“Am I to learn it now?” Haimya might be both dizzy and seasick; Pirvan was weary of riddles.
“My lady has it in her-she and Tarothin think-to be a cleric. But-she has never been allowed testing or training.”
“That is the Towers’ decision?” If the merchant princess and the peculiar wizard were going against such, they were renegades in fact and would soon be such in law. One did not need to be a sailor to be uncomfortable with that, aboard a ship on a voyage already likely to be sufficiently perilous.
“Her father’s. However closely held the secret, it would escape. Then there would be tongues wagging all over Istar, many saying Eskaia was rebelling against her house or refusing marriage.”
“Is she?”
Haimya’s eyes turned cold for a moment, then she swallowed. “I do not know. It is not a question one asks. If she wishes me to know, she will tell me.”
The tone made the words as close to an apology as Pirvan had received from Haimya since they had set sail. “It will need to be an even more closely held secret here than in Istar. We live closer together, and the sailors mostly do not care for anything except weather magic.”
“They are loyal to House Encuintras.”
“Loyal servants, yes, but not slaves.”
He wanted to ask aloud if her years as a mercenary had not taught her the difference, but he wanted to climb down from the top with all his teeth in his head. Haimya was no fool, nor even the first person he’d known made to sound like one by a queasy stomach.
“Will you keep the secret, and do whatever else may be needed to guard it?” Haimya asked.
“My oath did not-”
“Is your oath dung?”
“No,” the thief said. “Nor am I a slave, either.”
Pirvan hoped her temper would not flare beyond bounds. It would accomplish nothing except entertaining Kurulus, and Eskaia would have to play peacemaker.
“I will guard both your lady and her secret,” Pirvan said. That seemed to ease Haimya. She turned to climb over the railing into the rigging for the descent, then gripped the polished wood until her knuckles turned white. Just as Pirvan was about to reach for her, she swung herself over, as smoothly as a girl but for the white face.
“I can descend by myself, thank you,” she said to no one or everyone.
She went down considerably faster than she had come up, with Pirvan sneaking a look every few moments. As she touched the deck, Kurulus returned to the top. From his face, he might have heard nothing but seen a good deal.
“That’s a fine woman, and she’ll be finer when she gets her sea legs and loses that temper.”
“I think some of the temper is inborn.”
“Ah, that can be even better.”
“Or much worse.”
“A man can always hope,” the mate said.
“Hope is cheap,” Pirvan said. “Do you really think you’ve a chance with her?”
“Jealous?”
“You’ve no cause to insult me like that.”
“Aye. Forgive me. But what are my chances?”
“About the same as mine.”
“Which are?”
“None.”
Chapter 7
The pleasure voyage did not last much beyond the Delta.
They passed down the Great Channel (a name that had been carried by four different passages through the Delta since Istar was founded) the next day. Once they touched ground, but lightly and on a rising tide. In an hour they were afloat and bound seaward again.
At dawn the next day they were clear of the Delta and heading north down the Bay of Istar. The southern stretch of it was hardly wider than the river, but it rapidly widened until by noon they were out of sight of land from the deck. Pirvan was willing to take the word of The Mariner’s Almanak about the features of the shore, rather than climb up the mainmast again with a spyglass to see them for himself.
Toward nightfall they took in sail, as the wind was rising and confused, and lumpy waves were making Golden Cup sway clumsily, rather like an owlbear trying to do a Plainsman fertility dance. Gusts seemed to be coming in from all directions, and Pirvan saw Kurulus frowning as he watched the sails alternately fill hard as a breastplate, then flap like empty sacks.
“Oh, it’s not as bad as it could be, and it’s not likely to get that bad at this time of year,” the mate said. “The most of the storms come up from the southwest, and if we have the searoom we can tack right out of the gulf into the open sea faster than we could without the storm.”
“What about storms from other directions?”
Pirvan had heard sailors describe “tacking” for many years, but understood it hardly better than he understood Tarothin’s magic. He knew that it allowed a properly equipped ship to sail without the wind blowing from directly astern, but how it was translated into the movements of the ship’s three tree-tall masts and six broad sails, Pirvan did not pretend to know.
“I’d just as soon you kept this to yourself,” Kurulus said. “If we’ve searoom and nothing carries away, we can beat about in the middle of the gulf until the blow passes. Otherwise, we might be needing to put in at Karthay, no good thing, or face even worse.”
Pirvan did not ask about the “even worse,” because he suspected he knew what it was. He had never been in a shipwreck but knew some who had; he preferred not to join their ranks.
As for Karthay, the mate’s expression was that of a man who can be persuaded to answer but would rather not. Again, Pirvan suspected the answer. In his profession, the affairs of the mighty were of only moderate interest, and he had little need to know where Istar’s rule was real and where it sat very lightly. Karthay and its outlying ports were among those where Istarians walked softly and in pairs-and because without Istar’s fleet, Karthay would command the larger city’s sea routes to the rest of Krynn, it was a matter of no small moment.
Pirvan walked to the railing and made a small rite to Habbakuk to avert really dangerous weather-one did not ask him for gentle breezes and smooth seas, thereby implying that one lacked both courage and sea legs. Then he looked forward and aft along the deck, and took some consolation from the view.
Golden Cup was a hundred and forty feet from prow to stern, with the bowsprit jutting out another forty feet beyond the prow. The ship carried one sail on the bowsprit, two square sails on the foremast, two on the mainmast, and a single large triangular sail on the mizzen. Forward and aft, one deck was piled on another, like miniature castles, and even amidships, where the hull was lower, the railings (“bulwarks” was the name he’d heard) were solid wood and higher than a man, the hatchways massive structures with covers bolted on and tarred canvas lashed down.
This construction, so he’d heard, was mostly intended to make the ship proof against pirates. They could hardly climb aboard at bow and stern, and if they came over the railings and amidships, the defenders could rain arrows on them until they were as dead as the deck planking. Also, the high bow and stern would stay above the waves, which could wash over and through the bulwarks amidships without harm unless the hatch covers gave way.
This would have consoled Pirvan more if he had not talked with men who’d swum away from a ship whose hatches had caved in from the battering of a storm. They’d barely made it to shore, and seen most of their shipmates drowned or taken by something in the water they did not care to describe.
* * * * *
At dawn the next day, the sun illuminated mountain ranges of clouds to the south and west. Higher up to the south rode more clouds, as dark as a flight of black dragons. The wind had risen further, but it seemed to have steadied to almost due south. Golden Cup was throwing up rainbows from its bow wave and a millrace from its wake as the sails caught the wind.
Pirvan was walking back from the bow, where he’d been talking with Grimsoar, when he encountered Haimya. She wore a mate’s garb with her own boots and an expression that defied anyone to comment on the greenish pallor of her face.