He knew now that he would have to follow Magiere, go through her to procure this artifact, this key, this orb. And that itself might be enough. With it he might find a way to claim the other orbs that had been hidden away. He might have a weapon suitable to Léshil’s final purpose.
“Well?” Léshil demanded.
Magiere was silent, just watching, but Chap circled slowly, threateningly around Brot’ân’duivé.
“Your mother is strong,” he answered. “She is needed where she is. We must all follow our separate paths, each to our separate purpose.”
Léshil turned away, as if overwhelmed by all that had been said ... and all that had not been said.
Chapter Nineteen
Magiere wasn’t sure what to think while listening to Brot’an on deck. It didn’t surprise her that Leesil focused on his mother.
Nein’a’s situation certainly wasn’t good, but Magiere saw larger issues at stake. Standing behind Leesil, she carefully put her hand on his shoulder and closed it.
“So you started a war, you and Most Aged Father,” she began.
Brot’an shifted his attention from Leesil to her. “Wars begin well before anyone chooses to declare so.”
She wasn’t going to argue with that evasion. “What happened when you got to your people’s port?”
At the sound of a stumbling footstep, Magiere looked back to find that Leanâlhâm had returned. The girl stood outside the aftcastle door with a tray of food in hand. Her eyes were reddened and puffy. Had she been crying?
How long had she been there listening? And Brot’an still hadn’t answered Magiere’s question.
“Are you going to tell them?” Leanâlhâm asked, looking to Brot’an.
It was unusual for Leanâlhâm to speak up like this. Would Brot’an try to worm out of her question, too? Magiere turned to watch him and looked for a crack in his armor.
“Or not, because I am here?” the girl added. “You have no secrets to keep from me in this, Greimasg’äh. I was there!”
Leanâlhâm’s tone surprised Magiere even more, but she didn’t take her eyes off Brot’an. She wished she could’ve, just for a smile and a wink to the girl. It was the most backbone Leanâlhâm had shown in a while—and it was about time.
Magiere was also puzzled. How could Leanâlhâm have been at the port with Brot’an if she’d been stowed away with Urkhar’s people?
—Do not—ease up— ... —You have them—both—ready to—tell all—
At Chap’s instructions, Magiere knew he was right, despite the risk in dredging up more pain for Leanâlhâm. None of them could truly help the girl until they understood more of what had happened to her. Still, Brot’an said nothing—fair enough!
Magiere glanced back at Leanâlhâm. “Why don’t you tell us, if you were there?”
This time she did wink at the girl.
“And you can keep quiet,” Leesil snarled, likely at Brot’an, though the shadow-gripper hadn’t made a sound.
Leanâlhâm swallowed hard. Stepping a little closer, she set the tray atop a water barrel. She hesitated again, watching Magiere with those suddenly frightened, and reddened, green eyes of hers.
Magiere didn’t like having to do this, but she nodded slowly, urging the girl on, and Leanâlhâm began to speak....
It took the girl that everyone called Leanâlhâm almost eight days to reach the coast. She had barely eaten anything. What little food she carried was gone, and she knew almost nothing of how to find more in the wild. Upon reaching the inland outskirts of Ghoivne Ajhâjhe, the one true city of her people, she hung back among the trees.
Cuirin’nên’a must have learned by now of her disappearance. Would Léshil’s mother have guessed where she had gone? Was Cuirin’nên’a already here, somewhere in the shadows, waiting to take her back? The possibility did not seem as unlikely as it once had been.
Exhausted and hungry, with no notion of what to do, Leanâlhâm was certain only that she did not belong among the people anymore. Never having begged for anything in her life, she begged a wheat roll from a small baker’s shop—as she had nothing to barter.
She had never seen anything like this city.
To her knowledge, all inland an’Cróan lived in cultured wild groves of living tree dwellings. This place, which stretched so tall and wide, was made of ornately carved wood, some stone, and other materials she could not name. As she peeked out at the great piers down the beach, wild arrays of structures were spread along the shore above, amid sparse but massive trees. There were even more structures beyond the broad mouth of the Hâjh River spilling into the bay.
She shrank back from this overwhelming sight and realized how little of the world she truly knew outside the limits of the enclave where she had grown up. Then she scurried away, trying to find some quiet corner.
Beyond one living structure, a tree more massive than that of Most Aged Father, with curtained openings into its huge trunk and walkways the size of bridges among its branches, she found an open garden. Settling near its central pool, she looked down to where fish of glittering colors swam in dusky water. After using her cupped hands to take a badly needed drink, she bit into the roll.
Its crust was hard from having sat out all day, but there and then it tasted like the best thing she had ever eaten. Upon finishing, she returned to the waterfront and walked down the shore toward the beach and the long piers stretching out into the still bay.
The ships of her people were harbored here and there. One of those would be the best way for her to leave, but how would she know whether any of them were sailing into human waters? How could she even gain passage in order to obey the ancestors?
“Are you lost?”
Her breath caught at the voice, and she turned.
A young fisherman with a string of flounder over one shoulder walked toward her. If he noticed her darker hair, her green eyes, he did not show it. Still, she was filthy and tattered and had no idea how to answer.
Lost? She was more lost than anyone could be.
“I ... I need ...” she began, and could not get out anything more.
“A ship? Passage?”
She nodded. “North, and then around to human waters.”
He straightened. “No ships, not even for cargo, go as far as human waters, unless they carry emissaries with clan warriors ... or the Anmaglâhk.”
She looked forlornly about the bay. How was she to ever leave here? She was trapped between mountains on the western and southern sides of the territory and an ocean to the east and north.
“You do not want to go among humans,” he admonished. “My father sells our fish in the city, and we need someone to help clean fish. Do you need dinner and a place to stay?”
He was kind, but he was an’Cróan. She did not belong with his family.
“No. Thank you.”
With a frown, he nodded to her and walked away. She went off the way he had come, up the shoreline and keeping to the rocky slope above the sand so she might not be easily spotted by anyone along the city’s front. The only thing she could think of was to sneak aboard one of the ships, but which one? And what would happen if she was caught? It would have to be a large one, maybe military. That sounded like the only kind that would leave an’Cróan waters, but what did one of those even look like?
The only other way was to cross the mountains, and even from a distance they looked impossible to breach on foot. Desperation made her wonder if she should try. She might have to steal more food, clothing, and possibly a bow, if she could figure out how to use it. The thought of theft, and the shame of it, frightened her too much. When she spotted a small cleft in the rocky slope, she crawled in to hide.
Should she just sleep here? The air began turning awfully cold, and an inbound wind blew straight into the cleft. Her only other choice was the city, and she did not like that place, with its structures of dead wood and stone.
Perhaps she closed her eyes a bit too long while her chin rested upon her pulled-up knees. When she opened them again, night had fallen and ...
A large ship—bigger than anything else in dock—was coming into the harbor. Would a ship of this size be the kind that the fisherman had spoken of, one that would eventually head for human waters?
Crawling from the cleft, she stood watching as the ship settled in near the pier’s end. She wondered about its hkomas—what humans might interpret as a “captain.” If he would give her leave to board, she might soon be away from this land—perhaps by the next dawn, and she would not even have to watch as the coastline faded from sight forever.
Once the vessel docked, a ramp was lowered. Within moments a tall man walked down and onto the long pier. Even from a distance she could see there was something unusual about the way he moved. She could not hear his footfalls upon the planks, and the manner in which his left arm swung with his loose white-blond hair pricked her awareness.
When he passed beneath a lantern along the pier, her breathing quickened.
Strangely, he no longer wore an anmaglâhk’s garb but only the breeches and tunic of a coastal clan. His cloak was brown, and the end of a long and narrow canvas-wrapped bundle, tied to him by a cord, protruded over his shoulder. With his gaze fixed hard upon something beyond the pier’s end, he did not see her until she cried out.
“Osha!”