by Sylvia Kelso
In the unrelenting wind and rain, no-one had stirred out to watch. Segil put a boot to the wharf and pushed. Anfluga pitched a little, then the farther oars bit. She pivoted. The grey harbour waters revolved, as the River had beyond Marbleport, the somber blue tiles and stone walls receded. As silently as it had coalesced from wind and darkness, Gildair slid away into grey morning mist.
Chapter XV
Working round Gildair’s stubby southern cape, Anfluga
began to pitch. When we reached the wide gap between Sandouin and Hamair and turned south-east across the swing of open water, she began to roll as well, and I looked anxiously at Therkon, who gave me a somewhat dry smile.
“I don’t actually get ‘sea-qualm’,” he observed mildly. “Unless my stomach upsets first.”
Calling up Two’s record, I realized that it had never happened in the worst times aboard Aspis. Of course, in Dhasdein, he must have been on and off galleys most of his life. But what would his stomach make of Anfluga’s uncompromising dry rations?
I eyed him even more anxiously, and met a grin openly
mischievous. “Rathi,” he observed, “has been most exercised. I heard him interrogating Heillor over ‘what tack a fussy stomach’d manage, aye?’”
“Oh.” I felt only frank relief. Rathi had taken thought and care, despite his faintly disparaging attitude. If he could help it, Therkon at least would reach Kaastria in creditable shape.
Hamair appeared next morning, a high, ragged silhouette that grew into crag after crag of deeply indented cliffs, first grey, then honey-gold above a white-capped sea. “Aye,” Rathi said when he came off-watch. “They call it Crag, an’ it earns the name. There’s ne’er a harbour, an’ hardly a livin’ soul down this side, nowadays, until ye round into Muirwick.” I knew already this was the
island’s largest bay. “An’ not much but sheep an’ timber an’
rabbits anywhere.”
He tapped out his breakfast biscuit on a strake, and glanced swiftly back north. I did not need confirmation that the wind had been strengthening since the early hours, but my stomach twisted at his expression. Too well, too clearly, I remembered the wind hounding Aspis.
Therkon said, “Will it clear, do you think?” He spoke as he might to Aspis’ captain, and I caught the surprise in Rathi’s glance: respect was well enough, but what if he began wondering about the source for that air of command?
“So long,” I said, “as it doesn’t rain,” and Rathi turned back, with a crinkle at his eye-corners that signaled ease, approval,
perhaps the inclination of a smile.
“Rain it may not, lass. But if it clears, ye may get snow
instead.”
I groaned graphically, and he smiled outright. “Even with a norther, aye.”
It had not snowed next morning, though it was far colder, with a sky more white than grey. But the wind was steady, and with it on her flank, Anfluga was fairly stable as well. As we stowed away breakfast, including Therkon’s slightly stale but definitely white bread rolls, I suddenly realized that I need not sit idle on this passage. Therkon was here. It would help not to fret about this future, my ribs hardly came to mind any more, and I was direly in need of exercise.
I said, “Do you think you could work out with me?”
Deoren would have taught him drills, I was sure. Hand-to-hand moves, skirmish techniques, basic weapon-work were River troublecrew standard. He was steady enough now, and if the worst scathes were not completely settled, it would help him to move about. And restore his strength and balance and confidence too.
He gave me a dubious look. He would be remembering my
sessions with Azo and Verrith. I said meekly, “Just the basics. Not too fast.”
Ten repeats of step-in-and-engage had the furs and my
weather-canvas off, but as I expected, Deoren had not neglected his charge. Therkon knew the drills, and as he warmed up a
certain snap in his responses made me think he had used them on the field.
Five ground-shifting scrimmages taught us both to avoid
dunnage and inconvenient strakes. When Therkon wiped his forehead I said, “I could use some weapons work.”
The look on Rathi’s face almost made me laugh. Therkon’s expression was as daunted, if not so alarmed.
“Chaeris?”
I might not mean harm, but he knew my standard with
weapons. Did I imagine he could equal that?
“You could use Hvestang.” I forestalled the look of outright horror. “Tie the peace-strings, I’ll keep my knives sheathed. No edge or point at all.”
Hvestang had the orthodox ties to keep a sword in the
scabbard, and my knife sheaths were made to slip off the straps. After a few nervous passes, Therkon began to accept that he would
neither bruise nor behead nor even hit me unless I chose, and started to explore his own weapon. It was probably, I realized, the first time he had actually worked out with Hvestang.
When he started to slow and fumble I called a halt, and we wiped down, did a few muscle-easers, and hurried into our clothes before the chill undid it all. Settling against the side, Therkon observed ruefully, “I shall be stiffer than old fish tomorrow.” But the tone said it had been worth the price.
“Heillor had some muscle-oil.” Turning to rout among the baggage, I caught the faces of Anfluga’s crew in the shifting corner of an eye.
Carefully blank expressions. Aimed over my head, or aft into the wind, or at Segil, with the steering oar. All of them utterly quiet.
I glanced the other way. Therkon was watching me, and his face told me he understood. For most of them, it had been the first actual sight of what my knives could do.
I said under my breath, “I’m troublecrew. I need to know this. I need to work out.” I could already feel muscle and sinew starved for exercise relaxing in relief.
Therkon nodded. He did not have to say, I understand. I lived with troublecrew. Predictably, it was Segil who spoke out one thing that would have been on the others’ minds.
“I see,” he observed, leaning with deceptive indolence on the steering oar, “why ye’ve no use for skirts.”
* * * *
Anfluga ran eight days down the Hamair coast, and we worked out on every one. Therkon’s scathes settled almost completely, and he had learnt enough about Hvestang to give me an actual tussle the morning of our third landfall, on the high, canted end of Hostack, the cape guarding the north side of Furshaven bay.
“Third point, aye,” Rathi agreed, sounding relieved. “Across Hellir strait to Hamair head, then Muickhond, t’south side o’ Muirwick bay. T’one more cast across Tankerness water, an’ now we turn in for Rangar. It’s been,” with another of those uneasy glances behind us, “an uncommon clear run.”
I had not wanted to think about that. The whole eight days had been a time as in Gildair, an enchanted, sanctuary pause in which it seemed nothing could touch us, nothing was dangerous, nothing could change. All I wanted was to sail on, chewing hard tack and tolerating the cold and sitting, talking, working out with Therkon, and never come to shore again.
Even with the nights.
The first time it was I who plunged sweating and gasping back to the windy ocean-dark, the light secure hand about my wrist. The solid warmth against my shoulder, and Therkon saying, as he had among the rocks of the Brettabreck, “It’s all right. I’m here. It’s all right, Chaeris.”
And in the dark of Anfluga’s open deck, with all but Rathi and the watch-man asleep, it seemed beyond question that he should put an arm about me, and I should settle my head into his
shoulder, and we should find a way to keep together as we slept.
The second night, it was he who woke with a huge gasp and jerk and then a strangled sound half-choke, half-snarl as his hands clawed the gunwale almost up to the second I caught his shoulde
r and hissed, “It’s me, it’s Anfluga, it’s all right!”
We sat pressed together again, both no doubt wishing for that distraction of heating milk. His breathing was still rough and the heat of his cheek told me he had broken into a sweat. His arm shook a little, spasmodically, around me. I kept my hands from grasping his, and my questions quiet. The waking had betrayed him far enough.
Anfluga ran on, filling the night with the sounds, to me so
reassuring, of a ship under sail: rope-creak, wave-hiss and slap. The muscle-shift of strake and bottom under us, the sway of
Segil’s head above the steering oar, against the starless dark. Presently, just audible, Therkon spoke.
“At the worst times. I used to tell myself: it was a recompense.”
“For what?” Then I understood and was too shocked to fence. “For Ve Pool? For losing me? No-one would think, would expect you to pay for things like—not with that!”
He made a little sound that might almost have become a laugh. “Ah, Chaeris.” Light as wind, his palm brushed my cheek. “My truest troublecrew.” The lightness snuffed. He said flatly, “For Tanekhet.”
It came too fittingly, too close to inner truth. Slavery, the horror voyages, even Angrir, he would have fought, for Dhasdein and Iskarda and the Isles as well as for me. But we did not weigh against that symmetry of suffering by which he, who had tortured his oldest idol, might die by torture himself.
I drew breath as carefully as if my ribs had still not knit.
“He forgave you,” I said.
I did not have to add, You know that. You could not have
forgotten. That morning we left Iskarda.
Anfluga heeled a little far and white foam kissed the gunwale. Therkon was silent, every muscle saying my anodyne had failed.
“Or perhaps,” he answered, too softly, “for Keshaq.”
Who had also been enslaved, but who had seen his country lost and his family destroyed atop it. A balance even death would not have redeemed.
“But . . . you didn’t think—You didn’t want—?”
He moved a little, his body firming. Not in his own security, but to reaffirm mine.
“No. I did not want to go like that. I did not want to think it, either. It was only, sometimes . . .”
Sometimes endurance must have seemed impossible. And the only alternative had been to justify surrender. To accept, to deem it just that he suffer pain, torture, death.
I said flatly, “They would not have wanted that. Neither of them would have wanted that. And I would not want it. Whatever you did,” I heard the note warm, however I tried, “I would not want to lose you. Nor would anyone else in Iskarda. Nor,” the king-stroke, “in Dhasdein.”
Quite sharply he turned his head away. I bit my lip and kept my hands still, though my arms ached to reach for him, for
comfort, for reassurance to us both. For more than comfort. Shut up, I ordered Two brutally. This isn’t the time, and like that it never will be. Shut up.
Anfluga rolled, and Segil swayed. And gradually I felt the arm about me ease, begin to signal balance, composure reclaimed. In a moment, face still slightly averted, he spoke.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps, not everyone in Dhasdein.”
My eyes swam. It was neither wise nor safe, given how Two’s impulse matched with mine, to lay a hand, as I so longed to do, against his cheek.
“Oh, someone you forced to bake a whole week of poppy rolls . . .”
And my reward, however bittersweet, was in the breath of a laugh, the brief almost hug before he gave the packs a little shove and murmured, “I suppose we should try again.”
He meant, to settle down, I told Two fiercely. To lie down, if not together, and try to sleep.
He talked to me after that, more than he had ever done, and without the formality, the submerged wariness and sudden recollections of my human age that he had used on the River, or the baffling switches from warmth to brusquerie on Phaerea, or even the ruler’s informality he might have used to Deoren. I wondered sometimes if he had ever talked to anyone like this. As to a friend, an equal, to the peer he could never have had.
In cooler moments I told Two ferociously that I was his peer, not just fighting partner or ally or sharer of dangers, but the heir to another nation. His equal in rank. At other times I shut both our eyes and clung to a moment where the future, in Kaastria or beyond it, did not exist.
* * * *
Like Yinstey, Rangar lay at the very depth of its bay, but
Furshaven was not the Gnufe, however long its run, however precipitous and fir-lined its cliffs. And Rangar was no wretched hamlet but a good-sized town, once, Rathi said, a prosperous port for timber sales. “If there’s one thing Hamair can grow, t’is pine.”
But as we reached into the final cove, walls that should have been as brightly white-washed as Ve Pool’s began to show dull, faded, stained, or even sheeted with dirt. Where walls remained. Almost every neatly aligned street showed open-doored, broken-windowed houses, or outright fallen rubble and orphaned chimneystacks, like decayed molars in a mouthful of once healthy teeth.
“T’is south Hamair, no’ south Phaerea,” Rathi said dourly, meeting my glance. “Too close.” He did not finish, but I knew he meant, to Kaastria. To the spreading edge of ruin outright. “Folk or trade, there’s no’ a lot left.”
The harbour held one disreputable freighter and a cluster of fishing boats. On the quay rubbish lay everywhere, from shreds of net to untidily splayed, over-weathered heaps of planks, and every third door along the shippers’ row was boarded shut. Or beaten in. “Aye,” Rathi said grimly, “there’s always scum, when t’pond starts to rot.”
His own shipper remained, a short, saturnine man with two empty stools in his counting room and a watchful wariness. But he paid for the cargo, and named a trustworthy inn. “Leave a watch aboard,” he added, with a glance across to Anfluga’s mast. “She’s a weatherly craft, an’ there’s none so many left.”
The Pine Man was close to the quay, which, I realized, would lessen the risk of changing watches. It also had a tub and would heat water, the shore luxury I had coveted most. But its servery offered one stringy mutton stew, its taproom was three quarters empty, and the beer was rationed. I watched the gaunt, terse serving-maid and wondered if the same fear that haunted Fiskri loomed over her.
Rathi and his men sat together, quiet and watchful, and carried belaying pins. Therkon looked as grim as I felt. I was logically as much as cravenly relieved that he had taken us a shared room, and without demur. Whatever danger the great enemy might have in mind, every sense told me that theft, banditry, and all the other pests of incipient lawlessness were already here.
It was a paradoxical relief to rise in another rainy dawn, nag a breakfast from surly kitchen-folk, and gather up our traps. Rathi was curt as well as anxious, because, I realized, after hearing an exchange with Segil, they had not been able to find any more “soft tack.” Dry rations only, I thought, my heart sinking. How if Therkon’s stomach rebelled?
The shipper had offered no cargo. Rathi had in fact been
evasive about our next port, and when the little point began to occlude Rangar behind us, he glanced back with something near open relief. “Ye run nor’east out o’ Rangar,” he observed, “wherever ye’re goin’.”
Whether north or south, he meant, after clearing Furshaven. He had not wanted to let the shipper know we were headed for Kaastria.
The day was colder than ever, and grey as approaching dusk. When nothing lay beyond Anfluga’s dragon prow but open sea, Rathi leant suddenly, decisively on the steering oar and brought her round to lie into the wind. Then he jerked his head for Segil to take over, and came to Therkon and me.
“Ye know where we are, lass?” He crouched before us, balanced easily to the swing of the ship. “Back there’s Furshead. T’last cape o’ Hamair. After
this, there’s naught but Hvalwrast reach. An’ then . . .”
He had rehearsed it, over and over, in Gildair. One long last southern leg, and our next landfall would be Kaastria itself.
“So I ask ye, lass. Both o’ ye.” He glanced between us, brows deep-drawn in a frown. “What ye’d want now?”
“We’re in open sea,” he said, when both of us stared. “We can turn as we please. South. Or north. Back to Burayn, up in Muirwick. Or to Gildair. Or—wherever ye’d choose.” His eyes locked on mine, dark and more than anxious. “We can take ye. Wherever it may be.”
The sea and the wind spoke, and my heart thumped somewhere in my throat. Therkon looked at me, once. His lips tightened, and then, without my or Two’s prompt, he spoke for us all.
“You know,” he said to Rathi, “that we no longer have a choice.”
The wind and sea sound sank into some vast invisible gulf where, for an instant, I heard only the beating of my heart. Then Rathi’s eyes dropped. He got slowly up from his heels, said, just audibly, “Aye,” and turned away.
* * * *
The change began almost the instant Anfluga turned fully south. It did not come so unnaturally as the squall outside Riversend, but the sky darkened visibly, the clouds dropped lower, and spatters of rain began, altering rapidly to shreds of sleet. Then the wind rose, not savagely but steadily, from a brisk blow to the verge of a gale and on toward outright storm.
By then I was crouched under the gunwale, struggling to
retain even a hint of control. Aspis, my memories cried, over and over, replaying the hideous indelible images, it’s going to come again like that, they’re all going to die, this time we’ll die with them, it’s just like Aspis, Aspis, Aspis . . .
Therkon must have understood as well as I, but Therkon had been a commander, on whose composure others leant. I could feel his shoulder stiffen against mine, and see the tension knot his profile as he looked astern. But the first sleet had hardly scudded over us before he got up and crossed to Rathi and said, “Shorten sail.”
Rathi gave him a more than startled look: it had been the crown prince’s voice, undisguised.
