“Aye, aye, Jemar,” the mate said. He moved off fast enough to ease the sea barbarian chief’s temper for the moment. However, he would have felt a trifle better if he hadn’t sent the second mate off with Golden Cup. It never hurt a man to know that there was someone to take his place if he opened his mouth too often at the wrong times.
* * * * *
Gerik Ginfrayson was somewhere between wretchedly and horribly uncomfortable on the window ledge. But he would have clung to a branch or even hung from it by his tail (assuming he could grow one) to have as good a view of Fustiar the Renegade at work.
He had indeed seen everything clearly. Fustiar had lowered the dead (or at least senseless) prisoner into a hole in the floor of the tower’s dungeon, until he was out of sight. He had placed a bronze grating over the hole. He had sprinkled the grating with something that smoked like parchment sprinkled with rock oil and set alight.
Fustiar then nearly coughed himself into a fit and drank a good deal of wine (an entire large jug, Gerik judged) to clear his throat. It could not have cleared his head, but at least it did not befuddle it. Potent mages were dangerous enough working magic while sober; Gerik’s curiosity did not extend to being close to one working while manifestly drunk.
Now Fustiar was trotting industriously in circles around the grating. He held his staff crosswise in both hands and chanted as he moved. He was sober enough that the rhythm of his feet and the rhythm of his chant matched, or at least they had so far.
Meanwhile, a blue glow crept up through the grating. It brightened until it illuminated the entire dungeon, and Gerik drew back from the window for a short while. He was uneasy alike about the magic being worked here and about Fustiar’s noticing him as the light increased. Even the most moderate of mages dealt harshly with one who might be called a spy.
The glow continued to brighten until Gerik had to shield his eyes with one hand when he returned to his vantage. Certainly no human eye within the dungeon could any longer spy anything outside it.
If Fustiar’s eye was human.…
The mage was still moving, still chanting. The glow was brighter than ever. But in the middle of the glowing, something more solid, a heavy mist that seemed at once colorless and filled with every color of the rainbow, was curling up from the grating.
Gerik braced himself for the lash of heat on his skin. But as the mist rose like a snake toward the ceiling of the dungeon, he felt something quite different.
He felt as if the snow-laden winds of the southernmost Turbidus Ocean were blowing from the grating, filling the dungeon, and flogging his cheek. He shut his eyes, but the cold fire on his skin grew only more intense.
It began to seem that he had come here to witness the end of Fustiar the Renegade. If the man was still human, he had to be a stiffening corpse in the midst of that swirling ice.
* * * * *
“Habbakuk’s Gift!” was the cry from the boat.
“Board and be welcome,” was the traditional greeting from Windsword’s gangway.
Jemar the Fair looked around his cabin. Youris’s arrival made the council of captains here in Ansenor Bay as complete as it was going to be. The five here could vote for or against their all sailing in aid of Lady Eskaia and her enterprise. They could not bind Nersha, though if she spoke well of the voyage later, Jemar would see that she had a small share of whatever gain it might bring them. He and Nersha had shared too many drinks and occasionally a bed to leave her out entirely.
Youris entered as usual, rather like a mouse visiting a houseful of elderly cats. The appearance was deceptive, also as usual. Youris was undoubtedly the best swordsman of Jemar’s captains, and the most ruthless in looting prizes and ransoming captives. Honest trade came his way but rarely, and at times Jemar wondered if Youris wouldn’t be happier sailing under Synsaga. Somebody was going to slit his throat sooner or later, but on the Crater Gulf it might be later.
The five captains had each brought a servant with their stool of office. Some chiefs handed out maces, or staffs, or ornamented speaking trumpets; Jemar handed out folding stools of plain leather and even plainer wood. There was a time for display, but the serious business of a council of captains was not it.
Jemar’s style of addressing a council was also plain rather than florid. This was not entirely because of his pose of simplicity, though it certainly supported that pose. The simple fact was that Jemar the Fair hated long speeches, both hearing them and giving them; they made his throat dry, his ears hurt, and his temper uncertain.
Those women who shared his bed (and over the years one could have crewed a fair-sized ship with them) knew that he could be eloquent, bawdy, even tender whenever he chose, at any length he and his partner enjoyed. Among his captains and crew, however, he had the reputation of a man who seldom used two words when one would do and often preferred silence to saying anything at all.
He wondered briefly if Lady Eskaia knew that, and that the way he’d spoken to her was a sign of his high regard. He also wondered what a merchant princess of Istar would say to being well regarded by a sea-barbarian chief.
Then he stopped wondering, because Captain Youris was putting his stool in the center of the circle, the request for permission to stand and speak. Jemar swept his eyes around the cabin; the last servants departed as if the deck had caught fire behind them.
It was unusual for a captain to request to speak to the council before hearing what Jemar had to say. It was neither unknown, nor illegal, nor even particularly suspicious. Jemar decided that he would be the suspect one if he insisted on Youris’s silence.
Also, a man speaking often revealed what a man listening could hide.
“Shall Youris speak?” Jemar asked.
“Youris shall speak.” It was a ragged quartet (Jemar had heard better in seaside taverns with all parties three sheets to the wind), but he detected no doubt or dissent in his voice or anyone else’s.
“I shall speak,” Youris replied, accepting the permission as formally as it had been of feed. Some sea barbarian chiefs tolerated both drunken brawls and drunken brawlers in their councils; Jemar had found neither of much use, even as entertainment.
Youris remained armed as he stepped forward, but that was his right and no one so much as blinked at it. His voice was low, rather than the squeak one might expect, and his words came out as steadily as the beat of a galley’s oars at cruising speed.
“I would not care to prejudge our chief’s decisions, but I would be reluctant to do anything at this season except continue our cruises. Istar’s fleet grows by a ship a month, and the Karthayans and Knights of Solamnia have little love for us either. They lack seagoing ships to make their enmity effective, but-”
“Youris, your pardon,” Captain Shilriya said. “But counselor’s talk is not what we need. If you wish to amuse yourself, I have some wine or perhaps even stronger pleasures aboard Winged Fox. But if you wish to amuse us, be brief. Jemar has been courteous. Do return the favor.”
Youris turned to Shilriya and let his eyes linger. Most men did that. Shilriya was a robustly built redhead with a taste for long braids and short, low-cut tunics. It was hard to look at some of her tunics without wondering when she would emerge from them, with spectacular results.
Youris did not seem to be studying Shilriya’s charms, however. He seemed to be trying to silence her with the sheer intensity of his gaze. That was foolish, with Shilriya. Jemar knew her better than most women he’d bedded, and knew she had a will of iron. Youris should know that, too, unless he’d turned witling.
Or unless something had him uneasy, and this lapse of memory was a sign of it.