SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) (33 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Breach crossing had been like nothing Jarlyth could have even imagined. He had no words to describe it, either, except, perhaps, bright or sharp or brutal. Unimaginable that most of those on his ship had made the crossing several times.

After several days of waiting at anchor
, well clear of the Breach on its opposite side, they were met by a much smaller ship. Jarlyth was handed from the first ship to this second one like so much baggage, and the larger ship sailed away, back to Reinra.

The captain of this new ship was a woman
named Sonya. “Just Captain Sonya,” she replied when he’d asked her full name. Her face had weathered to timelessness, and Jarlyth would never have dared to guess at her true age. The first thing she said to him when he stepped on board her ship was, “You are in pursuit of someone lost.” He knew then that she had some power, what might be called “the Sight” by country folk but which was one of the rarer and more useful wizardly skills.

“
I am,” he agreed. “I have been seeking him for a long time.”

The woman nodded, her eyes narrowing with a shrewdness born of long experience.
“Good thing your crossing ship found us for you. Not many ships aside from the
Etesian
make a circuit of the lands on this side of the Breach. We go to all four major ports—Mirthia, Felencia, Camarat, and Tabritt. When they aren’t all at war with each other, business is good. We’ve just come from Mirthia, our home port, so Felencia is next.”

It didn
’t matter to Jarlyth, so long as he searched everywhere or as many places as needed to be searched in order to find Nylan. He had hoped to sense the boy once the Breach had been cleared, but he still felt only the sureness that Nylan lived. Wherever he was, it was still too far away.

She led him through the ship, showing him where all the important bits were, and they ended in her dining cabin where they were joined by her officers.

The meal was pleasant and the discussion friendly.
The captain appointed one of her officers to help Jarlyth learn the dialect variations for Camarat. Jarlyth accepted this even though he had no need of such lessons. Along with several other very useful charms, including one to keep anyone from noticing the sword he always carried across his back, Queen Tristella had given him a language charm which interpreted any dialect differences he encountered and charmed his own speech into the correct words as well.

Even so, the language was not so different from the common dialect spoken throughout
the former One Kingdom. The shared written language had kept it from drifting too far from its mother tongue, but the pronunciation had altered, sometimes to incomprehensibility, and many new words had been added, naming things and ideas that had not existed when the Breach had first been formed.

For the first leg of the voyage, Jarlyth kept to himself.
The Breach crossing had taken much more out of him than he’d realized, and he wanted to be cautious. These were not only Reinra folk, after all, and some were clearly not comfortable with magic. Though they’d accepted him as a passenger and treated him with the polite condescension sailors generally felt for landlings, many were still from this side of the Breach. Magic was a strange thing to them, and he didn’t want to risk losing their help.

Ten days after he
’d boarded, they reached Felencia, a sprawling, poor-seeming country ruled over by a duke and an elected council. This country had suffered much from what Jarlyth learned was a series of ongoing little wars, and had only begun to recover from the last scuffle between them and their near neighbor Tabritt.

Tabritt, it turned out, was now at war with Camarat.
Mirthia seemed to stay out of most of the problems, and he heard grumblings about this from several people as he worked his way through the various agencies who would have had dealings with lost children.

He
’d known from the first that Felencia was a waste of time. Nylan was not there, and he itched to go on to the next port. The ship had business to complete first, however, so he went through the motions and found out what he could about the other lands he’d be visiting.

By the time they upped
anchor at last, Jarlyth found the crew had become comfortable enough to start asking the most personal questions. His bearing had reverted to Templar the longer he’d searched for Nylan, and his actions and expressions, he knew, could be severe and off-putting. He rarely tried to temper this—he found the care with which he was treated to be useful—but sharing a small ship and meals for so long wore away at his own caution as well as the crew’s wariness.

It
was the first officer—a pleasant man by the name of George, a bit past the age when he should have had his own command—who eventually broached the most-discussed question. “Just who is it you’re looking for?”

Jarlyth was only surprised it had taken them so long to ask.
“You haven’t heard of me, then? I thought I and my quest were too famous not to have crossed even the Breach.”

The officer smiled, nodding as some of the crew listening nearby looked annoyed and disgusted while others looked triumphant.

Apparently, a bet was in play
.
It seemed only fair to confirm it absolutely so money could change hands.

“
I am Jarlyth Denara, warder to Prince Nylan of Serathon. I have been searching for him for years, now. Ever since he was taken from Tanara and from me.” He had only given his first name before, and then just “Jary.” Only the captain had known his real name.

A low mutter rose up and died away in response to this.
The bosun’s mate, an older man, nodded. “I met a warder once before. Long ago. You don’t usually get out so far, though I lived on the other side of the Breach, then.”

“
We never get this far,” Jarlyth admitted. For whatever reason—Vail only knew—Sensitives were a gift born only to Serathon. “That’s the problem.”

Some discussion of the stories they
’d heard of him ensued, and he answered some of their questions and avoided others. And then, one of the crew shouted out, “What’s ‘e look like?” the question rising anonymously from the group.

Jarlyth
’s face twisted into a painful smile, and he shook his head. “Like a SanClare,” he said, and his listeners all laughed, the voice which had asked making a sound closer to annoyance.

He waved his hand for patience.
“The deepest, darkest black hair you’ve ever seen; bright golden-hazel eyes—more gold, though, than green or brown. Striking. Very fair skin—like his mother’s—and lovely. He’ll be almost fifteen now.”

The good humor of the listeners had died down quickly as Jarlyth described Nylan, and by the time he
’d finished, they were entirely silent. Many of them looked...

F
rightened? Horrified?
He wasn’t sure and let go of his center to see if he could feel more. The emotions whirled up around him like a squall.

He turned to George, a sharp question on his face before it came out of his mouth.
“What’s—”

“
Holy Vail Over Us.” The man backed several hurried steps away from Jarlyth before whirling away to throw up over the side of the ship. The captain appeared in that moment, summoned by someone.

“
What do you know?” Jarlyth shouted. The blood roared in his head, and he wanted to be sick, too—violently and repeatedly.

Is he dead?
Have I gone mad with loss and missed that he’s dead? Have they hurt him? Oh, Dear Vail, please tell me they haven’t hurt him!

“
I know more than you’ll ever want to hear, Lord Denara.”

T
he captain’s voice was oddly soft; incongruously motherly for such a severe-seeming woman. “But you’d best know what I know before we reach Queen’s City.”

#

Michael’s life fell into a nightmarish pattern where he found himself summoned at odd intervals by his new master—there was no other way to look at the power Terac had over him. He returned from each encounter bloodied and exhausted and ever weaker. Though he was never again hurt badly enough to keep him more than a day or two from working, his wounds healed more and more slowly after each time, and he found, too, that his heretical powers no longer flared to life at a mere thought. He tried to pretend nothing had changed, and he wanted to continue helping Daren, though each time he worked a new healing, he felt worse.

Harly and
Daren all at once had decided he should become more involved, too, with their grand scheme and took turns trying to tell him more details. Michael, afraid that Terac might somehow find out their secrets from him, refused to listen and threatened to stop helping altogether if they kept at him about it.

It was not that he didn
’t want to help, either, but what they really wanted him to do was even more impossible than it was terrifying. Still, he felt sorry for the men. Their goal was nothing short of a revolution, and yet even with all their power and careful plans and strategies, they’d never succeed so long as the Duke of Reyhal lived.

Why do they think I can stop him?
They’ve seen what he does to me. It isn’t as if I let him.

As he became
steadily weaker, Michael started to make excuses not to help at all, none of which Daren wanted to accept. He put so much pressure on Michael to continue performing healings and to listen to his plans, Michael began to hide whenever he saw the man approaching.

It all ended very abruptly, however, when, a
t Daren’s strongest urging, Michael agreed to heal some poor, broken person worse off than even he was himself, only to wake up with a headache like a knife between his eyes and a badly bleeding nose which Daren, frantically, had still been trying to staunch. The man never asked him to help again.

Terac was killing him
. Slowly, but there was no possible doubt as to the eventual outcome. Michael couldn’t continue down such a spiraling path without, at some point not so very far in the future, reaching its end. And, though it frightened him to admit it, Michael found he once again felt nothing but welcome for the prospect.

#

As he led Jarlyth through the narrow, confusing streets of Fensgate, George kept glancing back at him, wary and still almost green with fear. Considering what the captain had told him, Jarlyth couldn’t bring himself to reassure the man that this was unwarranted.

Jarlyth
couldn’t be sure himself that he wouldn’t run the man through as soon as he’d made himself useful by leading Jarlyth to this Red Boar Inn where, by some cruel twist of fate, his long-lost Nylan could now be found.

Jarlyth guessed they might have reached their destination when turning a corner brought them to
a street that was almost twice as wide as any of the others they’d traveled. People seemed to be everywhere, too, where all had been desolate and rundown before.

“
That’s the One-Eyed Sailor,” George muttered as they passed a tall, gaudy building with light and noise overflowing into the street. Men and young women were paired off here and there, some in groups.

No!
Jarlyth corrected himself.
Those are boys. Vail!

“
It’s all boys there,” the officer finished miserably.

“
And the Red Boar?” Jarlyth asked, his voice that of the ruthless warrior he’d originally meant to be.

“
Only boy there is Michael, but there’s no point in any other boy competing with him. No one minds waiting, even if it’s only for a chance.”

“
Shut up,” Jarlyth growled. “Just shut up.” He knew he would never understand why Vail allowed this to happen.

George knew
Michael, this child everyone on the ship believed had to be Nylan. After the captain had explained, Jarlyth had interrogated George without pity, learning enough to believe they were right and enough to make him want to eviscerate the man rather than accept his help.

The Red Boar made the One
-Eyed Sailor look even cheaper and more pitiful than it had before. This building was grand and rich and beautiful. The entrance was guarded by two big men who stood on either side of the grand glass entrance and glared at everyone who approached. They apparently recognized George for they only nodded, but a gesture indicated Jarlyth was to stop.

“
He’s with me,” George said, pale in the warm light pouring from the enormous room beyond. The guard who’d stopped him looked Jarlyth over carefully, mistrustful, but at last he waved him on.

The
central salon was filled with tables which were surrounded by crowds of wealthy-looking men and a number of beautiful, opulently underdressed women. Games of all kinds—card games, dice games, games of chance and skill—were being played at the tables.

A larger group congregated around a big, round table
that commanded the center of the room. Several men were seated, playing a card game. Five-card, maybe, or whatever the Camarat equivalent was, Jarlyth guessed.