“This is Kharl. He’s one of our three guards.” Hagen held up the small lantern he was carrying so that the light fell on Kharl’s face.
The undercaptain nodded, and one of the guards stood back so that Kharl could open the hatch and step inside.
The passageway was a good twenty cubits long, but less than three wide and barely four high, so that Kharl had to duck his head to avoid hitting it on the overhead. There were doors on both sides for the mates’ cabins, and then smooth bulkheads for the last ten cubits leading to the captain’s cabin. Esamat rose from a stool set aft of the last doors. As the other man did, Kharl noticed that two changes had been made to the passageway. A bracket had been added to hold a small lantern, and a small watch bell had also been added where Esamat had been standing his watch.
“The bell is only if we get attacked or threatened,” Esamat said. “Captain refilled the lantern maybe half a glass ago.” The rigger stretched. “It’s been quiet. Hope it is for you.”
“So do I.”
After Esamat left, Kharl took his position in the passageway outside the captain’s cabin. For almost the first three glasses, except for Hagen’s retiring to the first’s cabin, the only sounds in the passageway were those of Kharl’s breathing and his own movements.
Then, about a glass before Kharl was due to be relieved by Ghart, Hagen reappeared from the cabin that he was sharing with Furwyl.
“Quiet, Kharl?”
“Very quiet so far, ser.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way, but don’t wager anything on it.”
“No, ser.”
“And don’t hesitate to ring the watch bell there if anything looks wrong. Anything at all, you understand.”
“Yes, ser.”
With a nod, the captain left the passageway.
Kharl heard him say, “Good morning,” to the armsmen outside on the deck before he closed the hatch.
In the next half glass, Furwyl appeared, as did Rhylla, then Bemyr, and they all went topside. Ghart was obviously still sleeping.
Then Kharl heard a high childish voice from behind him, loud enough to penetrate the closed cabin door.
“Mommy…want to go home…don’t want to be here…”
“…be going to the summer place…”
“…don’t want summer…want home…”
“…we’ll go home later. Your father will be coming to meet us…”
“…want home…”
About that point, had the boy been his, Kharl would have gotten somewhat more forceful.
Lady Hyrietta merely murmured something else that Kharl could not hear.
“…no…home…”
“No! That’s enough, Kyran!”
Kharl smiled. The Lady Hyrietta wasn’t all that much more patient than he was.
The voices subsided to murmurs, and Kharl studied the passageway, hoping that nothing did happen on the voyage southward, and especially not on his watches.
LXXXI
On the second day of the voyage, and less than a glass after sunset, Kharl was standing his second passageway watch of the voyage south to Dykaru. The seas were almost calm, and Hagen was on deck. In fact, all the mates were somewhere topside.
The Lady Hyrietta and her sons were in the cabin. The nurse had left the cabin a short while before, and from the silence, Kharl gathered that she and Lady Hyrietta had put the boys to bed and that the lady was reading or resting herself, while the nurse was on deck for a breath of night air.
After three glasses in the passageway, Kharl was due to be relieved in about a glass, and he was ready for that. Standing duty in the narrow passageway left him feeling restless and confined. Inadvertently, his thoughts skittered back to his imprisonment in the Hall of Justice in Brysta. Hall of injustice, he thought, wondering if better justicers would have helped, or if they would have been run out or dismissed by Egen or Lord West.
His lips curled into an ironic smile. People didn’t really want justice, not unless they were desperate. Even he hadn’t wanted justice so much as freedom. His thoughts were interrupted by a dull thump outside, from the main deck.
Kharl stiffened, easing off the stool and grabbing the cudgel, then turning as the hatch opened. He could sense someone outside-lifting something-a crossbow. That left Kharl as a target more vulnerable than a grounded goose, outlined by the lamp on the bulkhead. He did the only thing he could think that would help, using his Talent to bind the very air into a shield, hoping that he was in time, and that he could hold the shield long enough.
Clank! Thunk! The crossbow quarrel dropped to the deck, bent.
The armsman in black and yellow charged toward Kharl, his sabre extended and clearly expecting a wounded, if not a dead or dying, guard.
Kharl raised the cudgel slightly, but stayed behind the hardened air.
The armsman thrust, his blade striking the invisible shield. The sabre blade shattered, metal scattering across the deck and bouncing from the lower parts of the bulkheads.
At the momentary look of astonishment on the armsman’s face, Kharl released the minute order-chaos hooks holding the air solid, and struck at the man, the cudgel slamming into the attacker’s lower ribs.
“Oooof…” The armsman dropped the useless sabre hilt, trying to dance back and draw a long knife, but his steps were wobbly.
Kharl’s were not, nor was his aim off. His second blow was to the man’s knife arm, and something cracked. His third shattered a kneecap, and the man toppled, slowly, sprawling onto the deck. The armsman did not make a sound, but lay on the deck, writhing.
Kharl stepped forward, his cudgel ready.
The attacker’s good hand went to his belt, and then to his mouth. He swallowed something.
Kharl grabbed for the man’s arm, but with a second swallow, the armsman convulsed. Kharl began to ring the bell that Hagen had attached to the bulkhead.
“What-” Lady Hyrietta’s head peered from the captain’s door.
“Lady! Stay there and bolt the door!”
Hyrietta did not argue, and Kharl heard the bolt slam home.
Within moments, Ghart and Hagen burst through the hatchway from the main deck.
In the dim light from the small lantern, Hagen looked down at the still-convulsing armsman.
“I tried to stop him without killing him, ser,” Kharl said. “But he took poison before I could get to him.”
“Poison?” Hagen looked to Ghart, then back at the fallen armsman, who gave a last shudder before slumping into silence.
“He put something in his mouth.”
“He did something to the outside guards,” Hagen said, his eyes darting from side to side, checking the passageway. “Could have offered them something to drink-water, wine. Both are dead. Poisoned, I’d say.”
“But…he’d been with Ghrant for years…that’s what they said.”
“Treachery…that has always been Ilteron’s way…” Hagen turned to Ghart. “Go find the undercaptain and tell him what happened. Then take care of this one. Don’t let anyone inside here. The undercaptain can look from the hatchway if he insists.”
“Yes, ser.”
Ghart made his way back onto the deck, closing the hatch behind him, leaving Hagen with Kharl in the passageway.
Hagen looked at Kharl. “He picked you.”
“I suppose he did.”
The captain laughed, mirthlessly. “Bad choice.”
“You knew they would,” Kharl said.
“I thought, if there were any treachery, that they would. I’d hoped that his personal guard would have been above subversion. I wasn’t about to wager the lady and the heirs on that hope, though.”
Ghart reappeared. “Undercaptain’s on his way.”
“I’ll talk to the lady.” Hagen turned and walked to the door to his cabin, where he knocked. “Lady Hyrietta? Hagen here.”
After a moment, the door opened a crack, then more.