But he recognised an emaciated wolf, staring at him with dead eyes. There was also a huge lizard of the sort that scavenged carcasses across much of the Kingdom. He thought a strange, hunched shape huddled at the back of its prison might be an ape, one of the almost but not quite human monsters he had heard rumoured.
Only one of the captive animals held his attention for more than a moment. A lion. The kind of big male, bearded and maned, that his own people both hunted and respected. The desert lions were feared for the threat they posed to the precious Massatan horses, but no other creature was so admired.
Yulan could see the lion’s ribs through its hide. Its jowls hung slack. He could not be absolutely sure, but it looked as though the longest of the animal’s teeth had been knocked out. Certainly there were welts and scars across its flanks and back that suggested its captivity was ungentle.
It struck Yulan that any man so proud of holding all these creatures in such sordid imprisonment betrayed a terrible smallness of imagination and understanding.
‘They’ve come from all across the world to grace my court,’ the Corsair King was murmuring.
Yulan ignored him. His eyes followed the surprising keepers of this menagerie: children. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all young, all clothed in drab rags. All shuffling barefoot between the cages, sweeping away straw and dung that had spilled out onto the floor, pushing food through the bars. Some were hunched over. Some looked to be so thin they might collapse at any moment. Their dirt and rags and illness made it hard to tell how old they were.
Kottren, having evidently noted Yulan’s gaze, said simply, ‘My children.’
‘Your children,’ Yulan echoed.
He had seen a similar kind of suffering among Corena’s people. Had even known it once or twice himself when young, under the crushing weight of near-famine. The anger he felt stirring in his breast might be dangerous, for him as well as others, so he hid it away.
‘Every one sprung from my loins,’ Kottren muttered. ‘I care for them best as I can, now their mothers’re gone.’
Yulan wondered at the fate of the mothers, but did not enquire. He doubted there was anything to be gained from further exploration of the fetid swamp that was Kottren.
‘D’you want to feed them?’ Kottren was asking. ‘Perhaps the lion?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You’ll let me feed you, at least,’ Kottren said, beckoning one of the nearest children.
She came – Yulan thought it was a she – on unsteady legs. Yulan noted that most of the other children stopped where they were, scattered about the hall, to watch. There was something in the way they held themselves, their expressions … anxiety, perhaps? Trepidation? He felt a tension tightening the musty air. It did not quite fit Kottren’s casual gesture and the calmness with which the girl responded. So much here felt subtly – or not so subtly – off-kilter, as if the Corsair King’s imbalances had seeped into everyone and everything.
‘I should be getting back to the boat,’ Yulan said, just a little more curtly than he intended.
The girl stood before him, gazing up at him. Her eyes were red-veined and had some sort of encrustation at their corners. There were sores on her face. Her fingers were crooked, over-aged. She looked to Yulan like misery given form. He found himself wanting to give her a smile, to offer some small comfort.
‘She can fetch whatever y’want from the kitchens,’ Kottren said.
‘No, thank you,’ said Yulan. He found it difficult to shift his eyes away from that girl, but he did. ‘I’m awaited. What message shall I take with me?’
‘Message? Oh, the tithe notion?’
‘One-tenth of everything the fishing boats land, delivered up to you each month for as long as you live, in payment for peace.’
It was an offer riddled with trips and traps, only to be made if the Corsair King proved – as he had so far – resistant to intimidation. None but an idiot would seriously entertain it for long. Yet Kottren stood there, grasping and tugging at the fringes of his russet beard. For all the world, it looked as though he was giving the matter serious thought.
‘I’ll sleep on it,’ Kottren mused, almost to himself. ‘Sometimes answers come, y’know? Creeping into a sleeping head like … spiders, I suppose.’
He smirked unappealingly at Yulan.
‘Lake here’ll walk you back to your boat. I’ll bring you my answer down there in the morning. Early. I always rise early. Keeps the years from weighing too heavy, y’know?’
IV
There was little vegetation on the island. Stretches of short grass strewn with pink and white flowers were interrupted by bare rock and patches of gritty soil. Although a few stubborn bushes had rooted themselves in crevices, they could hardly be said to be thriving. It all meant there was little shelter from the wind blustering across the low, sloping isle, but Yulan – to his surprise – found it rather pleasant. Without the unsteady deck of a fishing boat beneath him, there was a certain appeal to the vast sky and the clean wind.
There might be little greenery, but there was life in abundance. The spine of the island had been colonised by thousands of gulls. Their nests were all around, even within a pace or two of the path down which Yulan and Lake walked. Their quarrels and conversations filled the air, a cacophony riding white wings.
‘You used to be an Orphanidon?’ Yulan said as they walked through the tumult.
‘I did.’
Yulan could not see Lake’s face, for Kottren’s bodyguard followed behind him. He imagined it to be entirely still and expressionless.
‘You don’t look the part,’ he said. ‘Not now, if you ever did.’
No answer came to that. It had been an easy and crude jab, Yulan knew, but he had to take the measure of this man somehow.
‘You’re very far from home, in more ways than one,’ he continued. ‘I thought being an Orphanidon was all about noble service to the Empire, not selling your sword to mad bandits.’
The gulls were growing angry as the two men passed through the heart of their nesting grounds. White shapes lunged down out of the sky, screaming accusations. Some dived so close to his head that Yulan could feel the sweep of their wings. He heard Lake’s quiet reply clearly enough, even among those distractions.
‘I have not been an Orphanidon for many years. I serve as I please.’
The accent was unfamiliar, certainly not that of any native speaker Yulan had ever met. It proved nothing, but it could be the voice of an Imperial exile.
‘It’s an inglorious cause you’ve chosen to adopt,’ Yulan observed.
‘Less so than was the Empire of Orphans.’
Fragments of eggshell crunched beneath Yulan’s feet.
‘You fell out of love with your masters, then,’ he said. ‘That’s a point in your favour. Kottren Malak might be mad, but the Orphans make him look sane as sane can be.’
‘Just so. I choose to serve a lesser madness, and have thus improved my station.’
There might have been a whisper of wry humour in that. It really was hard to tell with Lake, and Yulan had always thought himself rather good at reading a man’s tone.
‘I hope your Corsair King will not force us to our swords,’ he said. ‘His madness might be the lesser, but it’s still not worth dying for.’
‘You think I would die?’ Lake asked, and Yulan definitely heard amusement in that. ‘I know the Free, and your great capacities and terrible magics. But you do not know the Corsair King as well as you think. Even if all your hundreds came to this place, his would not be the only people dying.’
Yulan stopped and turned to face his companion. Lake stood four or five paces behind him. Just out of sword reach. Whatever his past had truly been, the man was capable and careful.