“Bireme,” Esmond said. “Twenty marines, hundred and twenty oarsmen, thirty sailors. They can’t be far from home. Royal ship too, I think, not a freebooter. Very well-trained crew.”
Adrian nodded, although being a royal ship wasn’t always much of a distinction, with Islanders. Any king’s ship would turn pirate if the opportunity offered.
One of the officers on the warship’s quarterdeck raised a speaking trumpet. He hailed them in Confed, accented but understandable.
“Ahoy there! What ship?”
“Wave Strider, out of Preble,” the captain said. “Bound for Chalice.”
“What cargo?”
The voice sounded suspicious; there were far too many armed men on the merchantman’s deck, but she was equally obviously no pirate or longshore raider. That would make her cautious. Even a successful ramming run might leave the warship vulnerable to boarding; a little bad luck, a ram caught in the wounded ship’s timbers, and the Wave Strider’s men could swarm aboard. That was how Confed ships had beat the Kingdom’s fleets despite the Islanders’ seamanship, grappling and turning naval battles into land fights.
Adrian stepped forward, speaking in the tongue of the Isles; he could feel Esmond stiffen in surprise. Which was natural enough, since as far as he knew Adrian spoke only a few words.
“Our cargo is brave men,” he said. “Come to serve King Casull IV, Lord of the Isles, Supreme Autocrat, Chosen of the Sun God and Lemare of the Sea, against the thieves and tyrants of Vanbert. We are Adrian and Esmond Gellert, of Solinga.”
The ships were close enough now that Adrian could see the officer’s eyes go wide in a swarthy, hook-nosed face. The plume at the forefront of his turban nodded as he turned and spoke urgently with some others.
“They’ve heard of us, and not just through Father,” Esmond murmured at his ear.
“Now the question is whether they want to get in good with the Confeds or poke them in the eye,” Adrian murmured back.
The gorgeously-dressed officer turned back, sun breaking off the gilded scales of his armor. “The King, may he live forever, must hear of this,” he said. “You will transfer to Slasher.”
“Esteemed sir, we will remain with our men,” Esmond said, in slower and more heavily accented Islander. “But we are very eager to lay our fates at the feet of the King, to whom the gods have given a great realm.”
There was a moment of tension as stares met. The plumes nodded again as the Islander captain nodded. “Very well. Make what sail you can.”
* * *
“Enter,” King Casull said.
The audience chamber was small and informal, one wall an openwork lattice of carved marble looking down over the city of Chalice. For the rest it held a mosaic of sea monsters—most of them quite real, as Casull had learned in his years as a skipper and admiral, before the previous King had met an untimely end in the last war with the Confeds—an ebony table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, embroidered cushions, a tray of dried fruit and pitchers of wine and water. A girl in a diaphanous gown knelt in one corner, strumming a jitar, and two guards stood by the entrance, the points of their huge curved slashing-swords resting on the floor before their boots and their hands ready on the hilts. A stick of incense burned in a fretted brass tray, melding with the scent of the flowers in the gardens outside, and the tarry reek of the harbor below.
Two men came through the door with a eunuch chamberlain following, in robes even more gorgeous than theirs.
“O King, live forever!” all three cried as they prostrated themselves on the floor.
The silver aigrettes at the front of the two merchants’ turbans clicked on the tessellated marble of the floor, as did the ruby in the eunuch’s turban. A palace chamberlain might lack stones, but not the opportunity to acquire precious stones. Casull smiled slightly to himself at his own pun and made a gesture with one hand. Another girl rose with silent grace and moved to pour thick sweet wine into tiny cups carved from the gemlike teeth of the salpesk.
“Rise, my friends,” he said genially. His father had once told him that even if you had to kill a man, it cost nothing to be polite. “Speak. Your King would hear your tale.”