‘Oh, and how many on the deck there know how to swim? Any?’ She shook her head, blinking salty spray from her eyes. ‘What would you have us do, crash this damned thing onto the strand? Pray to the shore that we can slip through the shoals untouched? Dear Watch, would you curl up in the lap of the gods?’
Bearded jaw bunched, cabled muscles growing so tight she waited to hear bone or teeth crack, then he looked away. ‘What would you have us do, then?’
‘Get the damned fools to bail, Yedan. We get any lower and the next wave’ll roll us right over.’
Yet she knew it was too late. Whatever grand schemes of survival for her people she had nurtured, deep in her heart, had come untethered. By this one storm. It had been madness, flinging this coast-creeping ferry out beyond the shore, even though the only truly dangerous stretch had been… this one, here, north from Third Maiden Isle to the lee of Spyrock Island. The only stretch truly open to the western ocean.
The gale lifted loose suddenly, slammed a fist into the port side of the craft. A mast splintered, the sail billowing round, sheets snapping, and like a huge wing the sail tore itself loose, carrying the mast with it. Rigging snatched up hapless figures from the deck and flung them skyward. A second mast toppled, this one heavy enough to tug its sail downward. Yet more tinny screams reaching through the howl.
The ferry seemed to slump, as if moments from plunging into the deep. Yan Tovis found herself gripping the lines as if they could pull her loose, into the sky-as if they could take her from all of this. The Queen commands. Her people die.
At least I will join-
A shout from Yedan Derryg, who had gone forward into the chaos of the deck, a shout that reached her.
And now she saw. Two enormous ships had come upon them from astern, one to each side, heaving like hunting behemoths, their sails alone dwarfing the ferry pitching in their midst. The one to port stole the gale’s fierce breath and all at once the ferry righted itself amidst choppy waves.
Yan Tovis stared across, saw figures scrambling about side-mounted ballistae, saw others moving to the rail beneath huge coils of rope.
Pirates? Now?
The crew of the ship to starboard, she saw with growing alarm, was doing much the same.
Yet it was the ships that most frightened her. For she recognized them.
Perish. What were they called? Yes, Thrones of War. She well remembered that battle, the lash of sorceries ripping the crests of waves, the detonations as Edur galleys disintegrated before her very eyes. The cries of drowning warriors-
Ballistae loosed their robust quarrels, yet the missiles arced high, clearing the deck by two or more man-heights. And from them snaked out ropes. The launching had been virtually simultaneous from both ships. She saw those quarrels rip through the flimsy sails, slice past rigging, then the heavy-headed missiles dipped down to the seas in between.
She saw as the ropes were hauled taut. She felt the crunching bite of the quarrels as they lifted back clear of the water and anchored barbs deep into the gunnels of the ferry.
And, as the wind pushed them all onward now, the Thrones of War drew closer.
Massive fends of bundled seaweed swung down to cushion the contact of the hulls.
Sailors from the Perish ships scrambled along the lines, many of them standing upright as they did so-impossibly balanced despite the pitching seas-and dropped down onto the ferry deck with ropes and an assortment of tools.
The ropes were cleated to stanchions and pills on the ferry.
An armoured Perish emerged from the mass of humanity on the main deck and climbed her way to where stood Yan Tovis.
In the language of the trader’s tongue, the woman said, ‘Your craft is sinking, Captain. We must evacuate your passengers.’
Numbed, Yan Tovis nodded.
‘We are sailing,’ said the Perish, ‘for Second Maiden Isle.’
‘As were we,’ Yan Tovis responded.
A sudden smile, as welcome to Yan Tovis’s eyes as dawn after a long night. ‘Then we are most well met.’
Well met, yes. And well answered. Second Maiden Fort. The silent Isle has been conquered. Not just the Malazans then. The Perish. Oh, look what we have awakened.
He’d had months to think things over, and in the end very little of what had happened back in the Malazan Empire surprised Banaschar, once Demidrek of the Worm of Autumn. Perhaps, if seen from the outside, from some borderland where real power was as ephemeral, as elusive, as a cloud on the face of the moon, there would be a sense of astonishment and, indeed, disbelief. That the mortal woman commanding the most powerful empire in the world could find herself so… helpless. So bound to the ambitions and lusts of the faceless players behind the tapestries. Folk blissfully unaware of the machinations of politics might well believe that someone like Empress Laseen was omnipotent, that she could do entirely as she pleased. And that a High Mage, such as Tayschrenn, was likewise free, unconstrained in his ambitions.