Grand Conspiracy (22 page)

Plain facts, and a truth that cut with razored pain to the heart; Fiark found himself wordless. ‘All right,' he agreed, when at last his dark thoughts loosened enough to let him speak. ‘No promise, but your given intent that you honor his Grace's wishes where your personal safety is at stake. He lost Caolle to the dark machinations of the curse. If your careless misadventures ever came to break his personal bond to our mother, I don't want to share in his anguish.'

Feylind drew breath, and Fiark interrupted in the same vein of brutal sincerity. ‘You didn't see the damage wrought by Caolle's death. Nor will you, if the Shadow Master's fate resolves kindly. Wish for nothing else, Feylind. To do less would not be the act of a friend, but an axe blow to further the frightening cause of his Alliance enemies.'

Late Winter 5654

Parrien s'Brydion, next oldest brother to the Duke of Alestron, paced the decks in bad temper. That morning had brought his family's state galley into the overcrowded port city of Southshire. Across the merle chop of the harbor's pale waters, he could already see that the dockside berths were jammed to the point of insanity.

The lighterman he swore at dutifully shouted back. ‘We've got moorings still available. But only through making the proper application, with the fee paid in full at the harbormaster's.'

‘May Dharkaron's Black Chariot shear a linchpin and drop a wheel foursquare on the heads of the dolts in this city!' Every bit as volatile as his youngest brother Mearn, but built with the shoulders of an axeman, Parrien snarled on in distemper. ‘Just what're we expected to do meanwhile? Row in pissing circles while yon simpering, overdressed clutch of officials quibble and suck on their pen nibs?'

With gauntleted fists hooked on his studded sword belt, he glowered askance, and then raised another ranging bellow, this time addressed to his crewmen. ‘Damn you all for a pack of mincing laggards! Quit fiddling with whatever part's itching and sway out this gilt tub's excuse for a shore tender!'

The war captain and five mercenaries who strapped on their weapons to go ashore watched, resigned, since the shortage of dock space at this time of year was altogether predictable.

Two months past the solstice, the rag ends of winter still
closed off the northshore ports. While howling white blizzards cast snowdrifts like nets over the mountain passes, the wharfside dives on the south coast of Shand enjoyed their peak season of prosperity. What trade moved at all in the months before thaws must pass by the southern sea routes. Since no man could predict when the ice packs would break, or the high peaks shed their mail of slurry and ice as spring rains sluiced open the roadways, the blue-water captains drove their vessels in a cutthroat race to seize profit. Each year, ships vied to complete one last run east or west before the premium price of their cargoes could be undercut by the first overland caravans.

The month before thaws, every harbor in Shand held a maze of anchored vessels. Having zigzagged an oared course through the crisscrossing traffic of lighters to gain the docks, Parrien clambered onto the sun-bleached boards, steel studs and weapons flashing. Bystanders and longshoremen scattered from his path. With his cadre of mercenaries trailing, he stalked to the sanctum of waterfront authority.

‘Wait here until I come out,' he commanded, adding a flicked signal to his captain. Under a graceful, tiled arch and the puckered bliss of a spouting nymph, Parrien rammed through double doors that led into the stuffy, paneled foyer of the harbormaster's office. There, he made his s'Brydion presence felt in blustering language. The three scurrying stewards strove to placate him, then flushed red to the ears and gave in.

A servant swiftly ushered him into the main office in vain hope of keeping him quiet.

Not about to stay mollified, Parrien paced. The sheath of the broadsword he wore at his belt sliced wide arcs that clipped tasseled furnishings. He fumed as he stomped, and disgruntled the robed secretaries by insisting on preferential treatment. When asked to show more seemly decorum, he raised his iron-flecked brows in astonishment. ‘Show me why an overdecorated galley from Jaelot should outrank a duke's brother where there's space at the docks to tie up.'

An elderly official in Southshire's silk livery answered in stiff-lipped reproof. ‘That vessel's sworn to the Alliance of Light.'

‘You say!' Parrien jutted his square chin across the propped ledgers arranged like a barrier on the desk. The foghorn bellow he shared with three brothers rattled the walls as he ranted, ‘So
what
if some puffed-up captain from that mayor's prissy galley flies the sunwheel banner? Alestron's in league with that cause as well.
You won't see a sniping scrap of white cloth on
my
masthead, just our own family banner. S'Brydion don't claim borrowed loyalty out of need to protect what's ours! Any ignoramus who holds his life cheap can slight our name at his peril. He'll get his head dunted with no cry for help for the Prince of the Light to send in armed might for backing.'

Rawboned and mean as a fidgety tiger, the duke's oldest sibling crashed his forearm into the ordered papers of officialdom. Reed pens and parchments jumped from the blow. The flask burped up a dollop of black ink, to a trilling squeak from a clerk.

For a moment the quiet became thick enough to wring running sweat from cowed servants. The balding harbormaster tapped an attenuated finger into a cheek like boiled leather, while two onlooking captains and several wattled ministers peered with circumspect caution from under their hat brims.

‘Sithaer's biting furies, man!' Parrien stormed. ‘You know what's good, you'll see me happy. I've a shipload of my brother's best mercenaries manning the oars belowdecks. Once they've drunk a skinful, they like to make sauce out of unsuspecting lightermen with their fists. I suggest you find me a berth at the docks. Let my men stagger back from their whoring on foot, and maybe your bonesetters can keep their chance of getting an honest night's rest.'

The harbormaster blinked, bored. ‘Banners aside, we have no berths free at the moment.' His enervated shrug made Parrien's high temper seem overdone to absurdity. ‘And if there's a bonesetter anywhere in Southshire's sea quarter who gets an uninterrupted night before equinox, I don't know him. One brawler more or less before thaws isn't likely to matter.'

Which was the plain truth; late winter on the south coast was no place for a man too refined to withstand the roughneck pursuits of a seafaring neighborhood. Even here, overcrowding made way for no nicety. The raw noise and shouts from the thoroughfare beat through the clay walls, interspersed by the croaks from the rooks nesting in the harbormaster's watch turrets. From that high vantage, each day, sharp-eyed tally boys stood counting ships. They matched their numbers against each entry in the register, and made accurate lists for the constables. Those captains who tied to a mooring without paying were systematically accosted and fined.

The shoreside watch was in fighting trim, with the taverns
and brothels packed night and day, and the wharf quarter tuned to the hysterical pitch of a carnival. Street stalls under their sun-faded awnings shook and bulged to capacity crowds. Each morning, men were knifed in hot-tempered arguments. Fights and trade conflicts heated to boiling in minutes, as vendors and landlords elbowed to rake in the easy flow of winter silver.

‘What's the price of your extortion, then?' Parrien grumbled, not beaten, but shrewd enough to know when intimidation became wasted enterprise.

The secretary's clerk peered up from his rodent's perch over the cash box. ‘Cost for a mooring's six coin weight the night.'

Parrien howled.

The harbormaster shrugged. ‘No pay, then no anchorage.'

His bland-faced indifference would not yield to s'Brydion wrath at this season. The slow months would return all too soon. Today's raucous press of patrons would dry up after equinox, until only the high-class establishments could stay open. No responsible captain allowed crewmen on shore leave in summer, when spoiled stores and green flies, and the humid, sick airs hazed the sea quarter, and the brothels, with their louvered galleries, languished in the dense south coast heat.

‘Six silvers for
mooring
? That's robbery.' Parrien leaned forward; paperwork crackled and ivory marquetry groaned to the press of his weight. ‘Find me a berth. I'll pay eight, and my mercenaries will toss no one's taproom.'

‘The galley from Jaelot has priority. They carry a half company of new sunwheel soldiers as well.' A last shrug from the harbormaster ended debate. ‘Those brutes were recruited from Alland's league of headhunters. Since they're just as likely to hammer my lightermen, your threat of bashed noses is moot.'

Parrien flashed teeth in a barracuda grin. ‘Very well, man. Don't say you weren't warned. I don't give any six of your town watchmen a chance against just one of mine when he's pissed.' The duke's brother slapped down the coin for his mooring, then clomped to and fro to vent ripping impatience while the clerk marked the register and the tally boy recited the colored markings on the buoy assigned to his galley.

‘Make sure you tie up at the designated mooring,' fussed the hovering clerk. ‘Claim another, and you forfeit your legitimate fee and subject yourself to a squatter's fine.'

‘Do I look blind or stupid?' Parrien glared. ‘I sure as blazes see
well enough not to splash my own shoe, which does me credit, looking at you.'

He turned on his heel and shouldered his way out, laughing gales at the whey-faced official, who had swallowed the jibe and now bent like a stork in a worried inspection of his slippers.

Outside in the streets, under sun like fine wine, the reek of human sweat wove through the stench of the midden carts, stale horse urine, and the bouquet of patchouli and lavender worn by the half-silver whores. Parrien collected his captain of mercenaries, a hatchet-faced man with scars on his arms who had no smile to spare for the doxies. Like black steel struck through cloth, the cohesive armed party sauntered off down the docks toward the sailors' quarter.

‘Boys,' Parrien flipped back to the swordsmen, who padded like wolves at his heels, ‘you've got my leave to tear up this town for the threefold hell handed down by its windbag officials.'

His pantherish stride clove through the press, the otter sleek knot of his clan braid cruising level with the froth of feathers that spilled from the trade factors' hat brims. On either side, between loiterers begging handouts and the clouds of grease smoke from the sausage vendors, his eye caught the gleam of fresh paint.

Parrien's mouth twitched. ‘Will you look at that?'

His captain also noted the sunwheel emblems newly blazoned on the doorposts of the houses. His sole comment became the gob of spit he ejected into the gutter.

The frown set in place at the harbormaster's furrowed the ridge of Parrien's nose. ‘You saw the sunwheel flying alongside the banners over the guildhalls.'

‘I did.' The captain's grin came and went like the cold gleam of quartz in a streambed. ‘This town's fawning terrified of piracy, looks to me.'

Parrien curled his lip. ‘It's their purses they're protecting, sure enough.' His laughter slapped echoes off the shaded arches of the shop fronts, and turned the heads of three girls buying ribbons.

The raids had become the scourge of seagoing trade. Afloat in armed strength in their contraband ships, Tysan's clans came down like plague on those galleys bearing slave convicts. Despite his family's lip service loyalty to Prince Lysaer, the spreading fashion of Alliance support galled s'Brydion independent sensibilities.

‘Best walk softly on our business indeed,' Parrien said in low warning to his captain.

The mercenary gave back a wary, clipped nod. Southshire had declared for the Light with a fervency they had seen repeated with unsettling frequency in their port-hopping voyage down the coast. Just like the guard garrisons at Elssine and Telzen, the uniformed watch here had sewn sunwheel patches beneath the city blazon on their sleeves. At the Fat Pigeon Inn, the recent trend proved entrenched. When Parrien arrived to complete his small errand, the louvered dimness of the taproom was crammed with a large party wearing the white tunics denoting a vow of life service.

‘What's this, the new kennel?' Parrien grumbled, but softly. Only his captain overheard.

What seemed a whole troop of Alliance men-at-arms sprawled at ease, dicing and wenching and swilling down beer. Others arm wrestled for coin, companionably mingled with burly deckhands on leave wearing Jaelot's rampant lion livery. Officers in gold braid commandeered all the corner nooks. Their immense, florid captain lounged with his boots propped on the best table, his beefy hands laced over his belly as he hobnobbed with a trio of pouting merchants. Behind their pastel velvets and lace, a ferret-nosed official in a spotless white tabard lounged against the frame of the window sash. He appeared to listen in, but did not participate. His searching glance raked the taproom's noisy patrons with a focused reserve that lifted Parrien's hackles.

‘Slinking headhunters,' he mouthed under his breath. ‘Never mind those milk-sucking dockside clerks, I'd buy any man a night's pleasure to cripple a few of these ham-brained murderers, and give a life pension for the head of that weasel-faced sunwheel informer.'

A seasoned veteran of Alestron's service, the captain rubbed his old scars. ‘Won't stay the night to catch lice for that lot.' He passed a surreptitious signal and closed his men into a wedge, prepared when the familiar wry twist curved the duke's brother's lips.

‘Well, you're right on that score.' Parrien laughed. ‘Bloodying faces is a sight cleaner fun than the whores would provide at this season.'