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—always 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.