died helping him.
He took the paper he'd been given, raised the pen, and began his report
and, in a sense, his confession.
THREE WEEKS Ot!T, Et'STIN BROKE.
The sea surrounded them, empty and immense as the sky. So far south, the
water was clear and the air warm even with the slowly failing days. The
birds that had followed them from Parrinshall had vanished. The only
animal was a three-legged dog the ship's crew had taken on as a mascot.
Nor were there women on hoard. Only the rank, common smell of men and
the sea.
The rigging creaked and groaned, unnerving no one but Balasar. He had
never loved traveling by water. Campaigning on land was no more
comfortable, but at least when the day ended he was able to see that
this village was not the one he'd been in the night before, the tree
under which he slept looked out over some different hillside. I lore, in
the vast nothingness of water, they might almost have been standing
still. Only the long white plume of their wake gave him a sense of
movement, the visible promise that one day the journey would end. Ile
would often sit at the stern, watch that constant trail, and take what
solace he could from it. Sometimes he carved blocks of wax with a small,
thin knife while his mind wandered and softened in the boredom of inaction.
It should not have surprised him that the isolation had proved corrosive
for Eustin and Coal. And yet when one of the sailors rushed up to him
that night, pale eyes bulging from his head, Balasar had not guessed the
trouble. His man, the one called Eustin, was belowdecks with a knife,
the sailor said. He was threatening to kill himself or else the crippled
mascot dog, no one was sure which. Normally, they'd all have clubbed him
senseless and thrown him over the side, but as he was a paying passage,
the general might perhaps want to take a hand. Balasar put down the wax
block half-carved into the shape of a fish, tucked his knife in his
belt, and nodded as if the request were perfectly common.
The scene in the belly of the ship was calmer than he'd expected. Eustin
sat on a bench. He had the dog by a rope looped around the thing's chest
and a field dagger in his other hand. Ten sailors were standing in
silence either in the room or just outside it, armed with blades and
cudgels. Balasar ignored them, taking a low stool and setting it
squarely in front of Eustin before he sat.
"General," Eustin said. His voice was low and flat, like a man halfdead
from a wound.
"I hear there's some issue with the animal."
"He ate my soup."
One of the sailors coughed meaningfully, and Eustin's eyes narrowed and
flickered toward the sound. Balasar spoke again quickly.
"I've seen Coal sneak half a bottle of wine away from you. It hardly
seems a killing offense."
"He didn't steal my soup, General. I gave it to him."
"You gave it to him?"
"Yessir."
The room seemed close as a coffin, and hot. If only there weren't so