Dragon Heart (29 page)

In his chamber, while a soldier brought Stencop a chair, Oto used a knife to slit open the case, and pulled out the thick paper with its seals and ribbon and ink.

The dispatch opened without the proper protocols, going straight to the evil.
I note with disapproval that this remote castle is not yet secured—

He ripped the paper to shreds. The admiral stood by the chair, in the center of the room, scowling at him. “Sir. This is unusual.”

Oto said, “He does not understand. He does not know what we're fighting against.”

The soldier stood at Stencop's elbow with a cup of wine, but the admiral ignored him. He had a broad red face, and his ornamented collar always seemed too tight. Oto glared at him, who also knew nothing. “So: you were attacked. What happened?”

Stencop did not answer for a moment. His vanity left him. He glanced around, maybe looking for help, and facing Oto again straightened, his shoulders squared.

“We were anchored inshore for the night, in revet formation. I heard screams—it was near dawn. I got to the deck in time to see the ship at the other end of the revet on fire, and then everything in her blew up at once.” Stencop's jaws moved under his beard, as if he bit down on something. “Then two more ships went down in just a few minutes. The first ship had half the bombs. The next two had all the soldiers.” His jaw moved again, this time swallowing.

“This coast is infested with pirates. Who were they? What ships did they ply?”

“I never saw a ship,” the admiral said. He seemed to notice the chair, now, for the first time, and he sat down. “Just my ships, burning and sinking. It was like something moving around under the water.”

Oto guffawed. “What. Mermaids perhaps? You didn't fight back? You were attacked, but you did not fight back?” He thrust out his hand. “Amazing to me that you dare to wear the braid.”

Stencop reached for the cup of wine the soldier had been trying for some time to give him. He said, “I am new come here and expected something of an Imperial welcome, the honor due a messenger from the Emperor. Instead I get this.” He looked Oto up and down, and then pointedly turned his gaze around the room. “Where is your brother?”

“My brother is dead, sir. You deal with me alone. I rule here.”

“The Empire rules here,” Stencop said, and drank. “Or should. Which is the problem, is it not?”

Oto said, “Through me! Only through—”

A knock on the door jerked him around. When the soldier opened it, Jeon stood there.

“Well,” Oto blurted out. “You waited, for once, to come in the proper way.”

Stencop was frowning, puzzled, but Jeon smiled. He walked into the room, tall, slender, his red hair hidden under a cap, his new beard a pale fuzz. Oto thought, Kill him. Soon.

Jeon said, “Sir, may I ask him a question?”

“Who is this?” Stencop said. “Who interrupts? Lord Oto, I insist—”

Oto rounded on the sailor again. “You'll obey me, Stencop. Me. Not whatever secret orders you have hidden in your sea chest.”

They stared at each other a moment. Stencop was half out of the chair; finally, he settled back down into it.

“I assure you—”

“Later.” Oto's hand chopped down, cutting Stencop off, and he turned back to Jeon. “Yes, yes. What is it?”

Jeon went up between them, Stencop in his chair and Oto standing by the table. “Sir, I think I know something important about the pirates.”

Stencop said, “Who is this?”

“Prince Jeon, a son of the local house,” Oto said. “What, Jeon? What is this?”

“Let me ask this of you.” Jeon turned to the admiral. “Sir, when you were attacked, was it near dawn?”

Stencop scowled around the great greying shag of his beard. “Yes, it was.” He glanced at Oto.

“And you were near to shore?” Jeon asked.

“We were at anchor, just offshore.”

“And was the tide making?”

“Yes. We had to rake off the shore to get away. A strong tide.”

Jeon turned back to Oto. “You know I found a witness, at the new fort. He said the pirates came in at dawn, with a making tide.”

Oto thought, He is too slick; he is treacherous. But the logic drew Oto in. “Go on.”

Jeon went to the table, where there were some pieces of dinnerware. “Let me show you. Last fall Santomalo burnt to the ground, no survivors.” He put the saltcellar on the table. “At the beginning of winter, another village, here. Burnt. No survivors. In the midwinter, the New Fort. Burnt. No survivors.” He set down the oil jar and the candlestick, a few inches apart, to the right of the salt. “Then, this attack on the fleet. Burnt.” He stuck a knife into the tabletop to the right of that.

“Many survived,” Stencop said hoarsely.

“The intent here maybe was different,” Jeon said. “To disable the fleet, more than to take slaves.” He reached across the table for Oto's cup. “So. Santomalo, the village, the new fort, the fleet. They are coming down the coast, harvesting people.”

Stencop grunted. Oto locked his hands together behind his back. The line of objects on the table held his eyes.

Jeon looked from one to the other. “And here we are.” He put the cup at the right end of the line. “And we are next.”

Oto could not look away from this. His mind was churning. He was a King with no men. His only men were Stencop's men.

Stencop said, “They have been raiding up and down the coast and you have done nothing?”

Oto pulled his gaze to Jeon. “This is Castle Ocean. Who would dare attack?”

“They will go for Undercastle,” Jeon said. “To do that, they must come into the bay.” His eyes shone, and he leaned toward Oto a little, urgent. His voice dropped. He said, “But if we know they are coming, my lord, we can set a trap for them. You have wonderful new weapons. You can defeat them. And that will prove you King against anybody, my lord. Anybody.”

Oto cleared his throat; he did not like Stencop hearing this, but Jeon made sense to him. He thought, Don't kill him yet.

Jeon said, “Right now, at sunrise the tide here is slack. But when the moon's full, ten days from now, it will be making. At dawn. And we should be ready.”

Oto forced himself to laugh, careless. “Well, maybe. You have certainly thought this all out, haven't you. I'll take it under consideration.” He nodded. He avoided looking at either of them; he needed to look sure of himself, the power firmly in his hands.

“If you are right, Prince Jeon, I will make you an Imperial Count.”

Jeon bowed down before him. “Your servant, my lord.”

*   *   *

Stencop went back down to the beach, to see to his men. Oto loitered awhile in the upper chamber. Jeon waited with him, and when he left followed him down the stair of the new tower. When they came down to the chapel landing, which was littered with broken stone, Oto stopped, one hand out to hold Jeon back. Jeon moved slightly out of reach: he hated Oto's touch. He saw that Oto wanted Stencop well out of earshot, and he guessed what Oto wanted to talk about.

“Why will they not do this properly?” He waved at the doorway into the chapel.

Jeon said, “Maybe they can't, sir.” The doorway and the space beyond were packed solid with the black rock; that was what knocked the stones out of the wall, the rock pushing outward. It occurred to him it would push against any wall of quarried stone.

The possibilities in that flowered in his mind, so that for a moment he did not hear that Oto spoke to him, and he came back to himself only when Oto said sharply, “Are you listening to me?”

Jeon jerked his gaze to the Archduke's. “Yes, sir. I'm sorry.”

“What will stop it?”

Nothing, Jeon almost said, and thoughtlessly he looked up the stairs, toward Oto's chambers.

At that, the Archduke hooted. “No need to speak. That says it all. I shall move myself out at once.” He leveled a mirthful stare at Jeon. “You're not that clever, you know,” he said, and went away.

Jeon followed him down into the antechamber. Somehow Jeon had not foreseen this: now Oto would choose to go somewhere else, perhaps out of reach. Jeon could not control this, only ride on it. In the center of the antechamber, the Archduke stood ordering around the three men posted there. Jeon glanced down at the foot of the stair he had just left. The gap between the living rock and the quarried stone had closed. Those stones along the edge were starting out of their places. The backs of his hands tingled. He went on, to go down to the beach, to see what was happening there.

 

16

Marwin was saying, “This is why we're fighting in the south, see, to get this stuff.”

With his foot he nudged a long, flat plank, not wood, which clinked when his boot struck it. There were three of these and they had been brought ashore like babies, each wrapped in its own coat of thick cloth and laid carefully down on blocks. The grunting soldiers were hauling a frame up from the grounded barge, an angular construction of wooden beams, taller than any of them, wider than three of them. The sun was bright and hot; Jeon was sweating, and he was doing little more than standing around watching. He unhooked the front of his coat and took it off.

Marwin said, “This stuff comes from some mine down south of the desert there. Look.”

He stepped onto the plank with both boots. The plank was about as wide as his boots were long and he bounced once to make sure he had good footing. Reaching down, he got the near end of the plank and with a yank pulled it up toward him, and the plank bent like a bow. When he let go the plank slapped back down again into the sand with a thump.

“Hunh,” Jeon said, mystified. But Marwin was beaming, his point made.

Another barge was heading in. This one had wheels on it, something at least recognizable. Jeon glanced around, wondering where Oto was. Stencop was off at the head of the beach, where his men were camping. Marwin called orders: the soldiers were rolling a wheel up to the wooden frame.

“We used these at the siege of Grom,” Marwin said. “We tore those walls down in four weeks.”

Jeon wondered what Grom was, and where. The Imperials laid the wheel down flat on the sand, called for help, and all together lifted the wooden frame and put it down on top.

Then it wasn't a wheel. Nothing in this was proving out as Jeon expected. He shook his head, to knock the old ideas loose. The Imperials were fixing the frame onto the flat wheel, tapping pins down through the wood with a mallet. One gave the frame a little push, and the whole apparatus swiveled smoothly around on the wheel.

“Ah,” Jeon said.

Marwin gave orders in an important voice. The men working under him settled the wooden frame, peering at it from angles, sliding their hands under it. Someone brought a stick, well fashioned, some kind of tool, and they used that to level the frame. Now two of them went to the pile of planks Marwin had shown Jeon. Carrying the top plank, one at each end, they brought it to the frame, and tilted one end straight down into the center so the bottom of the plank rested on the frame's heavy footing and the top poked straight into the air.

Now it looked like a crouching animal, with a long neck, but no head. Jeon remembered that long neck flexing, and began to see what this was.

The soldiers busied themselves with straps and pins, fastening the neck part into the crouching body. No head appeared, but they fixed a cable to the top of the neck, and wound the loose end of the cable down around a spindle where the kicker's tail should have been. Jeon dropped his coat on the sand and moved off to the side, to see this better. A flicker of movement up the beach caught his eye, and he looked back that way.

Oto was riding down the path from the cliff, trailing a long line of men on foot, each carrying something. Jeon backed away from the kicker. He would figure this out later. For now, he wanted to see what Oto was going to do next.

*   *   *

Amillee stood on the porch of the brewery, looking up the beach. The new camp was swarming with men. Behind her, Lumilla was bustling around, gathering cups; two fresh kegs sat on the open deck.

Lumilla said, “All these newcomers will be here as soon as they are let off duty. Now, listen to me. Serve them one cup at a time. Always take as much coin as they will give you. Nothing less than a whole. Don't keep broken coins with you; that way you can't give them anything smaller back. If they want to haggle, call me.”

Amillee grunted. Usually ale went for a quarter Imperial a cup. She would certainly not ask the local people for a whole or give them only one cup at a time. Lumilla said, “They don't know the way here, yet, and until they figure it out, I mean to make money.”

“Mother,” Amillee said, “you are—” and stopped. The false King, Oto, was riding down the beach toward them. Amillee watched him keenly; he came here seldom. The few times she had seen him closely, his clothes had always drawn her, the sleek satins, the colors, but also the perfect way he wore them. Disappointed, she saw he was not keeping himself well. His coat was rumpled and his boots dirty. He was coming right toward her. Catching herself staring at him, she backed away, to get her mother to the front.

Lumilla had seen him also. She went to the porch rail, and gave him a fine salute. She had not been serving his men for so long without learning something. She called, “Glory to the King!”

He drew rein before the porch. “Indeed. And to you, also, glory, woman. I give you the honor of providing me your place here for my residence.”

Lumilla coughed. “What?”

The false King said, “I require a dwelling here, and I will use this spacious and agreeable place.”

People were coming up around them to listen. Amillee threw a glance at them all, and said, “Mother, don't let him do this.”

Oto ignored Amillee. He said, “For this, of course, you will be recompensed.” He held out his hand, and the man behind him put in it a purse, which clinked.