The captain turned slowly, scanning the length and breadth of the shoreline through his own instrument. Between his fingers delicately engraved figures adorned the golden barrel, studded with precious gems. Tarrant had given it to him as a gift when they first left port, and Damien remembered wondering at its design. He shouldn’t have. Its message of value, tasteless but eloquent, had won the captain over in an instant. What good will the Hunter could not inspire in this crew, he clearly intended to purchase.
Carefully Damien studied the lay of the land beyond, breakwater and cliff face and an occasional rocky slope that might through some stretch of the imagination be termed a beach . . . he scanned the salt-frothed shoreline, wishing he had Tarrant’s Sight. By now the Hunter would have analyzed every current in the region and picked them apart for the messages they carried. Yes, he would have said, there’s human life, just south of here. Unaware of our presence. Sail on with the wind . . .
And then Damien drew in a sharp breath, as he caught sight of a pattern that wasn’t wholly natural. It took him a moment to focus on it: a pale line, mostly straight, that wound upward from the base of the cliff to its summit several hundred feet above. Artificial, he thought. Without a doubt. His fingers tightened about the slender tube as he focused in on the line itself, on the rhythm of tiny shadows that peppered its length. Trying to identify them.
And for a moment he stopped breathing, as he realized what they were. What they had to be. Dear God. That’s it.
The captain turned to him. “You see something?” He nodded. His heart was pounding so loudly from excitement he was amazed that the others couldn’t hear it. “There.” He directed the man’s gaze to the thing he had seen, then handed his own telescope to Rasya. Not wanting to say anything more until they had seen it for themselves. Until they had confirmed it.
The captain spotted it first, and swore softly. “Vulkin’ ninth messiah. Stairs?”
“Barely footholds,” Rasya corrected. “Slope’s too steep for more than that.”
“Humans carved ’em, though. That’s for sure.”
Humans, Damien thought, or something that looks human. Something that wears a human form and therefore uses human tools. Are we looking at the work of a possible ally . . . or is this the mark of our enemy? The uncertainty made him cold inside. He tried to work a Knowing, to settle his doubts, but the power that clung to the planet’s surface was still too far below them. Inaccessible. Tarrant might be able to Work through this much water, but he sure as hell couldn’t.
“Ras?” the captain prompted.
“Be bad for a landing,” she said quietly, “even for a rowboat. And there’s no place nearby to harbor the Glory - at least not that we’ve seen yet. That means we’d have to leave you here and move on, maybe ten, maybe a hundred miles down the coast. Not good.”
“But if you want it, we’ll do it,” the captain assured Damien. “That was the deal. Set you down wherever you want . . . even if it is in the middle of just about nowhere.”
“And against our better judgment,” Rasya added.
Damien studied the coast for a long minute, as if somehow that could settle his unease. “Can we wait here? Until the sun sets? That’s—”
“Seven hours,” Rasya supplied, and the captain asked, “Because of his Lordship?”
“I’d like him to take a look at this. Before any decisions are made.”
“Can’t stay here,” Rasya warned. “Not unless you want to be a sitting duck for the next smasher. Look there: that shore’s been hit hard and often. Staying here is asking for trouble.” She ran a hand thoughtfully through her short hair. “We could head out to sea for a while instead, come back in with Domina’s tide . . . risky at night, but if the wind holds steady I’d chance it.”
The captain looked to Damien for approval, then nodded. “All right. Do it.”
She nodded, laid down the slim black telescope, and left them to give the orders that would adjust their course. Damien moved to follow her. But the captain’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Not yet,” he muttered. “Not just yet.”
He gestured for Damien to retrieve the telescope. He did so, and focused once more on the distant shoreline.
“By the top of the stairs,” the captain directed. His voice was tense. “About two hundred yards to the right. Back from the edge a bit.”
Shadows. Boulders. And a circular form that gleamed darkly in the sunlight, a ring of blue-black metal that looked out over the surf like a vast, nightbound eye. It was not hard to make out, once he had found it. It took him a while longer to make out the shape that was behind it. The long metal tube and its supporting frame, coarse timber fastened with heavy iron bolts. Iron balls beside it, stacked with geometric precision. Canisters.
He lowered the telescope. And swore softly.
“Now mind you,” the captain said, “I haven’t seen a lot of ’em . . . but that damn sure looks like a cannon to me.”
Night fell, but it brought no true darkness. The cloudless sky was still half-filled with stars, a thousand brilliant points of light that twinkled in the cobalt heavens like diamonds on jeweler’s velvet. Toward the west there were so many of them that their light ran together, pooling like molten gold along the horizon, crowning the sea with fire. Soon Erna’s second sun would set—a false sun, made up of a million stars—but until then the Ernan colonists need have no fear of darkness. Only the creatures who feared true sunlight would call this time night.
Tarrant stood at the bow of the ship, his pale eyes narrowed against the Corelight. His gloved hands were tight about the railing, and Damien was sure that if he could have seen his knuckles they would have been white with tension. The man’s whole body was rigid, his attention wholly fixed on the shore beyond. Trying to Know? At last he relaxed, and exhaled heavily. Frustrated.
“Still too deep,” he murmured. “I had hoped . . .” He shook his head.
“You can’t tell anything?”
The silver eyes flashed with irritation. “I didn’t say that.” He stared at the shoreline for a moment longer, nostrils distended as if to sift scents from the evening breeze. “Life,” he murmured at last. Hungrily. “There’s human life there, in quantity. The currents are full of it. Rich with fear . . .” His lips tensed slightly. A smile? “But that’s not your concern, is it?”
“What else?” Damien asked stiffly.
“Civilization. But you guessed that, of course—from the cannon. They’re organized enough to defend themselves, and disciplined enough to use gunpowder.”
“And they have something to defend themselves from.”
The pale eyes fixed on him, molten gold in the Corelight. “Yes. There is that.”
“Our enemy?”
“Perhaps. But who can say what form that evil has taken, here in its native land? I would be wary of anything—even civilization—until we discover its foundation.”
“You can’t tell?”
“All I can do now is look at the currents of power, and guess at the forces that molded them. If I could draw on the earth-fae, I might be able to conjure a more comprehensible image . . . but as of now, those are my limits. One might look at a river current and guess at its origins, based upon the sediment it carries, but one could hardly tell from that what manner of boat last sailed in it. These currents are no different.”