David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

The stone on his little finger winked blue fire.

“—ring.”

Garric frowned. “Is Echeon immortal?” he asked.

The chieftain shrugged. “He hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” he said. “From the way he guards himself, no, he’s not immortal, but it may be that he’ll never die naturally. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I ever got within arm’s length of him, I promise you, or if any of the Brethren did.”

Vascay laughed again, relaxing visibly. “But as I said, friend,” he said, “we weren’t saints most of us to start out with, and our tempers didn’t change for the better when Echeon’s tax gatherers broke us. I could use—we Brethren all could use—your mind and your sword arm; and you’d be better to have family , let’s say, when you learn the realities of Laut. Even if your brothers are outlaws.”

“Fairly said,” said Garric, relaxing with a degree of surprise at how tense he himself had been a moment before. Vascay was too smart to want to be on the wrong side of Garric, fair enough. But Garric had seen Vascay—and Vascay’s knife—in action, and…

Garric grinned.

“Eh?” said Vascay.

“A friend of mine named Carus,” explained Garric, “would’ve said that close in a man with a knife had an advantage over a man with a sword. Might have. But I don’t guess I’ll ever learn for sure.”

Vascay spread his hands on his knees. “Listen, lad,” he said, grimly serious. “If you please, you can leave now or the moment the boat touches the shore of Laut, without my let or hindrance. But there’s no safety for any honest man on Laut, so unless you’re going to offer your services to the Intercessor…?”

He grinned, but there was a hint of real question in his eyes. It vanished when Garric shook his head in fierce denial.

“Right, I didn’t think so,” said Vascay. “If you’re not going to do that, then stay with us for at least a time. And if you stay long enough to help bring down the Intercessor…”

Fierce joy unexpectedly transfigured the bandit’s face. “If we can do that,” he said, “I’ll count my leg well lost.”

He slapped the peg leg with his hand with a sharp rap-rap : fingers against wood, and wood against the rock in which it rested.

“By the Lady, my friend,” Vascay said harshly. “If we can bring down Echeon, then I don’t mind if they hang me the moment after. Truly I do not.”

Garric frowned. “You talk as though there’s only Laut, Master Vascay,” he said. “I grant it’s your home, but if things are so bad—why don’t you leave for another isle?”

Vascay frowned in surprise that came close to anger; then his face cleared. “I forgot it was Prince Garric from the New Kingdom who was asking,” he said. “Echeon’s a wizard, you see. Those who venture into the seas at the horizon from Laut, coming or going, are run down by the galleys manned by Echeon’s Protectors of the Peace.”

He grinned harshly. “And sunk, and all drowned with no more trial than the crabs give them,” he added. “Nobody enters Laut or goes more than a league beyond the shore and lives. Some claim that the Intercessor uses his wizard arts to bring lightnings down on fleets too great for his Protectors to deal with, but I wouldn’t know. I doubt there’ve been any such fleets in the Isles since Prince Garric died and the Archai brought down the New Kingdom a thousand years ago.”

There was more than humor in Vascay’s smile; but there was humor also.

“If no one can enter Laut…” said Garric, weighing cautiously the words he’d listened to, “then how did Thalemos’ advisor get here from Tisamur? Metron.”

“Aye, Metron,” Vascay said. “With a purse full of gold and a tongue full of promises. His art brought him, I suppose.”

“Could he be an agent of Echeon’s?” Garric pressed. “Tricking you and others like you into coming out where he can snap you up?”

Vascay laughed bitterly. “You’re a prince indeed, aren’t you, friend Garric?” he said. “You think like a prince, at any rate.”

The bandit’s face hardened. “Aye,” he said. “That could be; I’ve thought it, though it’s not a thing I’d say to the other Brethren, you understand. But I took the chance regardless, because it’s the only chance on offer that might bring down the tyrant.”

Garric nodded. “I see,” he said.

What would Carus do in this place? Take the risk of supporting Thalemos, probably. And yet, how much of a risk was that compared to the other choices? What else could he do but wander Laut as a lone vagabond…with a beastgirl in tow?

Garric glanced at Tint. She felt his eyes and met them, still shivering with fear of the snakes all about her. He couldn’t very well leave Tint to her fate, any more than he could stay here on Serpent’s Isle as an alternative to trying his luck on the mainland of Laut.

Garric smiled at the bandit chieftain. The expression warmed him, so he let it spread more broadly across his face.

“All right, Master Vascay,” he said. “This past year I’ve found myself filling many jobs I wasn’t raised to. For a time, at least, I’ll try my hand at being a bandit and a rebel.”

Vascay leaned forward and clasped forearms with Garric. “Be a good enough rebel, my friend,” Vascay said, “and we can all of us give up being bandits. Welcome to the Brethren!”

Cashel shielded his eyes with a hand and squinted besides; the noon sun gave the bay a brassy sheen that’d make the back of his head hurt if he wasn’t careful. The water was so still that the reef formed a ragged black line instead of tossing spray.

“It’ll be a good time to go out,” he said to Tilphosa, who sat beside him. Her legs were crossed, right knee over left knee, and her hands were clasped over them tightly. “Past the reef, I mean.”

They’d have to row, of course; the sail the crewmen had rigged to the new mast—the wreck’s former main spar—hung as limp as the fronds of the palms at the tide line. That didn’t matter to Tilphosa one way or the other, of course.

Cashel dried his hands on his tunic. “I wouldn’t mind doing some real work,” he said. “Rowing would feel good.”

Metra was working her art in a space Cashel had cleared among the ferns. The sailcloth screen she’d used earlier was now part of the pinnace’s kit. Metra didn’t want the sailors watching her and maybe getting in the way—and the sailors, like most people, didn’t like to be around wizardry.

Cashel didn’t mind wizardry, but he was just as glad not to have to see Metra. He didn’t like her or trust her, either one.

“But you lifted that huge rock,” Tilphosa said, drawn out of her brown study by Cashel’s words. “Surely that was work, even for you.”

“That was a job, all right,” Cashel said. He paused while his mind sifted words to find the ones that’d explain. “But all that, killing the cannibal in its coffin…that’s kinda what I’d like to clear out of my mind, do you see?”

He gave her a smile. He didn’t suppose Tilphosa would understand, but she wasn’t the sort to sneer because “nothing that dumb ox Cashel says is worth listening to” like some folks in the borough whispered.

Tilphosa smiled back, but her expression chilled suddenly. She lowered her eyes to the ground and hunched her shoulders.

“I want to be off this island,” the girl whispered. Her clasped hands trembled, and for a moment Cashel was afraid she was going to cry. “I’d start swimming if I didn’t think they were going to have the boat ready soon. They will, won’t they?”

Tilphosa raised her eyes to the dinghy. A dozen sailors clustered about it, putting on what Cashel too thought were the finishing touches under Hook’s direction. They’d raised the sidewalls with boards from the wreck’s decking and had fitted the mast, turning a boat into a pinnace.