The Bright Saphronia pitched under Zeid. Her hull groaned, her ropes complained, her sail bellied and slackened with every shift of wind, and every loose object aboard seemed to possess a secret desire to roll into his path. The sea did not charge, wheel, feint, or obey the courtesy of formed ranks. It rose, dropped, twisted, and returned without warning. A man could not parley with it. He could not shame it with law, impress it with lineage, or arrange it in a ledger.
This, Zeid decided, was why desert peoples had produced better philosophy.
He stood near the lee rail with one hand closed around a tar-dark rope and the other held at his side in a posture he hoped suggested contemplation. His mouth tasted of bile, vinegar cloth, and the bitter draught Rafiq had insisted upon at dawn. Salt wind dragged loose strands of hair from beneath his turban. Spray freckled his face and the collar of the heavier travel coat Rafiq had forced on him.
The coat had been necessary. The looser binding beneath it would have shown under finer cloth, and the bruising from the old press-house had not yet turned the colours of healing. Each time the ship rolled hard to starboard, the cloth pulled across his ribs and reminded him that Alianor Aldren had carried him up a wadi slope two days earlier as if he were a sack of barley.
He had not forgiven the sea for the constant reminder.
Behind him the deck remained in its morning confusion. Sailors went barefoot across wet boards, sure as cats and twice as profane. A Rhomanian boy with a shaved chin and a stamped saint-token tied to his wrist carried a coil of rope larger than his own chest. Two Esberian men-at-arms sat beside the mainmast looking green and betrayed. Father Aldemar stood near the sheltered hatch, one hand over his stomach and the other around his prayer-cord, whispering appeals to the Revealed Light with a sincerity that had not yet produced calm weather. The ship’s master, Loukas son of Petron, shouted in Rhomanian from the stern.
Morain had turned pale but remained functional, which made him more alarming. He had strapped himself with a belt to the frame of a cargo rack and was making marks on a wax tablet while the ship attempted to hurl him into the treaty chests. The chests themselves had been wedged beneath layers of sailcloth and tied with double cord through iron rings. Khalaf had inspected the knots three times, then covered the seals against damp, then asked whether sea-salt could be entered as an enemy of parchment. Mikhael Laskaron, the Rhomanian factor whose guild had arranged the vessel, had answered that salt was older than kings and showed less respect for them.
Khalaf had not found this consoling.
The horses were below. This was the part of the ship Zeid least liked to imagine and most often heard. Hooves struck wood. A beast screamed once, was answered by another, and then by Tanrek’s voice descending through the hatch in a roar of such authority that even animals seemed to recognize.
Rafiq stood at Zeid’s shoulder with a covered basin in one hand and a folded cloth in the other.
“I do not require that,” Zeid said without looking at him.
“You have required it three times since sunrise.”
“That was earlier.”
“The sea has not converted since earlier.”
Zeid closed his eyes as the deck dropped beneath his feet. His stomach rose to fill the space left behind.
Rafiq lifted the basin.
“No,” Zeid said.
The ship rose.
“Yes,” Rafiq said.
Zeid turned with as much speed as honour allowed and was humiliatingly grateful for the basin.
When it was over, he wiped his mouth with the vinegar cloth Rafiq placed in his hand and stared out across the grey-green water. The horizon moved. It should not move. Lines in the world had purposes.
“This vessel was praised to us,” Zeid said.
“It floats,” Rafiq replied. “Among ships, that is held to be a virtue.”
“It does not float with restraint.”
“Your Highness may lodge a complaint with the waves.”
“I shall. Khalaf can draft it.”
“Khalaf is already drafting a complaint against mildew.”
Zeid breathed through his nose. It was not enough. The air smelled of salt, pitch, wet wool, horse sweat coming up from below, old fish, and the onions someone had unwisely begun to cook near the galley hearth. The onions entered him like treason.
He set both hands on the rail.
From somewhere behind him came a voice far too pleased with itself.
“Should I fetch a priest?” Princess Alianor asked. “Or a carpenter? I cannot tell whether you mean to commend your soul or accuse the ship of murder.”
Zeid did not turn immediately. He arranged his face. This took effort, because his face had begun making private treaties with his stomach without consulting him.
Alianor stood near the base of the mast, one gloved hand resting on a coil of rope. The sea had been kinder to her than justice required. Her braid was wind-torn, her cloak damp at the hem, and a strip of linen still showed beneath the restitched palm of her riding glove; yet she stood as if the deck’s movement were merely a poor training exercise. Mercy was belted at her hip, though shipboard law and common sense made the sword nearly useless in such a crowd. She knew this. She wore it anyway. Sivelle stood half a pace behind her.
“I was admiring the sea,” Zeid said.
“You were offering it breakfast.”
“A diplomatic gift.”
“The sea seemed unimpressed.”
“It is a barbarous power.”
“Yet ancient,” Alianor said, looking solemn. “You should respect old powers. I am told they are very fond of ceremony.”
Zeid’s hand tightened briefly on the rail as the ship rolled again. He did not bend. He considered this a victory large enough to deserve witnesses and regretted that his witnesses were enemies, servants, and sailors.
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“In Jaludian cavalry,” he said, “a horse announces its displeasure honestly. It tosses its head. It stamps. It bites the inattentive. It does not pretend to be ground and then become a ditch.”
“A fine proof of civilization,” Alianor said. “Horses do not pitch sideways.”
“They may be reasoned with.”
“Your horses?”
“Better than some princesses.”
She smiled, and the pleasure she took in his condition was bright enough to offend the heavens.
Rafiq said, “Highness, he should sit.”
Alianor’s smile sharpened. “He has my permission to collapse.”
“I am not collapsing.”
“No. You are negotiating with downwardness.”
Sivelle looked at the wet boards. “Downwardness appears to be winning.”
Zeid turned his head toward her. “You were quieter in Solymer.”
“In Solymer, Highness, there were more spears.”
“There are spears here.”
“Yes, but they are all trying not to vomit.”
Alianor laughed. Zeid looked away first, because the horizon had again betrayed him and because her laughter struck oddly against the rawness under his ribs.
He did not like being seen diminished. A court could be managed by choosing which face to offer it. Alianor had already touched the secret architecture of him once beneath the blue silk screen. She had seen him bleed without visible wound, tire without admitting weakness, command without title, and flinch when carried. Now she saw him mastered by weather and boards.
He would rather have faced Zayn with blunted lances.
A sailor passed too near, staring. He was a broad Rhomanian with a scar through one brow and a rope burn livid across his forearm. His eyes rested on Zeid’s face, then his coat, then the basin in Rafiq’s hand.
Alianor shifted her damp cloak from one arm to the other, stepped between Zeid and the sailor, and lifted the cloak as if shaking spray from its hem. The motion gave Zeid half a wall of wool and shadow. Her face remained turned toward the sea.
“Do Rhomanian sailors always stare like cattle?” she asked.
Rafiq’s eyes flicked once to her. Sivelle’s did too.
Zeid said nothing.
The sailor muttered something in Rhomanian and went on. Alianor lowered the cloak only when he had passed the mast.
“That was unnecessary,” Zeid said.
“Yes,” she said. “Most mercy is.”
“I thought you disliked mercy.”
“Did you forget it was my companion?”
His eyes went, despite himself, to the sword at her hip. The ship lurched. Zeid reached for the rail too quickly and pain caught along his side. It was slight; he made it slight by refusing the rest. But Alianor saw. Her amusement thinned.
“You should sit,” she said.
“So I have heard.”
“This is not advice.”
Rafiq, very softly, said, “A rare chance to obey a princess without scandal.”
Zeid considered all available forms of resistance. The ship rose under him again. Pride, like most banners, was less useful in bad weather.
He sat on a low chest beneath the rail. Rafiq wedged a folded blanket behind him. Sivelle handed Rafiq a fresh cloth without being asked.
“Thank you,” Rafiq said.
“It was for the ship,” Sivelle replied. “It has suffered enough.”
Rafiq accepted the lie gravely.
The morning passed in discomfort measured by bells, buckets, and Morain’s increasingly intimate hatred of water. He discovered that three barrels in the forward hold had taken in salt spray and demanded a witness, a seal, and a man to blame. Mikhael Laskaron offered two sailors, a cooper, and the opinion that all barrels lied eventually. Khalaf, hearing the word witness, arrived with ink-horn secured in waxed cloth and nearly fell into a stack of nets.
“Do not write while walking,” Nasir advised from beside the mast.
“If I stop walking, the deck moves more,” Khalaf said.
“The deck moves the same amount.”
Nasir had taken to the sea better than most and trusted it less than any. He translated between Rhomanian crew, Esberian nobles, Jaludian riders, Lagoran tallymen, and whatever language Morain spoke when numbers offended him. At noon he stood with Tanrek and Master Loukas over a waxed board on which the ship’s route had been scratched, erased, and scratched again. Rydric came up from below with his hair damp, his temper contained, and his expression too alert for a man who had slept badly.
“How far?” the king asked.
Loukas answered in Rhomanian. Mikhael, who preferred to translate his own profit, spoke before Nasir could.
“With this wind, Grace, two days to the outer approaches, perhaps three if the sea turns sulky.”
“The sea has been sulky since creation,” Tanrek said.
Loukas gave a grunt that required no language.
Rydric looked to the north. No land was visible. Only a line where grey water climbed into grey sky.
“Darat al-Bahr is behind us,” he said. “Valcierran ports are to be avoided. We keep north and west.”
Mikhael spread both hands. His rings flashed dully beneath salt. “A vessel keeps where wind permits. Kings keep where the Light permits. Merchants keep where payment permits. These are three roads, Grace, and only sometimes the same road.”
“Then earn your payment.”
“I have begun by not drowning Your Grace.”
Tanrek snorted. Rydric’s eyes narrowed, but the corner of his mouth moved despite him. He disliked merchants who spoke boldly but trusted them more than merchants who bowed too much.
Zeid heard all of this from his chest by the rail and resented that he found Mikhael’s answer sound. Movement had become easier while seated, though he refused to consider this evidence against standing. Alianor had taken a place near the hatch where she could watch the horses when they screamed and the prince when he pretended not to. Once, when Rafiq moved to fetch fresh water, she wordlessly set her boot against the chest to brace it as the ship dipped.
Zeid looked down at her boot.
“Your assistance is aggressive,” he said.
“So is your gratitude.”
“I have not offered any.”
“I had noticed.”
Rafiq returned with a cup. “Drink.”
Zeid sniffed it. “This is medicine.”
“It is water with medicine in it.”
Zeid drank. The draught was sour, bitter, and faintly sweet at the end. He made no face.
“You made a face,” Alianor said.
“I did not.”
“You made it with your eyes.”
“Esberian theology has grown bold if it now judges eyes.”
“It has always judged eyes. We simply write it more beautifully.”
Rafiq took the cup. “Both of you may conserve your strength. There is enough misery for the whole voyage.”
From below, one of the horses kicked the boards hard enough to shake the hatch cover. A sailor shouted. Tanrek answered with blasphemy so old it had likely crossed the Sepharan before any of them.
Zeid shut his eyes and leaned back against the blanket.
Alianor watched his face lose some of its courtly arrangement. Only a little. Enough for exhaustion to show in the line beside his mouth and the strain held under his jaw. The sea had taken from him the careful distances that halls and horses had allowed. Yet even here he guarded the shape of himself: coat closed despite heat, hands arranged, breath measured when pain moved, silence used as a screen.
She looked toward the grey water before the thought could become pity.
Pity was too soft a word for a man who had stopped her knife, insulted her father, argued theology like a jurist, and nearly died kneeling before an archer because a bleeding guard lay beneath his hands.
“Jaludian horses,” she said after a while.
He opened one eye.
“You said they prove civilization.”
“They do.”
“Because they do not pitch sideways.”
“Among other virtues.”
“And yet your Sultanate built ships.”
“Regrettable evidence that even wise realms make concessions to necessity.”
She smiled. “You are very loyal to the ground.”
“The ground has served me faithfully.”
“It also threw you from a horse once, I imagine.”
“That was not the ground. That was Zayn’s fault.”
“Everything cannot be Zayn’s fault.”
“You have not met him often enough.”
He smiled too.
Above them the sail cracked as the wind shifted. Loukas shouted. Sailors ran. The Bright Saphronia leaned hard, and for a moment everyone aboard remembered that the sea permitted their lives only by habit, not by oath.
Rafiq put one hand on Zeid’s shoulder to steady him. Alianor grabbed the rail. Sivelle caught Khalaf by the back of his belt as he slid past with an armful of document wrappings.
“My thanks,” Khalaf gasped.
“You would have taken the ink with you,” Sivelle said. “That would have been a loss.”
“Greater than me?”
“I know the ink better.”
Khalaf clutched the wrappings to his chest.
The wind strengthened before evening.