She was drawn to a rumble of power from the broken barrow and looked down once more. ‘She’s coming, Hannan Mosag.’
‘Shall I leave? Or will she be amenable to our arrangement?’
‘On that, Edur, I cannot speak for her. Best you depart-she will, after all, be very hungry. Besides, she and I have much to discuss… old wounds to mend between us.’
She watched as the malformed warlock dragged himself away. After all, you are much more her child than you are mine, and I’d rather she was, for the moment, without allies.
It was all Menandore’s doing, anyway.
Chapter Six
The argument was this: a civilization shackled to the strictures of excessive control on its populace, from choice of religion through to the production of goods, will sap the will and the ingenuity of its people-for whom such qualities are no longer given sufficient incentive or reward. At face value, this is accurate enough. Trouble arrives when the opponents to such a system institute its extreme opposite, where individualism becomes godlike and sacrosanct, and no greater service to any other ideal (including community) is possible. In such a system rapacious greed thrives behind the guise of freedom, and the worst aspects of human nature come to the fore, a kind of intransigence as fierce and nonsensical as its maternalistic counterpart.
And so, in the clash of these two extreme systems, one is witness to brute stupidity and blood-splashed insensitivity; two belligerent faces glowering at each other across the unfathomed distance, and yet, in deed and in fanatic regard, they are but mirror reflections.
This would be amusing if it weren’t so pathetically idiotic…
Dead pirates were better, Shurq Elalle mused. There was a twisted sort of justice in the dead preying upon the living, especially when it came to stealing all their treasured possessions. Her pleasure in prying those ultimately worthless objects from their hands was the sole reason for her criminal activities, more than sufficient incentive to maintain her new’found profession. Besides, she was good at it.
The hold of the Undying Gratitude was filled with the cargo from the abandoned Edur ship, the winds were fresh and steady, pushing them hard north out of the Draconean Sea, and it looked as if the huge fleet in her wake was not getting any closer.
Edur and Letherii ships, a hundred, maybe more. They’d come out of the southwest, driving at a converging angle towards the sea lane that led to the mouth of the Lether River. The same lane that Shurq Elalle’s ship now tracked, as well as two merchant scows the Undying Gratitude was fast overhauling. And that last detail was too bad, since those Pilott scows were ripe targets, and without a mass of Imperial ships crawling up her behind, she’d have pounced.
Cursing, Skorgen Kaban limped up to where she stood at the aft rail. ‘It’s that infernal search, ain’t it? The two main fleets, or what’s left of ‘em.’ The first mate leaned over the rail and spat down into the churning foam skirling out from the keel. ‘They’re gonna be nipping our tails all the way into Letheras harbour.’
‘That’s right, Pretty, which means we have to stay nice.’
‘Aye. Nothing more tragic than staying nice.’
‘We’ll get over it,’ Shurq Elalle said. ‘Once we’re in the harbour, we can sell what we got, hopefully before the fleet arrives to do the same-because then the price will drop, mark my words. Then we head back out. There’ll be more Pilott scows, Skorgen.’
‘You don’t think that fleet came up on the floating wreck, do you? They’ve got every stretch of canvas out, like maybe they was chasing us. We get to the mouth and we’re trapped, Captain.’
‘Well, you have a point there. If they were truly scattered by that storm, a few of them could have come up on the wreck before it went under.’ She thought for a time, then said, ‘Tell you what. We’ll sail past the mouth. And if they ignore us and head upriver, we can come round and follow them in. But that means they’ll offload before we will, which means we won’t make as much-’
‘Unless their haul ain’t going to market,’ the first mate cut in. ‘Could be it’s all to replenish the royal vaults, Captain, or maybe it goes to the Edur and nobody else. Blood and Kagenza, after all. We could always find a coastal port and do our selling there.’
‘You get wiser with every body part you lose, Pretty.’
He grunted. ‘Gotta be some kind of upside.’
‘That’s the attitude,’ she replied. ‘All right, that’s what we’ll do, but never mind the coastal port-they’re all dirt poor this far north, surrounded by nothing but wilderness and bad roads where the bandits line up to charge tolls. And if a few Edur galleys take after us, we can always scoot straight up to that hold-out prison isle this side of Fent Reach-that’s a tight harbour mouth, or so I’ve been told, and they got a chain to keep the baddies out.’
‘Pirates ain’t baddies?’
‘Not as far as they’re concerned. The prisoners are running things now.’
‘I doubt it’ll be that easy,’ Skorgen muttered. ‘We’d just be bringing trouble down on them-it’s not like the Edur couldn’t have conquered them long ago. They just can’t be bothered.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. The point is, we’ll run out of food and water if we can’t resupply somewhere. Edur galleys are fast, fast enough to stay with us. Anywhere we dock they’ll be on us before the last line is drawn to the bollard. With the exception of the prison isle.’ She scowled. ‘It’s a damned shame. I wanted to go home for a bit.’
‘Then we’d best hope the whole damned fleet back there heads upriver,’ Skorgen the Pretty said, scratching round an eye socket.
‘Hope and pray-you pray to any gods, Skorgen?’
‘Sea spirits, mostly. The Face Under the Waves, the Guardian of the Drowned, the Swallower of Ships, the Stealer of Winds, the Tower of Water, the Reef Hiders, the-’
‘All right, Pretty, that’ll do. You can keep your host of disasters to yourself… just make sure you do all the propitiations.’
‘Thought you didn’t believe in all that, Captain.’
‘I don’t. But it never hurts to make sure.’
‘One day their names will rise from the water, Captain,’ Skorgen Kaban said, making a complicated warding gesture with his one remaining hand. ‘And with them the seas will lift high, to claim the sky itself. And the world will vanish beneath the waves.’
‘You and your damned prophecies.’
‘Not mine. Fent. Ever see their early maps? They show a coast leagues out from what it is now. All their founding villages are under hundreds of spans of water.’
‘So they believe their prophecy is coming true. Only it’s going to take ten thousand years.’
His shrug was lopsided. ‘Could be, Captain. Even the Edur claim that the ice far to the north is breaking up. Ten thousand years, or a hundred. Either way, we’ll be long dead by then.’
Speak for yourself, Pretty. Then again, what a thought. Me wandering round on the sea bottom for eternity. ‘Skorgen, get young Burdenar down from the crow’s nest and into my cabin.’
The first mate made a face. ‘Captain, you’re wearing him out.’
‘I ain’t heard him complain.’
‘Of course not. We’d all like to be as lucky-your pardon, Captain, for me being too forward, but it’s true. I was serious, though. You’re wearing him out, and he’s the youngest sailor we got.’
‘Right, meaning I’d probably kill the rest of you. Call him down, Pretty.’
‘Aye, Captain.’
She stared back at the distant ships. The long search was over, it seemed. What would they be bringing back to fair Letheras, apart from casks of blood? Champions. Each one convinced they can do what no other has ever managed. Kill the Emperor. Kill him dead, deader than me, so dead he never gets back up.