Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (21 page)

“I suppose not,” Dahveed said with that same aggravating smile as the carriage rolled on. The thumping increased as they kept going along the path until Terian felt the carriage slow as it wended its way through a series of turns. Terian stuck his head out the window as the cavern widened ahead of them, the tunnel giving over to a massive clay beach. He could see the ruts where the fish wagons parked themselves near the docks.

Water lapped at the edge of the clay beach, making a curious, echoing noise that somehow overcame the dullish roar of the fishmongers and fishermen. Terian had been here before, long ago, and remembered the roar being louder. It was subdued now, the air laden with dankness and fear, as well as the smell of fish.

“Now that’s an aroma I haven’t forgotten,” Dahveed said with good humor. “Puts me in the mood for a fish bone stew.”

“I suspect you could afford a whole fish now, Dahveed,” Terian said, looking over the docks. Countless wood-plank tendrils stretched out into the blackness of the Great Sea. The cavern ceiling was barely visible overhead, the width of the massive chamber stretching off into a distance too far to see.

“I probably could, but I’d take the bones just for the sake of nostalgia.”

“You sound like my father with his gruel,” Terian said absently as he stared out at the colorful garb of the fishermen.
No pretense here, no black and white pride keeping them from using the wildroot dyes.
Terian took a breath and it was like a nose full of the Reikonos docks, a place he had rarely gone in his time in the city.
Quieter, though.

“Most people would take that as a compliment,” Dahveed said, strangely indifferent.

“Do you take it as an insult?” Terian asked, still transfixed by the sight of the boats at the end of the docks. There were more of them than he could count. Hundreds, perhaps.

“I don’t worry much about such things,” Dahveed said. “I am but a simple healer, and effrontery to my ears passes lightly and without consequence. No, I worry more about the real blades that come my way, not the verbal ones.”

“I doubt you see many of those these days,” Terian said.

“Not since the last war, no,” Dahveed said with his usual amusement. “But I expect any day now that will change.”

“We’re here,” Terian said as the carriage ground to a halt. Terian opened the door before the driver could get down to open it himself, prompting a look of consternation from the driver—
at his “failure,” no doubt
. Terian brushed past the man without saying anything, making for the latticework of docks that lay ahead. Fish carts passed him, half laden or empty, the men pushing them muttering forlornly about days gone by. The smell of fish nearly took his breath away.

“You can see the change undergone in this place, can you not?” Dahveed said, catching up to him to walk alongside. “The men with their stooped backs, downcast eyes.”

“Sounds like all the men of Sovar,” Terian said.
No, that’s not true. There is a difference here
.

“These were not like all the men of Sovar,” Dahveed said. “These were men with work and purpose and little enough supervision breathing down the back of their shirts. To be a fishermen in the Great Sea was to live at least in the Middles, if not closer to the Front Gate. They were men as close to free as you could get down here.” Terian realized Dahveed was whispering. “There were tunes whistled from their lips on every occasion I’ve had to visit down here—and I’ve made quite a few.”

“You do enjoy the smell of fish, eh?” Terian asked as he took his first step onto a wooden dock. It creaked with his weight and gave him pause for just a moment. A whole market and web of docks ahead of him belied the idea that this one plank would drop him into the water that waited mere inches below.

“I enjoy the smell of freedom,” Dahveed said. “Which is why I avoid the surface farms most conscientiously.”

Terian paused and looked back. Dahveed wore a tight-lipped smile and his eyes glimmered for just a moment.
You do enjoy treading close to that treasonous line yourself, don’t you, Dahveed?
It seems like I’m drawing these sentiments to myself of late, as though people can sense my reluctance to embrace this world.

“I think I see Grinnd and Verret waiting up ahead,” Dahveed said, nodding toward a fisherman’s boat in the distance.

“Then I suppose the rest will be nearby,” Terian said, turning back to look in the direction Dahveed had been pointing. Sure enough, under a bright red sail, he could see the outline of Grinnd’s muscled form, chatting amiably with a sea captain in bright green vek’tag silks that were showing more than a little wear.

“The rest are very nearby,” came a soft voice at his side. He felt the clank of armor lightly tapping his and looked to his side to see Sareea Scyros watching him, her white hair and lively eyes at odds with the dispassionate look on her face. “You should do a better job of watching your back for threats.”

“I’m on a dock in the Great Sea,” Terian said. “What threats need I be concerned about? Some angry fishmonger upset at my father for not conquering new waters for him to trawl?”

“You never know,” Sareea said in a throaty whisper, leaning to speak into his ear. “After all, you’re the width of a silk strand away from someone who has recently killed you, and you never saw my approach.” She pulled away from him, and he did not deign to look at her as she took up position next to him as he resumed his walk. The cool cave air prickled his skin.
Or is that something else?

“You have a report for me?” Terian asked. “Or were you just malingering in hopes of ambushing me for your own entertainment?”

“My own entertainment?” Sareea asked, amused. “All I do, I do for the Sovereign—and of course for the greatness of House Lepos.”

“And your own, presumably?” Terian asked.

“Somewhere down the line,” Sareea agreed, but in the way she said it, Terian caught more of her amusement than truth.

Terian steered his course over the docks, the clunking of his boots and Sareea’s keeping time with their march. As he weaved around a right turn onto a quay, he realized that Xemlinan was waiting in the shadows of an upturned crate. The smell of fish was stronger here, and it made Terian’s nose curl. Sareea wisely said nothing, and Dahveed did not speak either. The clunking of the boots on the dock was all the sound Terian heard until he got close enough to hear Grinnd’s enthusiastic tones.

“Report?” Terian asked as he closed in on Grinnd. The big man was still in conversation with the sea captain, nodding along with something the captain said. He turned at Terian’s voice.

“Ah, you’re here,” Grinnd said with his usual smile.
It’s unseemly for a warrior to be so damned friendly and happy.
“I’ve got quite a lot to report, actually.”

“Almost all of it sap and silliness,” Verret said, lurking in the shadows near Xemlinan’s upturned crate.

“Almost all of it interesting,” Grinnd corrected, not backing off his smile. “Twenty-seven boats have gone missing in the last three weeks alone.”

“Is that a lot?” Terian asked. “Comparatively speaking, I mean?”

“They typically lose one per year,” Grinnd said, “and there are almost always survivors. Not a single survivor has turned up from these, so—yes, it’s a lot. There were more before that, but the harbormaster wasn’t keeping a tally until the numbers got high enough to catch his notice.”

“A real ‘big picture’ sort of fellow,” Xem said with a dose of irony. “Clearly concerned about the well-being of those sailing from his port.”

“I got the sense that he didn’t care about much of anything so long as his quotas weren’t affected,” Verret said with an air of irritation. “I would recommend to your father to have that one sent to the Depths and replaced by someone more competent—and less drunk. The man is clearly a traitor by his dereliction of his post.”

“Tell my father yourself if you feel that strongly about it,” Terian said.
I don’t really want to be responsible for some poor, sodden bastard getting that treatment.

“The disappearances happened all over the Great Sea,” Grinnd said, apparently unfazed by Verret’s diatribe. “No one specific area that the ships were fishing. Most of the fleet is sticking close by the shores at present, and fish yields are dropping by the day.”

“Getting messy,” Xem said. “I’d say it’s a mess best left to someone else, but since your father assigned us this duty …” He sighed. “What now, Terian?”

“We go out on the sea, I guess,” Terian said, unblinking. “Figure out what this is for ourselves.” He looked to Grinnd. “What are you thinking?”

“I am but asking questions of these people, my friend,” Grinnd said with a warm smile. “I leave it to smarter men than me to draw conclusions.”

“Grinnd,” Terian said, “there aren’t many smarter men in Saekaj Sovar than you. You have a working theory, yes?” He waited for Grinnd to nod. “Out with it.”

Grinnd took a deep breath and sighed, tapping his big fingers on his dark-plated armor as he adjusted the swords across his back without any apparent thought. “The disappearances are quite vexing. My first instinct might run to pirates.”

“Pirates?” Verret said, turning his head to look at Grinnd as though the warrior were mad. “On the enclosed, buried Great Sea?”

“Aye,” Grinnd said, “it was but a working hypothesis that I quickly rejected. The men who know the Great Sea tell me that there aren’t any coves or grounds where any such pirates might be hiding. And the difficulty of maintaining a ship, overpowering crews—it just doesn’t sound feasible given that secrecy would be of the utmost importance. The moment that secrecy ended, the Sovereign’s own wrath would descend upon the pirates, and the Great Sea offers little in the way of hiding places. In addition, these fishing trawlers are not exactly prizes.”

“Thank you for walking us through your thought process on how you ruled out what isn’t responsible,” Verret said. “Perhaps now you might share what you believe is happening—”

“There are several theories—” Grinnd said.

“Cut to the chase,” Terian said. “Most likely culprit.”

Grinnd took another deep breath. “Sea monster, I think.”

There was an air of quiet among the group. “This is your theory?” Verret asked, incredulous. “A sea monster? Some great threat hiding beneath the lapping waves?”

“Yes,” Grinnd said, nodding sagely. “I think that’s it. Some transplanted beast that belongs outside of these caves, in the open water, where the diet can include larger sea life. I think whatever it is that’s doing this, it’s ill suited to this environment and forced to feed on our people because they’re all it has. The fish that live in the outside world cannot survive down here without some specific adaptations—”

“Blather on, man of science,” Verret said. “This is all preposterous.”

“Preposterous as it may sound,” Grinnd said with a light sigh, “I believe a large aquatic creature from one of the freshwater lakes—perhaps even Lake Magnus—has been introduced into the Great Sea, and it’s eating the only thing it can reasonably find to subsist on—the fishermen.”

Verret started to speak again. “This is—”

“Preposterous, yes,” Terian said, stroking his chin. “You’ve said that. Grinnd, assuming you were right, how would we even go about rooting something like this out?”

“We would have to take a fishing trawler out,” Grinnd said, “and attempt to locate the creature—which I suspect would not be hard. It’s doubtless hungry, having not had anything venture out far enough to become fodder for it in a week or more. Once we found it, we would have to kill it—and then preferably bring it back for study—”

“Find it and kill it,” Terian said, his eyes falling on the blackness of the water extending in front of him. “It’s destroyed every boat that’s come its way.”

“None of these fishermen were armed, I should point out,” Grinnd said. “That put them at a significant disadvantage. They were probably plucked and eaten while trying to swim to shore.” He paused. “We’ll need to dispense with our armor in case the boat is destroyed.”

“I like this idea not at all,” Xem said. “Actually, why am I even here? I’m no use at fighting sea monsters. Never done it before. If you need a bit of thieving done, though—”

“We all go,” Terian said, studying the dark waves. It felt as though he could see motion beneath them, as though they were teeming with life just beneath the surface. “No armor, like Grinnd said. It’ll just weigh us down if we end up having to go in. But we carry our weapons, because they’ll be our salvation if we run across this thing.”

“It eats boats,” Bowe Sturrt said from behind Terian. He turned and realized that the druid had been sitting there in a meditative position, legs crossed before him on the docks, his hair stirring as he turned his head to look at Terian. “No wreckage. What can weapons do against such a beast?”

“There aren’t any currents in here,” Grinnd said. “Doubtful it eats the whole boat. Probably enough to reduce it to wreckage, which fails to wash ashore due to the lack of currents.” He blinked, almost embarrassed. “That’s just a theory, though. It’s probably susceptible to magic and blades.”

“‘Probably’ is thin armor with which to gird ourselves,” Sareea said quietly.

“We have a job to do,” Terian said.
She’s right.
But how can I return to my father and tell him I didn’t do this assignment he ordered me to look into because it didn’t seem safe?
He almost laughed.
Nothing we do is safe. That’s the hallmark of our jobs.
“We go. Grinnd, we’ll need a fishing trawler.”

“This kind gentleman has already has volunteered his.” Grinnd nodded at the sea captain he’d been speaking to. The green-robed man bowed. “Though he did emphasize that it’s a very easy craft to steer and row, without any necessity for himself or his crew to come along.”

Terian looked at the green-clad captain, and saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he bowed low again. “Fine, he can stay here. It’s a long cave anyway, it’s not like we’re going anywhere but directly out to sea and back when we’re done.” He glanced around. “Take off your armor if you can’t swim in it, just in case.” His gaze came around to Sareea. “You can stay here if you’d like.”