Beneath an Opal Moon (16 page)

They had come, eventually, and taken the ruined body away, silently and without disturbing him as he had stood in the center of the room, exactly where Aufeya had stood, staring at him as he had left. Aerent had seen to that. But the Regent had not come upstairs and Moichi had been grateful for that because he thought that he could not bear to see another living human being then without lashing out with his dirk.

He blamed himself, deeply and without quarter. It did no good for the pragmatic part of himself to point out that he had done what he had thought best; that he had had no way of knowing—How
had
Hellsturm found out about the harttin? For he had no doubt that Hellsturm was behind the death of his friend and the snatch. (What a pejorative word:
snatch
. But it was proper and fitting for the most heinous of crimes.) Just as it did no good for him to ask himself, What else could I have done? It was just too ironic that his meeting at Three Kegs Pier had not been a high affair of state as he and Aerent had believed it would be. He could have taken Aufeya after all.

God, what a monstrous death! And Aufeya? Perhaps she already lay in her own lost fluids in some dank back alley, like her friend Cascaras, a gaping hole in her chest over her heart. Oh God, he cried inwardly, let it not be so! Then where had Hellsturm taken her? It could be anywhere.

He had heard a sound on the stairs as someone came up. Who would dare? He felt rage burning within him and whirled. He found that he was still holding the dirk he had given to Aufeya.

It was Chiisai.

What did she want? he thought savagely, feeling an unreasoning resentment. It was her fault. If she had not arrived—

“I thought you might like to talk,” she said, “to someone who is a foreigner also.”

And with that, his anger dissipated and he felt ashamed. No one was at fault.
Sei
, he thought.
Karma
. Is that not what he had told Aufeya? That seemed so long ago, now. Another lifetime.

“He was a good friend,” Moichi said, his eyes wandering around the room.

“He put up a valiant fight. But perhaps the odds were too high.”

“He could take on six men at a time.”

She came toward him through the rubble. “Interesting. He must have been up against a most formidable foe.”

Moichi was abruptly sick of the room and he went out through the ragged gap in the ruined jalousies, onto the veranda. The day was still fine, the weather bright and placid. The air was the most pellucid he had ever seen it here, reminding him of the air far out at sea.

Chiisai stepped through after him.

He looked for the spot where he had found the dirk lying abandoned. Then he looked closer. Where the dirk had been was no piece of wood. Neither was it the floor of the veranda. He knelt, reached out.

“What have you found?” Chiisai asked.

“I'm not certain.” He stood up with it. Surely he could not be mistaken. It was a strip of silk ripped from the shirt he had given Aufeya. There seemed to be blood on it. He turned it over. For a moment nothing registered. Then he saw it for what it was: a symbol or, more accurately, a pictogram. He knew it was kubaru but he did not recognize it.

“Quickly,” he told her. “Ask Llowan to send up that kubaru. The one he sent to Three Kegs Pier to fetch me.”

In a moment, she had returned with the man. He stood hesitantly inside the room even after Chiisai had indicated to him to go through; he would not move without a sign from Moichi.

When at last he came out and stood next to the navigator, Moichi could see the real concern on his face. “I am most sorry, san,” the kubaru said. “Most grieved.”

“Thank you.” Moichi inclined his head. “I am indebted to you.” He indicated the blood-soaked strip of silk. “Perhaps you may help me again.”

“Whatever you ask.”

“Tell me”—Moichi held out the silk—“what this means.”

The kubaru took the strip as gingerly as if it were a priceless piece of hand-blown glass.

“That is a kubaru symbol, is it not?”

“Yes,” the kubaru nodded. “It means ‘home.'”

After he had gone, Moichi said to Chiisai, “Home. Aufeya left that for me, clever woman. Hellsturm takes her back to Corruña. That is where I must go now.”

“But you shall not go alone,” Chiisai said.

“I must,” he told her. “Aerent cannot go with me.”

“I was not speaking of the Regent.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “You will stay here with him. Here in Sha'angh'sei, as your father ordered.”

“Did not Aerent tell you I brought a communiqué from the Dai-San?” There seemed to be the ghost of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth as she lifted out a small metal cylinder from beneath her robe, handed it to him.

He opened it suspiciously. It was written in the Dai-San's own hand.
“Moichi, my friend,”
he read,
“Chiisai can be the only one to deliver this to you. She will do so directly by hand and only when the two of you are alone and unobserved. What she told Aerent is only a half-truth. This was done to protect him as well as herself. Chiisai is with you now under my orders. Of course, the Kunshin had no objections. She is to stay with you now no matter what is to happen, until such time as she deems it appropriate to do otherwise. I am leaving this to
her discretion. You know me well enough that I need say no more. Our trust is our bond as brothers.”
Moichi looked up at her but she only shook her head.

“I know less of this than you do.”

He was certain she was lying but knew that she had good reason to do so. This was hardly his concern, in any event. If she meant to come, that was all right with him, as long as she kept her place and did not get in his way.

She smiled at him. “I know what you are thinking.”

“Oh, really? What?”

With a deft gesture, merely a flick of her wrists, her silk robe had parted and now slid off her shoulders, puddling the floor at her feet.

“You see,” she said, “I
can
be of help.”

Moichi stared.

Underneath the fallen robe she wore an intricately carved breastplate of black metal inlaid with gold filaments, tight black leggings of the supplest leather. Around her waist was buckled a thin belt studded with pink-and-white swirled jade from which hung the two traditional Bujun swords, the katana and the longer dai-katana.

She laughed when she saw his expression, a kind and gentle sound.

I should have realized, Moichi thought. All the signs were right in front of me.

The shrouds cracked in the wind and the yards creaked as the Daluzan lorcha sped through the water. They were professionals, the men who manned this craft, and it had not taken them long to accept Moichi. He spoke their language and he knew what had happened to Aufeya. Since she had been missing they had been terrified at the prospect of her death.

“So we return home,” Armazón said. He was the bos'un, a burly man with a thick shock of white hair and a seamed, leathery face, beaten into a proud configuration by the wind, sun and salt sea. His eyes were bright bits of lapis, liquid and knowing but withholding depths from the casual observer. He shook his head now. “I had no good feeling about this voyage from its inception. I begged Aufeya to find some way to reach a bargain with that man.”

“Hellsturm?” Moichi said.

Armazón nodded. Spray flew into his face as the lorcha bucked down then up through an oncoming wave.

“A babor!”
Moichi cried to the helmsman, and the vessel immediately swung to port. It was a well-designed craft, Moichi saw, and he appreciated this. It was tremendously responsive, much less ponderous than the larger three-masted schooners. But because of its smaller size, it was much more prone to subjugation by the whims of the sea. If Aufeya had set sail in a three-master, she never would have run afoul of that storm.

To his left, the coastline was a green-and-brown ripple, distancing itself as the lorcha moved out to sea.
“Basta!”
he cried, and the lorcha returned to its northeasterly course.

“What did she say?” Moichi had returned to his conversation with the Daluzan bos'un.

“Say?” The man snorted. “Why, she laughed at me and said, ‘You poor fool. No one can make a bargain with Hellsturm. Once he is given a task to perform, there is no one who can stop him!'”

“
Given
a task?” Repeated it because it had been some time since he had heard so much Daluzan. The language had so many nuances, spoken inflections changing the meaning of words which, if written, were constant, that he needed to be certain of what he had heard.

Armazón nodded.

“Hellsturm is working for someone? Who?”

The bos'un shrugged. “I do not know. I am not family. It is a matter strictly for the Seguillas y Oriwara.”

“You mean the seamerchant family?”

He squinted up at Moichi. “Yes, Aufeya's family. You did not know?”

Moichi shook his head. In any other land, it might have been a strange name. But, he knew, the Daluzan custom was for two people to combine their names when they were wed. He had, of course, heard of the Seguillas y Oriwara when he was in Corruña. It would have been surprising if he had not. The family was quite wealthy and owned a sizable fleet of merchant ships.

“You have heard of Milhos Seguillas, piloto?”

“Yes.”

“One of the finest men in Corruña, in all of Dalucia for that matter. Then he had to go and marry the foreigner.” He spat sideways into the creaming sea. “That was his downfall, mark my words well.” He looked at the backs of his hands, strong and blunt and capable, as dark as tanned leather; the sea had made them that way. “Dead now, the senhor is. Dihos make peaceful his soul.”

There was something peculiar in the inflection that made Moichi ask: “How did he die, the Senhor Seguillas?”

“Violently, piloto. He died abominably, if the truth be known.”

“How did it happen?”

Armazón spat again over the side. “Just passing the time, eh, piloto? Something to do to wait out the journey.”

“I think you misunderstand, Armazón,” he said seriously. “I wish only to get Aufeya back and to destroy Hellsturm. Anything you can tell me—”

He broke off at the other's grating guffaw. “Pardon me, piloto, but you are a foreigner, unused to our ways. You wish to destroy this man, Hellsturm. Very admirable, I admit. He is an evil man. But you do not know him. We have a saying in Dalucia, piloto. ‘Easy to say, hard to accomplish.' You know it, eh? No? Well, now you do.”

“I have seen what Hellsturm can do. He murdered my friend.”

“Ah.”

“I will destroy him.”

“Bravo. Bravo!” Armazón clapped his hands derisively. “You will pardon me, piloto, if I do not join in the celebration just yet, eh? I have a somewhat more pragmatic turn of mind than do you, apparently.”

“You were about to tell me about the Senhor's death.”

“Ah, yes. So I was. He was murdered in a duel.” He squinted up at Moichi once again, gauging the response to what he had just said. “Oh, yes, I know what you must be thinking. One enters a Daluzan duel as a matter of honor and one accepts, honorably, what Dihos decrees as the outcome. That is part of Daluzan law. It is fixed. A constant. No one may interfere in a Daluzan duel.” His face was a sea of seething emotion, as if the words, like individual bricks, falling from his lips, anticipated the crumbling of some strong wall. His voice became a hiss of suppressed hate. “I tell you this, piloto, as certain as I am standing on this deck speaking to you now, someone violated that sacred law. Someone interfered.”

Moichi stared at him silently. The man was working himself up into a state of great agitation.

“This is how I know, piloto. I knew Milhos Seguillas well, very well I might even say. We sailed together on many a prosperous voyage, not all the time as master and bos'un, if you catch my meaning. Aboard ship, well, piloto, who am I to tell you? The tenets of the sea are much different than those held on land, eh? Restrictions are lifted, prohibitions vanish like so much mist, eh? Eh? Here one is free to be oneself. The chains of class and wealth ne'er apply. That was the kind of man Milhos Seguillas was. He was a high lord who cared more for the sea and those loyal to it than all the silver in the world.” He squinted up at Moichi. “She is a cruel mistress, the sea, eh, piloto? We both know that. She is harsh and unforgiving but like a lover she cradles those who are faithful to her. You think that superstitious nonsense?” He hawked and spat, clearing his throat, as if from the clotted emotion spilling out. “Listen to me well, piloto. Milhos Seguillas was an expert swordsman. Expert! He would not have been killed so quickly in a duel unless—” He paused, his mouth hanging open, as if he felt himself on a precipice and in voicing this hidden knowledge he had begun to fear his own words. “He was poisoned, piloto. Poisoned just before the duel began. I saw the body. I know. A substance few know of, derived from a plant indigenous to a region far to the northwest. But Daluzans, they have little contact with poisons.”

“But for Senhor Seguillas to be poisoned in such a manner—this could not possibly be accomplished by his opponent,” Moichi pointed out.

“Precisely, piloto. You have cut directly to the heart of the matter. Senhor Seguillas' foe had a cunning accomplice. One so fantastically clever that the Senhor never even suspected.”

“What are you saying, Armazón?”

“Just this, piloto. Senhor Seguillas was poisoned by his wife!”

“My God, man, do you have any proof of this?”

“Proof, piloto? Aye. Proof enough. Not such that would prick the interest of a magistrate. But, I'll warrant, enough to satisfy me. I knew Senhor Seguillas. And I know his wife.”

“Does Aufeya know anything of this matter?”

“Not a bit, piloto. Leastwise, not from these lips. I've breathed nought to a soul save yourself.”