Kitabı oku: «The Wars of Light and Shadow», sayfa 6
Handfasting
Seventy-five leagues northward, far removed from the chill of woodland nightfall in Taerlin, candlelight rinsed the carpeted chamber where the oldest daughter of the Lord Elect of Erdane perched on a brocade stool. Her lush skirts spilled a lake of pale rose silk and gilt trim around her primly crossed ankles. Walnut hair fanned over her shoulders, combed into a shining cascade of warmth by the lady’s maid who attended her.
‘Oh, Ellaine, to be so fortunate!’ From a nearby stuffed chair, with a pert, dimpled chin perched on cupped palms, her younger sister mused on, ‘Having a prince ask for your hand in marriage! I could burst from the excitement.’
The tortoiseshell comb slid, streaking sparks of static in the dry air, while the candle’s rinsed glow raised Ellaine’s skin to a flush and glinted off lips like ripe peaches.
The sister’s spun fantasy gushed on through bright hopes and girlish dreams. ‘You’ll go to Avenor and wear diamonds and ermine, and we will all die of envy.’
‘The contract’s just signed,’ Ellaine contradicted in her sweet, retiring alto. While the maid tipped her head to run the comb at Ellaine’s nape, her muffled voice showed apprehension. ‘A thousand things could go wrong.’
Her thoughts skittered and fled like dropped pearls. She tried not to think of the horse with the blue-and-gold trappings just arrived, with a train of liveried attendants. The turmoil of their stabling still upset the evening calm of the yard. Dogs barked in the streets. Every hall in the mayor’s mansion reechoed with the fast-paced dialect of strangers. Ellaine’s damp fingers clamped in her swathed lap. Belowstairs, her mother and father stood to receive the royal suit and exchange courtly courtesies until the moment of her formal presentation.
‘You could worry yourself silly!’ A moue on her cupid lips, the younger sister masked a giggle as the maid crossed her line of view. ‘The trade guilds would scarcely see you lose such a prize! Father’s done nothing but count the coin for your dowry for at least the past six weeks. Believe it. You’re going to stop hearts.’ The maid gathered up the smoothed waves of hair and deftly separated the shining mass into neat strands for braiding. ‘You’re not thinking of shaming us all by throwing a scene as he meets you?’
Ellaine swallowed. ‘No.’ Erdane was no eastland city, to encourage its women to bold acts of freedom and independence. ‘But you know there will be unkind comparisons drawn.’
She would not speak the name of Lysaer’s first princess, who had been Etarran, beautiful and proud and spirited as a wild lioness. During her winter’s stay at the palace of Erdane’s mayor, the girls had known Lady Talith well enough to measure her mettle. She had made no secret of her penchant for the blood sport of palace intrigue. Small good her rebellious intelligence had done her in the end; even her sharpened wit had become eclipsed by the Prince of the Light’s blinding majesty.
The maid’s firm fingers braided Ellaine’s hair, unconcerned, as the sisters took stock of the recent tragedy that cast a dampening chill on the hour’s anticipation. The late Princess of Avenor now lay six months dead, a suicide who had plunged from the high tower battlement that fronted her husband’s hall of state.
‘She was barren and in despair,’ the younger girl insisted, while the maid’s efforts bundled her sister’s dark tresses in consoling, brisk tugs that pulled at her small furrows of worry. ‘All you need do is give the prince heirs. You’ll wear pearls and fine gowns and be comfortable for the rest of your life.’
Other benefits remained politely unspoken, that Ellaine’s promised marriage would also bring Erdane the strength of Lysaer’s royal protection. The city would claim the prince’s defense against the machinations of the Master of Shadow, and also a field-trained division of sunwheel troops to secure the trade roads through Camris.
The indolent young sister lifted no hand to help as the maid stretched and caught up the silk cord for tying: dusky rose, to match the dress, wound in twisted gilt threads for strong accent, and tasseled with a dropped spray of pearls. She laced its rich length through the end of the braid, then coiled the magnificent, shining rope into a headdress to crown Ellaine’s heart-shaped face. Elaborate grooming did not settle her nerves. Refined brows and doe eyes flickered in trepidation as a foot page tapped at the doorway.
‘His Lordship the Elect asks that the Lady Ellaine come down for the presentation.’
‘Stop frowning, you goose!’ teased the sister. ‘And leave off measuring yourself against Lady Talith. You don’t keep forward habits. Nor do you delight in ambushing old, scarred captains at arms in their bathtubs. You won’t gad about playing fire with politics, or get yourself abducted by a sorcerer.’
The maid patted down the last wisp of strayed hair. She garnished the piled glory of coiled braid with a gold-and-ruby pin, her earthbound steadiness in contrast to the sister’s girlish trills of excitement. ‘What will you do but have beautiful, strong babes for the realm? If you dare throw a tantrum, be sure I’ll run ahead of you, begging to go in your place!’
That won the small, bowed ghost of a smile, and a loosening of clammy fingers. Ellaine arose. The pearls on the gold-and-rose ribbon dangled jauntily down the determined line of her back. Primped to a crescendo of magnificent good looks, and finished in the exacting deportment expected of the daughter of a westland city mayor, she dredged up a playful wink for her sister that unveiled the thoughtful, inner fiber of her courage. ‘You shan’t go in my place. If our father wishes me to wed royalty, I’ll find the grace somewhere to make the best of the prosperity bestowed on our family.’
The younger sibling laughed, adoring as she watched the maid smooth and arrange the folds of the magnificent rose dress. ‘Well, I’ll just have no choice but to stay home and wilt from sheer awe.’ She levered herself out of her nest of upholstery, kissed her sister’s cheek, and whispered her most sincere wish for good luck and happiness.
‘Thanks. I’ll need everything.’ Ellaine sucked in a final, deep breath, then sailed out the door and descended the long, curving stair to the salon.
The man who awaited her presence was dressed in shining silk in royal colors, and cosseted in her father’s best chair. His lean hand curled on the stem of a glass of Falgaire crystal. As he smiled his appreciation for the quality of the vintage, he turned his gray head; and Ellaine paused, consternation masked behind manners. This was not the vigorous, fair-haired prince she had been led to expect.
Dry-skinned, sallow, and elderly, the rail-thin Seneschal of the Realm arose on stilt legs. He set the wine flute aside, while her father spoke her name and beckoned her forward. Avenor’s aged envoy accepted her offered hand, his grasp cold and dry as he recited a prepared speech of welcome and acceptance. ‘His Grace, the Lord Prince of the Light, sends his most sincere regrets. He has a war campaign to wind down in the wilds of Caithwood, and an inspection of the shipyard at Riverton overdue since the closing of summer.’ The royal official blinked pouched, hound’s eyes, apologetic and stiff, no doubt recalling the past princess’s lightning wit, and the abrasive fight she had raised each time conflict arose with the Shadow Master’s allies.
Soft civility before her predecessor’s razored style, the Lady Ellaine masked her personal disappointment behind the decorum of her upbringing. She did not interrupt, but listened in patience as the seneschal finished his delivery. ‘The safety of the realm must come before his Grace’s preference and pleasure, as my lady must understand, who will become his crowned consort in the royal seat at Avenor.’
Ellaine endured the seneschal’s bony, chapped clasp and dipped into a flawless curtsy. ‘His Grace is excused. Please extend him my heartfelt wishes for a swift close to the strife in south Tysan.’
‘He has sent the traditional gift in token of his regard.’ The seneschal snapped his fingers. The page boy posted by the door stepped forward, bearing the royal offering.
She accepted the gold-edged coffer with shy grace and opened the lid. The inside was lined with damascened silk, and a plush velvet cushion. Against the shadow-soft nap, the sudden dazzle of gemstones cast back sliced light like a cry. Ellaine murmured polite thanks for the gift, a diamond-and-sapphire pendant hung on a massive chain of roped pearls. Though the piece was an emphatic exhibition of wealth, a male statement of property sent by a prince to mark his personal claim, her smile to the page boy was genuine. ‘Would you help with the clasp?’
The boy bowed, obedient, the gold fastening easy work for his admiring hands. The scintillant, dark jewel and sharp fire of the diamond lay too hard, too weighty against the delicate rose-and-gilt gown. Yet the girl handled herself well under the yoke of the twisted pearl chain. ‘Tell the prince I am pleased.’
Her father stepped in, his thanks more effusive, while the mother whisked her daughter away like the cosseted asset she had become. Erdane’s ambition and welfare would rise on her ability to pleasure Avenor’s prince. The Seneschal of the Realm accepted the hospitality of the mayor’s mansion, the discomfort that lingered after duty was discharged smoothed over in smiles and diplomacy.
The lady handfasted to wed the Prince of the Light in the month after spring solstice was a sweet child, with skin creamy rich as a white, summer peach, and sloe eyes like melted chocolate. Yet for all her unspoiled beauty and innocence, she was no match for the sultry wit of her late predecessor.
Lysaer’s political choice was too evident: the wife selected to bear Tysan’s royal heir was a biddable broodmare, not a mate who could stand as an equal partner in his cause to destroy the Master of Shadow. The nuptials to come would not interfere with his formal promise. The Prince of the Light had sworn to cleanse Athera of the tyrannies perpetuated by the Fellowship’s compact and to eradicate the practice of sorcery. True to sovereign integrity, after Talith’s embarrassments, he had ensured that no spirited wife would swerve him from the pursuit of his chosen destiny.
Autumn 5653
Triangle
Ivel the blind splicer rubbed his nose with the back of a horny fist, eyes rolled like fogged marbles toward the impatient presence of the Riverton yard’s master shipwright. He spat, then resumed tying an endsplice into a hawser. With rankling sarcasm, he said, ‘Should we bathe? Clean our teeth?’ Rope plies whipped into herringbones under flying, competent fingers as Ivel bared his gapped teeth in a grin of challenging mockery. ‘Or should we just sweep up the shavings so his Grace’s velvets won’t soil? Personally, someone should shoulder the broom so we don’t pain our knees when we grovel.’
The gripe concerned the scheduled royal inspection. Granted Ivel’s natural penchant for mischief, the comment’s disastrous timing was aimed to reap a storm of agonized embarrassment.
Feet planted in the scrolled flakes of spruce that blew like shed leaves from the sawpits, the burly master shipwright he tormented was no man’s easy mark. Cattrick maintained his cast-iron calm as naturally as he drew breath. Clad in his best scarlet cloak against the winds that foreran the change of the season, he matched the splicer’s wicked thrust with his own stamp of spiteful courtesy. ‘With all due respect, I must leave your question to the voice of higher authority.’
Goading on Ivel’s insolent disregard for rank, the yard’s master added, ‘That’s presupposing his Grace cares to answer a commoner’s impertinence in the first place.’
Stonewalled behind a laborer’s grave deference, Cattrick bowed to the glittering royal person, just arrived with his guard and his retinue for his long-deferred tour of the shipyard.
Ivel slapped his knee, the report of his callused palm like a whipcrack. ‘Hah! I thought as much! Anybody who hasn’t got the healthy stink o’ tar is bound to wear jewels and airs. So that’s his exalted self, the Prince of the Light, standing stiff-backed and pompous beside you?’
Cattrick pretended a cough behind the muffling sleeve of his shirt.
Lysaer s’Ilessid was all frigid formality in cloud white velvet, sewn like coarse rain with diamonds and sprays of small seed pearls. The statesman’s panache he wore like steel armor let him meet Ivel’s derision without astonishment.
Yet the rowdy splicer interrupted again before even the royal guard could intervene. ‘Tell me, should I prostrate myself and press my face in the dirt? Or in the name of efficiency to your royal design, would you rather I finished this hawser?’
Silence ensued, more thunderous than the hollow boom of the caulkers’ mallets which impacted the scene with the racketing crescendo of industry.
The lantern-jawed guard to the prince’s left was first to reach for his sword hilt.
‘No,’ Lysaer snapped. His raised hand averted the tensioned response as his other two bodyguards rocked on their toes to charge forward. ‘Let the craftsman be. He may mock, but his rank tongue harms nothing.’ The prince advanced a step to distance his person from the zeal of his armed protection. Against weathered board sheds and the trampled mud of the yard, he seemed a figure displaced. Hazeless sunlight fired his gold hair. The stark purity of white velvets and diamonds amid the workaday grime of the ropewalk appeared as incongruous as a snowdrift arrived out of season.
To Ivel, the prince said, ‘Bide in the grace of my tolerance and continue to place your best work into splicing new ropes for my ships.’
Ivel spat. His ejected gobbet landed just shy of the elegantly shod royal toe. ‘My best work,’ he said carefully, ‘is saved for my leave time with wenches. And the joins in my lines will hold only as true as the quality of the hemp you import for their making. Supply’s been second-rate, and your pay could be better.’
Lysaer blinked. A solemn corner of his mouth twitched. Then he laughed and swung his piercing regard back to his master shipwright. ‘Am I given to understand my treasury’s funding for this yard is fallen short of sufficient?’
While the gulls wheeled, crying, to a shift in the breeze, and the harbor bell pealed to signal the turn of ebb tide, Cattrick played his narrow-eyed survey across the row of ribbed hulls, the smoking brick chimneys of the boiler sheds, and the raw lengths of lumber, interlaced into stacks for the air to season the planks. He said, noncommittal, ‘Your Grace, you’ve read the reports. We’ve had setbacks aplenty since the upsets involved with your rout of the Shadow Master last springtide.’
The offshore pursuit of that quarry to the Isles of Min Pierens had told worst, with no authorized crown officer left at Avenor to rectify the flow of supply and demand. The stalled requisitions, the delays, the missed deadlines which sprang from the bottleneck were inked in hard figures by the scribes. If Prince Lysaer had come properly primed for this meeting, he must already know the details: quality had suffered to meet the decreed royal schedule. The accounts contained each laborious detail: the lists of forged fittings bought lacking the ideal, tested temper; of the green spruce that had dried too checked to be steam-bent; of the varnish that bloomed and then flaked from the brightwork, inviting premature rot.
When Lysaer s’Ilessid declined the proffered opening to shoulder his due part, Cattrick picked words with a deference at odds with the powerful, bear’s bellow he used to command his skilled craftsmen. ‘It’s scarcely my place to fault the crown treasury, your Grace. The inspection will show you our shortfalls.’
Lysaer’s relaxed smile returned like lost warmth. As if the blind splicer had caused no sour note, he gestured his readiness to proceed.
For Cattrick, that day, the hard edge to the breeze forewarned of the keen chill of winter. He led the prince and his three guardsmen through the shipworks the same way he measured his planks: with direct and exacting attentiveness. The steam boxes puffed like somnolent dragons. The shadows cast from raw ribs and keelsons, and the golden lengths of spruce being shaped in the sawpits seemed glued into the abundant, rich scents of salt air, pine pitch, and hot tar.
Lysaer did not rush. Nor did he expect to be spoon-fed the facts. As though his jewels and spotless white velvet represented no difference of station, he engaged the laborers in conversation. He shook the men’s hands as though they were not coarsely clad, rinsed in running sweat turned sticky with shavings and filth. If his majesty stunned them, or his unearthly grace, he gave no credence to awe. Nor did he seek either fault or restitution for the stupefying losses set in train by the Shadow Master’s plotting.
The spontaneous contact touched off admiration and camaraderie. The laborers opened and laughed. Through their loosened ease, the Prince of the Light learned the workings of the yard in utmost, gritty detail. He found Cattrick’s steady competence was held in respect. At each site, he tested and observed and moved on, while the rapport that he engendered between disparate men gained focus and became a unified cord of tied force.
Few could escape the drawing pull of the Prince of the Light’s bright charisma. From the dusty boys who shoveled the shavings from the sawpits, to the ox goads who kept the creaking wheels of the ropewalks slowly turning, to the sailmakers in their swept loft, stitching yards of oak-dyed canvas, the craftsmen sharpened to purposeful unity. Their industry flowed with their source of inspiration. At one crook of Lysaer’s diamond-jeweled finger, each one appeared ready to throw down his tools and beg for a place in armed service. The adulation was euphoric, as if within the prince’s magnetic presence, plain sunlight shone brighter, and the toils of exertion came sweetened, enriched to scintillant meaning.
Cattrick watched the transformation. The lined, wary squint never left his expression, and his broad hands stayed jammed in his breeches. He volunteered little, but gave answers like ruled lines to those questions Lysaer posed directly. Afternoon wore away toward sundown. The shadows lost edges, elongated to the texture of torn felt, and blended without seam into twilight. The royal party climbed the outdoor stairway to the sanctum of Cattrick’s chartloft. There, huddled under the glimmer of cheap tallow dips, they reviewed the close-guarded leaves penned with the lines of ships’ plans.
The moment was inopportune for interruption, yet one came in the form of a riled yell from the royal man-at-arms posted on watch outside.
A voice pealed through commotion, demanding. ‘Damn you, I’m an ally! If you don’t want a fight, put up your fool sword. One grunt’s length of steel is scarcely enough to keep me from going inside.’
Something responded with an indignant clang.
‘Told you,’ said the intruder, disgusted. ‘Now use the brains that Ath gave a mule and don’t try to stab me in the back.’
Speedy, light footsteps ascended the stair. An imperious fist banged on the door, and the latch gave way and flew open.
Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother of the clanborn Duke of Alestron, arrived at the entry, slit-eyed and poised as a cat with a bristled tail. His gaze fastened instantly on Lysaer. ‘You know how far and long I’ve had to ride to gain your ear for this audience?’ Neither honorific nor apology was offered in his testy habit of old clanblood arrogance and quicksilver, unvarnished nerve.
He strode in. Leathers left sweat-damp and redolent of horse cracked to his brisk stride. Brown hair peeled up and spiked by chill wind threw sliding lines of shadow across his frowning agitation. ‘Your lady is dead.’
For the second time, Lysaer’s raised arm checked the defensive rush of his bodyguard. ‘That’s surely no news, though you were in King Eldir’s court, I understand, on the day I blessed and settled her ashes.’
Mearn bore in like a terrier. ‘If I was in Havish, that doesn’t change that you honored her shade four months after the hour Princess Talith passed the Wheel!’
Resigned, Lysaer straightened from his perusal of a chart. Unruffled by the hard length of his day, he confronted the s’Brydion style of ripping censure with calm like grounded bedrock. ‘Should you concern yourself?’
Mearn reached the edge of the trestle, stopped. He planted gauntleted fists on the edge. The studs bit into creaking wood as he leaned and bore down on his knuckles. ‘Your seneschal claims she committed suicide.’
His blue eyes serene, Lysaer replied, ‘I believe him.’
For one second, two, prince and clansman locked stares, the former all fired, untarnished elegance, and the latter rumpled and taut as stressed cord. Cattrick looked on with folded arms, while the tense royal guardsmen stood by with mailed hands welded to their sword grips.
Then Mearn spun about in abrupt, liquid grace. ‘You believe him.’ He paced, the short, blunt spurs on his boots flicking off small points of light. He expected no answer. When he reached the shuttered window, he faced about and braced his angular frame against the sill. ‘They say on the streets that you have pressed suit for the Mayor of Erdane’s eldest daughter.’
‘My offer for her hand in marriage has been accepted.’ Lysaer was not smiling. His jewels might have been frozen stars, so controlled was his breathing. ‘The official announcement will be made next week.’
Mearn pushed back his cuffs and latched his thumbs through his sword belt. He might not bow, had never acknowledged Lysaer’s claim to title. As the scabbard and sheath at his hip were not empty, no man present dared mistake his clanbred defiance of court etiquette. ‘Well then,’ Mearn said, ‘since you’re to marry so soon, you must understand the personal edge to my impatience. I’ve stood as my brother’s ambassador for seven years. You’ll agree, it’s time I returned home to Alestron and settled myself with a wife.’
Before Lysaer could speak, he jerked up his chin. ‘No leave is asked. I’m not one of your subjects.’
Lysaer smiled in carved, regal tolerance. ‘No need to stand upon thorny clan pride. I never made such a claim. Please give your brother the duke my regards and the blessing of the Alliance.’
The words held dismissal. A polite man would leave. Mearn remained planted like immovable oak, his eyes pale ice in the gloom.
Lysaer chose diplomacy and ignored him, bent back to review the outspread leaves of scale drawings. He asked questions of Cattrick, who resumed answering with unruffled brevity. Minutes flowed into another hour. The shutters fretted in the play of the sea breeze, and the half-burned-down tallow dips gyrated to the wayward tug of the drafts. Outside, the yard workers indulged their light spirits, keyed to fast talk and euphoria. They seemed reluctant to leave. Their royal visitor was held by some to be god sent, and the rumors of miracles and divine favor gained fresh force with each passing month. Through Cattrick’s clipped consonants, the foreman’s exasperated remonstrance mingled with the metallic clangor of tools being put away. ‘Well, don’t just gawp with yer jaws hanging open. Damn fools. Honest citizens might think this was a boys’ brothel, the way you lot hang about, staring at a closed doorway.’
‘You wishing?’ somebody whooped, half-choking with laughter, and the clutter of voices diminished as the yard at last settled to the night watch’s step and the wash of the first riptide breakers.
The parchment drawing of a brig’s revised lines remained spread on the table as Lysaer finally straightened to end his detailed inspection. Others, loosely rolled, not yet tied with string, lay in a jumbled heap to one side. Mearn still held his place, a taut form melted into close-woven shadow. His watching eyes caught the unsteady light like pinned sparks as the royal men-at-arms regrouped for their charge’s departure.
White velvet and diamonds lent Prince Lysaer a wintery majesty as he voiced his commendation for Cattrick’s watertight management. ‘The neglect brought on by my absence will be put right the moment my handfasting to Erdane’s daughter can replenish the funds in the treasury. Rest assured, her dowry will bring in enough gold to amend the quality of your raw materials. You’ll have whatever sum you name then. Make an itemized list and send it under seal to my seneschal.’ He paused, his smile bestowed like new morning. ‘Until then, be diligent. After the Shadow Master’s blatant acts of piracy, the trade guilds must be given a show to mend their shaken faith. I will ask that my newly launched fleet be ready to sail into Avenor with flags flying to commemorate my nuptials.’
‘Your Grace,’ Cattrick acknowledged, his bow neat and perfunctory. ‘You’ll have a display worth your confidence.’
He accompanied the prince as far as the doorway, saw him out into rising wind and a night fallen dense as stuck tar.
Cattrick closed the door and reset the bar. For a large man, he moved carefully. The loft’s gapped, wooden floor creaked to his tread as he crossed back to the table and began one by one to tidy and roll up the ships’ plans. No fool, he judged as Lysaer had, that Mearn s’Brydion enjoyed any chance to pick fights. He chose not to comment. The clan hothead deserved to be ignored for his scathing lack of manners, his interruption, and his irritating effrontery.
Mearn proved unkindly disposed to the silence. He shifted foot to foot through the distant bark of laughter from the garrison sentry who exchanged parting banter and secured the yard gates. Through the clattering hooves of the royal departure, he pushed off from the sill and completed a stalking cat’s stride. A stiletto appeared from nowhere. Steel scribed a hot flash as he threw the weapon across the tentative halo of flameglow.
The blade struck and sang quivering, impaled through the scroll which Cattrick had just laid aside.
‘I know ships,’ Mearn opened through the diminishing whine as stressed metal subsided into stillness.
Cattrick’s lips peeled back in the smile that made even Arithon s’Ffalenn take cold stock. ‘That’s a claim that demands a forfeit, in this place.’
Mearn laughed. His teeth were crisply white as a ferret’s. ‘If you are speaking to Lysaer’s lackey, I believe you. Don’t lie. I have a second knife.’
Cattrick straightened, linked his broad hands, and stretched until the joints in his shoulders cracked. ‘All right. The knife’s a provocation. Remember that. And I won’t need to lie. If I am speaking to Lysaer’s lackey, he wouldn’t leave the yard gates with his life.’
Mearn’s eyes lit, cold as balefire with challenge. ‘Imagine my joy. I do think perhaps I might like what I hear.’
‘Then why not tell me, if you know your ships?’ Cattrick yanked out the knife, flicked his wrist, and let the pierced parchment unroll with a scraping hiss until it lay flat on the trestle.
‘Well enough. That’s fair.’ Mearn advanced and chose a stance on the opposite side of the board. ‘The irony shouldn’t escape you, I made certain. Now we both have knives.’
Cattrick unbent to a rough, booming laugh, then yanked open the drawstrings of his sleeve cuffs and shoved them back to clear his wrists. ‘You clansmen have arrogance bred into the bone.’ The knife in his hand described fearless threat. ‘Let us also see if your landlubber minds can interpret what I know to make ships cleave a course through blue water.’
Mearn returned his most evil grin and snapped a finger into the parchment. ‘This brig might have a grace to her lines fit to melt a man’s heart at her launching. But the love affair ends at her shakedown. She’ll be wayward as a cow under canvas. I’d bank on a nasty lee helm at the stiffening hint of a squall.’ He raised his head, treated Lysaer’s master shipwright to the frost of an unforgiving glare. ‘In a gale, I’d bet silver she’ll founder.’
Outside, the harbor bell tolled to mark the full change of the tide. A gust buffeted through gapped boards in the shutters and fluttered the flames in the sconces. Cattrick flipped the knife and, with his own stamp of insolence, used its murderous edge to scrape tar from the rims of his fingernails. His eyes, half-hooded in apparent inattention, shared the same vicious glints as the steel. ‘Go on,’ he urged the s’Brydion ambassador. ‘You passed the unfinished frames on their bedlogs. What else did you see outside?’
‘Mayhem.’ Mearn slapped the handle of his knife against his gloved palm, tap, tap, tap, like the winding tension on a ratchet. ‘The fleet Prince Lysaer has commissioned from you will be lucky to withstand the first coast-hopping run to Avenor.’
‘Opinion,’ Cattrick fired back. He sidestepped and sat on the chartloft’s crude stool. ‘If I’m talking to Lysaer’s sworn ally, what then?’
‘You have a bigger problem on your hands than ships that won’t answer their helmsman.’ Slap! went the knife handle, then ceased with an emphasis as startling. Mearn qualified into the teeth of raw tension, ‘The craftsmen in your yard are scarcely unseasoned. Why haven’t they noticed? And if they have, shouldn’t you now beware of their temper? Prince Lysaer can move plain stone to adore him. You know they worship him as an avatar in Avenor.’
