Mistress then.
But could she live with herself if hoarding this hard-won lore meant that Dev died and innocent people besides, even if they were savage Archipelagans who would murder a mage as soon as look at her? She was cold, dishevelled and exhausted. Her body ached for the reassurance of a warm bath, clean clothes, food and wine. She needed peace and solitude to make sense of this whole unnerving experience, but she couldn’t face the lofty isolation of her silent room in Hadrumal. She needed people around her after the desolation of Azazir’s madness. People who wouldn’t be asking any questions until she had some answers.
Velindre opened her eyes and seized the last wisps of air still struggling to escape imprisonment inside Azazir’s unnatural storm. Picturing one of the more discreet inns among the bustling cacophony of Relshaz, she fled the silent lakeshore in a flare of sapphire light
Chapter Fourteen
You’ve got a funny idea of pleasure, my lord,’ Dev mused as he climbed up on to the Mist Dove’s bow platform. We barbarians would generally prefer living in luxury with a beautiful woman open to our every suggestion to spending a full turn of the moon up to our arses in blood and slaughter.’
And we civilised men know that taking a girl to your bed because you feel sorry for her and angry with some other woman is seldom a good idea. At least, I used to know that. I certainly owe Itrac better than that, when we get back. Though I don’t know what that will mean for me and Risala, whenever she returns. Will she have thought better of tying herself to my fate, when she can still turn aside to make a new life for herself? ‘Do you have any news for me?’ Kheda looked meaningfully at the supposed slave. ‘Did you have an enjoyable shave?’
The wizard grinned, running a hand over his bald pate before he put his helmet on. Then he slid a covert glance at the side deck to be sure the trireme’s archers weren’t close enough to overhear him. ‘She left Jagai waters yesterday.’
‘She’s a couple of days out from Relshaz, then.’ Kheda fixed Dev with an unblinking stare. ‘Is there anyone there for her to meet?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dev replied with repressed savagery. ‘The stupid bitch is brushing aside my questions. I don’t know where she learned that trick.’
Has this magewoman learned the tricks we need, that we were promised? Or is there something Dev isn’t telling me?
He bit down on the questions crowding on the tip of his tongue, conscious of the storage space under the planking beneath their feet.
Do you know who’s in there? Some of the sail crew? The ship’s carpenter, about some innocent business? No, so watch your words.
The Mist Dove was rowing steadily past a shallow white slope of sand where a coral islet barely broke the waves. The Gossamer Shark and the Brittle Crab flanked the heavy trireme. Kheda looked out past the upswept prow, frustration burning like acid in the back of his throat. ‘Risala has courier doves. She’ll send word when she reaches Relshaz. Itrac knows to send out a dispatch galley with news from the north at once. Until then, all we can do is go on.’
How long can I rely on that sole omen of the infant shark? When will I see something more to guide me? And what an irony this is: I’m risking my life consorting with wizards and I’m still reduced to relying on birds carrying messages because Dev and this magewoman have somehow lost touch. ‘Go on slaughtering savages?’ Dev raised an eyebrow. ‘I suppose it’s a living.’
‘You imagine we’re enjoying this?’ Kheda rounded on the wizard. ‘You don’t think we’re all sick to our stomachs of the stink of blood and bowels?’ He gestured at the armoured swordsmen sitting along the rails of the trireme or lying down on the side decks. All showed signs of fatigue, some sitting with heads hanging or eyes closed, faces drawn. Hauberks and helms betrayed signs of rough cleaning but foulness still stained metal and leather. Only swords were bright and unspotted. Plenty of warriors were busy with whetstone, rag and oil while the archers sat to check that the fletching on their arrows was secure and that no damp threatened the soundness of their bows or mildew compromised their strings. At least I got my armour back and no one was killed fetching it. Is that any kind of omen? ‘It has to be done,’ Kheda said with weary determination as he wiped away a trickle of sweat from underneath his helm’s brow band. ‘And it will be done. We will clear every last island of these savages and then Chazen can look to the future.’
And pursuing them gets me away from the residence where everyone pursues me looking for answers and judgements. Where Itrac increasingly wants something more than affection, something I find I just cannot give her.
‘This little campaign of yours is certainly doing wonders for my swordplay,’ Dev commented idly. ‘I can really play the part nowadays. And it’s keeping everyone’s mind off the dragon,’ he added in a lower, thoughtful tone. Kheda rubbed a hand over his beard. ‘Is it possible we’ve already killed whoever was summoning it?’ he asked quietly. ‘There’s been no sign of it, no word, since the full of the Lesser Moon.’
‘I wouldn’t bet your residence on it,’ Dev said frankly. ‘Let’s see what’s happened at this village we’re heading for first. That sounds like the work of some wild wizard with a rush of blood to the head.’
‘It’s done no good for morale, has it?’ Kheda leaned back against the prow post, surveying the trireme’s tired contingent. ‘We thought we had the last of then penned in on the rocks beyond Conti with nowhere to go but the empty ocean and then we get news of a village razed to the ground two days’ hard pull behind us.’
‘Which is what makes me suspect some prentice wizard has felt his stones drop.’ Dev cracked his knuckles. ‘Who wants a quick and lethal lesson in his art.’
‘You’re to keep watch for the dragon,’ Kheda told him forcefully. We want to kill them all before it arrives. Try to think of anything we might do to drive it off, if we can’t get away in time, even if we’ve no idea how to kill it as yet.’
‘Without getting myself killed?’ queried Dev sceptically. ‘By the beast or by my own side,’ he added in a low tone.
Kheda looked up at the empty skies. ‘We can tell every archer to watch for it. Perhaps a storm of arrows will send it looking for an easier meal.’
‘As I said, my lord, I wouldn’t bet your residence on that,’ Dev scoffed.
‘Then we’ll have to try throwing gems at it.’ Kheda shrugged. ‘You know where the chests are.’
A warlord’s ransom in jewels extorted from Daish and stacked in the stern cabin of this trireme. It’s a good thing any pirates have long since fled these waters for fear of the dragon.
He frowned as he saw activity on the shore on the far side of the strait the Mist Dove had turned into. Skiffs with deft triangular sails were drawn up on the sand and bare-chested fishermen were landing a fresh catch and haggling with islanders in creased and sweat-stained cotton who sat on sacks of sailer grain, baskets of vegetables by their feet. Youths waiting out on the water saw the triremes and began shouting and waving.
Ready to give us all the precious sailer from storehouses that barely hold enough to see them to the end of the dry season. They’ll strip their village plots of reckal roots and send children into the forest to forage for hira beets instead, if that’s what it takes to support their warlord and his warriors, so we can put an end to these savages, so they can return to a life with only the usual chances and hardships to fear. ‘They’re a bit cursed close to this village that was attacked, aren’t they?’ Dev frowned. ‘They don’t seem overly worried’