222.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

Deep rage shattered Lirenda's dispassion.

Morriel Prime had not fallen to a flux of miscast energies. She had been betrayed. The failed nerve of this inadequate chit had undone the entire circle. Recognition followed, that the Matriarch had antici- pated, even planned for disaster. Seven chains of stayspells wrought over the observatory kept the construct in fugue through that unbind- ing moment of crisis. Awe remained, that Morriel had called up the strength and sheer will to force her spell to consummation. In mortal pain, perhaps dying, she had impelled her grand construct to live on.

Lirenda straightened up and moved on, leveled to realize she owned no such depths, nor any grand bent for self-sacrifice. Beneath the scintillant eye of the Waystone, she confronted the last tragic fig- ures. They lay in their layers of crumpled robes, youth and age like two dolls dropped through a fracture in time. The first throat she probed for a life sign lay cold; the steadfast initiate who had held to her vows had perished, her life's spirit drained out of ruthless neces- sity, that the Prime might survive long enough to stabilize the con- jury.

One bundle remained, cast down like dry sticks in a shroud of fine velvets. Lirenda sucked in a steadying breath. Lit by the gleam of the Waystone's chill presence, she knelt down and braced herself to touch.

The wrist she raised felt insubstantial as bleached parchment wrapped over substanceless bone. But a pulse still threaded the blue network of veins. Though cool, the flesh was not corpse chill.

Against all adversity, Morriel Prime still survived. Unconscious, weakened, perhaps strayed beyond recall, indomitable will kept her breathing.

Lirenda bent her head, while heated tears welled through her eye- lids. There and then, amid the musky, flat ash of spilled offerings and the alkaline tang of scraped chalk, she weighed an unthinkable choice: to collapse the grand construct and draw Morriel clear, or to let the spell burn on undisturbed to completion, and hope the Prime's tenuous reserves could hang on until the last sigil reached its planned closure.

Arithon's freedom weighed against Morriel's life; Lirenda snagged her lip between teeth like small pearls, shredded in the cruel crux between desire and ambition. Prime power in hand, and the chance to seize her autonomy; or a sheltered subservience with demeaning awareness that one man, still at large, held the means to unstring her whole character.

Lirenda arose. A laugh ripped from her patrician throat, shrill with 223.

]ANNY.

leashed-back self-loathing. She was prideful and flawed, too desper ately consumed by desire to rule. Temptation had set its steel claws in her vitals, and she was too threatened to tear free.

Alone in the dark, without voice beyond conscience, Liren& turned her back on the fallen Prime. She shouldered the task of retrac- ing her steps without jostling the spell's course of alignment. She held no regrets. At heart, she was exactly what her mother had claimed: a spirit born lacking the female kindness Ath granted to natural w0m- arthood. The man who might have unchained her closed spirit held too potent a power to ruin her. Once she was confirmed as Koriani Prime Matriarch, her authority would be unassailable. No one alive ..P~e-e~ .e_v_e_r_kp_ pw_ of the e~ptiness masked at her core.

224.

Midwinter 5653 Tidings The port of Innish had been known as the jewel of the southcoast for as long as oared ships ranged the seas. During the hard winters, when the Stormwell Gulf capes seized with ice, warehouse space at the dockside rented out at a premium. Every shed and stable loft near the waterfront became pressed into use by the insatiable demands of commerce.

In years when the seasonal snows also sealed the northern passes, the inland attics with sound roofs lay crammed with the silks spun in Atchaz, then packed through the desert by caravan. Crated oranges from Southshire towered in stacks under awnings, awaiting sea trade to the eastern ports along Eltair Bay, or the western cities of Havish.

The streets teemed. Sailhands on leave lounged under the shade of the damson trees. Merchants with their trains, breathless errand boys, and half-naked stevedores shouldering bales breasted the chaotic commotion. Busy men cursed the languidly idle who obstructed their frenetic course. The side alleys and the louvered windows of the wineshops rang with the brass bells of the prostitutes. In gilt-dusted lashes, heavy scents, and soft paint, the paid women of Innish could lure a man into dalliance and drown him in pleasure for hours.

Just crossing the wharf district for a day's business could tax an honest man to short temper. The sights themselves were temptation, the stucco colonnades with their tiled roofs and pierced finials a puz- zle of artful complexity. The allure of Innish could waylay the senses in the whirl of its milling crowds, its exotic scents, or its outright, 225.

JANNY WURTS.

%%'ax'~ ~%~x.~, c~e~~t out by the riffraff who skulked and preyed off the wealth that changed hands in the streets.

Feylind's brother, Fiark, had as much as he could handle as a"

heyman trade factor. Left wan from the hours spent working over ~ master's accounts by lamplight, sweating under his beautifully tai- lored broadcloth in the lush southland heat, he had no patience to spare, even for thrashing through arguments with the twin sister just called back in port.

The years spent on shipboard with Arithon's crews had not blunted her reckless temperament. Her decorum was still nonexis- tent. No woman he knew but a dockside hussy would pick her fights amid the racketing press of the wharf at noontide, where shouted conversation could scarcely be heard, and rumors flew mouth to mouth at the least possible whiff of a scandal.

"Why can't you give us a cargo bound for Ostermere," Feylind shrilled. Clad in the man's dress she wore at her post as navigator on board the brig Evenstar, she spun sideways to avoid a servant bearing a crate of white doves. "Don't tell me the ladies of Eldir's capital have given up buying fine silk! Not when the King's Grace just issued a public proclamation of his handfasting!"

"What would you know of court women and their refined ~',~vs, gallivanting in slops on a ship's deck?" Fiark sniped back.

Feylind eyed him askance, unable to accustom herself to his ~dt~tt dignity, nor the golden hair trimmed neat at his collar, and hi, gen- teel, quality clothing. No trace remained of the barefoot boy ,~s he paused by the bollards and hailed a lighterman to ferry him o~t to a brig at a remote anchorage.

'%. can't duck me so easily," Feylind retorted, her pale braid fly- ing loose strands in the breeze, and her full-sleeved man's ,t~rf ,~d pearl-sewn scarlet waistcoat enough to turn heads for sheer gat:di- ness.

When her brother merely shrugged, she shot out a toe and ex?ertly fended the inbound lighter away from the dock. The oarsman cursed her. She fielded his insults with a phrase by lengths more invenfi~, then crossed her arms and g]owered down her freckled nose at her twin. Except for appearances, nothing was changed between ~hern.

Either they connived hand in glove at appalling acts of mischief~ or they fought each other like stoats.

Feylind tapped her foot. Fiark would know she would heave him into the bay in his finery before she let him ignore her.

He glared back in anger for only a moment. Then ~he smile she loved best turned the corners of his lips, and merrimen~ sparkled/n 226.

his wide cobalt eyes, "

%~~,~x ~.~xetxx, reo~u'tred Prince Arithon's shade tion to the strings of need to finagle a passal Feylind's eyes of id~ ship you're in such a h~ She laughed. spun l less arc over the turqr ~%~tx~ ~xe seax~a~,. '

t%~xte~: a coin ~rom P~ The craft's slightec 'bribe:, "Such pride dock.

"Do throu~ "NOW'.

Two.

oaths.

ways.

and harbor. Her brigs: the by more y~ the see."

his wide cobalt eyes. "You want to gain news of him?" That pronoun, between them, required no naming; they had spent half their lives in l~rince Arithon's shadow, underfoot, or attached out of bold fascina- tion to the strings of his far-flung machinations. "Well, you don't need to finagle a passage to Corith to hear."

Feylind's eyes of identical color lit into shrewd recognition. "That ship you're in such a hurry to meet?"

She laughed, spun about, and flicked something bright in a care- less arc over the turquoise water which rolled in mishmashed chop against the seawall. The offering clanged into the cockpit of the lighter: a coin from Perdith, minted in heavy red gold.

The craft's slighted oarsman yelped in mid-oath. He recovered the bribe, then stood, face upturned, and bowed his unctuous appease- ment. "Where would the lady like to go?"

"Such a way you have with men," Fiark teased, then stung her pride back by extending his hand hke a gallant to assist her off of the dock.

"Do that again, and you'll swim for it," Feylind said. Limber as a monkey, she stepped off the wharf, trod down on the gunwale, then startled the lighterman all over again by claiming his unoccupied bench. She unshipped his spare pair of looms, threaded their leathers through the rowlocks, and scarce paused for Fiark to board at the stem before she dug the blades into a ferocious stroke.

"Now I'm in a hurry," she confessed as the lighter shot forward.

Two other craft in the way veered aside, the owner of one snapping oaths, Feylind ignored him, intent upon Fiark. "Tell the man where we're pointing this tub."

When her brother took his time to indicate direction, Feylind jabbed down one oar like a rudder and shot the lighter craft side- ways. Head twisted, she sized up the motley collection of boats, small and large, riding over their slice-cut reflections in the shelter of Innish harbor. Her grasp of detail quickly winnowed the clutter of merchant brigs: the slipshod ones with their sails tied in gaskets, and others run by more rigorous captains, rolling neat at their moorings with yardarms varnished and stripped. She assessed crosshatched rigging, the swept decks with baled cargoes, then unerring, spotted the one vessel set apart.

"Haht" she whooped, triumphant. "Belay Fiark's word, I already see." She backwatered, hauled, and jacked the lighter onto her self- determined new heading. "We're bound for the brig with the shame- less bronze tits on her figurehead."

"The Cariadwin," Fiark admitted to the muddled-up oarsman, who 227.

J^NN.

sat with his looms raised and dripping. "She's the new-looking brig on the far southwest mooring, and if anyone's shameless while still fully dotbed, it's my sister. Please accept my regret for her manners."

"Shameless, is it?" Feylind jabbed in her right blade and sent a rocketing arc of water dousing over her brother's neat head. "Take worse than a wetting to cool down your insolence, but that will do for a start."

"Wench!" Fiark laughed. "For each salt stain and watermark, I'll see you chained to the washtub at home. Our stepfather won't spare you from drudgery either. He swore he'd help if I held you down.

We've all got ripped hose and holed stockings for darning. High time you sat for us, mending."

"You conspired against me?" Feylind accused.

"Well yes." Fiark flipped back the dripping bangs plastered to his raised eyebrows. "Don't look so wounded. Your mother and I share the general opinion that you could stand more practice at needle- work. You ought to cultivate some womanly graces for the day you weary of seafaring."

This time, he was wise and fast enough to duck as the water grazed over his head. "No chance at all," countered Feylind, carving into the pull of the next stroke. "If that means getting soft and thick bearing babes, I'd sooner swim with the sharks." Her expert handling shot the narrow lighter into the choppy crosscurrents alongside the Cariad- win's side strakes.

Not to be outdone, Fiark dug into his scrip and pressed another coin in the palm of the flummoxed lighterman. "Come back at sun- down. Our appointment should finish then." Despite his town clothes and his love of staid commerce, he proved then and there he could still beat his sister up the battens of a deepwater trader.

The Cariadwin's captain sauntered on deck to meet them. He was a thick man, swarthy and wrinkled, with one eye crimped to a perma- nent squint from judging the set of his canvas. Wind and sun, and the tireless barrage of the elements had gnarled his joints, and his unlaced shirt ruffled against a chest broad enough to muscle a siege ram. He tucked away the rigging knife just used to clear a jammed block, his sharp glance touching Feylind and swinging at once back to Fiark. "Your sister, yes?" His thick, frosted eyebrows tipped upward with inquiry. "She have a strong stomach? There's business we'll have to conduct in the hold that's no pretty sight for a woman."

"Nor for a man, either," Feylind retorted, stance braced against the mild swing as the brig turned to the wind on her beam. "I promise not to puke first."

228.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

The captain threw back his head and roared with bass laughter.

"By Dharkaron's vengeance!" He dealt Fiark's twin a slap between the shoulder blades that might have staggered her forward, had she not reflexively shifted her footing. "Why couldn't I have found a lass like you before I had a wife and eight weans, not to mention six lusty mistresses?"

"Because lasses like me have no use for weans, and even less for a husband." Feylind grinned back, her teeth like fine ivory, and her hair a gold rope in the sunlight. "Keep your eyes and your insinuations out of my shirtfront, and get on with what Fiark came for."

Not chastened at all, still very much taken with the female curves underneath the breeches and waistcoat, the captain waved a lanky arm toward the opened hatch amidships. "Step into my lair, then, shewolf." He sidestepped to the ladder and led the way down. More vf his peppery invective boomed up from the cavernous opening.

"First or last, if you puke, lady, you'll be the one handed the bucket and rag to swab up the mess on my deck."

Fiark elbowed his sister aside before she could effect a reply. "A man might think you had bollocks in those breeks, the way you carry on." He ducked Feylind's punch through a hasty descent, then laughed at her scowl, framed in cloud fleece above him as she swung onto the ladder. "Step on my fingers, minx, you'll be sorry."

Feylind's retort came more thoughtful than barbed. "Trust me, it isn't your fingers I'm itching to flatten."

They descended into the brig's lower deck, enveloped by gloom and the fusty miasma of damp arisen from the bilges. The hull was new, the fug of lamp oil and mildew not yet entrenched through the tarry bite of the oakum worked into her seams. Feylind knew ships, in particular ones fashioned by Cattrick's exacting craftsmen.

Attuned to the hull like a sounding board, she analyzed the chafe of the lines and the slap of wavelets transmitted through the thick tim- bers; in her critical judgment, she determined the captain was compe- tent. No fittings banged, and no halyards thrummed loose to tap and spin kinks at the masthead. The small talk of three hands at work mending sail drifted down from the forecastle. In the aft cabin, a nasal-voiced purser conducted an inventory of stores with the cook, standard enough practice for a ship between legs of a sea passage.

A blue-water trader just cleared into port followed a preset routine.

The lower hold beneath would be cleared and swept, ropes and nets tidied in smart readiness for onloading new cargo. Aboard Cariadwin the main hatch was not open in welcome, but shut fast in the velvety gloom. No lit lamp burned in the ring overhead. Rather than roust 229.

JANNY WURTS.

out his sailhands for laggards, the captain crouched and whispered a password.

The countersign returned was a sequence of taps. Then, from the inside, the hatched grating cracked. A brown eye peered upward.

Against total darkness, the bared gleam of a knife scribed a thin line of silver.

"It's hirasel" assured a low voice in clan accents. A stirred exhala- tion came from below, as listeners released pent-back tension.

"You carry convicts freed from Lysaer's galleys?" Feylind whis- pered in excitement.

"Aye." The captain muscled the heavy grating aside. "They've got the news out of Tysan and Havish your brother's been sweating to hear." To the clansmen below, whose lives would be instantly forfeit if the authorities at Innish caught wind of their presence, the brig's mas- ter assured, "You're kept safe enough. Fiark's loyalty's true, and I've three hands with good eyes sitting guard on the forecastle. They'll shout if anyone boards us."

The face moved, then the knife in token of cauti-ous trust granted.

"For me," the man said, emphatic, "I'd slit my own veins and leave my blood to the sea before I'd risk freedom again."

Warm air swirled up from the close, musty darkness, made sti- fling by the lack of ventilation. Someone below unshuttered a can- dle. The weak illumination showed the upper-deck planking had been tacked over with canvas to seal off any chance gleam of light.

The men who inhabited this miserable den numbered an odd forty, faces upturned in keen wariness toward the visitors brought by the captain.

For all their cramped confines, they were reasonably clean. The few knives shared among them kept them shaven and groomed. Torsos roped in muscle from hard labor at the oar were decently clothed, some in the mended rags of forest-tanned leathers, and others in shirts gleaned by sailhands from Innish's used clothing stalls and motley from the ship's slop chest. No face looked healthy. Most were sorrowfully thin. The wrists and ankles rinsed by the flickering light were disfigured and angry where steel and salt water had chafed into permanent scars.

Feylind felt sorrow before sickness, then a ripping fresh anger as she reached the base of the ladder and a younger scout brushed by her to replace the hatch. A chance flare of the candle touched the raised, ugly mark left by some mayor's harsh practice of branding men sentenced as convicts.

Fiark sucked a shocked breath, then said without preamble, "What 230.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

are your needs? You'll have anything in my power that doesn't jeop- ardize my patron or require an outright act of theft."

The clan spokesman pushed forward, squinting through hanks of salt-and-pepper hair not yet regrown long enough to braid. He limped badly, his right ankle fused from a poorly set break. Still, he had not lost the grace of his manners. "Fiark?" He extended a forearm for the traditional clasp of amity. "My loyalty belongs to the Earl of Taerlin. In his place, hear my gratitude for your strength of heart."

"Speak," Fiark urged. He need not stress that each hour Cariadwin lingered in a port ruled by townsmen, the risk to her fugitives increased.

The clansman bowed his head, for a moment overcome. "Provi- sions, first off. Fresh meat and fruit. Bad diet has left many of us sick- ened."

"Clothing," Feylind added. "I'll supply funds."

But the freed man touched her wrist in restraint. "Bless you, but no. We won't be beholden for what our cousins in Selkwood are able enough to supply." To Fiark, he summed up, "For that, you need only sign us a legitimate cargo bound upcoast to Elssine or Telzen."

"Have to be luxuries," the captain chipped in from his laconic, square stance by the ladder. "Our lading list out of Cheivalt says our main hold's chock full of wool bales and barley bound for the brew- ers upcoast."