The seaman slipped away and returned a moment later with a towel and a cup of tepid water. She rinsed her mouth. The water tasted delicious.
“Captain!” A crashing knock sounded, the door swung open, and a hugely muscular man, bald and naked to the waist, his skin a labyrinth of blue tattoos, stuck his head inside. Carefully not looking at Tsorreh, he rattled off a string of phrases, nautical terms, she supposed. The first seaman, presumably the captain of the vessel, hurried away.
Tsorreh used a little of the water to wash her face and hands. Feeling refreshed, she tried standing up. She discovered several cabinets built into the cabin walls, filled with an assortment of clothing, maps, and small boxed instruments, nautical and medical, rolled maps, even a collection of books. She recognized a history of the Gelon Empire, the Odes of the Empress Cilician, and a volume in the spiky calligraphy of Denariya.
An interesting collection for a seafaring man, she thought, smiling to herself.
This cabin must belong to the captain. Probably, she was the only woman aboard, and this was the best accommodation that could be devised for her, especially on short notice. The captain clearly wasn’t Gelon, nor were his possessions those of a military man. She’d been put on a merchant vessel, most likely as part of a cargo of treasure looted from Gatacinne.
With each passing moment, Tsorreh’s nausea and weakness lessened. Although she had never been on an ocean-going vessel before, she had heard of the sickness that afflicted many. It was supposed to take days for the worst symptoms to pass. Strange, how she had recovered so quickly. One hand moved unconsciously to her chest, fingertips brushing her gown above her breastbone. A pulse of warmth answered her.
The te-alvar protects its own.
She lowered herself to the bed and tried to focus her awareness on the gem, to reconcile what she had been taught with what she had seen and felt in these last tempestuous days.
The petal gem held impressions of people and battles long ago, that much was clear. But it was more than a repository of history. That priest—the one with the scorpion image on his headband—had been searching for something hidden, something secret. She shuddered, remembering the pressure of his mind against hers. A power had flowed through him, but the te-alvar had shielded itself, had shielded her. If the stone had not spoken for her, giving the priest the very answer he would accept without questioning further, then he would have pushed harder and deeper. She very much did not want to think what would have happened then.
Not that I’m safe now.
Yet her situation was not so bad. She was in no imminent danger, and much could happen between now and her destination. There might be a chance, many chances, to act.
There was a hesitant knocking at the cabin door.
“What now?” Tsorreh muttered. When the tapping repeated, she called, “Come in!”
The door opened, revealing a sliver of bright day. One of the young women who’d attended the wife of the Gatacinne governor slipped inside. It was Menelaia, the one who’d played the harp, and she was sobbing. Tsorreh guided her to the bed and made her sit down. There was no more water in the cup, but the towel was still damp. She wiped the girl’s face and slowly drew out her story.
Menelaia had been taken onboard in the night with a handful of palace women and some men, too. She had been roughly handled but not otherwise molested, and had been told she was now a slave. If she failed to please her new masters, she would be thrown overboard. She had no answers when Tsorreh asked about their specific destination or the whereabouts of the priest, but she had noticed a number of armed Gelonian soldiers. None of the male captives bore any resemblance to Zevaron.
“I’m to attend you, lady.” She gave Tsorreh a look of desperate, tear-drenched appeal.
“And so you shall, once you are feeling better,” Tsorreh said. “Do you think you could eat a little or drink something?”
Menelaia shook her head. The ship gave another lurch. To Tsorreh, it felt like a gentle shift, like the rocking of a cradle. The girl moaned and clutched her stomach.
“I’ll get you some water.” Tsorreh found the door unlocked and went outside. The ship moved beneath her, and although she found the sensation pleasant, she had to grab for the nearest rail for balance. Beyond stretched an immensity of blue-gray water rising to a hazy boundary with the sky.
The only vessels she’d ever seen were much smaller, river-going craft. From her position, she made out a long row of oars extending from openings along the side and moving with a strong, even rhythm. The cabin behind her was the only structure above two half-decks, fore and aft. The hold between them was open, with benches for the oarsmen along either side. Wind ruffled the large square sail.
Everywhere, Tsorreh saw structures and items she had no names for. Men, sailors by their garb, hurried about their work, doing things with the ropes of the sail. One group she did recognize, however—a Gelonian officer and a handful of guards, some of them looking just as sick as she had first felt. The officer turned toward her and she saw his face. He was the one who had led the raid on the hiding place in Gatacinne, the one who had taken her prisoner. Seeing her, he scowled.
“Who let her loose? Why isn’t she shackled?” He nodded to the nearest of his men. “Do it immediately.”
The captain appeared from behind an open hatch and climbed nimbly on deck. “See here, sergeant. This is my ship and no one gives orders but me.”
“You forget yourself, Bynthos. You sail at the pleasure and command of the Ar-King.”
An easy smile widened the captain’s face, although his eyes did not soften. “So I do, and so do you. If you wish to sail this ship yourself, I’ll not hinder you.” He turned to the crew on deck. “Up oars! Cease all work! Lord Mortan, the Silver Gull is yours. Her men await your orders.”
The officer’s face turned a paler shade of green. “I am a soldier, not a sea-rat, and I am responsible for escorting the Meklavaran Queen to the Celestial Court at Aidon. I cannot permit her to go scampering about the deck.”
“Gods, man, where do you think she can go in the middle of the ocean?”
Mortan glared at the captain. “Have it your way, then, and on your head be it if she comes to any harm.”
“As you wish,” Bynthos replied. A stride or two took him to Tsorreh’s side. “This way, my lady. You will be more comfortable if you stay inside.”
Tsorreh allowed herself to be guided back to the cabin. “I was looking for water for the girl.”
“Not got her sea-legs yet, the poor thing?” Bynthos opened the door and stepped back for Tsorreh to enter.
“‘Sea’—oh, I see. No, she doesn’t.”
Menelaia lay as Tsorreh had left her, curled into a ball, moaning with each rocking motion of the ship.
“I’ll bring more water and have Cook make up a brew that might help.” The Captain moved to close the door.
“You are very kind,” Tsorreh began, and then panic rose in her at the prospect of being caged in this narrow space, isolated except for a helpless, miserable girl, unable to see what was going on around her. Most of all, unable to do anything, cut off from even the solace of her books.
“If you please, sir,” she stammered, “I think it would ease her mind if I could read to her. May I borrow one of your books?”
Bynthos paused, his face a silhouette of shadows against the sky. She read the surprise in his posture. Then he recovered himself and said, “Help yourself.”
Having a task gave Tsorreh something to focus on. At first, her hands shook too badly to manage the flint and tinder to light the lantern, but in the end she managed. Its small cone of light added to what came through the slit window.
She paused over the Gelonian history, thinking that even if Menelaia could not pay proper attention, she herself might learn something of value. It could not hurt to learn more about her captors. But her heart hungered for something more than the chronicles of kings and generals.
Her eyes went to Cilician’s Odes. They were
a series of poems, a cycle that began in anguish and homesickness, flowered into extraordinary eroticism, and concluded in grief, written over the course of a decade by a young woman who had been given in marriage to an Ar-King a century or more ago. Eavonen had said they were some of the most beautiful love poems in all of literature.
She had not gone more than a line or two down the first page when Bynthos returned. She sensed him standing there, just outside the door, his shoulder against the salt-weathered wood, heard the sudden catch and softening of his breath as she read on:
I hear the song of the flute.
The flower blooms, although it is not spring.
The sky roars and lightning flashes.
Rain falls.
Waves arise in my heart.
The shadows filled with light. Across the chasm of a century, the dead woman poured out her longing, a perfume just beyond the senses.
Tsorreh paused at the end of the verse. While she read, Bynthos had slipped into the room. On the bed, the girl Menelaia lay quiet.
“I—” the captain’s voice sounded rusty. “I had no idea that was here.”
Tsorreh looked up, startled. Surely, such a volume was to be treasured and savored. Could it be that he had never opened its covers? Or perhaps, she thought in a flash of understanding, a man such as himself had little time for poetry.
“Now you know,” she said gently, folding the book and holding it out to him. “And you can read those words for yourself whenever you desire.”
He crossed the narrow space and took the book from her hands, running his fingers over the worn leather covers. “No,” he said, “I can’t.”
Would he lose the respect of his crew if it were known that he indulged in poetry? Tsorreh had heard of such attitudes, but never believed them possible.
“None of your men need ever know,” she said.
“No, it’s not that.”
For a long moment, she stared at him, the strong features softened by the lantern light, the rough skin, the bright eyes. Then, setting down the metal pitcher of water, he was gone.
It came to her that he had just entrusted her with a secret, like the long-hidden chamber of his heart—not only that he could not read, but also how much he longed to.
* * *
After a time, Menelaia woke, and the two women sat together while the ship pitched and rolled. One of the Gelonian soldiers brought bread and olives and a small stoppered bottle of resinated wine. Tsorreh ate with an appetite and then went back to tending the frightened girl.
Her thoughts went to the battle at Gatacinne and all that had come before. She prayed for Zevaron’s safety, but the old fervor, the terror of any harm coming to him, had lifted somewhat from her heart. The sensation of warmth and steadiness from the te-alvar faded with the passing hours but never entirely departed.
Zevaron might be young, but he was strong, well-trained, and resourceful. He had kept both of them going during the flight across the desert wastes. Tsorreh wondered what he would do next, whether he would return home or stay in Isarre to fight the Gelon there. She had no influence over his decision. There was nothing she could do to help him, nor he, her.
He was alive—she would surely have sensed his death. Now their lives followed different paths. He would take what she had already given him and do with it what he willed.
As for her own future, she felt surprisingly tranquil. For the moment, she was safe and well. As royal hostage or spoil of war, she clearly had value to her captors. That might change once they arrived in Gelon, but she could not summon any amount of worry. The most frightening thing to happen to her since leaving Meklavar was the interview with the priest, and the te-alvar had protected her. She was its guardian, its safe-keeper, and it was hers.
By the shifting of light through the slit window, it was toward late afternoon when Tsorreh detected a change in the motion of the ship. They anchored at a little island, forested hills sloping down to a crescent of white sand. Most of the crew went ashore, where their fires glowed against the falling night. Tsorreh caught snatches of their songs through the surge of the waves, for she and Menelaia had remained onboard, guarded by a pair of grim-faced Gelon. Except for a brief foray on deck, enough to see the encampment on the beach and smell the salt air, they were confined to the cabin.
After a time, Bynthos entered, bringing a meal of the same flatbread, olives, and resin-wine, along with dried fish. When Tsorreh asked, he explained that the captain always remained with his ship. Even here, she wondered, with the sea so calm, the night so peaceful?
After lighting the lantern, he unfolded a table, a slab of oiled wood hinged into one of the walls, and brought up a pair of stools. At Tsorreh’s command, Menelaia sat on the bed. Bynthos listened gravely as Tsorreh recited the customary blessing for meals.
They ate in silence. The air grew thick with unasked questions. Menelaia, having finished her meal, curled up and soon fell asleep.
“I find it comforting to read aloud,” Tsorreh said. “Would it disturb you?”
Deftly she moved so that the pages fell open to both of them. She began to read, slowly and clearly, tracing each word with her fingertip,
O that I might see my country once again.
There wisdom fills her pitcher from the well,
Yet needs no rope to draw the water.
There no clouds cover the sky,
Yet rain falls in gentle waves.
Let us not sit on the doorstep,
Let us bathe in the holy rain!
At first Bynthos followed her finger surreptitiously, but within a few phrases, he leaned forward. His gaze locked upon the page, his whole body intent.
“Can you see this letter here?” Tsorreh said softly. “It begins both ‘rain’ and ‘rope.’ When I was a child, I always thought it looked like a spiked head of grain. In Meklavar, we call it ran, but the Gelonian word is reth.”
“Reth.”
“Yes, like the ancient word for barley. They each have names, these letters, and once you know the sounds, they tell you the words.”
“Reth,” he repeated. Then, bending once more over the book, he pointed. “It is here, and here…and here. Show me another.”
Smiling to herself, Tsorreh went on. “Here is lam, like the neck of a camel. And here, this little mark that is almost no mark at all, it is aph, the indrawn breath before you speak.”
In Tsorreh’s memory, her mother held her close as they traced the letters together. Even so had she herself read to Zevaron. Candles had burned in a many-branched holder, their light sweet and warm. Beyond the walls of the house, night had lain like a velvet cloak over the city. A cat mewed plaintively, bells jingling from its collar. Someone played a lullaby on a wooden flute.
“Here is the first breath, and the last, and all between,” Tsorreh’s mother had said. “Here is love and hatred, folly and understanding. Here is the story of Khored, and how his magic saved the world, that we might remember and honor him.”
They went on in this manner for some hours, letter by letter, until the lantern burned low. Menelaia roused, the reading lesson came to an end, and Bynthos took his leave. Menelaia made a pallet for herself on the floor from a folded blanket they discovered in the compartment beneath the bed. Tsorreh extinguished the lantern and went to sleep.
The next day passed very much as before, a day of confinement in the tiny cabin, of monotony broken only by the arrival of food and water, the unending rise and fall of the ship, the smells of salt air and fish. Again the ship came into harbor as the sun fell. When Bynthos brought dinner, Tsorreh asked him why they spent each night near land and not at sea.
“It is the custom, whenever possible, and Lord Mortan has ordered it. Perhaps he believes that the monsters who roam these waters attack at night. More likely, it is to keep us out of the way of pirates. And then, it is more difficult to navigate out of sight of land when the stars cannot be seen.”
Tsorreh mulled over the implications of his words. Lawless s
eamen, many of them Denariyan, were said to ply these waters. She had not considered the difficulty of staying on course when surrounded by waves in every direction. The strange sense of disorientation returned, along with the image of floating on a vast sea. She felt adrift, even here, even at anchor.
Monsters. Something beyond the motion of the ship that made her ill. She imagined lightless depths and strange beasts rising from them, moving slowly, inexorably. The room slipped sideways.
She stood on a cliff above an ocean. Waves rose at her call…no, not her call but that of the great king. From deep in the shadows beneath the waters, power stirred and took form: a great head, eyes huge and pale as pearls, mane like tangled seaweed, horns of polished coral.
“My lady?” Menelaia stepped to her side, touched her arm. “Is anything amiss?”
Tsorreh blinked. The cabin, now familiar in the light of the lantern, filled her vision, blotting out the image of the sea beast.
“I’m quite well,” she said quickly. “I was just thinking.” She turned to Bynthos. “Captain, you sound as if you do not share these fears.”
“I’m not Gelon-born, for all that I now sail under her command,” Bynthos said. “I’d just brought a cargo into Gatacinne when the invasion began. With Gelon barricading the harbor, the only way any of us leaves is at their bidding. One cargo’s as good as another, it’s said.”
“What cargo?” Tsorreh asked.
“Loot from the city, whatever they could pile together as prizes for the Ar-King.” He did not add that she herself was booty.
“Where are we bound?”
“First to Verenzza and then across to the mainland. That’s as far as the Silver Gull can sail. You’ll go upriver by barge to Aidon.”
“Have you been there? What is it like? What sort of man is the Ar-King?” Besides an arrogant, power-hungry tyrant?
“Aye, I’ve visited Aidon once or twice,” Bynthos said. “A marvel it is, that city, with wide streets and gardens everywhere, and palaces of white marble shining in the sun. I’ve heard it called the Crossroads of the World, the Pearl of Gelon.”
The Seven-Petaled Shield Page 17
