It had taken some time to get the wagon onto the beach and conclude the deal, and dusk was falling when it was done. The Tsingani would stay that night, and depart in the morning. They set up their camp with their usual efficiency, and I noticed Gisella doing a good trade in spices with the D'Angeline sailors, weary of bland fish stew. Joscelin entertained the children with one last Mendacant's tale as the stars emerged, benign and distant over the vast, surging ocean.
Hyacinthe brought me with him to make his farewell to Neci.
"May the Lungo Drom prosper you, tseroman of Neci's kumpania," he said, bowing formally. "You have been a good comrade on the way."
Neci stroked the tips of his mustache, twiddling them to elegant points. "And you," he added, and grinned. "Rinkeni chavo," He looked solemn then, with one of those quick shifts of emotion of which the Tsingani are masters. "Chavo, I don't know if it's true that you speak the dromonde or not. I do not care. When people say Manoj has no grandson, I will say it is untrue. I will speak your name and remember it. In my kumpania, your name will always be spoken."
"Thank you." Hyacinthe clasped his wrist, hard and firm. "And yours."
"The great trade of outermost west." Neci gazed at the sea, the waves breaking on the shore. "It is true. It will make our lav." He bowed to me. "And you, chavi, who was never born in a back alley, else I am a fool. We will remember you, too."
"Thank you." I kissed him, on the cheek. "Be kind to women without laxta, then, if you would remember me."
"I will remember you in my dreams." His white grin flashed, and he turned to stride back to his family, waving a last farewell.
"It's not too late," I said to Hyacinthe.
He gazed out at the sea, rippling silver in the dusk. "What did Rousse say? Maybe he's right. The Long Road doesn't end where the sea begins. If anyone is to cross it, it should be the Prince of Travellers, yes?"
"Yes," I said, tucking one hand around his arm. We watched the sea together, endless and amazing, moving without cease. "If we're not still here when de Morhban comes," I added, spotting the unmistakeable figure of Quintilius Rousse pacing the shore, pausing and staring out at his fleet.
"No," Hyacinthe said certainly. "He'll go. He has to. One ship; I saw it." He was silent a moment, then asked drolly, "And how was the dear Due de Morhban, anyway?"
"You really want to know?" I glanced up at his starlit face.
He laughed. "Why not? I always did."
"Good," I said, looking back at the sea. "The Due de Morhban was very, very good."
"I thought so. You had that look." Hyacinthe wound a lock of my hair around one finger. "I'm not afraid of it, you know," he said softly. "What you are."
"No?" I touched Melisande's diamond. "I am."
We went back, then, to Rousse's encampment, and I left Hyacinthe to go speak with the Admiral, still pacing the shoreline like an angry lion, wisely avoided by his men. A gibbous moon had arisen by that time, standing overhead to set a shining path across the sea, as if to show where the Long Road lay. "My lord," I said, kneeling near him. The sand was cool and damp beneath me. Quintilius Rousse turned on me, glaring.
"Ah, don't waste your Night Court decorum on me, girl! I've a hard choice to make here."
"Yes, my lord," I said, remaining on my knees. "To obey the Crown, or not."
"It's not that!" His voice rose above the sound of the waves, then he lowered it, squatting in front of me. "Listen, child. Ysandre de la Courcel's loyal to the land, and she's the making of a good Queen. I know it, and
Delaunay knew it, and Caspar Trevalion, too. That's why we aided her. And it would be a grand thing, this alliance ... if it stood a chance of happening. But the chance is precious slim, and the reality is, if you tell me true, that we face civil war and Skaldi invasion, all at once. So I must ask myself, you see, where can I do the most good? On a hare-brained mission nigh-doomed to fail, or fighting for my country? I've over forty ships and nigh a thousand men here, hand-picked, who can fight at sea or on land. Elua's Balls, they whipped the Akkadians, who fight like their ten thousand devils! Ysandre de la Courcel is young and untried, and knows little yet of statecraft, and nothing of war. How am I best to aid her? By obeying, or defying?"
Kneeling, abeyante, as I had been taught since earliest childhood, I lifted my face and gazed at him. "You have nothing," I said softly. Quin-tilius Rousse stared at me. "Do you think your ships will make a difference in a land battle? Do you think your men will count for aught? My lord Admiral, I have seen the Skaldi, and they number more than the grains of sand on this beach. A few hundred men ..." I scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle through my fingers. "How do you wish to die, Admiral? We are D'Angeline. At the hands of numbers, or dreams?"
With a sound of disgust, Quintilius Rousse rose and turned his back on me, standing at the verge of the gently breaking waves. "You're as bad as your master," he muttered, scarce audible amid the sea-sounds. "Worse. At least he didn't ply his words from a courtesan's lips." I remained silent. Quintilius Rousse sighed. "Elder Brother have mercy on us. We'll sail at dawn."
SIXTY-SEVEN
And so we did.
It was somewhat later than dawn, truth be told, when we set out in the oar-boat for Rousse's flagship. Once he'd made up his mind, the Admiral was nothing but efficiency, but there were a great many orders to be delegated before we left.
These I tried to follow as best I could, but Quintilius Rousse was in no mind to be tailed by Delaunay's anguissette, so all I caught was a confused impression. He would leave his lieutenant in charge, with orders to implement a shore brigade, guarding their borders. A quarter of the ships would sail upcoast to Azzalle and find berth at Trevalion, held loyal by Ghislain de Somerville, and send word to Ysandre. If royal couriers could not make it through Morhban, they could send word through Trevalion.
As for the rest, they would do their best to hold off de Morhban's inquiry, and sound out his loyalty. For de Morbhan had a fleet of his own—I'd not known that—and if he turned traitor, he could use it to sail north and harry the whole of the Azzallese coast, forcing them to turn their attention away from the flatlands and guarding the Rhenus.
It was a fair bewilderment of possibilities and strategies. I had never appreciated, until his death, the narrow and dangerous path Delaunay trod among his allies and enemies. Then again, I thought, nor had he, not entirely. Melisande had played a deeper game, and blinded him to d'Aiglemort's betrayal. It was only my ill-luck to have stumbled upon it.
And now I was playing an even deeper game that she had not yet guessed. Thinking on it, I shuddered. Kushiel's Dart, cast against the blood of his line. Whatever befell us on the waters, at least it took me further away from her. I did not trust myself, after seeing her at the Hippochamp. I had withheld the signale, it was true, the last time . . . but I would not trust it a third time. I had come closer than I liked to think, with de Morhban. It was shock and the numbness of grief that had buffered me that terrible night with Melisande, the night of Delaunay and Alcuin's death. And even then, it had been so close.
Another time ... I trailed my fingers in the water, as the oarsmen set to and the shore grew distant behind us. Another time, it would be different. And Elua help me, I longed for it. I could not help it, even as I despised her.
The edge between love and hate is honed finer than the keenest flech-ette. She told me something like that, once, but I dared not think on such things, with her name so close to my tongue. She told me too that it was not my acquiescence that interested her, but my rebellion. That was the thing that set her apart from the others, who failed to see where it lay.
That was the thing that terrified me.
Well, then; if I could not free myself from her sway, I could do that much. I ran one finger under the velvet lead tied about my throat, considering the horizon. Melisande Shahrizai wanted to see how far I would run with her line upon me, how far my rebellion would take me. I do not think she reckoned on it taking me to the green and distant shores of Alba. Elua willing, it might even lead to the unraveling of her subtle and deep-laid plans.
So I prayed, facing the forbidding seas. And if I were to die on these deadly waters, I prayed my last thought wouldn't be of her.
Though somehow I feared it would.
While I occupied myself with these morbid thoughts, Rousse's strong oarsmen gained his flagship, scrambling aboard. And then I had no time to dwell on such things, as they lowered rope ladders for us and we had to clamber on board, hands and feet slipping on the salt-slickened rope. I count myself agile, but it was no easy feat, learning to balance on the swaying wooden decks of the great ship.
A pillar of compassion, Quintilius Rousse laughed at our dismay, striding about with a rolling ease he didn't display on dry land. He shouted orders as he strode, obeyed with alacrity, and we came to see quickly, all of us, why he was the Royal Admiral. He gave us unto the charge of his second-in-command, wiry, sharp-eyed Jean Marchand, who showed us to a cabin with four hammocks slung from the ceiling.
By the time we had stowed such gear as we brought, Quintilius was giving orders to hoist sail.
I freely confess, boats are a great mystery to me. Before yesterday, I'd never even glimpsed the sea, let alone set sail upon it. I cannot begin to fathom the myriad tasks the sailors performed, swarming up and down the masts, lashing and unlashing ropes in bewildering profusion, cranking a chain that raised the anchor, massive and dripping. All I know is that Quintilius Rousse gave commands, and they obeyed. Some thirty men went belowdecks to set to at the oars, and the great flagship turned its prow slowly, swinging away from land and toward the open sea. And then the sails rose, steady and majestic, deep blue with the Courcel swan: three in a row, the greatest at the center, with smaller sails fore and aft. The wind filled them and they bellied out, snapping, setting the silver swan anight.
It happens faster than one imagines. One minute, the ship is turning slowly, inching through its own backwater, oars beating the sea into a seemingly futile roil. And then, suddenly, the waves are slipping past, lapping at the sides with ever-increasing speed.
A cheer arose from the sailors, and Quintilius Rousse breached a keg of wine for toasts all around; it is tradition, I learned later, at the start of each voyage.
In this, we shared. Hyacinthe tossed his down, gazing about him exuberantly. I sipped mine, finding it warming against the chilly wind. Jos-celin stared into his mug and looked rather green.
"I don't think I'm a sailor," he murmured.
Quintilius Rousse, strolling past, clapped him on the shoulder. "Drink it, lad," he said heartily. "If it comes back up, so be it. Just bend over the side, and give your toll to the Lord of the Deeps."
It proved to be prophetic advice. I winced with sympathy as Joscelin clutched the railing and leaned over, retching. Hyacinthe grinned.
"Cassilines aren't fit for the Long Road," he said. "Not when it extends over sea!"
"He can start a fire with damp tinder in the middle of a blizzard," I said, feeling an obscure need to defend him. "I didn't see any Tsingani in the heart of the Skaldic wilderness, Prince of Travellers."
"We're not that stupid." Hyacinthe laughed, and wandered off to watch the sailors at work, already taking on a rolling sea-man's gait. I watched him sourly, left to tend to the heaving Cassiline. There is something innately pitiful about a man in vambraces spewing up his breakfast.
It was Rousse's plan to sail due west, running ahead of the wind that blows through the Straits. If we got a good-enough lead, he reckoned, we might outrun Elder Brother's reach, gaining the open sea and rounding the southern tip of Alba.
It was a good plan, and from what I understood, we took a good run at it. A full half a day we sailed, until we were well and truly betwixt shores, neither visible, not Terre d'Ange that we had left, nor Alba that we sought. The weather held clear, and the wind blew true. As we headed west, nothing lay before us but open sea that made my blood run cold with its endless horizon, and made the sailors sing. Truly, they are a different breed, seafarers. I fixed my inner compass by the points around me, even in direst straits, knowing where I was. It is different for them. The unknown, the empty vastness of the sea, beckons with a lure I can but imagine.
Outermost west, the Tsingani had called the far shores of Kusheth. I understood then that it was only the place where the outermost west began, for the sea stretched endlessly, onward and onward, toward where the sun dies each night. Outermost west is beyond our ken. It is there, somewhere, the priests say, that Mother Earth and the One God created a realm where the sun never dies, but only rests; the true Terre d'Ange, where Elua walks smiling, naked feet treading upon the soil, and green things grow in his wake.
So it may be; I can only believe, and trust that it was true. Our journey was but a day's, and even that met its end.
It came, as such things ever do, when we believed that we had passed the point of crisis, and our way lay clear before us. No one knows, for a surety, how far the reach of the Master of the Straits extends. Without a doubt, it was farther than Quintilius Rousse reckoned, for it came when he began at last to relax, swaying comfortably at the wheel of his mighty ship, ordering his sailors to take the soundings and gauging whether or not it was time to turn his prow toward the north.
It began as a wind ruffling the waves.
Such a thing, one might think, is normal at sea, where the wind is one's mistress, and dictates one's course. This is true. But this wind ... I cannot explain. It ran contrary to the westerly breeze that blew us true, lower than that wind, blowing the waves backward, creating a cauldron of distress.
"Ah, no," Quintilius Rousse breathed, taking a firmer grip upon the wheel and casting his gaze skyward. "Ah, no, Elder Brother, have mercy!"
I looked up, then, at the sky, which had bid fair for our journey, as clear as the day before. No longer. Clouds roiled above us, gathering with purpose and darkness, a roiling mix, blotting out the sun.
"What is it?" I asked the Queen's Admiral, dreading the answer.
Questions are dangerous, for they have answers. I had said as much to the Due de Morhban. Quintilius Rousse looked at me with fear in his bright blue eyes, the old trawler-line scar dragging down one side of his mouth.
"It is him," he said.
And that is when the skies opened upon us.
For those who have never survived a storm at sea, I do not wish it upon anyone. Our ship, which had seemed such a safe haven on the vast breast of the waters, was pitched and tossed about like a child's toy. The contrary winds, one moment ago a mild phenomenon, turned to forces of destruction, boiling the sea into crests and troughs higher than our tallest mast. Night or day, there was no telling, the skies turned a horrid bruised color, split only by lightning.
"Drop sails!" Quintilius Rousse shouted, his powerful voice battered and lost in the winds and the lashing rain that followed. "Drop sails!"
Somehow, his men heard; I saw them, as I clung helplessly to the foremast, their silhouettes against the lightning-struck sky, high overhead, obeying the Admiral's orders. The sails dropped like stones, and I saw one man at least swept over, as the ship listed to starboard. Rain blew like veils across my sight; through it, incredibly, I saw Joscelin making his way to the foredeck, from grip to grip, a dim figure inching along with sheer determination. I prayed Hyacinthe had gained the safety of our cabin, though I doubted it; I remembered him last amid a group of sailors, too interested to go below. And it had come upon us too fast.
Gaining the mast, Joscelin took hold and crouched over me, sheltering me with his body from the buffeting winds. Drenched and sodden, I peered out from under him, my own rain-lashed hair obscuring my vision. "Do we turn back?" Joscelin asked the Admiral, shouting the question. "My lord Admiral! Do we turn back?"
"Here he comes!" Quintilius Rousse roared his answer, pointing with one shaking finger across the water. He came.
The Master of the Straits.
Those who have not made this passage say I lie; I swear, it is true. Huddled under Joscelin's sheltering form, I saw him, a face upon the waters, moving toward us. Of waves was his flesh wrought, of thunderclouds, his hair; lightning, his eyes and, I swear, he spoke. His voice burst upon us like thunder, drumming at our ears, until we could but cower beneath it.
"WHO DARES CROSS?"
Like calls to like. Lashing himself to the wheel, the Queen's Admiral dared to reply, roaring like fury into the winds, shaking his fist. "I do, you old bastard! And if you want your precious Black Boar to rule in Alba, you'll let me go!"
There was laughter, then, and the face of the waters reared up three times the height of our mid-mast, dwarfing Rousse's defiance. A vast, watery face, laughing like thunder, until I clapped my hands over my drowning ears.
"THAT IS NOT YOUR DREAM, SEAFARER! WHAT TOLL WILL YOU PAY?"
"Name your price!" Quintilus Rousse howled his answer, hands clinging like iron to the straining wheel. The ship plunged into a trough; he held its course, hurling defiance into the winds. "Just name it, you old bastard! I'll pay what it takes!"
The ship climbed up the crest of a wave, toward the vast maw, dark and infinite, that had opened in the sky. Open, laughing like thunder, to swallow us forevermore.
This is the end, I thought, closing my eyes.
And felt the absence of Joscelin's sheltering body.
"A song!" I knew the voice; it was Joscelin's, strident and urgent with hope. His hand grabbed at my shoulder, hauling me erect, even as the ship teetered atop the pitch of a wave. "Such as you have never heard, my lord of the Straits, sung upon the waters!" he shouted at the wave-wrought face that loomed over us. "A song!"
"What song?" I asked Joscelin desperately, the ship pitching. The rain whipped his hair, dull and sodden, his hands anchoring me. We might have been the last two mortals left alive, for all that I could see. "Joscelin! What song?"
He answered, shouting; I saw it, though I could not hear. The wind ripped his answer away, rendered it soundless. But we had been together through all that humans might endure, through blizzard and storm, and all that the elements might hurl at us. We did not need to speak aloud. I saw his lips form the words.