‘He didn’t mean to offend,’ Yulan said on behalf of his comrade, who nodded in confirmation.
‘I daresay,’ she grunted. ‘Folks often don’t. Tell me this: we going to get our throats cut in the night?’
Yulan shook his head. ‘Hamdan and I’ll take watches by turn. I don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow, but I promise we’ll live to find out.’
He watched her back as she went to organise her own little crew for the night.
‘He has children in there,’ he said softly. ‘Kottren. We should get them out.’
‘Careful, son,’ Hamdan grunted. ‘Might be you think too much. If you didn’t want to be different, you’d no business joining the Free. Folks’ll fear you, maybe admire you. There’s not many of them will end up liking you, no matter what you do.’
The archer stretched himself out, setting his back to the deck and clasping his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes.
‘I’ll sleep first, unless you tell me otherwise.’
‘Fine.’
Yulan leaned on the gunwale, staring out over the island. A half-moon was lighting it with faint touches of greyish silver. The ripples on the surface of the sea glinted. In the far distance, he could see feeble little touches of orange light: torches or lamps in Kottren’s castle.
He had toyed with the notion of creeping back in there tonight. Finishing things quickly. He had not seen quite enough in his time ashore to be certain of that outcome, though. He did not know where in the crumbling castle Kottren slept, or whether Lake watched over him.
And there was still the chance, however slender, that this all would end without blood. There was no way to know, but Yulan could not help playing things out in his mind. Since childhood he had sometimes seen both the past – memories – and the future – possibilities – more clearly than those around him. It was part of why he had left his home in search of something more. It was part of why Merkent had sent him to this forsaken island. The Captain of the Free had told him: ‘You’ve got talents, but they’re like unbroken horses: no use to anyone until you prove you can ride them. So let’s find out if you know how to ride.’
‘Told you, you think too much,’ Hamdan said.
Yulan looked down at him.
‘I can hear you thinking from here,’ said Hamdan, eyes still closed. He rolled onto his side. ‘Just keep your watch well. The answers are waiting for us on the other side of the night, but tomorrow can’t talk until it gets here.’
‘All right,’ Yulan said.
‘And don’t get sick. If you empty your stomach on my head while I’m asleep, I’ll throw you overboard.’
Yulan made a sound halfway between grunt and laugh.
‘I mean it,’ Hamdan said.
‘I can’t swim.’
‘Neither can I. What’s that got to do with anything?’
VI
‘What in the name of all the entelechs is he wearing?’ Hamdan asked, staring in poorly concealed amazement at the Corsair King.
Kottren Malak was advancing slowly down the path towards Yulan, Hamdan and Corena. He came with close to a score of attendants and fighting men. Some of the former flanked him, holding up tall staves that attracted the ire of the seagulls and thus spared Kottren’s head from their attentions. Yulan wished someone had told him of that trick yesterday. As Hamdan said, though, the most striking thing was Kottren’s attire.
‘Are those seashells?’ Hamdan asked.
They were indeed. Scallop shells, by the look of them. Thirty or more were plated over Kottren’s shoulders and breast like a child’s notion of armour. On his head rested a wreath of gull feathers and dried seaweed. It trembled as Kottren limped closer.
‘He looks like something washed up on a beach,’ Hamdan murmured. ‘If that’s supposed to be royal regalia …’
Yulan already had another matter on his mind.
‘The Orphanidon’s not here,’ he said quietly.
‘No? That good or bad?’
‘Not sure.’
It was unexpected, and that troubled him. He had assumed Lake would be at his master’s side. The warrior’s absence made little obvious sense.
‘I don’t know whether to be proud or pained,’ the Corsair King was calling as he came out from beneath the assaults of the gulls. ‘I get the famous Free set on me and all I merit is a fishwife and you two sand-eaters.’
‘I’ll pain the bastard myself if he carries on like that,’ Hamdan muttered under his breath, dropping his head to conceal his lips from view.
‘Best to take the pride,’ Yulan said loudly. ‘All the Free stand behind us, even if you can’t see them yet. And this lady is no fishwife. She is here as contract-holder and to witness for her people how matters are settled between the Free and the Corsair King.’
He heard Corena crossing her arms, and could imagine with what fierce loathing she was watching Kottren’s approach. He hardly begrudged her that loathing. She was entitled to it.
Kottren’s shells scraped and clicked against one another as he drew himself up, a good twenty or so paces from Yulan and the others. He flicked both arms out sideways and those of his escort who lacked the look of fighters fell back a short way; those with weapons fell into line on either side of their king. The wind tugged at Kottren’s ragged crown and he lifted a hand to set it a little more firmly on his head. It would be laughable, if laughing were not so inadvisable.
‘She’s a fine day for the mighty t’be making parley,’ the Corsair King said with jab of his bearded chin towards the wide and cloudless sky.
‘As you say,’ Yulan nodded. ‘And what is it you’re to tell to us?’
‘What to tell, what to tell,’ Kottren echoed distractedly. He was watching gulls circling way up in the azure air.
Hamdan glanced at Yulan, one eyebrow sharply arched.
‘Mad for sure,’ the archer silently mouthed.
Yulan allowed himself the slightest and most subtle of shrugs.
‘I spent years under the heels of folks that thought they were my betters,’ the Corsair King told the sky. ‘Took me all that time to reckon out what a man’s real duty was. Y’know what I reckoned?’
‘No,’ said Yulan. He was not certain he managed to keep all of his impatience out of his voice.
‘Do what you want,’ Kottren smiled, turning his gaze at last down towards earthly matters. ‘Don’t go looking for a mercy no one’s going to give you. Don’t hope for a kindness that’s not in the world. Fight your way up, and break any bastard as tries to push you down.’
The Corsair King looked beyond Yulan.
‘What’s a contract-holder, then?’ he asked.
‘Our Captain and the elders of her village put their marks to a parchment,’ Yulan explained without any enthusiasm. ‘She carries it as proof that what we do is right in the law. Whatever we do, within the bounds of the contract.’
He tried to put a touch of threat into those last words, but it washed over Kottren unnoticed as far as he could tell. The Corsair King took a few paces closer and beckoned Corena with a crooked finger.
‘Let’s see it, then. Let’s see this contract between peasants and the Free that’s supposed to make my bowels tremble.’
‘There’s no need …’ Yulan began, but Corena was already moving smoothly past him.
‘Let the man see it if he wants,’ she said.
She carried the parchment case at the small of her back, strapped around her waist. Her hand moved round towards it as she walked. Kottren was holding out his hand. He was smiling with the sort of sour laziness Yulan had come to expect of the King’s amusement.
Off-kilter, Yulan’s mind whispered to him. It caught the shifting mood before he was consciously aware of it. It set his legs in motion, even as he was seeing that Corena’s hand behind her back clasped not the contract but something else, nestled in there beneath the leather case. He reached for her with one hand, for the hilt of his sword with the other, and already knew there was nothing he could do.