“… So, in the end, the Towers suggested that I had gone against law, custom, and my own philosophy. Not by serving it in a way careless of the consequences to others. I admitted that I had been in haste, but they called that explanation rather than excuse, and indeed a sign that I needed discipline more rather than less.”
Pirvan disagreed with nothing in this summary, but it did not quite explain why Tarothin was here. His look asked that without words, and the wizard continued.
“Now, I wished to avoid danger from the thieves and also a course of discipline in the Towers. It might have lasted years, and to be trapped in Istar that long-but I run ahead of myself.”
“No harm done.” At least, no harm done if he finishes the tale I hear in those words some other time, Pirvan mused.
“I disguised myself, quite naturally, and went aboard while Golden Cup was still alongside the quay. After we sailed, I left my hiding place and came up here, having heard that your cabin had space and that you had honor.”
“As to the space, the hammock is yours-”
“I’d rather sleep on the floor.”
“As you wish, but don’t complain if I step on you when I visit the head.”
“Never fear, as long as you go barefoot.”
“Let’s discuss the proper footgear for stepping on you some other time. I do have honor, which brought me on this voyage to make recompense to House Encuintras. Now it requires me to take you to their representatives.”
“Why?”
Pirvan suited bald answers to the bald question. “Because you stowed away, and a wizard aboard ship can make sailors nervous. Nervous sailors can be bad sailors, and bad sailors wreck ships.”
Tarothin nodded. Pirvan had the notion that he’d just passed a test of his own knowledge, rather than adding to the wizard’s. He almost hoped so. Worldly wizards and clerics were the butt of any number of rude jokes, but they were the sort you wanted to have along on a voyage like this.
“I will go gladly, though more so to Lady Eskaia. She commanded my spells, so will be the best judge of what I must do. Indeed, she commanded me without-”
“Without speaking to her guard-maid?”
Tarothin’s vexed look confirmed Pirvan’s suspicions. That definitely made Eskaia the better woman for this business.
“Then I suggest that we finish our night’s sleep,” Tarothin went on. “Haimya is about at all hours-learning her way around the ship, she says. But Eskaia takes a lady’s privilege and puts in a full night. Is there any reason we shouldn’t do the same?”
Pirvan saw none, and slept again soon after Tarothin started snoring.
* * * * *
“That’s Freshwater Point over yonder,” Mate of the Tops Kurulus said. “No matter how high the tide, the water’s fresh from there on back to Istar.”
“How long before we reach the Delta?” Pirvan asked.
“We’ll have it in sight in another two hours,” Kurulus said. “But we’ll be anchoring overnight. Nobody runs the Delta by night unless he’s in a smaller ship or wants to run aground-or worse.”
“Worse?”
“Pirates, ogres, sea trolls, or so they say-never seen one myself, but I can swear to the others.”
“This close to Istar?”
“Close is as close does,” the mate said. “There’s plenty of places in the Delta. Might as well be on Nuitari for all the soldiers can reach them. Then there’s razorflies, strangleberries, black willows if you’re foolish enough-”
He broke off and looked down. “Hoa. I think we’re about to have company.”
Pirvan looked down Golden Cup’s mainmast and saw Haimya climbing the rope ladder toward the top, where he and Kurulus stood. From fifty feet above, he could see that she wore an expression of grim determination.
Probably no worse than I had this morning, he thought.
Pirvan had first gone aloft after seeing Tarothin to Lady Eskaia’s cabin and being graciously dismissed. Kurulus had said it was a good way to wake up, and would give him a better name among the crew.
About the crew, Pirvan knew nothing. As to the waking, he had to agree. There was a certain degree of fear that left no room for early morning fuzziness, only for total concentration of mind and body on a single task-in Pirvan’s case, not falling out of the rigging like a ripe apple from a wind-shaken tree.
He had, in fact, been higher than the maintop, on cliffs and walls and in trees. But none of these swayed as the mast did, even in the calm waters of the Istar River. His climb was slow, though his recovery afterward was mercifully quick.
Now it was complete, his head for heights had entirely returned, and he stood with one hand on the rail of the top. Haimya was now so close that she would notice him looking at her and resent it, so Pirvan turned his eyes out over the river.
Two miles wide here, it had room for a hundred vessels between green-furred shores. These ranged from at least one ship as large as Golden Cup down to fishermen’s row-boats. There was even one odd craft with two triangular sails, crewed by figures too short to be human.
Pirvan pointed at the strange two-master. “Dwarves, kender, or gnomes?”
“Cursed if I know,” Kurulus said. “Dwarves mostly don’t go on water-you know they can’t swim, though some use floatbelts. Kender will go anywhere and do anything that promises an adventure, so it could be they. No gnome craft ever sailed as well as that one, and I’ve heard they’re giving up sail anyway.”
“Sailing? They’re building galleys?”
“The better for them if they were. No, I’ve heard they’re working on contraptions of levers moved by steam from giant teakettles that turn wheels either side of the hull.”
“Trust a gnome to run one like that.”
“Aye. Word is, so far they haven’t launched one that didn’t burn or sink. Us old sailorfolk have a few years yet before we need to put oars on our shoulders and walk inland to take up farming.”
A big Istarian galley swept by to port as Haimya climbed over the starboard railing of the maintop. For a moment, Pirvan thought she was going to fall, and resisted the temptation to put out a hand to her. She was seldom rude, save when a man offered unsought help; then she could rattle ears or even teeth with her reply.
At last Haimya embraced the mast as if it had been a lover, and murmured, her voice half-lost in the tarred timber, “A fine day for a sail.”
Pirvan nodded. “And to think we’re having it all without paying a single horn for it.”
The mate threw back his head and howled with laughter. “Try calling it a pleasure cruise when a southwester hits, friends. If you do it then, I’ll call you madmen or sailors.”
Haimya turned toward Kurulus a face that was pale with a slight tinge of green. “I have always wondered how to tell the two apart.”
The mate laughed even louder. Haimya frowned. “Could you leave us, please?”
Pirvan was about to suggest a more polite way of making the request. It said much about Haimya’s state of mind and body that she only pressed her face against the mast again.
“Well and good,” Kurulus said cheerfully. “I won’t leave two lubbers like you alone, unless you really need it, and the top’s no place for that, let me tell you. Hitting the deck all wound together like that-”
That finally drew some barracks language from Haimya. The mate’s grin widened.
“I’ll see to some lashings on the mainyard. The worst storms always hit the day after you’ve decided everything is shipshape.”
He swung himself over the railing, dropped to the yard, and strode out along it as briskly as any shepherd ever drove sheep across a level pasture. Haimya closed her eyes. Pirvan didn’t altogether blame her. Sailors took being comfortable high in the air somewhat farther than he ever had.
“Lady Eskaia and Tarothin thank you for more than you know,” Haimya said at last.