and reducing the competition for precious natural resources among those who remained. And it would quickly establish a thriving colony on the Far Coast that could exploit the region far more efficiently than the Kingdom had heretofore, providing a quickly profitable revenue source, but still keeping taxes low for those new colonists.
Jim almost admired the audacity of the plan, the sheer scope of it. What a stunning triumph it would be for whatever faction of generals and nobles in the Gallery of Lords and Masters were behind this! But then his admiration fell short when he considered it was his kingdom that was being carved up to make this dream a reality.
What he saw on the next ship suddenly brought the entire plan together. Slavers. The next ship was boarding a party of at least fifty members of Kesh’s Slavers’ Guild.
Outlawed in the Kingdom for nearly two centuries, slavery was still an institution in Kesh. More than one Keshian slave had died trying to reach safety in the Kingdom, but few could get across the frontier.
The sick feeling returned to the pit of Jim’s stomach. Now he knew how Kesh’s invading colonists would deal with those they displaced. He had imagined them being run up into the hills to find their way to the East and the haven of Yabon, or the Free Cities, or perhaps seeking sanctuary with the dwarves or the elves up in Elvandar.
Two problems solved at once, thought Jim as he started back down the ropes, as if he had an important task besides scuttling up to the yards and unfurling sails. First the villagers and townspeople would not have to be considered as a potential liability; boys displaced from their homes would not grow up to be outlaws and bandits in the woodlands and forests of the Far Coast, and some of the expense of this massive invasion would be underwritten by a vast influx of new bodies for the trading blocs in every city in the Empire.
For one brief second Jim felt overwhelmed. Who could have devised this insane plan, one so overreaching that it might even work? No one he knew among the rulers of Great Kesh hated the Kingdom enough or was covetous enough to …
Then it hit him. There was one common weakness shared by both the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh; both were currently ruled by unsure men with no apparent heirs. With the crown in play, a great many political promises could be made irrespective of the likelihood of those promises being kept. When the conditions of a promise were, ‘When I gain the crown …’ those involved knew both the price of failure and the scope of the riches that might be attached to success.
Jim hit the deck and scampered below, heading straight for his bunk. He found his tiny sphere and quickly removed it from the fabric of his hammock. He slid the tiny lever that enabled him to select one of three destinations and then the second lever to active it.
Nothing happened.
Jim barely contained a primitive scream of frustration as he repeatedly tried the device on all of its settings. It had simply stopped working. He knew the Tsurani devices were old, and many had failed, but he had taken the one he judged most likely to work at need and had guessed wrong. He was so caught up in this unexpected change in his plans that he was unaware of the man coming up behind him until the last possible instant. Jim spun and crouched, ready to fight for his life. But he was an instant too late. As a club struck him on the side of the head, a blinding explosion of light was followed by blackness.
Jim’s head pounded as if he had been on a seven-day drinking spree and his jaw throbbed. He blinked as he opened his eyes and tried to focus.
He wasn’t on the ship.
He could sense a difference in the air. It was dry and warm where it had been cool and damp. He was in the desert. Or near it.
He looked around and found himself in a large room. He was tied to a heavy wooden chair. A quick personal inventory told him he had not been abused beyond the blow that had rendered him unconscious. From the ringing in his ears he judged that a good thing; another blow like the first one and he might not be waking up now. Two more and it was certain he would never wake up at all.
He felt the man stirring before he heard a sound or saw movement, then realized someone was in the corner watching him from the shadows. It was only a moment before he heard a voice say, ‘Ah, at last. Light.’
From behind Jim someone else lit a lantern and Jim at last could make out his companion in the room. A dark-skinned man with a fashionably trimmed beard stood up slowly. He wore rich robes in the fashion of the people of the Jal-Pur and he smiled. He was young, more than twenty years Jim’s junior, but Jim knew he was already a man to fear.
‘Kaseem abu Hazara-Khan,’ Jim said and found his voice came out as little more than a whisper.
With a wave of his hand, the Keshian said, ‘Water. Quickly. And untie his hands.’
Two men appeared from the corners behind him, one cutting the ropes around Jim’s wrists, and the other putting a cup of cool water to Jim’s lips. Jim’s hands were shaking when they came up to grip the cup and he drank greedily. When he finished, he spoke and his voice was stronger. ‘How long?’
‘Two days. I’m sorry to say my agent was a bit more enthusiastic in fetching you here than I had instructed. He shall be punished.’ He stood looking down on Jim. ‘Lord James Dasher Jamison, it is good to see you again. Or should I be calling you “Jim Dasher?” From your current attire, I’m uncertain. Or would you prefer, “Jimmyhand”, or “Quick Jim?”’
‘What do you want, Kaseem?’ said Jim. As the unnamed head of Keshian Intelligence, like his father and grandfathers before him, the young Keshian had played the role of minor court noble in the Imperial Court of Kesh, never for a minute revealing his knowledge of Jim’s position. It was an amiable fiction they both observed. To be dropping all pretence meant something significant.
After a long pause Kaseem said, ‘What makes you think I want anything?’
Jim sighed. ‘Fine. If I must play. For you to have a man on that ship means you were following me since Hansulé. You’re a powerful man, but even you can’t have an agent on every single ship in that fleet.
‘For your man to drop his role as a sailor and bring me in before I escape to return to the Kingdom means either you want me dead or you want something from me, and as I am not dead, I assume it’s the latter. So, what do you want, Kaseem?’ he asked for the third time.
‘Ah, Jim,’ said the Keshian noble. ‘You and I have a problem.’
‘Which is?’
Coming to kneel beside Jim, the young Keshian desert man put his hand on Jim’s shoulder in an apparently friendly fashion. ‘Our two governments seem suddenly to be populated by madmen, and as ironic as the gods can be at times, nothing like this has happened in my lifetime. This is the long and short of it: you are the only man I can trust to help end this insane war, and I am the only man you can trust.’
There were many things Jim thought he might hear from his opposite number, but this hadn’t once occurred to him as a possibility.
• CHAPTER NINE •
PUG CAST HIS SPELL.
Without any apparent physical effort, he gestured and a wall-frame rose off the ground where the carpenters had laid it, and hovered in the air for a moment. Two workers grabbed it by the ends and Pug moved sixty feet of wall into place without difficulty where it was quickly attached at the base by large iron spikes driven into the foundation stones. Straps of iron were then attached at the corners to link it to the already-standing rear wall of the main house.
‘Thank you, Pug,’ said the chief builder.
‘You’re welcome, Shane.’ He liked the rough-mannered stonemason who would now oversee the placing of each stone against the frame. The interior would be plastered and when they were finished there would once again be a Villa Beata