Whisper of Waves (19 page)

The larger fish smashed deck planks to splinters, biting at the still unfinished ship out of pure frenzied frustration.

At the same time, both Ran Ai Yu and Hrothgar dived for the falling chain. The Shou merchant fell to her knees under the onslaught of pain from her broken arm but smiled when she saw the chain in the dwarfs hands.

“The sword?” Hrothgar shouted to Devorast.

The red-haired man kicked at the side of the larger eel’s head, trying unsuccessfully to push it away from the ruined section of deck. Even as he kicked, Devorast grabbed at the other end of the chain, which flew through the air around him made wild by the giant demon-fish’s frenzy.

Devorast still had the machete in his hands.

“Yes!” Ran Ai Yu yelled to the dwarf, Devorast’s intentions playing at the edges of her mind. “My sword! Hook to the sword that chain!”

The dwarf seemed to understand, though Ran Ai Yu was having some trouble trying to translate her desperate thoughts into words in the Common Tongue.

Not sure what else she could do, Ran Ai Yu backed up, and when her heel caught the edge of something heavy, she went down. Her broken arm bounced against the deck, and she had no choice but to scream. The cry gave her a mouthful of rain water, but it also bought Devorast a precious heartbeat’s worth of time.

The larger of the two creatures reacted to the sound, jerking its head up from the deck and opening its mouth in a silent roar.

Devorast chopped across with his machete, lodging the blade deeply into the edge of the creature’s jaws.

It didn’t react at first to the wound, and again there was no blood, but then the blade must have touched something inside—something that made the lightning spark from its mouth. There was a small explosion of blue-white light then a constant rippling of lightning bolts that arced and twisted, danced and blazed between the depths of the wound and the rusty old blade.

The dwarf cried out in incoherent triumph and Ran Ai Yu saw the chain hooked around her heirloom blade.

The smaller of the fish continued to whip its head this way and that, but the blade held firm, and the chain held just as firmly to the sword.

The monster battered the very air with its head, sending the chain whipping around fast—too fast for Hrothgar to avoid. Ran Ai Yu rolled away, shielding her eyes, but she still saw the chain hit the dwarf in the side of the head and hit him hard.

Hrothgar went down in a shower of sparks, and his right leg spasmed when he sprawled unmoving on the deck. Blood poured from a deep gash on his forehead.

Ran Ai Yu scrambled to her feet but had to dance back when the chain flashed across her vision, missing her own head by the length of an eyelash. Sparks of burning lightning danced between the links, making the chain all the more terrifying.

The dwarf rolled over and grunted. He sat up and Ran Ai Yu dived on him, pushing him back onto the deck. He must have been very weak still from the blow to the head, otherwise her thin frame would never have moved the sturdy dwarf anywhere he didn’t want to go.

“Devorast!” Hrothgar gasped.

“The chain!” Devorast called at the same time.

Without thinking, Ran Ai Yu reached up and tried for the wildly swinging chain. One attempt after another failed, but finally the chain hit her palm with bruising force and she wrapped her fingers around it. Her arm tingled and sparks began to play around her wrist.

Devorast was there, though she couldn’t imagine how he’d made it across the section of ruined deck.

He took the chain from her with a cryptic smile and said, “Close your eyes.”

His voice was so calm, Ran Ai Yu was certain in that moment that the red-haired man was insane.

She didn’t close her eyes and so was able to see him swing the chain over his head with one hand while pulling with the other in an attempt to hold the thing steady.

The smaller fish fought against him like a horse resisting the yoke.

The larger fish left off worrying over the machete in its jaws long enough to make another try for Devorast.

Just like it had the fleeing craftsman, the great jaws came down around Devorast and the man disappeared into the thing’s mouth from the waist up.

But he was still holding the chain, and—

Everything went blue and there was a sound like an animal grunting but so loud it rattled Ran Ai Yu’s eardrums. The sound was so alien, it made her scream. Her vision went white, then black. There were flashes of images like shockingly realistic paintings:

Devorast flying through the air, his face twisted with agony and his body contorted in a massive, all-over convulsion.

Hrothgar jumping out of the way of whatever was happening, but not sure which way to go, so just…jumping.

The two enormous demon eels, connected by the length of chain, lightning meeting lighting from steel blade to iron chain to steel blade.

Lightning meeting lightning.

Blue meeting white.

The giant fish bursting.

Blood.

Electricity.

Screaming.

Ran Ai Yu screaming.

Then merciful darkness and comforting silence.

36_

10 Uktar, the Yearof the Helm (1362 DR) First Quarter, Innarlith

Though the attack by the still-unexplained and unidentified demon eels had set back their schedule some,

Ran Ai Yu’s ship was ready to depart less than four months later.

“She is fine ship,” the Shou merchant said.

Devorast, whose eyes continuously darted from rail to mast to deck to rigging, always checking for the tiniest imperfection, nodded. Ran Ai Yu did her best to detect any trace of pride in his manner but saw none. He appeared satisfied, but that was all, as if he’d known all along how the ship would turn out and was in no way surprised by his success. Ran Ai Yu found it impossible to feel the same.

“I have never seen like of it,” she said, running the tip of a finger along the rail and admiring the way the light rain beaded on the ceramic surface.

“No ship like it has ever been afloat,” he told her.

“It will be a long voyage back home,” she said, “and we will stop in many ports along the way. You will be busy building more very soon, I know.”

“There’s no need,” he said. “It’s been built already. Let others do it again.”

“Ah,” she said, “I see. You are the first but will sell the plans and—”

“I have no intention of selling the plans,” he said. “You have a copy I made for you, to aid in any repairs you may require should circumstances dictate, but I will destroy mine.”

Ran Ai Yu found herself at a loss for words, less because of what he’d said but because he actually noticed her confusion.

“I have built the best ceramic ship I know how to build,” he said. “I will find a new challenge.”

“You will turn away gold bar after gold bar after gold bar,” she said. “It is bad trade. Bad… business.”

Devorast smiled, even laughed a little, and said, “Your Common improves by the day, and if ‘bad business’ is all I’m ever accused of, I’ll die a happy man.”

Ran Ai Yu could only shake her head.

They stood in silence for a long while, watching the last of Devorast’s shipwrights climb into a dinghy. Hrothgar was the last in, and the dwarf made no mistake about his discomfort on the little boat.

“Coming, then?” Hrothgar called to Devorast. “I can’t swim, you know.”

Ran Ai Yu spared the dwarf the indignity of the laugh she felt bubbling up in her throat. Then she had to hold back a tear when Devorast stepped away from her, turned, and held out his hand.

“Miss Ran Ai Yu,” he said, “I wish you safe journey.”

She took his hand, but when he tried to let go, she wouldn’t let him.

“I wish I could return sooner,” she said. “I have found our work together here rewarding, if not dangerous.”

Devorast nodded but didn’t seem to know what to say. There had been more than the one attack, no shortage of sabotage attempts, and in those months they still didn’t know precisely who had tried to have them killed and the tiled cog destroyed. Ran Ai Yu had suspected at least one, maybe two of the wizards who had offered to transport her and her crew magically back to Shou Lung, but nothing could be proved.

“Still,” she said, “I will avoid the portals through the Weave.”

That made Devorast smile.

“You will have a safe journey,” he said. “I built her well.”

Finally letting go of his hand, Ran Ai Yu said, “There should be a canal.”

Devorast turned to go then stopped.

“I’m sorry?” he said, turning back to face her.

“Today!” the dwarf bellowed from the listing dinghy. “We’re taking on water here for Moradin’s sake.”

“Did you say a canal?” Devorast asked.

“A … what is the word…” she said. “Xiao hud? Joke? That there should be a canal to connect Innarlith with my home in faraway Shou Lung.”

She couldn’t quite fathom the look that Devorast gave her then, and she was distracted by a ruckus on the dinghy. The dwarf argued with the shipwrights and threats flew.

“You have these?” Devorast asked her. “In Shou Lung? Canals, I mean.”

“We do,” she replied with a shrug. “I have sailed the Grand Canal of the Second Emperor myself from my home province of Tierte in the north, south through the hills to Wang Kuo. A canal from here to Shou Lung would be impossible. I think if even the gods were capable of it there would already be a river, no?”

Devorast nodded and sighed.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Ivar!” Hrothgar bellowed.

With a distracted smile Devorast said to Ran Ai Yu, “Thank you, Miss, for more than you might imagine.”

Ran Ai Yu bowed deeply, as she would to a person of great power and importance—as she would to a king.

“Ivar,” the dwarf growled, “get in the gods bedamned boat!”

Devorast climbed down into the dinghy, and Ran Ai Yu’s crew set sail.

“Jie Zud,”she said, finally giving her new ship a name. In Devorast’s Common Tongue: Masterpiece.

12 Hammer, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

Phyrea liked the way the leather felt against her skin. It wrapped her in a second layer of flesh, a barrier against the very air of the world she had no use for. “Pretty,” a voice said.

It was a man, his voice echoing in the high-ceilinged chamber. She didn’t turn around but heard him cock the crossbow. Her eyes settled on the egg. It sat on a piece of soft fur—probably mink—in a silver bowl. The bowl was in the little wall safe she’d found hidden behind the picture just where Wenefir told her it would be.

“So,” she said, still not turning around, “you can hear.”

She’d overstated her ability to open complex dwarven locks—if she hadn’t Wenefir wouldn’t have let her come-but when she grew bored with trying to pick it, there was always the magical oil that blew things up. It didn’t take much of the stuff to blow the door off the safe.

“Step back,” the man said. “Take one step back from the egg and turn around slowly. Do anything else and you get a quarrel in the arse, and it would be a shame to hurt that arse.”

The side of Phyrea’s mouth curved gently up into a half smile, and she didn’t step back or turn around. She looked at the egg.

It was a real egg—just a common chicken egg—but it had been pierced with a needle and the contents blown out.

Then the delicate, intact shell had been decorated with gems and gold. The emeralds alone were worth a fortune, and still there were rubies, sapphires, and one diamond after another. The gems could buy a seat on the senate, but the egg—the craftsmanship, the delicate beauty, the rarity—was priceless. When she looked closely, she could see the man reflected in hundreds of little gemstones. He was a big man, and he had a big crossbow, but he was looking at the wrong part of her.

“You heard me, beautiful,” he said, taking a step closer to her, but still looking at her shapely behind. “Step back and—”

She tossed the vial over her shoulder. It tumbled through the air, reflected a thousandfold in the facets of the gems. He never looked up and never saw it. Phyrea closed her eyes just before it hit him on the forehead. The vial broke and the oil did what the oil was made to do. The sound was a dull thump that rebounded from wall to wall in the candlelit confines of the hall. It hurt her ears but not too badly.

She turned, and her smile became a grimace.

The headless man was still standing. His body quivered, blood rained around his feet, and his arm jerked.

And the crossbow fired.

Phyrea leaned back and watched the quarrel rip through the air an inch from the tip of her nose. Bent so far back that her shoulders nearly touched the floor, all she had to do was tip her head back to watch the crossbow bolt smash into the silver bowl.

She hissed a curse no girl her age should ever have heard, let alone said, and went into a fast, dizzying backward somersault, spinning and landing on her knees just in time to catch the delicate egg a handspan from hitting the floor.

Phyrea breathed a sigh of relief and stood, just as running footsteps began to echo from farther down the hall. More guards.

She took the swatch of fur and wrapped the egg in it then stuffed it into her little shoulder bag. The footsteps

grew louder and louder. She drew the short sword from its scabbard at her belt and whirled it through her fingers. The magically enhanced balance of it always made her feel good—powerful, in control, safe.

The guards practically fell over each other coming around the corner, all trying to stop the second they saw her.

Her long, soft, black hair fell playfully over one side of her face in the way she knew men liked. She smiled at them in the way she knew they couldn’t resist. Then she bent one knee and extended her other leg straight out in front of her, lifting the short sword over her head with her right hand and motioning them to her with one finger of her left hand in a way she knew they would find mesmerizing.

To a man their jaws went slack, and their weapons hung limp at their sides.

“Good boys,” she said.

Before they could snap out of it—if they ever did snap out of it—she skipped into a run, one step then two, and she was out the window to her right, a window she’d only just noticed was there.