The Knight Marshal (The Silk & Steel Saga) by Karen Azinger

overhead, the apparent
calm belied the urgency in her first mate’s voice . “A moment!” Juliana
took the time to pull on her boots and belt a long dagger to her waist. Tucking
a wayward strand of copper-bright hair behind her ear, she opened the cabin
door to find her first mate hovering outside, an anxious look on his suntanned
face.
    Marcus stabbed her with a daggered
glare. “Wren found this tied to the crow’s nest. He swears it was not there
yesterday.”
    Her gaze flicked to his hands,
shocked by what he held. “Come in.” She stepped aside, locking the door behind
him.
    Marcus filled her cabin. A big
burly man with dark wavy hair tied at his nape, a gilded seashell dangling from
his left ear for luck, he smelled of leather and salt. Setting the pouch on her
chart table, he stepped back as if it held a coiled cobra.
    A red and blue checkered shield
surmounted by a white osprey with wings spread wide emblazoned the pouch,
marking it as a royal dispatch. Juliana’s fingers traced the embroidery, but
instead of tanned leather, the pouch was made of sealskin…as if it was meant to
weather a storm. 
    “Never seen one like that.”
    “Nor I.”
    “Never found one tied to a crow’s
nest either.”
    And that was the riddle. Messenger
pouches usually waited for her in ports of call or were passed from ship to
ship. They didn’t just appear while under sail betwixt a long sea crossing.  
    “I’ve sworn Wren to silence.” His
deep voice was a low growl. “Can’t let rumors of magic fester.”
    “Just so.” As a Royal J, Juliana
was acquainted with magic, enough to value its uses without stirring irrational
fears, but her seamen were a superstitious lot and ill omens could scuttle a
voyage. “You did well, but there’s no one in Navarre who could magic a message
pouch halfway across the Western Ocean.” 
    “Yet it’s here.”
    She gave him a slanted look. “And
the watch noticed nothing unusual?”
    “Nothing reported.”
    “Then we best learn the meaning
behind the riddle.” She untied the elaborate knot, more proof the dispatch came
from Castle Seamount. Inside she found two scrolls. One bore the seal of her
father, the king of Navarre, and the other bore the seal of her sister. “ Jordan !”  Her swordish sister was meant to be Wayfaring with the Kiralynn
monks deep in the Southern Mountains, a long way for a scroll to travel, a
riddle of another sort. At the bottom of the pouch, she found a wooden disk
with a message coil. The message coil gave her pause for they were only used in
dire times.
    Marcus hissed when he saw it. “An
ill-omen.”
    “Perhaps.” She reached for her
sister’s scroll first. Cramped handwriting crowded the page. The familiar
scrawl told a tale of ambush in the monastery, of a long journey across Erdhe,
of strange visions and a wedding in a ruined keep…and then it spoke of death.
Juliana issued a strangled cry. “Death at Castle Seamount!”
    “Navarre’s been attacked?”
    “Assaulted by treachery.” Juliana
sank onto her bunk, feeling gut-punched.
    “Treachery?”
    “The Curse of the Vowels.”
    Marcus gasped making the hand sign
against evil. “The king?”
    “Survives, but many Royal Is are
dead, my aunts, my uncles, felled by poison.” Juliana struggled to hold back
tears. “How could this happen?”
    Marcus had no answer. “Perhaps the
other scroll?”
    Taking a steadying breath, she
broke the second seal, her gaze scanning her father’s bold hand. “ Impossible!” The vellum slipped from her fingers.
    Marcus stared at her. “New orders?”
    “A death sentence.” She nudged the
scroll towards him.
    He scooped it up, holding the
vellum to the light, his lips silently forming the words. “ By the gods!” He
glared at her. “This must be a lie!”
    “Yet the seals and the knot work
name it true, though I cannot believe the king would issue such orders.”
    “But you cannot sail the fleet there, ‘tis madness.”
    “Poison and