“Your Grace,” he soothed, “I understand your feelings, but, truly, it took more courage to come away with me than it would have taken to stay. Perhaps you could have … negotiated your surrender. After all, you are a duke, not some nobody Sharleyan and Cayleb could simply sweep under the carpet. But once we reach Desnair and find a way to get you to Zion, the Grand Inquisitor himself will greet you as a true son of Mother Church. Believe me, you’ll find the respect your birth and your sacrifices in God’s cause deserve, and the time will come when Mother Church’s victorious armies will restore all you’ve lost and more.”
“Well,” Rock Coast half-mumbled, “I suppose.…”
His voice trailed off, and Mahrtynsyn finished unpacking the mess kits with a sigh of relief.
* * *
Night wind hissed in the tall seagrass and waves roared softly, rhythmically, across the rocky strand. Braigyr Head, on the border between Rock Coast and the Earldom of MaGuire, loomed above the beach like a sentinel, shielding the bonfire burning above the high tide line from inland eyes. Or Sedryk Mahrtynsyn certainly hoped it did, anyway.
“You’re sure they’re out there?” Rock Coast demanded.
“They’ve been here every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday night for the last three five-days, and they’ll be here for the next two if they miss our fire tonight, Your Grace,” Mahrtynsyn told him … for no more than the thirtieth time. “It’s not that terrible a hardship for them, and they won’t raise any suspicion. The fishing off Braigyr Head is actually quite good.”
“As long as someone hasn’t slipped them enough marks to betray us,” the duke growled fretfully.
“That isn’t going to happen,” Mahrtynsyn said rather more flatly than he normally spoke to the duke. Rock Coast looked at him in the fire-spangled darkness, and the priest shrugged. “These are faithful sons of Mother Church, Your Grace, tried and tested in the fire. Believe me, they would never betray me—I mean, us.”
The duke looked skeptical and started to say something else when Mahrtynsyn laid one hand on his forearm and pointed out to sea with the other.
“And here they are, Your Grace!” he announced, and felt Rock Coast’s taut muscles relax under his grip as the dinghy came through the surf and grated on the rocky beach.
One of the small boat’s two-man crew climbed nimbly over the side and waded the rest of the way ashore. He carried a bull’s-eye lantern, and light glowed as he opened the slide and trained it on the two men waiting for him.
“That you, Father?” he asked in a rough MaGuire accent.
“It is, my son,” Mahrtynsyn assured him, turning his head to let the fisherman see his face clearly even as he signed Langhorne’s Scepter in blessing. “Langhorne and Schueler bless you for your faithfulness!”
“Thank you, Father.” The fisherman ducked his head, but he also peered suspiciously at Rock Coast. “And this would be…?” he said dubiously.
Rock Coast started to reply to the insolent familiarity with a sharp setdown, but Mahrtynsyn squeezed his forearm again.
“He’s a friend, my son, another son of Mother Church. I vouch for him.”
“That’s good enough for me, Father,” the fisherman declared, and closed the lantern slide. “Best be getting into the boat, then.”
The four of them filled the dinghy pretty much to capacity. Rock Coast clearly didn’t think much of the battered, paint-peeling little boat, but at least he came from a coastal duchy, and he’d spent enough time in small craft to manage not to encumber the oarsmen.
The boat waiting for them was larger than the dinghy. That wasn’t saying a great deal, however, for it was little more than thirty feet long, and the smell of fish was overpowering. Rock Coast gagged quietly on it as he climbed aboard, but he made no complaints. Mahrtynsyn’s grip on his forearm had warned him that the fishing boat’s crew didn’t know who he was, and the duke approved of keeping them in ignorance. He had rather less faith in the goodness of men’s hearts than Mahrtynsyn appeared to cherish. If they realized they had the fugitive Duke of Rock Coast in their hands, they might just decide they could retire as rich men after selling him to the Crown.
“What’s next?” he asked Mahrtynsyn quietly as the boat came onto the wind and headed farther out to sea.
“Now we make rendezvous at dawn with something a bit larger and more comfortable than this, Your Grace,” the priest replied equally quietly, standing with him in the bow. “I’m afraid it still won’t be the sort of passenger galleon you’re accustomed to, but it will be fast and well armed.”
“Really?” Rock Coast raised an eyebrow, and Mahrtynsyn chuckled.
“Technically, Your Grace, what we’re meeting is a privateer out of Desnair.”
“A privateer?” the duke repeated sharply and frowned when the priest nodded. “Given what the Navy’s been doing to privateers, what makes you so confident this one will have survived to be waiting for us?”
“Because, as I said, it’s only technically a privateer. In fact, it’s been chartered by Mother Church and paid—paid very handsomely, as a matter of fact—not to take prizes. Its only job for the past month has been to wait for me—for us, now—at this rendezvous on the proper nights.”
“And how did it know to be waiting here this month?” Rock Coast sounded skeptical, and Mahrtynsyn shrugged.
“Your Grace, I didn’t know precisely when you and the others would make your attempt, but I knew roughly what the window of opportunity had to be. So last month, a different ‘privateer’ was waiting. The month before that, it was yet another ‘privateer’ … and next month, it would have been still a fourth.”
Rock Coast looked at him narrowly, and Mahrtynsyn hid a smile as he watched the duke reevaluating just how high in Mother Church’s hierarchy his “chaplain” actually stood. Or how high in the confidence of the adjutant of Mother Church’s Holy Inquisition, at least.
“Trust me, Your Grace,” the priest soothed. “The ship will be there, and once we’re aboard, her crew will see that both of us arrive safely in Desnair.”
* * *
“Sail on the larboard bow!”
Duke Rock Coast sat up from where he’d actually managed to fall asleep against the side of the fishing boat’s wretched little deckhouse. The fishermen had offered to let him go below, but he’d declined. The stench was bad enough on deck; he didn’t even want to think about what it must be like below decks.
Now he rubbed his eyes, peering in the indicated direction, and poked Mahrtynsyn in the ribs. The priest snorted awake and jerked upright, then stretched hugely.
“Yes, Your Grace?” he half yawned, and Rock Coast pointed.
“Unless I’m mistaken, that’s your ‘privateer,’ Father.”
Mahrtynsyn shielded his eyes with his hand, then nodded sharply as the two-masted schooner tacked in their direction. Desnair’s black horse on a yellow field flew from its foremast head, and he was pleased to note that it was even larger than he’d expected. Ideally, no one would even see them on the voyage to Desnair, but the big, obviously well-armed schooner looked more than capable of taking care of itself if it had to.
“About twenty minutes, I’d say,” Rock Coast said, estimating times and distances with an experienced eye, and grimaced. “I’m sure these fellows truly are the loyal sons of Mother Church you called them, Father, but I hope you won’t take it wrongly if I say I’ll be happy to be shut of their boat.”
“To be honest, Your Grace, I can’t fault you,” Mahrtynsyn admitted with a smile. “They’re fine fellows, but it is a bit … fragrant, isn’t it?”
“Nothing burning our clothes as soon as we get out of them won’t cure,” Rock Coast said dryly.