Fugitive Prince - Chapter Ten - Pursuit
Feb. 19th, 2024 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatThis title bodes well!
So last time, we spent a lot of time with Mearn. He had a rough go of it. The Fellowship remains positively useless. Everyone's walking into various traps. And well, things are not great at the moment.
But we did get to see Elaira tell off Kharadmon. So that was something!
So it's Spring 5653. Still. Of course.
We're rejoining Caolle here, actually. He's been situated in the mate's cabin of the "Lance of Justice". He's chained by the ankle, but has some idea of where the ship is because of the smell. (He'd gotten them to latch open the door by complaining about varnish fumes.)
He's not doing great. He's aching but wants to stay alert. Also, while the Koriani healer means well, her remedies make him sleep and he's prone to nightmares. Understandably.
And like his liege lord, he's prone to angst:
Like a crippled, old dog, he felt he had outlived his usefulness. The enchantresses’ meddling fed his unease, tick tight as they were with Lysaer s’Ilessid’s Alliance. Dread fanned that anxiety, that his part in his liege lord’s flight out of Riverton might become their best tool to clinch Prince Arithon’s downfall.
Aw.
Anyway, Caolle's a pretty proactive guy and he's definitely not resigned to his fate. But he's injured, and his "festering wounds on his forearms" (eek, that sounds bad alone) are bandaged so well that they also "serve[] as restraint".
There's lots of Caolle observing and gauging the ship and the crew. He's figured out how many guardsmen are aboard (twenty-five), how many are idle (half), there's about two dozen sailhands each one with character references from merchants or justiciars. Lysaer isn't taking chances apparently. Or Lirenda isn't.
Caolle knows some of the folk from the time at the tavern: the handpicked officers, for example, and the serving-class appointments: cook, purser and steward. There's also a street kid that had stowed away and got pressed into service as a "ship's boy". Said boy fetches and carries for Lirenda mostly.
So there's an interesting weakness to Koriani crystal magic - it doesn't span open salt water. Therefore both Lirenda and the healer are aboard this ship. They share the captain's quarters, while the displaced officers are stuck in the chart room.
Caolle learns more from the cook's complaining: seventy-two of Arithon's accomplices, all exposed by Koriani magic, are chained in the brig. He realizes that the other two vessels following this one must be the ones that bear the Etarran fighting men who'll be used to defeat Arithon at Corith.
It's a shame there's no disembodied sorcerer who could pop in and pay a visit and collect this useful information, right?
Oh well, it's not a Fellowship chapter, so I can quit my bitching.
Caolle also describes for us the mate's cabin. I'm not sure how much if anything will be useful to know. It sounds very ordinary though: berth, hanging locker, a niche for a sea chest, et cetera.
At some point, he hears something very interesting. Lirenda is changing the course. The vessels had been intended to go to Corith, on the Isles of Min Pierens. But she knows that Arithon knows of the plan. In fact, she claims he was deliberately allowed to hear warning. That...actually could be true. Mearn's escape was rather convenient.
She believes he'll flee south for Torwent, and Lirenda knows where his sloop is hidden. So they're planning to ambush him when he bolts for open water.
And we see, maybe, a bit of Lirenda's character flaw at work:
“That’s a coast run,” cracked the captain, tired and brittle from the long, fussy hours of seamanship required to run the Riverton Narrows. “You’d have been better off to charter a galleyman who hauls cargo through Tideport and Mainmere.”
“You’re afraid?” Lirenda’s derisive accusation chilled Caolle to ugly foreboding. “I’m surprised. Three ships with armed companies against a pleasure sloop crewed by one man and a bumbling, fat drunk would seem an auspicious engagement.”
Maybe it'd be good to listen to an expert? But Lirenda's got a point too. The captain is concerned about Arithon's sorcery - especially thinking about the destruction of the fleet at Minderl (in Ships of Merior). We know though that Arithon's control of sorcery is limited and that the Minderl destruction was as much Lysaer's doing as Arithon's.
Lirenda just points out that they've got the backing of the High Matriarch AND gainsaying her would be a betrayal of the Alliance of Light (for refusing their help to corner the "Spinner of Darkness" - I do rather enjoy that sobriquet. "Master of Shadows" is more dramatic, but the spider reference really does paint Arithon as more of an insidious plotting danger. And well, it's not wrong, per se.)
And well, as we see, Lirenda knows Arithon better than the captain does:
“You worry for nothing.” Lirenda arose to a breezy rustle of silk. The crack in the wall flickered as she crossed through the light to leave by means of the companionway. “The Master of Shadow will come readily to heel once he learns of our cargo of hostages.”
“Are you mad?” The captain of the brig banged frustrated fists on his chart table. “The man’s a fell sorcerer and a thrice-confirmed killer! Do you actually believe he’d give himself up to spare a mere coffle of lackeys?”
Of course he will. But Lirenda doesn't bother to argue. She just emphasizes the Koriani requirement.
So poor Caolle is stressed and upset. He knows Arithon. Lirenda's right. And even more right than she knows, because Caolle also knows that Arithon's going to be angsting up a storm due to Caolle's situation. But Caolle's not done yet:
Forty years with the burden of command left Caolle a sharp judge of character. Whatever Morriel’s successor believed, her reasons for seeking the Shadow Master’s ruin were entrenched and intensely personal enough to raise the hair at his nape. In defiance of despair, and the straits of mortal pain, Caolle gritted his teeth. He linked his fists through hemp netting and began in stark need to chafe the linen bound over his poultices.
...forty years? I know they start young, but how old IS Caolle at this point?
We're fifteen years past Mistwraith. Jieret would be about 27. I guess it's plausible that Caolle is in his fifties. Sixties would be pushing it though. I feel like he'd be described differently if he were that old.
Anyway, we skip ahead to midnight. It's the change of the watch. The Koriani healer has come to tend Caolle. She has some pity for the guy: apparently the healing magic is really painful at this stage and he doesn't like painkillers. Because of this pity, she doesn't tend the low-burning candle first.
Caolle is worse than usual, though. He tells her that something's wrong: the dressing is sodden. She notes that he's feverish and is concerned.
We learn a bit about healing magics here, and it's pretty interesting:
For the ciphers and seals still actively binding spirit to flesh were far from safe or beneficent. If Caolle’s wound had gone septic, the same conjuries which regenerated torn tissue would outrace their proper intent. Sigils as a rule were unselective, a vectored spell of forced impetus. A starting suppuration would engage their figured energies, then turn on itself and run rampant. All risks came redoubled. Misread the first signs, and Arithon’s liegeman could die in an hour, consumed from within by infection.
I'd actually like to hear more about how this sort of spell casting works, but then it would be boring to excerpt/recap.
Anyway, she uses her crystal to try to determine the issue. She doesn't find anything, which puzzles her. As she rechecks her findings...
The explosive attack took her without warning. A hand grabbed her hair and yanked her headlong toward the hammock. Trance dulled her reaction. The sharp break from mage-sight hurled her dizzy, and the shock never let her assemble her balance to strike back.
Oops.
So the healer's down. She does start to frame a sigil to warn Lirenda, but Caolle's a pro. He seizes her spell crystal and she passes out.
Actually, it seems like the sigil made it to Lirenda, who wakes up out of a sound sleep. She doesn't seem to be anticipating danger, more that the healer is upset by some kind of "mismanaged turn of disaster" She decides to be subtle because apparently the seamen are feeling acrimonious after her clash with the captain. She doesn't want to give them more grounds to challenge Koriani authority.
She gets to the room to see something horrifying:
The brig slogged through a trough and rose at the bow. Newly forged hinges swung free to her roll, and the panel gaped further open. The sultry glow of a failing wick etched the interior of the cabin, with the bulk of Caolle’s hammock a dim silhouette overtop. Lirenda heard a woman’s groan. Quickened to alarm, she made out a female form, held pinned and struggling beneath the rucked folds of a healer’s mantle.
“What ails you, wench?” teased Arithon’s liegeman in muffled, derisive clan accents. “Only boys mind a virgin. Keep still and enjoy the fine sort of fun you’ve been missing.”
Ick.
The threat makes Lirenda so angry that she storms into the room and shoots a spell at Caolle to stun him. Except...
“First Senior, my lady,” murmured Caolle in obliging regret, from behind, as the door panel crashed shut at her heels.
Thank goodness, Caolle isn't actually a rapist.
Anyway, Lirenda wakes up, finding herself restrained by hands, ankles, and mouth with strips of bandages. She's been propped up against the closed door of the cabin.
Caolle is sitting on the sea chest. His feet are still fettered, actually, but they've been muffled with oilskin.
He taunts her a bit here:
“Foolish, to think I’d sully myself with a witch who kept me living as bait to bring down my liege. Not to mind,” he ran on, as Lirenda jerked stiff. “She’s there, in the hammock, triced up neatly as you are. How obliging of her to struggle and moan just as you made your appearance.”
Caolle knows he's in bad shape, and is suffering pain spasms. But he's also got both Lirenda and the healer's spell crystals in hand. So...he's got the power in this encounter. Lirenda realizes that pride is worthless here and tries to hammer her feet on the deck for help, but he's wrapped her feet in her robe of office.
Meaning she's actually naked, by the way. She gives a muffled shriek of rage and:
“I didn’t like being fingered by ladies I don’t know, either,” Caolle agreed in unswerving complaisance.
Oh, Caolle. He's such a dick, I say with some affection.
His arm by the way is bleeding. His struggles to free himself reopened his wounds. But he's not particularly worried. He holds the healer's crystal above the lantern flame, but Lirenda isn't worried. There are wards on the stone to protect it from fire.
This though...
“Would you say that her youth’s an illusion?” Caolle mused. “There’s a fact or two whispered in the lore of our clans concerning the ways of your kind.” He lifted the gemstone, heated now, the unquiet shimmer of its facets thinly tarnished under a layering of soot. “Do you know, I’ve a perverse curiosity to find out how ancient your colleague really is.”
Russet light wheeled as he shifted the lamp. The bent of his cruelty struck through at last as First Senior Lirenda realized he held an iron bucket braced between his tucked knees.
Salt water in an iron bucket. Apparently these are the "talismans listed to ground and clear a spell crystal."
So...what does that mean?
Hot quartz struck cold water. A sharp hiss, a shot geyser of steam, as the crystal shocked out of resonance and shattered. The fragments sliced in terrible, thin clangs against the metal confines of the bucket. Trapped helpless in mage-sight, Lirenda beheld a cloudy burst of static. Then an actinic flare of silver bloomed above the rim as wrought sigils let go, and a lifetime’s figured energies bled off and vanished into air.
On the hammock, death visited with wrenching finality as the stabilized seals to retard aging gave way. The healer’s slim body bucked once. An inhuman screech shrilled through the linen wound in layers across her mouth. Muscle, nerve, and bone, her body convulsed, shivering the hammock on its rings. Her bound limbs thrashed. Joints cracked and cartilage popped to the lash of unnatural stresses. Spasmed hands jabbed and fought their restraints, then seemed between heartbeats to shrivel. Tendons contracted. Splayed knuckles bent. Bone clenched to bone, leaving not fingers, but claws, cranked tight into rigor like the leg-folded husks of dead spiders.
Then the fit which contorted the woman’s wasted sinews let go. The remains sagged limp and the covering cloak slid away.
Even Caolle's pretty horrified by this. The narrative tells us that while he's killed countless times, it was never this hideous. The healer's corpse now looks like it languished three centuries in the grave. Egads.
Caolle's a pro though and he recovers quickly. He has one prisoner and her crystal.
We hear Lirenda's point of view here:
For of course, he possessed a second purloined crystal to spin in cold threat above the lantern flame. Despite features pinched by sleeplessness and suffering pain, his glacial deliberation left Lirenda in no doubt that her peril was real. This was the clan war captain who had helped Arithon s’Ffalenn engineer the atrocities at Tal Quorin and the Havens, and after these, the most unconscionable of all, the thirty thousand casualties which had bloodied the field in one hour at Dier Kenton Vale. He owned no unmoored nerve to revolt. The First Senior watched, wholly defenseless, as Caolle hooked up the braided chain which fastened her personal crystal. He rebalanced the lamp, played the stone through the flame, his ultimatum served up in a silence like dammed acid.
It isn't really surprising that the Koriani position is that the clans are the cause of the Tal Quorin atrocities. They've got the same town biases. But I will never stop pointing out that the only reason any "atrocities" happened is because the townsfolk tried to commit genocide.
But well, the Koriani are kind of doing the same thing. Morriel believes Arithon will destroy her order, if not stopped. So what does she do? She keeps giving him good reason to do that, if the opportunity ever comes up.
Caolle explains his demands, though we don't get to hear them. We do get to see Lirenda listen, berating herself for messing with Morriel's plan and forgetting that Caolle is a dangerous SOB who would gladly die for his cause. Yep. That was dumb.
He cuts her ankles free with the healer's stone knife, but leaves her to saw her own wrists free on her own. Fitting. There is a bit of an attempt at an exchange of taunts, but Caolle has the power here. If nothing else, he doesn't believe an untried fleet of three ships could take on Arithon and survive.
He makes her leave the knife with him. And we hear that there's a time limit for what he wants from her: once the oil in the lamp runs out, she's to lock herself in her cabin. If he notes anything wrong, he'll kill her. But if she does what he wants, she'll be freed.
Lirenda isn't stupid and, well, she's not really a devoted fanatic either. She obeys.
Once she leaves, Caolle shows us that he's not doing as well as he seemed:
Caolle slumped back against the bulkhead of the hanging locker, his large frame shaking head to foot from the pain in response to unwise exertion. He dared not acknowledge the grisly remains in the hammock. His nerves would revolt. The bucket would become an immediate catch basin for the rejected contents of his stomach. The minutes crept past, while he sweated. Ath knew, he set small store by prayer. Nor would he yield to his hypocrite fears, and beg the creator’s indulgence.
There are a lot of ways that his scheme could go wrong. And he's definitely not doing well. And we learn what he's ordered Lirenda to do:
Caolle clung to the reassurance of each sound. He endured the grim seconds one after the next in tight-breathing, bulldog tenacity. Inside a few minutes the lamp would burn dry By then, the last of Arithon’s collaborators must be set free from their chains. Either their little hired captain, a foul-tongued West Shandian, would arrive bringing confirmation, along with the keys for the leg irons and also the brig’s forward arms locker; or Dharkaron damn the consequences, Lirenda’s quartz focus would be dropped in salt water to shatter.
Caolle himself will probably not survive Koriani vengeance either way, if he manages to survive this at all.
--
The second subchapter is Second Upset.
We're in Mainmere Bay. Three Alliance brigs are sailing in convoy. The lookout on the second vessel is a bit concerned as the Lance of Justice is listing starboard.
Apparently there's some blinked code - do they have Morse Code on Athera? (It occurs to me that they very well might, given the origin story.) The ship is planning to "heave to" and they're supposed to "round up alongside" to take on cargo and prisoners.
They speculate on what's wrong and comply. Because of leg irons, the prisoners have to be hoisted aboard one at a time. There's a particularly vocal prisoner, a West Shandian captain who is "vitriolically loyal to Prince Arithon" who keeps making ribald and "ruthlessly damning remarks" about their technique.
You know, I think this might be one of the few times anyone's called Arithon by his actual title.
Well no, actually, it occurs to me. The curse hit on Arithon's coronation day, so really, he should be "King", shouldn't he? But then, maybe it doesn't count if the crown never got put on his head?
Anyway, this prisoner is definitely one of Arithon's ilk:
For no mark proved exempt: the prisoner possessed a deadly sharp eye for slack seamanship, and a tongue to scale rust from black iron. Worse yet, his railing came poisoned with wit to crack the most dour man’s ribs. The oarsmen who ferried him across in the longboat lost their timed stroke, unraveled into helpless laughter. They arrived, doubled over their banked oars, shut eyes leaking tears, while wind and drift fetched them headlong against their mother ship’s side strakes.
One poor oarsman is so upset that he stands up to defend himself, and, due to a mistimed swell, ends up falling into the ocean.
Arithon would be so proud, dude.
There's an interesting note that the crew of the other vessel seems to be laughing with the prisoner. Ah. Well then...
Things do start getting chaotic, between the prisoner's taunts, other prisoners and crew offering unhelpful suggestions, and so on. The captain of the second vessel is mad enough to issue threat and:
Far from cowing the sailhands back to order, his enraged threat of violence only seeded a frenetic, new snarl of confusion. Sailhands jostled and yelled oaths from behind. They pressed their captain’s stance, apparently possessed by a brainless urge to start brawling. More shouting erupted from the oared boats port and starboard. Then both lanterns were doused in unison. Darkness clapped down, an oddity which meant the brig’s deck lamps had also extinguished. Screams ripped through the laughter before anyone realized: the boats alongside were not friendly.
The prisoners themselves were escaped from their chains and bearing arms in a battering attack.
Hahah. So yes, Caolle's maneuver does seem to have worked. The prisoners were free all along, the crew replaced, and well, now they're boarding and taking this second ship. The captain tries to order a warning to the third ship, but they're too late: the ship's bell's been cut down.
And somewhere along the way, the Etarran company ended up confined out of the way. The hatches are battened. Apparently.
I should really learn more about sailing.
But this is the gist that we need to understand:
Then, the insufferable last straw, the Shandian captain swarmed up the strakes and leaped the rail in swaggering insolence. “Strike your colors and surrender this vessel.” His grin came and went, all uncivil, sharp teeth. “Or die valiant while we run up the leopard of Rathain. It’s all one to me. This brig’s already befouled to her scuppers. We’re going to have to find pails and swab up your mate’s liver, anyway. Refuse, and you’ll just make that unsavory task the more grisly.”
--
The last subchapter is Reckoning
The freed henchmen are meeting in the Lance's chart room. They get to decide what they're doing next.
They have: one Koriani First Senior, fifty smoke-sickened Etarran company men as hostages. They're now in the hold that used to hold the henchmen prisoner.
The third ship is still loyal, but has no idea what's going on. They've been told that the Lance would retire to Tideport to be mended. The other two would go to Mainmere for the blockade. It will be attacked after sundown.
After the meeting ends, one of them goes to the other cabin. Caolle's inside. They fill him in. The Lance of Justice is now renamed simply "Lance" and will be turned over to Maenol's clansmen. The clansmen will then decide whether to get Arithon's orders at Innish, or sail to Corith to fight Lysaer for any survivors.
Caolle's in rough shape, from the sound of it:
Caolle lay with his eyes closed, his breaths fast and shallow and his skin like limp parchment with suffering. “The plan’s sound enough,” he whispered at long length. If the men chose the fight in the Isles, they would have the brig and the Koriani First Senior as bargaining chips, as well as a sea captain and the Etarran company to play for an exchange of hostages. “The First Senior’s jewel is well away?”
If they survive, the brig's crew will be shipping the spelled quartz off to Arithon as a present. Hah, you know, I could 'ship Caolle and Arithon. That's a good courtship gift indeed.
But sadly, like other new ships in this book, this one is doomed. Caolle's dying. The spells keeping him alive are undoing themselves, now that he's killed the healer.
In time, he asked if it were nightfall, the cabin seemed so cold and dark. The roll of high seas dissolved into the spiraling spin of blank vertigo. He could not feel his blankets. The breath in his lungs felt insubstantial and light, not like true air, but some vaporous drug which wafted his mind into dizziness.
“It’s afternoon,” the man said, never far from his side. His accent had the syrupy vowels of the southcoast, and his hands, a shipwright’s thick callus. “The curtains aren’t drawn. You can’t see the sunlight through the stern window?”
Yep.
The clansman with him is gentle, asking him if there's anything he wants to say to Arithon or to his kin. They'll make sure to pass along the message.
“Let my people and my prince hear that I died in the assault to toss out the Koriani witches. No less than plain truth.” Caolle denied clutching fingers of pain just enough to wrench out a gritty, disparaging grin. “Tell the Teir’s’Ffalenn, too…every word I said to Dakar at Riverton is still binding. But add one thing more…I’ve survived many worse than the pinprick he gave me. His Grace has a puny sword arm, and may Dharkaron Avenger damn him for a weakling if he doesn’t choose another liegeman to stand at his shoulder in my place.”
Fitting last words.
--
So the sneak peek section is Turning Points.
The first: in Corith, Lysaer is reviewing the disposition of troops, galleys, and the captured brig. He's waiting with keen anticipation for Arithon's ambush.
Hope you're ready for disappointment, dude.
The second: Maenol's men fight the alliance to buy time for threatened families to flee. Eventually, he whistles the retreat. Now it's up to whether or not Eldir grants sanctuary.
The third: a Hanshire captain, Sulfin Evend, has been tracking Arithon and Dakar. He knows they're driving an oxcart, and there's a company of sunwheel soldiers and a Crown Examiner ahead of them. If they move fast, they might catch them.
The chapter ends here.
So last time, we spent a lot of time with Mearn. He had a rough go of it. The Fellowship remains positively useless. Everyone's walking into various traps. And well, things are not great at the moment.
But we did get to see Elaira tell off Kharadmon. So that was something!
So it's Spring 5653. Still. Of course.
We're rejoining Caolle here, actually. He's been situated in the mate's cabin of the "Lance of Justice". He's chained by the ankle, but has some idea of where the ship is because of the smell. (He'd gotten them to latch open the door by complaining about varnish fumes.)
He's not doing great. He's aching but wants to stay alert. Also, while the Koriani healer means well, her remedies make him sleep and he's prone to nightmares. Understandably.
And like his liege lord, he's prone to angst:
Like a crippled, old dog, he felt he had outlived his usefulness. The enchantresses’ meddling fed his unease, tick tight as they were with Lysaer s’Ilessid’s Alliance. Dread fanned that anxiety, that his part in his liege lord’s flight out of Riverton might become their best tool to clinch Prince Arithon’s downfall.
Aw.
Anyway, Caolle's a pretty proactive guy and he's definitely not resigned to his fate. But he's injured, and his "festering wounds on his forearms" (eek, that sounds bad alone) are bandaged so well that they also "serve[] as restraint".
There's lots of Caolle observing and gauging the ship and the crew. He's figured out how many guardsmen are aboard (twenty-five), how many are idle (half), there's about two dozen sailhands each one with character references from merchants or justiciars. Lysaer isn't taking chances apparently. Or Lirenda isn't.
Caolle knows some of the folk from the time at the tavern: the handpicked officers, for example, and the serving-class appointments: cook, purser and steward. There's also a street kid that had stowed away and got pressed into service as a "ship's boy". Said boy fetches and carries for Lirenda mostly.
So there's an interesting weakness to Koriani crystal magic - it doesn't span open salt water. Therefore both Lirenda and the healer are aboard this ship. They share the captain's quarters, while the displaced officers are stuck in the chart room.
Caolle learns more from the cook's complaining: seventy-two of Arithon's accomplices, all exposed by Koriani magic, are chained in the brig. He realizes that the other two vessels following this one must be the ones that bear the Etarran fighting men who'll be used to defeat Arithon at Corith.
It's a shame there's no disembodied sorcerer who could pop in and pay a visit and collect this useful information, right?
Oh well, it's not a Fellowship chapter, so I can quit my bitching.
Caolle also describes for us the mate's cabin. I'm not sure how much if anything will be useful to know. It sounds very ordinary though: berth, hanging locker, a niche for a sea chest, et cetera.
At some point, he hears something very interesting. Lirenda is changing the course. The vessels had been intended to go to Corith, on the Isles of Min Pierens. But she knows that Arithon knows of the plan. In fact, she claims he was deliberately allowed to hear warning. That...actually could be true. Mearn's escape was rather convenient.
She believes he'll flee south for Torwent, and Lirenda knows where his sloop is hidden. So they're planning to ambush him when he bolts for open water.
And we see, maybe, a bit of Lirenda's character flaw at work:
“That’s a coast run,” cracked the captain, tired and brittle from the long, fussy hours of seamanship required to run the Riverton Narrows. “You’d have been better off to charter a galleyman who hauls cargo through Tideport and Mainmere.”
“You’re afraid?” Lirenda’s derisive accusation chilled Caolle to ugly foreboding. “I’m surprised. Three ships with armed companies against a pleasure sloop crewed by one man and a bumbling, fat drunk would seem an auspicious engagement.”
Maybe it'd be good to listen to an expert? But Lirenda's got a point too. The captain is concerned about Arithon's sorcery - especially thinking about the destruction of the fleet at Minderl (in Ships of Merior). We know though that Arithon's control of sorcery is limited and that the Minderl destruction was as much Lysaer's doing as Arithon's.
Lirenda just points out that they've got the backing of the High Matriarch AND gainsaying her would be a betrayal of the Alliance of Light (for refusing their help to corner the "Spinner of Darkness" - I do rather enjoy that sobriquet. "Master of Shadows" is more dramatic, but the spider reference really does paint Arithon as more of an insidious plotting danger. And well, it's not wrong, per se.)
And well, as we see, Lirenda knows Arithon better than the captain does:
“You worry for nothing.” Lirenda arose to a breezy rustle of silk. The crack in the wall flickered as she crossed through the light to leave by means of the companionway. “The Master of Shadow will come readily to heel once he learns of our cargo of hostages.”
“Are you mad?” The captain of the brig banged frustrated fists on his chart table. “The man’s a fell sorcerer and a thrice-confirmed killer! Do you actually believe he’d give himself up to spare a mere coffle of lackeys?”
Of course he will. But Lirenda doesn't bother to argue. She just emphasizes the Koriani requirement.
So poor Caolle is stressed and upset. He knows Arithon. Lirenda's right. And even more right than she knows, because Caolle also knows that Arithon's going to be angsting up a storm due to Caolle's situation. But Caolle's not done yet:
Forty years with the burden of command left Caolle a sharp judge of character. Whatever Morriel’s successor believed, her reasons for seeking the Shadow Master’s ruin were entrenched and intensely personal enough to raise the hair at his nape. In defiance of despair, and the straits of mortal pain, Caolle gritted his teeth. He linked his fists through hemp netting and began in stark need to chafe the linen bound over his poultices.
...forty years? I know they start young, but how old IS Caolle at this point?
We're fifteen years past Mistwraith. Jieret would be about 27. I guess it's plausible that Caolle is in his fifties. Sixties would be pushing it though. I feel like he'd be described differently if he were that old.
Anyway, we skip ahead to midnight. It's the change of the watch. The Koriani healer has come to tend Caolle. She has some pity for the guy: apparently the healing magic is really painful at this stage and he doesn't like painkillers. Because of this pity, she doesn't tend the low-burning candle first.
Caolle is worse than usual, though. He tells her that something's wrong: the dressing is sodden. She notes that he's feverish and is concerned.
We learn a bit about healing magics here, and it's pretty interesting:
For the ciphers and seals still actively binding spirit to flesh were far from safe or beneficent. If Caolle’s wound had gone septic, the same conjuries which regenerated torn tissue would outrace their proper intent. Sigils as a rule were unselective, a vectored spell of forced impetus. A starting suppuration would engage their figured energies, then turn on itself and run rampant. All risks came redoubled. Misread the first signs, and Arithon’s liegeman could die in an hour, consumed from within by infection.
I'd actually like to hear more about how this sort of spell casting works, but then it would be boring to excerpt/recap.
Anyway, she uses her crystal to try to determine the issue. She doesn't find anything, which puzzles her. As she rechecks her findings...
The explosive attack took her without warning. A hand grabbed her hair and yanked her headlong toward the hammock. Trance dulled her reaction. The sharp break from mage-sight hurled her dizzy, and the shock never let her assemble her balance to strike back.
Oops.
So the healer's down. She does start to frame a sigil to warn Lirenda, but Caolle's a pro. He seizes her spell crystal and she passes out.
Actually, it seems like the sigil made it to Lirenda, who wakes up out of a sound sleep. She doesn't seem to be anticipating danger, more that the healer is upset by some kind of "mismanaged turn of disaster" She decides to be subtle because apparently the seamen are feeling acrimonious after her clash with the captain. She doesn't want to give them more grounds to challenge Koriani authority.
She gets to the room to see something horrifying:
The brig slogged through a trough and rose at the bow. Newly forged hinges swung free to her roll, and the panel gaped further open. The sultry glow of a failing wick etched the interior of the cabin, with the bulk of Caolle’s hammock a dim silhouette overtop. Lirenda heard a woman’s groan. Quickened to alarm, she made out a female form, held pinned and struggling beneath the rucked folds of a healer’s mantle.
“What ails you, wench?” teased Arithon’s liegeman in muffled, derisive clan accents. “Only boys mind a virgin. Keep still and enjoy the fine sort of fun you’ve been missing.”
Ick.
The threat makes Lirenda so angry that she storms into the room and shoots a spell at Caolle to stun him. Except...
“First Senior, my lady,” murmured Caolle in obliging regret, from behind, as the door panel crashed shut at her heels.
Thank goodness, Caolle isn't actually a rapist.
Anyway, Lirenda wakes up, finding herself restrained by hands, ankles, and mouth with strips of bandages. She's been propped up against the closed door of the cabin.
Caolle is sitting on the sea chest. His feet are still fettered, actually, but they've been muffled with oilskin.
He taunts her a bit here:
“Foolish, to think I’d sully myself with a witch who kept me living as bait to bring down my liege. Not to mind,” he ran on, as Lirenda jerked stiff. “She’s there, in the hammock, triced up neatly as you are. How obliging of her to struggle and moan just as you made your appearance.”
Caolle knows he's in bad shape, and is suffering pain spasms. But he's also got both Lirenda and the healer's spell crystals in hand. So...he's got the power in this encounter. Lirenda realizes that pride is worthless here and tries to hammer her feet on the deck for help, but he's wrapped her feet in her robe of office.
Meaning she's actually naked, by the way. She gives a muffled shriek of rage and:
“I didn’t like being fingered by ladies I don’t know, either,” Caolle agreed in unswerving complaisance.
Oh, Caolle. He's such a dick, I say with some affection.
His arm by the way is bleeding. His struggles to free himself reopened his wounds. But he's not particularly worried. He holds the healer's crystal above the lantern flame, but Lirenda isn't worried. There are wards on the stone to protect it from fire.
This though...
“Would you say that her youth’s an illusion?” Caolle mused. “There’s a fact or two whispered in the lore of our clans concerning the ways of your kind.” He lifted the gemstone, heated now, the unquiet shimmer of its facets thinly tarnished under a layering of soot. “Do you know, I’ve a perverse curiosity to find out how ancient your colleague really is.”
Russet light wheeled as he shifted the lamp. The bent of his cruelty struck through at last as First Senior Lirenda realized he held an iron bucket braced between his tucked knees.
Salt water in an iron bucket. Apparently these are the "talismans listed to ground and clear a spell crystal."
So...what does that mean?
Hot quartz struck cold water. A sharp hiss, a shot geyser of steam, as the crystal shocked out of resonance and shattered. The fragments sliced in terrible, thin clangs against the metal confines of the bucket. Trapped helpless in mage-sight, Lirenda beheld a cloudy burst of static. Then an actinic flare of silver bloomed above the rim as wrought sigils let go, and a lifetime’s figured energies bled off and vanished into air.
On the hammock, death visited with wrenching finality as the stabilized seals to retard aging gave way. The healer’s slim body bucked once. An inhuman screech shrilled through the linen wound in layers across her mouth. Muscle, nerve, and bone, her body convulsed, shivering the hammock on its rings. Her bound limbs thrashed. Joints cracked and cartilage popped to the lash of unnatural stresses. Spasmed hands jabbed and fought their restraints, then seemed between heartbeats to shrivel. Tendons contracted. Splayed knuckles bent. Bone clenched to bone, leaving not fingers, but claws, cranked tight into rigor like the leg-folded husks of dead spiders.
Then the fit which contorted the woman’s wasted sinews let go. The remains sagged limp and the covering cloak slid away.
Even Caolle's pretty horrified by this. The narrative tells us that while he's killed countless times, it was never this hideous. The healer's corpse now looks like it languished three centuries in the grave. Egads.
Caolle's a pro though and he recovers quickly. He has one prisoner and her crystal.
We hear Lirenda's point of view here:
For of course, he possessed a second purloined crystal to spin in cold threat above the lantern flame. Despite features pinched by sleeplessness and suffering pain, his glacial deliberation left Lirenda in no doubt that her peril was real. This was the clan war captain who had helped Arithon s’Ffalenn engineer the atrocities at Tal Quorin and the Havens, and after these, the most unconscionable of all, the thirty thousand casualties which had bloodied the field in one hour at Dier Kenton Vale. He owned no unmoored nerve to revolt. The First Senior watched, wholly defenseless, as Caolle hooked up the braided chain which fastened her personal crystal. He rebalanced the lamp, played the stone through the flame, his ultimatum served up in a silence like dammed acid.
It isn't really surprising that the Koriani position is that the clans are the cause of the Tal Quorin atrocities. They've got the same town biases. But I will never stop pointing out that the only reason any "atrocities" happened is because the townsfolk tried to commit genocide.
But well, the Koriani are kind of doing the same thing. Morriel believes Arithon will destroy her order, if not stopped. So what does she do? She keeps giving him good reason to do that, if the opportunity ever comes up.
Caolle explains his demands, though we don't get to hear them. We do get to see Lirenda listen, berating herself for messing with Morriel's plan and forgetting that Caolle is a dangerous SOB who would gladly die for his cause. Yep. That was dumb.
He cuts her ankles free with the healer's stone knife, but leaves her to saw her own wrists free on her own. Fitting. There is a bit of an attempt at an exchange of taunts, but Caolle has the power here. If nothing else, he doesn't believe an untried fleet of three ships could take on Arithon and survive.
He makes her leave the knife with him. And we hear that there's a time limit for what he wants from her: once the oil in the lamp runs out, she's to lock herself in her cabin. If he notes anything wrong, he'll kill her. But if she does what he wants, she'll be freed.
Lirenda isn't stupid and, well, she's not really a devoted fanatic either. She obeys.
Once she leaves, Caolle shows us that he's not doing as well as he seemed:
Caolle slumped back against the bulkhead of the hanging locker, his large frame shaking head to foot from the pain in response to unwise exertion. He dared not acknowledge the grisly remains in the hammock. His nerves would revolt. The bucket would become an immediate catch basin for the rejected contents of his stomach. The minutes crept past, while he sweated. Ath knew, he set small store by prayer. Nor would he yield to his hypocrite fears, and beg the creator’s indulgence.
There are a lot of ways that his scheme could go wrong. And he's definitely not doing well. And we learn what he's ordered Lirenda to do:
Caolle clung to the reassurance of each sound. He endured the grim seconds one after the next in tight-breathing, bulldog tenacity. Inside a few minutes the lamp would burn dry By then, the last of Arithon’s collaborators must be set free from their chains. Either their little hired captain, a foul-tongued West Shandian, would arrive bringing confirmation, along with the keys for the leg irons and also the brig’s forward arms locker; or Dharkaron damn the consequences, Lirenda’s quartz focus would be dropped in salt water to shatter.
Caolle himself will probably not survive Koriani vengeance either way, if he manages to survive this at all.
--
The second subchapter is Second Upset.
We're in Mainmere Bay. Three Alliance brigs are sailing in convoy. The lookout on the second vessel is a bit concerned as the Lance of Justice is listing starboard.
Apparently there's some blinked code - do they have Morse Code on Athera? (It occurs to me that they very well might, given the origin story.) The ship is planning to "heave to" and they're supposed to "round up alongside" to take on cargo and prisoners.
They speculate on what's wrong and comply. Because of leg irons, the prisoners have to be hoisted aboard one at a time. There's a particularly vocal prisoner, a West Shandian captain who is "vitriolically loyal to Prince Arithon" who keeps making ribald and "ruthlessly damning remarks" about their technique.
You know, I think this might be one of the few times anyone's called Arithon by his actual title.
Well no, actually, it occurs to me. The curse hit on Arithon's coronation day, so really, he should be "King", shouldn't he? But then, maybe it doesn't count if the crown never got put on his head?
Anyway, this prisoner is definitely one of Arithon's ilk:
For no mark proved exempt: the prisoner possessed a deadly sharp eye for slack seamanship, and a tongue to scale rust from black iron. Worse yet, his railing came poisoned with wit to crack the most dour man’s ribs. The oarsmen who ferried him across in the longboat lost their timed stroke, unraveled into helpless laughter. They arrived, doubled over their banked oars, shut eyes leaking tears, while wind and drift fetched them headlong against their mother ship’s side strakes.
One poor oarsman is so upset that he stands up to defend himself, and, due to a mistimed swell, ends up falling into the ocean.
Arithon would be so proud, dude.
There's an interesting note that the crew of the other vessel seems to be laughing with the prisoner. Ah. Well then...
Things do start getting chaotic, between the prisoner's taunts, other prisoners and crew offering unhelpful suggestions, and so on. The captain of the second vessel is mad enough to issue threat and:
Far from cowing the sailhands back to order, his enraged threat of violence only seeded a frenetic, new snarl of confusion. Sailhands jostled and yelled oaths from behind. They pressed their captain’s stance, apparently possessed by a brainless urge to start brawling. More shouting erupted from the oared boats port and starboard. Then both lanterns were doused in unison. Darkness clapped down, an oddity which meant the brig’s deck lamps had also extinguished. Screams ripped through the laughter before anyone realized: the boats alongside were not friendly.
The prisoners themselves were escaped from their chains and bearing arms in a battering attack.
Hahah. So yes, Caolle's maneuver does seem to have worked. The prisoners were free all along, the crew replaced, and well, now they're boarding and taking this second ship. The captain tries to order a warning to the third ship, but they're too late: the ship's bell's been cut down.
And somewhere along the way, the Etarran company ended up confined out of the way. The hatches are battened. Apparently.
I should really learn more about sailing.
But this is the gist that we need to understand:
Then, the insufferable last straw, the Shandian captain swarmed up the strakes and leaped the rail in swaggering insolence. “Strike your colors and surrender this vessel.” His grin came and went, all uncivil, sharp teeth. “Or die valiant while we run up the leopard of Rathain. It’s all one to me. This brig’s already befouled to her scuppers. We’re going to have to find pails and swab up your mate’s liver, anyway. Refuse, and you’ll just make that unsavory task the more grisly.”
--
The last subchapter is Reckoning
The freed henchmen are meeting in the Lance's chart room. They get to decide what they're doing next.
They have: one Koriani First Senior, fifty smoke-sickened Etarran company men as hostages. They're now in the hold that used to hold the henchmen prisoner.
The third ship is still loyal, but has no idea what's going on. They've been told that the Lance would retire to Tideport to be mended. The other two would go to Mainmere for the blockade. It will be attacked after sundown.
After the meeting ends, one of them goes to the other cabin. Caolle's inside. They fill him in. The Lance of Justice is now renamed simply "Lance" and will be turned over to Maenol's clansmen. The clansmen will then decide whether to get Arithon's orders at Innish, or sail to Corith to fight Lysaer for any survivors.
Caolle's in rough shape, from the sound of it:
Caolle lay with his eyes closed, his breaths fast and shallow and his skin like limp parchment with suffering. “The plan’s sound enough,” he whispered at long length. If the men chose the fight in the Isles, they would have the brig and the Koriani First Senior as bargaining chips, as well as a sea captain and the Etarran company to play for an exchange of hostages. “The First Senior’s jewel is well away?”
If they survive, the brig's crew will be shipping the spelled quartz off to Arithon as a present. Hah, you know, I could 'ship Caolle and Arithon. That's a good courtship gift indeed.
But sadly, like other new ships in this book, this one is doomed. Caolle's dying. The spells keeping him alive are undoing themselves, now that he's killed the healer.
In time, he asked if it were nightfall, the cabin seemed so cold and dark. The roll of high seas dissolved into the spiraling spin of blank vertigo. He could not feel his blankets. The breath in his lungs felt insubstantial and light, not like true air, but some vaporous drug which wafted his mind into dizziness.
“It’s afternoon,” the man said, never far from his side. His accent had the syrupy vowels of the southcoast, and his hands, a shipwright’s thick callus. “The curtains aren’t drawn. You can’t see the sunlight through the stern window?”
Yep.
The clansman with him is gentle, asking him if there's anything he wants to say to Arithon or to his kin. They'll make sure to pass along the message.
“Let my people and my prince hear that I died in the assault to toss out the Koriani witches. No less than plain truth.” Caolle denied clutching fingers of pain just enough to wrench out a gritty, disparaging grin. “Tell the Teir’s’Ffalenn, too…every word I said to Dakar at Riverton is still binding. But add one thing more…I’ve survived many worse than the pinprick he gave me. His Grace has a puny sword arm, and may Dharkaron Avenger damn him for a weakling if he doesn’t choose another liegeman to stand at his shoulder in my place.”
Fitting last words.
--
So the sneak peek section is Turning Points.
The first: in Corith, Lysaer is reviewing the disposition of troops, galleys, and the captured brig. He's waiting with keen anticipation for Arithon's ambush.
Hope you're ready for disappointment, dude.
The second: Maenol's men fight the alliance to buy time for threatened families to flee. Eventually, he whistles the retreat. Now it's up to whether or not Eldir grants sanctuary.
The third: a Hanshire captain, Sulfin Evend, has been tracking Arithon and Dakar. He knows they're driving an oxcart, and there's a company of sunwheel soldiers and a Crown Examiner ahead of them. If they move fast, they might catch them.
The chapter ends here.