CHAPTER SEVEN

Lyrna

“I t’s there again!” Murel said, pointing in alarm and making the boat pitch as she rushed to the bow. “Do you see?”

Lyrna looked at the sea, catching sight of the great fin before it slipped under the water once more. They’re always hungry.

“Maybe it likes us,” the outlaw with scarred cheeks suggested. His name was Harvin and he claimed to have once commanded a band thirty men strong, his capture and imprisonment the result of betrayed love for a beautiful woman of noble birth, a story Iltis had greeted with open contempt.

“Sold out by some tavern doxy you forgot to pay, more like,” he had laughed.

They bickered constantly, often to the verge of violence and Lyrna had given up trying to placate their temper. If one killed the other, then at least the rations would last longer.

“Fell in love with the brother’s beautiful face when it rammed the hold,” Harvin continued. “Just couldn’t stay away.”

“You criminal scum!” Iltis bridled.

Lyrna turned away as the argument began its inevitable escalation, eyes scanning the waves for sign of the shark. Four days adrift on the ocean and their only companion a red shark. She wondered why it didn’t simply tip the boat over and eat them at its leisure. If it could sink a ship, what challenge did their boat represent? Her thoughts kept returning to Fermin’s last smile, his bloody teeth. Given all I have to give . . .

Next to her Murel stiffened as the fin reappeared, her scabbed fingertips going to her mouth. It was closer this time, tracking an arcing course towards them through the swell. Murel closed her eyes and began reciting the Catechism of Faith. Lyrna put an arm around her shoulders as the fin grew ever larger, Iltis and Harvin abruptly forgetting their argument. The fin veered away some twenty yards short of the boat, the red-striped body of the shark rising from the water, a huge black eye gleaming above the waves for a moment. Murel opened her eyes, whimpered and closed them again. The shark gave a brief thrash of its tail and disappeared under the surface.

“It’s gone,” Lyrna told a sobbing Murel. “See?”

The girl could only shake her head and slump down in exhausted fear, her head resting in Lyrna’s lap.

Lyrna surveyed her small wooden kingdom of five hungry souls and wondered again if it might have been kinder to abandon them to the hold. They had managed to scavenge some supplies from barrels found bobbing in the water the morning after the ship went down, mostly pickled fish that made her gag the first time she tried it, however hunger had soon overcome such qualms. Her biggest fear had been the lack of freshwater but this soon disappeared under the weight of rain that threatened to swamp the boat on a daily basis, forcing them to bail continually, albeit untroubled by thirst. Their oars consisted of two short splintered planks from the ship’s deck, the outlaw and Iltis spending much of the first day paddling a westward course until a quiet youth named Benten, a fisherman from Varinshold and the only sailor amongst them, pointed to the early evening stars and judged them fifty miles east of where they had started the night before.

“Means we’re a good ways south of Varinshold,” he said. “The Boraelin currents flow east at these climes. Paddle all you want, won’t make any difference.”

East. Which meant Volaria, in the unlikely event their food held out that long. Lyrna had read enough sea stories to know the extremes to which hunger could force desperate people, the tale of the Sea Wraith looming largest in her mind. She had been one of her father’s first warships, built at considerable expense and some said the finest ever to sail from a Realm port. She had disappeared in a storm off the northern coast sometime in the second decade of Janus’s reign, presumed lost for months but eventually found drifting south by Renfaelin fishermen. They had discovered only one crewman on board, a gibbering loon gnawing on the thigh-bone of one of his crew-mates, a pile of skulls stacked neatly on the deck. On her father’s orders the Sea Wraith had been burned and sunk for no sailor would set foot on her again.

Murel’s head shifted on her lap and Lyrna saw that she was sleeping, faint groans of pain coming from her half-open lips as the dreams made her relive the torments she had suffered on the ship. Lyrna resisted the impulse to caress her hair, knowing any touch was like to provoke a flurry of screams. I’m sorry, she thought as Murel’s eyelids fluttered and she jerked in her sleep. Seems I won’t be bringing down their empire after all.

The boat pitched again and Lyrna looked up to see Benten standing in the stern, hand shielding his eyes against the sun as he gazed east.

“The shark?” Lyrna asked him.

The young fisherman maintained his vigil for a moment more then stiffened, turning to her with a grave face. “A sail.”

The others all turned, the boat threatening to tip over with the movement. “Volarian?” Iltis asked.

“Worse,” Benten said. “Meldenean.”

? ? ?

The Meldenean captain rested his arms on the rail and stared down at them with faint curiosity and no small amount of contempt. “I think I prefer you land-bound enslaved, it seems fitting somehow.”

Iltis brandished the chains he had kept at his side, probably, Lyrna suspected, for killing Harvin should it become necessary. “Slaves no longer, freed by our own hand.”

“And the ship?” the captain enquired.

“Sunk, along with our captors.”

“And anything of value they may have carried.” His gaze roamed the boat, lingering first on Murel then finding Lyrna’s scars. “And what use did they have for you, my beauty?” he asked with a grin.

Lyrna forced her anger away, knowing if they sailed on it meant death for everyone in this boat. “I am well learned,” she replied, knowing the true reason would only provoke more laughter. “And speak many languages. The master wanted a tutor for his daughters.”

“Really?” the captain asked, continuing in Alpiran, “Have you read The Cantos of Gold and Dust?”

“I have.” And very nearly once met the author.

“Where does the heart of reason lie?”

“In knowledge, but only when married to compassion.” A word I hope holds some meaning for you, she added silently.

The captain’s gaze narrowed a little. “And Volarian?” he asked slipping back into Realm Tongue.

“Yes.”

“Read it as well as speak it?”

“I do.”

He waved at his crew. “Bring her aboard. Leave the others.”

“No!” Lyrna shouted. “All of us. Whatever you need my skills for, I’ll only help if you take all of us.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, my burnt beauty,” he replied with a laugh. “But, just to demonstrate my generosity, we’ll take the pretty one too.”

One of the crewmen at the rail suddenly straightened, finger shooting out with a shout of alarm. Lyrna turned, seeing the shark’s head break the surface no more than fifty yards away. It rolled onto its side, jaws wide, teeth gleaming. The Meldeneans immediately began to work their rigging as the captain barked orders, glaring down at Lyrna in consternation. She placed a foot on the edge of the boat. “All of us,” she called to him. “Or I jump.”

? ? ?

They took the others to the hold, Iltis and Harvin reluctantly surrendering their chains at the sight of so many bared sabres. The captain pushed Lyrna into his cabin, a cramped space of rolled maps and locked chests, one of which he hefted onto a squat nailed-down desk, turning a key in the heavy lock and lifting the lid. He extracted a scroll with a broken seal and handed it to her. “Read.”

She unfurled the scroll and scanned it, absorbing the contents in barely a few seconds, but deciding it would be best to delay her translation. This man had far too keen an eye for her liking. “From Council-man Arklev Entril to General Reklar Tokrev,” she began in a slow laboured voice. “Officer commanding the Twentieth Corps of the Volarian Imperial Host. Greetings, honoured brother-in-law. I assume congratulations are in order though of course a full account of your inevitable victory has yet to reach us. Please extend my warmest affection to my honoured sister . . .”

“Enough,” the captain said. He took a small leather-bound book from the chest, exchanging it for the scroll. “This one.”

Lyrna turned the first few pages and suppressed a wry smile as she placed a puzzled frown on her brow. “This . . . makes no sense.”

His gaze narrowed further. “Why?”

“The letters are all jumbled, mixed up with numbers. Perhaps some kind of code.”

“You know of such things?”

“My father used codes in his business. He was a merchant, always worried his competitors would discover his prices . . .”

“Can you solve it?” he interrupted.

She shrugged. “Given time, it may be possible . . .”

The captain took a step closer, assailing her with his breath. “Believe me, land-bound, you do not have the luxury of time.”

“I would need to discover the key.”

“Key?”

“All codes require a key, the basis for the cypher. Likely to be known only to a few . . .”

He took her by the arm and pushed her from the cabin, across the deck towards the hold, still clutching the book. She was led past the others, crouched in the shadows and surrounded by crewmen, Murel looking up at her with fearful eyes. The captain stopped at a locked door near the stern, a crewman standing guard. “Open it,” the captain ordered.