There’s one simple problem with sea-riding—a sea-pony loves to dive and, given the chance, will do so, with or without people on its back. However, there’s also a simple solution. The animal will only dive if it can close its airhole, so a special ring, made of animal hide and inserted into the lip of the hole, solves the problem. Naturally you have to keep a close watch to make sure the ring doesn’t pop out. I carried extras in case it did.
I also carried Seeker, who whined unhappily inside one of the hide bags. Every now and then he poked his snout out of the top and gave a dismal howl, a strange, undog-like sound that made the hairs on my neck stand up and probably did the same for every sailor in every ship anchored around the harbour. There’d be a lot of talk about sea-dragons, or sea-sirens and the like, on board ships that night. I cursed him. I might have known he’d be a pest. In the end I tied the top of the bag so he couldn’t look out and spoke to him softly until he quietened.
Nightfall found me swimming over to the Keeper Fair from the seaward side, in order to tether the sea-pony to the Keeper ship with a long rope. The animal was invisible against the darkness of the water; if anyone saw it anyway, well, there was nothing unusual about a sea-pony being in the sea. There were wild ones everywhere, after all.
Ruarth was there, flying about in spite of the dark, to show me where to go. There was actually enough warding on the Keeper Fair to make it light as day for the two of us. Fortunately everyone was busy preparing the ship for sailing and the lower deck seemed deserted. The worst of the damage seemed to have been repaired, although I could still smell an unpleasant mix of burned wood and dunmagic.
Ruarth showed me where they had warded Flame—a cabin, with a porthole, and on the lower deck too, seaward side. It couldn’t have been better. I asked him to make sure she was alone and he flew up, looked in and then flew back to me, nodding. Then he went back up to tap on the glass and attract her attention. A moment later the porthole was unlatched, and Flame had pushed it open using the handle of her hairbrush so as not to touch the warding. I flung up a hook attached to a rope and a little later still I was wriggling through the porthole, not the easiest of procedures for someone my size. I very nearly left most of my clothing in the sea, but at least I was still unseen by any Keeper.
‘This rescuing business is becoming a habit,’ Flame said mildly. ‘Although I see this time you did your best to leave your, er, habit behind, so to speak.’
‘Very funny,’ I replied, pulling my trousers back up.
‘Perhaps we ought to set up a proper business: Spectacular Rescues Made. Surcharges where Dunmagic is concerned—’
‘Do shut up, Flame. You’re not rescued yet. Are you all right?’ In fact, in spite of her banter, I was appalled by her appearance. Her eyes seemed too large for her face and she looked as though she hadn’t slept for a week. It was only a few hours since I’d seen her last, and she looked as if she’d been shipwrecked in the meantime. Beside me, Ruarth was jumping around in that agitated avian way of his, quite obviously just as disturbed as I was.
‘That friend of yours has his methods,’ she said tightly.
‘Duthrick? What’s he been doing?’
‘Using sylvmagic to confuse me. He can make you think the world is upside-down, Blaze. He’s so much better trained than I am—I’m no match for him.’ Of course not. The Syr-sylv was, among other things, the chief teacher of sylvtalent use in The Hub Academy. The bastard. ‘He can make me lose track of who I am, where I am in space and time. It was like being bodiless, without senses. Lost in infinity…awful. I thought I was going mad. For a time, I was mad.’
I frowned. Sylvmagic illusion used this way seemed very much like dunmagic. I asked gently, ‘Did you tell him what he wanted to know?’
She closed her eyes. ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. I’m not sure.’
Ruarth burst into wild chatter then abruptly stopped and went to perch on her hand instead. She raised him to her cheek and he laid his head to hers. ‘I know, I know, Ruarth,’ she whispered.
‘Who made these wards?’ I asked.
‘He did. Duthrick.’
‘Listen, Flame. There’s transport out there. All we have to do is to get out of that porthole.’
‘But the wards?’
‘Duthrick is going to have to break them for you. Get him in here. Him alone.’ I had already noted that there was a key on our side of the door; the door itself was warded, of course. I locked us in. ‘We’ll only open it for Duthrick. Start yelling, Flame.’
Obligingly, she started bellowing for Duthrick. For a woman of her size, she could certainly produce a lot of sound. Ruarth flew off her hand quite smartly and went to sit as far away as he could, which wasn’t far—the cabin was tiny. I stood behind the door.
We had a couple of false starts. A woman came first and asked Flame, quite pleasantly, through the door, what she wanted. Flame asked for Duthrick and the woman went away. Flame then resumed her bellow, and a few minutes later someone else came by to explain that Duthrick was busy because the ship was just leaving port and couldn’t it wait? This Keeper, a man, actually tried to enter, but Flame refused to unlock the door. Instead, she raised the volume and started shouting gibberish.
Five minutes later Duthrick came.
Flame insisted he enter alone, which he obligingly did—only to find my sword at his throat. Flame locked the door behind him.
He stared at me, nonplussed. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ he said finally. ‘The patriarch Stragglermen was on that ship that just left.’
‘I changed my mind. Break the wards, Duthrick.’
‘She’s the Castlemaid, Blaze.’
‘That’s right. And she’s leaving—with me.’
‘You knew?’ First he couldn’t believe it. Then when he did, he wanted to kill me. He came within an inch of drawing his sword, but, after considering the circumstances, thought better of it and settled for: ‘You double-crossing halfbreed Awarebitch!’
I said, ‘Well, now we know what you really think of me, don’t we? Break the wards, Duthrick.’
‘Never.’
‘There’s another way I can do it,’ I pointed out, almost purring. ‘Don’t make me kill you, Syr-sylv.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ But he was doubtful.
‘Oh yes I would. For Flame I would do anything.’
‘You pervert,’ he spat.
I let him believe it. ‘You’re fussy about such things all of sudden, aren’t you? Tell me, Duthrick, which is the perversion: the love between two mature adults, or the fact that you wanted to marry Lyssal off to a man of fifty who likes little boys of five in his bed? But enough of that. I’m afraid some of your friends may grow a little uneasy if we take too much time over this—break the wards, Duthrick. Now.’ I eased a little pressure on to the hilt of my sword and the tip broke his skin at the throat. ‘Now, Duthrick.’
His teeth clamped down as he hissed, ‘You’ll never get away with this.’
‘Do you know, I think I will? Flame, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill him…’ I sighed and gave an irritated tongue click, as if his murder was a mild annoyance. I looked across at Flame. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think it would be necessary.’ Privately I wondered if I really would be able to do it. Apart from those subverted to dunmagic, I’d never killed a Keeper sylv before. I’d never needed to before. And a Councillor? A few days earlier it would have been unthinkable.
‘I don’t mind,’ Flame said calmly. ‘After what he did to me, I don’t care if he dies.’
Duthrick snarled. ‘I’ll hunt you down, Blaze, if it takes the rest of my life.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Duthrick. It doesn’t suit your cool style. Last chance—this sword is going in now.’ I smiled at him, a smile as ruthless as I knew how to make it. And he capitulated. The wards came down. To this day, I don’t know whether I really would have killed him, but he believed it—and he knew me well.
I dropped the point of my blade and whirled him around to face
the door. A moment later he was unconscious on the floor. I knew a thing or two about pressure points: one of Syr-sylv Arnado’s handier lessons to an adolescent acolyte with aspirations to be a Council agent.
Ruarth said something and Flame translated, stricken. ‘He said that—that you have made a ruthless enemy.’
I felt a spine-crawl of fear. Ruarth was right; Duthrick was an unforgiving, unscrupulous man. He would lose face over this and he would seek the means to restore his lost pride and prestige. You’ll never get away with this. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Flame hesitated. ‘Er, you first.’
‘No, you. Just in case he wakes up.’
‘I think you’d better go first.’
I looked at her, exasperated. ‘Will you get out of that bloody porthole!’
‘I can’t swim,’ she admitted sheepishly.
I flung my hands up in the air in capitulation. I went first. Flame’s bag followed, then Flame, who, by performing a remarkable feat of contortion, managed to follow me feet first. She hung by her five fingers from the porthole for a prayer-filled moment, then dropped daintily into the water. The ship was already slipping away from the docks. I caught her in my arms as she came up.
‘Here,’ I said, handing her the rope I had just cut away from the Keeper Fair. ‘Our transport out of here is on the end of that somewhere. I’ll support you while you haul us in to the beast.’ I groped around with one hand for her bag, which was floating nearby.
She asked, with justifiable asperity, ‘And just how do you suggest I pull myself along when I only have one hand?’
I was still looking for a diplomatic answer to that one when she hit on her own solution by gripping the rope in her teeth in between hauling on it with her one good arm. Still, her mind was elsewhere. She took a mouthful of water, spluttered, and gasped, ‘You let go of me and I’ll never speak to you again.’
‘You should learn how to swim.’
She spoke from between gritted teeth: ‘You can teach me one day. But not now. Blaze, will you please get me the hell out of this bloody ocean!’
Just then there was the most appalling howl of anguish from in front of us. Flame moaned. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, ‘let me guess. That’s the sound of a hungry sea-dragon searching for maidens to devour.’
‘Then neither of us need worry, need we?’ I said sweetly. ‘Actually, I think it’s my dog.’
‘Your dog? Somewhere in the middle of the ocean—in a boat, I hope—you have a dog that howls like a drowned sailor’s lost soul in the Great Trench?’
When she put it like that, it did seem rather ridiculous. And, what’s more, she didn’t know about the sea-pony.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When dawn came, we were on a remote beach leagues to the west of Gorthan Docks. I built up a seaweed fire and we sat by it to warm ourselves while we had breakfast. Ruarth, who had spent the night nonchalantly perched on the sea-pony’s head, asleep, was flitting around catching insects and eating grass seeds; Flame wasn’t nearly so happy. I think it was partially because she was tormented by her failure to withstand Duthrick. She needed someone to tell her she could fail occasionally—and it couldn’t really be Ruarth; not when he had to rely on her so much because of what he was, because of the stature he lacked. She needed a friend who was an equal. I was suddenly glad we were together, although my parting from Tor was an undercurrent of heartache that all too often eddied sharply to the surface.
The other reason for Flame’s unhappiness was more tangible. The run from the Docks on the back of a sea-pony had been a non-swimmer’s idea of tempting providence, even though I had tied her to both me and the mount.
I myself was well pleased with the time we had made; sea-ponies in their element could really move. Too fast even for blood-demons—although, guessing blood-demons were coastal creatures, I’d kept us well out to sea anyway.
Seeker was just relieved to be out of the bag. He’d eaten and was now leaping around the dunes kicking up sand and generally behaving like a child who’d escaped from a strict nurse. We’d already had to have a short discipline session with regard to Ruarth and birds in general; fortunately he seemed to have accepted the idea that chasing, eating or harassing anything with feathers was out of the question. He was nothing if not eager to please.
‘Let me see if I have this right,’ Flame was saying. ‘You intend that we ride—on one of those—those—sea-worms—up to our backsides in water all the way to Mekaté? Two or three days without stopping? You’re saltwater mad! What if we’re attacked by sharks? What if we fall asleep and fall off? What if it takes longer than that and we run out of water? What if there’s a storm? What if the skies cloud over and we can’t read the stars at night?’ Her expression was becoming more and more frantic. ‘God above, what if we miss Mekaté altogether and just keep going until we fall over the edge of the world?’
‘The water only comes up to our knees when we sit on the sea-pony,’ I pointed out reasonably, ignoring the fact that in rough weather it was an entirely different story. ‘Sharks are scared of sea-ponies. We’ll take it in turns to sleep. We’ll tie ourselves on. The currents flow directly from here to Mekaté at this time of the year, or so the fishermen say. It’s not the stormy season. And a Menod scholar from The Hub once told me the world was actually round and you couldn’t fall off the edge. If we kept on sailing west we would eventually just arrive back where we started from.’
She gave me an expressive look.
‘Flame, there’s no other safe way—’
‘Safe?’
‘Duthrick is going to scour Gorthan Spit for you—and me—especially now that he knows you’re the Castlemaid. He’ll sylvmagic everyone in sight to find out if they’ve seen you. No ship will leave the Docks until he’s searched it right down to the bilge water. You can’t leave the island any other way but this. The sailors back in Gorthan Docks all told me the good weather will hold for at least another three days, if not longer—storms are rare at this time of the year anyway. We’ll be tied on and we can watch over one another. You were willing to die rather than marry the Breth Bastionlord before; this time there’s very little risk, I promise you.’
‘Great Trench below,’ she moaned. ‘I’ve got to be out of my mind to listen to you. I’ve had nothing but trouble since I met you, Blaze Halfbreed!’
‘Unjust!’ I said indignantly. ‘It was your trouble right from the beginning, not mine!’
‘Yeah. Well, maybe. And I suppose I should say thanks for rescuing me again.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ That sounded ungallant, so I leant forward and touched her knee. ‘After what you did to save Tor and me? Flame—’
She cut me off with a gesture of embarrassment, so I stopped. Some things we really didn’t have to say.
Just then Ruarth, apparently having finished his breakfast, came back to us and sat on Flame’s hand. He lifted a wing, stretched it daintily so that the tip touched the toe of one foot, and rubbed his beak against his shoulder. ‘What’s he saying?’ I asked.
She looked at him, blinked and then laughed. ‘Blaze, he’s just preening.’
I felt an idiot. ‘Oh. Sorry, Ruarth. You really are going to have to teach me how to understand Dustel.’
Flame said bleakly, ‘There’s not going to be much time for that, is there, except on this crazy ride to Mekaté. I’m sorry I’ve upset your plans, Blaze. Where will you meet up with Tor again?’
‘Well, er, I wasn’t actually thinking of joining him. I found out he was a patriarch of the Menod, and I just can’t see myself as a patriarch’s dutiful wife.’
‘Ah.’ She looked at me with compassion. ‘We did wonder. Ruarth said he was sure Tor was at the very least a Menod lay brother. I’m sorry, Blaze. What are you going to do?’
So I’d been the only blind idiot, had I? That rankled. ‘Well,’ I said, feigning indifference. ‘I was wondering if you and Ruarth would take me along with you.’
‘You want to go after Morthred?
Are you serious?’
‘I’m serious, yes. I can’t say I want to go after him particularly, but it has to be done. And I can’t possibly let an innocent like you stick your nose into more dun shit without me there to keep an eye on you. Ruarth in his present form simply hasn’t feathers enough to keep you out of trouble.’ The bird cocked his head at me and ruffled his wings.
For a moment she continued to look at me, dumbfounded. Then tears started to trickle down her cheeks. Finally she managed to say, ‘I’ve had so few friends—only Ruarth and the Dustels. They do their best, but I have so needed someone who—another woman, who understands. I never dreamed… I never thought that you would want to… Hell, Blaze. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I love you, you great halfbreed firebrand.’
‘Yeah, well, we seem to get along,’ I said gruffly. Her coincidental use of Niamor’s word for me affected me more than I would have thought possible; coupled as it was with her declaration of love, it almost disintegrated me.
I guess she sensed my emotional turmoil, because she sniffed and said in a normal fashion, ‘But I can’t stand dogs.’
At this point, right on cue, Seeker came running up and flopped down at her feet. A dribble of saliva trickled out of his mouth onto her toes. I could see the reasons for her aversion to this particular specimen at least. A still half-hairless parcel of skin stretched over bones with an oversized tail at one end and four dinner-plate feet underneath, he wasn’t an attractive sight. I hoped it might be a different story once all his hair grew back and he’d gained some weight.
‘I don’t think he’s actually wholly dog,’ I said. ‘Especially not after I heard him howl. I think he’s a halfbreed, like me.’
‘What’s the other half?’ she asked, eyeing him doubtfully.
‘I don’t know, but I suspect he might be part Fen lurger.’
She obviously hadn’t heard of these marsh-bred canines but she said, ‘Oh. Well, that’s all right then. As long as he isn’t all dog, I guess I can learn to live with him, can’t I?’
The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) Page 35
