In fact, one could argue they’d been too lucky. They’d found three little boys with blond hair and fair complexions, and on first inspection, there was nothing to distinguish the special one from the other two.
Anton could haul all three back to Pirate Isle and let Captain Highcastle identify the one he wanted. But what if none of them was the right child? It would be embarrassing to disappoint the self-proclaimed Chosen of Umberlee. It might even be dangerous.
He raked the prisoners with a menacing glare. “My name is Anton Marivaldi, and my ship is the Iron Jest. You may have heard of me.”
Apparently they had. Some of them blanched.
“You have a choice,” Anton continued. “Someone can point out the boy Stedd Whitehorn without further delay, in which case, all of you will live. Or you can keep mum until my men kill enough people to loosen somebody’s tongue.”
With that, he waited. While the rain beat down, the moments crawled by, and none of the peasants spoke up.
Perplexed, Anton shook his head. The rustics were clearly terrified. He could all but smell it on them despite the downpour. So why weren’t they giving up an outsider to save themselves?
Maybe because, despite Anton’s reputation, they hoped he wouldn’t carry out his threat. If so, it was time to disabuse them of their optimism. He turned to Yuicoerr. “Have at it. Start with the babies and little girls.”
“No!” an old man yelped. He was stooped and scrawny with brown spots on the backs of his wrinkled hands and the bald crown of his head.
Anton raised a hand to halt the second mate and the other pirates advancing with knives in hand. “I’m glad one of you is sensible. Keep talking, old man. Point out Stedd Whitehorn and save your grandchildren.”
“I can’t!” the elderly villager replied. “He isn’t here! When the trouble started, one of his minders rushed him out of town!”
Anton’s jaw tightened. That was what he’d feared might have happened, and he and his crew could hardly comb the countryside if riders from Teziir were on the way.
But was the story true? If he’d been commanding the other side, would he have believed he had to get the boy out of the village because he couldn’t possibly win the battle to come? Why? The defenders had had wizardry and superior numbers on their side, and at least some of their fighters had been seasoned warriors of the scroll, moon, and stars.
“That’s too bad,” he said to the old man. “I explained the only way to save your village, but if the boy’s no longer here, then obviously, you can’t avail yourselves of the opportunity. Go on, lads. Kill everyone.”
“Wait!” cried a woman with three small children clinging to her skirts. She had the sagging, loose-skinned look of someone who’d been stout before hunger whittled away the excess weight. “He’s-”
“No!” cried one of the three golden-haired boys. “Don’t say it! You don’t have to.” He turned to Anton, and even amid the downpour and the gloom, his eyes were as blue as the clear skies and seas that no one had seen in a year. He swallowed, and in a voice that quavered just a little, said, “I’m Stedd.”
Anton had to admit, the lad had courage. Although he might not know exactly what fate awaited him, he surely realized it wouldn’t be pleasant. But then again, maybe he was simple or downright mad and believed the power he professed to serve would protect him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Anton said. “Now be a good boy and stand still while one of my men ties your hands and leashes you. Then we’ll be on our way and let your friends here get back to slopping the hogs or whatever they need to do.”
Yuicoerr looked to Anton. “What about our dead?”
“In my considered opinion, they’re likely to stay that way.”
“I mean, we should carry them back to the ship and give them to the sea.”
“That would slow us down.”
“Only a little, and we owe it to them.”
Anton laughed. “When did you turn so sentimental? We owe it to ourselves-”
Something smashed into the back of Anton’s head. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees, and, his skull ringing, turned his head to discover Naraxes standing over him. The first mate raised the belaying pin he used as a cudgel and clubbed him a second time.
The rain turned the streets of Immurk’s Hold into streams rushing from the mountainous heights of Pirate Isle, past taverns, festhalls, fighting pits, chandleries, smithies, and sail makers’ shops, and down to the harbor, where the rising waters of the Sea of Fallen Stars were drowning docks and shipyards. Umara Ankhlab hunched her shoulders against the downpour and tried to avoid wading through deep water. It slopped over the tops of her shoes and soaked her feet even so.
That was unpleasant, but not as much as her sense of Kymas Nahpret’s amusement at her discomfort. Her superior had cast a spell to link their psyches, and in consequence saw, heard, and felt what she did, but not so intensely as to cause him distress.
One day, he said, speaking mind to mind, if you serve me well, I’ll make you as I am. Then you’ll never be cold again.
Or forever cold, she thought, forever cold and dead. Then she made haste to mask the thought before it bled across into Kymas’s awareness. It would be unwise to let him realize she didn’t want to become a vampire.
And actually, she needed to overcome her instinctive revulsion and desire it in truth. She came from a long line of tharchions and khazarks, but over the course of the last century, mortal Thayan nobles had declined in stature relative to the undead ones. The only way for even the daughter of an old and once-prominent Mulan family to achieve any measure of genuine status and influence was to become such a creature herself, and at least then she wouldn’t have to bear the presence of a thing like a psychic tapeworm.
She splashed past scrawny, half-naked men setting up trident-shaped markers to line the street leading to the temple of Umberlee, Queen of the Depths. The rain made any sort of outdoor labor unpleasant, but the raiders of Pirate Isle evidently were no more concerned than Thayans for the misery of slaves, and the overseers with their coiled whips had taken shelter under the dripping eaves of nearby buildings.
Many buildings in Immurk’s Hold were haphazardly constructed of driftwood, other flotsam, and the odd piece of plundered lumber. A few though, including fortresses and the mansions of the most rapaciously successful captains, were as imposing as any structure Umara had seen in any settlement bordering the Inner Sea. The house of the Bitch Queen was one of the latter, and thus proof that Pirate Isle was one of the few places where her priesthood had wielded considerable influence even before Evendur Highcastle proclaimed her new ascendancy. It was a pile of blue-green stone perched on a promontory overlooking the storm-tossed sea. Stairs and walkways snaked their way down the cliff face to vanish beneath the heaving surf where it smashed itself to spray against the rock.
Umara strode to the primary entrance, where two steps ascended to a recessed doorway with one of Umberlee’s emblems, a double wave curling to both the right and the left, carved above it. A pair of sentries, novice priests in sea-green tabards, crossed their tridents to bar the way.
“I’m Umara Ankhlab,” she told them, “Red Wizard and envoy of Szass Tam, master of Thay. The Chosen of Umberlee has agreed to receive me.” As he certainly should have done after all the gifts Kymas’s legionnaires had carried to the temple.
One of the waveservants said, “Yes, Saer. Follow me.” And when he led her into the high-ceilinged, shadowy chamber beyond the doorway, her first thought was that it was a relief to escape the rain. She pushed back her scarlet cowl and wiped at the moisture that had blown inside it to dampen her face and shaven scalp.