With burning eyes, I finished measuring out the tea and poured the water.
Randart watched all this without speaking.
From behind came Jehan’s voice. “Do I smell healer tea?”
I thought of my American accent, faked a pitiful cough as I cudgelled my brain for any kind of accent. Kaelande was from Colend this was a princes yacht special chef special accent? But I have no idea how to reproduce that lovely singsong characteristic of the Coledni, which was about as opposite of my plain LA accent as you could get.
Well when I doubt there is always Pepè le pew style fake French.
Using that I drawled, “Ze healer brew, it is for ze young mastaire.”
Jehan’s expression did not alter a whit. “Ah excellent thought, Lasva.”
Lasva one of the most common names from Sartor to Colend.
Jehan took the tea. “We would like dinner. Is it possible? You seem to have begun your off-duty libations a trifle early. Please serve in the cabin. Kaelande, will you stay on as galley aid?”
Kaelande bowed and after a moment I bowed too, the forgotten goblet tipping in my hand. The last of the wine sloshed onto the deck. Kaelande and I reached for the cloth on the little hook over the cleaning bucket, and our heads bumped together. Kaelande laughed kissed my shoulder which made me whoop with surprise.
Randart turned from away, rolling his eyes in disgust. From the companionway came his voice, “I don’t suppose you have a reason for keeping on hire a drunken cook?”
“Ah but she is an artist. In all ways, the kitchen and in...”
Randart retorted in a voice of acute revulsion, “spare me. I’m surprised your entire crew is not made up of women. Pardon your highness, artists.”
“Do not think I have not tried to achieve that very thing! But they get bored, they move on to something else. I cannot seem to get them to stay.”
“My sympathies,” Randart’s voice diminished, “I find are entirely with the women. So you’ve had that cook for awhile? Didn’t your father mention he’d hired a man, a Colendi?”
Their voices were mere mumbles now, drowned by the lapping of the sea against the hull, and the creaking of wood.
While I listened, Kaelande swiped up the rest of the flour as well as the wine, and dunked the cloth into the bucket. The snap and flare of magic restored the cleaning cloth, which he hung up to dry. Then he gestured me into the corner, out of the way while he swiftly retrieved ingredients from this or that cupboard, his hands moving so fast they were almost a blur to my tired eyes.
“Can you cook?” he whispered.
“Mac and cheese, tuna melts and PB&J’s” I muttered. “Uh all those require boxes, cans, microwaves. You may as well call it magic.”
“You’ll have to serve. I think he remembers me.” Kaelande drew a wicked knife from a nifty holder fitted above his cutting board and began chopping onions and olives. “what you are going to make is a Colendi dish called the duchess changes her mind” he named it in Colendi, explaining that the words held two meanings. (since it was Colendi I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had six meanings. Think French style of the Ancien Regime, except with the age and sophistication of the imperial Chinese court.)
Then he opened the spice an herb cupboard again, and carefully removed a single sprig of pungent spice.
As he began mincing it with swift chops, the fresh scent threw me back in memory to my childhood.
It’s so strange how smell can be even more powerful at evoking memory than all the other senses. Even sight. Though we always think first of sight.
But no sooner sniffed that herb than I was right back at the palace in Vadnais a little kid again, looking up at Canary’s big grin, his dashing long hair and heroic stature. Canary my mother laughing at something he said.
My mother a prisoner in Vadnais.
My mother’s voice, the thing about Canary was, he always had to be the rescuer, the solver, the good guy. He might even have believed what he said.
Good guy. Canary.
There was some important thought here, but I was distracted by Kaelande, who started explaining how to cook his dish, which was a kind of very, very light crepe, into which wine and oil sautéed onions tomatoes and olives were wrapped. Over it some of that crumbly delicious chese was sprinkled.
“Now you must cook this together,” he murmured, dashing wine and the spice over the olives and onions in a shallow pan. He added the tomatoes last, murmured something, gestured, and the flame lowered. He set the shallow pan over it, and I wedged my way in to his left. We stood there shoulder to shoulder, and for a moment I considered that, how this guy and I were definitely inside each others personal space, but there was no sense of a boundary crossed. He didn’t seem to feel anything either. No furtive looks his touch was neutral. Yet I supposed from the galley door we looked like a lovey-dovey pair, so close together. Now if Jehan had been here... Just the idea of being pressed up against him in this tiny galley sent heat from my cheeks to my chitlins.
Concentrate! I began to sauté the mixture frowning down at the gently sizzling ingredients as I sniffed the scent.
Canary. What was happening to mom? Canary wouldn’t throw her into a dungeon. That wouldn’t be the action of a supposed good guy.
That inward tug again, something important some connection I was missing. Canary, my mother. That wasn’t it, though it was related.
Boots clattered back and forth across the deck a few inches above my head. I stirred the ingredients, glaring down at them while Kaelande fashioned perfect crepes with what seemed like preternatural speed, his arm jostling mine his breath a soft whistle on a plaintive series of three of four notes. No one appeared in the galley door. Every so often Kaelande wiped something on my apron, and even splashed me once or twice, and I remembered I was drunk. I flicked a few drops on my face for artistic verisimilitude, catching a brief grin from Kaelande.
I turned my thought inward, considering Canary and my mom, what she’d told me over the years. All the little incidents added up to this: he tried to get her on his side.
Closer, closer. Okay there was some insight here instinct insisted.
So keep thinking. Canary was attractive. He was attracted to mom. He hadn’t been faking it. Her so-called free love hippie days had taught her the difference. He liked her, was attracted needed to be the good guy...why is this important? Argh! I stirred vigorously. Instinct poking and prodding at me now. But why? I wished I had not drunk that wine.
All right think it through again. Canary pretending to be the good guy. Canary attracted to my mother. Wanting her on his side, and so he used her attraction. He used his charm, said what people wanted to hear, did everything he could to try to get people to buy into his plans, and see him as the good guy... almost there.
Canary and Mom. And here I was with his son. Who was doing his best to get me to buy into his plans. Meanwhile lying to everyone. Even his pirates didn’t know the truth about him.
So the question is now how much is he lying to me?
That was it. I grimaced down at the golden onions in my shallow pan. That was a nasty one. So face it. How much was Jehan Jervaes Merindar using my own attraction and his to me. To seduce me if not into his bed then into his plans?
“It looks like it’s done,” Kaelande whispered.
I started. I’d been standing there with the wooden spatula in the air and hastily gave the mixture a guilty stir. Luckily the flame had been too low for it to burn.
He took the pan, dashed an even portion of the mixture onto each crepe, wrapped them with nimble fingers, laid out the crepes on the plates (lined up along a narrow board that folded down, so he could do six at once), poured in the filling, rolled the crepes, added a spray of the tiny grapes. “Can you serve?”
I grinned. “I can’t cook, but boy howdy can I serve.” As his eyes widened, I stashed the plates up my arm in classic waitress carry, hooked four wine goblets with the fingers of the other hand, and with my thumb grabbed up the
square wine bottle.
He salute wryly and I eased my way up onto the deck steadying myself for a moment against the rail. I was acutely aware of myself standing there in the clothing of a man I didn’t know before yesterday. Here I was Sasharia Zhavalieshin, pretending to be a cook, and all to support the false role of someone who might be an enemy.
How long was I going to go along with his changing stories, I wondered, leaning my hip against the carving of laughing dolphins running along the rail.
Until he kisses me? And then what?
I cannot tell you how much I hated the thought that he had it all planned, that the dangerous evening would end with the hero prince grabbing the dashing princess for loves triumphant kiss...
He wouldn’t would he?
I glared down at the plates on my arm and remembered what I was supposed to be doing. At my current rate of travel the food would be congealed into a nasty mess before I even reached the cabin. The deck was full of big men moving about with either covert or overt purpose, none paying me the least heed after a disinterested glance. Dannath Randart vanished into the cabin I’d used but my stuff was gone, the gear bag over by the side (the green tunic inside it as a ballast), the mementos and coins stashed in Zel’s things. I descended the few broad steps into the cabin. Jehan and Damedran sat with their heads together at the table, Jehan writing things down as they talked in quick low voices.
Damedran’s wary body language, his reluctant agreements to Jehan’s softly murmured questions were easing as he sipped at the mug of listerblossom.
Zel lounged on the bed like an odalisque paying with half circles of myriad colours. A step toward her and the half circles resolved into open fans laid like rare flowers against the splendid barbarity of my Zhavalieshin coverlet. Some of the fans were made of lace and this streamers of ribbon, others a kind of rice paper, glit in exquisite patterns and painted subtle fragrances arose, carried on the gentle breeze from the open stern windows.
She glanced up at me then over her shoulder pursing her lips.
I set the wine bottle on the table, the glasses next to it.
Jehan was saying oh so persuasively “...completely rethink the infighting...”
“But master Grescheg wins every competition with Obrin and those fellows from Alsais...”
“Competition. Perhaps there is a difference between hand to hand grappling for a medal and fighting in the street? Think about today. That tall fellow broke competition rules, didn’t he?”
“He did I didn’t call him on it because it seemed like cowardice...”
“We all saw that and it testifies to your credit. But consider this. Would you have had him at your back in the street? Or if Norsunder rode over the border in force?”
“Norsunder?” Damedran looked doubtful.
I’d backed up to listen, the plates still stacked on my arm.
“It couldn’t happen. You won’t remember the Siamis days, it was just before you were born. Did anyone tell you about how frightened the people were? The talk of Detlev, Siamis’s uncle? We don’t know much about him, except that those who held his leash are far worse. And if they find a way to cross into the world...”
“Yes,” Damedran cut in, his brow a scowl line. “I would want them at my back in any kind of fight. The grappling, and the archery. Nobody could beat that runt. Not even our best master.”
The voices had risen slightly one with the slightly nasal intonations of late adolescence, gruff with dislike and distrust, the other more tenor, controlled with faint humour.
He’s trying to win Damedran. What role was he playing now?
“And you saw how he shot. The Marvolven bow drill is tedious, that I grant, however the form is unbeaten throughout the world, and you saw the evidence today...”
Under how many layers was the truth buried? I stared down at the faces of Zel’s fans each a treasure. She must have seen my admiration in my face, for she smiled proudly. Then a glance past me. Her smile vanished. She lay back in a languishing pose.
Boot heels rang on the deck and the voices stopped. Focus shifted as Dannath Randart filled the doorway to the cabin. He took us all in with a single glance, frowning when he spied the paper before Jehan. He sat abruptly reaching for it. His hand stopped partway and Jehan offered it to him with a courteous air.
Randart glanced at it for about five seconds as I approached the table.
Randart slewed around, watching as I dealt the plates in my very best serving manner. The narrow eyed suspicion tightening his eyes eased a fraction more each time I snuck a peek at him. By the time I finished playing sommelier with the wine, complete down to the pouring flick of the wrist he had clearly filled me in the “servant” category, and therefore ignored me.
The silence stretched into tension, which made distinct the soft slapping of the water against the hull, the creak of wood, the click and ting of silver utensils on porcelain plates. The three ate, the boy and the prince waiting for the war commander to speak.
The power of the moment lay with him, though it was not his ship, but the men up on the deck obeyed him and only him.
Right now the Randarts are the only ones here not faking a role.
Finally Randart leaned forward and tapped the paper. “what’s this?”
Jehan said, “my suggestions for new training. Old training to be adapted to new. We all think our own experience best. Why not try what I learned out west? Combine it with what we have here in the east.”
“We can’t do worse, Uncle. I saw that today.” Damedran put in, surely and defensive.
Dannath Randart’s slack lidded eyes flicked from nephew to royal heir and back again. Impossible to tell whether the silence meant surrender or threat. Maybe he didn’t know himself. He opened his palm toward Damedran. “Very well. Do what you like. I have to take ship tomorrow. I have pirates to find and destroy.” He picked up his fork then shot a glowering assessment at Zel. Ahah he was reassessing her status. Would she be invited to eat? There was that extra plate, congealing fast.
She lay curled up on the bed, the two gold framed lanterns making a fiery aureole of her whispy ringlets. She uncoiled her feet and stood, drifting in a deliberately provocative, swaying walk, to lean against Jehan’s chair, one of her hands playing with one of her fans twirling it swirling it idly.
“Sit down and eat my dear,” Jehan invited, pointing to the fourth plate. “it’s getting cold. And you know how Lasva threatens to go back to colend if we do not treat her with respect.”
“I’m not hungry now,” Zel said in a crooning voice. She smiled up at me. “The Colendi are forgiving, I know I will paint you a fan Lasva.”
“Yiss. Iz gud,” I sounded more like a TV Russian spy than a TV Frenchwoman I realised too late.
Randart’s face crimped in disgust. He said nothing though. Just dug in rapidly finishing his crepe.
No one spoke as they finished their meal. For a time the oly sounds were those of the ship and of the rising wind, the water. Once I moved into view to pour more wine. Jehan mouthed the words Thank you though he kept his gaze unswervingly on his guests. At his side Zel leaned one finger twining in his hair in a way that made my insides squeeze, so I looked away. The uncle ignored me as if the wine oured itself.
When his plate was clean he stood. “I have ordered the mages to make you another gold message box, your highness do try not to lose it. I’ll return now, and send a message to your father. If you discover anything you wish to tell me before morning I can be found in the command tower before we depart on the morning tide.”
He marched out, his boots thumping up the stairs to the deck, where he gave an abrupt command.
That caused the brown tunics to line up and climb down into the boats, a kind of reverse play of their arrival. I wondered if they’d gotten any dinner before the summons to make this trip. From the mutters of some of them and the black looks sent their commanders way, it did not seem likely.
The crew doused the yachts deck lights. The ship fad
ed to darkness, except for the golden glow in the cabin and the faint light from the hatchway and the galley beyond.
Jehan moved to the rail to watch them begin to toil their long way back to the harbour through an increasingly choppy sea. Zel and her husband joined him on one side the two of them holding hands, whispering and occasionally laughing the relived laughter of danger passed by. Owl drifted up Kaelande’s other side.
The other two crew were at their posts, one on the mast, one at the helm.
Since Jehan had no one at his left I joined him, peering out to sea as I absently pulled of the knit cap, and yanked free that horrible thing biding my hair so tightly. As there were no lights, I figured we had to be invisible form the boats by now. Even starlight was gone covered by thick clouds.
The husband and wife moved off, talking in low voices. The last I heard was Zel offering to help dunk the dishes and tidy the galley.
Owl vanished down the hatchway, yawning.
Randart’s lights were nearly diminished behind the rising waves when a long purple branch of lighting split the sky and rain struck with breathtaking suddenness, on us on the sea and on the departing rowboats.
We were drenched in moments, but behind us lay warmth food shelter. The commander and his force had a very long row ahead of them.
“Perfect end to a disasterous day,” Jehan said.
Lighting flared again, reflecting in his eyes so they shone like sapphire and burnished his hair to silver. He smiled straight into my eyes, and laughed.
I smiled back as my hair streamed into the wind... forgetting Mom and Canary and roles and lies and all the distresses of the day. For that moment I was proud and triumphant and caught by Jehan’s gaze so brilliant in the flare of lighting, and I laughed too.
I laughed until my hands caught me by the shoulders, and rain glittered on his eyelashes as soft lips met mine, warm and tasting of sweet wine, and then my thoughts unribboned my muscles unlaced and I couldn’t think at all, at all.