Chapter 2078: Tapping At The Window

While Jocelynn faced her trial on the frozen ground of the Vale of Mists, her father worked late into the night in Blackwell Manor, unaware of the dangers she faced.

The candles in the great chandelier had burned down to stubs hours ago. Only the oil lamp on the corner of his desk still burned, throwing a small circle of golden light across the charts spread over the old blackwood desk.

Count Rhys Blackwell leaned over the charts with his elbows planted on either side, and traced a calloused finger north along the coast, past Astier’s Point and Riven Isle and the neatly marked line that ran between the two before extending off across the sea.

By longstanding agreement with the crown, Rhys’s dominion over the high seas ended at the Riven Line, as did his responsibility to patrol the seas for piracy and other threats to the kingdom. North of the line, the Royal Fleet patrolled the frigid waters, launching from their slips in Cobalt Bay and the Ice Breaker Isles.

The things that happened in those waters weren’t supposed to be his responsibility any more than the ice-filled waters of the northern sea where Marquis Kuusik’s White Fleet held the line against the northern Eldritch clans.

But at the moment, Rhys’s attention was focused on a small isle so far off the coast that the Royal Fleet troubled it roughly as often as Rhys’s own fleet did, despite the fact that it fell under their purview rather than his.

"If the winds have been fair," Rhys muttered to the empty room, "and nothing forced them to thread the Shark’s Teeth..." he murmured as he tapped the narrow, jagged gap between two islands that every sailor in Blackwell knew better than to attempt in winter. "They should reach Saltmourn by tomorrow. If they haven’t already."

Mervyn would have laughed at him for worrying. Domenec would have called him an old fishwife. Then the white-bearded baron would have reminded him to trust the men he’d sent to sea to know how to row their own boat once they were upon the water.

Rhys let out a long, slow sigh between clenched teeth and reached for the pipe sitting on the corner of his desk to calm himself.

He hated this.

He hated sitting behind a desk while his barons sailed into a nest of cutthroats on his orders, with nothing between them and a knife in the dark but a flag of truce and a handful of papers bearing his seal. Twenty years ago, he’d have been standing on the deck of the Stormtossed beside them, facing the same danger they faced...

But twenty years ago, he hadn’t had a fleet to rig with black sails, or guild masters to wheedle, or Church spies to root out of his harbor like rats from a granary. He hadn’t had a war to prepare for. And if Blackwell was going to be ready to move against the Lothians and the Church come spring, then every one of those things needed him here, at this desk.

No matter what he might have wanted, he knew better than to follow Mervyn and Domenec on their mission, skulking about pirate-infested waters while attending clandestine meetings with men the Crown wanted dead.

He took the pipe in hand and stuffed it with a pinch of the best leaf from Baron Dalais’s own estate before lighting a taper with the lamp’s flame to bring the pipe to life.

There was a ritual to his motions, a smooth, comforting flow built from decades of habit as he slowed his breathing to puff the pipe to life.

Maela would have scolded him for smoking in his study. A pipe belonged on a ship’s deck or at least on a balcony where a breeze could carry the sweet-smelling smoke away. She would have scolded him for taking his meals in his study too.

But what was the point? Rhys thought as he puffed the pipe to life, letting the sweet scent of it linger in his nose while the vapors settled in his chest. Maela was leagues away in the convent, and Ash and Jocey had been gone for close to a year.

Rhys had banished the malaise and lethargy that clung to him after his family fractured. Now that Ashlynn had managed to survive, he approached each day with renewed focus and purpose. Come spring, he’d sail up the Senara to fetch Maela from that convent, even if he had to storm the convent’s gates to reach her, and then they would race to join their daughters together...

She could scold him then, about his smoking in the study and everything else that had gone so terribly wrong. So long as they were together again, she could scold him about anything. Until then, little mattered more than the preparations he was making to prevent the Church’s forces from reinforcing the Lothians against his daughter.

If Mervyn and Domenec were successful, then...

-TAP-

The sudden tap on the window pane startled Rhys out of his thoughts, and his head snapped up as he turned to the window.

-TAP.- -TAP TAP-

It was well past the evening bell, far later than usual for any of the gulls to gather on the ledges of the manor when there were better places to roost for the night. But then, the light from his desk lamp spilled into the night from the window, and some birds were clever enough to know what that meant.

-TAP!-

"Greedy beggars," Rhys grumbled, but there was no heat in it. He clenched his teeth on the pipe and picked up a heel of bread leftover from his supper, tearing it into smaller pieces as he stood up from his chair and crossed to the window.

"I’m coming, be patient," he said as he worked at the old iron latch that held the window closed.

The window swung open, and a gust of freezing night air swept in off the harbor, carrying the smell of brine and the distant clang of a ship’s bell with it.

He was wrong. The bird wasn’t a gull at all.

A raven hopped onto the sill the instant the window was open. It was larger than most, and its feathers were so black they seemed to drink the lamplight. Before Rhys could so much as lift the bread, it spread its wings and swept past him into the study.

Rhys spun, dropping the torn bits of bread as his hand reached for the brass-capped hilt at his hip. His fingers wrapped around the hilt of his fighting knife, but he made no move to draw the blade. Nor did he raise his voice to call for the soldiers stationed down the hall, protecting his privacy while he worked late into the night.

That was the last thing he needed after giving orders to dye the sails of the fleet black. Rumors that he was jumping at shadows and calling up his soldiers to fight birds.

Still, the bird was far too strange for him to relax his grip on his knife.

The raven landed on the corner of his desk. Its talons clicked against the blackwood. And where it perched, a fine white rime of frost crept outward across the wood and over the edge of his charts, crackling softly as it spread.

Then the bird turned its head and regarded him with one dark, clouded eye.

"Hello, Rhys Blackwell," the raven said. Its voice was deep, far too deep for such a small creature, and utterly without expression. "I have messages for you, from your daughters and your wife..."