Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

‘There isn’t even anything to steal – not that Garec and I could crew the thing anyway. I’d be trapped on a yard-arm or strung up by a tangled rope within an aven,’ Kellin added. ‘We’ve plenty of silver, but not a clue about where to find boat or captain.’

Brexan finished her beer with a flourish. ‘Then you certainly need to come with me.’

‘You have a ship heading north?’

‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘if we’re not too late.’

‘Then go,’ Garec said, ‘don’t wait for us. We’ll get our things; you go get us that boat. We need to leave in about six days.’

Brexan reached for her cloak then stopped. ‘Us?’

Garec nodded. ‘I want you to talk with Gilmour; it’ll be good for him to hear what you have to say. He and Versen were close, but he and Sallax were like-’

‘I know.’ Brexan felt her heart speed up again; this was it, she was back in her element. She’d be sad to leave Nedra, but hopefully she would understand. And I’ll come back, Brexan thought, when this is all done. I’ll come back and stay with her until the end.

Kellin interrupted her thoughts, asking, ‘Do you want to come with us?’

‘More than anything,’ Brexan said quickly, in case Garec changed his mind.

Garec took her hands. ‘Good. You belong with us.’

‘And now I have to hurry,’ Brexan said. ‘I’m at the Topgallant Inn, north of the point, at the end of Tapen Rise, near the marsh.’

‘We’ll be there.’

‘And we’ll find Gilmour?’ Brexan felt reborn; she could have kissed them both.

‘We will.’

‘Oh, whoring rutters,’ Brexan stopped. ‘What if Ford and his crew won’t take us?’

‘We’ll offer them all we have to get us to Averil,’ Garec said.

‘Averil?’ Brexan stopped. ‘It’ll take you until spring to get to Pellia from there – and that’s if you’re allowed through. Prince Malagon didn’t encourage unannounced guests.’

‘We’ll hire your captain to take us to Averil, and once we’re at sea, we’ll… well, you know-’

‘We’ll renegotiate our destination,’ Kellin finished for him.

Garec smiled. ‘There you have it.’

Brexan’s stomach knotted at the unsettling feeling that she had allowed her enthusiasm to cloud her judgment. Captain Ford didn’t strike her as one who would do well with liars or scheming partisans. She’d have to tell him the truth – but surely he’d understand the importance of their journey and take them all the way to Pellia. It wouldn’t be a problem. She hoped.

Kellin read her hesitation. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing – it’s just that this captain isn’t a fool. He’s been working the Ravenian Sea for a long time, and I’m not sure how many trips he’s made north of the archipelago.’

‘We’ll worry about that when we get there,’ Garec said. ‘If it’s too bad, we’ll put in to shore and make our way into Pellia on foot.’

‘That might work,’ Brexan murmured. ‘I just worry that it may not be a very pleasant journey after we find Gilmour and encourage Captain Ford to take us through the Northeast Channel.’

‘Pleasant?’ Garec said. ‘Brexan, when we get there I will personally explain to Captain Ford how little I care whether our journey is pleasant.’ The boyish look on Garec’s face had faded. The Bringer of Death was back.

Mark shifted in his chair. Old Grunbaum had the worst chairs, the kind that connected to the desk with a curved bar of what was, at one time, polished silvery metal. Now, forty years later, those desk-chair connectors were corroded rust barely holding the shape, with exposed bolts on each end. Mark scraped his arm on a jagged corner and wondered if the school board knew about the condition of Herr Grunbaum’s classroom furniture. I’ll have to ask Mom if my tetanus vaccination is up to date. Even Gerry O’Donnell, Mark’s curmudgeon of a calculus teacher, had new desks; the whole county had them, all except for Grunbaum, the venerable Kraut, here forty-one years and still teaching German I through V, the advanced placement class for the bright kids or the kids from Bakersfield, who had German or Jewish grandparents. Many of them knew a good bit of the guttural language long before coming to lessons in ninth grade. But the desks had to be some kind of retribution on the part of the Massapequa Public Schools Division, for four decades of Herr Gerrold Grunbaum’s Teutonic dictation: horen und sagen. Jetzt, fanger wir an… eins, zwei, drei, vier… and all the time his sparklingly clean wingtips clicked in perfect rhythm on the scuffed tile floor.

This was German II, non-honours, a general education class for college-bound tenth graders, exceptional ninth graders and those who needed a spare foreign language credit. Save for a pair of Hungarian kids who spoke some German at home, the class was not a hotbed of talent. Mark was amongst the brightest in the room, and he periodically had to pinch himself – or slice my goddamned arm open on the desk – to stay awake.

Today, there was a snake on the floor, one of the colourful ones he and Steven had seen on the Discovery Channel, a coral snake: a nasty little bastard with plenty of the Crayola ringlets the tiresome narrator with his now-you-hear-it-now-you-don’t British accent had called ‘nature’s way of saying danger’.

Steven had paraphrased: Stay back, meathead, or I’ll sting you where it hurts.

That wasn’t right; Mark wouldn’t meet Steven Taylor for seven years.

The snake was coiled up and motionless, watching and waiting; Mark tried not to step on it – that would piss it off – while he shifted uncomfortably and tried to follow Herr Grunbaum’s lesson.

Heute mu?en wir… blah, blah, blah.

Somebody knock me senseless for the next twenty-two minutes.

Jody Calloway was sitting next to him. Mark wanted to check her pulse; she hadn’t moved in ten minutes. She might be dead, bored to death. And my mother said that was impossible. He craned his neck to see if she was breathing or if there was a puddle of drool pooling on the desktop. I’d get interviewed by the paper. They’d ask what happened, and I’d tell them she was fine, looking normal, chatting with friends, but then Old Grunbaum started in on the differences between Viennese and Bavarian German, but I wasn’t really listening; I was trying to see if Jody was still alive because I thought it might be entertaining if she would, you know, move around a bit, maybe lean back once or twice before the end of the period. She’s no dairy princess, but at least there’s something there to see.

On the board, Grunbaum had drawn one of his famous sketches. Mark’s Uncle Dave had gone to Massapequa Heights as well, twenty-seven years earlier, and he’d had Grunbaum for German I and II. Even then, back in the sixties, the old bastard had been drawing bad sketches of castles, battlefields, rivers, and all manner of architectural styles: Gothic this and Baroque that; Mark wondered how he didn’t manage to improve over time. He’s been drawing the same shit for four decades; you’d think he’d eventually get better, he thought. How many times do you have to draw the Stephansdom before it begins to look like a cathedral? Jesus, there he goes again.

1742, Maria-Theresa von Hapsburg…

What did he say? How many kids did she have – God Almighty, lady, read a book or take in a movie or something – just get off your back!

She loved this muted yellow colour… used it for many of her architectural projects, including her summer home, the Palais Schonbrunn. Kyle, why don’t you tell the class what that means, auf Englisch…

Good, good, on the hill south of the palace… the Gloriette, which members of the Hapsburg family used, amongst other things, for shade -