"No. It would be best if those in the forts saw nothing."
Osten nodded. "Good day, Lord Kharl."
His shields still ready, Kharl watched as the latest Lord West turned and walked off the pier.
Demyst moved closer to Kharl. "He is not to be trusted, not so far as one could heave his mount."
"I don't intend to trust him." Kharl also had his own plans for making the best of a bad situation. "We need to get back to the residence. I'm going to need a very solid meal before this evening." He began to walk toward the carriage.
Neither Mantar nor Alynar said anything as Kharl and Demyst approached, but both men looked relieved.
"We're heading back." Kharl stepped into the carriage.
"Yes, ser."
Once Demyst closed the carriage door, Mantar turned the coach up Cargo Road.
"What did he want?" asked Jeka.
"The last rebels hold the harbor forts. Vielam's in one of them," Kharl said. "Vielam's probably worse than Osten, at least as a ruler, because he's not only cruel, but weak." He didn't know that, not for certain, but based on what he'd seen it seemed more likely than not. Vielam had played all sides and betrayed both his father and his eldest brother. Like everything Kharl had had to deal with in Nordla, he had no good choices. "So long as he's alive, he'll betray whoever he can, and the Hamorians will try to make trouble."
Kharl turned to Demyst. "Are you willing to come with me ... with your pistols?"
"Pistols against forts?"
"No. They're for you to shoot the two rowers if they try anything."
Jeka laughed.
"We also won't row back to where we leave. Mantar can bring the coach down to the old wharf off the lower market."
"Good," declared Jeka. "Alynar and I will be with Mantar. Sharlak, too. He's got a hunting rifle. Good shot. Even in the dark. He potted one of those patrollers that night they came against the house."
Kharl looked at Jeka, trying not to be too obvious, taking in the brilliant green eyes, the short-cut sandy hair. She was good-looking, but it was not that which appealed to him, he realized, but that she was alive. Even
when she had been scrounging out a living by her wits, she had not just gone through the motions.
"You all right?" she asked.
"Thinking," he replied.
She just nodded, as if she knew those thoughts were not for saying aloud in a coach.
Within a glass of returning to the residence, Kharl sat down to a solid early-evening meal, one that Khelaya declared-again-was not up to her standards because no one was selling good produce and meat, not at any reasonable prices, not in the upper market square, and she wasn't about to frequent the lower one.
At sunset, Kharl and his party climbed into and onto the carriage, with Alynar inside with Kharl, Jeka, and Demyst. Sharlak, a long-barreled rifle in his hands, sat beside Mantar.
When Mantar brought the carriage to a halt at the end of the pier, Kharl could see a half squad of lancers there-again commanded by Undercap-tain Huard. "Poor Huard."
"Poor ... and stupid to serve Osten," Jeka said.
Demyst nodded, but added, "Could be he had little choice. Younger lordly sons have few."
Jeka frowned.
"They cannot inherit. Trade is considered beneath them, and some are trained to be lords in case their elder brothers die. If the brothers survive, the younger ones are ruined for anything else. Especially honest work." Demyst laughed.
Jeka even smiled.
Carrying a small bag of provisions, Kharl followed Demyst from the carriage, glancing to the west, where the two forts were outlined against orange-tinged clouds. He moved toward the half squad of lancers, nodding to Huard. "Undercaptain."
"Lord Kharl. The boat and boatmen are ready for you."
"Thank you." Kharl kept his shields ready, but there was no sense of treachery or chaos, although Kharl couldn't help but feel sorry for Huard.
Halfway down the pier, two older men-fishermen, Kharl suspected- were waiting with a high-sided dorylike boat, moored on the shoreward side, well out of direct sight from either fort. The craft was smaller than most dories Kharl had seen.
"You're the mage, ser?" asked the taller of the two, a muscular man with graying hair perhaps ten years older than Kharl.
"He's Lord Kharl. He's a mage and the Austran envoy," Demyst replied.
"Do you understand what we're going to do?" asked Kharl.
"No, ser," replied the older man, "except we're to do what you want."
"How did Lord West find you?"
"He sent an overcaptain to the Fishers' Guild. Offered a gold each for the two best rowers to row a mage where he wanted to go this evening. Overcaptain said if someone didn't volunteer, wouldn't be a Fishers' Guild tomorrow. Gerrik and me, we figured a gold each was better 'n pissin' off a hothead lord. Beggin' your pardon, ser."
"Gerrik," Kharl asked, "is he telling the truth?"
"Yes, ser, Holyt's right fair, excepting that we didn't need to be threatened. Can't take our boats out now, nohow. Cannon blew poor Jotrok right out a the water this morning."
"I'm not threatening. We get through this, and I'll add a gold to each of you from my own purse-once we get to the old wharf there." Kharl gestured to the south.
"Beggin' your pardon, ser," said Holyt, "but it seems a mite strange for an Austran to be doing something for Lord Osten '.. . Lord West."
"I'm doing it for the people in Brysta, and because Lord Ghrant of Aus-tra doesn't want the Hamorians any closer than Hamor."
The younger man laughed. "We don't either."
Kharl studied the pair. "You'll be rowing blindly. The way we're going you won't be able to see a thing. I'll give you directions. Do you understand?"
The older, slightly graying Holyt nodded. "Don't much care, ser mage, so long's as we get back."
"That's why." He looked toward the breakwaters. From the end of the pier the northern fort would be closer. He eased down and sat on the forward thwart, not exactly comfortable, but a position from which he could direct the two rowers.
Demyst settled aft of the pair. He did not reveal the pistols.
Twilight was settling across the harbor, but they would still be visible against the shimmer of the water for a time.
"You can cast off," Kharl said.
"Yes, ser."
, •
«t
"You'll be able to see until we reach the end of the pier. Then, everything will go black. You won't be able to see, but the lookouts on the fort won't see us, either. Once we get close to the breakwater, we'll need to be quiet. They won't be able to see us, but they can hear us."
"So long as you know where you're going, ser."
"How close can we get to the breakwater on the harbor side . .. without going aground?" asked Kharl.
"In this craft, ser?" Holyt smiled. "Maybe a cubit from the rocks. Oars'd hit the rocks before we'd ground."
"Good."
As the small dory's prow reached the end of the pier, Kharl raised the sight shield, extending it a good five cubits behind the stern. In the dim light, he hoped that would be enough so that the ripples from the oars would not be that obvious to the forts' lookouts.
"Bring her starboard," Kharl said.
"Coming starboard."
Kharl used his order-senses, trying to get a course line from the end of the pier to the northern breakwater.
"Just a touch more starboard," he said.
After a moment, he added, "Steady as she goes."
"You been at sea, ser?" asked Holyt.
"Merchanter subofficer," Kharl admitted.
In a murmur Kharl was not meant to hear, Gerrik murmured to Holyt, "Maybe we got a chance."
Kharl certainly hoped so as the dory moved across the twilight-calm waters of the harbor toward the northern breakwater.
Nearly a glass later, he could sense the stones of the breakwater and the port. "Port a quarter."
"Coming port."
"Hold on this line," Kharl said quietly. Just thirty cubits ahead was the northeast corner of the harbor fort. The stone walls ran straight down into the harbor.
Less than a quarter of a glass later, the dory was little more than an oar's length from the wall, and less than twenty cubits north of the southeast corner.
"Back down and stop here," Kharl said.
He just sat in the prow of the dory, extending his order-senses toward and around and through the stones of the ancient fort, searching out the
magazines and the linkages he might be able to make between them. As he did, a sense of profound sadness settled over him.
He could not but help recall what Jusof had first said to him about the law, that it was a tool and a necessary evil-and that, bad as it was, without it, matters were inevitably worse. That was the position in which he found himself. Bad as what he was about to do was, not doing it would lead to worse evil, and because he was but one mage, his choices-those that seemed to be effective-were limited to the use of great power applied seldom and violently.
He swallowed, and began to undo the linkages in the iron-lined walls of the largest magazine that he could reach, at the same time creating order-tubes to the other magazines nearest.
As chaos flared, the first magazine exploded.
Kharl released the sight shield and clamped a shield of hardened air around the small dory.
The early-night sky flared into red and whitish orange flashes that streaked out from the northern harbor fort. Beneath the colors of powder and cammabark exploding was the red-tinged white of released chaos.
"Friggin' demons!" hissed one of the fishermen.
". .. poor bastards .. ."
Kharl just sat in the prow, holding his shields. The chaos voids of death washed over and around him. Stone fragments, chunks, pebbles, and other things he didn't want to think about pelted the hardened air. The dory rocked back and forth, wildly for at time, then bobbed up and down within the shield. As he had half expected, his eyes saw nothing.
Finally, he released the air shield. Hot air washed across them, air laden with the smell of ashes, hot metal, and all manner of burned things.
"It's time to start rowing again," Kharl said. "Across toward the south fort."
He forced himself to ignore the odors. Instead, he opened the provisions bag and slowly began to eat, interspersing food with ale from the water bottle.
Not until Holyt and Gerrik had rowed the dory halfway across the channel between the burning and sundered north fort and the southern fort did Kharl raise the sight shield once more.
As they neared the southern harbor fort, Kharl could make out voices
from the battlements above. He set aside the provisions bag and tried to
hear exactly what was being said on the walls above them.
'
"No ships out there, ser!"
"Nothing in the harbor."
"There must be something. Forts don't explode by themselves."
"Chaos or fire in the powder magazines could do it."
Kharl listened, using his senses to discern the dory's progress. "A touch to starboard," he whispered.
The dory eased to starboard.
"Steady."
As the dory neared the harborside wall of the southern fort, Kharl began the process of seeking out the magazines and setting up another set of links. He pushed aside the sadness and concentrated on the task at hand.
Once more, as the order links parted, and chaos flared into the first magazine, Kharl dropped the sight shield and set the hardened air shield in place.
Currumptt!
Light and chaos once more flared across the harbor, though Kharl could only sense that brilliance, rather than see it, followed by the voids of death.