“Well,” said the Mate, “we have men to get.”
“I wonder if she’ll come ashore?”
“She’ll come if she wants, Captain. Her doing is no concern of yours. Your job is the ship and to do what she asks.”
“I have more of a job than that,” and he looked back at his still craft.
The Mate touched the Captain’s shoulder. “If you’re going to speak things like that, speak them softly, and only to me.”
“I have more of a job than that,” the Captain repeated. Then suddenly he started away; the Mate followed him down the darkening dockside.
The wharf was still a moment. Then a barrel toppled from a pile of barrels, and a figure moved like a bird’s shadow between two mounds of cargo.
At the same time two men approached down a street filled with the day’s last light. The bigger one threw a great shadow that aped his gesticulating arms on the crowded buildings. His bare feet slapped the cobbles like halved hams. His shins were bound with thongs and pelts. He waved one hand in explanation and rubbed the back of the other on his short mahogany beard. “You’re going to ship out, eh, friend? You think they’ll take your rhymes and jingles instead of muscles and rope pulling?”
The smaller, in a white tunic looped with a leather belt, laughed in spite of his friend’s ranting. “Fifteen minutes ago you thought it was a fine idea, Urson. You said it would make me a man.”
“Oh, it’s a life to make”—Urson’s hand went up — “and it’s a life to break men.” It fell.
The slighter one pushed black hair back from his forehead, stopped, and looked at the boats. “You still haven’t told me why no ship has taken you on in the past three months.” Absently he followed the rigging, like black slashes in blue silk. “A year ago I’d never see you in for more than three days at once.”
The gesticulating arm suddenly encircled the smaller man’s waist and lifted a leather pouch from the belt. “Are you sure, friend Geo,” began the giant, “that we couldn’t use up some of this silver on wine before we go? If you want to do this right, then right is how it should be done. When you sign up on a ship you’re supposed to be broke and tight. It shows you’re capable of getting along without the inconvenience of money and can hold your liquor.”
“Urson, get your paw off!” Geo pulled the purse away.
“Now, here,” countered Urson, reaching for it once more, “you don’t have to grab.”
“Look, I’ve kept you drunk five nights now; it’s time to sober up. Suppose they don’t take us. Who’s going — ” But Urson, laughing, made another swipe.
Geo leaped back with the purse. “Now, cut that out — ” In leaping, his feet struck the fallen barrel. He fell backward to the wet cobbles. The pouch splattered away, jingling.
They scrambled —
Then the bird’s shadow darted between the cargo piles; the slight figure bounded forward, swept the purse up with one hand, pushed himself away from the pile of crates with another; and there were two more pumping at his side as he ran.
“What the devil…” began Urson, and then: “What the devil!”
“Hey, you!” Geo lurched to his feet. “Come back!”
Urson had already loped a couple of steps after the fleeing quadrabrad, now halfway down the dock.
Then, like a wineglass stem snapping, a voice: “Stop, little thief. Stop.”
He stopped as though he had hit a wall.
“Come back, now. Come back.”
He turned and docilely started back, his movements, so lithe a moment ago, mechanical now.
“It’s just a kid,” Urson said.
He was a dark-haired boy, naked except for a ragged breechclout. He was staring fixedly beyond them. And he had four arms.
Now they turned and looked also.
She stood on the ship’s gangplank, dark against what sun still washed the horizon. One hand held something close at her throat, and the wind, snagging a veil, held the purple gauze against the red swath at the world’s edge, then dropped it.
The boy, automaton, approached her.
“Give it to me, little thief.”
He handed her the purse. She took it. Then she dropped her other hand from her neck. The moment she did so, the boy staggered backward, turned, and ran straight into Urson, who said, “Ooof,” and then, “Goddamned spider!”
The boy struggled like a hydra in furious silence. Urson held. “You stick around…Owww!..to get yourself thrashed…there.” Urson locked one arm across the boy’s chest. With his other hand he caught all four wrists; he lifted up, hard. The thin body shook like wires jerked taut, but the boy was still silent.
Now the woman came across the dock. “This belongs to you, gentlemen?” she asked, extending the purse.
“Thank you, ma’am,” grunted Urson, reaching forward.
“I’ll take that, ma’am,” said Geo, intercepting. Then he recited:
“Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter.
Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.
“Thank you,” he added.
Beneath the veil her eyebrows raised. “You have been schooled in courtly rites? Are you perhaps a student at the University?”
Geo smiled. “I was, until a short time ago. But funds are low and I have to get through the summer somehow. I’m going to sea.”
“Honorable, but perhaps foolish.”
“I am a poet, ma’am; they say poets are fools. Besides, my friend here says the sea will make a man of me. To be a good poet, one must be a good man.”
“More honorable, less foolish. What sort of man is your friend?”
“My name is Urson.” The giant stepped up. “And I’ve been the best hand on any ship I’ve sailed on.”
“Urson? The Bear? I thought bears did not like water. Except polar bears. It makes them mad. I believe there was an old spell, in antiquity, for taming angry bears.”
“Calmly, brother bear,” Geo began to recite:
“Hey,” said Urson. “I’m not a bear!”
“Your name means bear,” Geo said. Then to the lady, “You see, I have been well trained.”
“I’m afraid I have not,” she replied. “Poetry and rituals were a hobby of a year’s passing interest when I was younger. But that was all.” Now she looked down at the four-armed boy. “You two look alike. Dark eyes, dark hair.” She laughed. “Are there other things in common between poets and thieves?”
“Well,” complained Urson with a jerk of his chin, “this one here won’t spare a few silvers for a drink of good wine to wet his best friend’s throat, and that’s a sort of thievery if you ask me.”
“I did not ask,” said the woman.
Urson huffed.
“Little thief,” the woman said. “Little Four Arms. What is your name?”
Silence, and the dark eyes narrowed.
“I can make you tell me,” and she raised her hand to her throat again.
Now the eyes opened wide and the boy pushed back against Urson’s belly.
Geo reached toward the boy’s neck, where a ceramic disk hung from a leather thong. Glazed on the white enamel was a wriggle of black with a small dot of green for an eye at one end. “This will do for a name,” Geo said.
“The Snake?” She dropped her threatening hand. “How good a thief are you?” She looked at Urson. “Let him go.”