Captain Raven has heard many times of the great waves spawned by undersea earthquakes, but in all her years on the sea, she's never seen one until now. The lookout in the crow's nest calls down to report the peculiar pattern that precedes a tsunami. They are far enough out to sea that it appears to be a swell, but closer to shore the water will suck out and then the wall will come crashing in.
The ship is beginning to rise on the water. If Raven is not careful, she will be drawn along to shore and her ship wrecked, her crew lost and scattered.
Raven swears under her breath; she wasn't fond of this place to begin with, and now this? She searches her memories for a moment. There had been an old sailor she'd shared drinks with back in Amber that had a few things to say about tsunamis. A lot of it, she suspects, was utter garbage - clothes sucked off corpses and fish in trees, for sure - but there's always a bit of truth to such things, and his comments on how his captain dealt with it seem sound enough.
"Turn us hard to port and put the bow to the waves," she orders, and by habit she scans the faces that turn towards her to see who disagrees. There should be an exit from this world somewhere two or three days up the coast, or so she's been told, and it's moments like this, when she has to order a change in course that takes them away from the next possible way home, that she clearly recalls how she became captain of this ship. The last world had been kind - or more properly, prosperous, and so her men are well-fed now and look better than they have in months. And richer as well, she notes with amusement as she spies touches of gold and embroidery on clothes and around necks. If - no, when - they make it back to Amber, there will be some very heavy trunks carried off this battered ship... her own included.
She paces restlessly as her orders are carried out, waiting to see if she's chosen correctly.
The Captain's men move to do as she says, not without grumbling. The officers quieten it; some of them have sailed long enough to see the swells that are coming and read their meaning. The ship slowly turns to port as the wave rises slowly.
Soon the ship faces out to sea, cutting through the rising water, running parallel to where Raven is sure the rift should lie, if the old rutters are true. Since the storm that sent them running and lost away from the double-dozen seas of Amber, the rutters have played Raven false more than once.
Something has happened to make this tsunami. Perhaps when she's ridden it out, its source will give her answers.
And maybe that source is something useful. Maybe it's even a way home; they have seen things as strange. Their passage to this land had been through the belly of a black fog, and some months back, there had been a ride on the edge of a whirlpool that still haunts Raven's dreams now and then.
She also considers that if they were to, say, continue the port turn once the swells had passed and make a loop of it, they will be unlikely to end up right back on top of it. And if they can stay behind the deadly wave, there might be a bit of salvage to be had - at least if the tales she's heard are true. Salvage, she knows, will go a good way towards making up the detour with her men. What she has been told about the exit down the coast sounds like she has a few more days than the days it will take to get there, so as long as they keep any other detours to a minimum, they shouldn't miss it if this tsunami turns out to have come from nothing they can see.
Raven nods to herself and continues to pace, keeping a sharp eye out for the end of the waves.
The waves continue to rise for hours, and it's close to nightfall before something changes. The lookout reports something in the water: first one, then another, then still more.
They are bodies, bodies that have come up from the depths of the ocean.
Raven stands at the rail, watching the corpses float. In normal waters, she would expect to be able to follow the corpses back to some great drowned wreck, probably a victim of whatever had caused the tsunami. Here? Well, who knows. There's nothing to do, she thinks, but to investigate with the hope that it's something to benefit her crew.
"Follow the bodies," she orders. "I want to see where they're coming from. Never know; it could be a way home."
The ship continues on its course, which seems to be heading toward the where the bodies are coming from.
The first mate turns to Raven and asks, "Shall we bring one up?"
Raven considers for a moment. The floating dead are macabre, but it might be useful to know what they're headed into. And - well, salvage is salvage. She smiles thinly at the first mate, an old drinking mate turned assistant with a face to match his namesake. "Do it, Mister Stone," she answers. "And make sure you give it a thorough search."
Stone nods and moves off to obey the order. A few minutes later, they retrieve one of the bodies. It's not, by consensus of the crew, costumed as a man of Amber or Rebma. The weapons, or rather, general lack of them, aren't right. The decedent could have lost his spear, though.
Nor is it immediately obvious what the animal horn on a knotted leather string around his shoulder was for. It seems to have some sort of cap on one end, designed to seal it against water. He did die of injury and not from drowning or (solely from) crushing pressure.
The condition of the body is not great since it has been in the water for some time, but the crew has strong stomachs. They haven't had to handle it closely, though.
Raven walks over to the body and nudges it with her foot. If it doesn't immediately explode or do anything else untoward, she snorts. "Right. Somebody go pull Stern out of the mess." Stern has probably the strongest stomach of the crew; he'd told her once he had taken on a number of odd jobs before joining the Navy, including a brief stint working with the dead. And it's not the first time she's called on him for this kind of task, although she has to admit that the other times, the bodies had been a bit less soggy when they started. "Tell him there's a body to be dealt with again."
"Aye Cap'n." Someone runs off to do just that.
She works the horn free while she waits, turning it over in her hands for a moment before looking up again. "Miles." The owner of the name is terribly thin and always has been, and jumpy even when he doesn't need to be. "See if you can get this open," she tosses the horn to him, "without dumping it all over the deck or yourself. And stay in my sight this time, you hear me?"
Miles comes over to take the horn. "Aye, Cap'n."
Soon enough Stern comes up for instructions. Meanwhile, Miles has been working on the horn, which he's managed to open. He shows its contents to Raven: a strange powder with an odd smell that the horn has kept dry, perhaps magically.
Raven eyes the powder suspiciously. "Somebody pull up a bucket of sea water, and get me a spoon. Make sure it's dry."
She turns to Stern. "Strip him," she says bluntly, indicating the body. "And then chuck him over the side before he starts to stink worse than he already does. Let me know if you need a hand."
"Aye, Cap'n." Stern doesn't even wrinkle his nose, but begins work on the body. The rest of the crew finds excuses to be somewhere else as best they can.
Once she has both bucket and spoon, Raven wipes the latter on her shirt briefly - just to be sure. There are any number of reasons why this stuff was being kept dry, and she isn't eager to lose a hand if it reacts badly to water. Then she scoops out a tiny amount of the powder and drops it - and the spoon - into the bucket.
The spoon falls into the bucket and the powder gets wet. There's no chemical reaction that Raven can see: certainly nothing instantaneous.
Stern, meanwhile, finishes his gruesome task and there's a splash as the body goes overboard. He brings back a pile of goods. He hands what seems to be the coin purse to Raven without opening it separately from the rest of it, which he drops on the deck.
"He had a knife--" which Stern shows to Raven "--but that was his only weapon. And he had markings, tattoos, on the skin. No clue what they mean. Never seen anything like them."
Raven tucks the purse into her belt for the moment, still keeping a wary eye on the bucket. Just because it hasn't exploded doesn't mean it's safe - or, for that matter, that it won't explode soon. If the spoon dissolves or rusts or turns into a lump of unidentified goo, or for that matter if the bottom of the bucket dissolves, that will tell her something about the powder. And if none of those happen in the next few minutes, there's always the step of catching whatever was scuttling in the hold a few days ago and dropping that in the bucket to see what happens. Unidentified powders didn't make her happy; they never had.
"Think you'd know the marks if you saw them again?" she asks Stern as she examines the knife in his hand. "Seems a fair guess that there will be one or two more of those out there."
"Aye," Stern says, and makes shift to help hoist another body or two out of the water.
While Raven waits, the men haul up another body and Stern repeats his task. When he reports back, he has another horn of powder and another strange, fringed coin purse, which he gives to Raven. This man had tattoos of a similar design, but they weren't identical.
Meanwhile, the bucket has remained intact.
"See if you can find one without a horn to pull up," Raven tells him. "Let's see if those are any different."
She pulls the first pouch out of her belt and compares it with the new one. Fringed things always remind her of a rug her mother had insisted on hanging in her childhood bedroom, and she frowns at them. It's kind of... girly too, even if they'd both come off men.
At length, she opens the first one and shakes the contents out onto her palm.
It's not a money bag at all, as it turns out. There are objects in it: a couple stones of different kinds, one of which might sell for some money if it were polished up nicely, a feather that was probably very elegant before it was submerged in water, a small carving of an animal--maybe a bear?--that Raven can hardly guess what is, and some herbs, which, like the feather, are submerged in water.
She takes some time to examine these things while the men pull up another one. Once they get it on deck, Stern calls over, "Cap'n, you'll want to take a look at this one."
When Raven does, she can see that his gear is easy to recognize, at least for an Amber sailor. He's Rebman.
Raven pockets everything but the feather and the herbs, which she decides aren't worth saving. She tosses them over the side to join the rest of the waterlogged dead before heading over to the latest corpse.
"I'll be damned," she says. "Looks like we're closer to home than we thought, lads." She turns on her heel, locating her first mate, and calls across to him, "Make sure we're keeping an eye below the water as well as above, Mister Stone. And if anyone spots a landmark they know, don't be shy about calling it out.
"You lot," she adds, turning again to the body and the crew that had pulled it up, "back to work. Stern and I have it for now." She kneels next to the Rebman, indicating Stern should start on the other side with a gesture, and looks him over.
The crew disperses and heads back to work, or back to stations where they can look for the signs of Rebma. There's a palpable excitement among the crew now: hope that they'll make their way back to Amber soon.
Stern and Raven look over the the Rebman's body. He doesn't appear to have been killed by weapons. It's more like he died of falling rocks or some other crushing damage.
Raven frowns at the body in puzzlement. One killed by weapons, one killed by crushing... and presumably all three had come from the same place. And it could be that they all came from the source of the tidal wave. It's interesting, she admits to herself, and not a little baffling. "Well, he doesn't look like an officer," she says quietly. "Let's strip him and chuck him, same as the rest. How did the other one you pulled up die? Anybody that looks like an officer out there?"
Stern says, succinctly, "Battle. But I've been looking over the edge, and some are dying of both. I saw one bloke, one of the others--" by which he means not a Rebman "--who looks like he got crushed and squoze." Stern makes a wringing kind of a motion with his hands. "You know what that means?"
"A messy death," Raven answers drily. "I've a thought on the matter, but I wouldn't mind hearing yours first, seeing as how you're the expert on dead bodies around here. And if you've got another on why we're seeing the crushed and the battle-marked all floating on the same sea, I'll hear that as well, because I don't much like mine."
"Why the one that looked like something fell on him was like that, I don't know. But all squoze up like that means Tritons, Cap'n. The Rebmans brought the Tritons to war."
Legend has it that nobody has done such a thing since before Moire was Queen, perhaps not since the Tritons were bound to serve Rebma. Only in direst need would the Rebmans do such a thing. It speaks of disaster of an epic level.
Raven whistles lowly. "That's worse than what I'd come up with. Guess it was too much to hope we'd come home to what we'd left." She settles back on her heels, frowning at the corpse. Doom and war come to Rebma - but was it just Rebma, or would it be in Amber, too? Better keep a sharp eye out. Not - and her frown twists towards a smirk - that she was going to have to tell a ship full of homesick sailors looking for landmarks of home to keep a sharp eye out. If more than bodies get by, she'll be surprised.
And then, of course, there's what she has to assume is the other side of whatever's going on. She fishes out the two purses and the contents of the first and drops the handful on the dead body - since it's between them, it can serve as a table as well as it can rot. "Interesting coin purse you found. Stones and this thing," she pokes the carving, "and some bits of plant. I bet the other's the same. The closest I've seen to anything like this is that port months back where they were handing us shells instead of proper money." She regards Stern with her best prompting stare, although she's not hopeful; he probably would have mentioned recognising the other corpses by now.
Stern shakes his head. "If this is money, the hinterlands they came from were more broke than most of the stale backwaters Amber can't be arsed with." And it's true, no two things are alike. And it's not like they're carrying gems of quality that they could use as money in different Shadows.
It's reminiscent of the troubles in Amber after Oberon left, when Eric took the Regency and then the throne. When strange things came out of Shadow, and the rumor was that one of the Princes had sent them against his brother, or worse, when there were armies led by Bleys and Corwin that the navy had had to defend against. At least this lot seems to have been human.
"That we're seeing folks with clothes we don't know at all means the Royals were involved," Raven counters. "Just because Amber wouldn't give a rat's arse for it don't mean someone couldn't have got an army of them anyway. They brought in those ships full of whatsits, right? Don't suppose those things used proper money either."
She eyes the objects for a moment longer and then scoops them back into her pocket. "I bet you're right that it's not money, but why are they carrying pouches of trash and horns full of powder that don't seem to do anything?" She shakes her head, thoroughly puzzled by this. "Strip this one and throw him back, Stern. And see if you can spot me an officer or two; seems like we're sailing into a nasty bit of business, and it'd be nice to know what it is."
"Aye, Cap'n." He lets Raven retreat before he starts the business of stripping and dumping the body.
It takes about a half-glass for them to find a Rebman officer, or one with enough of him left to be worth saving. Miles appears at one point to report they think they have one, but he turns out to have been a meal for a shark, so there's not enough of him to be worth bringing up.
The officer's corpse doesn't seem to reveal much other than that he had a nasty encounter with a spear that ended his life. He's not carrying dispatches or any such.
One of the sailors, Vado, whose mother was a Rebman, approaches Raven to speak. When she permits, he says, "Captain, I've been watching the bodies. Not all those Rebmans are army. Either they summoned reserves or there were Rebmans on both sides."
Raven frowns at the information. Tritons plus non-army Rebmans and foreigners adds up to two very different pictures in her mind, and one of them is likely to be more hospitable than the other. How all this might be affecting Amber is another question, and one she has even less of an answer to so far. "You probably know more about Rebma than I do," she tells Vado. "Anything from before we left that might point to whether we're eyeballing the remains of an invasion or a civil war?"
Vado shakes his head in the negative. "There's been no civil strife in Rebma since before Prince Martin quit Rebma, and that's been more than a century. But if it's true what they say about Rebma and Amber, that the undersea city follows the landward?" He shrugs. "It's above my head, Captain."
"So, it's likely invasion." Raven nods. She understands the feeling, but she's not going to admit it quite yet. "Keep an eye out for anything else that strikes you as odd and let me know." She doesn't bother with a formal dismissal, but a dismissal it is, as she moves back to the group pulling up bodies. "Keep fishing until you find me a useful officer," she orders. And then she snorts in amusement; dead men weren't exactly useful, unless you were desperate or starving. "Or at least someone with papers. A courier'll do."
Papers are less likely in the undersea, but they might happen. Unfortunately, in Rebma, the information couriers had is likely to have died with them. They might get lucky and find a written message with the surfacers, though. The men redouble their efforts.
Assuming they have nothing to add, she turns on her heel, surveying the deck, and locates Stone. "How ready are we," she asks as she reaches him, "if trouble should come looking?"
"Close quarters combat, we're good for. Better than we were, if we take any decent weapons from the Rebmans and their foes." Stone flashes a smile at the idea of spare weapons he might leave in his enemies. "Ship to ship, depends on their weaponry. Thraxian fire might be a problem, but not so many carry that."
Raven nods. "Good enough. I'm not sure of what we're sailing into still, but it's as like as not an invasion into Rebma and who knows what into Amber beyond. It'd be best if we're keeping a sharp eye on the water as well as below." She smiles thinly in answer to his, not at all disagreeing with the sentiment. "We've got a few weapons so far, and some clothes for those that want it. Holler if I'm needed; I'm going to help fish 'em up."
"Aye, Captain."
From above a voice cries out. "Sails Ho!, Land Ho!" The man on the top of the mainsail is pointing in the direction of both the stream of corpses and the prow of the ship.
"What flags?" Raven calls back up.
Then, to Stone as she heads back down to Stern and the others, "Have someone run up the Amber flag, or what's left of it, anyway."
"Aye, Captain!"
As soon as she reaches the group, she directs briskly, "Strip 'im and ditch 'im, boys, and no more for now. Any of you need clothes or weapons, take from what we've pulled so far and then pass the rest out to those that need it. Miles, take the horns and stick them with the rest of the crap we've not made heads or tails of." As she speaks, she picks up the bucket she's left sitting all this time, fishes out the spoon, and dumps the rest of the contents overboard.
There is no effect from dumping the pail overboard.
Raven's men scramble to obey her orders as the news filters down from the crow's nest.
"There's a gate, Captain. And on the other side, they fly the flag of Gateway!"
Gateway is the end of the trading route, but there's a way back to Amber from there. The news is electrifying and the off-duty sailors pour up from belowdecks. They explode in cheers and cries of relief.
One of those cheers is Raven's. It's a relief to finally be sure she hasn't been leading them the wrong way. Rebmans on the water or not, it has to be easier sailing from here to home.
As the noise dies down, she moves among the off-duty men, detailing them in ones and twos as necessary to duck back belowdecks. There are some assorted little tasks that need taking care of, just in case there should be someone from Amber's Navy about: things to hide for now, mostly - trinkets and treasures from ships they had met along the way, most of which were obtained in ways the navy definitely would have frowned upon. None of the tasks take more than a few minutes, plenty of time to get back up on deck as familiar sights come into view; she hasn't the heart to chase them all below where they should be, anyway, not as long as they can stay out of the way.
The orders are welcome--except for any that involve staying below decks--and in a little while, they've sailed through the gate, leaving the bodies and their mysteries behind, and are headed toward the familiar docks of Gateway.
By long custom, a naval vessel like Raven's doesn't anchor at the docks proper, but in the harbor, and the Captain takes a rowboat ashore to settle papers and the like. The men are anxious for her to do so, because by custom, when the Captain returns, they'll find out about shore leave.
Raven can see the Harbormaster's men coming out on to greet her before she debarks from her own ship.
Raven ducks into the captain's cabin long enough to exchange her comfortable coat - pilfered off another captain some time back, albeit not a Navy captain - for the coat of her ship's former captain, which is a bit too small in the shoulders for her and perhaps a bit too large about the waist. She had never quite mastered enough sewing to fix it; she can patch holes in sails and people, and that's about it. Still, she doesn't figure it will hurt too much to at least look the part. She gathers up whatever else she thinks might be necessary while she's there.
Then she boards the rowboat and heads across, aiming for the nearest location to the Harbormaster's men to come ashore.
The Harbormaster's men wait for her boat to arrive and for her to step up onto the dock before greeting her and asking her for her ship's papers, which the Captain keeps in his cabin. The papers should tell where her vessel, the Vale of Garnath, has been.
Raven has kept the records as tidily as she can. The deaths of the captain and upper officers are noted over the space of several days, with a final note detailing the cause of the deaths as either disease or a poisoning; they weren't sure which, given the unusual surroundings, so they dumped any food reserved specially for the officers overboard just in case. Curiously, none of the regular sailors seems to have acquired the disease, if disease it was, and it didn't touch anyone of Raven's rank or lower. The officers were too weak to work up any official paperwork in their last days, but it is recorded that Raven's appointment as acting captain was witnessed by Stone and the master-at-arms, who died some time later during a brief stay ashore (that entry reads: "Locals are foul. Lost Hook. Left quickly."). Each journey through a rift is documented, along with observations of the new world taken as soon as they came out the other side; each landfall is noted, along with a few concise notes about the place. Salvage operations are also noted, always as a sad necessity to keep the ship provisioned. And, of course, the usual observations of wind and wave and weather are noted regularly.
In short: nothing to point to any acts of murder, mayhem, mutiny, or piracy, on board the Vale of Garnath or off. Nothing is forged, though there is almost certainly a fiction or three and a certain amount of omission.
The Harbormaster comes out to review the documents and haggle for the harbor fees himself. There's some hmming and hawwing about various points, but that doesn't seem too unusual to Raven based on what she knows. When they've agreed on the fee, he invites Raven into his office to weigh out the goods, also as usual. There will probably be a drink for her as well.
[How hard does Raven haggle over the fees?]
[Enough to make it look good, so long as they're not ridiculously outside the range of normal harbor fees; if they are, then enough to get them back down into that range. She's not terribly fussed by handing over money at this point. Shore leave, now - that, she'll haggle for in earnest if she needs to.]
Raven accepts the invitation, of course. The more smoothly this goes, the quicker she can find out what she needs to know and get back to the ship. The crew aren't the only ones looking forward to at least a few days on dry land.
When they enter the Harbormaster's office, the Harbormaster's men move to subdue Raven and her sailors. They outnumber the sailors, but aren't as strong as men of Amber, much less Captain Raven.
"I see the hospitality of Gateway is in full force today," Raven says curtly, the anger in her eyes hearkening back to a night on the open seas, when a plague of knives in the darkness hit the Vale of Garnath and left her temporarily captainless. "Come on, then."
And with that, she wades into their opponents, with every intention of subduing them first with fists or whatever comes to hand.
Following Raven's lead, her men also join in the attack. The Harbormaster's men subdue her sailors quickly, especially as more of the harbor patrol pour into the office from behind her.
Raven is made of heartier stuff than her sailors, though, and it takes a fair number of the Harbor patrol to come to a standoff, with Raven holding them off with a chair. Raven thinks she might have a chance of getting away until the Harbormaster points something at her.
It looks like a small version of the thing the invaders of Rebma were wearing. If she hadn't been sure of what it was, she is now. It's a weapon.
"Stand down and I'll spare your life, Captain."
"I'd rather it be done the other way 'round," Raven answers. "But for the sake of not being killed like a cornered rat, let's compromise. How about you let me in on what that thing in your hand is, and I'll consider not throwing this chair at you and making a break for it until you've done?" She isn't making any openly agressive moves, but she's definitely continuing to defend herself in case anyone else comes at her.
"It's a gun and it'll blow your head off if I fire it at you," the Harbormaster explains.
"Ah." Raven considers this for a moment, frowning. "And if I stand down, are you just going to kill me anyway?"
The Harbormaster shakes his head. "There are questions for those who come from Amber. I can't say what happens after that, but you'll not be killed by my men if you stand down."
"If you're expecting recent news, you'd do better let me go and keep hunting," Raven says flatly. "But fine. I always did prefer alive to dead. Better be quick about the questioning, though; I've a ship full of men that haven't had a decent shore leave in longer than I care to think about, and haven't been this near to Amber in longer. If this takes too long, I can't promise that they won't be taking action to find out what's gone wrong this time." She smiles thinly as she sets down the chair and steps back from it. "Last time they had to find me, they burnt down half the town."
"Burning down half of Gateway would be harder work than that," says the Harbormaster, keeping his gun generally pointed in Raven's direction, but no longer aimed straight at her, once she lowers the chair. Raven knows he's right; the magicians of Gateway can do a lot to stop that kind of thing.
[Assuming no further resistance]
Raven's men are separated from her and sent off to what she expects is the harbor gaol. She's taken to another building that seems to be a makeshift lockup of a slightly better sort. There's furniture, including a bed that someone brought in, and there's actual food and wine on the table, if mostly consumed.
The other resident of the room rises to greet Raven when she's locked in with him. He's dark-haired and bearded, unkempt, and pale. He moves like a man healing slowly from bad wounds. He's not in naval garb but even so has the gait of a sailor.
"Captain?" he asks. "Which fleet?"
"Aye, name's Raven," she answers agreeably. "Southern Fleet." She glances around briefly before settling her gaze back on him. "Hope you don't mind me being blunt, but - you been here a while and had a time of it, or were you half-dead when you got here?"
He throws back his head and laughs. "Oh, I doubt you have what they wanted from me." He offers his hand, and despite the slowness of it, his hand (if she takes it) proves strong.
"Marius. Once a captain of the Southern Fleet and now--" Marius trails off and smiles. "Now, I think, an enemy of the Gatwegians and their ill-chosen ally. Give me a day or two, and I'll be ready to break out of this place."
This seems unlikely to Raven unless the man's a Prince of Amber.
Raven squints at him for a moment. "Right," she says finally. "So you've been in here too long, then. Got any recent news from Amber? It's been a while."
Marius eyes Raven with some interest. "How long have you been gone? Were you lost before what they call the Sundering? Who was king when you left the Pearl of Cities last?"
"The what?" A beat, and then Raven snorts in amusement. "Well, that'll answer that question, I suppose." She frowns, clearly thinking, and finally says slowly, "Near as I can recall, who got to be king was still being sorted out when we left Amber. That was right after King Eric bit it. Heard later from a passing merchantman that the old king was back - that was before we got lost - but this is the first place we've been that we know since then, so I can't say if that was truth or not."
"Oberon did come back, but he's left us forever now. I was there when he was put in his grave, such as it is," Marius says. "Random is King now. The civil strife of the last war seems to be over; the princes will remain united for a time against external enemies. Some of them are dead, and others have left the city, for good, I believe. You'll find Amber much changed when we return--assuming I can travel with you for the price of showing you the path home." He tilts the end of the sentence up, not quite enough to make it a question.
Mad he may be, but he seems quite lucid.
"Yes, yes, of course," Raven says absently; she's clearly chewing over the rest of what he said. "Though I take no responsibility for what might happen if you lead us astray." She grabs a chair, turning it around to sit in it backwards, and eyes her cellmate again once she's settled. "Sit down, will ya? You look like you might mean to fall over if you stay up too long, and I have questions. What do you mean, 'much changed'?"
Marius takes the other chair in the room and sits down with a bit more care. He seems to be favoring one arm in particular. "When the armies came back from the far end of the universe, after we defeated the foes of the Black Road, we found that there had been an earthquake under Kolvir. The castle was damaged and there was fire and destruction in the city.
"There were other changes. The sea paths have changed--but I'm sure you've noticed that."
"A bit, yes," Raven answers sourly. "If we're counting 'lost for the last few years' as noticing." Drumming her fingers lightly on the back of the chair, she considers her growing list of questions and settles on, "What's this 'far end of the universe' crap? How did the docks fare - and the Navy, for that matter? Oh, and why in the name of the seven hells of Kari-Hum did we follow a line of dead Rebmans into Gateway?"
"The far end of the universe is the place the Black Road sprang from. We went to the other end and defeated the army that sent us there. But it cost us the lives of many good men, and some of the Princes and Princesses as well. And King Oberon." He pauses there, as if that death means more than the rest somehow. "The measures he took for the defense of the realm--for its salvation--wiped the sea paths away. Yours wasn't the only ship stranded. Every vessel that was at sea, be she navy or merchant marine or mere fishing boat--was lost."
Given what Raven knows about the size of the navy, and what she knows about their rotations, the scale of the loss is awful. In the merchant marine, it's likely to be even worse, since they ship out as quickly as possible to keep from losing money on idle cargo space.
Economically, Amber must have been destroyed.
Raven whistles lowly. "That's - " and she stops there, frowning. A little silence falls, and when she speaks again, her voice is very thoughtful. "Keep that little tidbit under your hat for now, all right? Not that I don't think you're telling me the truth and all" - which she isn't entire sure of, given that he seems to think he'll be perfectly fine in a few days - "but I need to come up with a good way to break it to the lads." 'A good way,' of course, being a way that won't cause a riot or a mutiny. "Just how bad is it?"
Marius laughs.
"Bad enough that they're abandoning the city in favor of a place Random founded and another Corwin founded. And the shadow paths that are re-forming lead to Xanadu and Paris now. I've heard that some of the merchant marine ships have found their way back. So might you have, if you'd not stumbled into this trap first."
"I'm pretty sure it was luck that brought us here," Raven observes. "We've been following holes to other places the whole damned time. And we're going to Amber." That is a distinctly stubborn statement. "Ain't no reason to head elsewhere when we don't know if our families are still there or not." She taps her fingers against the chair for a moment. "So Random and Corwin are running their own kingdoms, huh? I suppose that means they don't have the whole kingship deal sorted, then. Who's the Navy gone with?"
"Caine." He says this as if it's self-evident. "Gerard stayed in Amber through the war, as Regent, and when the earthquake they call the Sundering took Kolvir, it broke his back. He lived, but he gets about in a wheeled chair now. So Caine is the only admiral left, and the Navy follows him.
"He swore to Random, but Random treats him like Julian now: with the deference that comes from knowing his brother has a military he can't match."
"You're just full of sunshine." Raven shakes her head. "That's a damned shame, about Gerard. Not that I've got problems with Admiral Caine, mind, but I've been Southern Fleet my whole service, and I've never seen or heard anything but that he's done right for us. I don't have that kind of intel about Northern affairs. Never had much need to ask, to tell the truth. I'm guessing that's public knowledge?"
Marius has to stop for a moment to think about that. "It is, if only because he ruled Amber for five years from his chair." There's another pause, and he says, "Tell me about the bodies."
"There was a tsunami, and then there were corpses," she supplies, with the air of one who wishes that this was the weirdest thing in recent memory. "Lots of Rebmans and lots of... well, not-Rebmans. Didn't look like anyone we'd expect to see near Amber or Rebma, and carrying things I still haven't quite made sense of. Knives and such, I get - but they had these little bags full of rocks and trash." She pats her coat pocket and then shakes her head at its emptiness. "Other coat, or I'd show you. Our best guess is that there was some sort of invasion or civil war...?"
Marius is nodding slowly as she speaks. "So he did invade. Did he win or lose, I wonder?" He blinks a couple of times; his words are slow and seem aimed mostly at himself, not Raven. "Whatever happened, it's beyond changing now," he adds, and refocuses on Raven. "We need to rest. Tomorrow I may be well enough to get us out of here."
Raven holds up a finger. "Wait. He who? 'Cause I thought you said all the princes were getting along for now."
"The royal family as we knew it is. I suppose," Marius says, thinking about it, tasting the words, "I don't like to think of Huon as family." Refocusing on Raven, he adds, "Huon is one of Oberon's bastards. The Gatwegians have allied with him. And if the battle in Rebma is already over, we need to get out of here sooner rather than later."
"Glad they're not my family," Raven remarks off-handedly. "I've got enough trouble with the one I've got. Thanks, though; that explains some things. Gives me a bit to chew on, too. One more thing, before you go back to resting - anything I need to know about the grub around here?" She smirks. "Not that I'm a suspicious soul, mind, but I didn't exactly volunteer for this." She waves a hand in the direction of the door.
"They haven't tried to poison me, if that's what you mean. Ensorcel me, yes." Marius gives her a smile whose sanity is questionable. "Poison me, no. But if Huon's been taken, it's only a matter of time until something unpleasant happens."
Raven laughs. "Story of my life, that. I'll see if I can't come up with a plan or two while you nap; I'm not ready to rest yet."
Marius gets up and retreats to the bed, lying down for his nap. Soon enough he's asleep, and not long after that, dinner is brought, or at least shoved through the tray slot, such as it is. It's stew, and hearty, and there's a hell of a lot of it more than Raven thinks she and Marius ought to be able to eat together.
There's also wine, but only a bottle of that, and a lot of water.
Raven mutters, "Huh," under her breath as she examines the meal, but after a moment she shrugs. If her - their, she amends with a glance at her questionable cellmate - captors want to waste food, so be it. They must just have more food than sense.
She takes a generous portion of the stew for herself and, bowl in hand, moves around the room as she eats. Not that she had any particular qualms about inspecting the place while Marius was awake, but there had been questions to ask, so while he was asleep was as good a time as any. She's mostly interested in what's there and what might be turned to their advantage if he's serious about an escape attempt in a few days at the moment, but she'll stop and examine anything else that seems interesting.
The makeshift jail seems pretty solid. It's a stone building with windows that have been barred so Raven can't break them and escape easily. The door was barred from outside when she arrived, and she remembers hearing the bar fall into place, but when Raven tries it, she finds that she can't make it budge. It's probably Gatwegian magic of some sort.
Well, it is a prison. Raven chuckles to herself. It wasn't really a surprise that they'd have to wait for the door to open to get it. After all, it didn't make any sense to do half a job if you meant to keep someone in. Particularly if one of the someones believes himself a Royal. Speaking of which... She saunters in the direction of the bed, pausing a short distance away to address the sleeping occupant loudly. "Food's here."
Marius is a light enough sleeper that that's enough to wake him; he may have already been partway awake from the look of him. He makes an "mmph" noise and sits up. "Thanks," he says after a moment, rubbing his eyes in a fashion that might almost be described as boyish.
Then he comes over to the table and inspects his dinner, nodding at the state of the table. "You've eaten?" he asks Raven.
Raven nods. "Figured you could use a few more minutes," she says. "It's not cold yet."
There's a moment's pause, and then she adds, "I took a bit of a look around." She shoves her hands in her coat pockets and jerks her head in the direction of the door. "Tidy little prison we've found ourselves in. I don't suppose you're saying you'll be fine in a few days means you can do anything about barred doors what should give a little and don't, does it?"
"If you can force the door, physically, I should be able to take care of the rest of it."
Marius serves himself generously, and it becomes apparent why they brought so much food: he eats for two. At least.
He looks surprisingly better after that nap, too. Or maybe he just seemed worse off than he was when Raven was brought in.
"I can try, but no promises until I have," she answers. "Is that the grand plan, then? Shove the door open and make a run for it?"
Marius grins and nods at Raven. "The old plans are the best sometimes. We'll need to arm ourselves, but I think we can arrange for that by the time we get to your ship. It seems likely enough." The grin curls a bit higher, as if Marius has made a particularly funny private joke.
"Huon's the only one I worry about being able to take me blade to blade. And without his backing, the Gatwegians will fold against Amber. Or Xanadu in any case. Your arrival is particularly convenient for everyone involved, Captain. The Gatwegians get to say I recovered and escaped, you get to go home, and I get to leave before Huon gets back." The smile has turned sourly cynical now.
In no wise has the discussion impeded Marius's prodigious intake of dinner.
Raven laughs. "Well, if you're not too fussy about being down a chair if this fails, we can have some passable weapons to start with.
"And before you go calling me 'convenient', I have two complications. One, two of my men came ashore with me, and I'm guessing they're in the regular jail with the rest of the miscreants. I won't be leaving here without them.
Marius glances up from his dinner. "That's a minor problem unless the Gatwegians have some reason to put them in special holding. Like this." He gestures around their chamber with his fork. "We can let all their prisoners out and keep them busy that way. And the other complication is?"
"Well, the last I saw of the papers and the log was the Harbormaster's office," she says. "And I ain't leaving without those either."
"We'll get them." He sounds remarkably unconcerned about both items. Either he's crazy or he really is something special. Instead of worrying about that, he changes the subject. "So, Captain Raven of the Southern Fleet, I've told you what I know of Amber. Tell me your tale while I finish this fine repast our jailers have left us with."
"Mine, or my ship's?" Raven answers, and then waves a hand with a thin smile. "Never mind - the one isn't as interesting as you'd think. We've wandered, seen some strange things - just trying to get home. I already told you about the corpses; did I mention the tsunami before that? Or the fog so black, it made a crow's wing look as white as a lady's arm? The lightning eaters of Orchid Hill? The fish men of the third tier of the seven hells of Spak?" She snorts. "Half of it sounds absurd, and the rest like we've been to sea too long."
"Oh, you might be surprised what I'd believe. I've had an adventure or two myself in my Navy days, and since then I've had a few more. Tell me about the tsunami. And tell me about how you got lost," Marius suggests.
"Not much to tell on the tsunami front." She shrugs. "We had only been in the area a short time, and we were headed for a rift we'd heard about from a passing ship. All of a sudden, there was a big wave. Decided to head for the source once it passed, and that's when we encountered the dead bodies. We may have found Gateway before we actually found the center - but gotta admit I'm not sure how you'd find the center, so we could have passed it and not known.
"Now, as for getting lost." Raven frowns, thinking. "Near as I can recollect, it started with a storm. I know it ended up a hurricane fit to wipe out half a country, like that one twenty years back that just missed Karboras and flattened that neighbor of it that I can never remember the name of. Don't matter, it's not like we dealt with them, then or now. I'd just bunked down for the night and missed the first part; by the time they woke me and I got on deck, we were somewhere with a green sea that boiled Red Jones when he went over the side." She shakes her head. "At least, we figure he was boiled; we hadn't seen him match his hair before. We were set to fish him up and see if he still lived when the sky went silver and the rain started - rain like nails, hard and cold. The sea went blue, just as sudden-like, and whatever gods might or might not have been in that place must have decided they didn't like us, because the blue sea's rain fair near drowned us right there on deck. It got stranger after that, but I didn't have much time to look - the weather got worse, and there's more to do in a storm than gawk, ain't there? And I weren't captain then, I was bosun. Didn't make captain until later. When the storm stopped, we were near some little green islands, just big enough to have something that looked like a camel, ate like a bird, and tasted like someone'd boiled shoe leather in garlic."
"Was there a moment when it all just seemed to stop?" Marius asks, watching her intently now. "When it just seemed as if there were nothing?"
"Maybe..?" she answers, drawing out the answer slowly. "There might have been. Things was a bit chaotic at the time, if you follow me. There might've been something like that, some time between the storm and the eye of it, but I don't rightly know if I could say if it's what you're asking for or not." She pauses, clearly still chewing over the question. "It was the stillest damned eye of a storm I've ever been in, I can say that much. Full moon up, not a breeze to be found, and water like glass - the fancy stuff what has no bubbles or flaws."
Marius nods slowly. "That could be it. That could be very well be it." There's a pause, and he adds, "I was just wondering."
Raven gives him a slightly skeptical look, but lets the subject drop.
Marius finishes his dinner at long last. He really did eat all of that food. He looks quite a bit healthier than he did when Raven came in and he seems to be moving more steadily than he was when Raven entered the cell.
"I think I could do this," he says. "Are you ready?"
"As charming as it is to stand around watching someone eat, this ain't exactly my idea of a good time," Raven answers. "I'm ready."
Marius smiles as he comes to his feet and moves to the door. It bodes ill for the Gatwegians.
He gestures to Raven to get into place. "You force it, and I'll deal with their magic. It should come free quickly enough."
Raven positions herself appropriately and then nods. "Ready." It has not escaped her notice that she'll be first through the door and first to find out if there are guards out there (and how many). Not that she blames him, but it's nice to know that her fellow prisoner is self-serving enough to let someone else be attacked first. It's not the most charitable of thoughts, but given some of his claims so far, it doesn't seem entirely undeserved.
Last modified: 11 May 2010