Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

Captain Hershaw offered a hand to Captain Blackford, still lying on the barge’s deck. They were both in shock, mute in disbelief.

‘Why?’ Blackford finally managed.

Hershaw gestured towards the southern wharf. Three ships remained intact, tied to a deepwater pier and facing north, as if they knew somehow that they would survive the morning. These were frigates, giants, capable of carrying massive cargoes to anywhere in Eldarn.

Hershaw said, ‘I don’t think she wants to be followed.’

‘So we’re going home in those?’

‘Not just us.’

Blackford tried for a moment to figure out who might be joining them when he heard a change in the low humming coming from Major Tavon’s quarters. It was slight but unmistakable as the pitch ratcheted up a tone or two, resonating with an extra pinch of mystical intensity.

He looked at Hershaw. ‘Rutters! She’s not yet done!’

As if hearing him, the harbour itself rose up. Swelling first in the middle, a hummock of smooth water bubbling up from below, it grew into a rounded hill, higher than the tallest buildings along the waterfront. Burning ships tumbled off its slopes and were extinguished in the waves. Bits of jetsam and floating debris slipped down its sides and scuttled across the surface. Still the hill grew until it was a tremendous liquid dome, dwarfing the waterfront like an alpine range.

‘Great rutting whores,’ Blackford said, ‘she’s going to destroy the city!’

‘Let’s go,’ Hershaw said, drawing his sword.

‘She’ll kill us both,’ Blackford argued, ‘we can’t-’

‘We have to.’

Trembling, Blackford followed, hoping he would get the chance to run Tavon through, especially if she was distracted, even for an instant, by the stone table. Or by killing Hershaw.

But before they had reached her, she struck, and the blast ripped the door from its leather hinges and sent much of it ripping through Captain Hershaw’s body in jagged splinters. He was dead before he stopped tumbling, somewhere amidships.

‘Blackford!’ Tavon screamed.

He approached warily. His face and arms were bleeding, and he feared he would spend the next aven picking splinters out of his skin, but he was still here, still alive. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said politely.

‘I want you to watch this, Blackford.’ Tavon was elbow-deep in what looked like a waist-high circular pool. Blackford knew better, though. It was the stone table, transformed somehow by magic into a fluid, unending cauldron of energy and power. He watched the colours change, flickering from hue to hue as the major’s wiry arms pulled and pressed spells and charms about inside. There was an animal, something that looked like a tadpole, and then a snake, and a hideous-looking fellow with a grim countenance, if that was possible. There was a creature Blackford guessed was an almor and then a blurry and indistinct image of a man, a South Coaster hiding in a stone temple with a rainbow-coloured serpent coiled at his feet.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he whispered. ‘Please, Major, enough.’

‘Oh, shut up, Blackford, your breath stinks. It’d stop my watch if I hadn’t given it to that Ronan slut.’ The pool changed again; this time, Blackford could see the outline of the Orindale waterfront. The northern and southern wharfs were on either side of the inlet. He saw the Medera and the stone bridge arching above it, connecting everything in the Falkan capital. The bridge looked different, though: cleaner, whiter, as if it had been carved from pristine marble. When the centre of the table rose up in an aquamarine hummock, Blackford understood what he was about to witness.

‘Please, Major,’ he repeated, shaking.

‘Watch this, Captain.’ She released her hold on the hill of magical energy she had called up beneath the waters of Orindale Harbour and, as the tiny hillock of blue careened through the imagined inlet and across the waterfront Blackford could see lining the circular edge of the stone table, he heard the deafening roar of the actual harbour rushing east to swallow the wharf and flood the Medera from Orindale to Wellham Ridge. Inside the spell table, Blackford saw the waters crash over the stone bridge, collapsing it like a bit of folded paper. Without looking towards the city, he knew that the bridge spanning the Medera had fallen as well. There had been hundreds of people on that bridge. They’d be dead now; there was no way they could have survived. Hearing the fading thunder as the great floodtide rolled east into Falkan, Blackford tasted something tangy and metallic in his throat. The dead would number in the thousands.

‘Captain.’

‘Yes, ma’am?’ He was crying and didn’t care. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. No matter. He hadn’t changed his uniform since they had ventured into the foothills.

‘I want you to seize those three frigates and get them prepared for a journey north.’ She pointed towards the ships still tethered to the wharf. They bobbed gently in the small swells that skidded along the shore in the aftermath of the mammoth tide.

‘No, ma’am.’ Blackford swallowed, coughed and said, ‘Kill me now, ma’am.’

Tavon laughed: a hearty, belly-laugh that chilled Blackford’s blood. ‘Oh, but that is funny, Captain.’ She withdrew her hands from the pool, waved them over the surface and waited while the depthless cauldron congealed and then froze into solid granite. Still laughing, she picked a small bit of stone from its centre and slipped it into her uniform pocket. ‘No, really, Blackford. I want you to get those ships ready. Pay the captains, kill them; I don’t care, but I want them ready to sail by high tide, three days from now.’ Major Tavon chuckled then mimicked him, ‘Kill me now, ma’am.’

‘Yes, please.’ His hands were shaking and he laced his fingers together in hopes of appearing brave.

‘You’re a coward, Blackford, a whimpering baby. You don’t want to die any more than I want to kill you. I need you. When I’m through needing you, if you’ve done what I ask, you’ll enjoy a long life. At that time, whether you’re a coward or a hero, I don’t give a shit. I’ll be going home. So, stop dicking around making jokes and get those boats ready to go.’

Blackford took a breath and tried, unsuccessfully, to compose himself. ‘To where, ma’am?’

‘Ah, finally a cogent response. Good. To Pellia. I want as many soldiers as we can muster, including your former colleagues from Wellham Ridge, on board, well fed and ready to hit the road in three days. Got it?’

‘Hit the road, ma’am?’

‘Right, skedaddle, bug out, take off, hit the highway, jet back to Kansas with Toto. Know what I mean?’

‘Yes, ma’am. To Pellia.’

‘Excellent, Blackford. Now, get us south to one of those open piers. I want you to scare us up some beer and maybe a burger.’

Blackford backed away. ‘Yes, ma’am. Whatever you like, ma’am.’ He kept eye contact with her, not because he wanted her to see that he had summoned every bit of his courage to stand there with Captain Hershaw’s body spilling blood all over the deck, but rather because he did not want to be caught looking at her pocket. The stone. Don’t look down, or she’ll know. But you’ve got to get that stone.

Orindale Harbour was a ruin. The waterfront had sustained massive damage, and apart from the three frigates Blackford had been ordered to commandeer and the few naval ships that had almost miraculously escaped the devastation, there was not another seaworthy vessel in sight.

Jacrys’ skin tightened into gooseflesh. Something’s wrong. He didn’t have much magic, just a few spells he learned from the failed carnival conjurer-turned-fennaroot addict, a lodger beneath the brothel where he had worked as a boy, but he knew enough to sense that something significant was occurring. Rolling over the Ravenian Sea like summer thunder, the distant spells penetrated the weary spy’s bones. Someone powerful was painting with a broad brush.