The House Of Gaian

encounter with the Fae was sufficient to educate him.” Ashk smiled with grim amusement. “It would seem he’s about to have a houseful of unexpected guests.”

 

     
     

Chapter 22
     

 

     
     

     
    waxing moon
     
    Ubel strode down Seahaven’s waterfront with two hundred of his warriors behind him. They broke off in companies led by captains to swiftly search the warehouses and the ships. Buckets, used as chamberpots, were being emptied over the side in the darkest hours of night. The stench was strong.
    Ship captains might be able to sneak people into the cargo holds and hide them, but they couldn’t hide the evidence of those people.
    In the end, it would be simple. Loyal merchant captains and fishermen would keep their ships—and would prosper since they would have fewer rivals for their business and could set a higher price for their goods. They would need that income to pay for the license each ship would be required to carry in order to prove that loyalty—income that would build ships, as Wolfram had done, to keep the harbors and seaports clean of unsuitable traders or visitors. Income that would finance an estate for the Inquisitors who would have to remain here to keep the barons under control and continue the search for escaped witches.
    Right now, however, his goal was to flush out the witches and witch sympathizers who had fled from Durham and the southern counties of Sylvalan, flooding into Seahaven in the hope of finding any kind of seaworthy craft that would take them away from the Inquisitors’ justice. Rats and witches. Both vermin.
    Both plague carriers in their own way. He’d find plenty of both on this waterfront. And when he was done cleansing Seahaven, only the rats would remain.
    Right now, his eyes were on that merchant ship at the far end of the docks—a ship, according to the harbor master, that had slipped in and out of Seahaven several times in the past few days, taking on some cargo, but nothing like the usual amounts. And having nothing to unload to speak of. Most unusual, the harbor master had said, since the ship was one of several belonging to a well-to-do merchant family.
    A merchant family that was also a filthy nest of witches and men so ensnared by the bitches that they pumped good seed into foul wombs to produce more filth. Oh, plenty of those vermin had already been eliminated, burned in their very ships or taken by the Inquisitors and the barons to be questioned and exterminated. But that nest was being rebuilt somewhere by the witches who had escaped, and he suspected the captain of that ship would be able to tell him the exact spot—after he’d softened the man sufficiently.
    “Why do you accost me this way?” said a loud, panicked voice. “I’ve done nothing. Nothing! I’m an honest merchant just trying to catch the evening tide to take my goods to Wellingsford!”
    Ubel hesitated. Stopped. Finally, with a last look at the merchant ship at the end of the docks, he motioned the guards to continue on as he turned toward the commotion behind him.
    “You shouldn’t have come back,” Craig whispered fiercely, his tone a mixture of gratitude and anger. “
    You shouldn’t have waited for me.”
    “You’re family,” Mihail replied. And we’ve already lost too many . He shifted a little, easing the strain of leg muscles that had been in a crouch position too long. Something was happening at one of the other docks, but he couldn’t quite see around the crates he and Craig were hiding behind.
    Craig was right. He shouldn’t have made this last trip, shouldn’t have waited one more day for one man when his cargo hold was filled with people—strangers who had offered him their last coins for standing room in the holds of his ship. But among them was a woman, with her daughter, who had lived close to Durham. So he’d stayed one more day, hoping Craig had gotten out of Durham, too, and had managed to reach Seahaven.
    If he’d left yesterday evening, he’d be out in the open sea right now, and Sweet Selkie’s sails would be full of a Mother-blessed wind that would take him back to Sealand, back to Jenny and the boys, back to safe harbor.
    If he’d left yesterday... before the Inquisitors’ ships had sailed into the harbor and the harbor master had sent bellringers to make the announcement that no ship was permitted to leave Seahaven until it had been inspected by the Inquisitors and duly licensed as a ship loyal to the barons.
    Barons. Bah.