Across the Long Sea (12 page)

Vertigo spun Mal to his knees. When the first mate fell against him, restraints pulling, he realized the reckless tilt was not in his head. The ship bucked and heaved about like a leaf in a draining cistern; the stern dragged far lower than the bow.

“Take these off!” Mal yelled. He shook his wrists at the mate. “I can help! Free me from the sorcery, and let me help!”

The other man drooped against knotted rope. Blood oozed from a cut on his brow, and was washed away by a sideways roll of seawater. He sputtered and coughed.

“They're tuned to Baldebert,” he said when he could speak again. “He's the only one can take them off, my lord necromancer, and I guarantee he'd rather rot at the bottom of the water than put himself at your mercy.”

“I'm not a compassionate man,” Mal replied. “Mercy's of no consequence.”

He heaved himself over the bulwark and onto the bowsprit, wrapping arms and legs around the spar. He'd lost all sense of the horizon. The sky and the sea were the same angry green. Baldebert was the only bright spot in the world, the captain's angry curses so vulgar they made Mal want to giggle when he should weep.

“Your bird's come back!” Baldebert shouted. “He's brought the bloody funnels with him, the demon!”

Mal turned his head against the spar and saw that it was not the waves Baldebert cursed, or the listing ship, but the black-­feathered bird perched above on the jig.

“He's only a bird!” Mal screamed above the wind. “You're a madman. Come down from there before you fall in!”

“I'm knotted tight.” Baldebert turned away from Jacob and looked down across the sprit. He was wet as a fish, his grin crooked. “They'll find my bones lashed to my ship, if they ever find us at all. You're a single hand's slip from the drink, my lord. One sturdy wave and you're in.”

“Release me.” Mal demanded through chattering teeth. “Let me help.”

Baldebert's mad smile grew thin.

“And what would you do, magus?” he challenged. “Scatter us to the devils with a snap of your fingers? I think not. I'd rather die a natural death.”

“Scatter the winds with a cant,” Mal shouted. “I'd rather not die at all.”

Baldebert shook his head even as the spar groaned and Mal dug his fingernails into wood, scrabbling for purchase.

“And can you raise my ship from the state she's in, broken and waterlogged?”

“Aye,” said Mal simply, although he wasn't entirely sure. “But not shackled in ivory.”

Baldebert's fine brows rose. “Almost I believe you.”

“Cargo good as diamonds, remember?”

Baldebert stood still as the world rocked. Mal inhaled a mouthful of rain and sea, spat it out again. His lungs, already weakened by assassin's poison, burned. He wanted to lay his head down on the spar. Instead he lifted his chin and looked across his nose at Baldebert.

“You have my word of honor,” he called. “Let me save the ship, and I'll submit again to the shackles after.”

“Your word means nothing to me.” Baldebert's sigh was audible even through the raging storm. “Unfortunately, you've reminded me I've given mine as well.” He used the tip of his dirk to slice free the ropes about his waist and ankles, then dropped to hands and knees and shimmied back along the bowsprit, gripping the blade in his teeth. When they lay on the spar, nose to nose, Baldebert extended one brown hand, curled his fingers.

“They're tuned to my lineage,” he said around the dirk. “Set your hands in mine.” Mal complied without hesitation. Baldebert's fingers were not quite long enough to curl around Mal's slender wrists, but it was close. The captain's flesh was chill against Mal's own.

Baldebert stroked his thumb over ivory. At his touch the bracelets split each down the middle. Baldebert caught the pieces as they fell, four slender ivory half-­moons.

“Now your feet,” the captain ordered. “Grab my belt. Don't let go.”

Baldebert's belt was little more than a shank of rope. Mal gripped it tightly. Baldebert twisted sideways until he hung over sea or sky, reaching into the green, the tails of his captain's togs fluttering. Mal clenched his fists around the man's belt and closed his eyes against vertigo. He jerked when he felt Baldebert's fingers against his ankles, but didn't relax his hold.

The ivory broke and fell away, taking enchantment with it. Mal's innate magic flamed from spark to pyre, smoking away the mists in his head and the palsy in his bones. He shouted in relief and welcome, and banished the rain with one word, the howling wind with a quickly constructed cant. He lowered his voice, whispered to the sea, smoothed the waves back flat as glass.

He'd almost forgotten strength, he'd been so laid low with vertigo and sorcery. Now the magic rushed through his veins, filling his body with heat and light and the heady, heady thrill of power. He sat up on the spar, faced the gloaming horizon, and laughed, giddy.

Mal?
Avani's uncertainty in his head, along the thread that bound them, stretched thin across unkind deep sea, but not yet broken.

“Blood hells, man,” Baldebert screamed. “I said, don't let go!”

Mal blinked and Avani was lost to him, their connection battered by distance and unfriendly fathoms, shredding. Mal chased after the bright sense of her, even as he smiled at Baldebert.

“I haven't let go,” he said. “Shall I pull you back up, or can you manage on your own, Admiral?”

For answer Baldebert crossed his legs about the spar, swung down and around and up again, dirk gripped between his teeth, ending once more upright. He shook his head at Mal's expression, then sheathed his blade in his belt.

“Easier without the wind and funnel,” he said, hopping lightly to his feet. “But we're still far too low in the water, more sunk than not.” It was the captain who took Mal's hand, and pulled him upright. “You're flushed pink as a lad got into his mum's pastries; fix this before joy fades sour and black.”

“Deep sea turns a magus dangerous,” Mal said, remembering.

“Just that,” Baldebert replied. “The ivory is meant to prevent it, but I've taken the ivory away. So. Fix this mess. Quickly.”

I
T
WAS
EASY
, too easy, and wisdom whispered for caution, but Mal was made near wild with the delightful burn of magic in his veins. He balanced on the bowsprit, Baldebert's grip on his shoulders holding steady, and laughed down at a deck awash with refuse and struggling men, and the wandering, baffled spirits of the newly dead. The
Cutlass
was near one-­third submerged, the stern listing just below the waterline, the bow pointed gently at the sky. The engine, Mal thought, was most certainly drowned. Worry tempered joy as he searched the deck for Liam. He saw no sign of the lad.

With a word Mal stole fistfuls of energy from the groaning dead and used it to burn away the weight of unwelcome bilge. Drowned and broken ghosts howled as their spirits snuffed away, sacrificed to Mal's need. Once he might have pulled the strength from Siobahn, or Avani. But Siobahn was gone, banished forever, and Avani was but a twitch of worry in the back of his skull, useless.

As Mal cleared
The Cutlass Wind
of haunts old and new, his strength burned bright and sharp. Smoke rose in great plumes from the boards, burst from hatches and portholes. Mal heard living cries from below, shouts of pain and terror.

“Ware,” Baldebert warned. “Too quick and you'll boil what's left of my crew.”

Salt sparkled on the deck, left behind by dissipating vapors. The
Cutlass
bumped and rattled, immediately lighter, and bobbed back into place atop the calm seas. Mal let his hands fall back to his side, embarrassed to discover he'd been conducting vapor and rigging and board as enthusiastically as a general over ranks. Sweat dribbled down the bridge of his nose, itching. He brushed it away irritably, and shrugged Baldebert off.

“Your ship's seaworthy. I need to find my page,” he said.

Baldebert followed Mal down the bowsprit and onto the deck. Salt scraped beneath the soles of Mal's feet. Jacob dropped from the jig, settled on Mal's shoulder, claws scratching. The bird tilted his head at Baldebert, and croaked.

“Demon,” Baldebert said, dislike writ clear across his face. “You've decimated my ship, drowned my men. If it's fresh water you want, take it. But leave us be.”

The captain wheeled and strode away, barking orders. Jacob flexed his toes, drawing blood. Mal winced.

“If you've killed Liam in your temper,” Mal warned the bird, “I'll pluck you like a winter goose.”

L
IAM
WA
SN
'
T
DROWNED
. Most of the engine was, and more still dying, spirits pulling away from waterlogged husks. Liam fumbled to free those left alive from their iron chains while Mal and the redheaded officer dragged corpses through salt and piled them away from the bilge walls. Liam's hand was steady on the key, his face set. Mal counted twenty-­one dead. The survivors were battered and bleeding.

“Can you do nothing to repair them?” The officer held her right arm against her side. Mal thought she'd dislocated her shoulder.

“Bandage wounds and tie splints,” he said. “I've a light hand with a needle and catgut, and I can wield a scalpel. I know medicines. But I'm no theist priest to heal a man with book learning.”

The woman frowned.

“I don't know ‘theist,' ” she said. “But I've bandages and catgut stocked in my quarters, and some healing lore from my mam. Help me get the spared oars up on deck and into fresh air, necromancer, and it's possible we can restore a ser­viceable number.”

“A ser­viceable number?” Mal echoed, even as he eased a woman's thin, suffocated corpse onto the pile. “You speak of men and women, not cogs in a misfunctioning bilge pump.”

The woman's mouth twisted without mirth. She touched the collar around her neck.

“Little difference, necromancer,” she replied. “But that the bilge pump, even broken, is far more valuable.”

 

Chapter Ten

A
VANI
MA
DE
P
ETER
pull up outside Mors Keep, alongside the ruins of an old water wheel. The wheel lay on its side against the riverbank, rotting. The wheelhouse itself was long vanished, although Avani thought she could pick out stone foundations hidden in high grass.

Their horses drank eagerly of the clear, sweet water. The River Mors was high with the swell of late spring. Avani squatted in the shallows, bathing her face and neck. It was far warmer in the valley than above in the highlands. The heat made her shirt and trousers cling uncomfortably; she'd grown used to mountain air.

“Lord Gavin's at home,” Peter remarked, indicating the flag flying above the keep.

“The lord's always at home,” Avani returned. “Isn't that the point of him? To guard the river road east? What's the good of a kingsman if he abandons his post?”

Peter's jaw set.

“I only meant,” he wrapped the bay's reins about a bit of grass, then did the same with the chestnut, “we've a bit of time if you'd like to have a word with the man. I understand he monitors your post.”

Avani stood up, shook water from her hands, and sighed.

“What happened to haste, man? The mad rush from Stonehill before the sun was up? You lashed your poor horse most of the way down the mountain. And now you want to stop for a chat?”

Peter had the grace to color.

“I only hoped—­mayhap there's been word. A letter, or a token, waiting for you in the post?”

“From my Lord Vocent?” Avani considered. She'd braided her long hair back, then pinned it up and away from her face in deference to the heat. “Well, then. I suppose there's that possibility, if slim. If my lord stepped on trouble, he'd send a rider, and not to me.”

“Go and inquire,” Peter suggested. His tone was just short of command.

Avani nodded, then paused. She eyed the man from head to toe, let him see her disapproval, arched both brows as she often with Liam when the boy was in particular need of rebuke.

“You're a changed fellow, Peter Shean,” she said. “You were kind to me, once. I haven't forgotten, even if you have. Your lovely sister would be well disappointed. She was a woman who understands the importance of good temper even in the worst of circumstances.”

Peter stared back, uncowed. Avani had the distinct feeling the man was looking straight through her.

“I'll wait here,” he said. “Give Lord Gavin His Majesty's regards.”

T
HE
NEW
LORD
was cheerful in spite of his surprise. He let Avani under the portcullis, and gave her a friendly thump on the arm.

“Everin was just here,” he said. “Didn't expect another visit for a fortnight. My lady will be pleased to see you, though. She's already planning next winter's wardrobe, and has many questions for you.”

“I'm only passing through,” Avani said with real regret. “On the way to the city. I haven't time to visit, I'm afraid. Have you any post?”

“Nay, mistress,” Lord Gavin answered, baffled. “I gave the latest to Everin, and it was only the usual accountings from the Fair. Hasn't he passed them on?”

“
Ai
, he did. I only wondered if there was anything recently come, or unusual. From court, perhaps? Particularly the Lord Vocent?”

“No, missus, and I know his hand well.” The man regarded Avani soberly. “Is there trouble?”

“Some,” admitted Avani. “Keep an eye out, will you? Send a rider if anything arrives?”

Lord Gavin nodded, pulling thoughtfully on ginger whiskers. “I've a quick lad, I'll send him right away anything turns up. I've been thinking of sending him to the city anyway. Once the season's passed. He's spending too much time hunting barrowmen in the back fields as it is.”

Avani hid a frown. “Is that so? Barrowmen? In your fields? They've come so low?”

The new lord nodded. He had clear blue eyes, meant for merriment, but there were new worry lines etched into his brow.

“They're in the east fields,” he said. “We hear them, sometimes, singing beneath the earth. They leave impressions in the alfalfa, grass laid flat as one of your rugs, mistress. My boy recalls he's seen them, at night, hunting our stock. He's taken to patrolling the perimeter walls, foolish lad. It's not likely they'll test the keep. But his mother doesn't like him searching out the barrows in the day, you understand, missus.”

“Your lady has the right of it. Keep your lad away.” Avani glanced around the bailey. “And fire to hand, after dark. They don't much care for fire.” She hesitated, then rolled her shoulders in resignation. She couldn't help but remember the last lord of the keep, brutally cut to pieces in front of his own pantry. “Wards would be preferable, my lord.”

He nodded once in sharp agreement. “I understand the vocent is likely spread thin, missus, with the season. And now gone missing, has he? But not for long, I imagine. Most powerful man in the kingdom, below only His Majesty, Lord Malachi's like to turn up safe. And when he does, missus, mayhap you'll drop a word in his ear? We've old wards set, of course, but I misdoubt they've been tuned in a generation, not since old Lord Andrew walked the roads, and even then it weren't the barrowmen they were tuned to.”

“Best not wait for my lord,” Avani said, although she wished she could. “Not if they're prowling your fields. If you show me the wards, I'll tune them as best I can.”

“You, missus?” The lord caught himself, schooled his expression from disbelief to careful respect. “You will tune the wards? That's vocent's work, missus.”

“It's a matter of knowing what to do,” Avani corrected, more sharply than she'd intended. “I've the learning and the knack of it. Lord Malachi has been kind enough to teach me a thing or two along the way.”

“He's training you up,” the lord said, blunt. “And here my wife thought he was writing you love notes. Begging your pardon, of course.” He studied Avani more closely. “Are you magus, then?”

“Close enough.”

“And you've a way with wards?”

“In theory.” Avani straightened her shoulders. “I'm confident I can provide you better protection than you have now. But if you're dubious, man, I'll leave you to it. I'll not meddle where I'm unwelcome.”

The lord's frown split to a wide smile. This time when he thumped Avani on the back, she staggered beneath his enthusiasm.

“Not at all, not at all,” he said. “I'm hardly eager to send my only lad out into the fields with fire. My lady will be over the moon. Let's get to it. Where do we start?”

“Y
OU
'
RE
WASTING
GOOD
daylight,” Peter complained. He tracked Avani through the high golden grass against the keep walls. He carried with him a length of branch broken from a low-­hanging linden, and used the tip to brush back vegetation where grass and vine clung to the base of the graystone battlements. “I don't fancy riding through the night.”

“Neither do I.” Avani walked the fingers of one hand across warm graystone. “We'll wait until morning. The horses need the rest; you've ridden them too hard as it is.”

“Necessity is an unkind master. You're needed in Wilhaiim, Avani. Let the lord of Mors Keep fend for himself. The lad's imagining things. The
sidhe
are well contained beneath the Downs.”

“The lord has a name, you've used it yourself. His wife gave up city comfort for this post. They've got a ginger-­haired lad who'd rather be fighting barrowmen than studying his letters.
His
name is John. They're good ­people, in need of protection. I'll rest easier nights knowing we've done what we can to leave them safe. Won't you?”

Peter's branch scraped angrily against graystone.

“Aye,” he muttered, then: “Do you even know how to set wards, Avani?”

“If I don't, I'm not much good to Renault when it comes to greater magics,” Avani hedged. “It's a lovely little test,
ai.
If I can't set this right, best go home without me and look for a better solution.”

“Hah. I know you better than that. Well, then. Tell me. What exactly are we looking for?”

“Ghost magic,” Avani replied with distaste. She paused, swiping damp tendrils of hair from her face, waiting as Peter drew close. “Whoever first warded the keep, he'll have set the magic into something solid, yet tied to the spirit world. A bit of jewelry, taken from a corpse, a scrap of clothing? Relics, charged and then set to ward around the walls, to the north, the east, the south, and the west. Buried, I think. Or mortared into the stone itself.”

“And you'll just—­what?—­recognize each ward as you trod upon it?” Peter leaned on his branch. “What if they're buried deep? Or set behind layers of mortar?”

“I'll know them,” Avani said. “It's the shiver of corpse magic I'll recognize.”

“Bone?” Peter suggested. “Jewelry or scrap clothing, you said. Also bone?”

“Obviously.” Avani couldn't help but assume the man was being purposefully obtuse. “Bone being the most basic of choices.”

“There's bone in the wheelhouse.” Peter reversed and shoved his way through high grass. “I noticed it, earlier. Phalanges in the keystone.”

“Why didn't you say so in the first place?” Avani hurried after. “And you the one wanting to rush.”

Peter shrugged without looking around. “I didn't know we were looking for a bones, did I? Besides, it's not unusual, though generations out of practice. Grandfather's arm bone kept back and bricked into the family cottage for superstition or luck.”

“Abomination.” Avani spat into the long grass, revolted. “It's no wonder this continent is hung about with unhappy ghouls. How can your ancestors rest, tied still to soil and rock?”

The horses had trampled flat much of the grass around the rotting water wheel. The ground where they'd grazed was wet and slippery. Peter poked about with his branch, muttering as he scaled a small hillock behind the wheel. Avani climbed after, slipping once and gashing her hands on stone. More stone lay hidden under the grass; graystone brick still firm in the soil. The edges of foundation she'd noticed earlier appeared to be only a small portion of the ruin.

“The keep was flush, once,” Peter said. “Look, there. Millstone. The lord's crop would have been ground on-­site. A wheel this size, he must have sent at least some of the flour on for trade.”

“What changed that someone let it fall to ruin?” Avani wondered. She set her palm against the flat, round stone. It was warm as the walls around the keep, but worn smooth by use.

“Bad yield? A holding decimated by plague? A lord preferring alfalfa over wheat crop? Who knows? The bones are there, in that corner.”

Avani felt the ward before she saw the bones, and wondered that she hadn't noticed the pull of old magic earlier. She exhaled, eyes closed, and sent silver fingers of power questing across the grassy hillock. The ward was a white star in her head, and when her magic brushed across along the surface of old bones, it flared to wakefulness behind her eyelids, blue and yellow, steadier than candle flame.

“Ah!” Avani's eyes snapped open. “Not plague, or failing crop. Marauders. Bright-­eyed men from the east, over the mountains, with spears and burning arrows.”

“Desert tribes,” Peter said, surprised. “But the last eastern invasion was long before Andrew's time.”

“Nevertheless, it's how these bones are tuned.” Avani chewed her lip, thoughtful. “There may be other wards, more recent. But this set will do, she's still very strong, and now I've touched her, the other stations will be easy to find.”

“She? A woman's bones, then?” Peter glanced about the hillock. “Is she here?”

“I'm not looking for her, am I?” Avani returned, sharp, although she could feel the weight of ghostly blue eyes between her shoulder blades. “The dead are best left to rest.”

“As you like. You
can
reset the wards against the barrowmen?”

“There's only the one way to find out.” Avani extended one hand. “Lend me your branch.”

It was a simple cant. She'd mastered the basics of a warding. Her protective silver bubble had served her well enough in the barrows; it was only a matter of taking that principle and making it bigger, large enough to encompass the entire keep, anchoring it in the four directional corners by way of each skeletal fragment. Avani disliked using human remains in such a way. It was disrespectful, and she complained audibly as she used Peter's branch to unearth a shinbone buried against the bailey's eastmost battlement.

Peter, sweating and outwardly bored, listened without sympathy.

“How was it done on your islands?”

“With honor.” Avani filled the shinbone with memories of the barrowmen, of sharp-­toothed, flat-­eyed
sidhe
hungering for human flesh. She could feel the moment the ward reset to a new enemy. The shift made her momentarily dizzy, and she had to lean her weight upon the branch. “With prayer and ceremony and celebration. This feels like coercion.”

Peter shrugged. He sat on the earth, weaving long grass into fanciful patterns.

“I don't suppose the lord and his wife and ginger-­haired son care much how you go about it, so long as their home is protected.”

The man had a point, and the truth made Avani bristle. She'd been orphaned before her mother and brothers had thought to teach her anything more than a few simple hearth spells. Now she had only Mal as a teacher, and his learning felt foreign, the phrases wrong even as she spoke them aloud. But the old wards around the keep recognized corpse magic, and responded, and Avani didn't dare vary the rite.