Marie Brennan: Voyage of the Basilisk

Such a rescue, however, would have arrived ill-informed. And so I soon found myself standing in front of the admiral, still clad in male garments, but these at least dry and in one piece.

Most of Admiral Longstead’s attention was on Lieutenant Handeson, the only member of our little crew who seemed at all reliable. I was after all a woman, and a mildly notorious one at that—yes, he recognized my name—and Suhail was Akhian. But the princess had sent me because I knew about the caeligers, and given that he had just seen a second one fly away with all speed, he needed an explanation. Moreover, I now suspected that Miriam’s words just before the escape had not been mere idle musing. She wanted to be certain I understood her views.

When we had finished telling him our tale, I added, “You may wish to make haste, sir. Not that you would tarry, of course—but I suspect the Yelangese may be making their way to Keonga as we speak.”

He frowned at me. “They were headed for Kapa Hoa, the last we heard.”

“Indeed. But if the caeliger we… commandeered—” Handeson had used that word; it had a better ring than stole . “If it originated with that group of ships, they will know where it had been sent. They will also know, by our decision to flee from them, that there was no longer a Yelangese crew aboard; the fact that we fled toward you, however accidental it was in truth, will suggest that the caeliger was in Scirling hands. They may think the princess was with us. But regardless, they will want to investigate Keonga, and retrieve their men if they can.”

Longstead mulled this over, then shook his head. “You may be right, Mrs. Camherst. It hardly matters, though. We will want to reach Keonga before those island devils move Her Highness elsewhere. I do not fancy starting our hunt anew. The Broken Sea is far too large of a haystack for that.”

His choice of term for the Keongans made me apprehensive. “Sir—I do beg your pardon. But before I left, Her Highness spoke quite a bit about her feelings toward the islanders. She acknowledged that those directly involved in her capture and imprisonment must be punished, but did not want to see retribution visited on all their people. She is quite sympathetic to their cause, even if she deplores their most recent method of fighting for it.”

“I don’t give a damn about their cause, Mrs. Camherst,” the admiral snapped. “I will do whatever it takes to bring Her Highness back to safety.”

“Your pardon, sir, but I am not speaking on my own behalf in saying this—though for my own part, I will add that I have found the Keongans generally to be friendly hosts, and certainly I have more cause to consider them my friends than I do the Yelangese. But I am conveying the princess’ wishes. She would be very displeased if you initiated hostilities with the Keongans.”

Admiral Longstead’s neck reddened. “This is my ship, madam—”

“I do not dispute that. But I believe Her Highness was appointed the senior envoy of this embassy, was she not? Was the secret detour to Raengaui excluded from her brief, or included?”

When the admiral did not answer right away, Handeson murmured, “It was included, ma’am.”

“There you have it,” I said. “If you are attacked, then by all means defend yourselves—though I should hope you would, out of common decency, attempt to limit the carnage to a minimum and move toward peace at the first opportunity. But to strike against the Keongans, without first attempting diplomacy, would be in direct contravention of the wishes of your senior envoy.”

This account of my speech makes me sound quite levelheaded, but the truth is that however moderate my choice of words, my temper was hanging by a rather thin thread. I had sympathy for the admiral’s frustration; he had misplaced his most valuable charge for an extended period of time, and wanted to expunge that failure, along with everyone who knew of it. But I had family and friends on those islands, and I counted some of the local inhabitants among the latter. Nor did I want to fail at the task I believed Miriam had set me.

“We sail for Keonga,” the admiral snarled. “What happens when we get there… we shall see.”

The winds were not fair for Keonga; they seemed to fight us, as if defending the islands. Or so I was told: I was awake for very little of it, exhaustion having vanquished me at last. The admiral was gentleman enough to cede his cabin to me for the time being, and there I collapsed, regaining my strength while I could.

I woke long enough to eat supper and to be told that we would not reach Keonga until the following morning. We were not that far, but as I have mentioned before, a number of reefs surrounded the archipelago, adorning the tops of islands either unborn or long deceased. However impatient Longstead was, he would not risk his ships by charging blindly ahead when it was too dark to see the warning surf.

Suhail also spoke to me during this time. “What happened to our find from Rahuahane?” he asked. His tone was casual, as if speaking of nothing terribly important, but he had chosen a moment when no sailors were near, and he avoided naming the thing directly.

“It is here,” I said. “The lieutenant who helped me stow it did not see why I place such importance on a superstitious trinket—a mere carving of an egg—but, well, he is not a naturalist. I could hardly expect him to understand.”

“Indeed,” Suhail said. He did not grin, but his eyes were merry at my explanation. So long as no one broke the egg, the nonsense I had spun would stand.

I slept again after that and woke a while before dawn. On deck, I discovered our little fleet of three was proceeding cautiously, men standing at the rails with log-lines to constantly monitor the depth. We had entered the treacherous waters girding the Keongan Islands; all about us were patches of troubled surf, the easy swell of the waves sent into turmoil by the changing terrain below. I found myself holding my breath, and made myself exhale.

One of the ways sailors find islands—particularly if they do not have the benefit of modern navigational equipment—is by looking to the sky. Clouds often form above land, and these can be seen on the horizon long before the land itself is near enough to make out. So it was with our approach to Keonga… but as we drew near, it seemed to me there was something peculiar about the clouds I saw. Over the rush of the waves, I could hear an odd sound, almost like a drumbeat.

From behind me Suhail murmured, “Smoke.”

I gripped the railing until my knuckles ached. He was right: smoke was casting a pall over the island. It might have been ash from a volcanic eruption; a part of me almost hoped it was. But I heard one of the lieutenants bellow, “Cannon fire!” and knew that it was not.

The Yelangese had indeed made sail for Keonga, and they had arrived before us.

They must have rendezvoused with allies along the way. Seven of their ships were arrayed off the coast; an eighth had run aground on a reef and was now burning. Smoke also rose from Rahuahane—a signal fire, lit on the beach by the stranded men of the caeliger when they saw their countrymen approaching. But the Keongans had been keeping watch as well, and by the time the Yelangese ships drew near, they were ready.

Princess Miriam was not the only thing they had been hiding from us. Aekinitos had said, mostly in jest, that there might be an entire war fleet on the far side of Lahana. He was wrong only in his choice of location. They had been arrayed throughout the archipelago, a great mustering of Puian canoes from many parts of the Broken Sea, in preparation for the possibility—the likelihood—that their attempts to trade Her Highness for Waikango would not succeed before the Yelangese found her. They had paddled out as the Yelangese approached, forming a defensive line a little distance from shore, and there they had waited.