The Pirates of Pacta Servanda (Pillars of Reality Book 4) Read Free Page A

seek the capture of Lady Mari, but her death.”
    The captain nodded with obvious determination. “We will not allow that. Lest you doubt me, Sir Mage, death awaits me and more than one of my crew if the Empire gets its hands on us. Imperial bureaucrats have not been impressed by some of our means of making a living. They would no doubt grant us the promised reward to meet the letter of their law, but then would fine us the same amount for our crimes—alleged crimes, that is—and hang us. I admit that my crew and I are not the type to risk our deaths needlessly. Perhaps we’ve been more like the Syndaris than we like to admit. But…”
    He hesitated, then knelt before Mari, speaking almost bashfully, far from his usual boisterous and confident self. “I long ago stopped believing in anything but what I can hold in these two hands, Lady, and counted those who risk death for no profit as fools. But I have seen you and heard you, and if Lady Mari were to ask life itself of me I would give it. The sea changes in unexpected ways, and so it seems I still can as well.”
    Mari, looking extremely uncomfortable, beckoned the captain to stand. “I’m sorry. I know you mean well, but I really don’t like it when people kneel to me. Please don’t do that again. And I very much hope that neither you nor anyone else will have to die because of me. Too many people already have died.”
    The captain stood up, smiling. “There, you see? We’ve spent our lives knowing that no Mechanic and no Mage cared the slightest about whether we lived or died, not as long as we were doing what they ordered us to do. We didn’t matter, that’s all. But we do matter to you. Thank you, Lady. If we can get into Julesport without a fight, I promise it will be done. But if we must fight, we will. I will let my crew know.” He saluted with careful formality before departing.
    “Great. More people who want to die because of me,” Mari grumbled. “If we didn’t have to worry about saving those banned Mechanic texts, I’d dive overboard right now and try to swim to shore. But those texts are more important than I am. More important than everyone else on this ship.”
    “I thought you said—” Alain began.
    “I am not more important than anyone else,” Mari insisted. “That’s what I said. You heard what the hidden librarians we found on Altis told us. Those texts were designed to enable people to rebuild civilization if the worst happened. With them people can recreate the technology that the Mechanics Guild has suppressed for all of these years. I, or somebody else, can use those texts to defeat whatever the Guild throws at us. If we have enough time.”
    “The Storm approaches,” Alain said.
    “Well, I wish the Storm would send a breeze ahead of it to help this ship get its butt into Julesport! How much can you and the other Mages do, Alain? Didn’t you tell me that while the amount of power Mages can draw on is almost always weak over water, it also varies by location?”
    “That is so,” Alain said, not surprised that Mari had remembered that. She was always trying to understand Mage skills by using the rules of her Mechanic arts, which usually led to frustration. “There is little power here, as is usual on the sea. Even the elders of the Mage Guild do not claim to know why this is so.”
    “You managed some spells when we were on the
Queen of the Sea
,” Mari pointed out. “That was the Mechanics Guild ship that captured us near the Sharr Isles.”
    He felt unease at the memory. The large metal ship filled with Mechanic devices had felt strange in a very disquieting way. “That ship was moving fairly quickly, bringing more power available with each distance covered,” Alain explained. “Here we sit in the same spot.”
    “Oh. You were…sort of getting more current by moving along a wire,” Mari said. “Yeah. So we have to assume that this time the Mages cannot help?”
    That stung in some unaccountable way. “There