“Your orders, sir?” he said to Adrian.
“Beach the ship lightly,” he said, then looked ahead. “There’s shallow shelving water and soft sand there—just touch her.”
The captain shivered and made a covert sign with his fingers. Those eyes . . . They’re not like those of other men. As if demons or spirits—or gods?—were looking out of them. Telling him things, that’s what the tales say. He’s not canny.
He turned to give his orders to the steersmen and sailing master. The sail and yard came down with a muted thump and were furled; below the oarsmen stirred in sleepy protest. There was a yelp or two as the bosun’s rope-end persuaders swung, and then the oars came rattling out, poised, dipped down into the dark star-reflecting water and bit. The ship turned towards the black line of the shore, where low waves and white foam and pale sand made a line in the night. It was calm water, and the ship was a raider, built for ‘longshore work. Behind him the sorcerer was talking with his woman in Confed, a language the captain knew only a few words of.
“Adrian,” Helga said. “What’s going on?”
The Emerald drew a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you where we were bound,” he said. “Because I didn’t want to spoil things more than . . . earlier than I had to.”
“You’re bound to attack Confederacy territory,” she said, her voice quiet and level as her eyes.
“Yes,” Adrian said.
“Preble? It’s the logical target and weakly held.”
Adrian felt a knife twist deeper. This woman has brains, he thought. Some of the Scholars of the Grove held that the only true love was between man and youth, because only then could there be a meeting of minds and not merely of bodies. He’d admitted the theoretical force of the argument, but not anymore, not anymore. . . .
“Yes.”
“Adrian . . .” She stepped closer and put a hand on his shoulder. He could barely feel it through the shoulderpiece of his corselet, but a heat seemed to gather beneath.
“Adrian, don’t do it. You’ll be killed, you can’t understand even if you win at first, the Confederacy always comes back in the end, please, don’t throw yourself away—”
She’s thinking of me, he realized with a glow of wonder. He shook his head and went on:
“I’ve . . . got to back my brother. And I’m not going to ask you to fight against your country . . . possibly against your father’s own troops.”
Shock turned Helga’s face white. “You knew?”
“You favor him. And I knew about the raid.” His hand came down on hers, where it rested on the bronze of the armor. “Helga . . . I didn’t give a damn. Don’t now.”
She looked at him for a long slow moment. “I believe you,” she said. “And you’re not sending me back now as a gift to him?”
His mouth quirked. “Your father is notoriously patriotic. Who was that ancient Confed general, the one who executed his own sons when they proposed surrender . . . ?”
“Louis deVille,” she said automatically. “That was in the war of King Peter.”
The one who came up with the phrase Petric Victory, a scholar’s corner of Adrian’s mind remembered. That was long before the Confed conquest of the Emerald lands, when an Emerald—or half-Emerald—general could still invade there himself. But he’d won no concessions, although he’d carried half a dozen bloody fields against the nascent Confederation’s army. The problem was that they could replace the men, and he couldn’t.
“Well, if deVille was ready to sacrifice his sons, I think your father—much though he must love you—will sacrifice a daughter for Preble. I’m not going to be buying any favors from him with you.”
Her eyes searched his. “How well you must know him,” she said. “Is there nothing you don’t know?”
“I don’t know how to come by what I want most in the world and still keep my honor,” he said.
The tears that glittered in her eyes stayed unshed; he’d found the one argument that would weigh heaviest with someone raised in the household of a Confed noble of antique virtue. The fact that it’s the miserable truth is sort of a bonus, I suppose.