Dark Empress (35 page)

That eagle marked the arrival of the archipelago and the departure of one prickly passenger.

Hoisting the heavy bag onto her shoulder, she glanced down at the other two, open on the bed and messy and dishevelled.

With a sigh, she tapped the hilt of the knife in her belt with her free hand and gave a last quick scan of the cabin to make sure she’d forgotten nothing. She hadn’t, of course. Asima was nothing if not thorough.

Nodding with satisfaction, she opened the door of her cabin as quietly as she could, the faint creak going unnoticed among the many other creaks and groans of a ship under sail. It was almost midnight and most of the crew would be asleep. The oarsmen were bedded down in their temporary sleeping rolls in the flat space between the benches in the lower deck, their oars up and locked, out of the water. The ship slipped quietly through the sea, rising and falling gently, carried by a light wind, slowly but continually.

The only crew still active on deck would be two or three of the more senior men above her current position, maintaining course and speed, lookouts in the bow and atop the mast, and two or three ordinary crewmen padding around on watch where the oar benches lay empty overnight. The only light kept aflame was at the rear where the officers worked.

Asima peered out into the corridor from her door at the end. The rear of the ship supported what was, in essence, an extra partial deck. Most of the ship consisted of a hold in the bottom of the hull, with a deck of oar seats and ports above, and then the main deck, with two more rows of oar seats. The centre of the ship, however, boasted a raised timber castle-like structure housing the war machines, while the rear held an enclosed section of cabins with the rudder and command section atop it.

There were only seven rooms in the covered area, five occupied by the most senior officers, one for medical use, and one for dining. Asima had been given the captain’s cabin and everyone had shuffled down a room for the duration of the voyage. She frowned at the corridor as she held her breath and listened.

No sound came from the two nearest rooms, while the second door on the left hummed with the sound of gentle snoring. The last cabin and the sick room were silent, but the noise of laughter and activity issued from the dining hall. The door there was slightly ajar, yellow light illuminating the medical bay door opposite. There appeared to be a dice game going on within, along with a lot of drinking.

Taking a deep breath, Asima crept as quietly and quickly as she could down the corridor. Silently, she slipped past the beam of yellow light, catching a momentary glimpse of men at the table within who were paying no attention to the corridor.

Heaving a sigh of relief, she continued on to the end of the corridor. Pausing, she peered out through the doorway. The door itself had been jammed open with a wooden peg, allowing the warm and fresh night time air to circulate in the interior. The sounds of several dozen sleeping sailors rose noisily from the deck below, adding to the creaking and groaning of the ship. If anything, the vessel was actually noisier at night than during the day.

For a brief moment, as she grasped the door frame and prepared to put her plan into action, Asima experienced doubt, a thing that happened so rarely it gave her pause. Was she being foolish? It was possible she could make a comfortable life in Velutio; certainly she would be a great deal more welcome there than in Pelasia or M’Dahz. Could it be that she was choosing the difficult course when she could make a life in the north?

She shook her head, angry at her own weakness. She had no intention of living out her days in exile in a place where the wind chilled the bones and rain was a regular occurrence. And the weather was only a small part of her reasons. The Imperial capital would already be full of people who knew the local game so much better than her. She would stand precious little chance of getting close to the Emperor or his companions and she would likely end her days as some strange, foreign refugee existing on the periphery of court life.

Ashar’s ban or not, Pelasia was the place for her. It was in her blood and in what was left of her soul. And the realisation of that in her first few hours aboard had prompted her new scheme. If three satraps; a vicious one, a greedy one and a virtual nomad, could pull off a coup that almost changed Pelasia forever, imagine what she could do. Given a malleable satrap with good connections and a sizeable estate and military, she could put him on the throne within a year; two at the most, and on his own, not as part of some triumvirate.

And Ashar really did have to die. He’d set himself against her and, despite her earlier deluded schemes to ingratiate herself with him, it was clear when she thought about it objectively that he would have to go in order to pave the way to power. Whatever changes to her plans might be caused by unforeseeable events, one thing was certain: she had no desire of a future in the Empire. Pelasia was for her.

Nodding to herself over the rightness of her decision, Asima ducked out of the door and turned a sharp right, around the outer lip of the deck around the cabin section toward the stern. She held her breath once more. The ledge was only a foot wide and a slip here would end in disaster.

Slowly and carefully she edged along the ledge, watching the turbulent waters below with care. Fortunately, the cabins she had passed on this side of the ship had all been silent and apparently empty, so she had no concerns over being seen through a window. It was above her that was the problem. There would be several men on the upper deck busy keeping the ship on course.

Very slowly, she shuffled along the ledge, occasionally feeling her foot slip and grasping the thin rail that ran around the wooden cabin housing as though her life depended upon it, which, of course, it very well could. Every tiny slip sent her thumping heart into her throat and made her want to cry out, though she clenched her teeth and continued on in silence.

A murmur of conversation made her halt and pull herself tightly against the wooden wall. Above her two men approached the railing and stood for a moment discussing something technical that completely bypassed Asima’s attention. She stood perfectly still for long moments, willing the two men away, until they appeared to reach some sort of conclusion and then wandered back to the centre of the deck.

Asima allowed her breath to escape slowly and continued to edge round the ship, reaching the stern rapidly now. She took a peek around the corner and found that what she had seen through the window in her rear cabin was, indeed, the case. The huge rudder that was easily handled by a single man on the top deck was one enormous beam, flattened out at water level to give the strength to guide the vessel. It was attached to the stern by a hinged wooden contraption and safety rope that allowed it to pivot and move freely while remaining firmly under control.

She had studied it for some hours through the window but had been unable to actually reach it from there, hence this night time journey around the dangerous edge of the ship. The Wind of God had been on active service for quite some time since her last sojourn in dock for maintenance, and nowhere was it showing the strain more than here.

“I expect you have to carry a lot of spare parts?” she had asked her escort this afternoon, probing lightly, but he had informed her that they only carried bulk spares of rope, timber and sail cloth. Certainly not anything as complex as the hinged mechanism she now found herself closely examining as she closed on the rudder.

Course had been set as soon as the eagle rock had come into view and the rudder locked into position at the top. That needn’t matter and, in fact, would prove beneficial, meaning that no sailor would be close enough to the rear rail to notice her work.

Her assessment from her cabin had been correct. The two wooden struts that held the rudder into the hinged mechanism were long past due for replacement. One was white with age and had been seriously attacked by salt and weather. The other had already snapped, though the damage had gone unnoticed as the safety rope continued to hold it together.

However, if the other wooden spar went…

Reaching the mechanism, Asima grasped the shipward end and drew her knife. Inserting it into a natural stress crack in the wood, she began to slowly and carefully work the solid, heavy blade back and forth. She smiled as she felt the wood beginning to give easily under her assault, and small flakes and fragments of ruined timber twanged off and floated down into the water.

She sighed with relief as she realised that this was going to be considerably easier than she had initially estimated. There was a quiet crack and a large piece of the strut disappeared down into the waves. Just a moment longer…

She almost lost the knife as the strut split with the last push, grabbing madly to retrieve it. The effect was more sudden and obvious than she’d expected. Though still attached by the rope, the lack of any solid support had allowed the rudder a great deal more leeway than before. With a crack, it slipped sideways as far as the restraints would allow.

The whole ship lurched and banked with the new direction of control and Asima was almost thrown from the ledge, the starboard side of the ship rising alarmingly. She heard shouts of alarm from above and knew she had only moments.

Flinging caution to the wind, she ran along the narrow ledge, trusting the new raised angle would push her further aboard rather than tipping her over. She reached the corner and flung herself around it, grasping the rail for safety just as the heads of the sailors above appeared at the upper edge, desperately trying to see what had happened to the rudder.

She grinned as she realised she had done it.

The ship would suffer badly in its manoeuvrability and would not be able to continue its journey across the open sea with the rudder floundering around. By her estimate it would take some serious work with ropes and all the strength of four men to keep the course steady enough to get anywhere to repair it. Ghassan would have no choice but to make for the nearest port which, according to the chart in her cabin, lay some three miles along the island’s coast from the eagle rock.

The rest should be easy. Once the Wind of God was in dock, she would have the easy task of slipping away into the small town. It would be Pelasian territory and there would be fishermen with sailing boats that could take her from island to island until she found herself on the mainland and away from Ghassan and his principles. Passage would be easy to buy with the riches she carried, as would the silence of anyone involved.

She would shortly return to Pelasia to plan her rise to prominence and Ghassan would have to head back to Calphoris and be disciplined for his failure. Unfortunate for him, but he must be used to failure by now and, besides, he shouldn’t have got in her way.

She…

Asima’s smile fell as she reached the end of the narrow ledge and turned the corner back toward her cabin and came face to face with a burly sailor.

Momentarily, she considered knifing him and tipping him overboard, but decided against it. Not only did he carry a heavy belaying pin that he may be able to hit her with first but also, if she attacked him and failed, she would compound her guilt in Ghassan’s eyes.

Whatever happened, they would still have to put in at the island and she would find a way to leave. Nothing had changed.

In which the reunion is completed

The young captain growled angrily and Asima merely shrugged.

“I could lie to you if it would make you feel any better, Ghassan. Perhaps I heard a dangerous crack from my cabin. Not wishing to disturb the poor, hard-working crew, I risked life and limb to make my way out to the source of the noise and try to help. I barely made it back with my skin intact when the thing gave way just as I approached.”

She smiled with the most unpleasant falseness she could muster, right down to the curl of a sneer on her lip.

“Does that make you feel better, captain?”

Ghassan stood and stared out of her cabin window. The sun had been up for a little more than an hour now. He had refused to order his men to carry out any work in the conditions last night, what with the darkness, slippery wood and the ship lurching every now and then. As soon as dawn had crested the horizon, though, he had sent three men down to the rudder to completely remove the damaged hinge mechanism and tie the pole tightly in place. The Wind of God bobbed on the calm sea, drifting as the current took it.

“What did you hope to achieve?”

Asima shrugged again.

“I have no wish to visit Velutio and I believe the word you’re looking for, Ghassan, is sabotage. You’ll have to put in at the nearest island and I will find a way to leave you whatever you do to contain me.”

Ghassan snarled at her.

“You stupid woman! You risked your life and ours because you are so damned spoiled that you will have your own way whatever the cost? Just how selfish have you become, Asima?”

She allowed her sneer to remain while the smile fell from her face.

“Your words mean nothing to me, Ghassan, because you mean nothing to me. I have been mere steps away from becoming one of the most powerful queens the world has ever seen and I will have that again, despite the interference of mindless soldiers.”

Ghassan laughed without a hint of humour.

“Well I’m afraid you’ve failed this time. I have no intention of putting to port. It will take the best part of a day for my chief carpenter and his men to work up a replacement and a matter of hours to fit it. By this time tomorrow we will be on our way once more.”

He turned and pointed angrily at her.

“In the meantime, you are restricted to your cabin. It will be locked from the outside and your window will be barred, even though I doubt you would fit through it. The only contact you will have with the crew is when Palas brings you your meals and you’ve never met a more straight-laced and unfriendly man than Palas. He will have none of your charm. Were it not for the fact that you are supposedly a noble guest and I am duty-bound to look after you, I would have you locked in one of the equipment rooms down below in the dark.”