Ludovoco had just arrived on deck. Alvantes swung down the ladder and came to a smart halt in front of his fellow officer. "I see we've stopped," he said. "Perhaps I could take a few minutes ashore to stretch my legs."
"I'm sorry," said Ludovoco, "I can't spare anyone to accompany you."
"I won't need any assistance."
"Let me speak plainly. You are under the protection of the Crown Guard. As long as that remains the case, you're my responsibility. To have you wandering unescorted is a risk I'm not willing to take."
"I've no intention of going far, let alone placing myself in danger."
"Nevertheless…"
"Commander, I must insist."
The silence that followed was heavy as the minutes before a storm, as though the very air was holding still in anticipation. The moment seemed to stretch impossibly. Then, as if nothing untoward had been said, Ludovoco waved over one of the sailors. "Labro," he said. "I'm assigning you to Guard-Captain Alvantes. Take him wherever he'd like to go in town." He put particular emphasis on those last two words. To Alvantes he added, "Might I suggest you take your companion with you."
"Fine by me," I agreed.
"I can give you an hour. After that, Labro will escort you back."
"An hour will be ample," Alvantes agreed.
"Good." With a gesture somewhere between a salute and a wave of dismissal, Ludovoco turned and disappeared into the lower deck.
I watched his retreating back in fascination. What I'd just witnessed was a pissing contest, pure and simple, and Alvantes had instigated it. I wondered if the results were what he'd hoped for. Ludovoco had given ground, but in such a fashion as to make clear who was in control — and that we were going nowhere without his say-so. If Alvantes had been feeling out the limits of his status aboard the Prayer at Dusk, he had his answer right there.
Now it was time for me to do the same. I'd seen an opportunity that might not come again. "Just a moment," I said, "I've left my coin in my cabin. This is my first time in Ans Pasaeda. Who knows what I might find?"
Labro wavered, obviously unsure how this fit into his orders. In the end, he looked to Alvantes.
"Be quick," Alvantes told me.
"I'm always quick."
And I was — when I was up to something I didn't want to be interrupted.
I scurried down into the aftcastle and on into our room, closing the door quietly behind me. Alvantes's bags were crammed into the slender gap between the bunks and the outer hull. I took a moment to memorise their precise position, then pulled them free.
Now that I knew what to expect, it was easy to see which had the slight bulge at its base. I drew out the bag's contents, a blanket, a change of shirt and other personal effects, taking care to remember how everything was packed and piling them accordingly.
The bags were leather, lined with heavy cloth. I could see immediately that the bottom of the other saddlebag's lining had been cut out and sewn into this one. Feeling around, it wasn't hard to detect a halfdozen shallow bumps beneath the fabric, or to identify them from shape and size as onyxes.
Not bad. Quite clever even. Alvantes's ploy might have fooled anyone who didn't know what to look for — and hadn't been the one to educate him in the art of hiding things. With that in mind, it didn't take a genius to notice there was another thumb's length of space beneath the false bottom. My guess was he'd removed the bottoms of both bags and sandwiched them together, with the coins between and a shallow hiding place beneath.
It would be tricky to investigate further without leaving evidence — and time was running out. I pushed one hand within the bag, placed the other on the outside and teased along the edge of the false bottom. Something solid ran around the circumference. It didn't give at all, but nor was it heavy enough to much affect the bag's weight. Perhaps some reinforcement for the compartment? Then again, the stiff leather outer would suffice for that. More likely, this was the hidden object itself. What could it be? A perfect ring of metal, thin, light, a thumb's length deep…
I realised I wasn't breathing — hadn't been for I couldn't say how long. With a great effort, I forced myself to draw air.
It was a crown.
No. It was Panchetto's crown.
To all intents and purposes, Alvantes had been carrying round the princedom of Altapasaeda.
Mounteban would kill without hesitation to have it.
So would many others — maybe even Ludovoco. Who knew what nest of political vipers we might have stumbled into?
Using the tiny portion of my mind still functioning, I heaped Alvantes's belongings into the saddlebag, put both bags back as I'd found them. It was tricky to remember how to walk, but I managed it. I left the cabin, climbed the stairs to the deck. Alvantes gave me a brief glance of suspicion but said nothing.
"Shall we go?" I asked. I felt as if I was trying to talk around a mouth full of treacle, but if either of them noticed, they hid it well.
Panchetto's crown.
He'd been wearing it when I first met him. It had been exceptionally shiny. In bare weight of gold and jewels, it would be worth a fortune. Symbolically, it was worth a city, perhaps the fate of the entire Castoval.
No wonder Alvantes had taken pains to hide it.
The remainder of the day passed in a blur.
Before I knew it, we'd returned to the Prayer at Dusk. I couldn't recall a thing I'd seen, or any detail of the town we'd walked through, not even its name. On the rare occasions Alvantes or our "escort" Labro had bothered to speak to me, I thought I'd managed a coherent response. I couldn't remember the conversations any more than I could anything else.
As I lay in my bunk that night, my mind was a whirlpool, broken debris of thoughts whipping about its rim. How had Alvantes come upon the crown? It could only have been during the interval between Panchetto's murder and our escape from Altapasaeda. Knowing him, he had some high-minded idea about keeping it from falling into the wrong hands.
Probably that was all this trip had ever been about. Alvantes's talk of bearing the news of Panchetto's death and recruiting the King's help against Mounteban had been little more than a smokescreen. In truth, he was striving to return the crown to the safety of royal hands.
What an appalling waste!
By the third day, I felt I was behaving more or less normally again. It helped that normality involved sitting in silence on the aftcastle deck, watching Ans Pasaeda drift by.
Here at least the landscape was moderately diverting. To either side were vast and almost level plains, so boundless that they made my eyes ache with their magnitude. Scattered upon them were groves of unfamiliar willowy trees, great grazing herds of cattle, goats and sheep and endless farms, each in its own rectangular compound. There were villages too, a few larger towns, and a couple of far-distant places that must surely have been cities. Perhaps they were as big as or bigger than Altapasaeda, yet the sense of scale made even the largest communities seem insignificant.
I had to gaze far westward to see the land rise up, where it finally gave way to the incline of the mountains. Even farther to the north, it was just possible to make out the point where a great ridge of mountainside jutted outward. According to Alvantes, our destination lay at the lowest tip of that spur. If the wind continued to favour us through the night, we'd be there by early morning.
I slept restlessly. Numbing tedium and then the thrill of Alvantes's secret had served to quieten my other worries for most of the journey. As I lay there, wondering what the morrow would bring, they returned in force. I might have evaded Synza once again, but it was hard to escape the sense that I'd only swapped one threat for another. I was friendless and far from home. In fits of madness, I'd given away most of my money. Even finding one of the greatest treasures imaginable within my reach offered scant comfort, for what hope did I have of separating the crown from Alvantes before he hurled it away upon the King? All told, I could see no grounds for optimism.