“That’s what everyone says.” Karn stood. “Gentlemen. You’ll hear from me soon.”
After the door closed behind him, Hal heard the bolt sliding shut.
“Do you think he’s going to help us?” Robert said, glaring at the closed door.
“I wish I knew,” Hal said. Time was passing, and both the empress and the thane armies would soon be on the march. There was no way to know who would arrive in the city first.
32
WEEPING SISTER
For the first few days of the crossing, the weather was blustery and cold—typical for early spring in the northern oceans. Personally, Breon enjoyed the ride, spending as much time as possible on deck, chatting up the crew and asking questions about the ship, the rigging, and the ports they’d been to. Gathering information that he hoped to use later.
Most were the empress’s purple mages, and they were a dour lot, not particularly receptive to his considerable personal charm. Gradually, though, they grew to tolerate him, allowing him to help them in their work and join them on their watches.
The Siren was built for speed and maneuverability and not for the tender stomachs of day sailors. Her Highness huddled miserably in her cabin until Breon finally managed to coax her up on deck. Once they were there, he advised her to put her face in the freshening wind and fix her eyes on the horizon. After that, she was less prone to spewing, which made their shared cabin a lot more livable.
Since that day on the beach, when she’d murdered Aubrey, the empress had been sweet, solicitous of their comfort, so kind that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Breon listened hard for Celestine’s music, but he heard only the raging storm—the crash of thunder, the creak of the masts and singing of the lines as the sails filled, and the flapping of the sheets when they lost the wind. He watched and waited, looking for a chance to get hold of one of Celestine’s belongings that might give him a clue. But she was exceedingly wary of him, as if she knew all his tricks and how to sidestep them.
He meant to make her pay for Aubrey somehow. Now that he was clean, he seemed to have lost his limitless ability to make excuses for himself. He’d done some low-down things in his life. He understood what it was like to have nothing and want something, and know that the only way to get it was to take it. His “manager”—the streetlord Whacks—had taught him that honesty was something only a blueblood could afford. And then he’d come to realize that most bluebloods lie and cheat and steal even if they don’t have to. The only difference was that their takings were bigger and they nearly always got away with it.
As they neared their destination in the Northern Islands, the seas rose and the weather worsened. A howling wind drove needles of rain into their faces and made it all but impossible to remain on deck. Visibility was so poor that Breon couldn’t see more than an arm’s length past the gunwales anyway. He worried that they wouldn’t know they’d found land until they broke apart on the rocks.
The seas would rise under them, lifting the Siren until she was perched atop a mountain of water. Then she’d begin to slide down the other side, plunging nose first into a trough between the waves so deep that rain and salt water mingled together in Breon’s mouth. Eventually, his stomach would rejoin his body and it would happen all over again.
Breon watched as the empress strode up and down the quarterdeck, her hair seething in the wind, barking orders at the helmsman and the first mate, muttering curses at someone named Latham Strangward. It was as if she were in a personal grudge fight against the sea.
She knew what she was doing—that was clear enough. Her crew clung to every order like it was a lifeline that would pull them out of the storm and into the blue.
Her Highness was clinging to the rail, eyes closed as if she could pretend she was somewhere else. Breon leaned close, shouting to be heard over the wind and waves. “If she goes down, let go and jump as far as you can so you don’t get pulled under. Then swim like the Breaker’s on your tail so you won’t get tangled in the lines.”
She nodded, so he knew she’d heard him, but said nothing. That was when he remembered that Her Highness couldn’t swim.
All right, then.
“Hold my hand,” he said, prying one of her hands loose from the rail and gripping it. “Don’t let go. When I jump, jump with me.”
She gave him that look of hers and said, “Save yourself, busker. I would prefer not to be responsible for your drowning.”
“If I drown, nobody will miss me,” he said. It was true, now that Aubrey was gone. “In your case, the fate of the realms hangs in the balance.”
That wrung a damp smile from her. “If I die here, busker, write me a song. Legends live longer than actual people.”
Moments later, they were crushed to the deck as if the air were a lead weight pressing down on them. Just as Breon began to worry that he might suffocate, the pressure was gone. They seemed to pop through an invisible wall, leaving the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves on the other side.
The winds that had been filling the sails and straining the lines to the breaking point died away. The Siren glided forward in the sudden silence over a moonlit sea toward an island shrouded in mist and cloud. Overhead, the stars seemed impossibly bright after so many days of gray. Weeping Sister—it must be.
It was not their day to die after all. Maybe. There was a saying Whacks liked to use—“out of the frying pan and into the fire.” Breon wondered if it might apply in this case.
The princess opened her eyes. They looked at each other, rendered speechless, which was rare for him, personally.
As they drew closer, Breon saw the source of the mist: multiple waterfalls cascaded from the cliffs, sending up clouds of steam when they hit the cold ocean. Fumes erupted from fissures, and the mountainsides were lit with sullen orange wherever lava leaked through. The Weeping Sister wept scalding tears.
Three tall ships were moored in the harbor, sails rolled and bound to the masts. Warehouses newly built of raw wood squatted in concentric circles around the quay. Surrounding those was what appeared to be a newborn city, devoted to military and marine purposes—barracks and stables and paddocks, a sprinkling of small stone houses in a uniform gray color.
Beyond the warehouses and stretching up the slope were the ruins of a once-great city, built of timber and stone. Now the roofs had rotted through, the walls had caved in, and stone pillars—monuments to the old gods—had toppled and broken.
And, there, overlooking the harbor, extending higher than anything else on the shore, was a marble palace, apparently still under construction. It seemed to glow in the moonlight, as if the walls couldn’t contain the light within. The center part looked finished, frosted with elaborate carvings of dragons and sea serpents and sirens. Two wings were like broken-off teeth, still ragged at the top, swarming with workers who resembled insects at that distance. Working through the night.
Breon had an affinity for the music of harbor towns—for the discordant clamor of the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate wherever seafarers come ashore to do business and forget their troubles. They were places where ugly rubbed shoulders with uglier, where utility outranked beauty, where new elbowed forward, embarrassed by the old. It was a place for living and dying and making bad decisions of all kinds.
This looked like no harbor town Breon had ever seen. It was as if it had no soul, no memory, no history, no music at its heart. It told no stories. Breon didn’t like it one bit.