Read Online Ison of the Isles by Carolyn Ives Gilman - Free Book Online

with four or five of her top captains. The conversation had turned to grave silence as the messenger related the story. Dorn and his pirate fleet had sailed north to brazenly raid the prosperous town of Torbert, southernmost port of the Inner Chain. But this time the Adaina marauders had not contented themselves with plunder. With an organized ferocity they had never shown before, they had gone house to house, rounding up male Torna inhabitants and herding them into a warehouse on the wharf. Then they had surrounded the makeshift prison with gunmen, and set it on fire.
    Harg had been the only Adaina at the table as the news was delivered, and he saw the Torna faces around him hardening with hatred. It was exactly the effect Dorn had wanted to provoke: to divide the races and prevent any such alliance as the one Harg had been labouring to achieve. At that moment, there was nothing he could do but express revulsion and outrage as loudly as anyone in the room. But all the while he was aware, as they appeared not to be, that Tiarch and her navy were the very people who had driven the Adaina to the brink of such vicious retribution. At the same time, he had felt the horrible truth that it was now his problem to solve.
    When he had been able to get Tiarch alone, he had made the case that she needed to let the Adaina take care of Dorn. Otherwise, he argued, it would devolve into an endless revenge cycle, Torna against Adaina. “The Innings are the enemy,” he had said. “We can’t get distracted killing each other.” She had accepted the argument, and that was when he had gotten the three ships to command, with the understanding that his first mission was to pacify his own people.
    Before they could appear on deck, Harg and Jearl had to wait for the deck officer to initiate a ceremony involving whistles, bells, parades, and commands. Jearl was a stickler for propriety, and all the naval rituals were punctiliously performed on his ship. It struck Harg as a little antiquated; the Northern Squadron was still mimicking a pre-war Inning Navy, before the transformations wrought on it by Admiral Talley. But he said nothing. The formality was important to them, and not to be meddled with lightly.
    Once on deck, they found that the squadron was nearing the entry to Harbourdown Bay, with the
Smoke
in the lead. “You sent the cutter ahead?” Harg asked. He had not wanted his own people to mistake the warships for an enemy and sail out to attack.
    “Yes, sir,” Jearl answered.
    “Shall we give them a salute?”
    “I had anticipated that.”
    Jearl gave the order for the gunnery crews to assemble, and Harg watched from the quarterdeck as they cast loose their cannons and took up their tompions, admiring their organization and training. The common sailors were mostly Adaina, but they obeyed their Torna gun captains with a willing efficiency that gave Harg hope for the blended Navy he wanted to create. “They’re very well trained,” he said to Jearl.
    Jearl’s deep-lined face didn’t move at the compliment. “They’re on their best behaviour because you’re watching,” he said. It was the first intimation Harg had had that Jearl noticed the effect an Adaina admiral had on an Adaina crew.
    As they cleared the headland, the bay and town became visible, and Harg scanned the ships at anchor. All four of the captured Navy vessels were there—
Windemon
,
Pimpernel
,
Spinneret
, and the majestic
Ison Orin
. With surprise, he recognized a fifth one as the armed sloop from Yora. Barko had been out collecting, it seemed. The thought of being able to confront a captured Captain Quintock filled Harg with evil glee.
    As the
Smoke
entered the bay, she fired a rolling salvo, magnificently precise in its timing, that echoed back from the cliffs and the dark walls of the Redoubt above the town. In answer, the ships at anchor began to fire—a chaotic, haphazard barrage that made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in discipline. Jearl made no