By contrast, Chankley’s Harbor was a grungy place, looking exactly like what it was: a village that had grown up because the small harbor was a good one. There were sheds for storing nets, rope, and extra sail, dwellings that were hardly any better than sheds to hold the fisher folk when they came ashore. Probably the best maintained structure in the place was the stone well. Fresh water so near a saltwater bay was not a resource to be treated lightly. The docks were built on stone pilings, with wooden planks, meant to bear against both storm and hard use.
“A working village,” the Old One said as they approached down the overgrown, twisting landside trail. “Not a remnant of ancient privilege.”
Since until a short time before the Old One had lived in the seegnur’s former landing facility, spending a fair amount of time in the abandoned shuttle repair facility beneath Mender’s Isle, Julyan did not think he was out of line for finding this statement hypocritical.
He held his tongue. The Old One enjoyed seeing how people would react to his various odd comments. After being lured into several “philosophical” discussions that only served to prove that the Old One could think with more twists than a basket full of baby snakes, Julyan had decided stoic silence was his best course of action. He suspected his silence amused the Old One, too, but at least silence didn’t force him to think in a fashion that made his head ache.
“They know me here,” Julyan said. “Unless you want to be seen before I have a chance to tell Captain Bore Chankley that you’d prefer word of your return did not spread, it’s better I go ahead.”
“Go, by all means,” the Old One said, his pale grey eyes twinkling with mild amusement. “Although I think Bore would be wise enough to anticipate my wishes and assure his people’s silence.”
Julyan replied with a terse nod, thinking that the Old One was probably correct. The Chankley Clan had worked for the Old One for some time now, arranging for supplies to be dropped off at Mender’s Isle. Although many of those who crewed the ships had no idea who their mysterious client was, Captain Chankley certainly did. He was the sort of slimy eel who would do almost anything—including violating a prohibited area—if paid enough. But he’d want the security of knowing who he was working for, so he could drag him under with him if he started drowning.
Perhaps because the landside trail was so infrequently used—it was far easier to reach Chankley’s Harbor by boat than by land—Julyan’s approach attracted attention. Slatternly women and sloppy men drifted out of various structures, looking—despite the midday hour—as if they’d just woken up.
Of course, Julyan thought, most of them probably have. The boats would have been out either very early or overnight, depending on where they were fishing. Unless they had an extraordinary catch, most of the work would have been finished hours ago.
Julyan swaggered into the village square, chucked the prettiest of the young women under the chin, and said, “So, where’s the captain? I’ve news for him, news worth coin, not just barter.”
Lots of the sailors here could have claimed the title “captain,” since the boss of any boat with a crew larger than two merited the title, but in Chankley Harbor only one man was “the captain.” It was rumored that Bore Chankley had assaulted his own father for the title, so Julyan guessed that no one was willing to push the point.
“I’m here,” came a rasping voice from the doorway of the least offensive of the structures—the one that nearly merited the word “house” rather than “hut” or “shack.” “Julyan Hunter! Almost didn’t know you with that white hair and those clothes. So, you weren’t drowned. Figured not. You’re too mean to drown.”
Julyan didn’t protest. He and Captain Chankley understood each other too well for that, and their mutual respect made certain the rest of the captain’s people treated Julyan with proper deference.
Bore Chankley had hips like a snake and shoulders that testified to a lifetime of hauling on lines and setting sail. His eyes were framed by deep lines that gave his face a serious cast, but his mouth showed he knew how to laugh. Of course, what he laughed at wasn’t what amused other people. A scar ran from his hairline, across his left eyelid, over the nose, and trailed off somewhere in his cheek. The formal explanation was that it was a cut from a rope, but legend said it had been bestowed by his father in a drunken rage.
“A word with you, good captain,” Julyan said, at his most polite. “I’ve brought with me a bottle of excellent brandy…”
Captain Chankley was not an alcoholic as his father had been, but he liked a nip or three when he wasn’t going to be sailing.
“I won’t say no.” He gestured to a gazebo that stood apart from the other structures and offered a pleasant view of the bay. “Wait for me there. I’m just awake and need to splash water on my face.”
Julyan moved in that direction, listening carefully when Bore Chankley stopped to talk with a couple of the women, but all he caught was an order for food to be brought to the gazebo. He didn’t think it was a code of any sort, but he resolved not to eat anything the captain didn’t first.
He slouched into the chair that offered the most cover from being seen. He wasn’t worried about keeping the Old One waiting. When things were going his way that one had a hunter’s patience, and he didn’t plan to sail until well after dark. Julyan wouldn’t be surprised if the Old One hadn’t found a comfortable spot and was catching a nap, leaving Seamus to watch.
When Bore Chankley joined Julyan, he had taken time to comb and braid his long chestnut hair, then tie it beneath a bandana. He brought two wineglasses with him—very fine cut crystal that looked like seegnur vintage—and set them on the tabletop between them.
“Old One gifted them to me,” he said. “He alive?”
“Yes, though he’d prefer that not get around.”
“Figured he would be. Take more than water to kill that one. I’ve heard stories from before he settled here. Weathered the worst hurricane anyone had seen and came ashore, clinging to a spar, nothing more than leather and bones. Been eating shark. Had wedged the teeth in a crack in the spar to prove it. Man who told me had one of those teeth as a charm from his grandfather. Swore it made him proof against drowning.”
“Did it?”
“Don’t know. Got killed in a squabble over a woman.”
“Heh…” Julyan chuckled. “Old One wants to go to Mender’s Isle tonight if weather’s fit. He says it will be. Got a crew who’ll dare it?”
Bore Chankley snorted. “Take more than a few lights and weird voices to scare my sailors.”
“Voices?”
“Yeah. Heard ’em myself, since the waters around the Haunted Islands are my fishing grounds. Don’t know if they were spirits, but they didn’t speak like humans. I’ve sailed far enough to hear lots of dialects. This was different. Nothing like anyone had ever heard. Scared some of the crew.”
“Not you,” Julyan said.
Bore Chankley shrugged. “Ain’t heard a sound yet that can kill a man. Things that make a sound, sure, but some of the worst sounds are made by little things like loons and bullfrogs.”
“Point.” Julyan spilled more of the amber brandy into Captain Chankley’s glass, feeling a familiar thrill. It was almost the color of Adara’s eyes. “You’ll sail then?”
“To the reef. Won’t bust a ship, not even for the Old One.”
“Fair. I suspect he has worked out a way to deal with the reef.”
“He would.”
Julyan asked a few more questions about the apparitions on the Mender’s Isle, but Bore Chankley hadn’t heard much more than Loremaster Flamen. When the bottle was empty, Julyan excused himself.
“I’ll just go and make arrangements on my end. We’ll be down after full dark.”
“And we’ll sail.” Captain Chankley’s smile was sardonic. “It’ll be just like old times.”
* * *
Leto’s complex was an archeologist’s dream come true. Parts of it were still sealed off—Leto claimed not to be able
to operate the door locks. However, what was available was sufficient to keep Griffin occupied for months. The complex had two main sections: one for research and development; the other for residential needs. The research and development area consisted of a large lab with numerous open workstations, a bunker in which prototypes were racked, and, on a lower level, a fabrication area. Almost all the equipment was nonfunctional, but Leto had reactivated a few of the stations.
Griffin would have been perfectly happy, except that Leto seemed to have taken a dislike to Adara. The facility coordinator (which was the title Leto gave herself) had been fine with Adara’s presence as long as there had been clearing away to do. However, now that the hauling and carrying was done, Leto grew sulky whenever Adara entered the complex. When Leto grew sulky, lights flickered, air circulation grew poor, and Griffin’s investigation was hampered in a dozen ways, small and large.
“I don’t understand,” Griffin said to Leto one afternoon when Terrell and Adara were both outside. “You don’t mind Terrell. Or me.”
“This is a restricted access facility. Although you are not on the list, I can see a rationale for admitting you. You have many of the right qualifications. In any case, I cannot expect you to be included on a list that was made centuries before you were born.”
“And Terrell?”
“Terrell is your bondsman,” Leto said primly. “Although such situations were exceedingly rare, there is precedent for him to be admitted. However, there is no precedent at all for Adara, less than for the great cat. After all, some of the residents of this facility did keep pets. However, under no circumstances were any unbonded savages permitted within—much less permitted to come and go at their own whim. I was in violation of my own dictates when I let her enter. I have since regretted it.”
Could you have done anything about it? Griffin thought. From what I have seen, the defensive weaponry within this facility was thoroughly disabled. Even now, you can only show your displeasure by making the facility unpleasant.
He wanted to care more, knew he should care more, but he felt detached from everything other than this fascinating facility. Even with the damage it had taken, it was easily the most complete pre-war R & D complex he had ever seen.
Than anyone in the Kyley Domain has seen. Possibly than anyone in all the inhabited galaxy has seen. If my suspicions are correct and this facility was doing covert research, it may have been advanced even by the standards of those days. I press tabs, read instructions, piece through bits and pieces, and am all too aware that I am like a child who sits at the helm of an interstellar battle cruiser and imagines that he is in command. Even Leto does not seem to comprehend the half of what is here. Was her memory tampered with or was she created to keep this complex running and nothing more?
He found his thoughts drifting back to this puzzle, the question of whether or not Leto welcomed Adara becoming less and less important.
“Well, Leto. Adara may not be bonded to me, but I’d like it if you’d continue to give her access. Without functioning food synthesizers, I do need food and fresh water. Terrell cannot both assist me here, and take care of hunting and other such menial chores.”
“She will not stay here?”
“She will if I need an extra pair of hands,” Griffin replied sternly, “but otherwise, no, I don’t think we will try your patience. Now, I’d like to go back to figuring out the operating system for this console. You say you remember the headset being used, but I haven’t found the necessary access codes. Still, if the seegnur built in this complex as they did everywhere else, there will be an alternate means of access.”
“Very good, sir,” Leto replied. “Perhaps these manuals I located will be of use? Wise O’Rahilly was fond of detailed documentation. The reader is a primitive enough device that it is functional.”
If there was a certain smugness to the disembodied voice, Griffin found it very easy to ignore as he went to fetch the data reader.
* * *
The Old One did indeed have a means of getting over the artificial reef that barred access to the Haunted Islands by ship. Julyan had always assumed the reef was of the same width throughout—but it turned out that in at least one place it was narrow enough that a small boat could be dropped over. The currents that kept such small vessels from approaching on the seaward side were not a hazard within the reef.
This wasn’t to say the experience wasn’t frightening, since the boat couldn’t simply be lowered over the side, but had to be swung out some distance using a device jury-rigged from the ropes and pulleys more often used to haul in heavily laden fishing nets. Once they were in the water, Julyan, of course, was the one set to the oars.
The waters within the artificial lagoon were seeded with carnivorous sharks, a fact Julyan was well aware of, since the sharks had done in a couple of the men who had decided that they didn’t like the terms of the Old One’s employment. He suspected—although he’d never asked—that the sharks had something to do with a couple of the women who had disappeared as well. Now they bumped lazily against the hull of the rowboat, attracted, no doubt, by the lingering smell of fish blood and guts permeating the wood. Captain Chankley kept a strong fleet, but not necessarily the tidiest.
A couple of times one of the sharks grabbed hold of an oar blade, mistaking it, no doubt, for a struggling fish. With unsurprising coolness, the Old One walloped these bolder fish with the end of the boathook, being careful not to draw blood, since that would send the sharks into a feeding frenzy. Seamus huddled in the bow, shivering slightly but otherwise showing no awareness of his surroundings.
Eventually, the bottom of the rowboat scraped against the sand and gravel of the shore. The Old One did not wait for Julyan to ship the oars, but leapt over the side into the shallows and, working with the surge of the waves, pulled the boat clear of the water. Once again, Julyan was reminded that, despite his somewhat effete appearance, the Old One was very strong.
“It was obviously necessary that we arrive here by night,” the Old One said softly. “However, I do not think it would be wise for us to begin our explorations until dawn. If, as I believe, someone else is now inhabiting this island, they may have laid traps. I would have.” He gave a slight, humorless smile. “Indeed, I did. Best we not run afoul of those either.”
The night was quite warm and the sand, while not precisely soft, could be sculpted into a bed far more comfortable than those in many a woodland camp in which Julyan had slept. They moved clear of the tideline, to where few scrubby trees stood. The Old One put Seamus on guard.
“I will need you alert come dawn,” he said to Julyan. “We shall both sleep until then.”
Julyan obeyed. One of the many things he had learned from Bruin was how to sleep restfully without fully relinquishing alertness. It was a gift possessed by most animals, lost by humans, who craved the temporary oblivion and the peculiar half-life of dreams. He also had cultivated a good internal alarm, dependent not on any sense of the passage of time but on maintaining an awareness of his surroundings. Thus it was that the sun was just tinting the sky grey and the birds were making their first querulous comments when he came fully awake.
The Old One was also stirring. He rolled gracefully to his feet, then unslung his small pack of supplies from an overhanging tree limb. Without a word, he pulled out provisions and a covered bottle of water, fairly sharing out three portions. They dined in silence. Wordlessly, the Old One commanded Seamus to take his turn at sleep. He then indicated that he would be gone for a short time and Julyan should remain.
When the Old One returned, he had clearly taken time to attend to his appearance. He wore a fresh shirt and his hair—still longer than he usually preferred—had been combed and pulled back into a neat queue. He motioned to Julyan, gesturing splashing water on his face.
Julyan went where he had been directed. While he peed against a convenient tree, he considered defying the Old One’s hint that he should wash up. Then he grinned at himself. Had he been alone, he
would have taken any chance to wash. Another of Bruin’s lessons had been that a clean hunter was much more successful than one reeking of sweat and other odors that gave the prey warning.
You’re only considering skipping because you don’t like how the Old One orders you around as if you have fewer brains than Seamus, he thought as he knelt next to the stream, washing both face and mouth. Cut off your own nose to spite your face, as Mom would have said.
The sun was not far above the horizon when Julyan returned to the Old One, but there was ample light with which to see their surroundings. The Old One had pulled the rowboat the rest of the way up the beach, turned it upside down, then concealed it with dead branches to which leaves still clung. He swept away the marks with another branch, tossed it onto the pile and gave a satisfied grunt.
“That won’t hide anything if someone searches,” he said, “but it will be ample to keep anyone out on the bay from spotting it. Now, where to begin?”
Julyan, rightly guessing that the Old One had been thinking aloud, did not bother to answer. If the Old One wanted advice, he asked for it directly.
“There is an entrance into the underground facility not far from here,” the Old One continued after a moment. “A minor one. That should serve us admirably.”
He turned. “Please, take point. You are far better than I am at spotting traps. We are heading in the direction of that wind-twisted pine, the tallest one in that cluster.”
Julyan nodded. He thought he remembered the entrance the Old One referred to, although as far as he recalled, it had never been used. The Old One really was like an fox, knowing all the ins and outs of his burrows. The only traps they encountered along the way were of the Old One’s own making. Julyan was beginning to wonder if they’d returned to Spirit Bay on a wild goose chase. Maybe it was as Flamen’s associates had thought, just another bit of the seegnur’s old trash falling from the high orbits.
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