Characters:RavenLogs/TTS GatewayBound
Gateway is the end of the trading route, but there's a way back to Amber from there. The news is electrifying and the off-duty sailors are pour up from belowdecks. They explode in cheers and cries of relief.
One of those cheers is Raven's. It's a relief to finally be sure she hasn't been leading them the wrong way. Rebmans on the water or not, it has to be easier sailing from here to home.
As the noise dies down, she moves among the off-duty men, detailing them in ones and twos as necessary to duck back belowdecks. There are some assorted little tasks that need taking care of, just in case there should be someone from Amber's Navy about: things to hide for now, mostly - trinkets and treasures from ships they had met along the way, most of which were obtained in ways the navy definitely would have frowned upon. None of the tasks take more than a few minutes, plenty of time to get back up on deck as familiar sights come into view; she hasn't the heart to chase them all below where they should be, anyway, not as long as they can stay out of the way.
The orders are welcome--except for any that involve staying below decks--and in a little while, they've sailed through the gate, leaving the bodies and their mysteries behind, and are headed toward the familiar docks of Gateway.
By long custom, a naval vessel like Raven's doesn't anchor at the docks proper, but in the harbor, and the Captain takes a rowboat ashore to settle papers and the like. The men are anxious for her to do so, because by custom, when the Captain returns, they'll find out about shore leave.
Raven can see the Harbormaster's men coming out on to greet her before she debarks from her own ship.
Raven ducks into the captain's cabin long enough to exchange her comfortable coat - pilfered off another captain some time back, albeit not a Navy captain - for the coat of her ship's former captain, which is a bit too small in the shoulders for her and perhaps a bit too large about the waist. She had never quite mastered enough sewing to fix it; she can patch holes in sails and people, and that's about it. Still, she doesn't figure it will hurt too much to at least look the part. She gathers up whatever else she thinks might be necessary while she's there.
Then she boards the rowboat and heads across, aiming for the nearest location to the Harbormaster's men to come ashore.
The Harbormaster's men wait for her boat to arrive and for her to step up onto the dock before greeting her and asking her for her ship's papers, which the Captain keeps in his cabin. The papers should tell where her vessel, the Vale of Garnath, has been.
Raven has kept the records as tidily as she can. The deaths of the captain and upper officers are noted over the space of several days, with a final note detailing the cause of the deaths as either disease or a poisoning; they weren't sure which, given the unusual surroundings, so they dumped any food reserved specially for the officers overboard just in case. Curiously, none of the regular sailors seems to have acquired the disease, if disease it was, and it didn't touch anyone of Raven's rank or lower. The officers were too weak to work up any official paperwork in their last days, but it is recorded that Raven's appointment as acting captain was witnessed by Stone and the master-at-arms, who died some time later during a brief stay ashore (that entry reads: "Locals are foul. Lost Hook. Left quickly."). Each journey through a rift is documented, along with observations of the new world taken as soon as they came out the other side; each landfall is noted, along with a few concise notes about the place. Salvage operations are also noted, always as a sad necessity to keep the ship provisioned. And, of course, the usual observations of wind and wave and weather are noted regularly.
In short: nothing to point to any acts of murder, mayhem, mutiny, or piracy, on board the Vale of Garnath or off. Nothing is forged, though there is almost certainly a fiction or three and a certain amount of omission.
The Harbormaster comes out to review the documents and haggle for the harbor fees himself. There's some hmming and hawwing about various points, but that doesn't seem too unusual to Raven based on what she knows. When they've agreed on the fee, he invites Raven into his office to weigh out the goods, also as usual. There will probably be a drink for her as well.
Raven accepts the invitation, of course. The more smoothly this goes, the quicker she can find out what she needs to know and get back to the ship. The crew aren't the only ones looking forward to at least a few days on dry land.
When they enter the Harbormaster's office, the Harbormaster's men move to subdue Raven and her sailors. They outnumber the sailors, but aren't as strong as men of Amber, much less Captain Raven.
"I see the hospitality of Gateway is in full force today," Raven says curtly, the anger in her eyes hearkening back to a night on the open seas, when a plague of knives in the darkness hit the Vale of Garnath and left her temporarily captainless. "Come on, then."
And with that, she wades into their opponents, with every intention of subduing them first with fists or whatever comes to hand.
Following Raven's lead, her men also join in the attack. The Harbormaster's men subdue her sailors quickly, especially as more of the harbor patrol pour into the office from behind her.
Raven is made of heartier stuff than her sailors, though, and it takes a fair number of the Harbor patrol to come to a standoff, with Raven holding them off with a chair. Raven thinks she might have a chance of getting away until the Harbormaster points something at her.
It looks like a small version of the thing the invaders of Rebma were wearing. If she hadn't been sure of what it was, she is now. It's a weapon.
"Stand down and I'll spare your life, Captain."
"I'd rather it be done the other way 'round," Raven answers. "But for the sake of not being killed like a cornered rat, let's compromise. How about you let me in on what that thing in your hand is, and I'll consider not throwing this chair at you and making a break for it until you've done?" She isn't making any openly agressive moves, but she's definitely continuing to defend herself in case anyone else comes at her.
"It's a gun and it'll blow your head off if I fire it at you," the Harbormaster explains.
"Ah." Raven considers this for a moment, frowning. "And if I stand down, are you just going to kill me anyway?"
The Harbormaster shakes his head. "There are questions for those who come from Amber. I can't say what happens after that, but you'll not be killed by my men if you stand down."
"If you're expecting recent news, you'd do better let me go and keep hunting," Raven says flatly. "But fine. I always did prefer alive to dead. Better be quick about the questioning, though; I've a ship full of men that haven't had a decent shore leave in longer than I care to think about, and haven't been this near to Amber in longer. If this takes too long, I can't promise that they won't be taking action to find out what's gone wrong this time." She smiles thinly as she sets down the chair and steps back from it. "Last time they had to find me, they burnt down half the town."
"Burning down half of Gateway would be harder work than that," says the Harbormaster, keeping his gun generally pointed in Raven's direction, but no longer aimed straight at her, once she lowers the chair. Raven knows he's right; the magicians of Gateway can do a lot to stop that kind of thing.
[Assuming no further resistance]
Raven's men are separated from her and sent off to what she expects is the harbor gaol. She's taken to another building that seems to be a makeshift lockup of a slightly better sort. There's furniture, including a bed that someone brought in, and there's actual food and wine on the table, if mostly consumed.
The other resident of the room rises to greet Raven when she's locked in with him. He's dark-haired and bearded, unkempt, and pale. He moves like a man healing slowly from bad wounds. He's not in naval garb but even so has the gait of a sailor.
"Captain?" he asks. "Which fleet?"
"Aye, name's Raven," she answers agreeably. "Southern Fleet." She glances around briefly before settling her gaze back on him. "Hope you don't mind me being blunt, but - you been here a while and had a time of it, or were you half-dead when you got here?"
He throws back his head and laughs. "Oh, I doubt you have what they wanted from me." He offers his hand, and despite the slowness of it, his hand (if she takes it) proves strong.
"Marius. Once a captain of the Southern Fleet and now--" Marius trails off and smiles. "Now, I think, an enemy of the Gatwegians and their ill-chosen ally. Give me a day or two, and I'll be ready to break out of this place."
This seems unlikely to Raven unless the man's a Prince of Amber.
Raven squints at him for a moment. "Right," she says finally. "So you've been in here too long, then. Got any recent news from Amber? It's been a while."
Marius eyes Raven with some interest. "How long have you been gone? Were you lost before what they call the Sundering? Who was king when you left the Pearl of Cities last?"
"The what?" A beat, and then Raven snorts in amusement. "Well, that'll answer that question, I suppose." She frowns, clearly thinking, and finally says slowly, "Near as I can recall, who got to be king was still being sorted out when we left Amber. That was right after King Eric bit it. Heard later from a passing merchantman that the old king was back - that was before we got lost - but this is the first place we've been that we know since then, so I can't say if that was truth or not."
"Oberon did come back, but he's left us forever now. I was there when he was put in his grave, such as it is," Marius says. "Random is King now. The civil strife of the last war seems to be over; the princes will remain united for a time against external enemies. Some of them are dead, and others have left the city, for good, I believe. You'll find Amber much changed when we return--assuming I can travel with you for the price of showing you the path home." He tilts the end of the sentence up, not quite enough to make it a question.
Mad he may be, but he seems quite lucid.
"Yes, yes, of course," Raven says absently; she's clearly chewing over the rest of what he said. "Though I take no responsibility for what might happen if you lead us astray." She grabs a chair, turning it around to sit in it backwards, and eyes her cellmate again once she's settled. "Sit down, will ya? You look like you might mean to fall over if you stay up too long, and I have questions. What do you mean, 'much changed'?"
Marius takes the other chair in the room and sits down with a bit more care. He seems to be favoring one arm in particular. "When the armies came back from the far end of the universe, after we defeated the foes of the Black Road, we found that there had been an earthquake under Kolvir. The castle was damaged and there was fire and destruction in the city.
"There were other changes. The sea paths have changed--but I'm sure you've noticed that."
"A bit, yes," Raven answers sourly. "If we're counting 'lost for the last few years' as noticing." Drumming her fingers lightly on the back of the chair, she considers her growing list of questions and settles on, "What's this 'far end of the universe' crap? How did the docks fare - and the Navy, for that matter? Oh, and why in the name of the seven hells of Kari-Hum did we follow a line of dead Rebmans into Gateway?"
"The far end of the universe is the place the Black Road sprang from. We went to the other end and defeated the army that sent us there. But it cost us the lives of many good men, and some of the Princes and Princesses as well. And King Oberon." He pauses there, as if that death means more than the rest somehow. "The measures he took for the defense of the realm--for its salvation--wiped the sea paths away. Yours wasn't the only ship stranded. Every vessel that was at sea, be she navy or merchant marine or mere fishing boat--was lost."
Given what Raven knows about the size of the navy, and what she knows about their rotations, the scale of the loss is awful. In the merchant marine, it's likely to be even worse, since they ship out as quickly as possible to keep from losing money on idle cargo space.
Economically, Amber must have been destroyed.
Raven whistles lowly. "That's - " and she stops there, frowning. A little silence falls, and when she speaks again, her voice is very thoughtful. "Keep that little tidbit under your hat for now, all right? Not that I don't think you're telling me the truth and all" - which she isn't entire sure of, given that he seems to think he'll be perfectly fine in a few days - "but I need to come up with a good way to break it to the lads." 'A good way,' of course, being a way that won't cause a riot or a mutiny. "Just how bad is it?"
Marius laughs.
"Bad enough that they're abandoning the city in favor of a place Random founded and another Corwin founded. And the shadow paths that are re-forming lead to Xanadu and Paris now. I've heard that some of the merchant marine ships have found their way back. So might you have, if you'd not stumbled into this trap first."
"I'm pretty sure it was luck that brought us here," Raven observes. "We've been following holes to other places the whole damned time. And we're going to Amber." That is a distinctly stubborn statement. "Ain't no reason to head elsewhere when we don't know if our families are still there or not." She taps her fingers against the chair for a moment. "So Random and Corwin are running their own kingdoms, huh? I suppose that means they don't have the whole kingship deal sorted, then. Who's the Navy gone with?"
"Caine." He says this as if it's self-evident. "Gerard stayed in Amber through the war, as Regent, and when the earthquake they call the Sundering took Kolvir, it broke his back. He lived, but he gets about in a wheeled chair now. So Caine is the only admiral left, and the Navy follows him.
"He swore to Random, but Random treats him like Julian now: with the deference that comes from knowing his brother has a military he can't match."
