Grand Conspiracy (27 page)

‘Well you'd better change heart! Sithaer, you're knocked down and winded and kicked to a pulp!' Parrien let go. A studied assessment of the defiance held pinned and bleeding by his mercenaries made him vent a more poisonous oath. For Arithon s'Ffalenn, there would be no yielding, no civilized alternative to curb his set will short of actual bodily harm.

‘You ravening idiot! Don't say after this you don't deserve all you get.' Disgusted with entreaties, Parrien snapped off a nod to his captain. ‘Hold him fast. Fail me there, and I'll see you
regret every day you survive before Daelion Fatemaster drags your carcass past the Wheel.'

He set his hands on his knee, pushed heavily erect. A shaken stride carried him to the chart table, where the wine flask stood miraculously upright. He snapped out an arm, grasped the neck, and yanked out the stopper with his teeth.

The ejected cork rolled across blood-smeared boards and bumbled to rest amid the burst cushions and smashed glass.

Parrien spun away from the appalling damage. ‘Pry open his Grace's mouth. Brute force isn't the only way to take a stubborn man down.' Eyes sparkling malice, he knelt. His captive's enraged glare struck him full in the face. ‘Why not just relax and enjoy your defeat? The wine's a spectacular vintage.'

The Shadow Master's spread-eagled limbs contorted in a wild explosion of protest. Yet for all of the furious struggle left in him, he failed to break from the mercenaries' grasp.

Parrien gave his most evil smile, the wine raised in salutation. Then he tipped up the flask and poured the duke's best Shandian red between teeth forced apart by the merciless fingers of his captain. ‘Share your miseries with the Mad Prophet,' he murmured, while an ungentle fist in the ribs compelled his victim to swallow. ‘If Dakar's up and walking, no doubt he'll nurse your hangover with the practiced hands of experience.'

Late Winter 5654

The finesse required to return Arithon to his brigantine became a cold trial of patience.

While the
Khetienn
's night watch subsided to suspicious mutters, and a bristling crewman moved on the foredeck to stow the flying jib's shackle, Parrien cradled the bundled-up form of Rathain's unconscious prince. The only parts visible outside swathing blankets were a dangling hand and a trailing twist of black hair.

‘Everybody drinks with their friends now and then,' he argued, while the pounding discomfort of his own cuts and bruises threatened to ignite his rank temper.

The rest of the crew had outworn their disbelief, except for the
Khetienn
's belligerent steward. That one never moved from his stance of obstructive, arm-folded mistrust. In desert accents inflected to pure venom, he said, ‘Show me.'

Parrien swore, careful to keep the flare of the afterdeck lantern behind him. ‘Have some respect for his Grace's dignity.' In trust his two mercenaries would keep station at his heels, he jostled forward, hooded head aimed toward the companionway to the stern cabin. ‘Dakar's in there?'

The desertman's teeth flashed in the blood orange glow of the lamp. ‘Asleep. I think you speak lies. Except once with Cattrick, his Grace has shunned too much drink since the day the shed blood soaked the shores at the Havens.'

‘You don't know that for certain.' Parrien tapped his foot. ‘You
weren't there to mother him. And anyway, Shandian wine's too smooth and sweet to bring on terrors and nightmares. Do please move aside. Or else go rouse Dakar before I get upset and dump Rathain's prince in an unconscious heap at your feet.'

‘You wake up Dakar,' the desertman snapped. ‘Let you be the one to clean up the sheets when your drinking guests render their gorge.' Sly in contempt, he sidled ahead and flicked up the latch. As the ship's mild roll swung the door wide, Parrien's party invaded the sanctum of the
Khetienn
's stern cabin.

The interior was black. Dakar had always eschewed light with his hangovers, and, obliging, the vindictive little steward had left the lamps dark at sundown.

‘Sithaer's plaguing furies!' Parrien resisted the instinctive urge to shove back the hood masking the bashed state of his own features. ‘Can't see a damn thing.' Two steps behind, his mercenaries groped a bumping course past lockers and unfamiliar furnishings. ‘Somebody, dig out an Ath-forsaken light.'

They purloined the burned-down stub from the chart desk. A lump of flint from a pocket and the blade of a dagger struck the necessary spark. New flame wavered over the quill pens, the dividers, the leather-stamped covers of the brigantine's logbook, and the scrupulous rolled ends of her charts. A glass-paneled cabinet held the priceless lyranthe inherited at Halliron Masterbard's death. An adjacent empty peg showed where the lesser instrument with the cutoff tassels had hung. The green baize cushions and blankets on the quarterberth were neatly brushed and untenanted.

‘Dakar's about somewhere.' Parrien glared at the unhelpful desertman, then rattled terse orders to his mercenaries. ‘Search the port and starboard quarters, by force if need be.' The ache of his bruises and a swelling cut on his lip made even simple speech onerous.

‘He's in here,' came the call from the depths of another darkened doorway.

‘Take the candle,' Parrien said to the guard captain at his elbow. Still bearing Rathain's prince, he followed the slip of yellow flame into the aft cabin, then slammed the door shut before the inquisitive steward could decide on an afterthought to trail him.

Dakar lay wadded like a kicked hedgehog in a wallow of crumpled blankets. His exhaled air reeked of metabolized alcohol. The lingering, sweetish reek of cheap brandy wafted from the
irregular stains soaked into his collar. A ruthless shaking by Parrien's mercenaries eventually rattled a tortured groan out of him. He shot a wild fist at the candle thrust in his face, then growled something obscene a man could try with his bollocks, a basin, and a rock.

‘Dakar, you're needed,' Parrien said in succinct and irritable urgency.

The Mad Prophet plowed his head under a pillow. Unintelligible grumbles emerged through the muffling goose down.

‘Is there a bucket to douse him?' the mercenary captain asked his subordinate.

That threat caused Dakar to shed bedclothes and sit up. His hair was rubbed into a rat's nest of spikes, and a flustered moment passed as he unsnarled his beard from his shirt buttons. ‘No water, I'd lose it,' he said clearly. He had time to register the hatchet visage of Parrien's field captain before vertigo overcame him. Folded in half with his forehead resting on his knees, he said to the laddered socks on his ankles, ‘Why are you back here?'

‘Not to play nursemaid!' The duke's brother lost patience. ‘Damn you, sit up. Your prince has need of your services.'

Dakar rolled his neck. An indignant brown eye turned upward. ‘I'll have to use the privy first.'

For answer, Parrien flipped back the blanket that covered his burden. A quick signal moved his men, who hauled the Mad Prophet bodily erect to confront the gist of the crisis.

The blood, the puffed scrapes, and the slack jaw of unconsciousness swam in the flickering flood of the candle.

A blink, a stark moment of igniting disbelief, then the Mad Prophet slapped off the hands which slung him up by his shirtfront. ‘You fought him?' His voice climbed into outraged disbelief. ‘Merciful Ath! The last affray in Tysan laid him low for three months. Didn't anybody tell you? He just barely got back on his feet!'

Parrien at least had the grace to look sheepish as he pushed back his covering hood. ‘Your royal charge wasn't knocked out from blows. Just an unholy excess of red wine.'

‘Lay him on the upper berth.' Dakar jerked down his rucked shirt, scrubbed his face with his sleeves, then ordered the sword captain to fetch a jug of water as though he were a born servant. Then he gouged crusted eyes with his knuckles and wrestled his disjointed dismay into speech. ‘Why in fate's name did you have to use violence?'

Parrien shed the slack prince, blotted an oozing scab on his forearm, then faced the interrogation straight on. ‘I had to stop him. Unless you wanted him sailing straight back to Avenor to intervene on behalf of Cattrick and Mearn.' In rapid, plain words, he outlined the conspiracy arranged with the master shipwright and the scheming, wild plan set in place by his youngest brother.

‘Ath!' Dakar stabbed stiff fingers into the shining, dough folds of his cheeks. ‘I hurt too much for this. Your cook's brandy is evil and ought to be banned from civilized consumption for eternity.'

‘Well, my Shandian wine won't be much more merciful.' Parrien licked his split lip, then added, reluctant, ‘We had to dose a second flask with valerian since the first one failed to put your prince's lights out.'

Dakar's hands fell. He flopped back on crushed pillows, the resolve all leached out of him, except for his eyes, which stayed piercingly wide and direct. ‘Dharkaron, you're serious. His Grace wouldn't quit, even when he was beaten?'

Parrien was sour. ‘My best archer's got a thumb bitten down to the bone as living proof.'

Dakar's worry intensified. ‘His Grace only gets that difficult if he's desperate.'

‘Or insane.' Parrien winced at the jolt to his balance as the kick of changed tide in the inlet riffled rip currents beneath the
Khetienn
's keel. ‘When I threatened to break his arm to keep him passive, he asked me point-blank to break his leg.'

‘To spare his hands for his music? Sweet Ath!' New sweat sprang and dripped down Dakar's temples. He laced sausage fingers into the screwed hair at his nape, his frown pinched to alarm. ‘If Arithon said that, he's not going to be reasonable. The only way to be sure he won't act is to follow through with your threat.'

‘That's barbaric!' Parrien's square face stood wide open to shock. ‘An honorable man couldn't.'

‘But this isn't about honor, or decency, or pity,' Dakar blazed back from his agonized prostration. ‘This is about keeping the Master of Shadow away from Prince Lysaer's throat. We can't survive another curse-driven bloodbath. Are you hearing me?'

Parrien stopped raging, his blunt hands raised in a gesture of warding disbelief. ‘You believe Mearn's predicament provided an excuse?
That the Mistwraith's own curse could have raised this
uncontrolled outburst of ferocity?
'

‘I don't know that for certain.' Dakar rallied sick nerves and propped himself upright. ‘Except we can't risk the possibility. All the future's at stake if we judge this wrong.'

‘Dharkaron's fell Chariot, you mean,
break his leg?
' Parrien backstepped as if the Avenger's Black Spear might fall dipped in fire to torment him. ‘We don't do things like townsmen, nor cause wrongful harm to sworn friends for expediency.'

Dakar said with queer dignity, ‘I wouldn't call preventing a needless, mad slaughter anything so simple as expedience.'

Flattened to the bulkhead, Parrien weighed that terrible truth, his circling conscience trapped and raging. ‘If this happens, before Ath, we'll answer our clan blood debt to the s'Ffalenn prince up front.'

Before Dakar could smooth down the thorns of rankled pride, Parrien beckoned to his brother's prize captain of mercenaries. ‘Step forward, Vhandon. Dakar needs to know you're no hireling soldier.'

In fact, the taciturn veteran was Duke Bransian's oathsworn commander at arms, bearing clan bloodlines back to the uprising. The spare phrases Parrien chose for introduction gave too little recognition for the man's impressive record on the field. ‘Tell me, Vhandon,' Parrien finished, his depth of stark weariness struck through his bearing, and his eyes like the heads of iron nails. ‘Is Talvish there your most steadfast man?'

‘None finer.' Always grudging with words, Vhandon shot an appraising glance at Talvish, then added, ‘He's a man for tight corners with the sword.' His eyes remained calm, the color of rubbed jade under the ash-colored jut of his eyebrows. The wrinkles at the corners looked quarried in granite as he held his fighting stance, feet braced against the ship's roll.

Parrien nodded, satisfied. ‘Very well. Hear my orders as if they come from your duke, for his name and family honor are now yours to keep. You and Talvish will break Prince Arithon's right leg. Make a clean job. I don't want him lamed. Then you will stand by him, through convalescence and beyond. For s'Brydion good faith, you will swear this spellbinder a blood oath to serve him. Then defend him, life and limb, for as long as you are fit to bear arms or until the curse of the Mistwraith is broken.'

Dakar jerked erect, mouth opened in protest. ‘You can't do this. These men have ties, surely. What of their families left in Alestron?'

But Parrien shouted him down. ‘No! Don't speak. Compensation is fitting. Who else could your liege ask to take Caolle's place now?'

Into stunned silence, Vhandon's deep voice added emotionless support. ‘My sons are grown, my one daughter married.' He tipped a nod to the tall, blond swordsman in the corner. ‘Talvish is unattached, yet, and Earl Jieret's clans have no able lives left to spare, not since their best fell to their liege's defense by Tal Quorin. Someone must stay who has enough muscle to keep your Shadow Master flat until the affray with the Riverton shipyard reaches quittance.'

‘Fine, then,' Dakar snarled. ‘What if Talvish objects?'

The younger man leaned at ease against the closed doorway, his spidery hands quiet and his air of lithe stillness unruffled. ‘For the s'Brydion good name, I'll serve Prince Arithon as if he were my bloodborn charge.'

‘And get your thumbs bitten, too?' Dakar countered, too much in pain not to vent his distress. ‘A viper's less volatile. Don't weep to me when you discover his needling temper.' Since threats and appeal gained him no satisfaction, he accosted Parrien again. ‘Dharkaron wept! We're beleaguered enough by patrols and sunwheel galleys, we risk death each time this vessel takes on provisions, and his Grace himself's a damned killing nuisance, convalescent. If I've got to live through this when he wakes up, one Ath-forsaken leg won't be enough to hold him back.'