Our Lady of the Islands (40 page)

Sian leaned beside Arian against the gunwale of
Coppersmith
, Haron and Maleen’s deep-hulled sloop, peering out from under the tarp that covered them. They’d been underway for perhaps an hour. Silent running mostly, since they’d finished laying plans back on Malençon’s docks. She could see Reikos and Pino now, working efficiently together in the moonlit darkness, but little else as they sailed toward Home.

“Thank the gods for a fair breeze tonight,” she heard Reikos say to Pino. “There’s Cutter’s off to port already.”

The Factora-Consort reached out and squeezed her hand; Sian squeezed back and sighed. She had not enough strength left even to feel the grief and heartbreak that must surely be there.

“Are you all right?” Arian whispered.

“I feel like my skin has been cut off and put back in the wrong place.” Sian paused. “And I’m embarrassed. That was poorly done, back at Maleen’s, I’m afraid. But otherwise, I’m fine.”

“Otherwise.” Arian smiled sadly.

All those years of marriage without arguments … had not meant there weren’t differences after all. She and Arouf had just saved up all their disagreements for the end, when everything had finally broken underneath the strain.

“I do mean to divorce him. That wasn’t just a threat.”

“I didn’t think it was.” Arian studied Sian’s face in the dimness. “I think you generally mean what you say.”

When I
know
what I mean,
Sian thought, quietly astonished at how much she hadn’t known — consciously, at least — just weeks earlier.
I’d have told you then that I was happy. I’d have said my marriage was sound and comfortable — if perhaps a little cooled with age. I’d have said my biggest problem was managing all the paperwork … And I’d have meant it all.
“I should be asking how you are,” Sian said aloud. “You seem so calm. I’m sure I would be half out of my mind by now.”

“I am. Half out of my mind.” Arian turned from their tiny slit of view to gaze at nothing in the gloom. “Respond to crisis with an outward show of calm … That was perhaps the first thing my father taught me as a child. In the cradle even, I suspect.” She shook her head. “But you’ve changed something in me too.”

“Me?” Sian asked, half fearful to learn what.

Arian nodded. “Last night; you or whatever works through you now. I had no idea how afraid I’ve always been — of everything — until this power of yours swept through me, upending so much more than just bones and sinews, I think. Now …” She sighed. “There is some much greater, clearer distance within me between what is actually happening and all the dreadful things that
might
happen later. Right now, I am in a boat, heading toward my family at last. When we get there … We will see then whether I have cause to panic.”

It was not me
, Sian thought, recalling that haunted child on the beach.
There is something working through us all, I think
. “How will we get back into the Factorate?” she asked. “If there’s still fighting …”

“There is a passage to my rooms that no one knows of. I assume it is still secret. It opens well outside the Factorate grounds. If we can get even that close, it should take us safely inside. As for what we may find there …” She shrugged. “As I said, we’ll deal with that then. I am sorry to place you yet again into such danger.”

“Danger?” Sian grinned at her. “You say this to me now?”

Arian smiled back, wearily.

Pino came to tuck their small window on the world closed. “We are being approached by another boat, my ladies,” he whispered. “From ahead. You must keep very still until we find out what is happening.”

They nodded together, and hunkered lower into the hull, feeling the sloop veer and slow beneath them. It seemed Reikos was making no effort to avoid the other craft.
Wise
, Sian thought.
Nothing gained by seeming frightened
.

“Ahoy, friends!” she heard Reikos shout. “What island do you hale from?”

“Viel!” came a more distant shout. “And yourselves?”

“Meaders!” Reikos lied, cleverly choosing a small island of little probable significance. “Have you any news of events on Home?”

“If that’s where you’re headed, turn back!” the other boat replied. “It’s the heart of hell tonight! We’re bound for Malençon — or farther, if we must — until this madness blows over!”

“Sadly, my young mate here has family on Home!” Reikos called. “Aged parents — too frail to flee alone! We hope to get them out of harm’s way! Is there any part of the island where a small boat might still land more safely?”

“Not a chance!” the other voice replied. “The whole shore’s ringed in gunboats and swarming with house troops and bands of armed civilians! All fighting willy-nilly, from what we saw as we sailed by!”

“Any news about who’s winning?” Reikos called.

“Not sure who’s even fighting anymore! Factor’s dead! A couple hours back, we heard!” Sian felt Arian’s sudden intake of breath in the dark beside her. “And every last man, woman and child seems to be looking for the Consort now! That’s about the only two things everybody there seemed to agree on when we left!”

There was a pause, filled only with the sound of Arian’s increasingly ragged breathing. Sian groped for her hand and squeezed it hard.

“Any news at all about the Factor’s heir?” Reikos called less avidly — doubtless for Arian’s sake.

“None we’ve heard! By all accounts the boy’s been half dead for weeks already! Maybe he’s gone too now, or nobody’s just troubling to check with all the rest of this! I’m telling you, man, turn around! If one side don’t blow your little craft to smithereens before it gets a hundred feet from shore, the other will! It’s mindless chaos there!”

“I thank you for the warning!” Reikos called. “But this lad’s folks are likely trapped, and we may still go have a look — from a safe distance, at least! Good luck to you and yours!”

“And to you!” The other voice had already grown dimmer as
Coppersmith
heeled over under re-trimmed sails, and began regaining speed.

“Oh, Arian, I’m so sorry,” Sian said, gathering the other woman into her arms. “Maybe it’s just another rumor. It doesn’t sound like anything is very clear there yet.”

Arian wept quietly against her shoulder, saying nothing at all. There were clearly limits to this new calm she’d spoken of — a fact Sian found reassuring. Whatever her hands did to people now, they were left human still.

A few minutes later, the boat lost speed again and Sian heard hands fumbling at the tarp above their heads as Pino peeled it back. “Captain says we need to talk.” Behind him, the sails flapped loosely in the wind.

Arian drew a shuddering breath, nodding as she pulled away from Sian and wiped her eyes. “If we cannot take a boat ashore on Home, then … I suppose we have no choice but to go back into the tunnels.” By now, they’d all told each other of their earlier adventures.

Sian looked askance at this. “Did you not tell me they were sealed up around the Factorate?”

“I said blocked, not sealed. There are still ways for one person at a time to get through. That’s how Viktor and I went in, and Hivat still uses them quite often. They are gated, of course, but I know where the keys to most of those grates are hidden, and the others —”

“Yes,” Sian cut in, “but you also told me Escotte knows about them.”

“I did.”

“Then, I’m sorry to say it, but if he’s taken over the Factorate House, or even just some significant part of the island, wouldn’t he be watching them?”

“If not using them for his own purposes already,” said Reikos, having secured the tiller and come to stand behind Pino as their boat bobbed in the moonlit darkness. “If both your husband and the Census Taker knew about these tunnels, my lady, I would fly this boat into your palace through the sky before assuming that they aren’t already swarming with forces from all sides.” He shook his head. “I fear we would simply be walking into an even more confining trap without any ready exits.”

“Then how are Sian and I to get ashore?” Arian asked.

“If it is true that everyone there is looking for you, my lady, getting you ashore without being shot out of the water seems but the first of many difficulties,” Reikos observed. “Surmounting all this attention to yourself will be our biggest problem, I fear.”

“Well, Sian and I must get into the Factorate somehow. If Viktor is dead … My son is Viktor’s heir, and the rightful Factor of Alizar, until the people legally dictate otherwise. If Escotte and his compatriots are allowed to triumph this way unopposed, then Alizar as we have known it — as its citizens fought so hard to make it — is over. I owe it to Viktor as well as to the nation not to allow that, if I can.”

“With all due respect, my lady,” Reikos pressed, “what would you have us do then, just sail to Home and hand you to the first armed band we encounter there?”

“Can we not divert their attention somehow?” Sian asked. “Just long enough to get Arian and myself to land and past the waterfront?”

“Have you some suggestion as to how?” Reikos asked patiently.

“Maybe I could do something,” Pino said uncertainly. “Swim ashore … Create some kind of disturbance, while the rest of you —”

“What kind of disturbance can any single man produce, sufficient to draw off an entire army? Don’t be reckless, boy,” Reikos added with surprising gentleness. “What they’re all looking for is the Factora-Consort. Nothing we can do is likely to draw enough attention to distract everyone from that search.”

“Then, maybe I could spread a rumor that she had been seen across the island somewhere else,” Pino tried.

“A rumor that would spread all across the waterfront fast enough to do us any good?” Reikos parried.

A frustrated silence descended over all of them.

“But if it’s me they’re looking for,” Arian murmured, “couldn’t we just find an Alizari gunboat flying my husband’s colors, and hand me and Sian over to its crew? They would take us to the Factorate surely — if I asked them to.”

“If the Factorate is still under their control at all, my lady,” Reikos said, “and if they were allowed to do so without being attacked from all sides just as soon as your husband’s enemies realized what was happening. From what that fellow said, I doubt this little sloop would even reach such a gunboat before it or some other craft turned their cannons on us and sent us to the bottom.” He grew thoughtful for a moment. “What we would need,” he said pensively, “is some way to make them think you were aboard
this
boat, and get everyone to chase us, while you were actually being put ashore somehow …” He shook his head. “If only this poor dingy were large enough to carry a lifeboat of its own …”

“Your ship!” Sian blurted. “It has lots of lifeboats.”

Reikos smiled sadly. “My ship would certainly be large enough to attract everyone’s attention — and slow and cumbersome enough at such close quarters to die a fiery death in Home’s harbor before we had even gotten close enough to lower you ladies into the water behind her.”

“Not if …” Arian looked up at Reikos in excitement. “Is your ship equipped with cannon, Captain?”

Reikos gave her a skeptical look. “A few guns, yes, sufficient to repel a single pirate craft at sea, perhaps. But not half sufficient to repel a harbor full of hostile gunboats, my lady.”

“You might not need to repel them, Captain; just convince them to chase you out into the open sea where I am sure a large craft would quickly outdistance their pursuit. I think I know how we can give them the Factora-Consort to chase — at quite a distance. I did it, in a way, just a week ago, at the temple’s harbor. We would need your cannons, and some Alizari flags — preferably with Factorate insignia. But perhaps that would not be necessary, if … if we had a decoy dressed to look like me from a great distance. It could be anyone in a fancy dress — with blond hair, or anything that looked like it.”

“So, you are suggesting that I do what, exactly, with my ship?” Reikos asked quietly.

“I think, perhaps, that if a large ship bearing Factorate flags, with the ‘Factora-Consort’ herself standing at the prow — well lit by some means, of course — came just close enough to Home’s waterfront to fire its cannons toward the harbor, everyone looking for me might give chase.”

“And, meanwhile, you would be where — getting ashore how?” Reikos asked even more carefully.

“She and Domina Kattë would be with me,” said Pino, catching on, “waiting in this boat as close to shore as we could get without being noticed. As soon as everyone was chasing you, we could sail ashore somewhere. It’s a good plan, I think.”

“And if my ship does not succeed in outrunning your nation’s entire fleet of gunboats?” Reikos asked miserably.

“If we were in position before your ship arrived, you could just sail past the harbor at full speed, Captain, firing to draw them off without even slowing to let us down into the water, could you not? I expect they would have to pursue you from dead stop.”

“Possibly …” He nodded, still looking very dubious. “And, I am sorry, my lady, but it is my ship we speak of risking here. Though I have no wish to hurt you further, I feel I must ask it. If your son is no longer at the Factorate House, or no longer … savable …”