Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

I looked back across seawaters calm with the stillness of early morning. Somewhere, just out of sight, were the islands we’d come to reclaim. Somewhere, beneath the featureless cloak of trees, Kellarin’s mercenaries were prowling with murderous intent. Quiet as a squirrel too mean to share his nuts, Ryshad on one headland, Halice on another, they would be creeping up on the watchposts Allin’s scrying had betrayed to us. Somewhere, two of Kellarin’s coasters lurked in the inlets they’d crept into under the scant cover of the moonlit night and every mask of magecraft and Artifice that Allin and Guinalle could summon. Dastennin, Halcarion and every other deity grant the ships would bring our people back to us.

“Not long.” I spoke with more hope than certainty.

“We’ll make those bastards sorry they ever thought of staking a claim to Suthyfer,” Temar muttered. Kellarin men still asleep in the Eryngo ’s capacious lower decks would help make sure of that.

I glanced up at the sun, still broad and soft gold this early in the day. “It’ll take as long as it takes.” That would be Ryshad’s answer and Halice’s too but they’d better hurry, if we were to launch our attack to catch the pirates still fuddled with sleep.

The deck swayed beneath my feet as the Eryngo made a slow turn. The Nenuphar and the Asterias did the same, square-rigged mainsails furled like the Eryngo ’s, just relying on the triangular sails on their stubby aftmasts for steering in circles. I sincerely hoped all the sailors were pulling the right ropes to stop us colliding as we marked time in the same patch of sea.

“I should have gone too,” muttered Temar, frustrated.

“This is a very different fight to sweeping across the Dalasorian plains with half an Imperial army at your back,” I pointed out.

“As Ryshad and Halice keep saying with all their talk of skulk and strike and cut and run.”

I made a non-committal sound by way of reply. It was plain his exclusion from the fun still rankled with Temar but Ryshad and Halice had been adamant. The Tormalin wars of lordly conquest back in the days before history had been a very different affair from the base civil war that was Lescar’s running sore. It was dirty fighting that was wanted here.

Still, I didn’t like sitting on my hands aboard ship any more than D’Alsennin. This inaction came all the harder after the ceaseless hectic days since Parrail had raised his alarm. All of us had roused yeomen, miners and artisans to hone their tools and fury to a murderous edge. Halice and I had set every mercenary to scouring rust from swords and summoning old ingenuity for scavenging supplies.

Temar turned to look at the sterncastle and the doors to the rearward cabins under the raised afterdeck. “Allin may have news. Guinalle might be able to reach Parrail without so much water between them.”

“We let them sleep,” I told him firmly. If I couldn’t help my friends with a weapon in my hand, I could ensure this expedition’s magical resources were carefully husbanded. Guinalle was an even worse sailor than me and the stresses of working Artifice while actually afloat left the noblewoman with a headache like a poleaxed cow. Allin wasn’t so tired but seeing the pirates’ captives daily beaten, degraded and filthy distressed the mage-girl dreadfully. After breaking our backs to get Vithrancel’s ships sailing, we’d had to stand off the islands for three frustrating days waiting for Shiv and Usara’s ship to make the longer crossing from Toremal, even with wizardry clearing a path through the waves and swelling their sails with mageborn winds.

Temar glared at the closed door. “I want to know how Shiv’s men are getting on.”

“Sorgrad and ’Gren have been fighting for more years than you’ve been living.” Saedrin curse it, I sounded more patronising than reassuring thanks to my own apprehension. The runes can always roll wrong, no matter how much skill my friends might have to weight them. “Oh, come on then.”

Temar took time to smile and wave reassurance to curious sailors, as nobles always seem to, no matter how fast the ground’s crumbling beneath their feet. I knocked a brisk double tap on the door.

“Come in.” Allin sounded contemplative and sad but that was better than outright anguish. She sat scrying at a table hanging from the beams of the deck above. Its raised wooden rim and a dampened cloth offered her bowl some stability but pools of fading radiance showed where ensorcelled water had slopped over the edges.

“So much for me trying to make sure you got some rest,” I chided her. Next time I’d empty the cabin of anything she might use for magic. Then she’d probably go back to scrying in the butt of water kept on deck for the sailors’ refreshment. She’d only stopped when she realised none of them wanted to drink from it, even if all she were using was citrus oil.

“How goes it to the north?” Temar twisted his hands absently together.

“It’s all over bar the grieving.” Eerie reflections turned Allin’s sombre face into a mask of light and shadow.

I looked into the scrying bowl to see a triangular cove between two spurs of brittle grey rock where even the hardiest plants were defeated by the combined assaults of wind and wave. Temar’s pennant was waving on the roof of a sizeable if crudely built hut tucked beneath a crag. Bodies lay among the stumps of a recently felled grove of trees.

“Kellarin’s writ is in force on this islet at least,” said Temar with satisfaction.

“It’s a start,” I agreed. An important one; Shiv’s scrying had detected a sizeable outpost of pirates on this jagged diamond north of Suthyfer’s westernmost isle.

Allin looked up. “If you want me to bespeak Usara, I’ll have to give up the scrying.” A gleam betrayed the sorrow brimming in her eyes.

“Don’t waste your tears on these vermin,” Temar said severely but he gave her half a hug for comfort.

I tried to pick out familiar outlines among the anonymous figures looting the bodies, a yellow head bent over a dead man’s hand. ’Gren, surely? I bent closer but stepped back with an oath as a sudden conflagration erupted on one side of the cove.

A smile teased Allin despite herself. “Is that your friend Sorgrad?”

Sure enough, I saw a blond man warming ostentatiously casual hands at the blaze. “It is, and burning longboats by the look of it.” He looked small within the miniature world of the scrying, more so beside a hulking figure that could only be Darni. I still felt a sour resentment as I looked at the big warrior. I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t blackmailed me into working for Planir. All I’d wanted was to sell the bastard a valuable piece of silver before its unpleasant owner realised it was missing, but Darni had recognised it and my cooperation had been the price of staying out of irons. Still, I reminded myself, reverse those runes and I’d never have met Ryshad. That put me ahead of the game, didn’t it?

“None escaped?” Temar’s voice was tight with concern.

If they had, our venture wasn’t exactly sunk but it would be taking on water fast. To beard this pirate captain in his lair, we needed to attack from both ends of that crucial inlet dividing the two main islands of Suthyfer. We had to know nothing lurked behind us ready to stab us in the back.

“No one got away.” Allin gestured and her spell swooped backwards over the water to show the pirate fleet’s pinnace prostrate in the surf, barnacles and green fouling on her shallow hull exposed to derision from the deck of a tall three-masted ocean ship drawing close to the wide beach.

“That must be the Maelstrom ,” breathed Temar.

“Something to show for Ryshad’s coin,” I commented. Shiv and Usara had found a ship easily the length of the pirate predators, more heavily built with higher sides and deck castles but rigged for sailing just as close to the wind. As we watched, it anchored well clear of the pinnace’s three mastheads now digging deep into the pale sand and the tangle of sodden ropes and sails on useless spars. Corpses bobbed among nameless flotsam and the beach sand was stained muddy red with the blood of those few who’d made it to shore.