Life was on hold for her, as if responsibilities and dangers were standing back and waiting for the trip to finish. Even TM’s eidolon stayed away. She called him once, curious about his absence, but he didn’t answer. She was annoyed for about five minutes, then she shrugged off her irritation. She didn’t really want him around. The thought of him watching her with Karoumang made her itch all over.
She was enjoying her bi-nightly lessons as much as she thought she might. Karoumang was a man of wide and varied experience and it was a matter of pride with him that she got as much pleasure from their coupling as he did. He could be maddening at times, especially when he treated her like some brain-damaged infant, but he liked her. He really liked her. Part of that was because he simply liked women, all women. Part of it belonged to her. She stopped worrying about what was going to happen at Kapi Yuntipek. Her infatuation was settling into something less exciting but a lot more lasting.
Twelve days after the Miyachungay left Jade Halimm, she came to the hill country and passed through the first series of locks; there were three more sets she’d have to negotiate before she reached the high desert plateau of Ambijan and the run for Kapi Yuntipek.
5
Something hard and cold slapped against Korimenei’s buttock, then was gone; small hands and feet with sharp nails ran along her back. Something cold and hard slid along her shoulder and stopped against her neck. Long whiskers tickled her face. She muttered something, even she didn’t know what, opened her eyes. There was just enough light from the nightglim over the door to show her she was nose to nose with Ailiki. “Wha…”
Ailiki backed off. When she reached Karoumang’s pillow, she sat up, her handfeet pressed into the soft white ruff that flowed from neck to navel.
“Something wrong? Karou…” Korimenei shivered; the nights this time of the year were chill and damp, each one colder than the last, and someone-probably Ailiki-had pulled the quilts and blankets off her. Twisting around, she reached for the covers. Something rolled off her shoulder and thumped down on the sheet. She blinked. The Old Man’s bowl? Wha…
Ailiki darted at her, picked up the bowl and scampered back to the pillow. Sitting on her haunches, holding the battered pewter object against her stomach, she stared fixedly at Korimenei. Her ears were pressed flat against her head. The guard hairs on her shoulders were erect and quivering. Her lips were drawn back, exposing her small sharp fangs.
Korimenei rubbed at her eyes, tried to get her brain in order. “Lili? What’s happening? What are you… Karoumang?” She touched the sheet where he’d been. It was cold. Is it… Gods. His being gone hadn’t bothered her before; he always got up some time during the night and took a walk around the boat, checking things out, making sure his Second was doing a proper job and his night crew wasn’t sacked out on some of the softer bales. She slid out of bed, began groping for her clothes.
Ailiki beat on the bowl with her fingernails, a tiny, scratchy, tinging sound. Korimenei straightened, stared at her. Somehow, without crossing the intervening space, the mahsar had got over by the porthole and was squatting on the table where Karoumang worked on his books. She took the bowl’s rim in her little black hands and hammered at the table, producing a series of resonant clangs. Then she sat on her tail and fixed her round golden eyes on Korimenei.
“Not Karoumang?”
Ailiki shook her head and patted the bowl.
Puzzled, Korimenei tossed aside the trousers she was holding and pulled on her dressing gown. “I wish you could talk, Lili. It’d make things so much easier on both of us.”
Ailiki hissed at her; in spite of her relatively immobile features, she managed to look disgusted. She waited until Korimenei reached for the bowl, then she went elsewhere. She returned a moment later with a two-handled crystal cup filled with very clear water. She set it in front of Korimenei and stood back, expectation quivering in every line.
“Ah.” Korimenei kicked the chair away from the table, sat and poured the water into her bowl. “Farlooking?”
“Danger ahead?”
Ailiki scratched at the table.
“For me?”
Two scratches.
“For me and Karoumang?”
Three scratches.
“For everyone on the boat?”
Ailiki’s ears came up and her whiskers relaxed. She stretched out on her stomach, her chin resting on her folded forearms.
Karoumang came in. When he saw Korimenei at the table, his brows lifted. “What’s doing?”
“You see anything to worry about?”
He crossed to stand behind her, slid his hand into her robe and stroked her neck. “No, should I have?”
She leaned into his arm as his hand worked down to play with her breast. “No…” Ailiki lifted her head and scratched at the table again, her nails digging minute furrows in the wood. Korimenei sighed. She put her hand over Karoumang’s, stilling it. “Go to bed, Karou. You distract me.”
“From what?” His voice was sharper than usual; he wasn’t used to being told to go away. He freed his hand, cupped it under her chin and lifted it so he could see her face. “What are you doing?”
She caught hold of his wrist, pulled his hand away. “I don’t like that, Karoumang. I won’t be handled like that.”
He walked to the end of the table, faced her. “And I won’t be sent to bed like a naughty boy. What are you doing?” It was the Captain speaking, wanting to know everything about what went on aboard his boat. She wasn’t lover anymore, she was an unhandy combination of crew and passenger.
Korimenei relaxed. “Pastipasti, Captain SaO. Remember my profession.” She flattened her hands on the table, the bowl between them. “I had a warning. I was about to take a look and see what it meant. Now, will you please go sit on the bed and let me get on with it?”
He frowned, fisted a hand and rubbed the other over and around it. She could see that he’d forgot what she was since he’d taken her to bed; anyway, he never thought of women as having professions apart from their families; he wasn’t hostile to the idea, it simply wasn’t real to him. “Do it with me here,” he said. “I want to see it.”
“Hoik over that hassock and sit down then, you make me nervous, looming over me like that.”
She waited until he was settled, then she leaned over the bowl and began to establish her focus. She banished Karoumang, banished Ailiki, banished the boat, the noises around her, everything but her breathing and the soft brilliance of the water. She began a murmured chant, using archaic words from her birthtongue, words she’d learned from the rhymes her cousins and AuntNurse had sung to her when she was a baby. “Yso.yso.ypo.poh,” she softsang. “Ai.gley.idou.pan.tou.toh. Pro.ten.ou.kin.tor.or.thoh, nun. yda.ydou.ydoh.”
She blew across the water, creating a web of ripples that rebounded from the sides of the bowl, canceling and reinforcing each other until they faded and the water was smooth as glass. An image appeared, a narrow valley, heavily wooded, shadowed by the peaks that loomed over it. A cluster of houses inside a weathered palisade. A two-story building with a four-story tower beside the river, fortified, the second floor extending beyond the first. A lock gate with heavy tackle bolted to massive stone bulwarks and huge, heavy planks.
Karoumang whispered, “The locks at Kol Sutong.”
The scene fluttered and nearly vanished. She hissed through her er teeth at him and he subsided. With some difficulty she retrieved her concentration and brought stability to the image.