out of the west. We better get the topgallants up,” and she turned to squawk orders.
The
Piper
resounded with stamps and shouts and creaks as crew got sails higher on the mast, in order to make use of every bit of wind.
Connor kept his spyglass trained steadily on that smeary orange glow, his neck tight with tension.
Longface said, “Why’s this mage so important?”
Connor leaned his elbows on the rail, smiling up at the sky. “When I was a dashing young prince of twelve or thirteen, I thought I’d impress this short round girl in shabby clothes, with wild striped hair, who’d had the effrontery to make friends with my old friend Tyron. So I waved my sword around as I made heroic declarations.”
Longface almost smiled. “Did she laugh?”
“No. She was never mean.”
Unlike half my siblings
.
“Did she make her own heroic declaration?”
“Not her!”
“Well, what did she do?”
“She said, ‘Watch the curtains.’”
Longface waited, and when nothing more was offered, his dark eyes widened. “That’s it? Watch the curtains? And you even bothered to remember that?”
Connor sighed. “I guess it was the way she said it.”
“Something’s sure missing.”
“How much fun we had, the three of us. How brave she was, while making jokes. How smart. How . . . heroic, though she’d hate being called a hero.”
Longface’s incredulity faded, and he gazed at Connor with a speculative expression unlike his usual deadpan. “I know what’s missing,” he said in a wondering voice.
Connor flushed, remembering the many flirtations he and Longface had shared along the road. Always fun, and never remembered afterward.
“She didn’t like romance,” he said.
“Seems to me there’s a lot she doesn’t like,” Longface commented skeptically.
“The last time we saw one another, we’d been fighting Andreus of Senna Lirwan. It was not a romantic time,” Connor said.
Longface sobered back to his usual deadpan. “And now this Andreus is chasing her on that smuggler? Yeah, I guess she must be good at whatever it is she does.”
“She’s a mage student,” Connor said.
Her real gift is not just seeing you as you really are, but accepting you, too.
If she was on that burning ship . . .
Even if Andreus was not there on the unseen pirate ships, it was his malice behind the orders, his hand raised in threat over his underlings. Connor’s grip tightened on his spyglass.
The added sail caused the ships to plunge and rise, their speed increasing on the strengthening wind. But it was not fast enough for him.
“They’re moving into attack formation,” Captain Tebet observed. “I wonder what the navy sees from those higher masts o’ theirs.”
Connor shifted his eyes away from the spyglass, blinking against the blur caused by staring through the lens for so long. Archers climbed into the mastheads. Boom crews stood in the waist, ready to swing out the big booms attached to the central mast to sweep an enemy’s rigging in a close encounter.
“What ho?” Captain Tebet squawked, as the lookout above the flag ship gave a cry. She ran up the shrouds holding her mainmast, crowding in beside her own lookout, until she yelled down, “There’s someone out there!”
“What?” Longface and Connor spoke at the same time.
“There’s—I can’t make sense of it . . .” She peered through her powerful glass, and then gave her parrot screech of a laugh. “I must be dreamin’, or seein’ wrong, but it looks to me like there’s a single gig, floatin’ all alone right here, and all the big ships behind it burnin’, life boats swarmin’ around . . .”
“A gig?” Longface asked. “A gig? Has to be a life boat full o’ pirates.”
“I don’t know, they look like mighty small pirates, if you ask me. Yes, they’re standin’ on the rails. I think they see the flags on the foremast of the navy—”
“Who’s in that gig?” Connor rapped out, his heart beating hard.
“Boy with hair color o’ yourn, Red. Passel o’ dark-haired ones, and a little round one, with hair that looks like someone took a paintbrush to it. A bad painter—”
“Wren,” Connor breathed, and he leaped up onto the bowsprit, holding onto the jib-sail with one hand. Now he could see the gig, and that short person right in the middle, clinging to the mast and staring up—
“WREN!” he bellowed.
Captain Tebet rapped out orders, and the schooner, fast and light, slid ahead of the navy ships, though it was strictly against orders. Connor gripped the rail, scarcely breathing, until the gig was alongside, and ropes thrown over.
And next thing he knew a small, solid body hurtled into his arms, smelling of sweat and seaweed and smoke.
“Connor!”
He crushed Wren against him, and when she whooped for breath, and started laughing, he let go and stepped back. “Andreus—
Sandskeet
—what happened?”
“Oh, we had to leave the
Sandskeet
, and then the pirates chased us. Caught up with us today,” Wren replied in a quick, breathless voice. “But how did
you
get
here
?”
“Got a job in a local harbor. Rest of my time I sit, play cards, and listen to ocean-going news, especially about pirates. Then one day I saw Andreus. This was right after a navy ship brought in a pirate who’d attacked your ship some weeks back. That is, I thought it might be your ship. Now we’re hearing about the mysterious disappearances of mages, and all I could think of was rescuing you. I should have known that you would take care of them yourself.”
Captain Tebet gave a loud laugh, then clapped Wren on the shoulder so heartily she staggered. “A girl after me own heart!”
“Well, we would have welcomed you earlier, truth to say,” Wren said, surreptitiously massaging her shoulder, and Connor could see from her troubled expression that something had gone wrong. “But what we’d welcome even more is a bite to eat, if you have any. My fellow sailors and I have had nothing but fish and peanuts for days, and not even that since morning.”
“We’ll lay on a feast,” Captain Tebet promised. “And you tell us the story, while yon navy finishes wrapping up them pirates.”
Wren then introduced Patka, Thad, Lambin, and Danal, who had been standing in a silent row.
As Captain Tebet asked them kindly questions, Wren whispered to Connor, “I was coming out to find you, and here you are. “
Connor looked down into her tired face. “Not one bell ago I was standing on the rail swearing I’d go after Andreus if, well, if anything had happened to you, and making and discarding plans as fast as I could.”
“Plans.” Wren’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “Disappearing mages. Andreus. Why? He doesn’t do anything for fun. We learned that long ago. He always has plans. Usually plans leading to plans leading to other plans.”
Connor gazed down into her face, wondering why the air had gotten so hot. No,
he
had.
He took a step back as Wren gazed out to sea, looking troubled. “I wish I knew what to do.”
It was five days before Tyron sent a message to Teressa saying, “Halfrid’s here. We are on our way over.”
Teressa had been sitting with the scribes, going over seasonal judgments province by province. Incredibly tedious work that had to be done, her father had told her when he first invited her to sit in on the sessions:
Most
of
the
backgrounds
of
these
judgments
you
won’t
know
anything
about
and
so
you
won’t
change
them
,
and
the
dukes
and
duchesses
know
that
you
won’t
change
them
,
but
they
also
know
you’re
looking
over
their
shoulder
.
And
after
enough
years
patterns
do
emerge in the way they make their decisions
.
You
still
might
not
reverse
their
judgments
,
for
that’s
an
action
of
last
resort
that
undermines
their
authority
,
but
you
will
keep
those
patterns
in
mind
when
you
make
laws
.