The cry from the bow was soft but carrying. “She shelves.”
“Avast oars!” the captain called. “Brace for grounding!”
Adrian and Helga did, with an arm around each other as well as a grip on the rigging. The ship surged softly, and half a dozen crewmen dropped over the bow to hold her steady; the water was to their waists. For all its length and wicked bronze-sheathed ram the galley was absurdly light, a racing shell of thin pine planking.
The man and woman walked to the bow, hand-in-hand, in silence. Adrian vaulted over into the cold water, caught Helga by the waist and lifted her down. She was a solid armful, with the light corselet on her and the rest of her kit. Arquebusiers of the Lightning Band handed down the servant he’d bought her in Chalice, and a light duffel.
“There’s enough here to see you safely to Grand Harbor, and the Confed garrison there,” he said, tucking a soft heavy purse of chamois leather into her belt pouch. “And . . .”
“And?” she asked, chin up.
“And I may not be the Confederacy’s enemy forever,” he said in a rush. “When—if—that happens, may I come to call?”
She smiled with a courage that wrenched at his heart. “Yes,” she said. “I will so petition my father.” A moment’s urchin grin. “I told you what my marriage prospects are, didn’t I?” Solemnly: “Stay alive, Adrian.”
“I’ll do my best. Yes, best I go. Gods go with you.”
He watched the two figures walk up the beach, towards the tree-lined trail a hundred yards inland; it shone white in the moonlight, a wanderer’s ribbon across the moor that bordered the sea here. Then he turned and accepted a hand; others boosted him back to the deck. He stood there, unspeaking, while the crew pushed off and the oars bit, backing water and turning the galley’s prow to the west.
* * *
Esmond Gellert decided that the waiting was the hardest part.
The Briny Kettle was no warship, no sleek galley lavishly equipped with oars. She was a tub, a merchantman that carried grain and fish and oil and general cargo along the western coasts, out to the Islands, down south to the barbarian country. The only oars she had were half a dozen sweeps on a side, used only for working in and out of awkward ports. For the rest she was a deep-bellied teardrop, with a swan’s head curving up over the quarterdeck and steering oars at the rear, one tall mast in the center, and bluff-cheeked bows up front. At five hundred tons she was quite large, and that and her high sides and substantial crew, plus a couple of dart-casters, was usually enough to discourage pirates. Longshore raiding paid better anyway, usually.
“Yeah, waiting’s the worst,” Donnuld Grayn said.
Esmond started slightly. “Hell, I didn’t know I was talking.”
The older mercenary grinned gap-toothed, and offered a skin of well-watered wine—one part to three. “This business, you spend most of the time being bored, and a few minutes out of every hour shitting yourself,” he said philosophically. “When you’re not being seasick, that is . . . this tub pitches worse than a galley.”
The Briny Kettle carried no cargo but armed men; five hundred of them, packed like cured fish below decks, or lying flat on deck to ride concealed from anyone else—anyone, for instance, like the inspector in the little customs galley that was coming alongside. Its dozen oars easily matched the long slow rocking-horse pitch of the merchantman, avoiding the bows where a creamy V of white water pointed towards the low dark bulk of the city ahead. Reddish lights glimmered on the water from some of the lights there, and from masthead lanterns on the clustering ships docked to it, and from sentries pacing on the high crenellated walls.
“You’re late, Sharlz,” the official called out, holding up a lantern.
That glittered on the water, on his bald scalp and big-nosed face and on the gold hoop in one ear. He was an Islander himself, not a Confed—Preble was officially a free city in alliance with the Confederacy, although the Confed prefect here would have a lot more say than the council of magnates.