Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

I picked my helmet off the deck, dropped it on, and focused my optics on the other vessel.

A couple of crewmen scurried over the black ship’s deck, and the ship’s bow rose and fell as it cut the sea. “It looks like nothing—”

“Too late! Dumb bastards.”

Seaward of the black ship, a faint wake curled a vee across the waves. I zoomed on it.

At the vee’s apex, a fistful of dirty-white snakes broke the surface, fifty yards from the black ship, and closing on it.

White smoke puffed at the ship’s bow, then I heard a rifle’s faint crack.

The snakes rose further out of the water, and resolved into two dozen suckered, flailing fire hoses, in front of an eye as big and yellow as a stop sign.

Wilgan said, “Kraken.”

The hoses wrapped the ship’s hull, and as the ship heeled, the monster’s body came up out of the water. It looked like a giant squid, but with more arms. The beast was stuffed into the end of a tapered shell fifty feet long, like writhing ice cream in a cone.

The others clambered up from below at the sounds of Wilgan’s horn, and the shot.

Howard said, “Holy moly!”

The black ship’s masts snapped like straw. A single human scream echoed across the water, then the monster slid backward and pulled the black ship under like a tarantula dragging a beetle into a burrow.

Jude gripped the rail, eyes wide. “What was that?”

Howard whistled. “That’s the biggest nautiloid I’ve ever heard of!” He turned to Wilgan. “Are these top predators numerous?”

“Top predator?” Wilgan snorted. “That pissant?” He rapped on the tusk horn he had blown, which was as big around as my thigh. “This warning horn’s made from a rhind tooth.”

Wilgan held up his biscuit between thumb and forefinger, and pointed at it with his other index finger. “Kraken.” He opened his mouth, then pointed at his tonsils. “Rhind.”

Wilgan popped the biscuit into his mouth, bit down, swallowed, then grinned. “Any questions?”

Howard said, “Oh.”

I stared at the empty sea that rolled where the smuggling ship had been, as half-chewed biscuit caught in my throat. I gulped, then asked Wilgan, “Could we sail closer to shore?”

Wilgan returned to the wheel, laughing and slapping his thigh. “Top preddy-tours!” He shook his head. “Landlubbers!”

I walked to the bow, where Bassin stood.

I said, “Is a rhind the scariest thing on this planet?”

Bassin peered ahead, where the sun glinted off something atop a distant headland. I zoomed on the glint, which was a turreted complex of white stone that commanded a coastal bluff.

Bassin pointed at the bluff. “Her Majesty will receive us at noon. You may decide for yourself.”

THIRTY-SIX

THE BEAST THAT MENACED Howard, Jude and me for our last few hours at sea was neither kraken, rhind, nor Queen.

Ord was not about to allow any troops with which he was associated to go before royalty looking unsoldierly. We polished armor, shaved, cleaned weapons, re-polished, re-shaved, re-cleaned, washed everything that moved and scrubbed everything that didn’t. Even Jeeb, who Bassin asked us to bring along so the Queen wouldn’t think he was nuts, got his radar-absorbent fuzz groomed, and Jude polished Jeeb’s optics.

Bassin changed into a dress uniform that included a broad-brimmed suede hat with one side turned up, and plumes that looked like Howler feathers. He even traded his engineer’s axe for a gold one so dainty it couldn’t have cut prime rib.

The Captain of the Queen’s Household Guard met us at a jetty railed with rhind teeth.

I whispered to Bassin, “Did the Queen pull those?”

The Captain commanded two dozen Householders, who wore polished armor, with helmets crested with purple feathers, and who carried Marini rifles with gold bayonets fixed.

The Captain saluted Bassin, who returned it. “The Queen will receive you in the Morning Room.”

The Morning Room of her Majesty’s Winter Palace stood far enough above the sea that a visitor climbed two hundred twelve stairs to reach it, with breath-catching intervals along corridors hung with tapestries.

Along the way, we passed fifty more eyes-front Householders, each guarding a corridor junction or mammoth carved door, each armed with a gold-bayoneted rifle. Not one blinked at Jeeb, who skittered ahead of us, six legs crackling over the marble floors.

We also passed one unsmiling woman. She wore a high-necked, floor-length dress as smooth as her skin, and as black as her skin was white. Scarlet feathers winged each sleeve, and crystalline jewels ruffed her collar and wrists. The dress fitted her so closely that she couldn’t have hidden a coin under it, and the material seemed to be leather as thin and supple as silk. Her dark hair swept up, gathered by combs that matched the sleeve feathers, and she carried her chin high and serene.

I didn’t know whether she was a Countess or a chambermaid, but I bet on chambermaid, because she dropped her eyes as she passed Bassin.

When she saw Jeeb, her sleepy eyes bulged, but she said nothing. Jude turned to watch her slink away, and tripped over Jeeb. I nearly stumbled into a Household Guard myself.

We made one stop before we got to the Morning Room. Howard, Ord, and Jude were taken off through double doors into a two-story paneled room Bassin said was the Queen’s Library. Then Bassin took me and Jeeb and the holo generator to meet the Queen.

The Winter Palace’s Morning Room turned out to be an awninged roof terrace long and wide enough to land a twelve-passenger bouncer, surrounded by rhind-tooth ivory rails. These teeth were carved with battle scenes and inlaid with gold.

Like every proper castle since Beowulf’s day, the Winter Palace commanded all approaches to it. Beyond the terrace rails, and beyond battlements along which Householders marched, spun, and countermarched, I saw all the way across the Sea of Hunters.

On the horizon, like a chalk line, rose the low coast of Bren’s other continent. That was a distance of twenty-two miles, according to Jeeb. The water was an epeiric sea, according to Howard. A salt water puddle that would shrink to nothing over the next few mere million years, barely worthy of the name “sea.” According to me, with its kraken and rhind, the Sea of Hunters was one more bad neighborhood on a planet lousy with them.

To the north and west stretched green farmland, cut into facets by an irrigation-canal network that watered Marin’s southern breadbasket. To the south, beyond the canals, the land remained the wind-scoured red desert of Tassin.

The Captain of Householders announced us, then backed off the terrace.

The only object on the shaded terrace was one bentwood chair.

Alongside it, her back to us as she gazed across the Sea of Hunters, stood the Deliverer of the Stones, Protector of the Clans of Marin, and Sovereign of the Near Seas of Bren.

The Queen pivoted with her hands on a jeweled cane and faced us. She stood five foot three, and looked no heavier than two pounds more than a hundred. She also looked no younger than two decades less than a hundred. Her hair was white, her skin pale and creased, but her eyes shone as sharp as gray diamonds. Her dress was cut like the one on the younger woman, but silver, with ermine-white feathers, and brighter jewels.

When she saw Bassin, her eyes widened, and she sucked in a breath.

Then the Queen blinked and extended her hand. Bassin stepped to her, knelt, and kissed it. “Greetings to her Majesty on her seventy-second birthday.”

The Queen waved him to stand. “Bassin, never remember a woman’s birthday unless you forget her age.” She appraised Jeeb, with his faceted optics that looked like onyx eyes, and she arched her eyebrows. “Or you bring her jewels.”