“Your terms are acceptable, my lord,” he told Darvus. “Subject to ratification by the Crown.”
“Crown, is it?” The old man gave another cackle, raising a skeletal hand to point a finger at Vaelin with no sign of any tremble. “There’s only one head left fit to wear it and it stands before me right now.”
CHAPTER TWO
Lyrna
Captain Belorath was a fine Keschet player, demonstrating a fundamental understanding of the game’s many nuances whilst employing the more subtle strategies that set the skilled opponent apart. Lyrna beat him in twenty moves. It would have been fifteen but she thought it best to allow him some dignity in front of his crew.
He glowered at her from across the board, hands moving in a blur as he removed the remaining pieces. “We go again.”
“As you wish,” Lyrna said, removing her own pieces. For all his skill the captain laboured against a basic misunderstanding of the most important element of Keschet: the placement of the pieces. Every move flowed from this seeming formality. She had already won when he failed to place sufficient spearmen on the left side of the board to counter the lancers she would launch six moves in. The game starts when you place your first piece, her father had instructed all those years ago when he first taught a five-year-old a game that baffled most adults. Within a year she had beaten him in an epic battle of one hundred and twenty-three moves that would have made a salient entry in the history of the game, if anyone else had been there to bear witness. They never played again and the board and pieces disappeared from her room soon after.
The captain slammed his emperor onto the third square from the left in the first row, a standard placement if one intended an aggressive strategy, or sought to conceal defence with offence. She responded by placing one of her archers in the middle of the second row, continuing to build a standard formation in response to his seemingly complex arrangement. The Emperor’s Gambit, she thought with an inward sigh as crewmen and Realm folk wagered around them. The odds seemed to be in her favour. Thirteen moves this time.
In the event she managed to string it out to seventeen, any more generosity would have been obvious.
“The Dark,” one of the crew whispered as she plucked the captain’s emperor from the board.
“Dark or not,” Harvin replied with a laugh. “You owe me two cups of rum, my friend.”
Lyrna cast her gaze at the placid sea as the increasingly red-faced captain set about removing his pieces once more. Three days and not a whisper of wind, she thought, straightening as a familiar sight came into view, the huge fin leaving an impressive wake in the becalmed waters before slipping under.
The captain had ordered the crew to the oars when the wind died, but the heat of these climes forced frequent halts lest the crew collapse from exhaustion. The Realm folk had taken their turn at the oars, Lyrna included, though their inexpert lack of rhythm often proved more of a hindrance. It was during the latest break from rowing that the captain had produced a Keschet board and commanded his first mate to play, beating him in only forty moves, apparently something of a record on the ship.
“Our lady can beat that,” Benten had said, his tone one of complete confidence.
“Is that the case?” The captain’s bushy brows knitted together as his gaze found her, rubbing her aching arms as she rested on her oar.
Lyrna gave the young fisherman a hard look. She hadn’t shared a single word with him about the game yet instinct seemed to tell him a great deal.
“I can play,” she replied with a shrug.
His third try was more impressive, abandoning long-established set attacks for a complex series of feints on the left, seemingly careless of losses, but masking the gradual approach of all three thieves towards the centre.
“Congratulations, Captain,” she said with a bow some thirty moves later.
“For what?” he growled, staring at the emperor in her hand.
“For providing me with a unique game.” She raised her head as a gentle breeze tickled the still-sensitive burns on her upper cheek. Strange to feel the wind and not have it tousle one’s hair, she mused. “I believe we’re about to resume our voyage.”
The breeze built into a strong westerly wind, known to the Meldeneans as the Fruitful Vine as well-laden merchantmen were often to be found following its course. Now though the ocean seemed empty.
“Nothing makes for a clear sea like war,” the captain said, joining her at the prow during her customary evening vigil.
“I thought we might see some Alpiran ships at least,” she replied.
“They’ll all be in port for a good while yet, if they’re smart. War makes pirates of all sailors.” He moved to the figurehead carved into the prow, a snarling woman with improbably large breasts, extended fangs and clawlike hands reaching out towards the oncoming waves. “Know who this is?”
“I would guess it’s Skerva, stealer of souls, in her true form. She was sent by Margentis the Orca god to punish men for their crimes against the sea. It’s said she walks amongst us in the guise of a comely maiden, seeking out the most valiant of men so she can feast on their souls.”
He traced a hand over Skerva’s wooden shoulder. “Have you ever forgotten anything?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You make my crew nervous, the more fanciful wonder if you aren’t her, trapped somehow between your two forms, waiting for the moment to strike.”
“Wouldn’t that require the presence of valiant men upon whom to slake my unnatural hunger?”
She saw him conceal a smile beneath his beard before he looked out to sea. “Your friend doesn’t help.”
The swell was high but she could still make out the shark’s fin knifing through the waves off the port bow. “That is truly something I can’t explain,” she said honestly.
“The crew bring word of what those other land-bound whisper in the hold. They talk of a beast charmer.”
Fermin’s smile before the waters claimed him . . . Remember your promise, my Queen. “He died to free us,” she said. “Called the shark somehow. Perhaps that’s why it follows, an echo of that calling. Such things are outside my knowledge.”
The captain snorted. “Finally, a flaw.” His mirth subsided quickly, his expression completely serious. “The Isles are less than a week away.”
“Where the Ship Lords await. I’ll keep my bargain. They’ll find me very convincing, I promise.”
“The Ship Lords are one thing, the Shield is another.”
The Shield of the Isles. Her brother’s spies had brought ample word of him, famed swordsman and pirate, given charge of the defence of the Isles. “He’s unlikely to believe me?”
“It’s not whether he believes that matters, it’s whether he cares.” He gestured at the deck and the rigging. “The Sea Sabre is his. He oversaw her birth in the yards. Every plank, nail and rope has his hand upon it, and there’s plenty of his blood in the deck too. For years we hunted the waves with her, took more gold and cargo than any ship ever born in the Isles. Yet here I am in command of her whilst he skulks on a wave-blasted rock. If his hand had been on her tiller we should have been home by now. And I doubt you’d’ve taken him in twenty moves.”
“Fifteen, I was being kind. Why does he skulk, this great captain of yours?”
Belorath turned back to the sea, voice soft with regret. “Because it’s a hard thing for a great man to fail, even when the failure is in securing his own death.”
“‘The predicted slave yield is estimated at twenty-five thousand,’” Lyrna recited. “‘This is low in ratio to the overall population, but the expected high cull rate must be considered. The true value of the Serpent’s Den lies in its ports and any ships our forces can capture, the islanders being uncivilised savages with surprisingly well developed skills in this area.’”