The King's Blood

boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadam lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.
    “Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”
    They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.
    “Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.
    “There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”
    “Fifty-nine, then.”
    “Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”
    A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Cabral. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.
    “Maceo Rinál?”
    The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.
    “I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.
    The man said something obscene.
    Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Maceo Rinál sat on a cushion, wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.
    “You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.
    “You picked the wrong man,” Rinál said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.
    “Five weeks ago, a ship called the Stormcrow was coming east from the cape. It didn’t make it. Waylaid and sunk, but no sign of the cargo. Is this sounding familiar?”
    “I am the cousin of King Sephan of Cabral. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinál said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”
    Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.
    “Captain Rinál? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”
    The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.
    “I work for the Medean bank. My employers insured the Stormcrow . When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them.
    You weren’t even stealing from the merchants who owned them. You were stealing from us.”
    The pirate’s face went grey. The leather flap opened with a rustle and Yardem came in. His earrings were back in place.
    “News?” Marcus said.
    “The cargo here matches the manifests,” Yardem said. He was scowling, playing to the dangerous reputation of the Tralgu. Marcus assumed it amused him. “We’re in the right place, sir.”
    “Carry on.”
    Yardem nodded and left. Marcus took another bite of sausage.
    “My cousin,” Rinál said. “King Sephan—”
    “My name’s Marcus Wester.”
    Rinál’s eyes grew wide and he sank back on the cushion.
    “You’ve heard of me,” Marcus said. “So you know that the appeal-to-noble-blood strategy may not be your best choice. Your mother was a minor priestess who got drunk with a monarch’s exiled uncle. That’s your protection. Me? I’ve killed kings.”
    “Kings?”
    “Well, just the one, but you take the point.”
    Rinál tried to speak, swallowed to loosen his throat, and then tried again.
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to reclaim our property, or as much of it as you have left. I don’t expect it’ll make up the losses, but it’s a beginning.”
    “What are you going to do with me?”
    “You mean if I don’t take you to justice? I’m going to come to an understanding with you.”
    A cry rose up from the beach below them. Dozens of voices raised in alarm. Marcus nodded to the captive, and together they walked out into the light. On the bright water below them, the ship farthest from the shore was afire. A plume of white smoke rose from it, and thin red snake-tongues licked at the mast, visible even from here. Rinál cried out, and as if in answer a roll of sudden black smoke bellied out from the flame.
    “Don’t worry,” Marcus said. “We’re only burning one of them.”
    “I’ll see you dead,” Rinál said, but there was no power in his