Master of Whitestorm Read Free Page A

did not pass unnoticed. The officer spat grapeskins onto the deck and shouted a guttural warning.
    Korendir ignored him. With an irritable frown, the deckhand rose and unslung his whip.
    Haldeth kicked his benchmate’s ankle, imploring prudence. But with the final knot nearly undone, Korendir refused to relinquish his prize. The string fell loose, just as the deckhand strode the length of the gangway and uncoiled his lash. Korendir started to unwedge his shoulders from the oarport, but the deckhand moved first. Seven supple feet of braid struck, splitting through muscled flesh.
    Korendir recoiled and skinned his collarbone on the oarport. Silent and sullen, he straightened. Gripping his oar with both hands, he lifted gray eyes and glared at the deckhand. The insolence earned him the whip-butt across the face in a blow that left him reeling.
    “Mind thy manners,” snapped the officer. But the slave’s cold gaze left him strangely unsettled. He blotted sweat from his lip and sauntered back to his seat.
    The instant the officer’s back was turned, Haldeth caught his friend’s shoulder and whispered. “Was that necessary?”
    Korendir shifted his hand, surreptitiously exposing the corner of a small wooden box. Kahillan shaving tools were bound to be inside, and if his brief act of defiance had distracted the deckhand from noticing, Korendir considered the price worthwhile. One bruised eyelid dipped into a wink as he tucked his prize under his loincloth. Curled once more over his oarshaft, he ignored the flies which lit upon his opened back with impressive single-mindedness, and presently fell asleep.
    * * *
    In the dark, still hours after midnight, Korendir examined his contraband. Haldeth craned his neck to see over his companion’s shoulder as the box fell open. The contents were immediately disappointing. By the wan light through the oarport, Haldeth discovered that Kahillans removed their beards with slivers of sharpened shell, each imbedded in a layer of pitch to preserve their fragile edges. A slot to one side contained a well-used whetstone.
    “Neth,” said Haldeth. Disgust blunted his habitual caution. “Those things are worthless.”
    Korendir lifted his head. “They’re precisely what I expected,” he said mildly.
    But Haldeth remained too irritable to demand any explanation. Angered that he had permitted himself any hope at all, he hunched at the far end of the oar shaft and sleeplessly waited for dawn.
    * * *
    The dishonored mate resumed duty the following day.
    His jaw was clenched, and his strut more pronounced as he relieved the officer on the gangway. Interpreting the signs as fishermen read weather, Haldeth knew the man’s temper would be short. No slave needed Korendir’s crusted back to remind how readily the Mhurgai whip might fall. All orders on the lower deck were obeyed as though the rowers sat balanced on eggshells.
    Nallga cleared the barrier reef just after sunrise. Driven by both banks of oars, she thrust through the swells under a stiff breeze, her forward slaves drenched in spray.
    Accustomed to the shudder of planking against heavy waves, Haldeth rowed, preoccupied by thought. Korendir’s exchange with the Kahillan natives had been outright recklessness. Certain the mate would discover the contraband, Haldeth worried. Sharpened shells were no match for Mhurgai steel. Korendir was crazy to believe in them.
    Scarcely an hour beyond the barrier reef, Haldeth noticed cold water wetting his feet. He glanced downward, immediately suspicious of a leak. Nallga was clinker built, her strakes lashed through eyes on the ribs with tarred cord; one of the lines had given way, and seawater welled between the floorboards with each roll of the hull.
    Haldeth swore. Korendir surely had been at work with his shells; the line showed no trace of chafing previously. And with the mate’s competency questioned by the entire crew, now was the worst time to discover hull failure. Yet Haldeth had no choice.