Night again. The lights from the windows of the slave huts squatting by the frost-covered beach looked almost cheerful to the three half-frozen figures gliding toward them, their eyes on the storehouse at the end of the row. A bluff to their left hid most of the little bay from Blade's view, but as far as he could see toward the open ocean, it was clear of patrolling ships within easy hail. He drew his sword and motioned the other two to follow him.

He was so intent on moving quietly and thinking so much of the bread and dried fish that filled the storehouse ahead, that he failed to catch the first warning crack of twigs behind him. Then he heard Alixa start to scream, gasp, and squeal in panic as a hand clamped down over her mouth. He spun ground to see two large men in s.h.a.ggy coats jerking Alixa into the air until her feet kicked frantically. Brora sprawled face down in the needles, his sword lying a foot beyond his outflung hand.

An ambush! Blade whipped his sword up to the guard position and sprang backward, seeking a tree to protect his rear. As he did so more footsteps crackled behind him. Before he could complete another quick turn, something heavy and hard smashed down on his head. He felt his knees giving, but blackness swallowed him up before he could feel his face slamming down on the ground.

CHAPTER 13.

When Blade awoke, his first reaction was one of surprise that there was a soft, comfortable bed under him, and not the damp stone floor of a prison cell with perhaps a little moldy straw thrown down on it. Then he looked about him and realized that he was in the Captain's cabin of Thunderbolt. From the steady rolling motion under him and the creak of timbers, he knew the ship was at sea. Then the door opened, admitting first a blast of icy wind, then Tuabir. The sailor was grinning broadly.

"The surgeon said you'd be with us soon, so I came by to answer all the questions I knew you'd be asking."

Blade nodded, then decided that wasn't such a good idea. He found enough of his voice to ask, "Are we-prisoners?"

Tuabir looked indignant. "I-haul you back to face Cayla's bravos? The caretaker my lads were helping bag you thinks so, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him-or you." He seemed to take it for granted that no further answer was needed. And for the moment Blade agreed with him. But there were other questions.

"Where are we going?"

"Thunderbolt's following a course due west. We're hoping to make landfall at Cape Xera, Druk willing, in about three weeks' time."

So they were going to Royth after all. But: "What about you-and the crew? Won't-?"

"All of the crew yet living are with me in this" That remark, Blade felt, left out a few details. "King Pelthros has a name for being easy with pardons to pirates who come to him of their own will, giving up the pirate life and swearing by Druk to be peaceable and honest to the end of their days." Tuabir almost managed to say that with a straight face. Then he sobered and went on.

"I'm not feeling any great joy at giving up the Brotherhood. But now that Cayla has them eating out of her filthy white hand, there'll be no justice for any who go against her. Perhaps you should have stayed and fought her in the Council, for it was your running off that made her story believed as much as anything else. But no matter-you did what you thought was the best. It would have been a chancy thing to speak out anyway." He shrugged.

"Has she revealed some of her-her other plans?"

"For the moment, no. There are many in her camp having no wish to strike a blow for the Serpent Priestesses of Mardha, who'd yet strike mighty blows against the Kingdom of Royth."

"Yes, and she'll rebuild the Serpent shrines on the Kingdom's ruins. We must stop her!" Blade stopped, realizing that the blow on his head must still be addling his wits, to make him say such a foolishly obvious thing.

But Tuabir only grinned and said, "And after me just telling you why fourscore good men are forswearing the Brotherhood to take you to Royth... Ah well, you're needing more sleep, I think."

Blade slept another twelve full hours, and when he awoke after that he was calm, clear-headed, and ravenously hungry. Alixa came in to bring him a tray of food and stayed afterwards for conversation and other things. They lay curled against each other in the bed while Thunderbolt beat her way westward, mile by mile.

As he paced the deck and looked out at the heaving gray sea, Tuabir expected that it would be some days before anyone even thought of hunting for them, a.s.suming that he had been driven out to sea by bad weather. And it would be more days yet before they decided whether to send out ships to search, and even then they would probably decide against it. And then he thought of the risks he was running for the man who lay below in the Captain's cabin, risks that would keep Captains older and more experienced than he was in port. Most of Tuabir's nearly fifty years had been spent learning other things than philosophy, but he sometimes wondered now whether this Blahyd was not a man sent by Druk to influence many other men's destinies. And when he had finished that thought, he would shrug and grin and go stamping aft, calling for hot wine.

Whether by Druk's favor, Tuabir's and Brora's good seamanship, the stout hull of Thunderbolt, or merely common garden-variety luck, they made Tuabir's intended landfall only two days beyond his intended three weeks. Watching Cape Xera loom out above the gray feathers of mist that spread across the gently heaving swells, Blade had a feeling of relief that he quickly reined in. It was a case of "so far, so good."

"Now we need to find ourselves a port," he said. "One where Indhios isn't likely to be in control. And one where the garrison isn't going to be so nervous that they sound the alarm and call out the fleet before we can explain ourselves."

"Srodki is the nearest," put in Tuabir, looking at the chart.

"Aye, and part of the Chancellor's personal holdin' too. We'd be a flea leapin' into a furnace if we went in there," said Brora shortly.

"Then what of Pyreira?" said Tuabir. "It's next beyond Srodki. We'll be in more danger of storms than of men if we go on cruising hither and yon offsh.o.r.e."

"True indeed," replied Brora. "Aye, Pyreira it must be, then. But I little like pa.s.sin' north about the Ayesh Islands this time o' the year. Be we get a norwester and we've a good chance o' bein' driven straight among'em."

The northwester that Brora had feared was already beginning to rise by nightfall when they rounded the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Thunderbolt pitched with a steadily fiercer motion that forced Blade to hang on to the railing as he walked back and forth with Tuabir, inspecting the rigging. By midnight, they had to abandon any attempt to use the oars. The rowers could hardly sit on their benches, the oars as often as not flailed uselessly in the air, and the pumps were hard at work to throw out the water that poured in the oar ports every time Thunderbolt stuck her nose in deep. If they had been in no haste, they would long since have turned and run before the gale. As it was, it was nearly two in the morning before Tuabir came up to Blade and suggested that course of action.

Blade agreed. For all the small-boat sailing he had done in Home Dimension and his crash course in seamanship here, he was still an amateur where Tuabir and Brora were professionals.

To run before the gale, Thunderbolt first had to be turned broadside to the rising sea, an operation even Blade knew to be dangerous. The tiller was triple-manned and the rowers took their places. One side's rowers were ready to push, the others to pull, in order to swing the ship around before the waves could capsize her.

The darkness was now almost total. The wind blew sheets of spray out of a blackness as deep as that of the Pit itself. Only by judging the motion of the ship could Tuabir tell the best moment to turn. Blade saw him standing spraddle-legged as the deck heaved under him. Then he cupped both hands over his mouth and bellowed into the gale, "Coming about!"

Blade felt the motion of the ship change from a pitch to a roll and clung to the railing as the deck tilted over to a fifty-degree angle and green water sluiced over the leeward railing. For a long moment Thunderbolt hung there, tilted over at a preposterous angle and lurching slowly around onto her new course. The deck was just beginning to tilt back to something more normal when with a tremendous boom and crash a wave larger than any before roared out of the night. Thunderbolt heaved herself up in a wicked corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motion. From aft Blade heard a tremendous smashing and splintering sound.

As the wave pa.s.sed away under them and the water poured off the decks, Blade saw Tuabir coming rapidly forward. "The rudder's gone!" he gasped.

Blade had a short moment's we're-doomed feeling, then said, "We'll have to steer with the oars. Thank Druk this is a galley."

"Aye. A sailing ship would be finished here. And if we can't keep off the rocks, we'll be finished too. Druk grant us a beach for a landing place."

For the next three hours, there was nothing but the whistle of the wind, the hiss and boom of the waves, the monotonous clanking of the pumps, and the occasional thumpings of the oars. Tuabir and Brora made no effort to keep the men continuously rowing. Only when Thunderbolt threatened to swing round again broadside to the waves did Brora bellow orders, in a voice that was beginning to crack with fatigue and strain, to keep the oars moving until the ship was safe again.

Tuabir hoped the gale might drive them far enough east to let them clear the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Once clear of the land, they could ride out the gale at sea and then when it subsided row back to the first convenient landing place. But when a miserable gray dawn crept tentatively over the sea, the long, dark line of Grand Ayesh's north coast was clearly visible, stretching too far to leave them with any hope of clearing it.

There were nowhere near enough boats for all the men aboard, and even if there had been, no boat could live in the boiling surf that thundered around the approaching rocks. Their only hope was to cling to Thunderbolt herself until she took the ground, then swim for it, unless by some miracle they drove ash.o.r.e on sand, in which case the ship might stay in one piece long enough for the gale to subside.

Except for a handful of men at the oars to keep the ship end to waves that were getting shorter and more jumbled as the water shoaled, the whole crew was up on deck now. Brora was busily making ready a long rope, with which he hoped to swim to sh.o.r.e. At Tuabir's orders, most of the crew discarded seaboots, long coats, and everything else that might weigh them down in the water. Most of them, like Blade, stripped to shirt and trousers, a dagger, and a pouch on their belt. Blade's pouch, apart from a flint-and-steel lighter, held Duke Khystros' signet ring and the notes on the pirate conspiracy, securely wrapped in oiled leather.

The seas were steep and ragged now. The wind blew the spray from their tops in a continuous sheet. The men aboard Thunderbolt were as wet as if they had already been in the water. A jagged black slab of rock reared itself out of the water to port, the waves geysering spray in fifty-foot sheets as they beat against it. The water was shoaling fast now. Blade and Tuabir stood in the very bow, trying to pierce the gloom and spray and make out what kind of land lay dead ahead.

Then there was a grinding, a cracking sound, and a tremendous jolt that seemed to slam Blade's spine up through the top of his head. Not a man aboard Thunderbolt remained on his feet. The ship lifted again, but not fast enough to keep a green wave from crashing down on her and sweeping the length of her upper deck. Blade felt himself being stretched out by the tug of the water like a man on the rack and saw half a dozen men with a less iron grip than his go sailing over the side with despairing cries. The ship lifted and surged forward. Then she struck again, harder, and a third time, harder still.

At the third shock, Blade felt the whole ship strain and then sag and, looking aft, he saw the deck already beginning to buckle. Some submerged rock had driven up through Thunderbolt's bottom, snapping the keel like a twig and impaling the whole ship like a b.u.t.terfly on a pin. She was still rising and falling as the waves surged under her, and the grinding and splintering as her timbers began to pull apart rose to equal the thunder of the waves.

Looking forward, Blade saw that by a small piece of good fortune, they were less than a hundred yards from a sandy beach. But by a larger piece of bad fortune, most of that hundred yards was a spouting cauldron of foam as the waves broke and died on a maze of submerged rocks. Blade could see sullen gray and black ma.s.ses looming amid the white. But Thunderbolt would carry them no farther. It was time to rely on their own muscles. Blade looked at Tuabir, who nodded, then stepped forward and shouted over the wind: "All hands, prepare to abandon ship!"

Most of the pirates could swim. For those who couldn't, Blade and Brora took axes from the carpenter's stores and began chopping out pieces of the railing. But whether swimmers or non-swimmers, they were all hanging back, as though hoping that somehow there would be some alternative to plunging into the angry water.

Blade would have gone first, to show that it could be done. But he felt himself to be in a sense the Captain and therefore by the tradition of the seas (both here and Home Dimension's) the last man off. He did not have to wait long, however. Brora laid down his axe, raised his hand in salutation to Blade and Tuabir, then tied the rope around his waist and the other end firmly to the mast. He turned, quickly took the three steps to the side, and plunged over.

No one aboard Thunderbolt moved. All were too intent on watching for the small, dark shape of Brora's head to reappear amid the flurries of white as the line ran out. Then a cheer, as not only Brora's head but half his upper body rose to view on the crest of a breaker, arms moving strongly. Then it sank from sight, rose again, sank, remained out of sight a long time-then suddenly a small, dark figure was staggering up out of the water onto the beach, the foam curling about his legs. They saw him sit down, then untie the rope from around his waist and retie it around a nearby boulder. He got to his feet again and raised his arms in a beckoning gesture.

That started the men moving, finally. One by one, they stepped to the side, slipped into the water, and groped for the rope. As more and more weight came on it, Blade saw it tighten like a bowstring. But it held, and soon the first men to go were joining Brora on the sh.o.r.e. A few heroic souls promptly stepped back into the water, forming a human chain reaching out to help their shipmates ash.o.r.e.

Not every man made it. Too often those aboard saw bobbing heads and flailing arms swept away from the rope, as the men were pulled loose by the strength of the sea. Closer to sh.o.r.e, they smashed against the rocks as the rope fell and rose with the ship's motion.

In a time almost too short for Blade to believe, Thunderbolt's deck was deserted except for him and Tuabir. Just as well. The ship was slipping deeper in the water each time a wave surged past and dropped her. Green water flowed over the deck a foot deep each time a wave rose up under her. Tuabir turned to Blade and said, "Master Blahyd? You're the rightful Captain, but might I ask that I be last off the old lady? I've sailed aboard her twelve years now."

Blade nodded. The old sailor wanted to say goodbye to his ship, and Blade could hardly refuse. They shook hands, and Blade turned to face the water. He took a long running step, sprang, and plunged cleanly over the side into the sea.

Instantly the surge had him, but the rope was there, rasping against his side even through his shirt. He clutched at it with both hands, raised his head to get his bearings as a wave lifted him, then began pulling himself along the rope like a monkey. Sometimes a wave roared over him, pressing him down into the murky water until it seemed that his lungs would burst before he had a chance to breathe again. Sometimes he soared up on top of a wave until his arms practically pulled free of their sockets as he struggled to hold on. Foot by foot, the distance to sh.o.r.e shrank.

In one moment, he felt the bottom come up and slam hard against his legs, then the whole rope vibrated and he felt it go slack. Then there was a tingling boil of foam, as a receding wave collided with an advancing one. He was thrown forward, turned a complete somersault, then crashed down again, feet towards the land. With every bit of his colossal strength he lunged forward and staggered to his feet. Behind him the roar of another wave was building. He could stand up now, and so ran forward, ignoring the hands outstretched to help him. He didn't let his legs stop pushing him forward until he felt sand and gra.s.s under his feet; then he sat down and looked back toward Thunderbolt.

She had tilted over far enough to snap the rope. Blade saw the water rushing in and out of the splintered gashes in her hull. On the foc'sle was a solitary black figure. Tuabir. Blade waved frantically to the man, and thought he saw an answer. Then Thunderbolt sagged apart in the middle, plunging bow and stern deep into the water just as a wave struck. Blade saw timbers and foam rocket into the air, but the figure was gone. Blade turned away while his seawater laden stomach rebelled. When he looked back to the sea, Thunderbolt was gone also, and only the black shapes of scattered timbers remained, tossing their way toward the sh.o.r.e.

Brora's voice called his attention back to the land. He looked up. A double file of armed men was curling its way down the path from the top of the bluff toward them. They were armed in what Blade had heard described as the style of Royth-plate cuira.s.ses, square wooden shields, swords and throwing pikes. But on the shields was the silver bear on the blue field of Count Indhios.

Blade heard Alixa gasp and saw her point to the men with a shaking finger and heard Brora curse. The rest of the men knew nothing about the affair of Indhios and what his device on the shields of the approaching men might mean, but they silently turned their heads to look.

As if in response to Alixa's gesture, the company commander halted his men some thirty feet away and dressed their lines. He himself stepped out in front and shouted at the pirates, his words coming raggedly against the wind: "By the laws of the Kingdom of Royth and by the authority invested in me by the Lord of Grand Ayesh, the Count Indhios, High Chancellor of the Realm, and-" He lost the thread of his remarks and mumbled for a moment. This drew a laugh from the pirates. Then he recovered himself and went on. "By these I declare that you, being notorious pirates of Neral now under the authority of the King of Royth, shall at once forfeit your lives if you do not submit peacefully." He turned to his men and motioned. The rasp of swords being drawn came clearly to Blade's ears.

The pirates were outnumbered nearly two to one, more in that some were wounded and all were exhausted, and had nothing but their daggers. Still, Blade heard a growl behind him as the pirates rose to their feet and faced the soldiers. He shook his head sharply. A fight would be suicide for all of them-and against soldiers in the pay of Indhios might also lead to Alixa's being "accidentally" killed. He stepped forward.

"We are forswearing the Brotherhood, Captain. I-"

"I have no authority to accept pirates into pardon, man," said the captain crisply. "Now-will your ruffians disarm, or shall I order the advance?" And he cast an unmistakable look of recognition at Alixa.

Blade drew his dagger, held it for a moment while he glared at the captain, then threw it point down into the sand. Behind him, the pirates did the same. As the soldiers advanced, pulling ropes from their belts to bind the prisoners, Blade stood rocklike, cursing savagely under his breath. They had managed a desperately dangerous voyage in safety, then thrown it all away trying to reach a port where Indhios would not find it easy to reach them. Tuabir and a third of the crew were dead, and after all of it here they had stepped straight into Indhios' hands, as if they had steered straight up to his private landing place. It was a d.a.m.nable irony, and might rapidly become much worse.

CHAPTER 14.

Things did not get too much worse immediately. After a night spent huddled in an empty warehouse at the local army camp, where they were fed, the prisoners began the march across the island. That took the better part of two days. After the wild crossing to the mainland, there followed seven more days of continuous marching before they reached High Royth, the capital.

It was on this march that things became grim. Some of the pirates died of exhaustion or exposure or collapsed and were finished off by the soldiers. Blade, however, kept stubbornly on, putting one foot in front of another with dogged determination. He also kept eyes and ears open, and as a result learned much.

Indhios' influence was still on the increase. He had been awarded the lordship of the Ayesh Islands (including the job of protecting them from pirate raids) barely three months ago. This latest plum was for divers and sundry services in increasing and ordering the revenues of the Kingdom. Judging from the state of the villages along the road, Blade suspected that Indhios' methods involved mainly bleeding the peasants and tradesmen white. Moreover, judging from the size of the escort and of the camps on Grand Ayesh, the money Indhios was bleeding off was going more to build his private army than to increase the royal revenue. The Chancellor was already far too strong for comfort and getting stronger every day.

In an odd way, the fact that Indhios' soldiers had arrested them as pirates was slightly rea.s.suring. If they had simply been turned loose; it would have suggested that Indhios now felt himself able to openly befriend the pirates. The Chancellor apparently did not yet feel strong enough to abandon all pretense of being a loyal servant of the Crown. Blade wondered, however, whether after the pirates marched into High Royth, the next thing to happen might be an invitation for him to visit the Chancellor. From his extensive, if reluctantly acquired experience of intrigue, he wouldn't have been surprised.

However, nothing like that happened. On a gray, snowy day, the thirty-five ragged and b.l.o.o.d.y-footed survivors of Thunderbolt's crew limped in through the West Gate of High Royth, across the Central Bridge, and into the citadel. There Blade and Brora were separated from the rest of the crew and given the dubious privilege of a cell of their own.

Blade was now becoming something of a connoisseur of odd places of confinement, and except for the Official Secrets Act might have written a book called Strange Prisons I Have Known. The dungeon in Royth had nothing unusual about it, being dark, damp, miserably cold, and moderately infested with a.s.sorted insects. However, neither he nor Brora were chained, and the food, if barely edible, was at least regular.

Apart from the twice-daily food and water, the two men were left alone with the vermin and the dampness for nearly two weeks. The enforced leisure gave Blade ample opportunity to try to make his own plans.

He was settling down to his fifteenth night on the moldy straw when the rattling of keys being turned in the lock and the rusty squeal of the door being opened jerked him out of his doze. "Uh, Cap'n, some'un here to take you w' him," grunted the guard. Behind the too-familiar figure of the guard, a small, slender figure in dark red was visible. Who was it? Not Alixa-she was much taller than that. Not Indhios-not if the Chancellor was as fat as described. Possibly a messenger, and if so, whose? Had Indhios finally decided to pay some attention to him? If so, he might be on his way to a dangerous interview. If Indhios got one inkling of his plans to carry on Khystros' work, the man would hardly balk at having him killed without delay.

He wrapped his blanket, his only garment since his sailor's clothes had fallen apart, around himself, and stepped through the door. The figure in red beckoned to him without a word. The hand that beckoned was small, but gloved, and gave no clue as to its owner's s.e.x or age.

Whoever the person in red was, they had apparently done a remarkably thorough job of ordering, intimidating, or bribing the guards. None of them turned a hair at seeing the huge Blade striding down the corridors free of all restraints, his bare chest and wildly tangled hair and beard making him look even more formidable than usual.

Blade had no very good idea of the inner layout of the citadel, but he was surprised that his guide did not turn upward along any of the numerous stairways. Instead, they kept on through progressively lower and lower and darker and darker corridors, until Blade realized they must now be well outside the walls of the citadel. He saw racks of old armor lurking in shadowy alcoves, with vast festoons of cobwebs hanging from them, and rats scurrying red-eyed and nimble-footed around them.

The long prowl through underground pa.s.sages finally ended when they came to what appeared to Blade as a blank wall. But the same small gloved hand now reached out and pushed firmly against the stone. With a faint rumble, an entire section of the wall pivoted around on a central spindle, opening on a narrow flight of stairs leading up into total darkness. Reluctantly, Blade followed his guide. Underground warrens put him in mind of Cayla and her nightmare shrines, and he began to wonder whether the guide might not be another of the Serpent Priestesses. But when they reached the end of the long stairs and stepped out through another pivoted door, it was into a circular room whose narrow slitted windows looked out on the rooftops and streets of High Royth from a height of nearly a hundred feet. This was some castle tower, and the castle of some high person in the Kingdom, judging from the richness of the furnishings. A great bed, with hangings and quilts in the same shade of red as his guide's robes, stood in the middle of the room. The floor was covered by carpets of the same color and the walls by heavy tapestries in which reds, oranges, and yellows dominated the patterns. Even the candles that hung in red copper lanterns from the walls were red and burned with a reddish light.

For a moment Blade was so absorbed in trying to guess the nature of the room's occupant from the clues offered by its furnishings that he paid no attention to the other person with him. In that moment, the small figure in red stepped up to him and deftly whipped the blanket away.

Blade was only startled, for he was twice the size of the other. If it came to a fight, he had nothing to fear, even in his weakened condition. However, he thought it was time to ask a few questions.

"Who are you?"

The laugh that escaped from behind the red veil was unmistakably feminine, and Blade relaxed somewhat. The voice replied with a question of its own. "Can't you think of a more original question, oh great and wise pirate Captain?"

"I can't think of any I want answered as badly," he replied shortly.

"Ah, well," she said, and drew her gloves off, then lifted her hands-fine, delicate ones, Blade noted-to the veil and hood and pulled both away.

The face that looked out at him was marvelously beautiful and delicately wrought. Everything seemed sculptured from a material so fragile that to touch it or even breathe on it would make it crumple. The hair that framed the face was glossy and intensely brown, with a reddish tinge that might have been its own, or given it by the light in the room. And the large eyes that were roving over Blade's body held an expression that he knew extremely well. He hoped that nothing more was involved here than simple l.u.s.t. That he felt perfectly willing and able to gratify. He viewed with much less enthusiasm the idea of involvement in more plots, particularly those of the Serpent Priestesses.

The lady clearly had her mind on other things than answering Blade's questions and at once set out to make sure that his mind would not be on asking any. She knelt before him, her mouth open and her mobile lips already moving in hungry antic.i.p.ation, and set to work on him. It did not take long to fully arouse him, for it was a skilled mouth as well as a mobile one. With only minor pauses in her work, the lady unfastened the clasp of her cloak, then her robe. Both slipped to the floor. Under them she wore a filmy red gown, and under that Blade could see the outlines of her body. It matched her face in its exquisite delicacy.

He reached out his hands and pressed both of them into her ma.s.s of dark brown hair. The gesture made her look up. "Yes, you are becoming impatient, great Captain. And you are great." She made an explicit gesture in the appropriate direction. "Come, then." She led him over to the bed and motioned him to lie back on the quilts. Then quickly she jerked the red gown over her head and mounted him.

Her body was as perfect as he had antic.i.p.ated, with small, brown-nippled b.r.e.a.s.t.s whose slight sag suggested that she was perhaps not as young as he had believed. But there was not an ounce of excess fat in all her delicate and graceful curves as she writhed and wriggled and drove herself down on him again and again. It seemed that they would go on until their bodies melted and ran together like ice cream on a hot day, but at last Blade felt the end of his control approaching. He fought to hold back as long as possible, but in the end he spurted furiously into her, and his spasm touched off hers.

She lay atop him for a long time after collapsing, her eyes closed and her furious breathing gradually subsiding to normal. Then her eyes opened and she grinned-an impish grin that at once took Blade back to the notion of her as a girl barely out of her teens.

"I," she said, "am the Countess Indhios. But the name for you to use is Larina."

It was a while before Blade felt he could safely reply to that remark. Then he said, "The Count has a most beautiful and accomplished lady."

She grimaced. "The pretty speeches are for before, not after. And for us, not at all. If I thought you needed them, you would still be in the dungeon."

Blade kept silent. This was another decisive, almost dictatorial woman. She was like Cayla in that way; he hoped it was only in that way. Then, swiftly, in the same soft voice, she demolished his previous hopes that here at least were no plots.

She knew of her husband's plans to betray Royth to the pirates. He did not completely trust her, but on the other hand, he was too vain to pa.s.s up the chance of having someone to boast to. He would kill her in a moment if he suspected betrayal, but so far he suspected nothing.

Why was she betraying his plans? King Pelthros was a widower and childless. Now that Grand Duke Khystros was dead, there was no heir the King really trusted. He might well contemplate re-marrying a younger woman, who could bear him children, particularly if that woman had rendered some signal service to the Kingdom.

"Such as revealing Indhios' plans?"

"Indeed."

"Causing Indhios' prompt execution, and leaving you a young widow."

"Exactly."

"But-" She took his "but" for disapproval, and snapped: "I have no love for Indhios. There is nothing between us but our two children. And how much trouble it was to get him to my bed often enough for those, I could take ten nights telling you. He married me for my dowry, then repaid my father for his generosity by levying such taxes on his lands that he is now ground down to the level of his own peasants. Indhios' l.u.s.ts are for power and gold, not the clean l.u.s.ts of men for women."

That was the Countess' grand design. As for Blade's specific part in it, she needed a man with a martial reputation and a position at Court that enabled him to move about freely. She needed a combined spy and bravo, and if he were also a fit and proper bedmate, so much the better. Before Blade had any time to wonder how he, an imprisoned pirate Captain, was going to attain such a position at Court, she swept on to the next detail of her plan.