Chapter 7 #2
“When you’re done,” Isolde said, nonchalantly, “we can send it. I assume this changes things, unlike the Butcher’s useless note?”
It did. They both did, despite Isolde’s denial. Which things were changed, and how much, I didn’t know yet. Not knowing was a particularly exquisite discomfort I tried to ignore by squeezing Chay’s hand. I went back to change into my respectable, if dull, clothes.
Isolde helped me dress without any further comments. She seemed to be in a good mood, but I supposed it was fair to assume the plague hadn’t impacted the Steppes or the Matri’sion tribes in the north-west if it hadn’t made it as far as ’Ban.
Allison was waiting for me in the main hall we’d turned into a mess hall and meeting room in one, the delicate filigree clockwork sleeve open in front of her. Sticks of unlit incense circled her, connected with copper wires and positioned to connect to a crystal ball with lightning inside of it.
I went straight to her, message coiled and ready. She took it and, without opening it, as she was supposed to, laid it into the metal that would act as a seal and proof of my identity.
She was supposed to read it. She was adding her magical signature to it by casting the spell.
I said nothing as she worked, the smell of incense and metal filling my head. Her Dayquill sat to one side, glowing faintly with the magic that imbued it to carry messages from the lips of the writer in crisp, clear, impersonal script. But her Dayquill always sat beside her.
She knew who that missive had been from. She’d been required to unseal it, after all.
No one was talking. I smoothed a hand over my skirt, but it was all in place.
I knew people were waiting, hungry for news, but was I to announce it?
My father will return, but not for a year.
The people who we treated like enemies under my father’s control, who I’d like to be allies with, they’re well! And they have wheat!
“Should I have mentioned wheat?” I asked Isolde, as we left the feast hall. “To Darrius? To set up trades?”
She shrugged. “Seems like any ship with wheat on it that he sent would get here too late to do any good, and a mere trade caravan would take your entire lands if they wanted to. The less you ask of others until we stabilize, the better.”
“Darrius won’t take La’Angi,” Chay said, impatiently, from his place a half-step behind me and to my left. “He could help Audrey.”
“Just because you’ve had a change of…heart.
” Isolde’s gaze went over my shoulder as she raised her brows at him.
“Not everyone shares your fondness for…our city.” I felt the creeping embarrassment at the blunt jokes, but didn’t dare to look to see if he was uncomfortable with the jesting, ignoring the gnawing worry.
“The footing is unsure here, my lady,” Thomas said without infliction. “Best mind your step.”
Isolde wouldn’t have been teasing Chay if we weren’t alone, but Thomas’ words reminded me that he’d seen us in a significantly more compromising position this afternoon, and he’d had strong opinions on much less.
I was going to need to talk to him, too. Somehow.
One year.
The chore at hand busied me as I found the older man who’d taken charge of the pigeons in the dusty, dark coop that housed the birds. The old master was in a cart, the ground, or a pyre somewhere. The important thing was that this one knew which birds would fly to ’Ban.
I could’ve left that little tube with him and avoided the unpleasant building, but instead I followed along, watching as he did his work, making small talk as he prepared the bird. The cheddar he’d eaten this morning had been good and sharp. The wind was, too. The thaw might be soon.
My father hadn’t needed a response. That was the thing with orders.
The stairs up to the top of the coop made my thighs burn. I ignored the discomfort, following unnecessarily along. If I turned around, I was going to need to figure out the next thing. There were so many next things. Instead, I could follow through this one.
I was making him nervous, or Chay and Thomas were, and he talked too much. “It feels like such a long time since we heard from anyone,” I told him, to put him at ease. “I can’t wait for another.”
He smiled at this, clucking at the pigeon in his hands.
Finally, we crested the stairs and onto the big, open roof. The air was fresher, and the sun held some precious warmth.
I could go riding. We’d take bows and return with game. We’d guide parties to gather apples, or visit close by villages in search of wheat.
My eyes sought and found the nearest edge of the orchard to the east, then followed the lines of the gently rolling hills. Would I need to stage a tourney this autumn?
Who else would?
The idea of having Chay compete, of having him face a fair fight, made my heart sit lighter. It had been important to him. Mayhap it was an extravagant gift I was attempting to give, but the tourney happened every year. It wasn’t like I was planning an event only for him.
If I offered a larger purse than usual for the joust to see what he’d learned from the heavy infantry, well, what would it hurt?
The bird was in the sky with that precious spelled message. I have him, Darrius. I drew in a deep breath. I’ll do what I can to keep him safe.
Isolde made a noise of interest. I glanced over, shading my eyes against the afternoon sun and following her gaze across the sea, north of the bird’s path.
My heart turned over in my chest at the sight that met my eyes.
A ship.
A single, brave ship in an otherwise lifeless bay.
* * *
Waiting wasn’t something I considered myself bad at, but as I stood beside a silent Brian on the battlements while he fastidiously adjusted the looking-glass, I felt impatience clawing at me. That brown blot on the blue was growing bigger, but I couldn’t see much more than the shape of it.
Who was coming?
And why?
Would we all still be alive in a year?
“They’re pirates,” Brian said, finally.
I shouldered the worry that came along with his words with ease born of practice. “What’s the difference between pirates and merchants? The amount of blood they’ll spill?”
Brian snorted. “You haven’t had many dealings with merchants, have you, my lady?”
Ignoring the reflex to defend against that barb, I admitted, “No, I haven’t. I’m less concerned with being swindled than overrun, though.”
He glanced over, and his expression was sheepish as he passed me the glass. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t kind. You’ll see they’re flying no banners you’d recognize from any of the trading companies.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said, soothing away his guilt out of habit. Isolde, beside me, shifted a little. I didn’t need to glance over to know she was unhappy with me for that reflexive nicety, so instead I lifted the long copper-and-clockwork machine to my eye.
The waves jumped into view, the colors rippling across their surface. The blue of the water was so deep it was almost black compared to the sun so low in the sky. I adjusted my angle, slowly scanning until the vessel came into sharp relief.
Not only could I see people, but those people had faces. With the motion of the ship on the water they moved in and out of my sight, but impressions of dirty shirts and the scabbards at their waist left me feeling uneasy. The deck itself looked like any other ship deck I’d seen.
Until I came across the glint of glass, and the enlarged eye of a pirate staring directly at me.
Awareness jolted through me. The hairs on my body rose and my belly pitched as if it was me on that ship.
The watcher vanished from view behind a wave, and when they returned, I saw their looking glass in their hand, their face pointed toward me.
In the split second I had to take in the sight of them, I couldn’t see beyond the smirk tucked up in the corner of their lips.
They vanished again as other details seeped into my mind.
Their long hair, braided to sit atop their head, the inked images on their skin, the way their hand had gripped the helm lazily, the width of their shoulders and the challenge in the tilt of their chin.
“If they were a merchant ship, they’d have their trading company on at least one of their sails,” Brian said, jolting me from my reverie.
I dropped the looking glass from my eye and passed it back, recognizing the coil of anticipation low in my belly.
“Pirates are criminals,” I said, trying to refocus.
He shrugged. “Well, yes. They don’t have papers required to trade. They aren’t any more or less violent than any other ship, so I wouldn’t refuse them port, were I you. Who knows, mayhap they have cargo we’d find useful.”
I tried to remember the angle of their approach. “They’ve come from the north.”
“If the plague didn’t reach north, that seems like a wise place to linger,” he mused, leaning against the stone. My eyes went back toward the ship, and I wondered if that pirate was staring at me again over the waves. I wondered what I’d look like from their angle.
The thought wasn’t a comfortable one, so I turned to Brian. “If they were merchants, we’d know what they’d want.”
“Precisely.” He turned and we started down the stairs.
“One thing every ship needs, though, is a port to weather a storm.” I glanced at the sparse clouds in the sky, and he smiled at me.
“’Tis a metaphor, my lady. One of the challenges of piracy is limited places to sell.
They often don’t have money to buy papers because they can’t sell their cargo legally.
They’re forced to trade in small villages, or to lower their prices and pay exorbitant bribes. ”
I froze, struck by the impact of that sort of cycle. Always scraping to make a living, never able to claw their way to honest work, never able to undercut the trading companies, branded as criminals for attempting to do business…
“I want to meet them,” I said.
Brian’s smile vanished. He glanced at Chay and Thomas behind me, then back to me. “Should we talk to Kaelson?”
The gentle attempt to steer me toward a sensible path irritated me, and the sight of said steel-haired Captain approaching at a brisk walk didn’t mollify me at all. “Absolutely,” I said, my voice strained. “And Bernie, and Ettie.”
“Of course, my lady, I meant no disrespect,” Brian said, surprise in his words. “Only, the Captain understands security better than any of us.”
Does he? I bit down against the reflex to soothe Brian this time, picking up my skirts to make better time down the steps, aiming to meet Kaelson at the bottom, my head full of that pirate’s arrogance. Could I sign docking papers?
Would I be allowed near them to offer?
“We’ve guests,” I told Kaelson, and didn’t care that my irritation came through in those words.
“So I hear, my lady.” Kaelson bowed crisply and fell in beside me, too polite to chide me for my tone. “They could do a lot of damage if they slip into the city overnight.” He held up his hand. “You don’t know who this belongs to, do you?”
I glanced at it, but Kaelson wasn’t asking me, he was asking Chay.
The arrow was plain, simple, and exactly like the ones in my quiver. I kept my expression neutral.
Silence came in the wake of his words, until Chay said, “Was that question for me, Kaelson? I’m sorry, I thought you were addressing the lady.”
Kaelson shrugged. “Consider me addressing the group at large.”
“Should I recognize it?” I asked him, grateful for the wind that whipped my hair into my face and gave me something to do with my hands as we veered into the keep.
“It’s an arrow, yes? No colors on the fletching?
” Because Matri’sion don’t bother. Corpses don’t need to know who you’re loyal to. “Where did it come from?”
Two nights ago, Isolde had told me she’d scout and left Chay and I to fall asleep in each other’s arms. I’d had so many things on my mind since that I hadn’t asked how it had gone. Then my father announced his intended arrival date, and nothing else mattered.
“Three Leaves storehouse,” Kaelson said, briskly. “The Yyles are pleased to know their belongings have been returned, though they’re arguing our inventory was inaccurate.”
Behind me, Isolde stayed quiet as a predator.
“You recovered it?” I asked, letting the shock creep into my voice. “All of it?” She’d taken the storehouse. What had he said it was, an old treasury? Laughter bubbled behind my ribs. “What of the looters?” But I knew. There was blood on the head of that arrow.
“They’re dead, m’lady,” Kaelson said.
I looked over, lifting my brows. “What, all of them? Did your archer help you get in?”
He met my gaze for a step, and then another, drawing out my discomfort.
Was that speculation in his eyes? “It would appear a group of archers got themselves in and took care of the entire problem for us. I found this on my desk this morning.” This morning?
Had she done it last night? Or simply got tired of no one admiring her handiwork?
“A group of archers, you say?” Isolde asked. She’d be laughing at this, inside. No one would ever know it, though. “I thought you only needed one?”
My heart swelled.
“One to get in,” he said, the words bracing. “But getting in and taking a building have different requirements, m’lady.”
Of course it did. I thought of Isolde storming a building alone. If something had happened to her, of course, I’d’ve been furious. But it mustn’t have been so dangerous, or she wouldn’t have done it.
“Keen eye on them,” he went on. “Much like whoever protected Sir Chay at that ambush.”
Sir Chay? I turned over the importance of that title. Was I reading too hard into his mannerisms?
Happily, Brian asked, “How do you know?” Which wasn’t precisely the right question given the context, but it saved me from prying further.
“No missed shots,” Kaelson said, taking a few steps ahead and opening the door. “No arrows in doors or barrels. Eyes, throats, and chests all.”
Brian let out a whistle. “And you’ve no idea who these archers are?”
“The list of people I’ve mentioned the situation to is quite short,” Kaelson said.
My heart sank. I dropped my gaze to my skirts, watching where my feet went as I followed him in out of the cold.
“Well, mayhap mention our potential pirate problem to them,” I offered.
“Having someone watching the docks to ensure we aren’t infiltrated under the cover of night would be excellent.
” Isolde would, too, if the mood took her.
The laughter in my chest died at the thought.
“An excellent idea, my Lady Audrey,” Kaelson said, so jovially that it took everything in me not to slide a glance his direction. “Where is it we’re going, by the by?”
“The kitchens,” I said, our destination plain to see through the big doors ahead of us that never shut, held in place by the stone archway wide enough to fit three abreast. “To organize a Welcome to La’Angi feast.”