Ryshad hugged me before leaning forward to trace a finger down the broken mountains that formed Kehannasekke’s spine. “That’ll be hard going. The more time we have in hand the better.”
“How long will you be fighting Ilkehan?” demanded Sorgrad. “If you’ve driven him off those rocks before we’re barely halfway there, we’re all but lost.”
“Or if he drives your lot into the quicksands,” added ’Gren, all polite helpfulness.
Olret scowled at him. “We will not be driven back.”
“All the more reason for us to be ready to strike as soon as possible,” Ryshad said firmly.
Shiv was still studying the map. “Could you send some other boats fishing or something, at the same time as we set out? They’ll draw any curious eyes away from us.”
“Maedror can arrange that while he finds you a boat and crew,” Olret grudgingly conceded.
Sorgrad shook his head. “We’ll row ourselves. If we’re caught, we’ll take our chances. If your people are taken, that tells Ilkehan you’re helping us.”
“We don’t want to bring any more trouble down on your people,” said Shiv earnestly.
Olret’s face twisted with resentment. “Ilkehan thinks himself so powerful, so untouchable.”
“We’ll show him different,” ’Gren assured him blithely.
“We’ll get our gear, while Maedror arranges a boat.” Ryshad’s respectful courtesy left Olret with no option but to summon the guard waiting warily by the far door. By the time we’d packed up our few possessions and returned to the great hall, Maedror was waiting.
“The master will meet us at the water’s edge,” he said shortly as he handed us each an oilskin-covered bundle. I found mine contained bread and dried meat as he led us out to the stone jetties where an anonymous hide-covered boat bobbed gently at a tether.
Instead of his earlier ill temper, Olret greeted us with a smile. I wondered if it was as false as my own. “You have been my guests for so short a time but know that I value the friendship you offer.” He spoke loudly enough for the curious, pausing in their incessant fish gutting, to hear. “As you depart, I offer gifts in earnest of our future hopes.”
Ryshad and Shiv each got a braided wristlet of pale leather, threaded through beads of dark red stone.
“We call it Maewelin’s blood.” Olret offered similar wristlets to ’Gren and Sorgrad. “The tale has it that the Mother cut herself shaping such sharp mountains.” He chuckled and we laughed dutifully at the pleasantry.
“Does it hold any virtue?” I nearly said Artifice but caught myself just in time.
“Not beyond its beauty.” Olret looked puzzled. “But it loses its lustre unless it sees the sunlight, which we take as token of the Mother’s blessing within it.” He had a pendant on a single thong for me but I stopped him putting it over my head with a deprecating smile. “May I look?” No one puts something that might strangle me around my neck. I studied the red stone glowing in the bright sun, veins of green and yellow teasing the eye as they disappeared into the piece skilfully shaped to resemble the closed bud of a flower. “It’s beautiful.” I put the thong around my neck with a suitably grateful beam.
“We should leave before those boats get too far away to give us cover.” Ryshad pointed to others already cutting through the water, most with oars, one larger with a single square-rigged sail of ruddy leather. They were heading southwards down the strait towards the dark line scored by a broken row of sandbanks and rocky outcrops rising barely higher than the water. With a final bow to Olret we took up the places we’d become used to in the boat that had brought us here.
“Keep close in to shore,” Shiv ordered as Ryshad pushed us away from the jetty. Sorgrad gritted his teeth and hauled in his oar, ’Gren doing the same beside him.
“Don’t blame me if we get covered in bird shit.” Ryshad steered a careful course towards the piled stacks of black rock with their bickering roosts.
I waved a farewell at Olret who was watching us with a peculiar hunger on his face. “Goodbye,” I muttered. “Goodbye warm baths, clean beds and food someone else has cooked, even if it is the strangest I’ve ever tasted.”
’Gren laughed.
“Mind the outflow from the sluices,” Shiv warned as we passed the mill atop the causeway, water foaming from gates beneath it.
As they all concentrated on oars, tiller and the rush of water beneath the thin hull, we all fell silent, the only sound the rhythmic plash of the oars.
I twisted to check that we were out of sight of Olret and promptly took his pendant off.
“Don’t,” said Sorgrad sharply, seeing I was about to toss it into the sea.
“It’s the only thing we’ve seen there worth stealing,” ’Gren agreed. “Trust me, I looked.”
“I don’t trust Olret and so I don’t trust his gifts.” I hoped no one asked me to elaborate. I’d still rather not complicate matters by explaining about those Shernasekke women.
“Have you any sense that they’re enchanted?” Ryshad looked past me. “Shiv?”
“I’m the wrong mage again.” Shiv looked chagrined. “But I can’t feel anything awry and I always did handling Kellarin artefacts.”
“It could carry some charm to help him keep track of us,” I warned. “Or hear what we’re saying?”
“If there is some trick, getting rid of the things will just let him know we suspect him.” Sorgrad shipped his oar for a moment.
“He could just have been giving us a gift,” ’Gren mused as he took a rest as well.
I looked quizzically at him. “And you tell me to live my life trusting nothing and no one until Saedrin tells me different at the end of it.”
“I don’t have to trust someone to take their valuables.” ’Gren was unconcerned. “Anyway, we might want to bribe someone to look the other way before we’re done with Ilkehan. Better to use Olret’s wealth than our own.”
“We wrap them up at the bottom of someone’s pack,” Sorgrad said firmly. “Then any kind of magic will show him piss all but he won’t think we’re scorning or deceiving him by getting rid of them. I’ll take them.”
I turned to Ryshad who was leaning on the tiller with unseeing eyes. “Ryshad?”
He smiled at me. “I just remembered where I’ve seen this stone before. One of Messire D’Olbriot’s sisters has some pieces, passed to her by an aunt from one of the House’s cadet lines. She got them from some ancestor who married into a family trading out of Blacklith.”
“When we get back, you might like to ask your D’Olbriot just where his kin by marriage were trading in the Dalasor grassland clans,” Sorgrad remarked as he leant into his oar. “Now, where are we’re heading?”
“Just out of sight of Rettasekke and across the strait,” Ryshad told him. “I’ll be cursed before I flog you all the way up to where Olret suggested.”
“Cursed by me, that’s for sure.” ’Gren looked at Ryshad. “You don’t trust him?”
It’s always reassuring to have people thinking the same way as me.
“I don’t trust his reasoning.” Ryshad checked wind and wave before leaning on the tiller. “His route would take far too long. I want to be ready to hit Ilkehan as soon as we can.”
“If his attack goes badly, Olret might just give us up to save his own skin,” I pointed out. “He was discussing some kind of a truce when Ilkehan mutilated his son.”
“That lad’ll likely lose the other eye, even if he lives,” grimaced Sorgrad. “I’ve seen it before with a blinding.”
The memory of the tortured boy prompted another long silence as we toiled up the Rettasekke coast.
“This is our closest approach,” Ryshad announced some while later. “Shiv, you and Livak take the second set of oars and for all our sakes, match your stroke to hers.”
Rettasekke reached out into the sea, rising up to a headland faced with sheer cliffs. Distant Kehannasekke lurked just visible, a long sweep of low land among the ever-present mists across the open water. I made my way gingerly up the boat to join Shiv on the forward thwart.