I should remind myself how smart Esmond is occasionally, Adrian thought, wincing. His brother didn’t have the temperament for a Scholar, but he had at least as much raw brainpower as his younger sibling, and a tremendous ability to focus.
“That’s . . . for the time it has to be faced,” he said slowly. “Look, Esmond . . . can’t I have a few days? Just a few?”
“Of course,” Esmond said. His eyes grew slightly haunted. “I know how brief that can be.”
Feet clattered outside, and voices rang; one a high clear soprano. Helga Demansk swept in, wearing women’s dress this time, a long blue robe with a fold of her mantle over her hair. That was tied back with a ribbon, and twisted into plaits.
“Adrian!” she said, handing her shopping basket to a maid. “It fits! Oh, hello, Esmond.”
“Helga,” he said, half-rising and bowing his head. “What fits?”
“The cuirass and helmet,” she said. “They do good metalwork here, I’ve got to admit, even if they are pirate dogs.” Adrian winced slightly, and looked around. “Oh, don’t worry, Adrian,” she went on. “They’re proud of being pirates.”
“But not dogs,” he said.
“Are you going to tell me yet where this new expedition is headed?” she said, a green gleam in her eye. “Casull will have all the islands soon, at this rate.”
“Are you so eager to slay men, lady?” Esmond asked.
This time Helga looked aside slightly. “Well, no,” she said. “Not really. But it’s . . . exciting, you know what I mean?”
“Unfortunately I do,” Esmond agreed.
Helga reached into the basket. “And look at what I found,” she went on more brightly. “A copy of the War of the Thousand Ships. I kept myself sane partly by reciting big chunks of it from memory, but it’s been so long since I had anything to read.”
Esmond laughed. “You and my brother were made for each other by the gods, lady. Even when we were running for our lives, two pack-velipads full of scrolls followed us.”
Helga chuckled, but scowled slightly. “That idiot Audsley got a lot of good men killed, from what I hear,” she said. “Damned traitor . . . and of course he got his head handed to him when he met . . . Justiciar Demansk. Demansk is a real general, and he has the interests of the State at heart.”
correct, Center said. which is why with a high probability he would be hostile to our innovations. however, it would be advisable to gain a fuller psychostatistical profile of him—the subject helga demansk would be a valuable source of data.
Shut the hell up, Adrian thought. He could feel Raj agreeing with him, an eerie nonverbal communication, like some ghostly equivalent of seeing expression on a man’s face.
“Sorry,” Helga went on after a moment. “Sometimes I forget you’re Emeralds.”
“Emeralds and Confeds are near-as-no-matter blood brothers here in the Isles,” Adrian said lightly—which was true in one sense, and an outright lie in another.
Helga met his eyes and smiled, and worries seemed to dissolve themselves in time sweeter than honey. After a moment Esmond cleared his throat and stood.
“Well, I can tell when I’m the third wheel on a chariot,” he said. “Tomorrow, then, brother.”
* * *
“We’re getting sort of close to the mainland, aren’t we?” Helga said.
“That is the mainland,” Adrian replied.
The galley had been under sail alone, one squat square sail driving the lean hull eastwards. Adrian stood on the quarterdeck, with his arm and cloak around the woman beside him; he’d been still, because if he was still all he need see was the frosted arch of stars above, the ghostly arcs of the moons, the smells of salt water and sweat and tar and the mingling of jasmine and clean healthy woman that was Helga. If he did not think, his mind need not crack and bleed. . . .
“Sir . . .” began the ship’s captain; he was Casull’s man, and they were not authorized to be anywhere but on the approaches to Preble.
“Shut up, you,” Simun said.
The Islander skipper looked at him, and at the scores of Adrian’s arquebusiers sprawled about the galley’s deck, sleeping wrapped in their cloaks, throwing dice in the hollow of an upturned buckler, chewing hardtack and dried fruit, or simply sitting patiently on their haunches. His crew numbered roughly the same, though all but fifteen of them were oarsmen and sailors, tough hardy men and handy in a fight, but no match for soldiers with swords and light body armor. And from the flat dispassionate stare of the little underofficer, they’d be perfectly happy to slit his throat, throw the crews’ bodies after his, and turn pirate if this Emerald gave the word. They were his men, not the King’s.