Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell Read online

  I hadn’t had much practice at shaving so Rodden’s face ended up looking rather scrappy. I gave him back the knife without a word and found I couldn’t look him in the eye as we packed up camp and mounted our horses. Once we were on the open road I was glad to ride behind him, out of his sight.

  By midday the hot sun had burnt away my embarrassment and most of the strange, fluttery feeling I got whenever the image of grappling with Rodden entered my mind. We began the descent into Jefsgord. The city sat on the curving coastline, fortified by wooden palisades. There was very little farmland, the scrub extending right up to the defences in places. The dock, even seen from the far side, was prodigious. Ships’ masts sprouted from the water like a forest of masts and ropes. Clouds of gulls wheeled over the boats though we couldn’t yet hear their screaming cries.

  I pulled up next to Rodden. ‘Is it safe, do you think? What if that harming got ahead of us and warned all his buddies in the town?’

  ‘Jefsgord isn’t like Ercan. I know the captain of the guard here. He’s good at his job and the harming presence will have been kept to a minimum. We’ll go straight to him, and then down to the dock to find a trade-ship for the crossing to Pol.’

  I was relieved to see archers atop the city gate, attentive as those in the capital.

  Inside the guardhouse, Captain Helmsrid greeted Rodden like an old friend and they shook hands warmly. I waited to be introduced as his sister, but to my surprise Rodden said, ‘This is Princess Lilith’s younger sister, Zeraphina of the House of Amentia.’

  The captain took in my black hair and icy eyes. Griffin was perched on my arm and Leap was already sniffing under the man’s desk. ‘I see,’ he said, and I rather thought he did. He bowed. ‘Your Highness.’

  I bobbed, feeling odd acting so formally after spending the night lying on dirt. I sat down, hoping they would get things over with quickly so we could get down to the dock. We’d be safe once we were on board, I was sure.

  But Rodden launched into an explanation of what had happened in Ercan.

  ‘Why didn’t it kill you outright?’ the captain asked, turning to me.

  ‘I think it wanted to make certain who I was first.’ I remembered the jabbing black tentacles and shuddered.

  Helmsrid looked grim. ‘We’ll post extra guards. My men reported brants in the sky last night, something we haven’t seen in months. Here’s the body count from the last report.’ He passed a sheet of paper to Rodden. ‘Three exsanguinations: two terminal cases in a hospice and one destitute, made to look as if they had died in their sleep.’

  ‘Anything else to report?’

  Helmsrid shook his head. ‘Where are you going from here; back to Xallentaria?’

  ‘No, by trade-ship to Pol.’

  Helmsrid frowned. ‘Then there is something I should mention. It could be nothing, but . . . I was drinking with a sea captain last night and he mentioned the inordinate number of ships missing in action of late. It’s something I’d heard about, of course, but until now I’ve dismissed it as pirates, or wrecks. Some of the boats that dock here are floating deathtraps with only their barnacles holding them together. But this captain was telling me that good sturdy ships are disappearing and the crew never heard from again. He agreed it could be pirates after the cargo, too, but the last two ships to vanish have been empty. Pirates aren’t fools. They can tell which ships are loaded up by how low they sit in the water. These two would have been sitting very high indeed, and obviously empty, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Unless . . .’ He trailed off, looking between us.

  Rodden nodded. ‘Thank you, Captain. I’ll keep that in mind.’

  As we made our way down to the docks I asked, ‘Harming attacks?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  I sighed. I had assumed we would be safe on open water, but apparently not.

  Down on the dock, it was dark among the bellies of the enormous vessels. Fat, shiny seals lay on the crossbeams beneath the boardwalk, barking at each other and slapping their sides with their flippers. Leap peered through the planks at them, his tail lashing. He didn’t seem to be disturbed by all the water – but he was a drain-cat, after all. Griffin, who couldn’t help looking fierce all the time, was glaring more than usual and digging her claws into my gauntlet. I wondered what could have got into her until I saw her murderous looks at the seagulls screeching and wheeling overhead. Their cries were hurting her sensitive ears. The gulls followed us in a cacophonous cloud, alarmed by the bird of prey in their midst.

  The air was pungent with damp seaweed and rotting wood. I could see what Captain Helmsrid meant about floating deathtraps; we passed some very sick-looking vessels. Rodden dismissed ship after ship, some that looked quite acceptable to me, and I feared we wouldn’t find even one that met his exacting standards. But at last he called to a sailor carrying a calico bale up the loading plank of the Jessamine.

  ‘Who captains this ship?’ he asked.

  ‘Cap’n Krig,’ the sailor replied. He was heavily tanned, the skin around his eyes prematurely wrinkled by the sun. Faded blue tattoos of anchors and mermaids decorated his wiry forearms.

  ‘Where would we find him?’

  ‘O’er there, at the Krill ’n’ Mermaid.’ The sailor pointed at a lean-to on the far side of the docks. We thanked the sailor and struggled over to it, the way mostly blocked by rigging and crayfish pots.

  A white-haired man in a threadbare blazer sat blinking in the sun, a pint of ale and a bottle of dark rum at his elbow. It was barely two in the afternoon, but maybe there were such things as sea-time and land-time and it was quite acceptable for him to be drinking hard spirits at this hour. Or maybe he was a sot.

  ‘Captain Krig?’ asked Rodden.

  The man nodded.

  ‘We’re after passage to Pol. Is the Jessamine heading on there?’

  ‘Aye,’ the man said. ‘For t’bird and moggy, too?’ he asked.

  I nodded. Leap had his head inside a crayfish pot and was sniffing with interest.

  ‘We’ve already got a ship’s cat. Don’t think my Smokey’d like ’im,’ he said.

  ‘He’s very friendly,’ I insisted, as Leap tried to back out of the trap. It was rather one-way and he had his big silly ears stuck.

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The captain downed a slug of rum from a sea-green tumbler. He eyed our crossbows. ‘Can ye shoot those contraptions?’

  ‘Certainly can,’ said Rodden, bending down to extricate Leap.

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The captain took a moment to squint up at us. ‘We don’t up anchor until tomorrow evening. Goin’ with the tide. Y’in a hurry?’

  ‘Well, yes. But we can wait, for the right price.’

  The captain ‘hmphed’ at that. ‘Ten pieces each. Bird and cat free. Now, if that ain’t a bargain, I know not what is.’

  He and Rodden shook on it and we made our way back into town. A whole day and a half in Jefsgord. I hoped Captain Helmsrid was doing as good a job as he said and we weren’t about to run into any old friends.

  We needed supplies, especially clothes for me, but the market was already closing. We checked into an inn with a view of the sea from the first floor. I asked the keeper for a bath in my room, intending to soak myself into a pleasantly pruned state. Before I got into the steaming tub I locked my door and gave it a rattle to test its strength. Not totally harming-proof, but it would do.

  I could see the ocean from where I bathed and watched the ships slipping over the horizon. I was looking forward to this journey, though my excitement was tempered by Helmsrid’s story of missing ships. I hoped the Jessamine had a good lookout.

  SIX

  Rodden was bashing on my door at dawn, telling me to get up.

  ‘Don’t you ever sleep in?’ I called through two inches of wood. I had hoped we would lie around for a while on our last morning on dry land.
I threw the blankets off in a huff and climbed once more into my filthy clothes.

  The humidity of the air in Jefsgord, even at this early hour, was playing havoc with my hair. As we walked along the street I tamed it into a braid. ‘Are we going to the market?’ I asked, nodding at our horses, which he was leading.

  ‘Yes. We’ll sell our horses and pick up some gear for Verapine.’

  We stopped at a stall selling heavy winter clothes and Rodden began searching through a stack of coats.

  ‘I thought it was hot in Verapine.’

  ‘It is. But at night the temperature plummets to just above freezing. There’s never any cloud cover so the heat of the day escapes back into the sky.’

  I pulled on a woven poncho and a heavy pair of trousers over my clothes. They were very warm, so I took them off again quickly and bought them. From another stall we picked up pairs of plain breeches and shirts.

  ‘Do you want any dresses?’ Rodden asked.

  I shook my head. As I was going to be on a ship full of men I wanted to look as sexless as possible. Coarse shirts and badly cut breeches were prudent choices.

  The horses we sold to a dealer and then, tucking our parcels of clothes under the table, we sat at a tea shack for some breakfast.

  ‘Are we going to have enough yelbar points if we’re attacked?’ I asked.

  Rodden swirled his mug of milky camai, an import from Pol. It was spicy black tea, brewed with milk and sweetened with honey. He broke a small loaf of currant bread in half.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘I’m beginning to think this mightn’t be a good idea.’

  ‘But we need the bennium.’

  He watched me for a moment. ‘Even after what happened to you in Ercan, you’re not afraid?’

  A shiver went up my spine. I did find my mind returning to that moment, reliving the harming’s attack. ‘Of course I am. But that fear seems to be buried so deep, under layers and layers of other fears. Do you know what I mean?’

  He nodded slowly, looking at his camai. ‘You’re more afraid of other things. Like what might happen if we do nothing.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly it. What about you – are you afraid?’

  He looked at me, the sunlight making his white-blue eyes sparkle. ‘Who, me? I know no fear, princess.’ The words were said lightly, but without humour. Looking in the other direction, his fingers brushed mine, and then held. I could feel his heart beating in the veins of his hand.

  There was something I hungered for that wasn’t blood, nor water, nor food. I felt it keenly when he was close, when he let down his guard. When he touched me as he was doing now. I didn’t know how to satisfy the hunger, or even if I should want to.

  ‘Why do you think the harmings have started attacking ships?’ My voice sounded hoarse, and I coughed to clear it.

  ‘I suppose because there aren’t any witnesses on the open sea, not if you kill everyone or take them prisoner. Sailors are tough. They’d make good attack harmings. The children they took from Ercan, on the other hand, some they’ll train to fight, but most they’ll train to be spies and infectors.’

  The general picture of harmings I’d had in my head diversified into three sub-categories: attack harmings, spies and infectors. Then another category occurred to me: rebel harmings. Rarely seen in the wild, these harmings enjoyed throwing themselves into the path of danger and certain death. They were stubborn, cranky creatures, chronically under-slept and easily identifiable by the haunted look in their eyes.

  ‘How long will it take to sail to Pol?’

  ‘A week. Maybe a week and a half. It’s not the best time of year for the crossing as the winds are weak. At the peak of the season you can do it in four days with a good ship like the Jessamine.’

  A week and a half was a long time to be without anything to do. I would have liked to browse for books to read on our journey across the ocean, but Rodden had other ideas. ‘One more job. Remember what the captain said? He’s got a ship’s cat. That means no rats for us, and I was counting on them for our blood supply.’

  ‘Oh, of course. So now what do we do?’

  ‘Rabbits. We’ll say they’re meat for Griffin and Leap, which will explain why they’ll be disappearing one by one.’

  The only rabbits we could find in the marketplace were children’s pets. They were fluffy and white with big floppy ears, and much fatter than wild rabbits. Rodden counted them. ‘Fifteen. We’ll just have to ration them. One between us every day.’

  The stallholder overheard and widened her eyes, but the coins he slapped in her hand kept her mouth shut. We lugged the hutch of rabbits back to the inn with our parcels.

  ‘We’ll have to be discreet about feeding,’ he cautioned as we laid the hutch in his room. ‘Sailors are a superstitious bunch and I think blood-drinking would make them nervous.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll just do it in my room.’

  ‘Room? You don’t get a room. You get a patch of deck to lie down on. This is a trade-ship, not a passenger boat. We eat, sleep and wash on deck.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, my voice tight. ‘You didn’t think that as probably the only female on board I might like a little privacy?’ I was beginning to get the impression that Rodden enjoyed putting me in situations that tested my limits of being filthy and uncomfortable.

  He shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped. No passenger ships between here and Pol, Your Highness,’ he added.

  I rankled at the use of my royal address. He only said it when he wanted to annoy me. I put down the other parcels and stalked back to the market.

  ‘Back by four,’ he called after me.

  I ignored him and kept walking. The rest of the day I spent browsing the bookstalls and sitting in tea shacks with more mugs of camai, and I only returned to the inn at the very last minute.

  Rodden was standing outside. ‘You’re late,’ he snapped.

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped,’ I said, mimicking his words from earlier. We walked to the dock in silence, me carrying our bags and weapons and Rodden with the rabbits.

  The ship wasn’t quite ready for us to board, so we sat with the captain at the Krill ’n’ Mermaid. Rodden was fidgety and drank an excessive amount of rum and I got the feeling he was nervous about something. The seagulls were annoying Griffin again and she sat on the back of my chair, hackles raised. Leap was preoccupied by the crayfish pots, peering at them suspiciously as though they were about to swallow him whole. I was still sulking and the captain was drunk, so there was very little conversation at our table.

  At last a sailor waved to us from the deck.

  ‘That’ssusss,’ the captain slurred, getting unsteadily to his feet.

  I cast a baleful look at Rodden. He’d checked that the boat was sound but had neglected to do the same for the captain. But Rodden was ignoring me, his face pale and clammy. As he stepped up to board he went green and vomited off the dock. Wiping his mouth he muttered about something he ate. A handful of sailors sniggered from the rigging.

  We found a spot on deck that seemed to be out of everyone’s way and sat down. Leap’s ears were flat, and he had his paws splayed to steady himself against the rocking of the boat. Griffin was in the rigging, hunched up with slitted eyes as several gulls swooped around her. Rodden was still an unnatural colour. He slumped against the rabbit hutch and put a hand over his eyes.

  Several sailors grinned at me as they passed and gave me cheery hellos, clearly pleased to have a female on board. I helloed back, and shielded my eyes from the sun to watch them shimmy up the rigging. Rodden managed to open his eyes long enough to glare at them. Turning to me he said, ‘Stop distracting them from their work.’

  ‘I’m not. Don’t puke on the rabbits.’

  From the helm the captain gave the call to cast off, rather too loudly and with lots of
flinging of his arms. All manner of garbled instructions poured from his mouth but the sailors seemed to understand well enough. The sails filled, the ship gave a lurch and we were away. There was a bit of tricky manoeuvring to be done to get past the other ships but the captain seemed to be managing it well enough, though his tongue was poking out the corner of his mouth as he spun the wheel to and fro.

  We’d been going less than a minute when Rodden leaned over the side and threw up again.

  ‘Do you get seasick?’ I asked, passing him the water skin.

  ‘Yes,’ he said thickly. ‘I thought I might have grown out of it by now but apparently not.’ He rinsed his mouth and spat into the sea.

  I, on the other hand, felt perfectly fine. I wasn’t quite ready to feel sorry for him so I left him where he was. His moans and retching followed me all the way to the prow of the ship. We were sailing west, straight into the setting sun. The tor-line tugged at me as we pulled out of port, but I felt strong enough to ignore the pain.

  Leap jumped up onto a crate next to me and peered over the railing. He gave the sea a long, hard, distrustful glare. Then, apparently deciding that was enough to keep the sea down there and him up here where it was dry, he looked up into my face and purred.

  I wondered if he knew he was going home, if he would remember Pol. His history was unknown to me and I didn’t even know if he had been born there. It occurred to me that, once we arrived, he might even want to stay. Patting his sleek fur, I knew the noble part of me would be happy for Leap if that was what he decided. But the rest of me would be terribly sad without him.

  I woke the next morning to screaming gulls and the smell of porridge and seawater. I’d spent the night stretched on my cloak with Leap’s warm body curled against me and my new poncho covering both of us. By midnight Rodden had thoroughly expelled the contents of his stomach and managed to fall asleep. He awoke looking very drawn and unhappy and refused water, breakfast or blood. I left him dozing in the shade and went to get some porridge.