Liar's Island: A Novel Page 3

  “The captain has even better quarters, I suppose?” Rodrick said.

  Pia snorted. “We’re to treat you like an honored guest, not like the thakur himself. Don’t get above yourself. The captain’s giving me a little slice of her own share of profits for my trouble, anyway. She figures the inconvenience of ferrying you around is worth it to show the folk in the palace she’s reliable and accommodating. She thinks there might be some opportunity in it for her.” She sniffed. “The captain says you can dine with her tonight, if you wash the stink off first. For lunch you can settle for the same rations the crew get. At least they’re fresh, us being straight out of port. In the meantime, well. You’re not confined to quarters or anything, but try not to get in the way.”

  She went off, and Rodrick closed the door, not bothering to hook the little latch—it wouldn’t keep the door shut if anyone really wanted to come in, though it would probably keep the door from flying open every time they crested a wave. He drew Hrym, who sighed contentedly, like a man released from a cage, and set the blade down on top of the sea chest.

  “You mind if I get some sleep?” Rodrick said. “I have a date with that hangover I mentioned.”

  “Fine, fine, just scatter some gold on the chest for me to rest on, would you?” Hrym had been a dragon in a past life, sort of—it was complicated—and was never happier than when he rested atop a heap of treasures, though Rodrick could usually provide only a very modest hoard.

  He moved Hrym to the bed. “Didn’t someone threaten to keelhaul us once before?” Rodrick shook out a handful of gold from the bag, scattering it on the chest, and then put Hrym on top of the coins. He knelt and examined the lock on the sea chest, just out of professional interest, though he didn’t touch it.

  “Mmm. Last year, when we were trying to find that magical key. I don’t think anyone threatened it, exactly, but the subject came up.”

  “Keelhauling. Is that the one where they put you on a rack and attach your hands and feet to things and stretch you out until your bones break?”

  “No, that’s just called the rack,” Hrym said. “Keelhauling is when they tie a rope around you and—”

  “Oh, right. Throw you overboard and drag you along underneath the ship, scraping you against the barnacles on the hull, and drag you back up the other side. And if you didn’t drown, they beat you and then do it all over again. It’s coming back to me now. People must get bored at sea, to think of doing something like that.” He sighed and stood up. There was probably nothing he wanted in the chest anyway, and it would be a shame to let mere habitual larceny ruin his chance to reach Jalmeray and get his own weight in gold.

  He stretched out on the bunk—hardly the best bed he’d slept in, but a long way from the worst, insofar as it was a bed, and not a ditch full of leaves or the stone floor of a dungeon cell. He felt the ship jerk as it left port, and settled into sleep as the voyage began.

  Rodrick woke some unknown time later—there was still daylight in the tiny porthole, so he hadn’t lost the whole day—and sat up with a groan. His head was full of thunder, his mouth was dry, and he was simultaneously ravenous and nauseated.

  “Sleep well?” Hrym said. “I don’t know how you could with all the snoring you were doing. How a noise like that doesn’t wake you up is beyond me.”

  “The sleeping was fine. It’s the waking up that’s proving difficult.” He stretched as well as he could in the confines of the cabin, then blinked. His battered knapsack was resting on the floor, tied closed, along with his bedroll and lantern. “Are those my things?”

  “Apparently a djinni delivered them,” Hrym said. “Fetched them from our inn, though how it knew where we were staying, I couldn’t say, and don’t like to think about. I told the crewman to leave it there. You were sleeping like the dead. Only the dead are quieter.”

  Rodrick opened up the pack and dug through it. Spare clothes, a couple of knives, and the usual odds and ends—and, down at the bottom, his most valuable possession: a cloak of the devilfish, which would transform him into the eponymous vile, tentacled, and hard-to-kill sea creature if he donned it and gave the right command. That cloak was a great comfort to have on a ship, as such things had a distressing ability to sink with all hands lost, or so he gathered. Rodrick had owned some other wondrous items, once, but he’d sold them for enough to live like a lord for a few months. They’d been good months, but maybe a little boring, if he was being totally honest. The good months were followed by some hard ones, but that was the life he’d chosen—feast alternating with famine. At least this way he got the feasts. Most honest men had to settle for a steady diet of famine.

  He was rather cheered, having his possessions back. Who knew djinn were so considerate? “Want a breath of fresh sea air?”

  “I’m happy here.”

  “Too bad. I don’t want to leave you unattended.” He scooped up the scattered coins, counting to make sure none had rolled away during the voyage, though this ship was large enough he barely felt it sway.

  “I was using those.”

  “I’m not going to leave the gold unattended, either.”

  “No one could take it—or take me, for that matter—without me freezing them into a lump of ice. I may not be able to move around without your help, but I can protect myself and my hoard just fine.”

  “Just yesterday we ran into a wizard who used magic to render you powerless.”

  “Hmph. I wasn’t powerless. My power was fine. It just didn’t work on those men. But we took care of them anyway.”

  Rodrick put the refilled coin pouch away and picked up Hrym. “Yes, but I’d rather you not knock holes in the boat fighting off thieves. Look, I’ll wear the sheath on my back, and you can freeze yourself to the outside of the scabbard so you can see, all right?” Wearing a longsword on your back was generally not a clever thing to do—reaching over your own shoulder and drawing a four-foot-long blade from a sheath strapped to your back was logistically impossible for most people, and even if you had comically long arms, it was a good way to accidentally cut off your own ears—but with Hrym stuck to the outside of a scabbard and unfreezing himself at will, it worked all right, and looked impressive, too. They often traveled that way when they weren’t trying to keep Hrym’s wondrous nature hidden, though the freezing and unfreezing tended to destroy the scabbards after a while. Rodrick kept meaning to look into buying them in bulk, but he usually just stole a new one when the old one fell apart.

  Once he got the sword belt arranged across his chest and Hrym froze himself in place on his back, Rodrick ducked through the door and went up the steps to the deck. The sunlight dazzled him briefly, but he was good at adjusting to new environments quickly—it was one reason he wasn’t dead yet—and soon he was taking in a vast view of … nothing much. Ocean waves on all sides. No krakens or dragon turtles or pods of—he shuddered—gillmen. (He had nothing against gillmen, particularly, except the only one he’d ever met, Obed, had been a demon cultist who’d tried to murder him, so there were bad associations.) Just water and waves and a few crew members doing obscure but strenuous things with rope. The captain was at the bow, standing by the traditional big wooden wheel, but Rodrick’s attention was caught by a woman standing in the stern, wearing something like an embroidered white robe, but the cloth was wrapped around her in some complex way—women’s magic. She had a ruby stud twinkling in her nose, her hands outstretched over the water, and she was breathtakingly beautiful, with a hint of lushness under all that cloth.

  Rodrick strolled her way, and she turned her head before he got within five feet. Her eyes were dark, her lips full, her smile knowing. “You’re new,” she said.

  “I’m Rodrick. I came on board this morning. I’m taking passage to Jalmeray.”

  “How fortunate, as that is where we’re going, if She Who Guides the Winds and the Waves so wills. I am Tapasi.”

  “Ahhh,” he said. “A priest, are you?” That wasn’t necessarily bad news. Not all priests were celibate, after
all. Some, in fact, showed their devotion to their deities by being very much the opposite. There was always hope.

  She nodded. “I serve my god, and pray for good winds and gentle waves.”

  “Better to have the gods on your side than against you,” Rodrick said, though in truth, he preferred to avoid them altogether. He leaned on the railing and looked at the white wake trailing off behind them.

  “Are you a godly man?”

  “Ah. Not particularly. Nothing against the gods, mind you, just haven’t ever felt the call. I’m not familiar with your goddess. I’ve heard of your Irori, but most of the gods of the Vudrani … we don’t hear about them much where I’m from. Is it true you have thousands of gods?”

  “If not more. It is said that every crossroads, every heap of stones, every bend in the river has a god in our lands. Most are very small gods, though, with limited spheres of interest and influence. She Who Guides the Winds and the Waves is more prominent on Jalmeray than in our homelands, as we are an island nation. In fact, your people worship my god under another name—you call her Gozreh, though you revere her male aspect as well. Many in our homeland do the same, but to some of us, combining two perfectly sensible, focused gods into a conglomerate with multiple areas of concern seems needlessly complicated.”

  Theology was a bit beyond Rodrick’s realms of expertise or interest, so he decided to steer the conversation toward more useful areas. “How far away is Jalmeray, anyway?”

  She cocked her head. “The island is some eight hundred miles from Absalom. The journey is closer to nine hundred, in truth, as we must divert around Stonespine Island when we pass from the Inner Sea into the Obari Ocean.”

  “Ah. That’s … a long way.” It was a good thing the djinni had brought his clothes. “How long will it take?”

  “The best part of a month. Perhaps as few as twenty days, if the winds are generous. Do you often embark on journeys without knowing how long they will take?”

  “I received an invitation to meet the thakur in his palace. I wasn’t doing anything more exciting, so…” He shrugged. “It seemed an opportunity for adventure.” Preceded by a great deal of boredom. Maybe some of the crew diced. Maybe Tapasi diced. Maybe she did other things.

  She shaded her eyes and gazed off into the distance, then made a concerned sound. “I think you may have an opportunity for adventure sooner than you thought. A ship is approaching at speed, and it flies the flag of Nex—and below that, a banner with a symbol of the Arclords.” She pointed to a flapping flag, inscribed with the symbol of an eye inside a triangle.

  “Is … that bad?”

  She stared at him. “Do you know nothing of the history of Jalmeray?”

  Rodrick just shrugged. “I know there are monasteries, and the requisite monks, and it’s supposed to be very beautiful, but…”

  “The Arclords of Nex settled on Jalmeray, long ago. But they were not the rightful owners—they were, I think you would say, squatters? The Vudrani returned to take possession of the island, and had to drive the Arclords away. The battle was ferocious, but the golems and other constructs of the Arclords were no match for the bound elementals and genies of the Vudrani. Ever since the expulsion of the Arclords, relations between that faction and our people have been … strained. They don’t dare attack us directly, but if they see an opportunity to make one of our ships disappear, well. There are always accidents on the sea.”

  “How long ago did this falling-out happen?”

  “Since the Vudrani returned to Jalmeray and drove the Arclords into the sea?” She considered. “Two thousand years, more or less.”

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge,” Rodrick said. “Do the Arclords really still really—”

  There was a distant thrum, and a huge stone splashed into the water some distance behind them, blasting a gout of water forty feet into the air.

  “Oh,” Rodrick said. “I suppose they do.”

  4

  Cabin Boy

  The usual sort of chaos reigned on the deck. The captain and first mate were shouting orders, sailors were scrambling to and fro tugging on ropes and tying some knots while untying others for doubtless excellent reasons, and the priest beside Rodrick raised her hands and began to chant, or pray, or something.

  Rodrick stepped away from her, because you never knew with priests. She might summon a spirit of water to smash the other vessel, or she might start shooting lightning out of every orifice, or do something else he couldn’t even imagine. Supposedly some priests could turn water into wine, but he’d never been near one who shared such a useful ability with thirsty bystanders.

  They were under attack, and his cloak of the devilfish was in his cabin below. Wasn’t that always the way? He could scamper down and grab it, just in case the ship went down, but disappearing belowdecks was no way to impress a pretty priest.

  Instead, he drew Hrym and pointed him toward the approaching vessel, which had grown from a speck to something recognizable as a black-hulled ship with a vast mainsail. “The Arclords are the ones with a third eye in their foreheads, aren’t they?”

  “Sounds right,” Hrym said. “There probably isn’t one of them on the ship, though. They’re grand high so-and-sos. I imagine they have the usual lackey scum to do their dirty work.”

  The approaching ship wasn’t loosing its catapults anymore. It seemed unlikely they’d only brought along one heavy rock, though. He supposed the first shot had been to test the range, and it was found wanting. They’d paused from launching projectiles in order to concentrate on closing the distance, and once the range was better, they’d doubtless try again.

  Rodrick sighed. “Well, Hrym? Should we earn our keep?”

  “I don’t see how this is our problem. We aren’t from Jalmeray. We don’t have any quarrel with the Arclords.”

  “The fact that we’re on a ship the Arclords intend to fill with holes, which will then fill with sea water, which will then fill with drowned sailors, might be grounds for a quarrel.”

  “It’s not as if I can drown,” Hrym said. “And I can make an ice floe for you to use as a lifeboat, if it comes to that.”

  “True. But as much as I’d enjoy sitting soaking wet atop a sheet of drifting sea ice, I don’t think you’re considering all the potential drawbacks. I could drop you in the confusion, and then you’d sink to the bottom of the sea, there to stay for all eternity—”

  “I’d wrap myself in a cocoon of ice, and float to the surface, and eventually the currents would take me to shore, where someone would find me. I’d be fine.”

  “More likely a gillman would find you,” Rodrick said.

  A flash of red light illuminated Hrym’s blade, and Rodrick winced, expecting cackling and chaos, but it was just a mild pulse of the demonic. “I don’t much like gillmen,” Hrym said. He had the same reasons Rodrick did.

  “Oh, they’re not all devotees of evil who want to use your powers to free demon lords and set them loose upon the world. I’m sure many of them are perfectly nice. Of course, Obed’s cult probably has connections among many of the cities or tribes or whatever it is gillmen have—”

  “Fine,” Hrym said testily. “Let’s do work. What do you want me to do?”

  “The mainsail could be amusing. Can you do it from this distance?”

  “I’ll manage. Point me in the right direction.”

  Dark clouds were gathering, either by coincidence or because of the priest’s incessant chanting, and a strong wind was blowing them fast away, which didn’t help much, since the Arclord ship had the same wind and was apparently better designed to take advantage of it. They were close enough now that Rodrick could make out the individual crew members standing on the deck. Some of them were brandishing swords. But none of them looked as impressive as his sword.

  Rodrick extended Hrym out over the railing, pointed the end of his blade directly at the pursuing ship’s mainsail, and smiled as Hrym unleashed a torrent of icy wind. The temperature in his immediate vicinity
plunged, but Rodrick was used to cold by now, and holding Hrym protected him from being damaged by the sword’s own magical effects.

  The enemy’s sail began to turn white, then blue, as sheets of ice built up on the canvas, the mast, and the crossbeams. The sailors ran around in pointless terror as the weight of ice on the mainsail became too great to support. The mainmast cracked with a sound like a branch snapping, but a thousand times louder, and the sail—transformed into an immensely heavy hammer of solid sheet ice—smashed onto the deck with sufficient force to break the wood. The ship listed hard to port, though it didn’t quite capsize, and sailors leapt into the sea in terror—always an amusing sight, as long as they weren’t doing it on a ship you were on.

  Tapasi stopped chanting, and the dark clouds began to dissipate. She stared at Rodrick. He grinned, shrugged, and replaced Hrym on his back. He turned to find the entire crew staring at him, and the captain came forward, the sailors parting to let her through.

  “So,” she said. “That’s what your sword does.”

  “Among other things. I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds. I was just trying to be useful.”

  “I heard it talk,” Tapasi said. “The sword. It speaks!”

  “Of course I talk.” Hrym’s tone was peevish. “Why is everyone so surprised when I talk? What’s so great about talking, anyway? Loads of idiots can talk. Even kobolds talk. Lots of things talk.”

  “Ah,” Saraswati said. “But not swords. Usually.”

  “She’s got you there, Hrym,” Rodrick said.

  “Maybe they can talk, and choose not to. Maybe they just don’t have anything to say. You can’t prove otherwise.”

  “I am pleased to hear your voice, at any rate, sword,” the captain said. “You’ve both saved us a great deal of trouble.”

  “Also possibly a great deal of drowning,” Hrym said. “Feel free to reward us handsomely. Gold is always appreciated.”