Читать книгу Spellbreaker: Book 3 of the Spellwright Trilogy - Blake Charlton - Страница 17

Leandra was brushing her hair when she heard the rope outside her quarters creak. It made her smile.

Again she ran her tortoiseshell comb through her hair, glossy raven black like her father’s. Her wrists ached and her stomach still felt uncomfortable, but it seemed her disease flare was cooling despite the rice wine with Dhrun last night.

Behind her, the floorboards creaked. “Come in, Kai. Close the curtains.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

She tapped her temples. “An hour ago, I felt a few of my future selves were experiencing moments of … unsustainable pleasure. The more I thought of returning to my bedroom the more of my future selves began to feel such unsustainable pleasure.”

“Come on now, you know that sustainable problem only happened to me that one night.” He laughed. “I had an excuse; it was Bright Souls’ Night on Mokumako and my devotees drank too much kava and forgot about my requisites.” His firm hands landed lightly on her back and begin to massage her shoulder muscles.

She sighed as her muscles unknotted. Mokumako was Holokai’s home island, rimmed by cliffs and covered with jungle and cloud forest. She had met him there years ago, and his cult was still centered on that island.

“Did you want to talk about any of your requisites in particular?” she asked.

Holokai’s cult was a throwback to the golden age of the Sea People, when they had raided across the archipelago. His cult believed that, when the Disjunction came, he would defend the island from the demons. His requisites were to destroy any divinity posing a threat to his island. His cult also prayed that Holokai would one day father a demigod who would lead them to glory.

As a result, particularly in the morning when his worshipers were their most fervent, Holokai developed the powerful desire to sire that demigod. Long ago he and Leandra had discovered that her condition had left her infertile, but she did not mind helping her captain practice for such an important task. In fact, for the past few days he had received an unexpectedly large amount of prayerful energy. He wasn’t sure why his followers had become more devout, but because it made him particularly vigorous during certain actives, he wasn’t questioning it.

“Is the catamaran ready?” Leandra whispered.

“You know her captain wouldn’t rest if there was anything more to do for her. I thought there was another lady who might want help getting shipshape.”

She leaned back against his chest and smiled.

“You feeling better about the news that your mother might be in the bay?”

“I wouldn’t say better, but at least I can prepare myself.”

“You truly haven’t seen her since Port Mercy fourteen years ago?”

“Truly.”

“You ever gonna tell me what happened that drove you apart?”

“Sure, how about just before the seas boil?”

Holokai stopped massaging her shoulders. “So this thing with prophecy and you needing to kill someone and your mother’s coming into the bay … do you think it has to do with the Disjunction? How bad do you think it is?”

Leandra rolled her eyes. She’d forgotten how touchy he could get about prophecy. “Not bad enough to interrupt a back massage.”

He started working his hands again. “Hey, Lea, I’m serious.”

“I don’t see how this could be connected to the Disjunction. There’s no evidence of demons crossing the ocean. I just caught a glimpse of what’s coming for me.”

“But the possibility of war between empire and league—”

“Politics. The empire is cannibalizing deities to become stronger than the league, and the league is pumping out deities to keep up with the empire. Maybe they’ll fight another small war to see who’s got the upper hand lately. Whatever happens, neither civilization is going to give half a damn that they are torturing their own to crush the other one. Our job is to be different. That and stay alive.”

Holokai grunted agreement. “And about staying alive … is what we’re dealing with like that incident with the mercenary elephant god?”

“You keep harping on that.”

“He did crush half the bones in my body.”

“Do you even have bones when you’re a shark? I thought you were all cartilage.”

“Not the point. I want to know what we’re facing. How hot is the water we’ve landed in?”

“In terms of tight scrapes we have been in before?”

“That’ll do.”

Leandra considered. Since becoming Warden of Ixos, she had placed herself and her crew in mortal danger only three times. The first was the attempt to take down an elephant mercenary god who had gone neodemon and was trying to pressure the Sacred Regent to let him enter the Trimuril’s divinity complex. Leandra was trying to convert him back into the pantheon when things turned violent. If one of the neodemon’s lieutenants hadn’t gone mad, they never would have escaped.

Leandra’s second mistake had involved a jellyfish neodemon who had made his bloodthirsty devotees immune to the sting of his twenty-mile-long tentacles, which he wrapped around a fleet of their pirate ships.

Leandra had attacked with a full squadron and lost two ships and half her crew. She had been forced to flee and survived only because the sea became unusually hazy that evening and they lost their pursuer in the gathering dark. The remains of her squadron had just limped back into harbor. Blessedly, a powerful storm had struck and washed the neodemon onto shore where he died.

More recently, there had been the discovery of a mosquito goddess on the northern coast of the big island. She had been sucking blood from neighboring villagers and divine language from rival deities. When trying to escape after a failed conversion, Leandra and her party had gotten lost in a mangrove swamp. They heard the mosquito goddess’s swarm filling the air miles away. The neodemon’s insectoid manifestations were truly nightmarish. They had watched her swarm over a man. The bugs covered every inch of exposed skin and wriggled under chain mail. They sucked him dry of blood in moments. Leandra’s party would have suffered the same gruesome fate if a nearby volcano hadn’t erupted and filled the air with smoke that confused the swarm.

The more she thought about her three failures, the more Leandra realized that she still lived only because luck—the lieutenant’s madness, the sea storm, the volcanic eruption—had averted disaster. But then again, who could claim differently in such a precarious world? Every soul in Chandralu was alive only because fortune had spared them from war, disease, disaster. And, she reminded herself, only three of her expeditions had failed while her successes numbered in the hundreds.

She looked up at Holokai. “I’d say it’s a dangerous situation we’re in, maybe as bad as that botched conversion of the elephant god, but nowhere near as bad as the jellyfish or the mosquitoes.”

A bit of the tension went out of his eyes. He didn’t like thinking much for himself. Sharks, as a rule, are not being overly thoughtful. “Okay then.”

She leaned back against his chest. “Now, wasn’t there … something else you were concerned about?”

He laughed softly as his hands slipped down her back, tracing along her skin, to hang around her waist. Then she could feel his fingers working as they gathered in the cloth of her robes. Slowly, slowly her hemline rose up to her knees. “Maybe one thing.”

She reached back to press her palm against his hips. “What’s that?”

Softly he kissed her neck. “You’re sure no one will disturb us?”

“I gave everyone chores to keep them busy for an hour.”

He kept gathering in her robes, drawing the hemline up her thighs. “And Dhrun?”

“Him too.” He began to kiss her neck.

“You’re sure?”

His hands stopped working and pressed against her hips. “You worry too much about four-arms. I took care of him.” He turned her and she looked up into his handsome face. His deep brown eyes looked into hers. “I mean it now. You think about him too much.”

She smiled at him. “Your dimples don’t show when you’re jealous.” She reached up and ran a hand along his cheek. “There’s no need.”

He pulled her close. “I’m not jealous. But he’s an odd one. He converted himself. What kind of neodemon converts himself?”

“One who has requisites for glory and can pick a leader to get him there. And we agreed that he never had to talk about his past before conversion.”

Kai frowned. “He gets out of line. He’s too competitive when the whole crew has to paddle together.”

“I’ll talk to him—”

“No, no … We got something more important to worry about now.” He kissed her again, even more gently than before, but she could feel the almost limitless strength in his arms.

“Oh?”

His fingers started working again and slowly drew the hem of her robes up her thighs, over her hips.

Aboard his first barge, Nicodemus watched Rory direct repairs to the barge that the River Thief had tried to steal.

After Nicodemus had dispelled the neodemon, Rory had edited the druidic text in the ship to keep it afloat. Sir Claude had emerged from his metallic cocoon and—though careful never to touch his patient—treated Nicodemus’s minor wounds.

As dawn began to hide stars behind vivid sky, the rest of Nicodemus’s party appeared on the river. John had had difficulty rousing Doria from the River Thief’s godspell. It was only with the neodemon’s death, after which her godspells rapidly decayed, that John woke Doria and the rest of the party.

Rory was barking commands to the pilot of the fourth barge as he and a dozen sailors lashed the two barges together. Rory wanted to transfer some text from one boat to another to complete the repairs. Nicodemus tightened the blanket he had wrapped around his shoulders even though the tropical morning was warm and the coming day promised to be hot.

“I haven’t blackmailed you yet,” a woman said behind him, “only because I haven’t decided what I want to extort from you.”

Nicodemus turned to see Magistra Doria Kokalas, his envoy from the hydromancers of Ixos. At one hundred ten years old, Doria was the most senior spellwright in Nicodemus’s court. Born of the Cloud People in Chandralu, Doria had trained first in her native city as a hydromancer then as a clerical physician in Port Mercy.

Despite her age, Doria stood straight at nearly five feet ten inches and possessed brown eyes that were only just beginning to cloud over. Her long white hair was tied back into a ponytail and she absently bothered the sleeves of her long blue robes.

Nicodemus smiled. “Magistra, it is good to see you on this fine Ixonian morning.”

“Don’t change the subject; when I tell your wife about the risks you took attempting to convert a minor neodemon, her head will explode.”

“Not until after she made sure mine exploded first.”

“What did you expect? You married a dragon.”

“Doria, I’m sorry I didn’t wake you up. By the time I thought of it, it was too late.”

“Oh, it’s nothing that I can’t forgive after a little blackmail.”

“What are you hoping to extort from me? A large estate? A position on the league’s council?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of five to six handsome young men to cook for me, carry me about on a palanquin, give the occasional foot massage.” She shrugged.

Nicodemus laughed. Of all the envoys and personal advisors he had known, Doria was the one he liked and trusted most. Likely that was because she had been twenty-five years in his service; the other envoys had had the bad habit of getting killed.

“Five to six handsome servants sounds a bit much. How about two?”

The water mage smiled at him. “Didn’t you have a ‘First rule of fighting a water goddess’ or something to that effect?”

“The River Thief had requisites for equitable theft; you know how useful she could have been to us.”

“But you didn’t know that when you got into the God-of-god’s damned water, did you?”

“Three handsome young servants,” Nicodemus replied. “Final offer.” Just then a cry from the barge turned their eyes to the repairs. Something had gone wrong and the two boats nudged each other and began rocking. With a yawp, Rory dove off the bow and splashed into the river.

Doria sighed. “At least you managed to keep your druid and highsmith envoys alive this time around. Maybe these two will last longer than a season.”

“They both did rather well.”

“Which brings me to why I sought you out on this oh-so-lonely perch of yours.” She paused and then nodded aft where Sir Claude was leaning on the gunnel and studying Rory. The druid now swam alongside the barge and periodically reached up to touch its hull to edit the druidic text written within its wood.

“Sir Iron Pants over there,” Doria said, “just told me how the River Thief claimed one of the divinities in her goddess complex might have come from the Old Continent. Sir Steel also reports that the neodemon wore your daughter’s face.”

“It’s not a tall tale. I asked Sir Claude to inform you when no one would overhear.”

“So he did.”

“Can you think of any way we might find out if the River Thief was from the Old Continent?”

“Given that Freckles down there”—she gestured to Rory’s red head bobbing in the river—“killed all of the River Thief’s crew before we could question them … no, nothing comes to mind.”

“It’s my fault. I should have ordered Rory to restrain them if possible.”

“You should have. And you should have woken me.”

“Agreed.”

“As for why the neodemon should be wearing Leandra’s face … other than the fact that it’s a young and lovely face … no, I can’t think of any earthly reason the goddess would do such a thing.”

Nicodemus nodded and changed the subject. “What’s your opinion of Sir Claude? Can we trust him?”

Doria looked the knight up and down. “Well, he’s sarcastic enough to fit in with our crew. I think we can trust him to do his duty, especially if that duty involves picking a fight with Freckles. Those two have it out for each other in a way that I can’t figure out. Did they know each other before?”

“No.”

“Did one of them kill the other’s brother or something during one of the skirmishes between Lorn and Dral?”

“They deny it and there was no mention of such in the reports I read. In fact, Sir Claude was a veteran of the Goldensward War in the north of Lorn, and Rory a veteran of the Whiteforest Wars in southern Dral. I don’t think they’ve come within a hundred miles of each other until they joined my service.”

Doria made a thoughtful sound. “I wonder what it is then. Maybe just personal dislike. Anyway, my Lord Warden, what are we to do about preventing the River Thief from reincarnating?”

“Magistra, you are my advisor. Aren’t you supposed to be advising me?”

“I’m too old to do my own work. That’s why I went into politics.”

“Very well, given the River Thief’s requisites, I am wagering her cult will be mostly in the river villages.”

“Because of the requisite for equability?”

“The urban deities of theft are a more ruthless lot.”

Doria waggled her head from side to side as she did when weighing evidence. “That she was a complex of three makes it harder to say. Could be a city thief goddess fused with an ancient river goddess of the poor.”

Nicodemus raised an eyebrow. “Five thousand thieves praying near a single ark? Only place that could happen would be Chandralu. Lea might be having some trouble bringing down these rural neodemons; she hasn’t had any trouble in the city. If there had been a newly incarnated goddess of theft she would have known.”

Doria chewed her lip. “So, you’d argue that it’s more likely that five thousand souls along this river began to pray to steal a bit of the wealth that flows between Matrupor and Chandralu? It isn’t the worst idea I ever heard.”

“High praise from you, Magistra.”

“So we float back to Chandralu and tell the prince regent he’s got to find a way to let the villages in on the trade wealth? Let them charge tolls maybe? Or maybe have the crown build temples and schools to share the wealth?”

“Fiery heaven, I’m not suggesting a thing. Leandra is Warden of Ixos. Keeping the discontents from reincarnating the River Thief is her problem.”

Doria sniffed. “Typical. That’s just typical of the father.”

“What? I would be respecting the sovereignty of her office.”

“Look, you know she’s doing something wrong. You know things are out of hand in rural Ixos. So she’s going to have to change; would you agree?”

“I have this feeling that if I agree, you’re going to find some way of making me feel like an ass.”

“You don’t have to do anything in particular for me to make you feel like an ass.”

“Such a comfort you are, Magistra. All right, so, yes, I know Lea will have to change.”

“So you can’t just solve the problems and tell her she has to change.”

“I can’t?” Nicodemus asked. He had thought Doria was going to applaud his respect for his daughter’s independence.

“Of course not. You have to help her to change.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Nicodemus muttered, though he had no idea how exactly he was supposed to do such a thing.

“You would have done better with a son.”

“I would?”

“There’s a saying among the Cloud People—”

“You never quoted Cloud People sayings when we were in the South.”

“Being home makes me nostalgic. Now, do you want a gem of invaluable wisdom from my people or not?”

“I do.”

“So the saying is ‘to be a good father to a son, a man merely has to be kind, wise, or clever.’”

“I don’t get it. What does a man need to be a good father to a daughter?”

“But that’s the point! There’s nothing specific that can make you good at it. It’s just a”—She waved one hand in the air—“you know, a certain”—more vigorous hand waving, perhaps indicating the complexity of the sought-after attributes—“a certain combination.”

“Truly, a gem of invaluable wisdom.”

“Stop. You’re ruining the effect.”

“Doria, you’ve never had a daughter. You’ve never even had children.”

“But I’ve been a daughter. And that, don’t you think, better qualifies me to know what a daughter needs than would, oh I don’t know, screwing up the raising of one, hmm?”

“Lea is thirty-three years old now, the Warden of a whole kingdom. It’s hardly like I’m still raising her.”

“A son is a son until he finds a wife; a daughter is a daughter for life.”

“Another saying of the Cloud People?”

“Oh, please, no. You think we’d rhyme so sentimentally like that? The Cloud People are nothing if not practical. I heard that in Dral.”

“It sounds Dralish, but that doesn’t mean it’s not stupid,” Nicodemus replied. “And while I appreciate that raising daughters is a difficult task, I don’t know if your generalities apply to Lea. She is after all half-human and half-textual, the daughter of a dragon, too damn clever by half, fond of getting into trouble, and continuously fighting a disease that will—everyone agrees—kill her far too soon.” An unintended note of hurt had entered Nicodemus’s voice.

Doria waited a moment before saying, “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Leandra’s situation is unique.” She waited another moment. “So, raising a daughter is difficult. But for your daughter, that’s especially so.”

Nicodemus took a long breath. He needed to hurry back to his daughter. Away to the east, one of the big-bellied clouds was dropping a curtain of rain onto the jungle.