“Only if I have to,” Sasha snapped.
Errollyn heard the whistle just before Sasha and hurled himself hard down on top of her. The arrow hit the top rope with a thud, directly before his nose. It hit almost vertical, and he stared up…there, riding high on the mast, was a dark-haired figure with a bow. Kiel.
Sasha swore. “I looked up!” she insisted. Into a confusion of rigging in a black sky, with human eyes.
“Follow!” Errollyn hissed, leaping off her and running for the steps to the raised stern. Yells came from the bow, joined by shouts from up the mast as Kiel called the alarm. Errollyn cleared the steps and came face to face with Triana, piercing blue-grey eyes, a blade in her hand. The stern watch. “What are you going to do?” Errollyn half snarled, half laughed at her. “Kill me?” Triana stared at him in consternation. Errollyn spread his arms, daring her, and half preparing to tackle her barehanded. “Would you be the first of a thousand years?”
Her eyes darted past his shoulder, alerting him that Sasha had mounted the stairs. Triana moved to go around Errollyn, but he danced across, keeping himself between the two women. “You leave her alone.”
Triana backed up. Errollyn circled, Sasha at his back, and saw figures running across the deck toward the stern. Kiel was descending fast as a cunning system of pulleys and ropes sent him soaring down to the deck. Even now, he was fitting another arrow. “Rhillian!” Errollyn yelled at the figure with gleaming white hair that ran toward him. “You call him off right now!”
He pointed at Kiel. Kiel fitted his arrow, in middescent, and pointed it at Errollyn. Only not quite…Errollyn saw where it was headed, saw the muscles lose tension on Kiel's forearm, and leapt. The arrow hit him as he dived across Sasha's path. Blinding agony tore through his shoulder and the world turned colourless.
He heard Sasha's scream. He heard Kiel's shouts for Triana and Halrhen to get her…and opened his eyes to see Halrhen, a large and formidable swordsman, leaping his way…
Sasha moved. Blades flashed, clashed, and bodies flowed in lethal motion. Lying on the planks, dazed and insensible, Errollyn could recognise only shapes. The serrin fighters made beautiful shapes, with perfect form. And Sasha's shapes…were less perfect. She cut the corners off, crude and blunt, and devastatingly effective.
Halrhen fell first, slashed across the middle; then Triana, throat severed, blood spurting. She fell right near him, and squirmed and kicked as she died. Then he felt Sasha's hand grasp his arm and pull him toward the stern rail. He rose, consciousness returning…it was just the shoulder, he told himself firmly, struggling for strength. Just the shoulder. You're weak from the chains, that's all.
He dragged himself to the railing, feeling for the shaft…his hand brushed it and the pain made him wish he hadn't. Serrin were thundering onto the raised stern now, falling back as Rhillian took the lead. Her blade was naked and there was horror on her face. She crouched, first by Triana, then by Halrhen. When she looked up at Sasha, her eyes were filled with grief and rage.
Sasha stood between him and Rhillian. Her naked blade was barely bloodied, so fast had been her strokes. Errollyn could not see her face, but her stance alone was lethal. The thought drifted across his dazed consciousness that if Rhillian attacked, she would die. He'd thought them evenly matched before-his human lover and his old serrin friend. Now, he saw otherwise. Rhillian was serrin. Serrin perfected the form. The same form, always the same, where the only deviations came from the form's own complexity. Sasha made new forms. Or took the old ones and shaped them to her needs. She was human, and pragmatic, while Rhillian was serrin, and artistic. Rhillian fought with superb precision and artistry. Sasha fought to kill.
If all humans learn serrin ways, he thought, and copy serrin skills, surely we're doomed. Surely we cannot be humanity's enemy, and expect to survive.
Rhillian took her own stance. Blood covered the deck. Rhillian's emerald eyes blazed, her sword poised for attack. Sasha stood, and waited to kill her. Errollyn wanted to speak, but could not. If he spoke, he might distract Sasha and give Rhillian an advantage. Even as he thought it, he realised he was wishing Rhillian to die. It shamed and horrified him. He'd never wished it before on someone he loved. But he loved Sasha more.
Rhillian did not attack. Perhaps she feared. Perhaps she saw reason. Perhaps she knew herself outmatched. Errollyn could not tell. He only saw from the stance of the two women and the look in Rhillian's eyes, that all trace of regret or restraint had vanished. The friendship was passed. Now, they were enemies.
Finally, Rhillian spoke. “Get off my ship,” she said, very quietly. Her voice dripped with menace. “Get off before I kill you both.”
“You and which army?” said Sasha in Lenay, blunt and contemptuous. A Lenay warrior to the last. Errollyn eyed the semicircle of naked blades around them and thought it a poor choice of words.
The next thing he knew, he was very cold, very wet and in more pain than seemed reasonable. The world moved strangely, breath came with difficulty, and then not at all…he choked, gasping, trying to breathe through his nose as the air refused to pass down his throat. Hands rolled him over and his shoulder screamed agony. He was struck on the back, hard, then vomited water. And gasped again, to little effect. He thought he was going to die.
Then the air came, slowly, and he could breathe again. After a long time of gasping and coughing, he rolled back. Above him, through salt-bleary eyes, he saw Sasha. He was in Mari's boat, he realised. It was moving toward the shore. Away from the serrinim. Away from Saalshen. Toward foreign lands filled with cold and hostile people who did not understand him, and wished all his people dead. Strangely, that thought did not bother him, either, as much as it might.
Sasha was talking to him, but he couldn't hear much-there was a rushing, buzzing sound in his ears. Possibly they were full of water. He lifted his good arm and felt her hand clasp his. Most humans might have wished the serrin dead, but this one didn't. This one would fight to save him. It seemed the least he could do to return the favour.
“Hold on, Errollyn,” she was urging him. “We're almost home.”
Home. Now, he had no home. Home would be wherever she was. And that thought did not bother him very much either.
The wind was chill atop the North Pier Temple. Sasha pulled her coat tight as she sat on the small terrace above her quarters. Below, men hauled baskets and donkeys pulled carts filled with trade-cages of noisy chickens, ducks or geese; huge bundles of green, leafy vegetables; bags of potatoes and cauliflower; bags of flour and grain; and sometimes livestock tied into long trains of rope. Transportable items, for the docks.
Right on the southern edge of North Pier, the temple was always surrounded by a cacophony of activity. The new father, Father Recheldi, was a decent enough man, quieter and less well loved than Father Berin, but perhaps that would change in time. He had returned five days before from the grand mass to elect a new archbishop, and had had little to say about the process, save to shrug and murmur, “Time will tell.”
A man named Tietro was archbishop now. Few had ever heard of him, save that he came from a northern Torovan town in Danor, and Family Tietro were said to be close allies to Duke Tarabai of Danor. The days of fatherly neutrality, it seemed, were over. Few had been surprised.
Sasha had been pleased, though, that Father Recheldi had not returned with instructions from higher up that she and Errollyn could no longer be quartered in the temple. Most of the Torovan priesthood did not know that the North Pier Temple even existed…or not until recently, at least. Dockside temples were unaligned, the families of their priests neutral in broader Petrodor alliances, and their fathers thus unable to trade favours and climb the ranks to the higher slopes. Perhaps those higher ranks now thought to offer Father Recheldi favours to spy on her, or worse…Sasha did not know. She remained alert, and trusted no one but her closest friends. She'd been in Petrodor for long enough now that that was more a reflex than a conscious decision.
From back toward the dockside, she could hear the rush of waves against the dock and the creaking of boats at the pier. From the North Pier, yells and shouts, the trundling creak of heavy wagons, and the squeal of pulley ropes hauling loads. Further south, toward South Pier, the cries of the marketplace …and a more recent sound, the clinking and hammering of tools. Dockside was being rebuilt.
As she gazed up the vast, shambling slope before her, the bells were tolling once more as the upslope temples joined in the celebrations. The North Pier Temple did not have a bell. Father Berin had had better things to spend money on.
The trapdoor behind her creaked and Sasha turned in her chair to see Errollyn pushing up through it. His left arm was in a sling, yet he wore his sword all the same. The bow, of course, he left in their quarters.
“I wonder if they'll ring the same when the demons of the apocalypse come flying through,” he remarked, seating himself in a nearby chair. He pulled some grapes off the small table between and stretched with a wince. He looked tired, his hair in even greater disarray than usual, yet to Sasha's eyes he seemed healthier each day.
“I think maybe this is the demon of the apocalypse flying through,” Sasha said.
Errollyn smiled. The bells were tolling because Torovan had a king. Following the announcement of the new archbishop, the archbishop had then turned around and declared a sole ruler for Torovan-a king, as there had never been a king in eight hundred years.
King Marlen Steiner.
“He had us all right from the beginning, didn't he?” Sasha sighed. “Probably from when he first heard of the coming war.”
“Royalty is a strangely attractive notion for humans,” Errollyn remarked, shifting to seek a better position. He was always stiff, always getting aches in strange places. Worse, he tried to exercise as though he'd never been hurt, until Sasha had threatened to tie him up like Rhillian had. Kessligh was little better, though somewhat more patient. Between the two of them, Sasha sometimes felt like a nursemaid.
“Probably he was the one who started Archbishop Augine and the others table-thumping about the war in the first place,” said Sasha. “Marry a Lenay princess, start a war, destabilise your enemies and claim all the spoils when they collapse. That's quite a list, even for Patachi Steiner. Even his worst enemies underestimated his ambition.”
Marya had been the key. Lenay royalty. It had long been agreed that marrying into Lenay royalty did not confer royalty upon a Petrodor family. Marya had been a princess, yet that did not make Symon Steiner a prince…nor Patachi Steiner a king. It was a status symbol, nothing more, like the fancy jewels that Family ladies wore-a Lenay princess was an exotic status symbol for powerful Petrodor men. A fashionable accessory, like a necklace, or a jewelled dagger. Or a pet wolf. Only now, the new archbishop decreed that such a marriage was enough to make Patachi Steiner a king, and the entire Family Steiner a royal family. And it became so because there was no one left of sufficient power and resolve to prevent it. Torovan had a king, because those who mattered decided that it should. Sasha had read and heard told of enough old, romantic Torovan tales to know that it wasn't supposed to work this way-always in those tales there resided the notion of entitlement, that one ascended to such things because it was right and proper, and decreed by the heavens. But then, that was why the archbishop existed, to decree on the gods’ behalf. No one ever questioned who put the archbishop in power. The gods did. Of course.
Obviously her own father, King Torvaal, hadn't seen this coming either. He'd interfered by marrying Alythia to Family Halmady, and thus unknowingly creating a rival claim to the throne of Torovan. Steiner's claim would be superior, of course, because Marya was elder, but the Great Families of Petrodor were nothing if not insecure. Claims could be extinguished as easily as lives.
It was all so silly. Sasha had never been a great lover of royalty, but most of that had been for personal reasons. She'd never, until now, been quite so disgusted by the entire concept. She was revolted by it. Was this how kings were made? Through greed, murder, intrigue and villainy? Some kind of king Patachi Steiner would make, she was certain. Now, as Kessligh had predicted, things were worse.
“There's not going to be enough space on the old Maerler Mansion plot to build his new castle,” said Sasha.
“He won't stop at the old mansion plot,” Errollyn said grimly. “He'll build on all of Sharptooth.”
“Three of those families conceded rather than fought,” Sasha reminded him.
Errollyn shrugged. “You think that'll matter?”
Sasha thought about it. Then shook her head. “You're right. He'll demolish the lot.”
“King of Torovan,” Errollyn said, as though the words tasted foul on his tongue. “I'm sure he'll adopt the grandest trappings of royalty he can find. He'll keep all his trading empire, all the ships, all the warehouses. He'll turn all his allies into lords, give them holdings…not high enough to offend the dukes, but high enough.”
“Make the relationship formal,” Sasha agreed, nodding. “Formality has an odd way of changing people's behaviour.”
Errollyn raised an eyebrow. “As a Lenay, you'd know.” Sasha shrugged. “That castle atop Sharptooth will dominate the city. I'd think it'll take him fifteen years to build, at the least.”
“Ten,” said Sasha, popping a grape. “Petrodor grows so fast, and the stonemasonry here is excellent. There's unlimited labour, probably Riverside will be restocked of desperate souls in a year or two, they'll do anything for a few coppers.”
“Possibly.” Errollyn gazed up at the slope with eyes narrowed by pain. “We made a mess, didn't we? Serrin and human both.