Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ returned his most evil grin and snapped a finger into the parchment. ‘This brig might have a grace to her lines fit to melt a man’s heart at her launching. But the love affair ends at her shakedown. She’ll be wayward as a cow under canvas. I’d bank on a nasty lee helm at the stiffening hint of a squall.’ He raised his head, treated Lysaer’s master shipwright to the frost of an unforgiving glare. ‘In a gale, I’d bet silver she’ll founder.’

      Outside, the harbor bell tolled to mark the full change of the tide. A gust buffeted through gapped boards in the shutters and fluttered the flames in the sconces. Cattrick flipped the knife and, with his own stamp of insolence, used its murderous edge to scrape tar from the rims of his fingernails. His eyes, half-hooded in apparent inattention, shared the same vicious glints as the steel. ‘Go on,’ he urged the s’Brydion ambassador. ‘You passed the unfinished frames on their bedlogs. What else did you see outside?’

      ‘Mayhem.’ Mearn slapped the handle of his knife against his gloved palm, tap, tap, tap, like the winding tension on a ratchet. ‘The fleet Prince Lysaer has commissioned from you will be lucky to withstand the first coast-hopping run to Avenor.’

      ‘Opinion,’ Cattrick fired back. He sidestepped and sat on the chartloft’s crude stool. ‘If I’m talking to Lysaer’s sworn ally, what then?’

      ‘You have a bigger problem on your hands than ships that won’t answer their helmsman.’ Slap! went the knife handle, then ceased with an emphasis as startling. Mearn qualified into the teeth of raw tension, ‘The craftsmen in your yard are scarcely unseasoned. Why haven’t they noticed? And if they have, shouldn’t you now beware of their temper? Prince Lysaer can move plain stone to adore him. You know they worship him as an avatar in Avenor.’

      ‘A warning?’ Cattrick unfolded to his massive height, expansive with stifled delight. ‘The knife, you say, won’t come from up front, but in the back from some planker’s self-righteous turn of conscience? Why worry? This yard’s been guarded like a pedigree virgin since the Master of Shadow beset us with thievery last winter. I shape my own risks. The men here in position to know me will also have to choose theirs. High time I ask what reason you have to jam your sniping clan nose in my business.’

      ‘Well, first off,’ said Mearn, ‘I came here to kill you. A matter concerning a letter scribed in your hand that drew Lysaer s’Ilessid from Etarra with armed troops. A lot of clan blood was spilled over that. That’s a stirring provocation; only now, your ships’ plans give me reason to take pause. If you’ve turned coat again, I’d like to know why.’ His tone curdled to a whiplash of bitterness. ‘There’s an opportunity to weigh, in light of that gold that’s promised from Erdane for Lysaer s’Ilessid’s pledged marriage.’

      Cattrick hooted. ‘It’s a woman, after all!’ His sarcasm raked. ‘Princess Talith didn’t commit suicide.’

      Mearn’s first response was a whitening about the lips as the muscles of his jaw sharply tightened. ‘On that, there’s my knife. You can draw your own conclusion.’

      ‘I don’t need to. Nor will I fight for a woman whose sorrows are ended.’ One sudden, strong move, and Cattrick impaled the fine blade in the tabletop. ‘The truth holds no passion. My defection last spring was forced by a Koriani oath of debt, sworn on behalf of my sister. Their hold on me’s forfeit, discharged by that letter.’ He leaned forward, his shadow looming over the damning designs on the trestle. ‘Let’s by all means stay forthright. If this is an offer to join Alestron in conspiracy, I accept. If it’s not what I think, then hear my sweet warning. You’ll leave Riverton by sea, with a load of stone lashed to your ankles.’

      Mearn’s mercurial laugh intermingled with the chime as he cast his own steel to sliding rest beside the dagger impaled in the trestle. Metal struck metal. The pealing clang reechoed to the wicked bent of his gambler’s delight. ‘I have a much nicer idea. Why not sit down and stop bristling hackles? Let me extend an invitation: let’s both drink beer to the Shadow Master’s health over a certain chest of gold in the ducal hall at Alestron.’ As an afterthought, he grinned. ‘We build ships there, too.’

      Cattrick’s brows furrowed upward. ‘Then you’re Prince Arithon’s covert ally?’

      ‘Since Vastmark,’ Mearn admitted. ‘We, too, had our reasons for turning coat.’ He hiked up one leg and perched on the edge of the trestle. ‘I can write my brother in coded state language and demand his swiftest galley to bear me homeward come the spring. First, I’ll need to know what date to ask for, and which port of call will offer the most favorable rendezvous.’

      ‘The outer reefs, northwest of Orlest,’ Cattrick said with scarcely a second’s hesitation. ‘The timing, of course, must depend on the prince as he sets final plans for his wedding.’

       Autumn 5653

      Dispositions

      On the snow-dusted moors of Araethura, the herbalist’s cottage stands empty and cold, the enchantress who lived there gone north to ply her talents in the stews by the Morvain quay, where street children snatch life by robbery and wits; and knife wounds acquired by randy sailors and the unending afflictions of poor quarter harlots will take her mind far from the betrayal enacted through a black-haired shepherd boy’s trust …

      The day before Prince Lysaer’s sealed orders reach Caithwood, the Sorcerer Asandir stands under the frost-turned crown of a great oak, his expression like chisel-cut granite; over his head, the winds of late autumn thrash the leaves to a song of rare fury, and the drumming of twigs and the moaning of pines transmit the tattoo outward through the forest like the ripples cast across a stilled pool …

      In the teeming port city of Innish, on the south coast, a fair young man entrusted as merchant’s factor sits by the wavering light of a candle, reading a letter in sharp, coded script that describes a specific tavern in Southshire where dispatches are to be left, and closes with the laughing, wishful observation, ‘Keep your harpy of a sister well clear of my affairs, or one better, tell her I’ll play tasteless ballads for her wedding if she’ll find the good grace to exchange feckless seafaring for marriage …’

      Late Autumn–Winter 5653

       III.

       Caithwood

      The sealed orders from Avenor reached the small settlement known as Watercross in the shortened days of late autumn. There, the river route through Ilswater intersected the trade road that spanned Caithwood, linking Valenford to Quarn and the southern seaports of Tysan. Built at the threshold of the ancient stand of forest, the massive old land bridge, with its mossy stone pilings, spanned the river in the elegant arches which bespoke the masterful skill of centaur masons. Since the departure of the Paravians, mankind had made free with the axe. Five inns clustered by the verge, a congested accretion of multiple wings of timber raised three storeys high. These were fronted by a commodious barge dock, and boasted between them a post stable and a prosperous smithy. The streetside cluster of shops fanned into a disordered tangle of clapboard cottages, each with a cow and a garden patch. The steadings were inhabited by the families of serving girls who had married rivermen or drovers, and raised sprawling СКАЧАТЬ