He looked at her sharply.
“My apologies, my prince. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”
He favored her with an indulgent smile. “When did you find this out?”
“I’d suspected he had an… overlarge opinion of himself, but he didn’t say anything treasonous until this morning.”
“And you came straight to me.”
“Yes, my lord.”
A retainer emerged from the ranks and started coming toward the prince. He lifted a hand, telling the man to wait.
“You knew,” Liv said.
“I knew.”
“So… Did you send me to spy on him?”
“You tell me,” he said. Another servant looked ready to come forward, and again he motioned to the woman not to interrupt. Running an army meant making decisions from dawn until dusk and beyond.
“You weren’t testing him. You were testing me,” Liv said.
“Oh?”
“You knew he’d betray you; you didn’t know if I would. So I passed. Was Zymun in on this?” If he had been, that would mean that he was still favored by the Color Prince, and the way Liv had left him wasn’t simply over her loyalty to the prince. She might have just made a powerful enemy, without at the same time making a more powerful friend.
“Do you know what happens to an egg, when you keep it warm?” the prince asked.
“It hatches?” Liv said.
“And when you make it hot?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“It cooks.” He smiled, indulgent, magnanimous. “Everything has a proper time and season. Some things rushed are spoiled. This is why so many of the Chromeria’s wights go mad and become dangerous, not because wights are innately so, but because their drafters get to the end of their human span and then panic. Panicked people do shoddy work. If instead they worked deliberately, over a course of years, to prepare themselves for the transition, their odds of success increase dramatically. If they had people to teach them what to do, just imagine what we might accomplish.”
“That’s—that’s… wise. And that’s what you’re doing with Zymun?”
“Zymun is incredibly gifted, and very, very dangerous. There is no human warmth in him. Only a fool would trust a man like that, but by using him? I’ve found that I can trust you. Now, did he know you were coming here?”
“I’m—I’m afraid he might. I’ve made a terrible enemy of him, my lord.”
“Forgive me for this, but raise your voice now and swear that Zymun’s a traitor, that you wouldn’t lie to me, and so forth.” The prince’s face twisted. “Do it. Now.”
“My lord! I swear it to you! Zymun is a traitor—I would never lie to you! You have to believe me!” Liv threw herself at the Color Prince’s knees.
He backhanded her across the cheek hard enough it rattled her teeth, and she fell to the ground, weeping.
Two guards lifted Liv and pulled her away, just around a tent, out of sight, but still close enough that she could hear a little of what was said. She heard Zymun speaking, his voice oily slick as usual, totally unafraid. His back must have been toward her, because she couldn’t make out his voice.
“Zymun,” the Color Prince said, “I’m giving you a small force, drafters and soldiers, whatever composition you want, but only twenty men, and make sure you bring along gunners in that number. I want you to cross the neck at midnight, climb the cliffs, and take Ruic Head. There may or may not be ropes waiting for you. We have spies, but they’re criminals and prone to hysteria. Not trustworthy. Regardless, take Ruic Head and keep flying the Atashian flag. The Chromeria’s fleet is two days out. Let the scout ships through unaccosted, only open up when the main fleet first starts through the neck. I expect you to sink at least a dozen ships. At least. Oh, and take no greens with you. Take blues. The bane will be disorienting until Atirat is come.”
Zymun said something.
“No. Absolutely not. I have need of her.”
Something else. Liv cursed to herself for not being able to hear, but she couldn’t without exposing herself.
“Zymun,” the Color Prince said, raising his voice as if the young man was farther away. “I trusted you with a vital mission once and you failed. You lost a magic worth more than ten of you. It was my mistake to trust you with that, so I didn’t punish you for it. I had hoped to abort this war before it began. I thought it worth the risk. You’re one of the very best I have, Zymun. You know that I’ve been lenient with you and why. For a privileged few, I tolerate one failure. One. Understood?”
Chapter 103
Commander Ironfist had Kip and Cruxer join him on the central skimmer. Instead of heading directly for Ruic Bay as Gavin had, Commander Ironfist had them work their way up the Blood Forest coast.
Though they had only been skimming for two hours, Kip was feeling antsy. He didn’t like being trapped on a boat. He tried to enjoy the salt spray and the speed and the small towns they passed. The sea today was much calmer, and the sky was blindingly blue. The sea itself changed color with every bay and shallow.
They came upon the scout ship so fast they barely had time to split the sea chariots off. They rounded a point, and there it was, approaching the point from the opposite side, flying its broken-chain flag. Commander Ironfist was shouting orders and two of the sea chariots darted off in front of the rest of them.
The cocca was a small ship. Twenty-five paces long, with a crew of perhaps twenty and lateen sails, and six medium guns per side, balanced on the gunwales the old way instead of outfitted with gunports. It didn’t get a single shot off. A single sailor was manning the swivel gun on the front, trying to load it, when the two sea chariots passed on either side. One set its hullwrecker near the prow, the other on the opposite side near the stern. Then they broke away.
Kip could hear men shouting, and for what seemed forever, he thought that the explosives had failed.
Then they went off at the same moment. Muffled thumps blew all the way through the cocca’s hull and out the opposite side as well. There was fire, but it was quenched quickly as the ship went down.
With four wide holes in the hull, it didn’t take long. At Commander Ironfist’s piercing whistle, the sea chariots regrouped and sealed their individual boats back into place. By the time they were finished, the cocca was underwater. A dozen men and women were paddling in the water or clinging to debris.
“Commander, should we take captives for interrogation?” Watch Captain Beryl asked.
Ironfist looked at the people in the water and judged how far they were from shore. It wasn’t far. Leaving them wouldn’t be a death sentence, but Kip knew that they didn’t have the space to take captives and still continue to sink ships. “Our mission’s elsewhere,” the commander said. “By the time they could bring word back to their generals, our battles will be finished, I think.”
They left and hadn’t gone half an hour farther up the coast before a putrid smell rolled over the skimmer. It was death.
“There’s a village a league or two from here,” one of the Blackguards said. “Weedling, it’s called. I grew up just a few bays down.”
The skimmer cruised slowly into Weedling Bay and Kip was relieved to see that the village wasn’t burned to the ground. But there were hundreds of gray shapes crowded onto the beach so thickly that there was hardly any sand visible. Perhaps a dozen locals were walking across the backs of the shapes, carrying machetes and buckets.