The discussion went on; Alured-Visli allowed his captains to ask questions for a while, then told them to return after dinner for their written orders and bring their own estimates of troop strength and supplies. When they’d left, he went to the window and held up the necklace of blue and white jewels, watching them catch the light just like ripples of the sea.
He knew. His advisor had told him what they were, what power they held, what power the crown held, the crown that someday would be his. He would command an element, and the very element so important to him for so long as a pirate captain. He would command water. He would never be thirsty, never lack for water to float his ships or fill his wells.
Light danced on the walls of his office, as if from moving water; he smiled and tucked the necklace under his shirt.
You must go with your troops.
Alured-Visli had not expected that. When he’d sent agents and then troops west and northwest, his advisor had forbidden him to go, had insisted he must stay in Cortes Immer. This was just a small campaign, nothing like as complicated, and if he hadn’t been needed on the field there, why now?
I must see with my own eyes what resources the Duke of Fall has.
His second woman would birth her child in the next hand or two of days. He wanted to know if this would be another son or a daughter. His first son was just standing now, wobbly and unable so far to take a step without holding on to something.
But if he must go, he must.
By the time his troops from downriver, Lûn, and Cortes Cilwan had gathered, Visli Vaskronin, Duke of Immer, was more than ready to leave. His concubine had birthed a daughter three days before, a child he had ordered killed for the horror of that cleft lip running right up into her nose and the disfiguring birthmark across half her face. The concubine as well: the curse must have come through her side, not his; his son by his first concubine had grown into a handsome shirtling. It had not escaped his notice that the birthmark was shaped like a dismasted ship. When he found that the family from which he’d taken her had disappeared in the last twelve hands of days, he was sure they’d done it.
You must find and punish them. His advisor had taught him the uses of punishment long ago but still insisted he was not hard enough. Take your vengeance; never let an enemy escape; never give one ease. Else they will see weakness and make alliances against you.
Two other women were pregnant by him. He had their families under guard now, but … what if those children, too, were cursed? He knew gossip raged in his stronghold; he could not help but know. Best to be on the road to battle with men—men, not gossiping women and boys—around him.
He rode the handsome black bay his agents had brought from Valdaire’s horse market. A thief’s horse, it had been; that pleased him. Market talk his agent had brought back with the horse suggested that the Thieves’ Guild in Valdaire wanted it out of the city, far to the east if possible, before some legendary master thief from whom it had been stolen returned. Well. He understood thieves’ politics. The loser in this game would never find his horse. So far, Vaskronin had not been able to discover what thief-taught tricks the horse knew. Perhaps he would on this journey.
From his scouts he had an accurate idea of the land ahead. Immervale, the rich lowlands between the Imefal and the middle branch of the Immer … slow going, with the inferior road deep in mud in places. Ahead were the rounded hills and fertile valleys of Fallo itself, and finally the estate—hardly a stronghold—of the Duke of Fall. No grim gray stone walls too high to scale with ladders here but a wall intended more to train flowers against and hold out cattle from the house gardens than a defense against invasion.
A few days on the road and he’d almost succeeded in putting the frightening mask of that dead infant behind him. Here he might also see infants dead, but they would not be of his breeding and therefore of no concern. His scouts reported Fall’s troops moving, but not all were headed south, toward him. He hoped that meant Fall had a report of troops coming along the North Trade Road. Surprise would have been good, but dividing troops was also good. With luck—and with the winds this time of year it would take luck—his ships would be approaching Slavers’ Bay and he could frighten Fall from three directions.
They were yet days from the Duke’s estate when his scouts reported a force blocking the road ahead, a hundred or so of Fall’s militia and less than that of cavalry in Ganarrion’s colors. That would be only what showed, he was sure. A cavalry reserve, perhaps among trees on the slopes of a hill. A militia reserve. Some kind of archers. Even a half-hundred of Count Vladi’s pikes.