Song of the Current

by Sarah Tolcser

  In my extreme curiosity, I was willing to ignore the slight. “What happened to the Emparch?”

  “He’s been assassinated.” His voice was hoarse. “By Konto Theucinian, who by the grace of the gods was once born the Emparch’s own cousin.”

  “Once?”

  His nostrils flared. “A man who murders his own blood has no honor. He is not a man. The Theucinians have always been bitter because their line didn’t inherit the Emparchy in the Succession of 1328. Preposterous, of course.”

  He dropped into the seat opposite me, downing his drink in one swallow. “I don’t know how long they’ve been planning the coup, but Konto Theucinian has attacked the palace and seized the throne.”

  I remembered Commander Keros’s haste to get to the Akhaian capital. This had to be what he was talking about when he said there was unrest. But if word of the Emparch’s murder had already trickled south, why were the Black Dogs so intent on hunting down Tarquin? His news wasn’t exactly a secret. Something was missing in his story—and that wasn’t the only thing bothering me.

  “You’re the one they sent?” I eyed him doubtfully. With his high and mighty mannerisms and that silk robe, he would stick out like a sore thumb in the riverlands. Not to mention he didn’t seem very experienced. “Surely you can’t be the consulate’s best.”

  “I don’t know what you’d know about it,” he muttered. “It’s due to the influence of my father that I have a diplomatic posting, despite my youth.”

  “Who’s your father?”

  “He’s on the Emparch’s council. I”—his voice cracked—“I don’t know if he made it out of the palace.” His hand trembled on the checkered tablecloth. He saw me looking and pulled it into his lap.

  We sat in silence as the lantern flickered, long enough for it to feel awkward. Much as it annoyed me to admit, he was right. I wished I’d never opened the box. Pa and I were smugglers, but it wasn’t as swashbuckling as it sounded. Sometimes we buried a shipment in a hidden cache or gave a tariff agent the slip in the dead of night, but most days we just sailed from port to port. Nothing had prepared me for being in a scrape like this. The commander should’ve taken Pa’s suggestion and given the crate to the Bollards—I was in far over my head.

  “All right.” Taking down a chart from the shelf, I unrolled it and spread it on the table. “This is us.” I jabbed my finger on the snakelike line that marked the River Thrush. “And this is the Free City of Valonikos.”

  Tarquin waved his hand. “I have no intention of going to Valonikos. Not now that I’m awake.”

  “Oh, well, la-di-da.” I was nearing the end of my patience. “Where do you intend to go, then?”

  “Casteria.”

  He traced the River Thrush on the map until he came to the fork, where he drew a line not up the River Kars toward Valonikos, but down through Nemertes Water, past Iantiporos. He didn’t stop until he got to the Neck, the great narrow bay that lay many miles to the south.

  I flattened my palms on the map. “No.”

  “This is a different matter. Just as important.” He squeezed his glass, knuckles whitening. “You have to help me. I’m an agent of the crown.”

  “Not any crown of mine. I have to deliver you to Valonikos.” Pa’s freedom depended on it. On me. “I’ve got a letter of marque from the Margravina says I’m to take you there and let no one get in my way.”

  “So?”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re getting in my way.”

  “But everything’s changed now. When the shadowman enchanted that box, he didn’t know—” He abruptly shut his mouth.

  I’d heard of the shadowmen who live in the north, whose lineage is full of secrets they mostly keep. The stories say they can pluck horrors and illusions from the dark, and twist your dreams into bone-chilling nightmares. It is whispered that they were descended from the god of the night, just as the frogmen are children of the river god. I had never seen a shadowman. Only very rich people could afford their services.

  A shudder ran through me.

  Tarquin noticed. “You’re not scared of shadowmen, are you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Magic doesn’t make a man evil,” he said. “It’s just a skill. It isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s what’s in his heart that makes him evil, the same as anyone else.” He leaned across the table, the lantern casting weirdly shaped shadows on his face. I stiffened. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  I stared him down. “Of course not.”

  “Then you have no reason to fear a shadowman. They work the magic of light and dark, sleep and awake.” His voice took on a lecturing tone. “But that’s all they can do. Misdirection and shadow and sleep, and so on. Their power is passed down from long ago, time out of mind, when gods spoke and walked abroad among men.”

  They still do, I wanted to say. I thought everyone knew that. But I reckoned we’d had enough bad luck. I wasn’t about to bring more of it down on us by speaking of the river god out loud to a stranger.

  Outside, the wind whistled through the treetops. A spattering of rain blew in the open cabin window and the candle in the lantern guttered low.

  Wood slammed on wood, causing us both to jump. Fee’s long-toed feet appeared on the steps. “Gone on,” she said, shaking off water droplets.

  “Do you think they saw us?” I asked.

  “They shot at you. Of course they saw you,” Tarquin said.

  I shot him a rude look. As if I’d been talking to him. “I meant Cormorant’s name.”

  Surely it was too dark. I swallowed through a dry throat, remembering how I’d crouched in the cockpit and read Victorianos’s stern in the moonlight. It was impossible to know.

  I turned to Fee. “A disguise might not go amiss.”

  “Tomorrow,” she agreed.

  “Very well,” Tarquin said. “For now it’s best we all get what little sleep we can. In the morning you can convey me to Casteria.”

  “Valonikos.”

  “Casteria.”

  I slid Pa’s pistol a few inches out of its holster.

  He was unimpressed. “Will you cease pointing that contraption at me? You won’t shoot me. You don’t want to damage your precious cargo, after all.”

  “Why do you keep calling it a contraption?” I asked. “Surely they have guns in Akhaia.”

  “Of course we do. But a blade is the weapon of a gentleman. It’s the only honorable way to fight.”

  “Oh?” I looked pointedly at his waist. “I don’t see yours.”

  “I left in a great hurry. I didn’t have time to—” He closed his mouth and fell silent.

  Grabbing the lantern off the table, I gave him a sharp look. I still suspected he wasn’t telling me everything. But he was right about one thing—I didn’t dare shoot him, not when Pa’s freedom depended on his safe arrival in Valonikos.

  I decided further investigation could wait till morning.

  “You can take Pa’s bunk.” I nodded at the forward cabin.

  That bunk was the biggest we had, although he would still probably have to bend his knees to get into it. I showed him the head, in case he needed to use it during the night, and got an extra wool blanket out of the locker. This I shoved at him, almost daring him to make a remark about its scratchiness. But he said nothing.

  I stumbled through the motions of getting ready for bed, then blew out the lantern and dropped into my bunk.

  Cormorant rocked reassuringly, water slip-slapping at the hull, as the occasional burst of rain sprinkled the cabin roof. I lay awake, uncomfortable with the knowledge that a strange boy was sleeping on the other side of the curtain. I couldn’t see or hear him, but his presence seemed to fill the cabin. The wound on my arm throbbed. And worse, I felt the lack of Pa, a raw self-pitying loneliness that clawed at my chest.

  It was a long time until my heart slowed enough for me to fall into sleep.

  That night I dreamed of Mrs. Singer, the wherryman’s wife who died on Jenny. I dreamed she lay st
ill on a bed of coral, and that coral was brighter than anything at the bottom of the river. The reef sat on a patch of golden sand. Motes of light trickled down through the dark water.

  Mrs. Singer lay with one arm dangling off the edge of the spongy coral. Slick green weeds wound around her face, weaving through the locks of her long hair. Fish swam above her, but they weren’t like any fish I had ever seen. Their colors were brilliant—yellow, orange, and vivid blue.

  Then Mrs. Singer opened her eyes and said my name.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  I awoke the next morning greatly relieved not to have been murdered in my sleep by the Black Dogs. Casting a glance at the closed curtain to Pa’s cabin, I bound my hair with a red paisley scarf and slipped barefoot onto the deck.

  Mist hovered over the riverlands. A dragonfly flitted in the air, its wings a flash of green among the shivering cattails. Fee perched on Cormorant’s bow, a faraway look on her face. Was she talking to the god in the river? As his descendants, all the frogmen had a connection to the god. Whether it was the same language of small things the wherrymen spoke of, or something far older and stranger, I didn’t know. A pang of jealousy stung me.

  Squinting at the peak of the mast, I surveyed the mess from last night. Cormorant’s halyards were still tangled in the branches, her deck scattered with twigs and leaves. Pa wouldn’t approve of the way we’d left the sail in a heap. Together Fee and I unwound the ropes and lowered the mast to shake it free of the tree. I winced as sticks rained to the deck around me. We steered the wherry out of the dike and into Heron Water, where we anchored near the bank.

  Fee scrambled up from the cargo hold, setting a bucket on the deck. “Paint.” She pressed a brush into my hand.

  Reluctantly I eyed Cormorant’s name, spelled out above the cabin door in light blue letters with red flourishes. “I hate to ruin it.”

  She shrugged. “Or die.”

  “I know, I know.” I swiped the wet brush across the C, blotting it out.

  As I put the finishing touches on the paint, Tarquin emerged, blinking in the morning sunlight. He gazed out at the lake in surprise. It had been too dark to see anything last night.

  “I didn’t know there were other boats here.” He drew his brocade robe around him.

  One vessel was anchored down at the far end of Heron Water, a finger of smoke curling up from her roof. I couldn’t identify her—a houseboat, maybe? The other was a wherry, the Fair Morning. The wherryman’s wife sat on deck in a rocking chair, smoking a long pipe. She and her daughter stared at us. I didn’t know them, but I could tell they were wondering why we hadn’t said hello yet. And what kind of idiots we were to get our mast stuck in the trees.

  I set down the paint bucket. “Is that what all the Emparch’s couriers wear?”

  “It’s a dressing gown.” He saw my mystified look. “Sleeping clothes.”

  “Oh.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Well, really. Why would anyone waste such an elegant garment on sleeping?

  He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. “I didn’t have time to change before I was forced to flee—”

  “Flee?” Again his words caused an alarm bell to go off in the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right about his story.

  “I was rushing to get on the road,” he explained hastily. He put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the flat land, the breeze stirring his curls.

  The only white sails belonged to a two-masted schooner far away across the yellow-brown marsh. That didn’t mean anything, though, since the River Thrush had many bends and places where lines of trees blotted the horizon. Victorianos was lurking out there somewhere.

  The packing crate still sat on deck, its lid askew. I heaved it overboard with a muddy splash.

  Tarquin followed me. “What are you doing?”

  “The Black Dogs are looking for a wherry carrying this box,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m going to sink it. And you’re going to help me.”

  I slung the rope ladder over the edge of the deck and climbed down. At the bottom rung, I jumped off, landing thigh deep in the water. Mud squished between my toes.

  He sighed. “You expect me to jump into that muck? There could be leeches. Or snakes.”

  I put my hands on my hips, squinting up at him. The crate bobbed in the water beside me. “Of course there are leeches. Most likely snakes too.”

  He spent far too much time removing his boots and rolling up the cuffs of his trousers, as I hunted along the shoreline for large rocks. By the time he inched down the ladder, I had piled up a collection.

  “I aim to get rid of everything that might make this wherry stand out,” I said. “Starting with this crate. And you.”

  “Well, you can’t get rid of me.” He waded ashore, mud sucking at his bare feet.

  “But I can make you look more like a wherryman.” This was the part he wasn’t going to like. “Take off that robe and your trousers and put them in the box.”

  His nostrils flared, and he stepped toward me splashily. “Now see here—”

  “Oh, honestly. I won’t look.” I studied him. “What you should do is cut your hair. And take out that earring.”

  “No.”

  “What do you care more about, your vanity or your survival?” I countered. “No one in the riverlands dresses like that. The clothes have to go.”

  His gaze flickered over me. “Your scarf is unusual for a wherryman’s daughter. Made in Ndanna, I should guess from the pattern, and a particularly fine silk. I suppose we’re not burying that in the mud.”

  I touched the scarf knotted around my hair. It had been a present from my cousin Kenté, which was none of his business. “I’m not the one the Black Dogs are trying to kill.”

  Tarquin made all manner of unnecessary huffing noises as he pulled off his trousers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him balancing on one leg like a heron. At a glimpse of white undershorts, my cheeks went hot.

  “After I just finished getting all the gods-damned straw out of that robe,” he muttered. Tossing the bundle of fabric into the crate, he raised his eyebrows. “All right?”

  His letter from the consulate hadn’t been in his trousers or his robe. He must have stashed it in Pa’s cabin. I filed that information away for later.

  I piled my rocks in the box and watched bubbles rise up from the water as it sank. When it was completely submerged, we waded back to Cormorant. I kept my eyes politely slanted downward. Things between Tarquin and me were awkward enough without me seeing him in his underwear.

  “Ugh! There’s a leech on my ankle.” He pinched one end and began to lift. Its slimy black body stretched longer, but it didn’t loosen its grip.

  “Scrape, don’t pull.” I turned my foot over to find one of the creatures latched onto my big toe. “Like this.” With my fingernail I removed it and flicked it overboard.

  Instead of saying thank you, he let out a loud sigh. “I won’t have any further conversation with you while I’m not wearing trousers. It’s ridiculous.”

  Fee and I exchanged glances as he stalked up the deck, leaving wet footprints. He might have been a great deal more tolerable if he wasn’t so obsessed with his own dignity.

  I rummaged in the cargo hold until I found a sign, brightly painted with the name Octavia. Smaller letters underneath named the city of Doukas as our home port. I hung it above the cabin door, where it almost covered the slick new paint. Someone who inspected us closely would notice, but I figured if any of the Black Dogs were that close, we were already dead.

  Tarquin clumped up the cabin steps. “There. Do I look like a wherryman now?” He spat out the word as if it were a curse.

  The truth was he didn’t, especially not with that haughty sneer on his face. His forearms were pasty white. I couldn’t see his palms, but I knew they would be as smooth as mine were hard. He looked uncomfortable in Pa’s clothes, and furthermore his boots were all wrong. They were knee-length, crafted from creamy soft leather, and the brass b
uttons were decorated with lions. I regretted not sinking them too, but we didn’t have any others that would fit him.

  “What are we going to do about those pirates?” he asked.

  “There are lots of hidey-holes in these parts,” I said. “Dikes and ponds and the like. Places only a wherryman would know about.” Or a smuggler, but I didn’t say that aloud. “Even if they do know, I reckon that cutter can’t fit. Too deep in the draft.”

  “Can’t you speak plainly?”

  “The draft. A ship like that must be nine feet at least.” He still looked confused. “Her depth. Our keel is only four feet deep.”

  “Must be nice,” he said. “I bet they can stand up in their cabin.”

  I ignored that dig. “With any luck, we’ll see the Black Dogs before they see us. I can’t outrun them, but I know where to hide. And once we deliver the lumber—”

  “What are you talking about? What lumber?”

  “You’re not my only cargo.” I struggled to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “There’s a shipment of timber in the cargo hold that’s bound for Siscema.”

  “Can’t it wait? My mission is far more important than your logs.”

  I glared at him. “After we unload the logs, we’ll go a great deal faster.”

  He seemed to accept that, turning to examine the fresh paint on Cormorant’s cabin wall. “Why do you have a sign with another boat’s name on it?”

  “Smuggling,” I said. It wasn’t as if he could turn me over to a dock inspector. He needed me. “Sometimes a disguise comes in handy. Of course, anyone who knows her well enough won’t be fooled.”

  Tarquin glanced over his shoulder at the Fair Morning, which had raised its big black sail, then back to Cormorant. “They look exactly alike to me.”

  I laughed. “Ayah, to you.”

  The woman on the other wherry gave us a cutting look as they glided past. No doubt they had heard the gunshots last night and seen me painting out Cormorant’s name, and decided we were scoundrels of the worst sort.

  Tarquin pointed to the boat at the far end of the lake. “Is that a wherry too?”