Before Yulan could say anything, a rush of wings had him ducking away; too slow to avoid the stabbing impact of a beak on his skull. Yulan cursed and touched his hand to his scalp. It felt wet and sticky. A moment later, he could feel the blood trickling down his forehead.
‘First blood. It is best to keep moving,’ Lake said impassively. ‘These birds defend their families, even at peril of their own lives.’
Corena’s scow was moored in the lee of the island’s furthest point, where the rocks sloped away beneath the sea. Kottren’s motley little fleet had its own berthing in a cliff-ringed cove beneath the castle. They had not allowed the fishing boat anywhere near that.
The waters looked calm but Yulan still felt a twinge of foreboding at the prospect of a night afloat. At least he and Lake were spared any further aerial assaults. For whatever reason, the gulls chose not to nest down here on the lowest ground.
‘You can hail a boat to take you aboard,’ Lake said. ‘The Corsair King will meet you here in the morning.’
Yulan regarded the grizzled warrior. He read a subtle tension in the man’s posture and eyes. His own mimicked it, he knew.
Yulan’s every instinct told him this was all still edging its way towards bloodshed. He knew a good deal about woodworking and carving and had sometimes heard craftsmen say that a piece of raw wood held within it a shape that it wanted to become. He felt imprecisely but strongly that the day now drawing to a close had the shape of a bloody tomorrow within it, willing its own expression.
He suspected that Lake had the same sense. Perhaps even the same thought: This man might be dangerous if the time comes. Why wait for that time to choose its own moment?
‘You wonder whether you should try to kill me,’ Lake said.
Which was at once a good deal more blunt and more precise than Yulan was entirely expecting. He let his hand drift just a touch closer to the hilt of his sword. Barely noticeable.
‘You hesitate,’ Lake continued in a matter-of-fact way, ‘which means you have lost. If you attempt me now, I will kill you.’
Yulan knew, as fact not hubris, that he was better with a sword than at least nineteen out of any twenty men in the Hommetic Kingdom. The problem was that this one had the manner and assurance of that troublesome twentieth. In all likelihood, Hamdan was watching from the boat offshore and, given his absurd talents, could probably put an arrow or two in Lake even from there, but that would be of little consolation if Yulan was already dead.
‘I have spent three times the years since your mother squeezed you out learning the matter of violence,’ Lake announced. ‘I have embraced it and made it my own.’
Yulan forced some looseness into his shoulders and a smile onto his face.
‘I’m sure you’re very happy together, but I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Only to lift the burden of Kottren off from the backs of the fisherfolk.’
For the first time, Yulan thought he saw the faintest flicker of contempt in Lake’s face.
‘You should not disavow your willingness to kill. You diminish and weaken yourself. Now I know, still more certainly than before, that if you attempt me I will kill you.’
‘I thank you for the lesson,’ Yulan said lightly. ‘I regret any disappointment it may cause, but I’ll not be attempting you now. Perhaps another time?’
Lake gave a little nod of his head. Yulan turned his back on the warrior and waved to the fishing boat.
‘You should consider, when you ponder what is to come, that I am not the greatest danger on this island,’ Lake said behind him. ‘There is more power here than you see, and it will oppose you.’
Yulan steadfastly kept waving, which took a certain effort given how much he disliked the sound of that.
V
‘How could he have an Orphanidon and something worse fighting for him?’ Hamdan asked in disbelief.
‘What’s an Orphanidon?’ Corena asked.
‘Warriors of the Empire of Orphans,’ Hamdan explained before Yulan could say anything. ‘The Emperor’s personal army and the best killers there are, most’d say. Those who’ve not met the Free, anyway.’
They were sitting cross-legged on the deck of the fishing boat. It was rocking so gently that Yulan found if he kept his eyes fixed on the planks he could master his nausea. Out in the darkness he could hear the faint sound of waves slapping rocks, but they sounded half-hearted. The sea was not making war on him tonight.
‘One man can’t make much difference,’ Corena said.
‘It’s not about the number; it’s the nature of the man,’ Hamdan said, shaking his head. ‘Whole history of the Free proves that. Orphanidons are much the same.’
‘He might be lying about the something worse,’ Yulan said. ‘But one Orphanidon’s enough to fret over, anyway.’
He flapped a hand at a fly buzzing in his face, wishing it would go and immolate itself in one of the torches burning around the boat to keep the night at bay.
‘I failed. Half the purpose of me going in there alone was to see what faced us if it came to the sword. All I bring back is questions.’
Hamdan snorted, almost dismissively.
‘Questions we didn’t even know to ask before. Don’t go flogging yourself for missing the mark of perfection. You’ll have flayed your back to the bone by the time you’re my age, believe me.’
‘Of course it comes to the sword,’ Corena said with more than a hint of irritation.
‘Maybe not,’ said Hamdan. ‘Not yet, anyway. If your Corsair King’s foolish enough to take a tithe from you, even Munn of Festard won’t be able to shrug that off. Lords can’t stand by while bandits go around squeezing all the juice from their fruit, can they?’
Corena scowled and rose to her feet. She stamped away, shouting angry orders at her unlucky crew.
‘You’ve all the gentle touch of a rock,’ Yulan observed.
Hamdan did look a little guilty. He rubbed at his eye wearily.
‘And you’re very serious for a young man,’ he grunted.
That was true. Yulan had been serious for a child, serious a youth. Nothing had changed yet, if it ever would. He had always felt, from his earliest years, that there was a bigger world beyond his homeland. One where greater deeds and consequences awaited him. He had followed the scent of them north, out of the wastes. To the Free.
‘But you’re right,’ Hamdan continued. ‘I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s been a bad day. You’ve had solid ground under your feet. Me? I’ve been stuck out here with only the waves for company.’
He wobbled his hand in imitation of the rocking sea and grimaced.
‘True, though, isn’t it? If the Free turning up at his door isn’t enough to frighten this Kottren off, him being stupid enough to try for a tithe’s about the least painful way out of this I can see.’
‘He’s not nearly as scared of us as he ought to be, that’s for sure.’
‘How many swords did you count?’ Hamdan asked.
‘Twenty-three. Could easily be the same again out of sight.’
‘Who wins, if it’s you and me against fifty of them?’
Yulan shook his head.
‘Before the Orphanidon showed up on the game board, I’d have said us. Now? Maybe still us? Unless Lake’s telling the truth and there’s even worse than him waiting for us. I tell you, though, it might be Kottren Malak needs killing more than any man I’ve ever met.’
‘Oh, you’re young,’ smiled Hamdan ruefully. ‘The world’s got far, far worse than Kottren Malak in its quiver. You carry on the way you’re going, might be you even get the chance to kill some of them. Just make sure you’re getting paid well to try it, because they’re the ones liable to kill you right back.’
A slab of the hard, grainy bread that passed for food on the boat landed suddenly in Yulan’s lap. He started and looked up at Corena.
‘Not much to eat, but us tithe-fruit make do with what we have,’ she said as she threw another to – or perhaps at – Hamdan.