by Eric Flint
The relief left him weak at the knees. “Why is she sweating like that?”
“Fever breaking. We can change her sheets soon, and make her comfortable. She’s going to sleep for a fair while.” She looked at him. “And so are you.”
“I want to be here if she wakes. I’ve slept often enough in the command chair.”
The Leewit looked hard at him. “You’ll go to bed now, or I’ll have Ta’zara drag and tie you there. She’ll sleep now for at least twelve hours. I’ve seen to that.”
The captain yawned. “Wake me in ten, then. I have some ship and astrogation chores I had better see to.”
“Wake yourself,” said the Leewit, with a shadow of her usual impish grin. She yawned too. “I’m going to get Ta’zara to give me a hand with the sheets and go and crash onto my bunk. And sleep until I wake up.”
The Leewit had been rigid about being woken every two hours to check, and had only slept because the Toll teaching pattern let her know it was essential. That was enough to send the captain to his own bunk, only stopping to pass the order to wake him on to Vezzarn.
He woke before being called, and went via Goth’s cabin to the bridge. She was sleeping peacefully, with none of the tossing and turning discomfort he’d seen for the last few days. Her forehead was cool to a careful touch, and, though she was still ghost pale, there was just a hint of color about her cheeks. He went down to the bridge whistling—only to stop suddenly, because the command chair was occupied by Me’a.
“Is there something I should know about you taking control of my ship?” he asked.
“Other than the fact I have a spaceman’s ticket, and Vezzarn also needs to sleep, no,” said Me’a. “I assume by the whistling, that there is some improvement in your new arrival?”
“Yes.” The captain realized that Me’a would likely have known that Goth wasn’t actually on board when they left Cinderby’s World. “But that is Karres business, Me’a.”
“I feel that if Sedmon of the Six Lives doesn’t know that the Karres witches don’t actually need spaceships to travel, he doesn’t need to know. Although it doesn’t seem to leave the user in a good state.”
Pausert opened his mouth to explain, realized she was fishing, and smiled. “I’ll need to do some astrogation checks. You can stay there. Seeing as you’re available and qualified I may as well use you.”
He checked their course, checked the fuel levels, and ran a few checks on the telltales in the engines. The Venture was running as smoothly as if new, rather than having been built generations ago. He patted the old pirate chaser’s console affectionately.
“She’s a good ship,” said Me’a. “A lot faster than she looks, and well cared for.”
They were words that were music to the captain’s ears. “Flattery, Me’a. What do you want?”
She laughed. “You’ve been taught well, Captain. To satisfy my curiosity, of course. But I don’t think I will get the answers I want.”
“Not likely. I haven’t got them,” said Pausert, standing up. “If you need me, I’ll be in Goth’s cabin. Page me.”
She nodded. “That does at least answer one of my questions, Captain. I had wondered, given the briefing I was sent from Uldune.”
Pausert decided to go while he was at least leaving her wondering about some things.
Goth was still asleep when he’d gotten to her cabin and she stayed that way until after the Leewit arrived. “Huh. Goth, you lazybones,” said the Leewit, wiping the last of her breakfast off her chin. That was enough of a change in way she’d treated her older sister from the last few days, enough of a return to normal to help the captain relax a bit. The Leewit put her hand inside the covers and onto Goth’s neck.
Goth tried to burrow away from it. “Get your cold, sticky hand from off me,” she said, sounding at least something like her usual self.
In reply, the Leewit simply pulled the covers off her head. For a moment Goth looked daggers at her, and then caught sight of Pausert, and started smiling and reaching out a hand. The captain knelt down next to her, took it and gave it a squeeze, his voice too choked up to say anything.
“The two of you look like stunned breadfish,” said the Leewit in disgust. “And I’ll have my rochat back, you pet thief.” She stuck her hand under the cover and emerged with the lithe creature, which she popped into her shirt.
The captain finally managed to find his tongue. “I’ve missed you,” he said. “So much.” It wasn’t his best speech, but Goth seemed to like it a lot, because she struggled up enough to try and hug him.
“I didn’t know if I’d see you again, Captain,” she said in his ear.
“You’re safe now, little one.”
“Not sure if I am. I got poisoned.”
“You sure did,” said the Leewit. “Me and the captain are going to have a little meeting with whoever did that.”
Goth shook her head. “I don’t think they meant to.”
“Going to teach them to be more careful then,” said the Leewit. “You worried me stiff. And it’s your job looking after the captain, not mine. I’m not doing any more of this ‘responsible’ stuff. Now lie down. You’re getting better, but you’re as weak as a newborn bollem. An’ I don’t want my work undone.”
Pausert gently put her down. “She kept you alive, Goth. I think for now you better listen to her,” he said, his heart full of happiness. “Even if she doesn’t wash behind her ears unless we tell her to.”
“Do so!” said the Leewit, and blew him a raspberry.
Goth managed a laugh. “I guess it’s not just a great dream. No one could dream anything quite like you, Leewit. You’re right. I do feel pretty weak and battered.”
The Leewit had taken hold of her shoulder again. The captain knew by now she was using touch to “read” her patient. After a moment, she withdrew the hand. “And you’re staying in bed for the next while. We’ll need to feed you up, but kind of slowly. You frightened me, doing that sort of silly stuff. You shouldn’t let her off on her own, Captain.”
“I’m not planning to again, if I can help it,” said Pausert. “Now could you get her something to eat? I’m not sure what will be best.”
“Come to the mess and I’ll tell you what to order from the robobutler,” said the Leewit.
“I’d like to stay with her.”
“You’ll clumping well come and carry it back, and make sure she eats, but not too much. I got stuff to do,” the Leewit informed him.
And in medical matters, she outranked him, Pausert knew. So he went.
Which was the right thing to do because she wanted to talk to him. “She’s made big steps, Captain,” said the Leewit, tucking her arm in his, all the rudeness she’d displayed in Goth’s cabin vanishing. It had probably been an act, Pausert realized. “But you’re to keep her in that bed if you have to tie her to it. She’ll lose ground real easy at this stage. Lots of rest, small meals often, not too rich.”
The Leewit made a face. “I’d hate that, and I expect she will too. Goth’s not good at sitting still. You’re going to have your work cut out for you. She won’t listen to me.”
That was true of the Leewit, too. But as the captain found, not entirely true about Goth’s attitude. She didn’t give him the trouble he expected, and she was inclined to do what the Leewit told her to. “Not normally, see. Just, well, healing is her klatha strength,” admitted Goth.
Goth did sleep a great deal, and it was actually quite hard to get her to eat much. But as the days passed on the trip to Na’kalauf, her appetite seemed to improve. So did the amount of time she spent awake. It took a while for the captain to hear her story—which was probably a good thing, since it gave him a chance to get mad and then at least partly get over it.
“Well, I know where our next destination is,” he’d said, gritting his teeth.
“I don’t think so, Captain,” said Goth, seriously. “I think I need to recover. And I don’t think, after all these years, that a little extra time is going to make an
y difference. She’s well established and safe. I told her we’d be back, and Pnaden and his thugs aren’t going to be leaving, unless they find the pieces I took out of their ship.”
She was very firm about that. When Goth was very firm, it was really not worth fighting, Pausert knew. She seemed to have a reason she wasn’t telling him, though.
CHAPTER 15
Goth knew too well just what they were tiptoeing around. She’d come close to dying and she had pushed her klatha use too far and too hard. She had met people whose klatha use had burned out. People who had been hot witches once.
She wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier just to do what others who tried to do too much had done: burn up.
But the captain…he’d just been so pleased to see her.
So she tried to ’port a glass. All that happened was that it rocked and fell over. That brought the Leewit, who grumpily told her she needed to take it easy.
She tried, but it wasn’t easy. Sleeping was the best escape, so she did a lot of it. She was also fighting another demon. She’d gone off on her own mission and she could see why the prognosticators thought she would be better for that. Captain Pausert would have gotten furious and tried to take on the whole lot, head on. But…in a way, she’d failed. This was the first big failure in her life, and she wasn’t dealing with it well.
It was with all of this sitting on her, that the Venture closed on its next destination, Na’kalauf.
* * *
Na’kalauf was a water world, a blue jewel hung in space in a setting of moons. From far out they could detect no trace of land, but as they swung into a braking orbit they could see that the blue below was not all uniform. Zooming in on the screens, Pausert could see the color came from traceries of white—bands and patterns of them across the face of the blue jewel below them. He was aware that Me’a, her bodyguards and Ta’zara were looking over his shoulder. “So where are we going? Where’s the spaceport?” Goth was up, and sitting in the second’s chair, enjoying it. This was the first time the Leewit had allowed it, and it was a beautiful sight.
“So what are all the white lines?” asked the Leewit, peering at the screen.
Ta’zara answered her. “The reefs. The sea breaks onto the reefs. Our Nuii lie inside the reef.” His voice was strained—a little higher-pitched than usual.
No one had answered his question about where the spaceport was. So the captain zoomed the view on the screens a little closer. Now one could see the breaking reefs with the deeper blue of the ocean outside and paler turquoise areas within—surrounding endless small islands. “So just where are we going? Where is the main spaceport?” he asked again.
“No one wants to answer in case we start a war,” said Me’a, with a wry smile. “We are from different clans. Related ones at least, so it could be worse. There are no spaceports, Captain. Any Nuii that tried to build one would have everyone else go to war with them.”
“Why? I mean, Na’kalauf bodyguards travel. They go off-world. So how do they do it?” asked the captain.
“How and why in the same question. ‘Why’ is because our clans have a long, long history of war and raiding. It is what we are and why Na’kalauf guards are what they are. ‘How’ is easy. There are lots of beaches to land on. As much of it as you could want for a space fleet, if you choose the tide right. Fortunately we are close to the right tide.”
“And if we aren’t?” asked Pausert, warily. The Venture might be old, but she was his ship.
“Well, your ship is going to end up with her tail in the water, but only on the full flood tide—when all the moons align, on the war tide. But if you choose your time, it is all dry.”
“Um, when is that?” The moons varied in size and distance, and didn’t look particularly aligned.
“The Tide of the Dead comes around once a year. Our year, that is,” said Ta’zara.
Pausert was aware of that prickle of klatha that went with his gambles. He exchanged a quick glance with the Leewit. Both Goth and the Leewit always had that curious lithe tension in their posture, like a hunting miffel. But long experience had taught the captain to spot when that was heightened. Right now the Leewit looked like all that tension was about to explode into action. That was usually pretty messy.
“What’s the ‘Tide of the Dead’?” the Leewit asked. When she was being like this, all the little-girl speech patterns and mannerisms disappeared. The captain wondered if she put them on, in between, or if this was more of the effect of the teaching pattern in her head. The girls both carried their mother—and some others—with them always. A teaching pattern would have helped him, Pausert had often thought. But they seemed to think it would be better if he learned everything the hard way.
Me’a answered. “The opposite of the flood tide, of course. If all the water is drawn to one side of Na’kalauf, the reefs on the other side have it drawn away.”
“I wasn’t asking you, Me’a. I was asking Ta’zara,” said the Leewit, now definitely sounding very like her mother Toll.
There was a long silence. Then Ta’zara sighed and answered. “It is the time when all of the reefs around the Nuii are exposed. It is uncrossable. No war canoe can get through. The channels are dry, the reef corals are a wide barrier of knives no living warrior could pass through. It is when the battle warning-call sounds, calling the clans from the fields or from the lagoon or reef, home to protect the Nuii—but there can be no possible raid coming to defend from, then. It is the time when the clans call the dead back from the sea. Only their spirits can cross the reef then. The living call them, sing their deeds so they be remembered, so they can stand with their comrades again. Without that they are lost, forgotten. Their war brothers sing their deeds so they can return and guard their kin.” He shook his head and turned away, walking rapidly down the corridor to the cabins.
There was a long silence. Finally, Me’a broke it. “His whole clan group was killed. He will have to sing them all home by himself. Their kin will be waiting. That…is unusual, these days. The Imperials frown on the Na’kalauf going to war, and while bodyguards have to come home over the reef at the tide—it is rare. He will have to sing them all home by himself.”
“That has to be pretty hard,” said Pausert, awkwardly.
One of Me’a’s two bodyguards broke that silence. “It is the task of the living to honor their clan dead, to tell of how they conducted themselves, as warriors of the Aiwi, the clan. Then the warriors or the children of the warriors all sing of their deeds, so the dead and the living can hear. He can sing them home, but not of his own deeds, for them. The clan will have to send some of its elders to find any that witnessed, so they can sing of it. The old men travel under the truce flag, and go to ask. It has been done before.”
The man paused. And then he continued, reluctantly. “But you have said they have all fled. Fled beyond reaching.”
“Yeah. I guess so,” said the captain, thinking about it. It wasn’t strictly fled as gotten rid of, back to their own universe, but that would do. Ta’zara had expected to die in that effort. It was the price he had been willing, almost eager, to pay. He had not expected the witches of Karres to ’port him to safety at the last moment, as the Megair Cannibal fleet slipped through the rift into their own dimension.
He had not expected to have to face this.
“A word, Captain, in your shell-like ear. In private, perhaps,” said Me’a.
“There are no secrets between me and my crew, Me’a.”
She shrugged. “Very well. From what I have gathered you know nothing of how Na’kalauf’s society works. We are a poor world, and our only thing of great value to sell is the services of our warriors. A warrior has an oath of loyalty to their ‘warlord.’ In the case of the La’tienn oath—which is what almost all off-worlders get, it is simply that of personal loyalty and defense for a fixed period. The loyalty while they serve their contract time is total, and the fighting skills they bring, great. That isn’t cheap. Part of the payment goes to their fam
ilies, and part to the clan—who must care for the family, if the warrior is killed, or for the warrior and their family, if the warrior is injured.”
She looked at the Leewit. “There are higher oaths. They are granted, rarely, outside the clan—because they commit the clan too. And they are lifelong. It has been a century or more since that happened with an off-worlder. Ta’zara was part of a new defense squad—a thing of huge cost, to a very wealthy smuggler of illicit substances. A rival to the smuggling network of Sedmon of the Six lives—so he had reason to need them. Their new employer was killed by shrapnel from a missile fired by the Megair Cannibals.
“Ta’zara’s squad had no one to die in the defense of, so, strictly speaking, the clan is no longer responsible for providing for those families. Warriors, and bodyguards, die before their ‘warlord,’ preserving his or her life. Normally, when their charge falls despite their best, the La’tienn walk away. These could not. They lost their lives, and their families and clan lost their income. Not only does Ta’zara have no word of how they died, because he did not see them die, but the families and the clan have lost their breadwinners. It’s not a huge clan, but an old and proud one. This is a blow in every way, not just to him but to those families and that clan.”
“Um,” said the Leewit into the silence after Me’a had finished. “Are you saying I should be paying Ta’zara?”
Me’a’s two bodyguards looked surprised. That must be pretty shocking, thought the captain, as the one thing about Na’kalauf bodyguards was that their faces never gave much away.
He tried to decide what to say. But before he could say anything, the Leewit continued. “’Cause it’s clumping not like he just works for me. What I’ve got is his, if he needs it. I clumping well told him so. He always says he doesn’t need anything.”
“You have it right,” said Me’a, approvingly. “It would be an insult to offer money to a La’gaiff retainer. But it is traditional to provide for his needs and give him gifts that he can distribute to his kin. And it is also traditional for the kin and clan of the ‘warlord’ to thank, in a similar fashion, the warrior for any exceptional services.”
