Chapter Thirty-Six

THE RAVEN HAD come in the night. Their spies had spoken. The enemy fleet had sailed and was intent on one final battle, one last attempt at taking the kingdom before winter froze the war.

It had been a miracle that the pass hadn’t already been closed—as it was, they’d left at once and still struggled through heavy snowfall. He ought to have left Held sleeping, safe in the Winter Palace with Mother, but—

But a part of Janez had selfishly wanted Held with him, should—should this be the end.

This was war. And Held had saved him once before from a death at sea. Perhaps he would do so again. Perhaps death would be an adequate solution.

Janez brutally cut the thought as they finally entered the city boundaries. It wasn’t the time. As the harbour’s mayhem closed about him, the weight of his station rolled down his back and dissipated, and his rank sat close about his shoulders like a cloak.

He was a lieutenant.

And his ship prepared for war.

He swung down from the horse and waded in, heading straight for the Vogel. She’d been stripped for repairs after their last engagement but now floated near-ready, her hull low in the water from the weight of her guns. The crew were hauling her powder barrels aboard, and Janez made for her ropes to get aboard and join them.

“Your Highness!”

The rusty scratch of Lieutenant Bauer’s voice was an unpleasant noise, like the scrape of a knife upon a plate. Janez winced and stepped back.

“Your Highness, you ought to be at the palace.”

An entire day and most of the night riding, and now this insolent little—

Janez paused. Breathed out and said, “I am the lieutenant of a ship about to launch, Bauer. I ought to be here.”

“The king gave orders—”

“Unless the captain himself releases me from my duty to this ship,” Janez said stiffly, “any hearsay about the king does not move me.”

Bauer’s eyes bulged. “Hearsay!”

“Yes, Bauer, hearsay. Unless you have a royal seal?”

“How dare you, sir!” came the raspy indignation, his eyes bulging like a squashed frog’s. Janez fixed him with an utterly cold look.

“You forget yourself, Bauer.”

The bulging bulged further still—and then the deep rumble of the captain’s voice came between them, followed by his form.

“You both forget yourselves.”

The reprimand was swift, simple, and striking. Bauer coloured. Janez cooled. How easy rank made it to forget a slight, instead of station. How simple, to yield to the captain’s authority—yet how that, too, won Janez the argument, when the captain ordered Bauer aboard and Janez to the harbourmaster to muster any hands that could be spared.

“Five sick from the whorehouses, and two more rotting in the gaols for rape. Perhaps a touch of royal blood can open the master’s fist when it comes to his landsmen.”

Janez privately doubted it, as he was ill remembered there for releasing their foreign prisoner. But an order meant that the captain either hadn’t heard of any such command from the king, or had chosen to ignore it.

So Janez inclined his head and hurried away.

Pressing was Janez’s most loathed duty in the navy. A wooden crate of angry, stupid fellows with no wish to be there cried out for trouble, and in any case, Janez could privately admit he was something of a romantic when it came to the liberty of men. He would have liked at his side only those who wished to sail with him.

But then the pragmatist—the administrator, the diplomat, the heir apparent for that brief period between the death of his father and the birth of his nephew—made himself known once more. This was war. The allure of adventure and prize money was snuffed out in such times. Zeal for king and country fuelled many, to be sure, but in such bitter conflicts, with the protective cloak of winter almost about them, there was only so much that zeal could do. And Janez was not so well known by sight as to fuel a little more.

Still, he collared a handful of men from the builders’ yard, and a fishing boat returning at quite the inopportune moment delivered them up to the ship without much fuss. They swore and grumbled, of course, but seemed to know that if he didn’t press them, another ship would.

And so Janez came aboard to report to the first lieutenant these new hands, and felt the roll of a deck under his feet for the first time since that fateful day a blessed stranger had dragged him from the water. Oh, but it felt like home.

It was comforting, that gentle sway, even muted as it was by the moorings. Janez had been ranked since he was thirteen years old, a princeling of a midshipman, and much as he feared what each straying from a safe harbour might mean, there was a part of him that would always find home upon the sea.

How fitting, then, that his love had arisen from it.

The first lieutenant looked harried and pursed his lips in disapproval at Janez’s report. “It’s not enough,” he said. “We need two dozen more, at least. The enemy could be with us at any time, but we barely have the men to—”

And then, of course, it happened.

Dawn was barely breaking to the east, and under the first slivers of grey morning light, the first cry from a lookout on a sister ship arose.

“Sails!”

The harbour froze as one, barely breathing.

“Sails!” came the cry again. “Sails on the horizon!”

An explosion of noise. Of movement. Of activity, driven now by the desperation of hours, not days. They were almost here. The crews flocked to their ships with their last things. The ropes slithered and snaked away from their mooring posts. The anchor chains squealed, and sails were unfurled and began to swell.

And Janez’s heart clutched tight in his chest.

Held.

Where the devil was Held?