Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 3 Read online

  “You noticed. Good. That’s a rationalisation, Sasha. Those are the most dangerous of all.”

  “Break a few eggs to make an omelette?”

  “Exactly. Or in this case, ‘We must kill a lot of people now in order to ensure we don’t have to kill even more people later.’”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said glumly. “Enora is more stable now than Rhodaan, and it needs to be, considering its enemies. Maybe killing all the nobility was the right thing to do. It’s made their politics so much less destructive.”

  “Quite possibly. Even flawed logic can arrive at the correct conclusion by accident. But that doesn’t make the logic any less dangerous. Because if that becomes the way Enora deals with all future problems, it could easily become a nightmare.”

  Sasha used to find such philosophical ponderings exasperating. Kessligh seemed to make every discussion needlessly complicated. Since then, however, she’d seen the horrors of simple thinking. The northern Verenthanes of Lenayin, who had decided that the last remaining pagans in their midst, the Udalyn, should be exterminated. Lord Krayliss of the Lenay province of Taneryn, who had been prepared to see all Lenayin burn in civil war in order to see the return of the ancient ways to dominance. The power-hungry Patachis of Petrodor, who knew only wealth and swords, and respected no other currency.

  This was the world that Kessligh had sought to escape. These were the simple thoughts and ideals he had striven to find answers to.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Are we being caught?”

  “Errollyn doesn’t think so.”

  “Eiv>

  “And Errollyn knows much about boats?”

  Sasha shrugged. “Rhillian did. Rhillian’s uma was a boat builder, amongst other things. Rhillian told Errollyn quite a lot.” She gazed up at the flapping, heaving foresails, her mood suddenly dark.

  Kessligh put a hand on her shoulder. “Rhillian chose her own path,” he told her.

  “I know,” Sasha muttered. “She’s a bloody fool.”

  Meals on the Maiden were not as bad as Sasha had initially feared. The beef in the stew was salted and tough, but there were good vegetables too, and fruit, and even some half-fresh bread and cheese. The run from Petrodor to Tracato rarely took more than twelve days, but with this roaring tailwind the captain was confident they could do it in nine. Food kept well enough over such periods, and Nasi-Keth warriors like Sasha and Kessligh, and talmaad warriors like Errollyn, were somewhat particular about what they ate.

  They weren’t the only ones. Also aboard the Maiden was a lieutenant of the Rhodaani Steel, and two dharmi—footsoldiers of the Steel. Sasha had sparred against all three, and had been impressed. They used shorter swords than the Lenay warriors she was accustomed to, and she’d been expecting them to show less competence when fighting alone. Instead she’d found them a comfortable match to most Lenay warriors she’d known, untroubled by the shifting deck beneath their feet, and probably more practised at contesting her own style, too.

  Sasha had taken the opportunity to speak with all three men at length, and had learned a great deal. The Steel were serrin metalworking, weapons and armour, combined with serrin philosophies of motion and tactics, and the human knack for logistics, pragmatism and ruthlessness. One of the dharmi was half serrin by parentage, a common enough thing anywhere in the Saalshen Bacosh.

  The lieutenant’s name was Geran, and he had travelled to Petrodor to speak with the Nasi-Keth, and assess lessons from the great battles that had wracked the city. The Steel, Sasha learned, were like that—always learning, always trying new things. Councilman Dhael had travelled on similar business, and to meet with the new king of Torovan’s representatives (those who would deign to see a councilman from a nation Torovan was busily preparing to make war against). Being a merchant as well, he was also conducting trade. Nothing stopped the trade, it seemed. Not even war.

  In addition to Dhael’s three travelling retainers, there were five other passengers aboard, all Rhodaani. And, of course, there was Sasha’s sister Alythia.

  Alythia was now busily charming Councilman Dhael at one end of the passengers’ table. She laughed and smiled between mouthfuls, dabbing daintily at the corner of her lips with a napkin, in such a way as to draw attention to their fullness. She wore a red gown of flowing folds that fanned from the waist, with white, lacy trim. It enfolded her in a tight corset about the torso—a current fashion of the Bacosh. Alythia’s assets, Sasha noted drily, were just about spilling out, and the men at the table were staring. Dhael was married with four children, yet Alythia’s eyes, and breasts, seemed positively fixated on the man. Sasha knew only too well what that meant.

  Sasha finished her meal, and took a pear and her water flsk up steep, narrow stairs to the deck. She held onto a rail where she thought she couldn’t possibly get in the way, and ate the pear, listening to the rushing, roaring heave of the sea. The air smelled an intoxication of salt and freshness, as though alive. Cold, perhaps, but her sheepskin jacket was thick, and she had layers beneath…and she was Lenay, after all, and well used to cold.

  After a while on deck, she tossed the pear stem overboard and returned below. The galley table was clear, and she followed the narrow corridor up to the forequarters and the only half-decent guest lodging available on ship, up near the bow. The door was closed, and she recalled her manners at least long enough to knock before entering.

  She found Alythia struggling with her corset. Her sister looked annoyed that she’d entered before being invited, but also a little relieved. “Oh, Sasha. Could you help me with this? I can’t reach the laces properly.”

  “I can see,” said Sasha, amused. She shut the door, and stepped behind her sister. Alythia was taller, and her bundled hair tonight added to the effect. To say nothing of her boots, which Sasha saw only now were red leather, high with big heels. “Dear Lords, where did you get those boots?”

  “These? Oh, there’s so much for sale along the docks if you look, Sasha. You never looked. You lived in Petrodor for six months and you missed everything.”

  “Everything meaning clothes, jewellery and perfumes,” said Sasha drily. “You lived there for six months and you never once went out fishing.”

  “I leave fishing to men and tomboys,” said Alythia, unconcerned.

  “I leave dresses and jewellery to flirts and whores,” Sasha replied, loosening the laces with difficulty. Once, Alythia would have flown into a rage at such talk. Now, she might even have smiled…only Sasha could not see her face from behind.

  “Your opinion of fashion does not truly interest me, Sasha,” Alythia said mildly. “I’ll not take tips from someone who wears more dead animals than a Lisan sailor.”

  “Skins are the Lenay tradition,” said Sasha, straining to get the middle laces loose. “Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to know what that means. How in the world did you get these laces so tight? Considering you can hardly reach them?”

  Alythia smirked. “I had Lieutenant Geran come and help me into it. He was most accommodating. His hands are so strong!”

  “So the plan was to have Lieutenant Geran dress you, and Councilman Dhael undress you?” The laces finally came loose, and the corset shifted, loosening visibly. Alythia let out a small gasp.

  “Councilman Dhael is a very interesting man,” Alythia said, struggling out of the dress. “If I am to be located in Tracato for the next Gods-know-how-long, the least I can do is learn how the city functions.”

  “Councilman Dhael is a very influential man,” Sasha corrected. “What are you plotting, ’Lyth?”

  “Plotting,” Alythia snorted. “You have a devious little mind.”

  “Isn’t it slightly beneath the dignity of a Lenay princess to be a councilman’s mistress?”

  “Don’t you talk to me about dignity,” Alythia snapped. “If you knew the meaning of the word, you’d not walk around in pants with a sword on your back. Talk about being a blight on the dignity of Lenay princesses, you’ve got some nerve.”
/>   She shrugged the corset down her body and finally stepped out of the dress, which revealed curves that might have turned a less self-conscious woman than Sasha green with envy. Alythia, as most men seemed to observe, had a body made for sin. Sasha didn’t mind. She had a body made for war, and Errollyn liked it just fine.

  “So what did he tell you?” Sasha asked, bouncing onto Alythia’s small cot. “About Tracato?”

  Alythia took out a plain, brown and white dress from her chest, and pulled it carefully over her head. “It seems a strange place,” she said, muffled under her dress. Watching her, Sasha noticed that Alythia wore a knife in a sheath strapped to her shapely thigh…and Sasha wouldn’t have wagered good coin on the odds of that six months ago. “No kings nor queens, just the Council and the High Table. I’m not sure how it all works yet, but I understand more than I did.”

  “Kessligh says the idea is to give the ordinary people a voice,” said Sasha. “Instead of just petitioning their lords, they have actual representatives in the halls of power.”

  “Oh, Sasha,” Alythia said crossly, “for such a ruthless general, Kessligh can be so woolly-headed sometimes. It would never work, and there’s no way of truly telling who the people want as their representatives anyhow. People are so fickle.” She began letting down her hair, one pin at a time.

  “Is that what Councilman Dhael thinks?”

  “Don’t be daft, Sasha. Never ask a man what he thinks. Let him tell you of his own accord, that way he’ll never know which of the things he’s told you are valuable to you.”

  “I didn’t ask whether you asked him his opinion,” Sasha retorted. “I asked whether you know his opinion.”

  “He thinks Tracato doesn’t work very well,” said Alythia.

  “How doesn’t Tracato work very well?”

  “Oh, all this talk about ‘representatives of the people,’” Alythia said dismissively. “Councilman Dhael speaks prettily enough of his ideals, but truly, he’s just a merchant. Few enough of the Council are truly common folk, whatever their pieties; most are just schemers out for power. It’s so much simpler, Sasha, when the people know who’s in charge. But in Rhodaan, everyone thinks to be in charge, and stand on the shoulders of the other person to get there.”

  “Aye,” said Sasha, sarcastically, “because the nobility are so much more well behaved.”

  “You make fun,” Alythia said mildly, as dark curls unbundled down her back, “but in truth, they are. It is the natural order of mother nature, Sasha. Even wolf packs have leaders.”

  Princess Alythia.”

  “Aye, and if wolves owned lands, you’d have a fair analogy,” Alythia retorted. “But we can’t have everyone scrambling for power all the time, can we? Fighting over titles for lands? It would be a bloody massacre. It seems poorly enough in Rhodaan. Humans need structure, Sasha. Royalty and nobility serve their Godly purpose. This Rhodaani experiment seems ill advised indeed. The meddling of idealistic serrin and Nasi-Keth dreamers.”

  Sasha thought about it as she lay in her hammock later that night. She was sleeping in the general quarters, as there was precious little dedicated space for high-class passengers on the Maiden. Councilman Dhael had the only other quarters, though he had graciously offered them to Sasha…her being a princess too, in her previous life at least. Sasha had, of course, declined. It was her own little snobbery, perhaps, that she did not need such luxuries. She liked being tougher and less refined than women like Alythia, or men like Dhael. It made her smug.

  She, Kessligh, the three Rhodaani soldiers, Dhael’s three retainers and five other passengers all slept in the main quarters with the sailors. Privacy of sorts came from old sheets and blankets draped over ropes between hammocks. Being the only woman, she’d been allowed the forward-most space, up against the wall that separated main hold from forequarters.

  Sasha lay with a blanket folded three times over her to ward the chill. Boards groaned and creaked, and above decks men shouted direction. Frequently there were footsteps or conversation over by the crew hammocks, as tired sailors changed shifts, or returned below decks for things they needed.

  More footsteps, and then Errollyn pushed past the hanging blanket. He looked a little tired and grim.

  “I was up the rigging,” he answered her unasked question. “The captain wanted a better look at the lights on our pursuers. He thinks to know them better by their nightshift.”

  Sasha nodded. Serrin could see by night nearly as well as humans by day, and Errollyn’s sight was sharp even by serrin standards. “Do they draw closer?”

  “No.” Errollyn removed boots, socks, bandoleer and jacket, stowing them in their saddlebags against the wall. “The captain fears a trap.”

  Sasha nodded, biting her lip.

  Errollyn climbed into the hammock beside hers…an unusual arrangement, which had caused some consternation amongst some crew and passengers, and some mirth with others. Sasha was usually bothered by little where lewd or stupid remarks on her gender were concerned, but this was different. Some called her “whore,” she knew, and it worked on her temper as such things never had before. Well…before Errollyn she’d been a virgin, so it had hardly been applicable.

  She was one of only two women aboard, and she was sleeping with (or alongside, at least) a man who was not her husband…and was serrin, even worse. She’d thought a Rhodaani crew, with their superior affection for all things serrin, might not be bothered by this arrangement, but she was leaning that humans were more similar from land to land than she’d have liked. Errollyn, they were fine with. Some might have even respected him more, for appreciation of his “conquest.” It was her they called the slut.

  Errollyn pulled his blankets up, and reached across to put a hand in Sasha’s hair through the hammock netting, as she scowled at the ceiling. The motion of the ship made their bodies swing in time, barely touching.

  “Why the face?” he asked her.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Alythia?”

  Sasha shook her head. Errollyn reached his hand beneath her blankets to grasp her own. Then he put it on her thigh. Sasha removed it. “That’s not like you,” Errollyn teased.

  “Just rest it for a moment, will you?” Sasha said. Errollyn sighed, withdrew his hand, and laid his head back to sleep.

  “I’m sorry.” Sasha wriggled sideways in the hammock. “I didn’t mean to snap.”

  “You always snap. I’m used to it.”

  Sasha could have argued, but didn’t. Denying her own temper was foolish. If she wanted the man she loved to stay in love with her, at some point she was going to have to stop picking unnecessary arguments.

  “This ship annoys you. Very few serrin women would envy you, being what you are, here amongst humans.”

  Sasha smiled. Of course he understood. He always understood. She reached, and took his hand. Her frustrations had hardly kept them abstinent, of course. The hammocks were not suitable for a couple without the privacy or patience to experiment, but the cargo hold was usually empty. Which had been hardly romantic, with no space between crates and bags to lie down, but they’d managed nonetheless. As svaalverd warriors both, they shared an interest in physicality, and discovering what their bodies could do together—in positions that did not involve lying down—had been an entertainment all of its own.

  There came a round of unpleasant coughing from behind the next partition. Sasha swore lightly, and slid from her hammock. The other reason the hammocks were unsuited was that Kessligh bunked directly alongside. She suspected he wouldn’t have cared, but even so…

  She slipped past the blanket, and found him half seated in his hammock, sipping from a water flask. “You all right?”

  He grimaced, nodding as he drank. There was a small pan on the floor beside the bed, just in case. “Damn ships,” he muttered. “We’ll be in Tracato soon, that’ll cure me. What did Errollyn see?”

  “They’re not gaining. The captain fears a trap. Perhaps we’d best not sleep?”


  “If there’s an ambush, we’ll have enough warning to wake, dress and arm. Better to fight rested.”

  Sasha nodded. “How’s your leg?”

  “It’s fine, dammit woman,” Kessligh growled. “My mother died long ago, you don’t have to check on me every time you hear a noise.”

  “Oh, but look at you,” said Sasha in consternation. “Your hair’s a mess, you haven’t shaved in two days…here, just let me…” She moved to comb his hair down with her fingers. Kessligh swatted at her, dangerously fast, and she danced away with a mischievous grin.

  “You,” Kessligh said warningly, “will find you’re not too big for a spanking.”

  “You’d have to catch me first, old man,” Sasha laughed. “Sleep well.”

  She retreated back into her hammock. The ship lurched and rolled, but the only twisting in her stomach was from happiness. Woman. Kessligh called her “woman,” not “girl.” It was hard not to grin with delight.

  Errollyn noticed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” Sasha turned onto her side, facing him. “Say, you want to go downstairs and fuck?”

  Errollyn grinned. Spirits he looked nice when he did that. Those incredible green eyes flashed, full of humour. Sometimes she couldn’t believe her luck.

  “You’re impossible,” he said. “Tracking your moods is like sailing through four seasons before breakfast.”

  Sasha laughed. Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed him long and deep on the lips. Then she lay back again, and contented herself with holding his hand.

  “Sasha?” Errollyn asked. “I’ve a question. Don’t kill me.”

  “Ah,” said Sasha. “A stupid serrin question. Go ahead, I’m bracing myself.”

  “Do you think…I mean, Kessligh is like a father to you. But it’s all very well to say that, it’s another thing when a man hasn’t had a partner in a long time, and after all, you’re not his daughter…”

  Sasha frowned. “You know, for a serrin wordsmith, that’s an appallingly opaque question. Spit it out.”