Chapter Twelve

“CAPTAIN KÜHE TO see you, Your Majesty.”

Alarik gave the guard a sour look.

“I believe I said that I was not to be disturbed.”

“I—yes, Your Majesty, but he—ah—says—”

“A captain’s word is greater than a king’s now, is it?”

The guard coloured. The king was in a waspish mood, and Janez, tiring of the sport, swung his booted feet to the floor and rose from his chair.

“I will speak with the captain, if it please Your Majesty?”

Alarik grunted, already consumed once more in his letters—one of which, no doubt, was bound for King Sigurd—and Janez took his leave.

Captain Kühe waited just beyond the door: a vast man, both tall and fat, and made larger by his insistence on wearing his full uniform, breastplate and all, irrespective of need. In a predominantly naval city, this army captain was obvious and unpleasantly so. Janez rather disliked him—paranoid, sycophantic, and with delusions of adequacy, never mind grandeur. But for what the captain lacked in any other arena of his existence, he made up for in perspective. If he was moved to disturb the king, then there was good reason for it.

“Your Highness,” he said, clicking his heels. “A spy has been captured.”

Janez raised his eyebrows. Or perhaps not. “A spy? Well then, interrogate him. You know your duties.”

“That’s the problem, Your Highness. The guard won’t have it, Your Highness. Says he don’t speak the right foreign, Your Highness.”

“Then find an interpreter.”

“Not the guard, Your Highness. The spy.”

“The spy doesn’t speak the right language?”

“No, Your Highness. The guard says he’s never heard anything like it, Your Highness. And he speaks just about six foreigns, Your Highness.”

“Foreign languages, Captain,” Janez corrected. “And you don’t have to address me by title with every breath.”

“Yes, Your Highness. Like I said, Your Highness, six foreigns.”

Janez sighed and shrugged. “All right. Let’s see this spy of yours. Where was he found?”

“On the beach, Your Highness.”

“On the beach?” Janez echoed. What kind of a spy came in from the beach? It was far too close to the castle. No wonder he’d been caught.

“Yes, Your Highness. Stark naked and like he’d swum in off a boat, Your Highness. Babbled complete nonsense at us, Your Highness, and this shock of great long hair like a woman, right down to his a—ah, well. Ahem. Looks mighty foreign to me, Your Highness.”

As they passed from the great hall and out of the palace, Janez frowned and said, “Indeed, Captain, but there are many different kingdoms, and I’m sure some of them have long-haired men.”

The harbour cells had, of course, no access to the palace. Far too dangerous. But in this case…what kind of spy turned up naked on a beach within a half mile of the harbour walls? It seemed far more likely someone washed up from a sea battle. But the last one had been his own, two days past now. Was it possible to survive two days, swimming naked in this sea? The cold could kill in a matter of hours—minutes, even, with winter so close.

And winter was close. A fine mist hung over the city, and beads of water formed bright on Janez’s hair and coat. If not for Captain Kühe’s grating voice, and the puzzling task at hand, it would have been pleasant to enjoy the bracing air and that chill right before the bite of true cold set in. It was certainly preferable to stuffy rooms, stuffier letters, and Doktor Hauser hounding him about rest.

The cells were little more than the cellar rooms below the old harbourmaster’s house, which now served essentially as offices. They stank of damp and decay, and the alarmed look of the guard on duty said it all: what madness had possessed the captain to bring a member of the royal family into this dank, reeking hole?

“I ain’t touched ‘im yet, sah.” The guard fumbled and was clouted by the captain with a roar to use the appropriate title.

Janez drew back from the flash of temper and muttered an assurance, letting his cold disapproval stop the captain’s tirade more effectively than an argument would have done.

“Sorry, Your Hahness,” the guard mumbled. “Sorry, sorry. It’s jus’, with them no clothes and being in the water, s—Your Hahness, I thought ’e might be one of them foreign sailors off our ships, like, not like them foreign sailors off them foreign ships, like.”

The heavy cell door groaned open, and a slim form, huddled in the corner, stared up at Janez and the captain with wide, pale eyes.

Those eyes.

“You fool,” Janez breathed, staring right back. Those long fingers—not webbed, of course not webbed, they had never been webbed—and that hair so fair it was almost the bright white of sea foam crashing on the shore.

This was no spy, no spider. “Get those chains off him. Now! This is no spy, you absolute fools!”

The guard jumped violently; the captain began to babble.

“But he speaks foreign, Your Highness. Speaks—”

“And how would you know any language not your own from another?” Janez demanded hotly and wrenched the great ring of keys from the guard’s limp fingers. “This is the man who dragged me from drowning, and likely a great many others as well. Lord knows how long he’s been out there. He requires a doctor, not a dungeon!”

A terrible fury was burning in his chest, and it must have shown. The stranger cringed back as Janez unlocked the chains from around his thin ankles and wrists, and simply sat, still and silent, even when freed.

“Are you hurt?” Janez asked but was only met with a blank, uncomprehending stare. Perhaps he really did speak nothing of their tongue—although Janez suspected were he to tell the sailor to reef a topsail, he would be instantly and competently obeyed. “Come,” he said instead, tucking a hand under one slender elbow and tugged. “Up.”

The man still didn’t move, and Janez removed his overcoat and crouched again to tuck it around the man’s naked form. That sparked a flicker of response—if only that a hand clutched the warm fabric and tugged it a little closer.

“Where are his clothes?”

“I said, Your Highness, he didn’t have any—”

“And you didn’t think to provide them?”

The captain fell silent.

“Are you in the habit of capturing naked spies on beaches, Captain?”

“I—no, Your Highness—”

“If you find more, in future may I suggest a doctor?”

“I—I’ll find a physician, Your High—”

“No,” Janez said. He cupped both elbows and lifted. The man rose with him this time, on shaking legs. But they gave way, seemingly unable to bear his frame, and he collapsed against Janez’s chest, fingers grasping at the shirt. “Captain, go and find Doktor Hauser, and ask him to attend in his sickroom if he is not already there. I will bring your so-called spy.”

Lifting the man was not easy. He seemed alarmed by the action, and although thin and light, he was still tall enough to stand perhaps a head shorter and no less than Janez. But he settled after the first few steps and then ignored the bustle of the gawping harbour—princes carrying naked sailors from the cells were not, after all, commonplace sights—in favour of staring quite fixedly at Janez’s face. Did the sailor remember him as well, or had he been only one of a number that he’d saved?

A dungeon, indeed. The man was a hero.

The guards eyed him in barely muted surprise. A servant nearly dropped her linen basket at the sight. Janez rolled his eyes, certain he would receive a scolding from the queen about decorum. He’d done worse. Captain Kühe, looking understandably green about the gills, was emerging from the sickroom as Janez approached. He held the door, and Janez entered the realm not of kings and admirals, but of Hauser.

And severed heads, usually.

The sickroom was, in truth, a suite of rooms. The large bedroom was little distinguishable from any other, but it was the adjoining room that disturbed the peaceable image. There, Hauser had created a strange laboratory of sorts, full of foul potions, stinking corpses, and jars. Jars of brains, feet, and odd squishy things Janez was sure ought to stay inside one’s body, not be floating in jars in a doctor’s rooms.

“What was that idiot soldier barking about, and that—” Hauser extended a stubby finger towards Janez’s load “—can suffice with one of the harbour-side butchers.”

“Be nice, Doktor,” Janez said, depositing the man carefully on the bed. He curled into the loose overcoat, his gaze roaming the room only briefly before it came back to rest on Janez’s face. The stare was becoming unnerving. “This is the man who saved me.”

Hauser harrumphed, but set down his instruments and stalked from his room of horrors into the land of the living. The man cringed back from him, and Janez could not blame him for it. Though Hauser was trusted and beloved by the royal family, it wasn’t for his kindly demeanour or elegant looks. In fact, he was a short, balding man, with very pale eyes the colour of dirty water. They stared, unblinking, and there was a certain terrifying chill about them. Reptilian, almost. He would fix his gaze upon a patient, and the patient knew they were a breathing corpse, nothing more, and that this doctor would gain equal pleasure from saving a life as from boiling the brains out of a still-warm skull.

His fascination with dissection and study had made him a phenomenal doctor and surgeon, and his service was unswervingly loyal, but it came at the price of enduring the coldest stare any living man was capable of giving.

“Hmph,” Hauser said, peeling back the man’s eyelids, and leaning in to sniff at his breath. He ripped the overcoat open, easily batting off the hands attempting to close it, and then let go to stalk back into his rooms. “Cold. And dehydrated. Get him into some woollens. In the drawers. Those drawers, you incompetent fool…”

Janez grinned at the insult, and found the woollens (in a wardrobe, not drawers at all) and offered them to the man. When he stared blankly, Janez had to help him place his arms into a shirt. Fingers tried to clasp his own. He shook them off, but was grateful when he’d done only two buttons before the sailor seemed to catch up and buttoned the rest on his own. He curled his legs back under the overcoat, using it like a blanket, and Janez opted to let him. He could get a servant to come and dress the man properly if need be.

“Is he in shock, Doktor?” he asked as Hauser returned with a steaming cup of…something.

“Probably. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t spoken.”

Hauser handed the sailor the cup; when the man did nothing but stare blankly at it, Hauser said, “Well, drink it, then.”

No response.

“Foreign?”

“I think so.”

“Drink,” Hauser said again, loudly, and moved the man’s wrist up until the cup pressed against his lips. “Drink,” Hauser repeated, tipping it. The man drank, wrinkling his nose at the taste, and the doctor didn’t let go until the cup was empty.

“What was that?”

“A sleeping aid. It will warm him and knock him out. He can remain here for the night, or in the servants’ quarters.”

“What’s your name?” Janez asked, but the sailor apparently didn’t even understand that. “Name?”

Nothing.

Janez tapped his chest. “Janez,” he said and then pointed to the doctor. “Doktor.” He pointed back at the sailor, and—

Nothing.

“He could be simple,” Hauser opined.

“He’s not,” Janez said. “The way he looks at me…”

“Yes, fixatedly and unblinking. Simple,” the doctor said. He snapped his fingers, causing those great pale eyes to be turned on him. “You stay here,” he said as he gestured at the carpet. “Stay here.”

Janez rolled his eyes before turning to the little laboratory. Steadfastly ignoring the jars of disgusting things that should not be outside living bodies, he found parchment and a piece of dirty charcoal. He returned and carefully wrote his name in large block letters before presenting it to the sailor. It was a long shot. Most of the hands were illiterate, but if he was a midshipman or higher, he might have been educated in his home country. He looked young, perhaps twenty. It was possible.

The sailor brightened and took the things in shaky hands. He began to—draw. Rather than write, he drew: A long curved rectangle. The soft shading of planks. And then a semicircle with a flattened edge. Two sharp lines, meeting at a right angle. Another line, on three legs. And two lines, joined at their bellies by a shorter one.

Hauser chuckled.

“Held. He’s from the Held. Good Lord, I thought all hands had been lost.”

“He must have been picked up by the Ente. She was on patrol that day,” Janez said and beamed. “How apt! We can call him Held until we can figure out his real name.”

Hauser laughed, and Janez grinned up at him.

“It’s perfect,” he insisted. “A hero named hero! You hear that?” he asked, turned to the bemused-looking sailor. He tapped himself on the chest. “Janez.” And then reached out and tapped the thin frame under a borrowed woollen shirt. “Held.”

The man smiled.

“Held,” he echoed, in a thin, croaking voice. “Held.”