They sailed from port to port, booking passage where and when they could, and it was not until they reached Bocoum that the man opted to purchase the small vessel they now sailed in. He haggled for it for nearly an hour, as she watched it all, mystified. She asked him several times why they were traveling this way, but he ever directed her only to read the letter he had presented to her. In it, written in Thaddeus’s hand, was an all-too-brief explanation. The best way for her to slip into hiding was to do so without fanfare, drawing no unwanted attention, requesting no luxuries. Nobody would dream that the Akaran children would travel with only a single protector; thus they could hide in plain sight and proceed unmolested. It was imperative that they leave no signs somebody could later piece together and follow. This, she reasoned, was why they could no longer appear to have the kingdom’s finances to draw upon. The pretense, to say the least, was becoming tiresome.
“Where are you taking me?” Mena asked.
The guardian craned his neck around and took in the sea behind them for a moment. Mena noticed he did this often, every minute or so, as if it were a compulsion that his reserved manner could not subdue. “I am doing as ordered,” he said.
“I know that. But where have you been ordered to take me?”
“To the Vumu Archipelago. Just as I told you yesterday and the day before, Princess.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. I am just doing as ordered.”
“Will you take me home instead?”
His eyes touched on her for a moment, an emotion in them that she could not read. Then he looked back out over the sea again. “I cannot. Even if I wanted to…I cannot. I understand that you are scared, but all that I can do to help you I am doing.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
“A few more days. It depends on the wind, the currents.” He motioned with his hand as if he distrusted these things, was not even quite sure where they were located.
Mena stared at him, unimpressed. “Anyway, I did not say that I was scared. You are the one who is scared. Why do you keep peering about? What are you looking at?”
He scowled at her and then set his eyes forward as if he would not answer. But something in his respect for her family-however it might have been altered by recent events-chastened him. “There is a boat,” he finally said, “behind us. And closing.”
And so there was. It was tiny as yet. She would have passed her eyes across it, thinking it just the whitecaps on some wave. It surged into and out of view as it, and they, rose and fell. At first she did not believe that it was following them. How could he tell that for certain on such a heaving expanse? But an hour later she thought perhaps it was and maybe it was somewhat nearer already. Each time it emerged from a trough and cut through the peak of a wave it seemed to have closed distance. Mena asked the Talayan if they should wait for it. Perhaps it had been sent from Acacia to find them. Maybe they could turn back now. The guardian did not answer, neither did he alter their course or lower the sail. It did not much matter, though. The other boat was faster. It had longer lines and a wider billow of sail. It gained on them steadily, propelled by a gathering storm. Or perhaps it dragged the storm behind it. It was hard to say which directed the other.
Gusts of wind ripped talons across the water and buffeted the boat like a toy. The waves rose to increasing heights. By late in the afternoon the other boat had pulled abreast of them and cut the water at the same rate, separated by a hundred yards and then less, then still less. A lone man crewed the vessel. Mena had scarcely picked him out and was straining to observe details about him-still hoping to find him a messenger from her father-when he rose to his feet. He stood a moment, finding his equilibrium. He held what looked like a pole in his hand. The guardian must have seen this, too. He hissed a curse under his breath. He motioned for Mena to come near him, saying something she could not understand. She thought he wanted her to take hold of the tiller he held clenched under his armpit. Or perhaps the rope his hands fumbled and yanked at. Either way, the alarm in his voice and gestures froze her. She did neither. They climbed the face of a wave and launched screaming onto its back, their sail so filled with angry air, Mena feared they might lift out of the water and fly away like a kite untethered.
For a moment they were alone in a valley. Then they were two again. The other vessel came sliding down the back of a wave toward them, the prow hissing as it cut the slick back of the water. The pursuer flung the pole-now obviously a spear-with a force that almost toppled him forward out of the boat. It flew toward and pierced the center of the guardian’s breast as if it belonged in no other portion of the world. He released the tiller and grasped the spear shaft. He did not try to pull it out, but he did seem to want to support the weight of it. He coughed up a gush of blood, and then, reaching behind with one hand, he pulled himself backward, over the lip of the gunwale. He plopped into the water and was gone.
The boat swung around, directionless, pitching side to side. It leaned over and slurped in a gush of the sea and then righted and spun again. Mena had to throw herself to the deck to avoid being hit by the yardarm. The sailcloth thrashed about like a frantic animal, but it did not catch the air the way it had a moment ago. Mena had no idea what to do with it. She stared up at the snarling life in the fabric, paralyzed. Then she felt something she had not in days-the impact of the boat against something solid. This snapped her upright.
The other boat was beside hers, gunwale to gunwale, each smacking against the other as if each wished a fight. The attacking sailor leaped from his boat and landed sure-footed inside hers. He took her in with a quick glance, but came no nearer. He held a rope, with which he bound the vessels together, with enough slack between them that they could float apart. He was out of sight for a moment, then rose back into view, fumbling in the guardian’s shoulder bag. What did he want? What did he want with her? What would he do to her? She could not possibly imagine, but the specifics hardly mattered. Whatever the answer was, it would be a horror. At first she did not realize that her hands had found a weapon, and yet they had. She clenched her guardian’s long sword in both her hands. She tugged at it and just managed to pull it from its stowed place. But it was too heavy to actually lift. She could not even get it unsheathed, though the scabbard point dragged a jagged line across the boards. She had never felt so powerless.
How strange, then, that the man turned his back to her. He tugged at the rope for some time, and then leaped from the gunwale back into his boat. The two crafts crashed together again. The man reached out a quick hand and tugged loose the knot that attached his boat to hers. He seemed to have no interest in her whatsoever.
“What are you doing?” Mena shouted.
The soldier paused and looked at her, holding the two boats together with a single wrap around the cleat beside his foot. He clearly had wished to avoid speaking to her, but, once questioned, he could not fail to answer. “I wish you no harm, Princess,” he said, shouting back to be heard over the wind and water. “What happened here was between this man and myself. I have no quarrel with you.”
“You know who I am?”
The man nodded.
“Why did you kill this man? What are you going to do with me?”
“He and I had a-a dispute. With you I have no wish to do anything.”
They rose up over a wave and all was chaos for a moment. When she could see the man’s face again Mena spoke. “You will leave me here to die?”
The man shook his head. “You won’t die. You are in a current that drags you east. It runs through Vumu as if through a sieve. Even if you raise no sail but just float, you will sight land in a few days’ time. You will find land again. And people. What passes between you and them is for you to decide.”