By now, all hands on deck had dropped their work in favor of scrambling to pick up Lady Eskaia’s baggage. They would have picked up her as well had they not been leaving that honor to their captain.
Perhaps it will be for the best. Habbakuk knows they love her, and if they see her as a good-luck charm …
Everyone on the deck of Windsword cheered as Jemar the Fair lifted his wife and carried her into the aftercastle.
* * * * *
Tarothin found Pride of the Mountain’s galley as ill-stocked as he had expected. However, there were herbs and spices enough for one of the potions, not the best but likely to be good enough with a little help from magic and a great deal more from the gods.
The Red Robe wizard worked swiftly, following the principle that if it didn’t taste bad, nobody would believe it was any good. The smell of the potion as it boiled nearly drove the cooks and their mates out of their own galley, and the boys who carried the pots on deck did so with their kerchiefs wrapped over their noses and mouths.
But it worked. By the time Pride of the Mountains was ready to sail, the still-pale recruits were on their feet-and promptly set to work by the boatswains’s mates, at the capstan, hauling on the sheets, or lashing loose gear in place.
Once offshore, of course, the weather and the ship together did their best to put the recruits back on the sick list. But that best was not good enough; all were still on their feet and working, or else off watch and sleeping off honest fatigue, when Pride met the Istarian fleet.
The weather was still nothing for a pleasure cruise, and Tarothin would have sworn that he saw fog, rain, spray, and clouds in the air all at once. He clung to the railing and tried to count the Istarian fleet, and made a guess of some fifteen ships, of a size to hold some thousand or more soldiers beyond their own crew.
Some of them were making heavy weather of it; the galleys were all under sail and had their oar ports lashed firmly shut. Even the heavier sailing ships were rolling with a lazy motion that could have made Tarothin queasy if he’d looked at them too long.
He did no such thing. Instead, he went below and locked himself in his cabin, his services having earned him quarters to himself. Then he lay down and bound himself with a light spell that would put him into a trance and a stronger one that would make him acutely aware of any magic or magic-workers in the fleet.
It would not allow him to interfere with any spells; that was another and more serious matter, not to mention far more perilous. Neither would he be as able as he wished to defend himself from magical attack, let alone physical, while he lay in the trance.
But the combination of spells did have one great virtue. He was like a fly on the wall of a room, undetectable by those going about their business below, who would remain unaware of his scrutiny.
When he awoke, the fleet of Istar would have fewer magical secrets from him.
* * * * *
Lady Eskaia lowered herself into her husband’s second-most-formal cabin chair, the vallenwood one, with inlays of polished, wine-hued coral and hornwhale ivory. Her husband noted that she moved with both caution and grace.
Indeed, she would not lose that grace until the last months of her pregnancy, when no woman could avoid taking on the shape of a melon with legs or moving like one. Otherwise she might have been an elf, perhaps one with the wild blood of the Kagonesti behind her dark coloring, with an instinctive grace of movement ashore or afloat, walking or dancing, clothed or-
Jemar did not force that thought from his mind. He did force his tongue to draw inspiration from it, to shape words that he hoped might send his wife back ashore.
“You are too beautiful to be real, even when I see you sitting here before me.”
“Even when I am bearing?”
“Even so.”
She blew him a kiss. “I will never cease to marvel at how a rough sea warrior became so honey-tongued.”
“I had inspiration, my lady.”
“Then if you were so inspired, my lord, why do you seem so ill at ease over my presence here? Am I bad luck?”
“No.” That was mostly the truth; those who believed women aboard ship were bad luck were a diminishing handful, and Jemar did not care to have any of them serving him.
“You have been my good luck for as long as I have known you,” he went on. “I owe-”
“Something to my dowry and to the connection I brought to you, with House Encuintras and its allies, I would say.”
“You would say that, when here I am speaking words of gentle passion-”
“Better than words of not-so-gentle passion to see me back in the boat and headed ashore.”
Jemar leaped from his chair. He wanted to go down on his knees, put his head in Eskaia’s lap, and beg her to consider what folly she was about to commit. Instead he stood, hands clenched into fists and pressed against his side.
Eskaia’s gaze seemed to pierce him like an arrow. Was she suspecting he might be about to raise a hand to her? He had done this twice; he was quite sure that his life would be forfeit if he did it a third time. It had made him guard his tongue, temper, and wine-bibbing, none of which in moderation, he supposed, would do him any harm.
Indeed, moderation would give him more years to spend with Eskaia, who was some seventeen years his junior and would probably be a silver-haired beauty when he was a mumbling wreck of a sailor or a corpse long since reduced to bones by the fish of some distant sea. He wanted those years. He wanted them so badly, he could taste them on his lips-
Eskaia rose and embraced him, so that he tasted his dreams on her lips instead. “I do not think lightly of the dangers that might come on this voyage, Beloved. But remember that I survived a winter storm while carrying Milandor, and he is now up to my shoulder and hearty as a minotaur.”
“A storm is not a battle. If the ship stays afloat, all aboard are apt to live out the storm. A battle is another matter. A battle that might pit us against the fleet of Istar, with the odds on their side-”
“You need not draw me a detailed chart of the perils of this course,” Eskaia said. “But consider how many perils I may avert.
“First, I may well know some of the Istarian captains, or at least those under them. If we come to negotiating rather than fighting, that will be useful.
“Second, Istar’s fleet might well be prepared to send Josclyn Encuintras’s son by marriage down among the Dargonesti and the sharks. They will be less willing to sink Josclyn’s daughter. My father is not too old to be a bad enemy.”
“You ask me to sail into battle with all knowing that I am ready to shield myself behind my wife? My wife who is with child?” Jemar’s fingers twitched, and his voice climbed to the pitch of wind shrieking in the rigging.
Eskaia did not move. Instead she smiled. “Choose. Be thought a coward by little minds for so shielding yourself. Or be thought a fool, by me and likely others, for refusing to avail yourself of every weapon that the gods can possibly allow you.”
Jemar’s shoulders sagged. Eskaia would not slash him with her tongue like a storm slashing sails to ribbons if she thought his pride had made him a fool. But something would depart from between them, something that made life sweeter than he had ever dreamed it could be.
“If I know you as I ought to, there is another reason,” he said. His smile was forced, but she answered it with one of her own. “You want to see our old friends again, our friends of the quest to Crater Gulf.”
“You are not as witless as you sometimes pretend to be, Jemar,” Eskaia said, raising herself to kiss him. “I would be very happy indeed to see them.”
“Just as long as we are not too busy dodging galleys’ rams and showers of arrows to give anyone even a simple ‘Good day,’ ” Jemar put in. He gently embraced his wife.