“Where were they headed?” he asked.
She realized she had not made herself clear. Ignoring everything else in the room, the slender man with the unkempt hair turned to a stack of paperwork on his desk.
“Do not know,” she answered. “Need to know. Where ... someone take a ship from here?”
The harbormaster’s frown deepened. “You’re looking for someone, and you don’t know which direction they went?”
“Need to find,” she answered coldly.
He stood there for a long moment, studying her, and then asked, “Did someone hurt you? Steal something from you? Some man you trusted?”
She blinked, finding him far too blunt but not bothering to correct him. “Need to find,” she repeated.
He shook his head in seeming resignation and turned to pull a paper off the other desk. “Here’s a list of the ships that set sail today.”
She did not even glance at the paper. “How many?”
“Five.”
“Where they go?”
Setting the paper back down, he walked to the wall and pointed to a map. “Two headed for Calm Seatt, one headed up north, and two sailed south along the coast.”
“What is north?”
At this he shook his head. “You don’t know what’s north of the isle?”
“What is there?” she insisted, still meeting his eyes.
“Nothing much. A few Northlander villages and one big shipyard just shy of the great cold Wastes.”
This did not seem a destination Brot’ân’duivé would choose. He would not take Magiere to an uncivilized land where she could more easily be tracked and taken from him. He must be headed somewhere for a reason.
A few villages and a shipyard did not offer possibilities, nor did Calm Seatt. Doubling back was a legitimate tactic, but he had already faced great difficulty in hiding so many companions. No, he would flee in order to plan. And by the map, there were many ports south along the coast of these human nations. Several appeared to be large cities, by their symbols.
“One of the ships heading south was military,” the harbormaster added, “so unless the man you’re chasing is a soldier, I’d count that one out.”
Now he had her full attention. “What of other?”
“A big cargo vessel called the Cloud Queen, going all the way to the Suman capital port at il’Dha’ab Najuum. She’d be the only of those two to take on passengers.”
She had the name of Brot’ân’duivé’s ship and its final destination, though this did not necessarily mean the traitor would go that far. She now had to find a ship traveling that same route.
“I need to follow,” she said. “Help me find passage ... for tonight or tomorrow.”
Crossing his arms, he shook his head again. “I don’t have anything taking on passengers leaving that soon. Check back the day after next. Nearest that I know of right now is a small Suman vessel setting sail in five days.”
As his words sank in, her disappointment was bitter. It would not be pleasant to deliver such news to Fréthfâre.
The harbormaster stepped nearer until she felt his breath on her cheek.
“I’ll find you something,” he said. “Are you hungry? I was just going for dinner.”
She stepped back. As if she would sit and share food with a human.
“No ... I ... thank you. I will come back.” She turned to leave.
“You do that,” he called cheerfully after her.
Nightfall was nearly complete when Dänvârfij stepped out onto the waterfront to breathe in air that had not cooled much from the day’s warmth. Although she would have preferred a direct interrogation, her inquiry had not been a complete loss. As she turned up the shore, still filled with a scattering of passersby, she hoped the others had acquired all else that was needed.
They might be stalled here longer than any of them had anticipated.
Chapter Five
A day after setting sail, the girl everyone called Leanâlhâm stood on deck near the front of the ship named the Cloud Queen. The strong wind that moved the vessel made it hard to quiet her thoughts.
At dawn she had to force herself to rise, to eat, and even to go up on deck, and the morning was now half-gone. This would be the way of things, forcing herself to go on. Each dawn would crawl toward dusk and another long night, until ...
Léshil hunched over the rail and let out a long groan. “I shouldn’t have eaten ... anything.”
Indeed he looked pale, and the others stood a short ways beyond him, but she had little desire to join them.
Léshil and the majay-hì were blatantly obvious in their determination to keep watch over Brot’ân’duivé. As if either of them could without the master anmaglâhk knowing. Léshil was openly hostile to the greimasg’äh, though now he was too seasick to watch over anyone. Meanwhile Magiere continued prodding Brot’ân’duivé with what she seemed to view as subtle queries—though she was as subtle as a thunderstorm.
Of all Leanâlhâm’s current companions, Magiere was the one with whom she was most at ease. Magiere could be terrifying when that strange horror beneath her nature surfaced. But she was also fierce, like Sgäilsheilleache, in defense of those she cared for or anyone she simply chose to protect.
Leanâlhâm’s mother had been a half-blood, born of rape. She’d fled in grief and madness while Leanâlhâm was still an infant. All assumed that Leanâlhâm’s mother had later died, but it was this mother who had given her the birth name that meant “child of sorrow,” an unfortunate name.
Magiere did not care about such things. She defied what anyone thought of her or of those who mattered to her, and no one risked saying anything about either to her face more than once.
Leanâlhâm had yet to find that kind of strength within herself.
Then there was the majay-hì, whom everyone—even Brot’ân’duivé—called “Chap.” And this was repugnant, to force a name, even one that he wanted her to use, upon a sacred being. His watchful eyes were too often on the greimasg’äh, but unlike Léshil’s, the majay-hì’s gaze was fixed, cold, as he sat in perfect stillness. It was disturbing—frightening—until he did blink, now and then glancing at her.
Brot’ân’duivé had made it very clear that he expected his young charge to remain silent regarding events that had brought them here. Leanâlhâm had bent to his will in this so far, but she was growing tired of it. This tiredness sharpened every time someone spoke that awful name put upon her.
It was too much to face. Osha was gone, and with him the last piece of a world she had been forced to give up. She ached in isolation and loneliness, and had no one to tell what had really changed for her.
And then she found the majay-hì watching her again.
Part of her felt that he more than anyone might understand what she suffered. But he was so strange, a majay-hì in form but not in his actions and his words. That he could speak into her head was unnatural. She had learned of what Wynn called “memory-speak,” the way majay-hì, clhuassas, and other sacred ones communicated with their own. But they did so with memories, not words.
Leanâlhâm’s gaze shifted again to Brot’ân’duivé, his face as unreadable as always. She certainly could not speak with him about anything that mattered.
Then another movement caught her eye.
The captain’s young second-in-command came straight toward her around the forward mast. The day before, she had noticed him watching, staring at her, as she had boarded. He had not tried to speak to her, so she had given him no more thought.
To her horror, he walked right up to her and smiled, showing a row of white teeth as he squinted at her curiously.