One of my other junior officers was conspicuously failing to look busy: Banneret Johann von Zauberer, a junior thaumaturge who had signed onto the company when we passed through Vindobona, was staring at the show Teushpa was putting on as if the two of them were back in the famed city of books attending a fascinating lecture hall demonstration rather than standing aboard a ship full of mercenaries sailing through a city that had collapsed into the chaos of a civil war. Though Johann was well born with a fine formal education in magical matters, the student thaumaturge had not impressed me with his capabilities as a soldier or as an officer.
Teushpa’s left hand was dancing in the air; his right hand gripped Gulben’s hand firmly, though the sudden jolt of the collision between our bronze ram and a submerged piling had passed and she was no longer in any danger of falling except by choice. Next to them, a strange expression was passing over the face of the captured ensign, his eyes flickering with a ruddy light similar to the one I’d seen in Gulben’s eyes before when she called on her magic, the pupils dilated. From the color, I deduced that Gulben had placed a new enchantment on the ensign, though the red glow was not very consistent: The hair-thin ruddy strands of magic coursed irregularly with gaps, as if twisted around a thicker invisible structure.
If that invisible structure was the ensign’s will, I thought to myself, then surely Gulben’s enchantments could not master it given the sparsity of the threads of her magic compared to the invisible structure they were wrapped around. However, while the pattern of gaps in the weavings of the dozens of threads making up the heartbeat-long discoloration spanning the finger-width of the ensign’s irises in the prow of the quinquereme was painfully obvious from my position on the similarly elevated aftcastle of the ship, interpreting the reason for the size of the gaps relative to the threads was beyond my limited education in magical matters. When the twisted ruddy strands of magic sank deeper into the ensign’s dilated pupils and out of sight, the ensign’s mouth drew shut and his heels clicked together as his hand snapped up to salute in the general direction of Gulben as she sagged against Teushpa. The captured officer’s will had clearly been dominated quite completely by Gulben’s magic.
“Sorry, sir,” the helmsman told me, drawing my attention away from Teushpa’s theatrics and Gulben’s potent magical working against our prisoner. “With the fog coming on so unnaturally suddenly, it’s lucky we came that close to stopping cleanly at the slip.”
“Nonsense,” I said, speaking over my shoulder as I rushed to the fore end of the ship.
The helmsman’s utterance was nonsense thrice over. First, the helmsman was not the person most directly responsible for the operation of the flux engine that drove the oars; he was responsible for steering alone. Second, we had arrived fairly precisely where it had looked we should; the river water was opaque with mud and debris, the unfortunately positioned piling being as invisible as if it had been behind a wall. Third, the day remained quite clear, much as the weather had been for most of our journey; the wind and weather had been favorable to us in most of our sea journey from Venice to Tanais, the notable exceptions being occasions when Fyodor’s weather-witch wife was in a poor mood from being robbed of sleep by their infant son.
The helmsman did not need to invent some unbelievable lie about the sudden appearance of supernatural fog in order to explain a mistake that hadn’t been made and would have been Vitold’s fault if it had been made at all. While I would have been happier to pause to elaborate on this multiplicity of negatives, I felt my presence was urgently needed on the dock and so restrained myself to speaking but the singular word before rushing off to attend to those matters.
A squad of uniformed men armed with cutlasses and a mixture of blunderbusses and pistols had poured out of the building adjacent to the dock. They were looking every which way as they slowly advanced in the general direction of the ship, peering about for unseen (or difficult to see) enemies. Their uniforms were styled in the same manner as the ensign’s, marking them as soldiers in the service of the Ministry of Harbor Security. Since they did not look directly at the ship very often in the indirect course of their approach, I could only conclude that they presumed our galley to be filled with allies, but close proximity would soon puncture that presumption.
I doubted that the House of the Seventeenth Heir-Son had more true allies than enemies; however many allies by circumstance they possessed, the rhythmic patterns of gunshots that had reached my ears as we voyaged upriver were characteristically irregular, usually one to four immediate shots followed by an escalated exchange between groups of soldiers carrying more than a dozen usable barrels of firearms each. (It is difficult to tell the difference between three shots from a matched set of pistols and three shots from a triple-barreled pistol if one has not encountered the particular weapon before.)
In other words, hostility seemed frequently presumed in the surrounding streets, and based on the relative proportion of hasty gunshots that were followed promptly by a larger escalated two-sided or three-sided exchange, the presumption was warranted more often than not. The Ministry of Harbor Security must, I thought to myself, have something resembling a monopoly on riverine galleys, or else were allied with the navy. They must also, in turn, have enemies versed in the arts of invisibility, which is an art I have heard of but never seen practiced. Perhaps I should say noticed rather than seen—after all, invisibility is what is not seen.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
However, in spite of my urgent intentions to race quickly to shore without sparing the breath for more than a single quickly spouted word, our imprisoned ensign was youthful, unencumbered by armor, and had a head start of several dozen paces of crowded and cluttered galley decking. I had not reached the forecastle when he leapt overboard to greet the incoming soldiers. Teushpa, moving at a more sedate pace, had climbed most of the way down a rope ladder to the harbor by the time I reached the forecastle of the ship.
“I ask your aid,” the ensign said, speaking and looking in a direction that did not quite match the direction of the advancing squad, his eyes focused on a point not far from his own face. Then he paused, licking his lips twice.
My heart leapt into my throat as I squeezed past Katya and carefully stepped around Gulben, as I did not want to disturb the intent concentration of the latter of the two redheads. Presumably, Gulben was attempting to regain control of the rogue ensign through the enchantment she had placed upon him, which was why he had fallen silent.
Then Teushpa waved his hand, and that motion was enough to draw the attention of the soldiers of the Ministry of Harbor Security, who turned to face him directly nearly as one, their faces showing as much surprise at his calm, confident demeanor as if he had appeared out of thin air. Since the Cimmerian lieutenant was standing behind the ensign and surprised armed men have a certain predictable pointing reflex, this meant that the ensign suddenly found himself facing an array of muzzles.
With a nervous swallow, the ensign continued speaking as I landed on the dock with a heavy thump, mage-tempered Corsican brass boots leaving dents in the wood. “May I introduce Lord Igor V—”
“You may not,” Teushpa said, cutting in abruptly. “In case there are any spies listening.”
While I felt certain that Teushpa’s claim to magical talent was a fraud, it occurred to me that my Cimmerian lieutenant was blessed with a remarkable facility for acting as if he were someone or something other than who and what he was. It also occurred to me that as the holder of a real officer’s commission within the army of the Golden Empire, he likely possessed the knowledge needed to bluff his way out of a fight.
The soldier with the most decorated hat—or perhaps not a soldier, as once she came more fully into view it was evident she lacked a cuirass and was wearing a black dress trimmed with purple beneath an oversized soldier’s jacket—lowered her triple-barreled pistol and pushed down the barrel of the blunderbuss next to her. Her nose and diminutive stature put me in mind of a certain deceased major who had, arguably, been my de facto commanding officer. “Cousin. I should have recognized you,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I thought the Wallachians had the end of you along with the general at the end of your leash.”
Teushpa pasted a theatrical expression of disappointment on his face. “My dear,” he began and then fluttered his tongue silently for a second before continuing. “You surely expected I would not return as I promised?”
“You promised very little other than pressed flowers and, more lately, an option on the echoed glories of General Spitignov in place of my brother,” the woman said, propping her fists on her hips, the pistol seeming forgotten in her grip. “And my grandfather has given the same answer. Someone from the Second, or the Twelfth, or the Ninth, or an unbound mage of true talent would be a far better choice. We will remain friends, Igoryok—so, what do you want that your dear friend Yarka is allowed to give you?”
Teushpa’s eyebrows shot up. “My dearest cousin Yarka,” he said, then paused a moment, gauging the woman’s reaction before continuing. “You know what I truly want…” He hesitated, glancing back in my direction.
Behind me, Gulben whispered under her breath, and the ensign spoke, echoing her whispers. I braced myself, expecting the soldiers in front of me would hear the whispers matching the ensign’s words and react violently to the evidence that one of their officers was under malicious magical control.
“Milord and milady, before milord became distracted by your beauty—we are here to collect supplies,” the ensign said. “To travel upriver a substantial distance.”
The woman flushed, then paused, calculations visibly moving across her face as she digested the new information. “Oh. I know your mission. We have fewer seized cargoes here than usual; trade has been light, and the bribes have been generous.”
“Thank you,” Teushpa said. “If you wish, you may join us.”
“No,” the woman said, curtly and firmly. Then she took a deep breath, continuing in a more diplomatic tone. “I am needed here.” She shook her head, muttering under her breath. “Of course they would take the minister upriver before we laid siege to their capital department… I should not be surprised; everyone knows that the Seventeenth has its greatest strength in the capital district…”
Teushpa studiously ignored her whispers. I turned to look back at my soldiers gathered on the deck of my ship and then realized I was standing in front of the rope ladder that marked the most convenient point of exit from the ship. As we were stationary, birds had begun to gather, crows perching on the masts and sails. Remembering the baseless rumors that had circulated among my men about deserters being torn apart by crows, and seeing that nobody had come forward to leave the company in Tanais, I decided to give a speech, wishing the departing soldiers a warm farewell, reassuring them that I bore them no ill will, and reminding them that we were well beyond anyone’s originally contracted term of service.
As I spoke, the ship was loaded from the side by a steam-powered crane lowering barrels of ale, blocks of salt, sacks of flour, and sides of beef. As the last halved steer was lowered into place, I fell silent, running out of words.
Georg tugged delicately at my sleeve with one hand; she held the blue ledger in her other arm.
“Oh. Yes, Georg, you may call the men forward to receive their due pay,” I said, realizing suddenly that there had been a promise of due pay upon their release.
“Sir, what I was trying to tell you about earlier—nobody wanted to get off here,” Georg said. “Not in a city at war with itself.”
I cocked my head to one side, hearing what sounded like a cannon loaded with grapeshot fired perhaps three or four hundred yards away (echoes from buildings are rather irregular and make it hard to be precise), followed by the lighter crackle of arquebus fire and the pained screams of dying men.
Accidental War Mage series) is out on and and ! The audiobook has the same award-winning narrator as (), and I'm still on some level surprised that my first novel has earned itself a full professional audiobook production. But it is! Hopefully, these first two books do well enough that the third book also gets a full audiobook treatment...