Prince of Outcasts Read Online Free PDF Page A

their lives, starting when they’d been younger than he was. They came at his heels as he trotted quickly up to the quarterdeck; the owner was rapping out a series of orders, and the ship heeled sharply as it fell off into the wind and the sails cracked taut. The pitching motion gave way to a long smooth rocking-horse gait.
    â€œMission accomplished, Captain Feldman,” he said. “Except for those Korean ships in our way. My sister says you should cooperate fully with the
Stormrider
and her Captain, and we’re here to reinforce you.”
    â€œCaptain Russ RMN commanding,” Feldman said, looking southward at the frigate. “We’ve been playing dodge-’em and I don’t think he’s very happy with me. He couldn’t shoot when we slipped away like a wet watermelon seed . . . but I think he very much wanted to.”
    He grinned as he said it; he was a slender dark man in his mid-thirties, black-eyed and black-haired and with a single streak of white in his close-cropped beard over a scar, dressed with plain practicality in a peaked sailor’s hat over his kippah and brass-buttoned blue coat and pants and soft-soled boots. He stood for a moment with his thumbs in the belt that supported his cutlass, tapping his fingers on the walrus-hide. Then he turned to his signaler:
    â€œRun up
Prince aboard, Crown Princess ashore
and
will conform to your movements
,” he said.
    â€œAye Aye, Cap’n.”
    The signal hoist went up, worked by a sailor universally known as “Rat” McGuire, for his face and general attitude. Feldman turned his telescope on the frigate.
    â€œAcknowledged,”
he read. “Brief. My, my, Captain Russ
is
in a temper. He’s actually not a bad sailor . . . for an Astoria man.”
    Astoria was the main port for the southern Association territories, just within the dangerous bar at the mouth of the Columbia; Newport was Corvallis’ sole seaport, linked to the inland capital of the city-state by a busy rail line. Their rivalry went back well before the High Kingdom.
    Then he turned to John: “This situation is unstable, your Highness. May I ask why the Princess and the rest of your party didn’t accompany you?”
    John hesitated, then told him. Feldman whistled slightly between his teeth before he spoke.
    â€œMagic swords and wicked sorcerers. I don’t suppose they’re more dangerous than catapult shot or storms, but . . .”
    â€œI grew up around a magic sword, Captain. This . . . What they brought back out of the desert . . . it’s most definitely the genuine article.”
    â€œLike the Sword of the Lady?”
    Feldman’s voice was dry. He acknowledged the force of the thing the Quest had brought back from haunted Nantucket; you couldn’t see it and not do so, especially if you were a Montivallan yourself. That didn’t mean he had to like the fact that in the modern age such things walked abroad in the light of common day.
    â€œNot exactly. It’s more . . . more for battle. They have . . . other Sacred Treasures . . . for some of the things the Sword of the Lady does.
Kusanagi
is more purely a weapon. It’s a symbol of the ruler as Power. The power to protect and to punish; symbol of it, and the thing itself too. And it scares me silly.”
    He shook himself and returned to things less mysterious, to their mutual relief:
    â€œWho’ll win if it comes to a sea-fight?” John said.
    â€œA close-run thing, given all those savages they’ve picked up.”
    â€œThey can’t storm the shore,” John said, and Feldman nodded.
    â€œRight, we’d move in on them,” the Captain said.
    â€œAnd the Crown Princess and the locals could just pull into the mouth of the canyon there. It’s fortified.”
    â€œThey must be planning something else,” Feldman said