CHAPTER ONE

Two days out from Sulos, and Count Adred could not sleep. He sat up in his bunk. The roll and sway of the round ship on the ocean could not lull him to slumber; he was too troubled by worries and doubts, his moody concerns.

Then you had best return to the capital, yes, Mantho had told him. It will be expected of you. Give Queen Yta my love, won’t you? And her sons. This is such a sad day. King Evarris was a wise man, a strong monarch. After twenty-nine years of rule, it has become habitual to think of him ruling forever.…

Sighing, Adred pulled his bedpan from under the bunk, knelt and urinated into it, then carried it to the port win­dow. Unlatching the window, he emptied the pan and set it aside, then stood there and watched the sea and all of the sky at dawn. Open waters had ever held him. In a way, it was surprising that he had not gone to sea for his livelihood. But he was a son of the aristocracy. The sea existed to serve him, not he, it.

Fully awake now, Adred left his window open and crossed the floor to his washstand, where he cleaned himself as best he could. He pulled off his nightshirt and dressed quickly in trousers, an undecorated long-sleeved shirt, and a plain vest. He was as comfortably careless about his appearance as he was cautious and deliberate in his thoughts. After lacing his boots, he stood back and examined himself in the mirror behind his door. Thirty-one years old—but he looked younger. Self-conscious, Adred stroked the beginnings of his beard. It was the fashion among the stu­dents and intellectuals and the liberal gentry in Sulos to sport their beards in emulation of the working men whom, theoret­ically, they championed for the reformist cause. Adred, on a dare from Mantho over a lost game of usto, had agreed to grow his beard during his return to the capital. Regarding himself now, Adred decided that the beard wouldn’t look bad at all, once it was fully grown and trimmed. He decided that he rather liked it. But his posture was sagging, he could see that. He was definitely in need of a good bath and some exercise once he was home in Athad.

Athad. There to extend his sympathies to the family of the dead king. Evarris’s death portended much. It was a swift end and not a dissolution. Adred did not trust it.

But there was time enough to worry about that. He left his cabin quietly and made his way down the gallery of the Delios to the stairs and up to the middeck. Seamen were busy at lines on the poop and forward decks. Adred walked toward the starboard rail, inhaling the good strength of sea air and water.

There was a mist on the waves. The early sunlight played in bars through the mist, falling in bright lines and teasing the waves with flashes of light that jumped everywhere, went away, and came back as though they were alive and dancing. They might have been human thoughts or human souls, those quick, dancing lights on the water, newly awake and joyful.

“…so this poor fellow dies, you see?” spoke an elderly nobleman to Adred’s right, gesturing to a companion who, like the speaker, was dressed in fine silk, an embroidered vest, and fashionable boots. “He enters the Silver Portals and is greeted by some minor god and is promised an eternity of goodness. Which is fine, but it seems rather dull. So the beggar looks down from the stars and sees a rich nobleman in one of the hells. Flames are erupting and everything is gas and smoke, but the rich man’s bouncing a beautiful young woman on his lap—yes! right!—and he’s holding a wine jug in his free hand.”

“Yes, yes, go on,” urged Fashionable Boots, his lips working in anticipation of an eruption of laughter.

“So, so the beggar says to the god, he says, ‘I don’t understand. I spent my whole life humbly, doing good works, and I remember that nobleman being a coward and a liar and a hypocrite. You sent him to Hell, but look at him! He’s having a splendid time. He has a woman on his knee and a wine jug. What did he ever do to deserve such a reward as that?’ And the little god says, ‘All things work according to divine plan. Do you see that wine jug?’ ‘Yes, I see it.’ ‘It has a hole in the bottom of it. Now, do you see that woman?’ ‘Yes, I see her.’ ‘Well, she doesn’t!’”

Fashionable Boots guffawed, slapped the joke teller on the shoulder, and stomped the deck with great delight. “The wine jug does and the woman doesn’t!” he repeated, laughing, and wiped tears from his cheeks and coughed. “Oh, oh, that’s a good one, Semma! I’ll tell that one in Bessara!”

Adred smiled slightly out of politeness because he had overheard and turned to walk farther down the middeck. Behind him, Semma the joke teller began a new one.

A knot of sailors was a short distance away and there was a woman with them, an ill-dressed young woman holding a baby in her arms. The child was perhaps nine months old; the mother held onto it protectively, bouncing it once in a while, as she talked with the sailors.

“It’s a fine son you have there.”

“Thank you.”

“And will he grow up to be a sailor?”—grinning.

“I imagine so. His father was a sailor. He’d have liked him to.”

“A sailor? Out of what port, if we can ask?”

“Herossus. Our home was in the south, and he usually sailed from Herossus.”

“Is he aship now? If I meet him in port, I’ll tell him you’re well and that he has a fine—”

“He’s dead. He was killed in a storm six months past.”

“Very sorry.… Did he—never see the boy?”

“No.”

“Very—sorry.…”

The young mother turned away, memories coming, although she couldn’t blame the sailors, although she had come to terms with her loss, or thought she had. As she crossed the middeck she passed Adred, who could not help having overheard the conversation. The baby boy cooed and giggled and reached out with his pink hand, attracted by the amulet Adred wore about his neck.

The mother paused and eyed Adred carefully across the gulf between two separate and distinct houses.

Adred smiled and held out the amulet on its chain so that it twinkled in the sunlight and amused the baby. “It fascinates him,” he said.

The amulet was of purest gold inset with expensive stones. The child grabbed it and tugged it, pulling Adred close. He tried to put the amulet into his mouth.

“Jaso, no, here, here, leave the nice man’s pretty things alone!”

“Oh, it won’t hurt him.”

The mother pried the baby’s fingers loose, and an enor­mous frown filled the child’s face, the eyes and nose and mouth wrinkling with shock and resentment.

Adred reached his hands behind his neck, unclasped the chain, and handed the amulet to the baby. “Here you go. Play to your heart’s content.”

It took a moment for the young mother to understand. “Oh, sir, we can’t let you—”

“Oh, go ahead, take it. It’s nothing.”

The amulet was worth perhaps thirty-five or forty in long gold. It was enough to keep this woman alive for a year, likely longer. It had been given to Adred by a lady friend in Sulos, but it had no sentimental value for him. He fully expected that the young mother would sell it at her first opportunity, the moment the Delios landed, and he wanted her to do so.

“We really can’t—”

“Oh, go on, now. See? He really likes it.”

The baby held the amulet to his mouth with small, pudgy hands and turned large brown eyes up at Adred.

The mother was extremely nervous. “Thank you, then. Thank you—”

“Have a good voyage.”

The woman stammered and moved away. Adred watched her go, his smile fading. It was not charity that had moved him to do what he had done; charity is the deprived helping the deprived. This was rectification, balancing. When he turned again toward the rail, he noticed one of the sailors, the one who had conversed earlier with the woman, watching him. Aristocrats were notorious for buying the favors of unfortunate women. The two pairs of eyes held for a moment, and then the brown-faced sailor made a gesture to Adred, quick and familiar: thumbs up.

Adred nodded to him. The sailor looked away. It was done.

An old man in the white and gold robes of a scholar joined Adred at the rail, keeping a respectful social distance. Adred considered saying something, making some greeting or comment, but he refrained. And his companion seemed content, like­wise, simply to watch the lightening landscape.

A flock of birds appeared in the sky, flying from the east behind them. Strange. Adred tilted his head to watch them. It was a huge flock: hundreds and hundreds of birds swarming in a dotted pattern in the gray-blue sky, aiming away from the mainland. They could not be on migration; it was not the season, and besides, birds in this part of the world didn’t migrate west. There was nothing to the west but ocean.

“Odd,” muttered the scholar.

Adred glanced at him, then returned to the birds. They were not plovers or terns or ship-followers. They ap­peared to be ignoring the merchanter entirely. But why?

As Adred and the scholar watched, the birds circled in the sky, forming a dark, spotted ring. Then the ring broke and formed a line as the birds flew straight down to the ocean.

“What are they doing?” Adred exclaimed.

A number of sailors and passengers had by now no­ticed the flock’s strange behavior and were lining up at the rails, too.

Within moments, the birds had plunged into the ocean, all of them, the straight line of them shortening and shortening and disappearing upon the edge of the horizon and not rising again.

“They’ve dived into the sea!” exclaimed someone.

Adred continued to stare at the far waves, supposing that the birds had only dived out of sight and would soon reappear. But they did not.

“They’ve dived into the sea!” came the same voice again. “Isn’t that the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”

Adred’s brow wrinkled; he couldn’t understand it.

But the scholar to his left let out a deep breath, glanced at Count Adred, and shook his head. “This portends some­thing,” he muttered. “This is a bad omen.”

“What do you mean?” Adred asked him. He was reminded immediately of King Evarris’s untimely death.

“When do animals ever behave so radically?” the old man rejoined, shaking his head once more. “This is unheard of. Surely this is a bad omen.”

He walked away, crossing the middeck and going down into the hold. Adred watched the sea. The flock did not reappear. Truly, the birds had done themselves suicide in the water. It was beyond belief. He glanced at the others there, but already they had forgotten the wonder and were sauntering about, discussing breakfast or political events or fashions.

Adred slouched down against the rail, chin on his fists, staring at the sea and sky that were no longer, for him this morning, bright and promiseful and good.…