Roland Green - Knights of the Crown

“I believe I can now bless this wedding,” Tarothin said. “Eskaia, I will have to regret the loss of a good cleric, as you might have been. But I suppose you will be even more adept as a pirate’s woman-”

“Sea barbarian’s lady,” the couple said, in unison.

“Sea barbarian’s lady,” Tarothin corrected himself, “than you would have been as a cleric. Although whether your father’s blessing will be on this wedding, I am less sure.”

“He will surely bless it if we have a second ceremony in Istar or some other place where he can attend it,” Eskaia said. “And he will bless it several times over when Jemar’s ships protect those of House Encuintras from pirates and minotaur raiders.”

“And when will that start?” Jemar asked, eyebrows rising as he fought to keep more laughter inside.

“As soon as the marriage is consummated,” Eskaia said primly, “and thereafter as long as we both shall live.”

“I had not thought to receive your dowry,” Jemar said. “But neither had I thought to pay bride-price.”

“You did not think about many things,” Eskaia said, “but I understand that is common when a man is hot for a woman.”

Jemar kissed her lightly on the forehead, then stroked both her cheeks with the tips of his fingers. “Was it that plain?”

“Even a green maiden like myself could tell, my love,” she said softly.

Then they both laughed, because Tarothin was turning red. The laughter died as they looked beyond him toward the prow, where the slim figure of Haimya stood, the golden cap of her hair ruffled in the wind.

An even slimmer, darker figure was making its way toward her. Jemar and Eskaia looked at each other again, then both stepped to Tarothin, spun him around, and marched him off toward the cabin amidships.

Pirvan slipped up beside Haimya and looked out past the bow wave curling over the ram, to the endless sea horizon beyond. Perhaps the ocean was not so bad, in such a benign mood. But the memory of its other moods would be with him every time he smelled saltwater.

“That did not look like a farewell,” Haimya said, in a distant voice.

Pirvan wondered briefly what she meant, then looked back, as Jemar and Eskaia wrapped themselves around one another.

“It looks even less like one now.”

“So I expected. So I hoped.”

“What will you do now?” Pirvan asked.

Haimya shrugged. “I could doubtless enlist under Jemar. To be a sea barbarian warrior in his service is better than many other fates that might be mine. He might even consider it part of his gift to Eskaia, to find me a dowry and a husband.”

Several questions came to Pirvan’s mind; he kept them all off his lips.

“I fear I cannot accept such a gift,” Haimya said. “I have won most of what I have fairly. It is no great matter to do that again. Are you returning to Istar?”

“Perhaps, but not for long if I do. I have said I might be giving up night work. Also, I may have no choice. I am now known to many in Istar, who cannot afford to tolerate even the most moderate of thieves.”

“I was asking, because Gerik has kin. A sister, at least, wed to a merchant’s heir, and I believe they have children.”

“House Encuintras can do more for them than I,” Pirvan reminded her.

“If they so wish. Eskaia would make sure that they wished it, if she were returning to Istar. But the city may never see her again. Nor was any of House Encuintras there when Gerik died.”

Pirvan understood where this was leading. Haimya was afraid to face Gerik’s kin, when she saw herself with his blood on her hands. It was the first time he had seen her run away from a battle-and, in her position, he would have done the same.

“What I can do shall be done,” he said. He put his hand over hers. “I also fear that the time has come for us to stand apart.”

She lifted a hand and put it over his. When she turned to him, her face was a mask-except for the eyes.

“Tes, for now it is best if you stand far away. But not so far, my friend, that I cannot find you if I wish to see you again.”

Rumor ran that there was mailing and gnashing of teeth in high places in House Encuintras when Eskaia’s “mad fling” (as one woman was said to have called it) became open knowledge.

Rumor also ran that Eskaia’s father watched the wailers and gnashers run about, rather like a cat watching mice at play, then brought his paw down firmly on “this pestilential nonsense” (as it was said he called it). He had been waiting for an excuse to remove certain persons, as they had been waiting for an excuse to remove him. Now their conduct let him strike first.

However much truth there was to these tales, it was certainly some while before the matter of Eskaia’s dowry and rewards for the other questers could be settled. When it was, the terms were more than generous.

An amount equivalent to Eskaia’s dowry was paid out, but not as a single sum into Jemar’s hands. He received some, Eskaia received more (with strong legal barriers to Jemar’s ever taking it), a new ship was built to replace Golden Cup and Kurulus appointed its captain, and much generosity was recorded in the chronicles of the city, or at least in those of House Encuintras.

Pirvan received a generous sum, more money than he would likely have received from the factor over the sale of all the rubies. He gave part of it to Gerik’s sister, using his thief’s skills to make sure her husband did not know of it, for he was too respectable to take such “tainted silver.”

Then he left Istar, even before Jemar and his bride sailed up to the city’s piers and had a grand second wedding with a longer guest list than any wedding in the city that year. He regretted missing the occasion, but he had received warnings that his becoming well known would indeed mean exile from Istar.

Five years, at least, he was warned, and at the end of that time perhaps a full pardon. Otherwise, he might end in the arena or even on the scaffold, and at best could buy his freedom only by revealing the secrets of the thieves.

Pirvan was on the road from Istar that night, to guard against this being treachery intended to provoke him into some crime. He resolved also to yield without a fight if he could not outrun pursuit, rather than besmirch the quest’s reputation down the years.

There had to be some in Istar who would count his and Haimya’s eliminating Synsaga’s pirates-in Istar and in every other trading city-in his favor. But they seemed to be outnumbered by those who could see no farther than ending the career of one thief and perhaps learning the secrets of his brothers and sisters in night work.

House Encuintras was powerful, but it could not do everything. So Pirvan did the one most necessary thing remaining, which was to leave Istar for the safety that lay only a few days’ ride from the city.

He left so swiftly that he could not learn what had become of Haimya, and he regretted missing the wedding mostly for missing the chance to do that. It did not ease his spirits that autumn, when Grimsoar One-Eye found his way to the village where Pirvan was living and said that Haimya had not been at the wedding.

“Or at least if she was, she was so well disguised that even a man who’d seen all of her-”

“My hospitality is not without limits, Brother Grimsoar.”

“Oh, sorry. But you’ve let a good one get away, I say that-”

“I say that you ought to keep your tongue off Haimya, if you cannot talk sense about her.”

After that it was a while before a sullen Grimsoar would talk, but good wine and a better stew at the local inn brought him into a better humor. As he watched the grooms finishing work on the horse that would take him back to Istar and his ship, he clapped Pirvan on the back.