The Secret Texts Page 51

  Meanwhile, though, the Galweigh’s Eagle chased down the second longboat. Let Andrew giggle and squirm over the spectacle of the gorrahs’ feeding frenzy while they devoured the capsized crew on the first longboat; Crispin had things he could be doing.

  He went forward to the pilot’s cabin, and followed the last of the soldiers down the ladder to the deck of the Wind Treasure. He had a few bad moments—he didn’t like heights, and he discovered that being inside the Heart of Fire was much less disturbing than dangling on a rope ladder halfway to heaven, with that crazed pack of feeding gorrahs beneath him and nothing between him and his death but the tiny, distant deck of a damaged ship.

  He almost climbed back up the ladder, but he didn’t trust soldiers to be able to find what he was looking for and transport it to the Heart of Fire. So he steadied his breathing, dried his palms—one at a time—on his shirtfront, and worked his way down the ladder one wobbly step after another.

  “Had a bit of trouble with the ladder, eh?” a Galweigh soldier asked, grinning. “Most do that first time.”

  Crispin memorized the boy’s face. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, dusky-skinned: typical Zaith. They all looked alike to Crispin, except when they were screaming and dying. Still, he noted the gap between the front teeth, and the mole at the corner of the mouth. He would make a point of remembering that face. He said, “The soles of my boots are plain leather, and too thin and slick for such a climb. Unlike yours, which have rubber soles.” He turned and walked away, thinking of ways that he could be sure the soldier would meet his death before the crew returned to the airible. He hated having people laugh at him.

  When the boy went back to his duty, Crispin closed his eyes and smelled the air. Honeysuckle and rot, the scent that his silent partner told him was the scent of the Mirror of Souls. It was close. The scent permeated the ship.

  The voice said, If they’d taken it with them, the scent would be stronger over the water. You could follow it straight to them. But the smell of its magic ends here.

  He walked aft, following that compelling odor. He closed his eyes, tasting the air with Karnee senses. If he Shifted, he thought he would be able to track it down faster. In Karnee form, his nose was a thousand times as sensitive as it was in human form—though it was good when he was human. But if he Shifted, he would show what he was to the watching Galweighs—and he didn’t wish to give them that much information about him, even if he did intend to see them all dead at the end of the mission. People had a nasty habit of surviving no matter how carefully one planned; he always kept that in mind and acted accordingly.

  He smelled its presence faintly in one of the cabins, but only faintly. So in human form he followed his nose to the hatch, and down the gangway, then through the crew areas and at last into the cargo holds. His eyes lit up and he laughed out loud at the sight that greeted him there. Row after row and shelf after shelf of artifacts from the Ancients. In the first two rows alone, he recognized a distance viewer that didn’t look too far from serviceable, an eavesdropper, a marvelous matched set of transmuters, and half a spell amplifier that would at least serve as a source of repair parts for the broken one he had back home. Of course there were plenty of things he recognized as useless or merely decorative, and another, larger mass of things he couldn’t recognize at all.

  “Mine,” he whispered. A wondrous trove all in itself, he thought—worth a paraglesiat, worth a House, worth power and more power, and all of it was his. But the trove was nothing compared to the single final treasure he sought. The Mirror of Souls might rest in such an obvious hiding place, though he doubted it. The scent of it lay strongly in the hold, but he felt certain Ry would have hidden it before he abandoned the ship.

  He cast around the room, and on the far forward bulkhead he found proof that his instincts were good. The scent of the Mirror of Souls was strongest there, but the ropes that scent permeated had been hastily cut, and lay in a tangle on the decking.

  Crispin smiled. He would have to backtrail. He smelled Ry’s touch on the ropes, and that of another Karnee—this one a stranger to him—and a third person. Human. He decided to trail the Mirror first, and to focus on the people second.

  Then he had a thought that both startled and amused him. Suppose Ry knew that he, Crispin, was the one who would come after him. Recently Ry had seemed to be aware that Crispin spied on him while he slept. If he knew that, and if he were trying to be clever again, he would hide the artifact someplace where Crispin would have an especially difficult time finding it.

  Ry hunted with his nose, and he knew Crispin did, too. He’d use that. He would hide the Mirror down farther. In the bilge.

  Crispin wrinkled his nose just thinking about it; his exquisite sense of smell came with a few drawbacks. It would be almost useless in the conflicting sea of stinks that would fill a ship’s bilge. And he was fastidious, having nearly conquered his animal nature; he was proud of that fact. But he could, when necessary, get a bit dirty. He sighed and headed for the stinking bilge.

  A third of a station later, soaked in fetid, slimy water, his fine clothes ruined, he had to admit that the Mirror of Souls wasn’t in any of the three bilge compartments.

  He climbed onto the deck, sent the crewman with the mole and the smirk up the ladder to the airible to fetch him clean clothing, and retired to the ship’s bath to clean off. When he was alone, he asked the voice that traveled with him in his mind. “So where is it?”

  It isn’t on the ship, the voice said.

  Crispin snarled out loud, “It must be. You said I’d smell its trail leading across the water if they’d taken it with them.”

  You would. And I would clearly see it. The Mirror . . . calls to me.

  “But I’ve checked the cabins, the holds, and even the bilge. It isn’t here.”

  No. It isn’t. I already said that.

  “Then where is it?”

  If they didn’t take it with them and it isn’t aboard, there’s only one place it can be.

  And Crispin saw the truth and hated it in the same instant.

  “They threw it overboard.” He stood against a bulkhead and leaned his head against a stanchion as realization hit him. “Damn them,” he said softly. “Damn them, damn them, damn them.”

  He threw his clothes on and raced upward through the ship until he reached the main deck. There he called to attention the Galweigh soldiers on loan from the Goft Galweighs, and said, “The one thing that we must have from this ship our enemies have thrown overboard. You are going to go out in boats with a grappling hook and get it back.”

  And of course they asked what it was, and how they would know when they’d found it. They pointed out that they didn’t have a boat, since the ship’s crew had taken the longboats. They complained bitterly about the gorrahs that circled in the water below the Wind Treasure hoping prey would fall within their reach.

  Crispin accepted no excuses, and put a quick end to complaints by assigning complainers to the first shift. He pointed out that the other airible would be bringing back its boatload of captives soon, and with them the boat. He smiled.

  And then he assigned the Zaith boy who’d taken such pleasure in his awkwardness on the ladder to handle the grappling hook. He watched the dark forms of the gorrahs circling in the water beneath the ship and thought they would make the boy’s chances of seeing his home in Calimekka again slim ones.

  With his orders given, he climbed back up the ladder into the airible—an easier task than climbing down. There he sat down to a pleasant meal with the airible’s pilot and Andrew and the contingent of Galweigh Wolves who had insisted on accompanying the expedition.

  “Did you find Ry?” Andrew asked as the servant passed out plates. The men and women loaded them from dishes of chilled cubed monkey and dipping sauce, fingerling trout, sweetmeats, and fried goldbeetles over strips of jellied mango.

  “No one stayed aboard the ship.” Crispin took a sip of iced wine and tried the goldbeetles. Deliciously crunchy, and not too salty�
��a tricky balance to get right. He would have liked to keep the Galweigh cook—easy enough to do once the Galweighs were dead. But cooks did taste their cooking, didn’t they? Such a waste. “So either he’s already been eaten by the gorrahs, or Anwyn’s crew is picking him up now.”

  Shaid Galweigh took a few of the goldbeetles and sampled them, then settled on the monkey and sauce. “Disconcerting that they’ve hidden the Mirror so far.”

  “We’ll have it in our hands before the end of the day,” Crispin said.

  Andrew said, “When we overflew them, I thought I saw three longboats on their aftercastle. But after the wind, I’ve only seen the boat the gorrahs destroyed and the one the Eagle is chasing. So what happened to the third?”

  Crispin put down his knife and pick and stared at his cousin. “Three longboats. No. I’m sure there were only two.”

  Andrew grinned. “That’s the funny thing about you, Crispin. You’re always so sure about everything—even the things you’re wrong about. That ship is a Rophetian galleon. They carry more than forty people, and the Rophetian longboats’re built to hold twenty. If you look at the aftercastle, you’ll see the tie-downs and the spaces for three boats. And three places where the wood isn’t bleached as light—all three in the shape of longboats.”

  Crispin looked down at the back of the ship, at the broad deck where a mast had once risen, and where, clearly, three boats had once rested. Three.

  Andrew tugged at the long black braid over his left ear, the only hair on his otherwise shaved skull, and said, “Remember, I earned this braid.”

  “You skulked around docks with a bunch of illiterate bums,” Crispin said, forgetting for the moment the Galweighs who sat observing the two of them.

  “I sailed with the Sloebenes. We pirated any number of Rophetian galleons, and they had one longboat for every mast.”

  Crispin leaned toward his cousin, meal forgotten. “Then you tell me, you who know everything about ships and the sea: If there were three boats, why are there only two now? Eh? You have an answer for that?”

  Andrew shrugged his massive shoulders and giggled. “Me, I just figured some of the people got away.”

  “We would have seen them, you mare-dick. Look down. We can see everything that happens in the whole region—that’s the advantage of approaching by air. We can’t miss things.” He rolled his eyes and leaned back on his couch.

  Andrew had proven time and again that he was an idiot—useful as brute muscle, with the occasional moment of cleverness. But he was never reliable. Never. The streune-bolt that had disintegrated the mast and part of the decking had destroyed one of the three boats as well; that seemed obvious enough to Crispin. Ry was in the boat that had been taken captive, or he was in the one that had been capsized by gorrahs. Either way, he was dead. Dead already or dead in the Punishment Square, and Crispin was willing to consider either a happy outcome.

  Wasn’t he?

  “We disintegrated the third boat with magic,” he said.

  Andrew giggled. “Did we, did we, did we? Are you so sure that you’d bet your place as head Wolf? Eh? Are you that sure, cousin? Because if you’re wrong, it’ll come to that ere long.”

  The Galweighs were making a show of eating their food and ignoring him and Andrew, but they were, Crispin knew, hanging on every word. Dissension between Sabirs could only work to their good. And Sabir failures in carrying off the joint mission would only make them look better when they got home. Their smiles were hidden, but Crispin knew they were there.

  So he ignored Andrew’s question, instead asking one of his own. “Why don’t you think we destroyed the third boat?”

  Andrew’s grin grew broader. “Don’t want to bet me, eh? Don’t want to take a little chance that stupid Andrew might know something you don’t know? Smart of you, Cris. Smart, smart, smart.”

  “Why, Andrew?” He spent a moment imagining Andrew in the Punishment Square, the four horses ready to leap toward each of the four points of the world. That calmed his temper enough that he could say, “I’m willing to concede you might be right.”

  “How generous.” For just an instant, Andrew’s dark eyes looked at him with unnerving intelligence—but that penetrating gaze vanished, shattered by another idiotic giggle. “I know we didn’t get one of the three ships because no one would have tried to swim to safety through all those gorrahs. And there were no people on board when you got down there—you said as much yourself.”

  Andrew was right. That was something new.

  “But perhaps the ship didn’t carry a full complement of crew. Perhaps there were only forty people on board. Or less.”

  “Rophetians have no trouble keeping crew,” Andrew said. “No trouble, no trouble, none at all. Lads sign with ’em when they’re juicy boys, and die with ’em as old, old men. Rophetians don’t run ships light—they figure long shifts make the men unhappy, and unhappy men get careless. They might be light on crew if they ran into trouble across the sea, and you could bet that way and maybe you’d win. But me . . . I’m betting the third boat is out there. I am, I am.” He took a huge bite of fingerling trout, chewed it, and grinned around the food at Crispin. “I’m betting Ry got away.”

  Crispin studied his cousin from the corner of his eye, and considered what a problem he was becoming. He wasn’t reliable, but Crispin began to believe that the perverted bastard wasn’t as stupid as he usually seemed, either. He might be smart enough to double-cross Anwyn or Crispin.

  Before long, perhaps Andrew needed to have an accident.

  Meanwhile, Crispin could enjoy the predicament the Galweighs were finding themselves in. Their eyes drooped—he knew they would feel like they had eaten too much, like their bellies were full and their heads were stuffed with rags. He felt a mild version of those symptoms himself. Already Shaid yawned and murmured something about having eaten too much, and one of his Wolves chuckled and said she felt like she could sleep for a week.

  Crispin grinned and said, “Don’t leave this marvelous food uneaten. Your cook deserves a reward for his magnificent repast.” It would probably have to be posthumous, of course.

  Veburral tasted almost pleasant—nutty, in fact. It stood up well to heat. Unlike some poisons, it remained deadly after frying, baking, or boiling. Unlike some venoms, it did not have to be injected into the bloodstream to be effective—a man eating it in moderate quantities would die nicely. Best of all, however, veburral, derived from the venom of the copper flying viper whose range was to the Sabir settlements on the Sabirene Isthmus, could be taken in increasing doses over a period of months or years, and the taker could build up a complete immunity to it. Most of the Sabirs took regular doses as a matter of course—and since the Galweighs didn’t have access to the snakes, they didn’t have access to the poison.

  They would drift off to sleep one by one, and Crispin and Andrew would carry them off to the sleeping quarters and tuck them in. Alone in their darkened rooms, they would die quietly, without alerting the Galweigh loyalists, who wouldn’t suspect that anything was wrong until the Sabir loyalists and those Galweighs who could be bought killed them.

  Their impending deaths had already cost Crispin a small fortune. A double agent deep under cover in the Galweigh household had placed a bottle of veburral-laced nut oil into the cook’s traveling supplies just before he boarded the airible, replacing the bottle that should have been there. The agent had been in place in the household of the Goft Galweighs for five years, and this was the only service he had rendered. He had been worth his price, though. When Crispin and the Sabir army flew the Galweigh airibles into the landing field behind Galweigh House without challenge, and swarmed out to claim the House and everything in it, the Galweighs would fall and the Sabirs would hold Calimekka alone.

  Chapter 20

  Night buried the escaping longboat beneath its cloak, and Ian’s voice, long since reduced to a croak, called out the beat of the sweeps in slower and slower measure. Kait’s palms wore blisters beneath blisters, the s
kin ragged and weeping. The muscles in her back burned, her thighs ached, her calves cramped, even her gut felt like it had been set afire by a sadist.

  Ian called, “Ship sweeps and rest. Trev, drop anchor.”

  The chain rattled out of the front of the boat; it tugged as it bit into the sea bottom, and the boat drifted lazily with the unseen current until it swung around to point them all back in the direction from which they’d just come.

  Kait sat panting, her head between her knees. “I’m starving, but I can’t swear that I wouldn’t be too sick to eat if we had food,” she said.

  “I could eat,” Yanth said. “If I puked it up, I’d just eat more. I feel like I’m dying right now.”

  “I want water more than anything,” Trev moaned.

  Water. Everyone agreed with that. The boat had a small barrel of water on board for emergencies, of course, but it hadn’t been changed in a long time, and it tasted as bad as bilgewater smelled. Clear, cold, fresh water from a spring . . . that, everyone agreed, would be the true gift of the gods.

  “We’re half a station’s hard rowing from our destination,” Ian said. “All the sweet water there that you could drink in a lifetime. But I think we can afford to rest just a bit before we go on. The airibles haven’t come after us in spite of the fact that we were in clear sight for more than a station. So I suppose we’re safe to assume the spell worked.”

  Hasmal spoke up from behind Kait. “There’s a solid enough spell around the boat right now.”

  She sat up in spite of the agony in her back and turned around to look at him. He lay with his head propped against the forward bulwark, taking a careful sip of water from the barrel.

  Ry twisted toward the front of the boat, too. “You can . . . see . . . the shield?”