Witness my great restraint that I hadn’t.
So Kara and Sondra’s abrupt entry came as a relief, despite their tense expressions. I lifted my head from the tally sheet I’d been studying. Numbers I could understand. Though no amount of adding and subtracting would change our fleet of fishing vessels and pleasure boats into a navy able to carry an army of fifty thousand to attack and subdue Calanthe.
Ambrose could prattle on about how I’d be seducing the flower queen and fulfilling magical prophecies, but we had to get past her defenses first. On several levels, I thought humorlessly to myself. Still, the first would be the physical defenses of the island. I sincerely doubted I could just sail into Euthalia’s harbor and say, Hello, forget your imperial fiancé and marry me, a dog of an escaped prisoner instead.
I doubted any of this absurd plan would work, regardless, but I knew my primary job and capabilities: get us into the harbor with all important limbs and organs attached. Before that, getting us out of Keiost with same.
Kara’s and Sondra’s faces spoke of bad news, but not the unexpected kind—and of the variety that made him worry and her gloat. I might not be able to read fancy legal language, but I could read people.
“What do our scouts say—that Anure is sending ships to retake Keiost?” I guessed.
Sondra nodded, eyes steely with anticipation, and Kara handed me the scrap of paper he carried. “Word just came via messenger bird from the deep-sea fishing boats we sent out.”
I liked notes from scouts sent via birds—short words, to the point, and no embellishments. “Two warships, three days out,” I read. Then grunted and tossed it in the fire. Though summer in Keiost was hardly chilly, my blood had boiled thin in volcanic heat of Vurgmun. Having a fire nearby to keep the aches out of my bones was a temporary luxury, but one I savored as fair compensation for playing governor instead of doing what I did best. Now the time had come to vacate this oversoft seat.
I grinned, slow and satisfied. This was the best news we’d gotten in a while. “So kind of Anure send me ships.”
Sondra cracked a thin smile. “And here I was starting to get bored.”
Kara looked between us. “Have either of you ever seen even one of Anure’s warships? They can carry nearly a thousand soldiers and come equipped with siege engines that can sink a ship and level the walls of Keiost. Two of them is no laughing matter. And that’s if he didn’t equip them with vurgsten, which he will have done.”
I tapped my tally sheet. “I have fifty thousand soldiers and a fleet of one hundred and thirty-three boats.”
Kara’s eyelids nearly peeled back in his attempt to restrain his incredulity. “Conrí,” he said through his teeth, attempting to sound deferential when I knew he truly wanted to set me back on my heels. A good two decades older than I, Kara had been the most senior of us to survive the mines. Sondra liked to joke that he did it by turning himself into rawhide and that he wasn’t a flesh-and-blood man anymore. Never in his hearing, though. She respected him too much. And despite her thorny ways—and vicious glee in killing those who deserved it—Sondra still had a kind heart beneath it all. Kara cleared his throat. “Conrí. You have fifty thousand people answering to you, yes, but they include priests and clerics, mothers of small children and scholars. Easily ten thousand are children—”
“Eleven thousand nine hundred and eighty-three,” I corrected, tapping the tally sheet again. “At last count, yesterday.”
“Eighty-five, then,” Sondra put in very seriously, carefully not letting Kara see her amusement. “Twins were born in the night.”
I grunted appreciation, picked up the ink pen, and corrected both that number and the overall total. When I glanced up again, Kara had dropped all deference and positively glared at me. “The point is,” he gritted out, “for able-bodied fighters—less the experienced ones out of commission from the taking of Keiost—you have in the neighborhood of eight thousand.”
My tally had it at slightly less, but I nodded genially. “More than Anure’s possible two thousand.”
“How are you going to put eight thousand soldiers—”
“Seven thousand nine hundred and forty-two,” I said helpfully.
“—on a hundred boats!” Kara finished as if I hadn’t spoken.
“And thirty-three.”
He fumed at me. “Split the hairs all you like, that’s still…” He frowned, calculating.
“About fifty-nine and two-thirds per boat,” I offered.
“Can we put two-thirds of a soldier in a boat?” Sondra mused.
Kara ignored her. “Some of these are one-person boats.” He didn’t wave his hands, as Ambrose might, but clenched them by his side. “Pleasure skiffs and fishing boats facing down warships is a recipe for disaster. Not a matter for joking. You weren’t at Soensen. You haven’t seen what—” He broke off, jerking his gaze to the window, throat convulsing as he worked to master himself.
“That’s why we won’t face them, General Kara,” I said, plainly and with no inflection, hoping to break through whatever he saw in his memories. The man wouldn’t want sympathy, though I felt bad for teasing him. Some things could never be funny, dark as our gallows humor got at times.
“We have no way to launch vurgsten in small proportions,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, bringing himself back to the present. “Spears and swords do no good poking at a warship from a rowboat.”
“That’s why we won’t face them,” I repeated.
“You don’t understand—what?” He finally caught himself. “What do you mean?”
“I mean to do what we do best. Steal Anure’s warships—that will allow us to put nearly two thousand of our soldiers on them, thus only forty-four and two-thirds on the boats we have—and escape.” The prospect filled me with glee. Salvio’s chair wouldn’t suck me in after all.
* * *
Three days wasn’t much time, but we’d worked on tighter time lines. Much of the work had been done before word of Anure’s punitive force arrived. The walls had been repaired, at least to all appearances, though crews labored night and day to shore them up to the needed depth along with the height. Those who wished to leave had been given their portions of wealth and supplies. Those who wished to stay kept the rest.
Those who stayed would in turn offer the same choice I’d given them, and either the city’s population would swell by Anure’s two thousand, or the graveyard’s would.
I laid my trap carefully, relishing this part of the game. While Ambrose muttered in his tower and tinkered with my fate, I’d exercise control over what I could—before I became chained again, this time to the wizard’s plans for me to marry a woman I’d never met, one engaged to my worst enemy.
Anure’s warships sailed into Keiost two days later. The flagship pulled into the harbor while the other blockaded the exit to the sea. We’d left only a few ships at anchor—a few fishing boats and a merchant ship—while the bulk of our small fleet crouched on the other side of the peninsula, sails blackened and oars wrapped in muffling. I don’t know what Anure’s men thought they accomplished by trapping the few ships they had, but Kara’s experience, however bleak, had predicted them correctly. They’d done it simply because those were their orders. Original thinkers and the self-motivated didn’t last long under Anure’s thumb, and these officers came from a loyal mold, slavishly following standard tactics. And they’d grown soft and fat living off Anure’s enforced peace. They played into our hands, soon to be trapped in turn.