The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [2]
Fa Pan gasped against the shock. His good arm groped for the rail to hold him upright. He managed to focus on Yu Mao. His former colleague was surrounded by pirates, just another one of their number. "Why?" Fa Pan choked. Yu Mao spat.
"You wouldn't understand." He lunged again, spear out.
Fa Pan threw himself backward onto the ship's rail- over the ship's rail. For a heartbeat, it felt as if he were balancing on the narrow wood, caught by hands of the spirits between ship and sea. Then the balance shifted and he fell.
He hit the water hard and sank deep. Light vanished, choked off by the night and the dark water. Already cooling with the season, the water had been further chilled by the sorceress's spells. The shock of it stung his wound and he screamed, a lungful of air exploding into a cloud of pale bubbles. The cold brought a kind of calm as well, though, a soothing, weightless suspension. Fa Pan hung there for a moment, eyes half-closed, mind half-dazed, as the last of his air trickled away.
And when his lungs ached with emptiness, he opened his eyes, gazed up at the glow of the sea's surface, and drew in cold water.
Family legend held that his great-great grandmother, a famous beauty, had attracted the notice of a spirit of the bright little river that ran through her hometown. Her dalliance with the spirit had not been long, but it had brought the touch of the spirits to her bloodline-a touch that included the ability to breathe water as easily as air. Fa Pan hadn't made much of the strange ability since he had been a child; most of the time, it was easier to live without revealing himself as one of the spirit folk. Certainly he had never told Yu Mao. That ignorance was probably the only reason the murdering traitor had let him get as close to the rail as he had before striking. Fa Pan was safe in the water-for the moment, anyway.
He kicked his feet, propelling himself back up to the surface, and lifted his head cautiously into the air. The sounds coming from the ship's deck now were shouts of triumph, punctuated only briefly by wails from the survivors. The battle was over. The pirates had won. Yu Mao still stood beside the rail, as if surveying the results of his treachery. He wasn't alone for long. A second figure joined him-the pirate sorceress. The two embraced. Fa Pan recognized her now. He had seen Yu Mao with her and that wicked-looking halfling in Telflamm! Traitor to Lady Swan, traitor to his companions, traitor to Shou Lung-for the love of a woman? He choked back a groan.
Yu Mao had been right. He didn't understand. But if Yu Mao had wanted to destroy everything and everyone that might send news of his treachery back to his homeland, he hadn't quite succeeded.
Trying to board Lady Swan again or to sneak aboard the pirate vessel would be suicide. He was wounded and the pirates had him outnumbered. There was no way he could exact retribution on Yu Mao himself. The goods of the trade expedition were only silk and spices-losing them was nothing. His life and his witness to Yu Mao's treachery were more important. There were those who had to be told of what happened here. The choice between shame and retribution would be theirs.
Fa Pan let himself sink back into the comfort of the water. They had glimpsed the northern coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars earlier in the day. His wounded arm dragging awkwardly, Fa Pan began the long struggle for shore.
CHAPTER 1
Month of Hammer, Year of Rogue
Dragons (1373 DR)
Xhe door of the Wench's Ease slammed open without warning-slammed open so hard that it almost tore off its worn hinges. A crowd came pouring out of the tavern and into the cold winter night. No, not a crowd. A mob. Women and men, fishing folk of Span-deliyon, shouting loud enough that the screams of the thin man being dragged roughly out of the Ease were barely audible. "No!" he pleaded. "No! It was an accident! It was an accident, I swear-"
His screams ended in a thick grunt as someone punched him hard in the