Corsair

IV

There was little vegetation on the island. Stretches of short grass strewn with pink and white flowers were interrupted by bare rock and patches of gritty soil. Although a few stubborn bushes had rooted themselves in crevices, they could hardly be said to be thriving. It all meant there was little shelter from the wind blustering across the low, sloping isle, but Yulan – to his surprise – found it rather pleasant. Without the unsteady deck of a fishing boat beneath him, there was a certain appeal to the vast sky and the clean wind.

There might be little greenery, but there was life in abundance. The spine of the island had been colonised by thousands of gulls. Their nests were all around, even within a pace or two of the path down which Yulan and Lake walked. Their quarrels and conversations filled the air, a cacophony riding white wings.

‘You used to be an Orphanidon?’ Yulan said as they walked through the tumult.

‘I did.’

Yulan could not see Lake’s face, for Kottren’s bodyguard followed behind him. He imagined it to be entirely still and expressionless.

‘You don’t look the part,’ he said. ‘Not now, if you ever did.’

No answer came to that. It had been an easy and crude jab, Yulan knew, but he had to take the measure of this man somehow.

‘You’re very far from home, in more ways than one,’ he continued. ‘I thought being an Orphanidon was all about noble service to the Empire, not selling your sword to mad bandits.’

The gulls were growing angry as the two men passed through the heart of their nesting grounds. White shapes lunged down out of the sky, screaming accusations. Some dived so close to his head that Yulan could feel the sweep of their wings. He heard Lake’s quiet reply clearly enough, even among those distractions.

‘I have not been an Orphanidon for many years. I serve as I please.’

The accent was unfamiliar, certainly not that of any native speaker Yulan had ever met. It proved nothing, but it could be the voice of an Imperial exile.

‘It’s an inglorious cause you’ve chosen to adopt,’ Yulan observed.

‘Less so than was the Empire of Orphans.’

Fragments of eggshell crunched beneath Yulan’s feet.

‘You fell out of love with your masters, then,’ he said. ‘That’s a point in your favour. Kottren Malak might be mad, but the Orphans make him look sane as sane can be.’

‘Just so. I choose to serve a lesser madness, and have thus improved my station.’

There might have been a whisper of wry humour in that. It really was hard to tell with Lake, and Yulan had always thought himself rather good at reading a man’s tone.

‘I hope your Corsair King will not force us to our swords,’ he said. ‘His madness might be the lesser, but it’s still not worth dying for.’

‘You think I would die?’ Lake asked, and Yulan definitely heard amusement in that. ‘I know the Free, and your great capacities and terrible magics. But you do not know the Corsair King as well as you think. Even if all your hundreds came to this place, his would not be the only people dying.’

Yulan stopped and turned to face his companion. Lake stood four or five paces behind him. Just out of sword reach. Whatever his past had truly been, the man was capable and careful.

Before Yulan could say anything, a rush of wings had him ducking away; too slow to avoid the stabbing impact of a beak on his skull. Yulan cursed and touched his hand to his scalp. It felt wet and sticky. A moment later, he could feel the blood trickling down his forehead.

‘First blood. It is best to keep moving,’ Lake said impassively. ‘These birds defend their families, even at peril of their own lives.’

Corena’s scow was moored in the lee of the island’s furthest point, where the rocks sloped away beneath the sea. Kottren’s motley little fleet had its own berthing in a cliff-ringed cove beneath the castle. They had not allowed the fishing boat anywhere near that.

The waters looked calm but Yulan still felt a twinge of foreboding at the prospect of a night afloat. At least he and Lake were spared any further aerial assaults. For whatever reason, the gulls chose not to nest down here on the lowest ground.

‘You can hail a boat to take you aboard,’ Lake said. ‘The Corsair King will meet you here in the morning.’

Yulan regarded the grizzled warrior. He read a subtle tension in the man’s posture and eyes. His own mimicked it, he knew.

Yulan’s every instinct told him this was all still edging its way towards bloodshed. He knew a good deal about woodworking and carving and had sometimes heard craftsmen say that a piece of raw wood held within it a shape that it wanted to become. He felt imprecisely but strongly that the day now drawing to a close had the shape of a bloody tomorrow within it, willing its own expression.

He suspected that Lake had the same sense. Perhaps even the same thought: This man might be dangerous if the time comes. Why wait for that time to choose its own moment?

‘You wonder whether you should try to kill me,’ Lake said.

Which was at once a good deal more blunt and more precise than Yulan was entirely expecting. He let his hand drift just a touch closer to the hilt of his sword. Barely noticeable.

‘You hesitate,’ Lake continued in a matter-of-fact way, ‘which means you have lost. If you attempt me now, I will kill you.’

Yulan knew, as fact not hubris, that he was better with a sword than at least nineteen out of any twenty men in the Hommetic Kingdom. The problem was that this one had the manner and assurance of that troublesome twentieth. In all likelihood, Hamdan was watching from the boat offshore and, given his absurd talents, could probably put an arrow or two in Lake even from there, but that would be of little consolation if Yulan was already dead.

‘I have spent three times the years since your mother squeezed you out learning the matter of violence,’ Lake announced. ‘I have embraced it and made it my own.’

Yulan forced some looseness into his shoulders and a smile onto his face.

‘I’m sure you’re very happy together, but I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Only to lift the burden of Kottren off from the backs of the fisherfolk.’

For the first time, Yulan thought he saw the faintest flicker of contempt in Lake’s face.

‘You should not disavow your willingness to kill. You diminish and weaken yourself. Now I know, still more certainly than before, that if you attempt me I will kill you.’

‘I thank you for the lesson,’ Yulan said lightly. ‘I regret any disappointment it may cause, but I’ll not be attempting you now. Perhaps another time?’

Lake gave a little nod of his head. Yulan turned his back on the warrior and waved to the fishing boat.

‘You should consider, when you ponder what is to come, that I am not the greatest danger on this island,’ Lake said behind him. ‘There is more power here than you see, and it will oppose you.’

Yulan steadfastly kept waving, which took a certain effort given how much he disliked the sound of that.