They would heal these little conflicts, frequently, with bouts of coupling. But even that was hampered by the need not to be vocal in their taking of pleasure with each other lest they reveal to the Bornigrayans across the hall, or to some passing member of the crew, that their relationship was somewhat more intimate than that of brother and sister ordinarily should be.
Not that it was at all certain that they had anyone fooled. On a morning when the sea was especially rough Nortekku was passing the time in the ship’s little lounge, and Thalarne had gone above—they tried now to give each other as much space as they could—when a couple of crewmen came down the stairs and one said to him, in that thick-tongued Bornigrayan dialect that Nortekku still had so much difficulty understanding, “You ought to go up. Your woman is sick on deck, pretty bad.”
There was nothing unusual about that. The weather had mostly been stormy, eternally gray and windy, with much rain and sometimes sleet, and one or another of them had had a bout of seasickness practically every day. But Nortekku took exception to the phrasing.
“My sister, you mean.”
“Your sister, yes.” There was mockery in the man’s unfriendly blue eyes. “Up there, sick, your sister, on deck.” He winked suggestively. The other began to laugh.
Well, let them laugh, Nortekku thought. Having to pass himself off as Thalarne’s brother hadn’t been his idea.
He went up on deck. She was finished being sick, by then, but she looked dreadful. Nortekku laid his hand on her wrist and lightly rubbed the thick fur up and down by way of comfort, and she managed a faint, unconvincing smile.
“Bad?” he asked.
“Worse than seeing five sea-monsters crawling up on deck. But it’s over now.”
Just then the sea bucked beneath them, though, and the ship seemed to skip and hop above it, and from Thalarne came a dry ratcheting sound, followed almost at once by a little moan. She turned away from him, huddling miserably into herself. He held her, gently stroking her shoulders, and the spasm passed without further incident. With a game little grin she said, “I wonder how much longer this voyage is supposed to last.”
“Only another four years or so,” he told her. “Maybe three, if we remember to say our prayers every night.”
Seasickness did not seem to afflict him. But as the days went by the restlessness that had plagued him since boyhood grew to a level that was barely tolerable. He prowled constantly from deck to deck, up, down, up, down, standing a long while in the sleety air abovedecks, and then, half-frozen, descending to their cabin, where Thalarne sat poring over some map of Great World sites and looked anything but pleased to see him, and then up again, down again to the tiny lounge in the stern, up, down.
The time did pass, somehow. And it became evident, not many days later, that the worst of the voyage was behind them. Each day winter yielded a little more to spring, and the path of the ship had been trending all the while toward the southeast, so that now the skies were a clear blue the whole day long, no more rain fell, and the air was taking on some warmth. Birds were common sights overhead. Siglondan, who appeared to know something about natural history, said that they were shore-birds, coming out from the eastern continent just ahead of them.
She and Kanibond Graysz, with whom Thalarne and Nortekku took their meals every day, were speaking more openly now about the approaching fulfillment of the goals of the expedition. They seemed more slippery than ever, still cagy about what was actually supposed to be achieved. But what was becoming clear was that they had been bought, that their chief interest lay not in what could be learned about this handful of Sea-Lords that had so surprisingly endured beyond their supposed time of extinction, but in how much profit they could turn by prying loose rare artifacts for which the sponsors of the venture would pay extremely well. From something careless that Kanibond Graysz had let slip, Nortekku concluded that whatever collectible objects they brought back with them would be distributed among Til-Menimat and Hamiruld and the other backers according to some prearranged system, and the two Bornigrayan archaeologists would be given bonuses according to the quantity and quality of what they brought back for them.
A grimy business, Nortekku thought. And he knew what Thalarne thought of it as well. But she seemed able to balance her qualms against the advantage of being able to gain access to these improbable survivors from antiquity. He only hoped that she would emerge from the project with her own scientific reputation still untarnished.
The ship moved on, into warmer and warmer weather. Then there was a darkness on the horizon, which rapidly resolved itself into the skyline of a city.
“That’s Sempinore there,” Siglondan said. They had completed their crossing of the ocean; they were staring out at another continent, at a totally new world.
The city of Sempinore occupied a long looping crescent around a curving bay of sparkling blue water under a warm, inviting sun. He was unable to see either its beginning or its end. Its population, he thought, must be enormous. He felt awed and overwhelmed.
A grand boulevard ran along the shore parallel to the wharves, with swarms of wheeled vehicles moving swiftly up and down it, and porters guiding patient-looking red-furred beasts of burden that moved heedlessly among them. The air was sweet and fragrant, laden with the aroma of strange spices. There was noise everywhere, the shouts of the porters, the rhythmic chants of peddlers pushing heavily laden carts, the dissonant clash of unfamiliar music. Nortekku counted six wide, straight avenues radiating from the shoreline boulevard into different parts of the city: the main arteries, it would seem.
It was good to eat fresh tender meat that night, to drink sweet young wine again, and cool water from a nearby mountain spring, to fill one’s mouth with the flavors of fruits and vegetables that hadn’t spent weeks stored in casks. Good, also, to be at rest in a place solidly rooted in the ground, that didn’t sway or pitch or heave on the bosom of the sea. At the hotel Nortekku and Thalarne were given separate rooms, as befitted brother and sister; but he came to her after dinner and they slept that night side by side, in an actual bed, in one another’s arms. He left before dawn and returned to his own room, taking care not to be seen, though he doubted that any of their fellow travelers believed any longer that their relationship was what they had claimed it to be.
During the idle week they spent in Sempinore Nortekku devoted much time to a study of the city’s architecture. The place had a profoundly alien look, and though he knew he should have expected that, it was a source of constant amazement for him.
Its buildings—whitewashed clusters of high domes, spidery aerial bridges high above the ground linking spiky-tipped towers, massive dark octagonal stone structures surrounded by the delicate traceries of pink fretwork walls—had a kind of consistency of style from one block to the next, but it was an alien consistency, a style that reminded him curiously of the imaginary Vengiboneeza that he had seen once in his dreams. They had been designed and built by people whose experiences had been nothing like those of his own people, whose history was in every way different, other than that they too had waited out the Long Winter in cocoons.