The King's Blood Read online

“Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”

  They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.

  “Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.

  “There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”

  “Fifty-nine, then.”

  “Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”

  A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Cabral. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.

  “Maceo Rinál?”

  The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.

  The man said something obscene.

  Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Maceo Rinál sat on a cushion, wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.

  “You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.

  “You picked the wrong man,” Rinál said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.

  “Five weeks ago, a ship called the Stormcrow was coming east from the cape. It didn’t make it. Waylaid and sunk, but no sign of the cargo. Is this sounding familiar?”

  “I am the cousin of King Sephan of Cabral. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinál said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”

  Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.

  “Captain Rinál? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”

  The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.

  “I work for the Medean bank. My employers insured the Stormcrow. When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them.

  You weren’t even stealing from the merchants who owned them. You were stealing from us.”

  The pirate’s face went grey. The leather flap opened with a rustle and Yardem came in. His earrings were back in place.

  “News?” Marcus said.

  “The cargo here matches the manifests,” Yardem said. He was scowling, playing to the dangerous reputation of the Tralgu. Marcus assumed it amused him. “We’re in the right place, sir.”

  “Carry on.”

  Yardem nodded and left. Marcus took another bite of sausage.

  “My cousin,” Rinál said. “King Sephan—”

  “My name’s Marcus Wester.”

  Rinál’s eyes grew wide and he sank back on the cushion.

  “You’ve heard of me,” Marcus said. “So you know that the appeal-to-noble-blood strategy may not be your best choice. Your mother was a minor priestess who got drunk with a monarch’s exiled uncle. That’s your protection. Me? I’ve killed kings.”

  “Kings?”

  “Well, just the one, but you take the point.”

  Rinál tried to speak, swallowed to loosen his throat, and then tried again.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to reclaim our property, or as much of it as you have left. I don’t expect it’ll make up the losses, but it’s a beginning.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You mean if I don’t take you to justice? I’m going to come to an understanding with you.”

  A cry rose up from the beach below them. Dozens of voices raised in alarm. Marcus nodded to the captive, and together they walked out into the light. On the bright water below them, the ship farthest from the shore was afire. A plume of white smoke rose from it, and thin red snake-tongues licked at the mast, visible even from here. Rinál cried out, and as if in answer a roll of sudden black smoke bellied out from the flame.

  “Don’t worry,” Marcus said. “We’re only burning one of them.”

  “I’ll see you dead,” Rinál said, but there was no power in his voice. Marcus put a hand on the man’s shoulder and steered him back into the shade of the tent.

  “If I kill you or if I burn all your ships,” Marcus said, “then by this time next year, there’s just going to be another bunch like yours in the cove. The bank’s investments are just as much at risk. Nothing changes, and I have to come back here and have this same talk with someone else.”

  “You’ve burned her. You burned my ship.”

  “Try to stay with me,” Marcus said, lowering Rinál back to the ground. The pirate put his head in his hands. Marcus took the two steps to his field desk and took out the paper Cithrin had prepared for him. He’d meant to drop it haughtily at the pirate’s feet, but the man seemed so shaken, he tucked it into his lap instead.

  “That’s a list of the ships we insure out of Porte Oliva. If I have to find you again, offering yourself to the magistrate is the best thing that could happen.”

  The breeze shifted and the smell of burning pitch filled the tent and spoiled the taste of the sausages. The leather walls chuffed like tiny sails. Rinál opened the papers.

  “If the ship’s not listed here…”

  “Then it’s no business of mine.”

  “I’m not the only ships on these waters,” he said. “If someone else…”

  “You should discourage them.”

  The color was starting to come back to Rinál’s cheeks. The shock had begun to fade and the old righteousness return, but it was tempered now. The voices coming up from the water were brighter now, laughing. Those would be Marcus’s soldiers. A wagon creaked. It was time to move on.

  “You’ll travel with us as far as Cemmis township,” Marcus said. “That’s not too far to walk back from before your people get sick from thirst.”

  “You think you’re such a big man, no one can take you down,” the pirate said. “You think you’re better than me. You’re no different.”

  Marcus leaned against the field desk, looking down at the pirate. In truth, Rinál was a young man. For all his bluster and taking on airs, he was the same sort who tripped drunk men in taprooms and groped women in the street. He was a badly behaved child who, instead of growing to manhood, had found a few ships and taken his bullying out in the world where it could turn him a profit.

  A dozen replies came to Marcus. When you’ve watched your family die, say that again and Grow up, boy, while you still have the chance and Yes, I’m better than you; my ship isn’t burning.

  “We’ll leave soon,” he said. “I have guards posted. Don’t try to go without us.”

  Outside, the little two-masted ship roared in flame. Black smoke billowed from her, carrying sparks and embers up to wheeling birds. Marcus walked down the rise to where the carts were lining up, prepared to head back home. One of his younger Kurtadam was in the medical wagon, his arm being shaved and bound. Beneath the pelt, his skin looked just like a Firstblood’s.

  The dead enemy sailor was laid out under tarps. The rest, bound in ranks with arms bent back, were sullen and angry. Marcus’s men were grinning and trading jokes. It was like the aftermath of a battle, only this time there’d hardly been any bloodshed. The wet sand was smooth where the waves washed their footprints away. The mules, ignoring the smell of flames and the banter of soldiers, pulled wagons filled with silks and worked brass back toward the road. The smells of salt and smoke mixed.

  Marcus felt the first tug of returning darkness at the back of his mind. The aftermath of any fight—great battle or tap-room dance—a
lways had that touch of bleakness. The brightness and immediacy of the fight gave way, and the world and all its history poured back in. It was worse when he lost, but even in victory, the darkness was there. He put it aside. There was real work to be done.

  Yardem stood by the head wagon, a Cinnae boy on a lathered horse at his side. A messenger. As he approached, the boy dropped down and led his mount away to be cared for.

  “Where do we stand?” Marcus asked.

  “Ready to start back, sir. But might be best if I led the column. The magistra wants you back at the house as soon as you can get there.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Yardem shrugged eloquently.

  “An honest war,” he said.

  Cithrin

  T

  he reports were completed and sealed, the pages sewn shut and wax pressed all around with the seal of the Medean bank interspersed with Pyk’s personal sign. With all the work that had gone into them, Cithrin had expected something more. Four slim volumes, bound in leather. The notary’s report on everything about the Porte Oliva bank would fit into a satchel. The time had come to decide the details of her journey, and Cithrin, for all her preparation, wasn’t sure.

  The speed at which information traveled was the enemy of certainty. A cunning man’s ritual might pass a simple, urgent message from Porte Oliva to Carse in as little as two days. A pigeon could fly there in five and be more reliable. A single courier on a fast horse could cross the wide plains of Birancour, stopping at the posts and wayhouses, and reach Sara-sur-Mar in ten days’ time, and then by ship to Carse in another five so long as no bandits caught him and the weather on the coast was favorable. A caravan would be even slower, but safer. If she’d wanted it, Cithrin could have planned half a season on the road there and back again.

  She had sat in her room at night with the dragon’s tooth and map before her and imagined the different journeys she might take, letting herself debate whether to stop in Sara-sur-Mar for a time and make her introductions to the queen’s court, whether to take ship directly from Porte Oliva and see the ports in Cabral and Herez along her way, whether to leave by herself dressed as a courier and ride alone in the wide world. Every new version seemed sweeter, more enchanting, more real than the last. She’d settled on a middle way. Marcus and Yardem Hane and herself, traveling on the dragon’s roads all along the way. A small group would move quickly, and the trained blades and little promise of gain would discourage most of the trouble that might come. Rather than pack the dresses and paints and formal attire she’d want in Carse, she would take a letter of credit and purchase them there.

  Then came the news of war.

  “No,” Marcus said. “Not overland. There’ll be refugees on all the roads through Northcoast. Thick in the last parts of Birancour too, for that matter.”

  The counting house was empty apart from the three of them—Marcus, Cithrin, and Pyk. The chalked duty roster showed half a dozen names, but most of them were on the road back from Cemmis township under Yardem’s command, and the others Marcus had set to wait in the street. Their voices were audible, but Cithrin couldn’t make out any words. Her map was stretched out on the floor, with all of them looking at it as if there was a secret message hidden in its lines. Birancour in the south, with the smaller kingdoms clustered around it. Northcoast above and to the right, looking down at it like a disapproving older brother. And beyond it, the war.

  “Sea’s a problem too,” Pyk said, sucking at her teeth.

  “Why?” Cithrin asked.

  “We did just burn a pirate’s ship down to the waterline,” Marcus said. “Might want to give a little time before we offer him a chance at bloody vengeance.”

  Pyk’s expression darkened, but she didn’t speak. Cithrin hadn’t gone to the woman until Marcus had returned with confirmation that their scheme had worked. She’d left the notary in an uncomfortable place. Cithrin had taken action on the bank’s behalf without Pyk’s knowledge, but there had been no formal negotiation, no papers to sign. Nothing she’d done violated the terms under which Cithrin was bound. Only the spirit and intention of the thing was compromised, and in the process, the losses of the Stormcrow’s insurance contract would be at least partly recovered. Pyk could be unhappy about how it had been done, but the results allowed her as little room for open complaint as for pleasure.

  “Overland to Sara-sur-Mar and then by ship,” Pyk said. “Cuts out the waters near Cabral and keeps her far enough west she’ll miss the worst of it.”

  “Likely the best route,” Marcus said. “It does pass through some rough territory in the center. The farmlands are taxed hard. There’s places where the locals see travelers as either predators or prey.”

  “That’s truth,” Pyk said, though she sounded less worried about it than pleased. “The reports will want guarding.”

  “I don’t want a full caravan,” Cithrin said. “Just Marcus and Yardem will be fine, I think.”

  “The hell they will,” Pyk said.

  “That’s not a choice you get to make,” Marcus said.

  The Yemmu woman’s thick lips went slack in surprise.

  “You’re serious?” she said. “And here I was starting to think you weren’t an idiot. Or am I the only one who’s thought through the implications? Northcoast was on the edge of a fresh war of succession last year. King Tracian’s ass has barely warmed up his throne. Now Asterilhold—his neighbor with the longest and least defensible border—is marching into the field against Imperial Antea.”

  “Your point being?” Cithrin asked archly.

  “You want to go there with Marcus Wester in tow? Because the way I remember it, last time he was in Northcoast he killed their king.”

  “And gave the throne to Lady Tracian,” Marcus said.

  “So now that it’s her nephew wearing the crown, maybe you’ve come to take it back,” Pyk said. “If I were king of Northcoast and you came waltzing back into my kingdom with sword music already singing in my ears, you know what I’d do? Lock your pretty little ass up just to be on the safe side. And I’d start looking pretty damn funny at whoever it was that brought you, and I don’t mean the magistra here.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Marcus said.

  Pyk hoisted her eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. A shout came from the street, and then laughter. A single sharp rap on the door announced Yardem Hane. The Tralgu’s ears were canted forward, giving him an earnest, attentive look.

  “It’s all in the warehouse, sir.”

  “You have a full list?” Pyk snapped.

  Yardem walked across the room and gave the woman a handful of papers, but Cithrin’s attention was still on the map, her mind turning over the journey still ahead. A tightness she hadn’t expected was knotting her belly. In the corner of her vision, Pyk ran a scarred thumb down the list. The hiss of paper against paper when she moved the second page was like an impatient sigh.

  “This isn’t ours,” she said, tapping at the page.

  “Is now,” Marcus said. “It’s in our warehouse.”

  “Oh, really?” Pyk said. “And when some salt quarter merchant files claim with the governor, is that what you’re telling the magistrate? Well, we took it from a pirate, so it’s ours? If we don’t have papers proving our right to have it, get it out of my warehouse.”

  Cithrin pressed a fingertip against the northern coast, tracing it from Northcoast to Asterilhold to Antea. She had fled Antean swords before now. The Imperial Army had taken Vanai, and some Antean governor had burned it. They would remember that. The border between the combatants was a river flowing up from the marshes in the south and spilling into the northern sea. Only a single dragon’s road crossed the water like a gate in a wall. The sea would be, if anything, the wider battleground. When the nobles and merchants of Asterilhold fled west, away from the enemy, Northcoast would be the only place to escape to.

  “Yes, they are. Salvage rights are rights,” Marcus was saying. Cithrin realized she’d missed part of the conversa
tion.

  “When it’s your name taking the risk, you can keep anything stolen from anyone and you go to the carcer for it. I’m—”

  “I’d like to speak with the captain alone now, please,” Cithrin said. Three sets of eyes turned to look at her. Pyk and Marcus both smoldered with anger. Yardem was unreadable as always. “Just Marcus. Just for a moment.”

  Pyk made a spitting sound, but didn’t spit. Her rolling gait made her seem like a ship caught on high seas as she strode out. Yardem nodded, flicked one ear, and retreated, pulling the door to behind him.

  “That woman is a disaster,” Marcus said, pointing two fingers at the door. “I think they sent her just to punish us.”

  “They probably did,” Cithrin said. “That’s part of why she’s right.”

  “She’s not, though. As soon as Rinál took those crates, he—”

  “Not about that. About Carse. I can’t take you.”

  Marcus crossed his arms and leaned against the high table that was the last remnant of the old gambler’s desk. His expression was empty.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I’m going to Carse to win over Komme Medean,” she said. “If I’m bringing a scandal along with me, it doesn’t help. And you’re Marcus Wester. You’re the man who killed the Mayfly King. I forget that because I know you. And you don’t make that who you are. But for the rest of the world, and especially the court in Northcoast, they won’t hear your name without thinking of armies and dead kings. I need Komme Medean to like me. Or respect me.”

  His lips pressed white, sharp lines of anger drawing themselves down the sides of his mouth. For a long moment, Cithrin had the sick feeling that he was about to resign. Quit her and the bank and everything else. Then he looked at her and he softened.

  “Well,” he said. A dog yelped and a man’s voice cursed not far away. Marcus scratched his cheek, the sound like sand falling against paper. “I suppose someone’s got to keep an eye on Pyk.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ll still need guards. If it’s not me and Yardem, you’ll need four at least. We’re just that good.” Cithrin smiled and Marcus managed to smile back. “Just… just promise me you’ll be safe. I have a bad history of losing people in Northcoast.”