No. He would trek on west. Torunna was done for. Best to keep going, across the Cimbric Mountains, perhaps, and into Perigraine. Or even further west, to Fimbria. He could sell his services to the highest bidder. All the kingdoms were crying out for fighting men these days, even men who had run with their tails between their legs.
That would be giving up any dream of ever finding his wife again.
She is dead, Corfe, an empty-eyed corpse in a gutter of Aekir.
He prayed it was so.
There was a commotion in the firelit gloom, movement. His hand strayed to his sabre as a long line of mounted shapes came looming up. Cavalry, all light and shadow as they wound through the dotted campfires. People raised hands to them as they passed. It was a half-troop heading east, joining Lejer’s embattled command, no doubt. They would have a devil of a time fighting their way through the Merduk screen.
Something in Corfe stirred. He wanted momentarily to be riding east with them, seeking a hero’s oblivion. But the feeling passed as quickly as the shadowed horsemen. He gnawed on his turnip and glared at those who peered too closely at his tattered livery. Let the fools ride east. There was nothing there but death or slavery and the burning ruins of an empty city.
“T HERE is a rutter, a chart-book, that will confirm the man’s story,” Murad told the King.
“Rutters can be forged,” Abeleyn said.
“Not this one, Majesty. It is over a century old, and most of it details the everyday passages of an everyday oceangoer. It contains bearings and soundings, moon changes and tides for half a hundred ports from Rovenan of the corsairs to Skarma Sound in far Hardukh, or Ferdiac as it was known then. It is authentic.”
The King grunted noncommittally. They were seated on a wooden bench in his pleasure garden, but even this high above the city it was possible to catch the reek of the pyre. The sun beat down relentlessly, but they were in the dappled shade of a stand of mighty cypresses. Acacia and juniper made a curtain about them. The grass was green and short, a lawn tended by a small army of gardeners and nourished with a stupefying volume of water diverted from the city aqueducts.
Abeleyn popped an olive into his mouth, sipped his cold wine and turned the crackling pages of the old chart-book with delicate care.
“So this western voyage is authentic also, this landfall made in the uttermost west?”
“I believe so.”
“Let us say you are right, cousin. What would you have me do about it?”
Murad smiled. His smile was humourless, wry. It twisted his narrow face into an expression of knowing ruefulness.
“Why, help me outfit a voyage to test its veracity.”
Abeleyn slammed the ancient book shut, sending little flakes of powder-dry paper into the air. He set one long-fingered hand atop the salt-stained cover. Sweat beaded his temples, coiling his dark hair into tiny, dripping tails.
“Do you know, cousin, what kind of a week I’ve had?”
“I—”
“First I have this God-cursed—may the Saints forgive me—holy Prelate with his putrefactive intrigues in search of more authority; I have the worthy merchants of the city crying on my shoulder about his—no, our—edict’s resultant damage to trade; then I have old Golophin avoiding me—and who can blame him?—just at the time when I need his counsel most; I have this blasted burning every God-given hour of the day in the one month of the year when the trade wind has fallen, so that we wallow in it like peasants in a chimneyless hut; and finally I have the Torunnan king screaming for troops at the one time when I cannot afford to give them to him—so up in more smoke goes the Torunnan monopoly trade. And now you say I should outfit an expedition into the unknown, presumably so that I may rid myself of the burden of a few good ships and the crack-brained notions of a sunstruck kinsman.”
Murad sipped wine. “I did not say that you should provide the ships, Majesty.”
“Oh, they’ll spring out of the yards fully rigged, will they?”
“I could, with your authority, commandeer some civilian ships—four would suffice—and command them as your viceroy. A detachment of marines is all I would have to ask you for, and I would have volunteers aplenty from my own tercio.”
“And supplies, provisions, equipment?”
“There is any amount of that locked up in warehouses all along the wharves—the confiscated property of arrested merchants and captains. And I know for a fact that I could crew half a flotilla from the foreign seamen currently languishing in the palace catacombs.”
Abeleyn was silent. He stared at his kinsman closely.
“You come here with some interesting notions under your scalp along with the tomfoolery, cousin,” he said at last. “Maybe you will overreach yourself yet.”
Murad’s pale countenance became a shade whiter. He was a long, lean nobleman with lank dark hair and a nose any peregrine would have been proud of. The eyes suited the nose: grey as a fish’s flank, and with something of the same brightness when they caught the light. One cheek was ridged with a long scar, the legacy of a fight with one of the corsairs. It was a surpassingly ugly, even sinister face, and yet Murad had never lacked the companionship of the fairer sex. There was a magnetic quality about him that drew them like moths to a candle flame until, burnt, they limped away again. Several of their outraged husbands, fathers and brothers had challenged Murad to duels. None had survived.
“Tell me again how you came by this document,” Abeleyn said softly.
Murad sighed. “One of my new recruits was telling tall tales. His family were inshore fishermen, and his great-grandfather had a story of a crewless ship that came up out of the west one day when he and his father were out on the herrin run. His father boarded with three others, but a shifter was on board, the only thing living, and it killed them. The ship—it was a high-seas carrack bound out of Abrusio half a year before—was settling slowly and the yawlsmen drew off. But the shifter jumped overboard and swam for shore. They reboarded to collect their dead and the boy, as he was then, found the rutter in the stern cabin along with the corpse of the master and took it as a sort of were-gild for his father’s life.”
“How old is this man?” Abeleyn demanded.
Murad shifted uncomfortably. “He died some fifteen years ago. This is a tale kept by the family.”
“The mutterings of an old man garbled by the passage of time and the exaggerations of peasant storytelling.”
“The rutter bears the story out, Majesty,” Murad protested. “The Western Continent exists, and what is more the voyage there is practicable.”
Abeleyn bent his head in thought. His thick, curly hair was hardly touched by grey as yet. A young king fighting against encroachments on his authority from the Church, the guilds, other monarchs. His father had had no such problems, but then his father had not lived to see the fall of Aekir.
We live in trialling times, he thought, and smiled unpleasantly.
“I do not have the time to pore over an ancient rutter, Murad. I will take what you have told me on trust. How many ships did you say you would need?”
The scarred nobleman’s face blazed with triumph, but he kept his voice casual.
“As I said, four, maybe five. Enough men and stores to start a viable colony.”
Abeleyn’s head snapped up. “A colony, sanctioned by the Hebriate crown, must needs have someone of sufficient rank to be its governor. Who do you have in mind, cousin?”
Murad coloured. “I thought. . .it had occurred to me that—”
Abeleyn grinned and raised a hand. “You are the King’s cousin. That is rank enough.” His grin faded swiftly. “I cannot, however, let you commandeer the ships of those who have been caught up in these heresy trials. Men would say that I was profiting from them, and some of the odium that the Prelate is unfortunately collecting for himself would be dumped at my door. A king must not be seen to benefit from the misfortune of his subjects.”
Murad caught the slight emphasis and watched his monarch narrowly.
“However, what stores and cordage and spare yards and provisions and suchlike that are currently piling up in the warehouses might conceivably be moved elsewhere, for the sake of storage, you understand. These things, Murad, would not be missed. Ships are a different thing. We Hebrionese have a sentimental attachment to them. For their masters they are like wives. I know of your reputation in the wife-netting field, but if this is to be a crown-sponsored expedition it must start off on a wholesome note. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly, Majesty.”
“Excellent. No ships, then, will be confiscated, but I will give you a letter of Royal credit for the purpose of hiring out and outfitting two ships.”
“Two ships! But Majesty—”
“Kings do not relish being interrupted, Murad. As I have said, two ships, both out of Abrusio, and they must be ships whose masters have lately lost a large number of crewmen to the Inceptines. You will represent to their masters that they will regain their full crews for the voyage, which, if they undertake it, will be considered a form of amnesty. If they choose not to avail themselves of the crown’s generosity then you must make it clear that they are liable to be investigated for having so many heretics and foreigners in their complement in the first place.”
Murad began to grin.
“The letters of credit, I take it, Majesty, will be redeemed on the safe return of the ships to Abrusio.”
The King inclined his head. “Even so. I will also let you take a demi-tercio of marines from your own command and will confer on you the governorship—under certain conditions—of whatever colony you choose to set up in this Western Continent. But to set up a colony you will need colonists.”
Here the King looked so pleased with himself that Murad became wary.
“I will find you colonists, never fear,” the King continued. “I have a body of people in mind at this very moment. Is all this agreeable to you, cousin? Are you still willing to undertake the expedition?”
“I will, of course, be able to vet the potential colonists for myself.”