“I assume you’re ready and-like every young lieutenant who’s yet to develop a working brain-eager to go, Hektor?” he said finally.
“I wouldn’t say eager, Sir,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk replied, “but my boat crew’s waiting. Well, actually I suppose, your boat crew.”
“They’re yours for the moment,” Yairley reminded him. “And keep an eye on that rascal Mahlyk. Don’t let him damage my paintwork!”
“I’ll make sure he behaves himself, Sir,” the flag lieutenant promised.
“See that you do. Now, go! I believe you have a little trip to make.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
The lieutenant touched his chest in salute, first to Yairley, then to Captain Lathyk, and headed for the boat hooked onto Destiny ’s main chains. He didn’t look back, and Yairley watched him go, then shook his head.
“Young Hektor will do just fine, Sir Dunkyn,” Lathyk said quietly, and Yairley cocked his head at his flag captain.
“That obvious, was I?”
“Well, we’ve served together for a while now, you and I, Sir. And young Hektor, for that matter.” Lathyk shrugged. “I don’t think everyone in Destiny ’s guessed how you feel about the lad, though. Why, I’m sure there’s some assistant cook’s mate who hasn’t noticed at all!”
“I see why the men think so highly of your sense of humor, Captain,” Yairley said dryly, but Lathyk only smiled, saluted, and turned away to see to conning his ship the rest of the way up the estuary to the town of Sarmouth itself.
Yairley watched him go, and the truth was that the flag captain’s humor had helped… a little, at least. On the other hand, if anything happened to Aplyn-Ahrmahk, the admiral knew he’d spend the rest of his life second-guessing himself. He’d had no specific orders to send the youngster upriver, and he was quite certain any number of other captains and flag officers would have been horrified by his decision to detail a member of the imperial family-even an adoptive member of the imperial family-to such a risky venture. But the Charisian Navy’s tradition was that neither birth nor rank exempted a man from the risks everyone else ran, and trying to wrap the boy-the young man, now-in cotton silk to protect him would have done no one any favors. All the same, he wondered sometimes if some perverse streak inside him kept goading him into sending Aplyn-Ahrmahk into danger in an effort to prove, possibly only to himself, that he was willing to do it. Or as some sort of bizarre counterweight for how fond of the boy he’d become.
In this case, however, given who the boat party was supposed to pick up, Aplyn-Ahrmahk was actually a logical choice. In some ways, at any rate. And as long as one could overlook the probability of getting a member of the imperial family killed, of course. Not likely to enhance a flag officer’s future career, that.
Oh, stop it, Dunkyn! The boy’s in no more danger than anyone else you’re sending with him! The experience will do him good, and Lieutenant Gowain’s a good, competent officer. He’ll keep Hektor out of trouble.
Sir Dunkyn Yairley took a deep breath, clasped his hands behind him, put Lieutenant Aplyn-Ahrmahk firmly out of his mind, and began to pace slowly up and down the weather hammock nettings while he watched his squadron advance on the hapless little town they’d come to destroy. . IV.
Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
“ Kill the heretics! Burn the bastards out!”
The raucous shout went up from somewhere deep inside the mob, and other voices took up the refrain, bellowing the words in an ugly, hungry rhythm. It sounded like the snarl of some huge beast, not something born of human throats. It was still several blocks away, but Byrk Raimahn’s heart plummeted as he heard it coming.
“Come on, Grandfather!” he said, reaching out and actually grasping Claitahn Raimahn’s arm as if to drag him bodily out of the courtyard.
The old man-he was in his sixties, his hair shining like snow in the cold winter sunlight-was still powerfully built, and he jerked his arm out of his grandson’s grasp.
“Damn it, Byrk!” he snarled. “This is our home! I’m not handing it over to a mob of street scum!”
For a moment, Byrk seriously contemplated knocking him unconscious and simply hauling his limp body down the street. Claitahn might still be a fit, muscular man, but Byrk had spent the last five years sparring with some of the finest boxing coaches available in Tellesberg’s and now Siddar City’s gymnasiums. A quick jab to the solar plexus to bring his grandfather’s hands down, then a right hook to the jaw would do the trick, he thought grimly.
But he couldn’t do that, of course. Not to his grandfather. And because he couldn’t, he stepped back, drew a deep breath, and made his voice come out flat and hard.
“We’ve got to go. Go now, while there’s still time.”
“This is our home,” Claitahn repeated, “and it’s a lot safer place to be than getting caught in the street by those thugs! The City Guard’s bound to turn up soon, and when it does-”
“The Guard isn’t going to get here-not in time to do any good,” Byrk said, hating himself for the words as he saw the look in his grandfather’s eye. Yet they had to be said. “And we’re in the richest part of the Quarter. Those bastards out there will make burning us out a priority. I know you don’t like the thought, but we’ve got to go.”
“And where do you propose we go to?”
“I know a place. A place where we’ll be safe-or, at least, if we’re not safe there, we won’t be safe anywhere in Siddar City!”
“Then go!” Claitahn snapped. “Take your Grandmother and go. But I didn’t give up everything in Tellesberg just to let gutter trash and street scum drive me out of my home here! ”
“Grandfather, they may be street scum,” Byrk said as reasonably as he could, “but there are hundreds of them. You wouldn’t stand a chance of stopping them. All you’d manage to do is get yourself killed.”
“And if I choose-” Claitahn began, but for the first time since he’d been a passionate, adolescence-driven fifteen-year-old, Byrk cut him off in midsentence.
“And if you choose to stay here and get yourself killed, Grandmother will stay with you! There’s no way she’ll run away and leave you… and neither will I, you stubborn, stiff-necked, obstinate -!”
He made himself stop and glared at his grandfather. Eyes of Raimahn brown locked with eyes of Raimahn brown, and after a brief, titanic moment, it was Claitahn’s which fell.
“I…”
“Grandfather, I understand.” Byrk reached out again, resting his hands on Claitahn’s shoulders. “You’ve never run from anything in your life, and giving ground before a mob comes hard. I know that. But I don’t want to see you die, and I know you don’t want to see Grandmother die, so, please, can we get out of here, you stubborn old… gentleman?”
Claitahn stared at him for a moment, then surprised himself with a harsh laugh. He put his right hand over the younger, stronger hand resting on his left shoulder, just for a moment. Then he nodded sharply.
“My legs aren’t as young as they used to be,” he said. “So if we’re going to be running away, what say we see if we can’t get a good head start?”
Samyl Naigail gave a yell of delight as he used the smoldering slow match to light the rag stuffed into the neck of the bottle of lamp oil and threw the incendiary through the display window. Glass shattered, and a moment later he smelled smoke and saw the spreading pool of fire flickering in the depths of the shop. Racks of dry goods and bolts of cloth began to smolder, taking flame quickly, and Naigail’s eyes glowed.
This was better even than bedding a woman! There was a power- a wild fierce freedom-in finally freeing the anger which had boiled inside him for so long. Smoke rose from other shopfronts all around him as the mob rampaged through the Charisian Quarter, torching everything in sight. Fortunately, the wind was out of the northwest. It would blow the wind and cinders away from the central part of the city, and if they happened to set fire to the harborside tenements where the filthy Charisians lived like so many spider-rats in a city garbage dump, so much the better!