• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Duty is the flame in me.”

“Yes. And when you fail it, or worse, when it fails you, there is nothing left.”

“No.”

“I shed my armor, Sir Neil. I did not drown. I will find better things to fill my life with, better reasons to rise one day to the next.”

“But you haven’t found them yet.”

“Now you shoot at my target.”

“It seems only fair.”

“You’ve missed,” she said. “I’ve no longer any target to shoot at.” She came and sat by him again.

“I do not care who you are, Sir Neil. I do not care whom you have served. But I would like you to serve me. I need someone like you, someone I can trust.”

Neil smiled faintly. “If I betray one master, how could you ever trust me not to betray you?”

She nodded. “I suppose you have a point. I was hoping you wouldn’t make it.”

“But you’d already thought of it.”

“Of course. But it seems to me you have been the one betrayed, not the other way around.”

“The one I serve has never betrayed me.”

“That isn’t what you mumble in your sleep,” Swanmay said. “I will go now. Think about what I’ve said.”

“I do not think I will change my mind. I beg you once more—let me off at the next port.”

“If you decline my offer, I will put you off when you are well enough to travel, though not before,” she said.

He watched her leave, and through the open door heard the squeal of gulls. He waited a moment, then, ignoring the pain in his side, he went to the porthole.

The sapphire sea danced beneath the sun, and less than a league away, he made out a coast.

Then it wasn’t a trick. If their course had been set for Paldh, they would be in deep water. No island in the southern Lier Sea was as big as that.

He sank back down onto the bed, wondering what he mumbled in his sleep. Or had that been a guess? The queen hadn’t betrayed him, but . . . he did feel betrayed. She had sent him away from her, and she was surrounded by a dangerous court. If she were attacked, there would be nothing he could do. He had begged her to keep him near.

But he had been relieved when she finally did send him away, because part of him felt her death would be on her own head, that he wouldn’t be responsible. In Vitellia, he had felt truly alive again, actually competent, facing foes he could see and fight, even if they didn’t die when he cut them. Even that was easier than the knife-bladed shadows of the court.

Serving Swanmay had its appeals, and part of him yearned for it.

You have forgotten me, Fastia had told him.

I haven’t.

Have, will. It is all the same.

There were tears on his face, and a hundred yards of pain knotted beneath his chest began to loosen and uncoil, as he turned his face to the bedclothes and cried.

She came back six bells later, when the sun had gone into the wood beyond the world. He pretended he was asleep, and she did not try to wake him. He listened to her settle on the cot beyond the screen, heard her shift and toss for a while before her breathing softened and become shallow and regular. Then he rose, holding his bandaged side, and shuffled across the wooden deck.

The hatch was latched but not locked, and he cracked it and peered out. The deck was mostly quiet and only faintly lit by a moon he could not see. Two men were standing by the wheel, speaking in soft accents. Another stood against the steerboard rail a few kingsyards away. There was no one to backboard, however.

Keeping low, he pushed the door a little wider.

He nearly hit a man with it. He sat just beyond the hatch, a spear across his knees.

She was right. She needed better guardians. But Neil couldn’t be one of them.

No one called out as he approached the side of the boat. He strained in the moonlight, trying to make out whether or not the land he had seen earlier was still close. He thought he saw distant lights, though it could have been sparks from the fire in his side.

With no further hesitation, he slipped over the rail.

He hit the water with a splash. The cold shocked him, but he managed to turn onto his back and begin stroking and