Roland Green - Knights of the Crown

“Lady Eskaia, I am grateful for your hospitality and your presence,” Pirvan said. “As I made my promise in the hearing of you both, it will be kept. Remember, though, what I asked of you.”

Eskaia touched her hair and grimaced as she realized the shambles she’d made of it. Then her jaw set. It was a well-shaped jaw, in which were set two rows of even white teeth. Had she been born a poor man’s daughter, she would still have been a much-sought marriage prize.

“Very well. But I must ask one further promise-indeed, an oath by all you hold most in honor. That you will never speak of what I am about to tell you, unless Haimya, I, or my father gives you leave.”

Josclyn Encuintras being suddenly brought into the matter briefly unsettled Pirvan. He sensed that what he was about to hear would unsettle him even more. But a promise was a promise; an honest thief could not live in a world where promises were not kept.

Pirvan swore himself to silence, invoking Gilean and Shinare, then looked at Eskaia. “My silver, your service.”

Haimya looked shocked. Eskaia stuck out her tongue at him. Then she sobered.

“It is a matter of what the pirates of Crater Gulf may be doing. Or, rather, what they may be having done for them …”

By the time Eskaia had finished (with a trifle of prompting from Haimya), Pirvan understood why her father was taking a hand in this matter. What might be happening in Crater Gulf could wreak havoc on Istar’s trade and even on the city itself. Josclyn was a leader of the merchants in their rivalry with the priests for supreme power in Istar.

Discovering and ending a menace to the city could bring more than honor or gold to House Encuintras. It could bring an offer of marriage to a high noble or even a royal heir for Eskaia.

Lucky man, Pirvan thought, then turned wits and tongue to more practical matters. Clearly father and daughter were speaking more openly to one another than the rumors said. Just as clearly, this was to his advantage. It endangered no secrets of the thieves, and put more of the resources of House Encuintras behind the voyage.

“I can see why you wish my company on this adventure,” Pirvan said. “I can go where neither of you can. But I did not promise to face the dangers that come with being-a spy, not to make hard an easy matter. A spy, among folk who are even harsher than most in dealing with such.”

“You will be paid, of course,” Eskaia said. “At least the wages of a chief guard, and perhaps more.”

“As well,” Pirvan said. “I returned the jewels gladly, but what they would have bought me must be paid somehow.”

“Why not more?” Haimya asked. “The price of one of the jewels-the full price, not what the night merchants would have given you-upon your return.”

Pirvan looked at the two women with increased respect. There was no foolishness in Haimya, and under the gown and finely done hair, hardly more in Eskaia. But then, a mercenary soldier and a merchant princess should hardly feel soiled by talking of money.

“Am I allowed to pick the jewel?”

“How can you be sure we will offer you the ones you took?” Eskaia replied.

“I will ask to see all of them. Also, one hundred towers now, to be subtracted from my payment.”

“Only that?” Haimya said.

Pirvan nodded. “I thought you might not care to be too generous to the thieves. I have neither wife nor children nor any living kin or sworn friends I know of, so that is all I will ask beforehand. Oh, that and my equipment.”

“The bag you were going to pull up into the cellar?” Haimya asked. Her smile was almost a grin.

“You have it?”

“Yes, although not without some strong words from-a comrade, I assume-lying below to cover your retreat.”

“It is well to know that he is unharmed. Had you shed his blood …” The grimness of his face took the smile off Haimya’s.

He let them change the subject after that. He did not know when they would be sailing, but if it was not tomorrow, he had a plan.

They were taking him north to help guard their backs. Why should he not enlist someone for this curious voyage, to do the same for him?

Golden Cup loomed against the cloud-hazed sky above the skiff like a castle curiously set afloat. From her massive bulk, Pirvan thought she might better deserve the name Golden Kettle.

The breeze had risen since they had left the quay. The creaking of the timbers and the rigging almost drowned out the splash of the oars as they carried the skiff the last few yards to the gangway.

Pirvan slung his new seabag over his shoulder and looked forward, counting the other crates and bags among the feet of the rowers. He didn’t think they had orders to drop his gear overboard, but he intended to guard against both that and accidents as well.

The ship loomed higher in a darkness that seemed to have grown deeper. They were well out in the harbor now, where the largest ships anchored, waiting for a fair wind outbound or, if inbound, for space at the deep-water quays their draft required. The ship had no neighbors, and none of them were lit up except for the common bow, stern, and gangway lanterns.

The ship seemed all lumps and lines, and apart from its great size Pirvan could not have said much about it. He had never lived by the waterfront, where one could not take a five-minute stroll without seeing a dozen different ships. Lodgings there were apt to be cramped and noisy, and sailors and harborfolk in general not overly fond of men of his profession.

(It did not matter that they were hardly adverse to practicing it themselves, nor that Pirvan would never have stooped to robbing a working sailor. Neither would have saved him, if his luck was out, from a quick voyage to the bottom of the harbor with old shackles bound to his feet.)

“Ahoy, the boat!” split the night as someone on the gangway spotted them.

“Passenger for Golden Cup! ” one of the rowers shouted.

“Come alongside and be recognized.”

Pirvan hoped that the ship was as well kept as it was big. Poor shipkeeping, worse seamanship or navigation, drunkenness, fire-all could prematurely end this voyage (which Pirvan rather hoped would succeed) as well as Pirvan’s life (which he intended to preserve for longer than House Encuintras had any use for it!)

The gangway rose as high as a two-story house, and the railing was higher than a man, solid timber, and loop-holed for archers. As Pirvan climbed the last steps, a splash and a curse rose from below.

He looked down. Someone had opened a port and emptied a bucket into the harbor, without looking out first. Some of the bucket’s contents had caught the boat and the second rower, who was handing cargo to the first rower and a sailor on the bottom of the gangway.

A large man was suddenly before Pirvan, but ignoring him. He leaned over the side.

“Hush your noise there, or you’ll have a bath afore you’re back to shore!”

The rower hushed, but the cargo came aboard remarkably quickly afterward. The man kept looking upward, as if wondering what might fall on him next.

The big man now turned to Pirvan.

“You’re Pirvan, with the Encuintras party?”

“The same.” Pirvan pulled a medallion out of his purse and showed it to the man. A lantern hanging from either side of the gangway gave just enough light to examine it.

“Well and good,” the man said with a grunt. “You’re being the last. Follow this boy to your cabin, and stow your baggage right quick. We’ll be upanchoring as soon as the last shore boat brings the drinkers.”

A boy of twelve or so had apparently sprouted from the deck at the big man’s wave. He looked Pirvan up and down with an unnerving maturity.