The two women matched stares until Mahlia consented to lower her head in a fractional display of subservience. “Now,” Toria told her, beckoning for me to follow as she strode across the deck, “fuck off and fetch me and this famous fellow some grog.”

  “Captain?” I asked, following Toria through a hatch in the quarterdeck. “What happened to Din Faud?”

  “Sitting pretty on his home island in the middle of the southern seas. He practically owns the place these days, though not officially. He still sails hither and yon on the Morning Star when the mood takes him, but he’s more a merchant than a sea captain now, accruing great profits too, thanks to me.”

  Toria led me to a door at the rear of the lower deck, opening it to reveal a spacious cabin rich in silk drapery and soft cushions. A ginger cat of villainous aspect rose from its bed amid the satin softness to bare its fangs at me with a hiss. “Looks like a whore’s palace, doesn’t it?” Toria said, shooing the cat away with a flick of her wrist. It gave a grating mewl of annoyance and scrambled up hull planking to perch on the overhead beams.

  “Din Faud’s taste,” Toria went on, “but I can’t be bothered to change it. Besides—” she unbuckled her dagger belt and set it down on a rosewood deck before sinking into the cushion-covered couch “—it’s so comfy.”

  “You must be quite the sailor.” I settled myself into the tall-backed chair at the captain’s desk. “To rise so high so quickly.”

  “Not really. I can haul a rope and secure a sheet with the best of them, but I’m no expert at catching the wind. I leave all that to the first mate. The third mate sees to all that boring stuff with charts and stars and such. And the bosun beats the merry shit out of anyone who takes exception to my orders. It’s a nice and neat arrangement, all told.”

  “So, if you didn’t kill Din Faud to take his ship, how did you become captain?”

  Toria grinned, reclining on the silken cushions. “He adopted me. There was this whole ritual on the foredeck with incense and burnt parchment, after which I became his daughter, in the eyes of his gods, at least. It seemed to be good enough for the crew, most of them anyways. The Sea Crow was his gift. She’s just one of his ships, y’see. He had several when you met him, and now three times as many. I suppose I’ll inherit the entire fleet one day.”

  “I take it these ships were bought with Lachlan’s treasure. You really did lead him to it, didn’t you?”

  Toria’s mouth quirked in the manner of one privy to an amusing secret, her reply forestalled by a sullen Mahlia arriving with a cask of grog and two goblets. “Crew’s been talking,” the woman said, casting a baleful look at me. “Having this one on board sits ill. They’re saying he’ll draw the Cursed Queen’s eye upon us.”

  “Then they can piss off and find another berth,” Toria replied with cheerful disdain. “While you can stand post outside. I don’t want any visitors.”

  “Cursed Queen?” I asked when Mahlia closed the door with a pointed slam.

  “It’s what they’re calling her across the southern seas,” Toria said. “Ascarlians too. All manner of unlikely tales swirling as regards her supposed powers. I tried telling my lot she’s just a madwoman with strange dreams, but sailors are ever mired in superstition.”

  “Would that you were right.” I reached for the cask and poured a generous measure of grog into both goblets. “To Brewer,” I said, handing one to her and raising the other. “And so many other good folk lost to a false cause.”

  A shadow passed across Toria’s face. “Brewer’s dead?”

  “That very night in Farinsahl, slain by the duke’s men sent to kidnap the Anointed Lady. Most of the others are gone too. Ofihla, Swain, Delric…” Lilat, hanging on the scaffold…

  “Brewer wasn’t such a good man, as I recall,” Toria said. “But he was a friend, of sorts, so I’ll drink to his memory. Swain and Ofihla too.” She downed some grog, eyeing me carefully. “Did she kill them?”

  “She killed Swain and Delric, for the crime of saving her life. Ofihla died trying to kill me.”

  “Quite a tale you have to tell me, Alwyn.”

  I smiled and drank. The grog was good, smooth on the tongue and slipping down the throat with far too much ease. I hadn’t been drunk for a while and found I relished the prospect. “I’ll have your tale first,” I said after draining the goblet and reaching again for the cask. “And my share of the treasure, if you’d be so kind. I’ve an army in want of pay.”

  “Sadly, I’ve the story but not the gold. Unless you count knowledge as wealth, that is.” Toria settled back into her cushions, cradling her goblet. “Once we put to sea, Din Faud proved true to his word and sailed directly for the Iron Maze. He had plenty of questions, as you might expect. But I had no answers for him save the map. It would have been an easy matter for him to steal it and have his crew pitch me overboard, but he didn’t. A bargain sealed with coin means a great deal to his people. To them, breaking such a pact is like taking a shit on a shrine altar. Besides, I think he started to develop a fondness for me after I knocked out one of his sailors with a block and tackle when he got too free with his hands.

  “It transpires the Iron Maze is well named. Hundreds of close packed rocky islands where the sea churns white in the channels and the tides can smash a ship to splinters if you venture near at the wrong hour. Din Faud knew his business, however. It took ten days of careful navigation, but eventually we reached the island circled on the map.”

  Toria paused to gulp more grog, lips forming a rueful smile. “It was just a great spur of rock rising from the roiling waves, one of so many others. At high tide it appeared there was no way to land a boat on it, but when the seas calmed a bit, you could make out a hollow in its base. Din Faud ordered a boat lowered, but not all the crew were enthusiastic about risking the journey. I’ve never seen him draw his sabre, but just the sight of him putting a hand to the hilt was enough to fire their courage. I never thought I’d be more scared than I was at the Traitors’ Field, but getting inside that rock managed it. The boat heaved and slid all over the fucking place, but once in the shadow of the island’s innards, the sea calmed. So dark it was we had to light torches. Further in, we found a flat stretch of rock near level with the water, and a cave beyond. Din Faud left a couple of sailors to watch the boat and led the rest of us inside the cave. There were those among us who whispered of ghosts and such, but I saw nothing more alarming than a spatter of shit from the birds nesting there. That is, until we found the cavern with the pool.”

  Toria’s brow creased as she leaned forward on her couch, goblet clasped in both hands and forearms resting on her knees. “It was an ill place. As I said, I saw no ghosts, nor heard any spectral voices. But that cavern had a chill to it that went deeper than cold. I knew Din Faud felt it, his crew as well. One of them turned and fled, whimpering and cursing his way back to the boat. It may have been the sight of bones that did it. They were scattered about, a mess of ribs and spines save for the skulls. Two of them, black with age, lying in such a way it seemed they were staring at each other.

  “But the pool was the strangest thing about that place, for it was utterly still save for a few ripples when water dripped from the ceiling. Otherwise, it was like a mirror. We scoured the cave and found a chest, just as ancient as the bones, the lock that secured it rusted so much it only took a few blows with a spade to crack it. Din Faud allowed me the honour of opening it, which I did with all due ceremony, feeling quite smug about it all. I flung back the lid, expecting to be dazzled by the gleam of piled riches. But there was no gleam, just a bunch of scrolls with not a single coin among them. It was a right fucking disappointment, I must say.

  “I stormed about the cavern for a time, turning the air foul with curses. I kicked the bones in my anger, sending a few of them into the pool, and that’s when I saw it. Deep, deep down, revealed by the broken mirror of the surface. There was my gleam. Just a very small glint from the light of our torches, but bright enough to draw me in. Tugging off my boots, I called to the crew to shine their torches closer and dived in, though Din Faud warned against it. The gleam was brighter under the water, like a candle flickering at the far end of a long tunnel. Fuck, it was cold, but the heat of my need kept me going. I kicked and flailed to get deeper, my lungs burning with the strain. Twice I was forced back up, gasping in all the air I could, then diving once more. That final attempt, I saw it. Just for an instant, but I saw it clearly. As great a mass of treasure you could ever dream of seeing, so far down at the bottom of that pool there’s no hope of any human soul ever touching a finger to it.”

  Toria let out a sigh and drained her goblet. Rising, she moved to the cask for a refill. “Curiously, Din Faud didn’t appear overly bothered by my report, being principally occupied with the contents of the chest. There were books among the scrolls, apparently, including a captain’s log. Something about the tightness of the chest’s lid must have preserved it, for its pages could still be turned without flaking. Even I could tell the script was ancient, but Din Faud is a man of considerable education. ‘Be it known,’ he said, reading from the final page, ‘that I, Calim Dreol, called the Hound of the Sea by some, do make this testament of sound mind, if diminishing health. I swear by the Martyrs that all words set down here are true, and so do I beseech the Seraphile for forgiveness, though I know it will not be bestowed on so unworthy a soul as mine.’”

  “The testament of the Hound of the Sea,” I said, my scholarly interest piqued. “A treasure in itself.”

  “Din Faud still has it, if you’d care to make him an offer. Though the price will be steep. The Hound listed not only all his many crimes but also his voyages, in great detail. Din Faud was amazed by just how far the pirate had travelled, sailing seas barely known to sailors even now. Not only had he written it all down, he’d mapped it too. The scrolls in the chest were charts, so well preserved it was as if they’d been drawn yesterday. That was the real treasure, Alwyn. For in those charts were routes unknown to modern seafarers. Straits long thought unnavigable, but the Hound had sailed them. Passages that would take weeks off the sailing time for merchantmen. Others that would be a prize gift to any smuggler. Din Faud’s hands shook as he unfurled one after the other. All that gold, so close but forever out of reach, yet he didn’t care one turd for it. I had made him a very rich man, hence the whole making me his daughter and giving me his ship thing.”

  I grunted a laugh and drank some more, feeling the onset of liquor-induced bitterness, albeit tinged with a good deal of irony. “Of the pair of us, I reckon you got the better throw of the dice.” My goblet tipped over as I set it down, spilling a few drops on to the fine rosewood desk. I mumbled an apology and wiped my sleeve over it before fumbling at the cask’s spile for a refill.

  “Let me,” Toria said, holding the vessel under the tap. “Not to be critical, Alwyn, but you used to hold your drink a lot better.”

  “I used to do a lot of things better, like not getting my friends killed. Not as much, anyways.” I took the goblet from her and drank down half the contents, uncaring of the ominous roil from my belly. “Tell me, did the Hound’s testament make any mention of Lachlan at all? I mean, it was his treasure at the bottom of that pool, right?”

  “It was. And the source of the hatred he harboured for himself. Lachlan and he were brothers, y’see. As boyhood thieves, one had forsaken the Shavine Forest for the sea, the other stayed. In later years, they found one another again and Lachlan beseeched his brother for a safe place to hide his loot. As is the way of things, the more gold and jewels Lachlan placed in the Hound’s safekeeping, the more his pirate’s mind got to plotting. Also, it was plain Lachlan was fully mad by the time the Hound struck him down in that cave. ‘Had I not done it,’ he said, ‘I know he would have murdered me in time.’ But he knew he was damned for this crime, and so cast the cursed treasure to the depths of the pool and waited for death to claim him. The last words in his testament were, ‘For this is my due.’”

  “Brothers,” I slurred with a laugh. “That’s a turn-up. Berrine would like to know that nugget, I’m sure. Not that I’ll ever see her again. Also, she’s got no books to write it in, any more. All burned down, just like Couravel. Strange how flames have a habit following me about.” This miserable observation emerged in a muffled sputter, making me realise my head was resting on the damp surface of the desk. I pushed myself upright, finding Toria staring down at me with a concerned grimace.

  “Should’ve gone with you, shouldn’t I?” I said, head lolling. I wondered if the ship had put to sea since the cabin seemed to be heaving about. “But I couldn’t. Not then. Had to stay… for her.”

  “Don’t fret yourself too much.” Toria patted my head with the awkwardness of one unused to expressing sympathy. “You’re just an idiot, much like every man I ever met.”

  For reasons unknown, this struck me as extremely funny, though my subsequent mirth emerged as a series of sobs. “I’m more than that. I’m the fool who sired the future. The bastard who fathered another bastard who, I strongly suspect, is going to grow up to finish what his mother started.” I frowned, struck by my certainty that Evadine’s child would be a boy. How could I know that? I couldn’t, and yet, I did.

  “If you’re waiting for me to tell you it’s not your fault…” Toria trailed off with a helpless shrug. “But it’s not all your fault, Alwyn. And now, at least, you’ve got me to help you put it right.”

  “No.” I shook my head, growling in insistent denial. “Not you too.” I stood up, which proved a singular mistake due to the fact that my legs no longer possessed the will to support me. Some chaotic lurching saw me colliding with the hull until I collapsed into a corner, wondering why Toria had dimmed the lamps so much.

  “Not you…” I repeated as she hovered above me in a blurry mix of disapproval and commiseration. “I won’t kill you too…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I was roused from my drunken torpor by a gust of wind possessing the familiar sharpness of mountain air. Instead of the dry planking of the Sea Crow’s deck, my face was pressed against an irregular wall of unyielding granite. I blinked befogged eyes against a flurry of snow, not so thick as to conceal the tall peaks marking the boundary between Alundia and the Caerith dominion. Icy speckled cliffs loomed above to form a narrow channel between two mountains, a place where the wind was funnelled into a persistent gale. The walls of the channel came together a few dozen paces ahead, creating a dip between the neighbouring peaks. From the erosion of the rock, I assumed it must become a small waterfall in summer. Now, with the air so chill, the stream that fed it had frozen. My presence here was too impossible to be real, and too real to be a dream. So, when I heard her voice, it was with a lurch of excitement, but scant surprise.

  “I’m sorry, Alwyn.”

  She stood a short distance away, blonde hair trailing in the wind, a few strands whipping about that overly perfect face of hers. Her expression was drawn in both sympathy and regret.

  “For what?” I asked her, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “I mean to say,” I went on, getting to my feet, “there is so much to apologise for. So much you could have warned me against.” My bitterness blossomed into outrage as I advanced upon her. “So many good people slain that could still be drawing breath.”

  She gave no answer, meeting my anger with unflinching acceptance.

  “You’re the one with the book, remember?” I demanded, halting before her. “The book that surely details all of it. All the missteps I could have avoided.”

  “Is that what you think?” The compassion on her face shifted into shrewd, if affectionate, judgement. “Had you been able to chart the course of your life, would you really have changed so much? Or would you have found reasons, excuses, to deny it? Would her love have been so easy to refuse, Alwyn?”

  “Yes!” Even though this denial emerged as a growl from between clenched teeth, I heard the hollowness of it. The Sack Witch, known as the Doenlisch to the Caerith, had an inerrant way of cutting through delusion to find the truth. Knowing that didn’t make me any less angry.

  I turned away from her, stomping my feet and hugging myself against the cold. “No Erchel this time?” I muttered.

  “He has a task elsewhere, one more suited to his talents.”

  “When alive, his talents consisted mainly of cruelty and perversion. How can you sully yourself by making use of one such as him?”

  “Death transforms us, Alwyn. Those mighty in life often become weak when their spirit slips from the cage of flesh. The weak can become strong. The cruel, compassionate.”

  “Having met him recently, I’m bound to say he’s just as cruel as he ever was.”

  “Not all change is instant. Erchel will have many opportunities to shape himself anew. As many as he needs, for time moves differently in the plains beyond life. Your time, however, grows short.”

  “If you came to tell me I’m going to die soon, I fancy I already reckoned that out for myself.” I turned back to her, finding a fond smile on her lips.

  “I have missed you,” she said, which only served to stoke my resentment.

  “The Eithlisch has been looking for you,” I said. “He sent a veilisch to find you. Her name was Lilat. She died a terrible death on my account. But, you know that, don’t you?”

  The smile faded, and she nodded. “Some things I can prevent. Others I can’t.”

  “And my death? Which is that?”

  “I don’t know yet. I came not to offer words of death, but guidance in life.” She raised her arms to encompass our surroundings. “My people call this place Kain Laethil.”

  A Caerith phrase, one I hadn’t heard before, although I knew the words. The literal translation amounted to “narrow valley winter”. “Not a valley,” I murmured after some pondering. “A pass, in winter. The Winter Pass. That’s what the Caerith call it?”