Chapter 256: Conditions [1]

"Alright."

Meera smoothed the white silk over her knees and lifted her chin.

"Then let us speak of your men, Count Rubenhart. Since you clearly would rather speak of them than of yourself."

Ulrich returned to the armchair.

He sat with his right hand resting on the carved arm and his left laid along his thigh, and he waited.

Meera did not make him wait long. Whatever else she was, she was a captain, and when she chose to report she reported the way she sailed, without wasted motion.

"Twelve names," she said. "That is how many I carried out of New Ruben. Men and women the sea has not managed to kill in thirty years of trying. Some of them you would call pirates. Some of them would call you worse. All of them know the eastern waters better than the Crown’s charts do."

"And?"

"Two are dead. One drowned off the northern reefs in the autumn storms, one was hanged in Port Callan by a magistrate who did not appreciate his sense of humor. Of the ten who live, ten will hear you."

Ulrich’s brow rose a fraction.

"All ten."

"All ten." Meera’s mouth curved. "Do not look so pleased. They will hear you the way a wolf hears a lamb that has walked into its den and begun to make speeches. But they will hear you. That is a great deal more than any of them would have given a Skargardian noble a year ago."

"What changed."

"You did." She reached for her wine. "Or rather, your story did. A man who hunts witches and hangs smugglers is a lord. A man who just stands over five dead demons with the Queen of Skargardia in his arms is something else. Sailors do not care for lords. They care very much for demons. Every one of those ten has lost a ship, or a brother, or a whole crew to what comes out of the east at night with no lights showing."

Ulrich wasn’t very much aware of what was happening in the seas, but it looked like the Demons were quite an issue for the sailors as well. Well, perhaps he was indirectly responsible for that as well, allowing secret demon ships into his waters. Quite ironic, what he did actually pushed them to accept his offer.

Regardless, his story about fighting five demons and protecting the Queen in the capital had reached all of Skargardia like a huge storm within a week.

Meera sipped.

"They call themselves the Sea Lords, by the way. You will want to keep a straight face when you hear it."

"I will manage," Ulrich said, though he was very well wincing even now.

"You will not. But I look forward to watching you try."

Ulrich ignored that.

"Their conditions."

Meera set the glass down and held up one gloved finger.

"First. Neutral ground. Grayhaven, Barton’s tavern, the back room. Not your Estate, not your city, not any place where your knights stand behind the doors. You come to them."

"Acceptable."

Not like he wished these pirates to step and stain his precious home to begin with.

"Second," she raised a second finger. "You come with no more than six men. Six. They counted. They are aware that you could bring six hundred and burn Grayhaven to the waterline if you chose, and they are aware that you will not, but they want the courtesy of the number."

"I will bring five," Ulrich said. "The sixth would be wasted on them."

Meera laughed at his sarcasm.

"Third. They ask their questions, and you answer them. To their faces. Not through me, not through a steward, not through a letter with your seal on it. They wish to look at you while you speak, and judge for themselves whether you are lying."

"They may look as long as they like."

"They will. Some of them have very unpleasant faces. Fourth, now. No oath that night. No papers, no seals, no swearing on salt or steel. They hear you, they drink your wine, they sail home and think. If they come back, they come back of their own will."

Ulrich considered it.

"Acceptable."

"I thought you would say that. You are a patient man about the things that matter and an impossible one about everything else." Meera lifted her thumb, the fifth finger. "Fifth. The writ. Mine. They know what I carry, and they want the same. Sanction under the Rubenhart seal, so that the next time a royal galleon runs them down in your waters, they may hand the captain a piece of paper instead of their necks."

"Within Rubenhart waters," Ulrich said. "For what they do under my orders. Not for what they did before, and not for what they do beyond my coast."

"They will ask for all of Skargardia."

"They may ask."

"And amnesty for what came before."

"No."

Meera tilted her head, looking at him.

"You realise that every one of those ten has done something in the last thirty years that would see them hanged if a magistrate learned of it."

"I realise it. I am not a magistrate. I do not care what they did before they took my gold. I care what they do after. The writ covers the second and not the first. If a magistrate finds them for the first, that is their misfortune," Ulrich said coldly.

"That is harsh."

"It is honest. You told me they wanted honesty."

Meera’s smile deepened.

"I did, did I not? Very well. Sixth." She had run out of fingers on one hand and began on the other, apparently for the pleasure of it. "A share of the salvage from the islands. They know what those five rocks are, Ulrich. I know because I told them. Five islands no Skargardian keel has touched, sitting on the edge of the Scar, where ships have been going down for a thousand years. There are hulls on those reefs older than the Keep."

"They may have a share of what they raise from the water with their own hands," Ulrich replied.

Things were going unexpectely good.

Obviously, he didn’t hold any specific attachment to these five islands. He had chosen them because they were strategic points in the future war against the demons.

He wouldn’t even need to send his precious men there to guard them, and thankfully so. Dogs showed themselves at his doors to keep them guarded.

"How large a share?" Meera asked, not understanding much of how far Ulrich’s cunning was going in his head.

"Smaller than they will ask for."

"How much smaller?"

"We will discover that at Barton’s."

Meera pressed her gloved fingers to her lips to keep from laughing outright.

"Seventh. Their own crews are never conscripted. Not by you, not by your knights, not by any writ. The men they bring are theirs. You may hire them. You may not own them."

"I have no use for men who do not wish to be there."

"Eighth. They want to see the islands before they believe them. With their own eyes. A Count claiming to own five islands is a story. Five islands are a fact."

"They may see them. Swimming, if they prefer."

"Ninth."

Meera paused.

The amusement did not leave her face, but something sharpened behind it.

"This is the one you will hate."

"Then say it."

"Aboard their own ships," Meera said slowly, "their word is law. Not yours. Not the Crown’s. Theirs. A captain on his own deck answers to the sea and to no one else. That is not a term they invented for you. It is the oldest law there is on the water, older than kings. They will not give it up for gold. They will not give it up for a writ. They asked me to tell you that before anything else, so that you would not waste a month sailing to Grayhaven to hear it from them."

Ulrich looked at her for a long moment.

"No," he said.

Meera did not seem surprised.

"No," Ulrich repeated. "Their deck, their word, on their own business, in their own waters. That is nothing to me. But the moment a ship sails under my seal, on my gold, on my orders, that ship is mine, and the law aboard it is mine. I do not care what they call the man who holds the wheel. I care who he answers to when I am not there. If the answer is the sea, the sea may pay them."

"They will walk out."

"Some of them."

"Most of them."

"Then most of them are not the men I need." Ulrich’s voice did not rise. "I told you at the start what I wanted. Not disposable swords. Not scavengers who follow gold until the wind changes. I wanted men who understand order. A man who cannot accept a law above his own head does not understand order. He understands only that he is the largest thing on his own ship. I have knights for that. I have plenty of them."

He paused.

"Fewer than I had."

Meera watched him.

She had leaned back into the settee while he spoke, one arm laid along its curved back, her head resting against her own glove, and she was smiling.

"Do you know," she said, "why I like you?"

"I don’t wish to know."

"You sit in your chair with one arm sewn back, and you tell ten of the most dangerous men on this coast that they may go to the devil if they will not kneel to your seal. And you mean it. You would truly let them all walk out and start again from nothing rather than give an inch on that."

"Yes."

"It is the most foolish thing I have ever heard a nobleman say, and every one of those ten will respect it, and about half of them will stay because of it. The other half were never going to stay. They wanted your gold and their freedom both, and there is no such thing." She shrugged one shoulder. "I am a sea mercenary, Ulrich. I know."

"Are you?" Ulrich asked with a very suspicious stare.

Perhaps she was a sea mercenary, yes, but by now Ulrich knew she was hiding something else, and certainly not a small matter.