The Charnel Prince (41 page)

“You spoke it many times as you slept. She is the one you love, yes, not the girl on the ship?” She lowered her voice further. “The King of Crotheny had a daughter by that name. They say she was slain at Cal Azroth.”

“Who are you, lady?” Neil demanded.

“No one,” she replied. “Your secret is safe with me, Neil MeqVren. The only reason I ask these questions is to satisfy my own curiosity.”

“I cannot trust you about that.”

“I know. Did you really want to die?”

Neil sighed and laid his head back. “You change targets so frequently, lady.”

“No. This is the one I have aimed at all along.”

“I did not seek to die,” Neil said. “But I was—I think I was relieved. Relieved that there was nothing I could do.”

“And then I spoiled it all.”

“You saved my life, and I am grateful.”

Swanmay regarded her nails. “There was a time, Sir Neil,” she said, “when I stood with a razor in my hand and contemplated my wrists. There was another when I held a goblet of poison, fingers away from my lips. Of anyone I have ever known, I think you might understand why, how the unstoppable crush of duty can extinguish the flames in us.”

“Duty
is
the flame in me.”

“Yes. And when you fail it, or worse, when it fails you, there is nothing left.”

“No.”

“I shed my armor, Sir Neil. I did not drown. I will find better things to fill my life with, better reasons to rise one day to the next.”

“But you haven’t found them yet.”

“Now you shoot at my target.”

“It seems only fair.”

“You’ve missed,” she said. “I’ve no longer any target to shoot at.” She came and sat by him again.

“I do not care who you are, Sir Neil. I do not care whom you have served. But I would like you to serve me. I need someone like you, someone I can trust.”

Neil smiled faintly. “If I betray one master, how could you ever trust me not to betray you?”

She nodded. “I suppose you have a point. I was hoping you wouldn’t make it.”

“But you’d already thought of it.”

“Of course. But it seems to me you have been the one betrayed, not the other way around.”

“The one I serve has never betrayed me.”

“That isn’t what you mumble in your sleep,” Swanmay said. “I will go now. Think about what I’ve said.”

“I do not think I will change my mind. I beg you once more—let me off at the next port.”

“If you decline my offer, I will put you off when you are well enough to travel, though not before,” she said.

He watched her leave, and through the open door heard the squeal of gulls. He waited a moment, then, ignoring the pain in his side, he went to the porthole.

The sapphire sea danced beneath the sun, and less than a league away, he made out a coast.

Then it wasn’t a trick. If their course had been set for Paldh, they would be in deep water. No island in the southern Lier Sea was as big as that.

He sank back down onto the bed, wondering what he mumbled in his sleep. Or had that been a guess? The queen hadn’t betrayed him, but . . . he did feel betrayed. She had sent him away from her, and she was surrounded by a dangerous court. If she were attacked, there would be nothing he could do. He had begged her to keep him near.

But he had been relieved when she finally did send him away, because part of him felt her death would be on her own head, that he wouldn’t be responsible. In Vitellia, he had felt truly alive again, actually competent, facing foes he could see and fight, even if they didn’t die when he cut them. Even that was easier than the knife-bladed shadows of the court.

Serving Swanmay had its appeals, and part of him yearned for it.

You have forgotten me
, Fastia had told him.

I haven’t.

Have, will. It is all the same.

There were tears on his face, and a hundred yards of pain knotted beneath his chest began to loosen and uncoil, as he turned his face to the bedclothes and cried.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

She came back six bells later, when the sun had gone into the wood beyond the world. He pretended he was asleep, and she did not try to wake him. He listened to her settle on the cot beyond the screen, heard her shift and toss for a while before her breathing softened and become shallow and regular. Then he rose, holding his bandaged side, and shuffled across the wooden deck.

The hatch was latched but not locked, and he cracked it and peered out. The deck was mostly quiet and only faintly lit by a moon he could not see. Two men were standing by the wheel, speaking in soft accents. Another stood against the steerboard rail a few kingsyards away. There was no one to backboard, however.

Keeping low, he pushed the door a little wider.

He nearly hit a man with it. He sat just beyond the hatch, a spear across his knees.

She was right. She needed better guardians. But Neil couldn’t be one of them.

No one called out as he approached the side of the boat. He strained in the moonlight, trying to make out whether or not the land he had seen earlier was still close. He thought he saw distant lights, though it could have been sparks from the fire in his side.

With no further hesitation, he slipped over the rail.

He hit the water with a splash. The cold shocked him, but he managed to turn onto his back and begin stroking and kicking with his feet, hoping the wound in his side didn’t come open again. He had no plan for what he would do when he got to shore, but every day on the ship took him farther from where he had to go.

“
Hwas ist thata
?
” someone shouted. “
Hwasfol? Airic?
”

“
Ne, ni mih.
”

Neil grimly kept stroking with dogged determination. He knew the language—it was Hanzish, the tongue of the enemy.

The sound of voices receded. Once he thought he heard Swanmay’s voice, but he wasn’t certain. Then there was only his own struggle with the waves.

His arms became leaden all too quickly and despite the fire in his ribs, he felt the warmth draining from his body. If shore was not near, then he would complete the death Swanmay had saved him from.

Was she right? Did he want to die?

He summoned an image of the queen, her pale face and dark hair, and hands reaching for her from every direction, but he could not hold it. Instead, in the half-face of the moon, he saw Swanmay’s blue eyes. A strange despair seized him, and more questions, always questions. If she was Hanzish—and he was now certain of that—then why had she helped him? Whom was she fleeing?

The ocean swelled beneath him, and his face went under. He sputtered the water from his mouth and nose and turned to swim on his belly. He heard a faint shushing that might be surf and might be the dying beat of his heart.

He swam on. It was all he could do.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

He woke to a blue sky and the warm crackle of a fire. For a moment he thought he’d been dreaming, but then Swanmay’s voice broke through it. He felt immensely better, as if he had slept for ten days. The pain in his side was only a dull ache now, and for a moment he thought that perhaps everything that had happened since he had left Eslen was merely a dream.

But then he heard the chatter all around him, in Hanzish, and reached for his sword.

“You are a very stupid man,” Swanmay’s voice informed him.

He opened his eyes and sat up. He lay on a blanket. The fire was nearby, and beyond it there was a sandy shingle and the sea. Two langschips were pulled up on the beach, and Swanmay’s ship was anchored a hundred kingsyards offshore.

In the other direction was a plain covered in short, wiry grass. Swanmay sat beside the fire, on a small stool. Her men seemed to have set up camp. Nearby, two of them were dressing a small, odd-looking deer.

Swanmay wore a broad-brimmed hat, as if she really were a Sefry, but her face looked drawn and weary. The blue in her eyes had dulled, as if something vital had left her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to try.”

“I understand that now,” she replied. “It makes you no less stupid.”

He conceded that with a nod.

She shrugged. “We weren’t able to fully provision at z’Espino. My men are remedying that now.” She cocked her head. “How do you feel?”

“Wonderful,” he replied.

“Good. Do you remember anything?”

“The last thing I remember was hearing the sound of the surf.”

“We found you on the strand. Your wounds were open, and your breath was faint. You were very cold.”

“But now—what happened?”

“As I told you, I know some arts. I hesitate to use them, because there is a price.” She smiled fiercely. “You are fortunate that the walls between life and death are so thin.”

A sick dread fluttered in Neil. “Was I dead? Did you—?”

“You were not dead. The life in you was a flickering candle, but it was not extinguished.”

“Lady, whatever sorcery you used, you should not have. Tell me its price, and I will pay it.”

“It isn’t yours to pay,” she said softly. “And it is already done.” Her voice grew firmer. “And I make my own decisions. Have no fear, you are not cursed or possessed of spirits unhultha. You will not walk the night and do evil at my bidding.”

“I could never imagine you doing me harm,” Neil replied.

“No? Yet you spurned my company when you owed me your life.” Her voice rose. “Do you understand? You threw your life away in z’Espino, and with it any duty or obligation you ever had. You threw it away and I picked it up. Can you not concede that it is mine now? Do you feel no duty toward me?”

“Of course I do,” Neil blurted, “and
that
is the problem. And now I owe you twice, but I cannot repay you. That is agony to me, lady. Do you understand? You have put me between the rising tide and the cliff—”

“And can think of nothing better to do than drown yourself again.”

She snorted. “Enough. I am done with this.”

“Done?”

“You will never enter my service, I see that now. But you do owe me twice, and I do not expect you to forget that. One day I will ask you a favor and you will answer. Do you understand?”

“If I can.”

“No. If you feel obligation toward me, then take it as a geis. I will not call on you soon.”

He sighed and bowed his head. “Are you saying you will release me now if I accept this geis?”

“Hush. By noon we leave here, and I will take you to Paldh, no matter what you say now. But if you have any of the fabled integrity of Skern, you will take my geis.”

“I swear by the saints my fathers swore by, and take this geis,” Neil said. “When you have need of me, I will come, so long as it does not bring harm to those it is my charge to protect.”

“Very well,” she said. She stood and looked off across the distant fields. “I never went ashore in z’Espino,” she said softly. “This is the only strange land I have ever set foot on. It is fair.”

“Lady—”

“Make the ship ready,” she called to her men in Hanzish. Then she strode away from him without even a backwards glance.

“WILL THEY CATCH US?” Anne asked, watching intently as the masts of the pursuing ship appeared and disappeared behind the high swells. The sky was a turquoise gem, flawed only with a few streaks of white cloud. There was no land in sight.

Captain Malconio put his callused hands on the rail and leaned forward. Perversely, she noticed that he exuded the same faintly almond scent Cazio had when he sweated.

“Lord Netuno knows,” he said. “That’s a fast ship, a brimwulf built in Saltmark. And they’ve got a strong wind behind them.”

“Are they faster than us?” Anne asked.

“Much faster,” Malconio said.

“Then they
will
catch us.”

Malconio scratched his beard. “Ah, well—there’s more to it than speed, della. We can run against the wind a little better than she can, and we’ve got a shallower keel. If we can reach the shoals around Ter-na-Fath before nightfall, I give us a chance.”

“Only a chance?” Cazio sneered.

Malconio regarded his brother with narrowed eyes. “It’s not often I have the need to outrun a man-o’-war,” he said acidly. “In fact—why, that’s
never
happened to me before. It took you to come along and present me this delightful opportunity,
frater mio
. Indeed, it occurs to me our pursuers might be satisfied if I just gave up my cargo.”

“You won’t do that,” Anne said.

Malconio’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked at her as if she had just asked to cut off his foot. “Pardon me? I wonder how you formed that opinion?”