After that, the rest was ceremonial chat, more wine and cakes, and a return to Golden Cup. With all the supplies loaded and most put to use, there was little work for now, and there had been more wine than Pirvan was accustomed to drinking with so little food at this time of day.
He lay down until the buzzing in his head faded to a distant murmur, and by then he was falling asleep.
* * * * *
He awoke with Haimya sitting beside his bunk. She was good to look at, though fatigue and perhaps more had carved lines into her face that hadn’t been there before.
“Pirvan, I owe you an apology.”
“I’ll accept it, but I’m not sure you did anything you need to apologize for.”
“I’ve been-uneasy-Gerik … More uneasy than I should have been, perhaps. I keep telling myself that he’s a valuable hostage, so Synsaga isn’t likely to pull out his fingernails or put out his eyes. But likelihood isn’t certainty. I can’t be entirely easy until I see him again.”
Pirvan wanted to reach out and grip her hands, but he was afraid she’d flinch at his touch. He was more afraid that she’d read through his flesh the thought in his mind: It isn’t just harm to Gerik’s body that worries you. It’s what might happen to his honor. A mage who can wake a black dragon can often lead astray a man far from home and alone among strangers.
“In your situation, I might be harder to approach than a quillpig,” Pirvan said. “You don’t need to go around apologizing to everybody and his half-elven cousin.”
“I won’t. I do insist on apologizing to you. We need to work together, to … to …”
“To keep Eskaia from becoming infatuated with Jemar the Fair?”
“Is that what you call it? I would have called it wanting to lie down, lift her skirts, and raise her legs.”
Pirvan looked at the ceiling. “You have a family retainer’s privileges. I do not.”
“And I intend to use them, too,” Haimya said. “But, in all seriousness, I may be even more fearful for Gerik now if he’s within bowshot of a dragon’s lair. But I will try not to load those fears on you, and if I do, it will be by chance.”
And if you ever come out and tell the truth, it will be a miracle, Pirvan thought sourly.
Except that it might not be true that she was in love with him. He was not sure whether learning this would be a relief or a disappointment.
Chapter 11
“Twelve fathoms, brown mud,” the leadsman at Golden Cup’s bow called.
“Shoaling fast now,” the man beside Pirvan said. “If your captain doesn’t anchor soon, he’ll-”
Pirvan didn’t hear the rest of what would happen if the captain didn’t anchor. Jemar might have picked the twelve men he’d sent aboard for their fighting prowess; he certainly hadn’t picked them for their polished manners.
Or perhaps it was general to sea barbarians and not particular to these twelve men. It was said that the sea barbarians were elaborately polite to one another, to avoid fights aboardship. It was also said that against outsiders they competed with one another in the arts of provocation and insult.
Certainly Jemar’s men hadn’t been backward in those enterprises since they had come aboard a week ago. It was a minor miracle that there hadn’t been any duels or, even less formal, knifings. Or perhaps not; the word was out that anyone who killed one of Jemar’s men would himself die on the spot. Nobody except the leaders knew the full tale of why Golden Cup needed Jemar’s goodwill, but most men accepted that this was so, even if they grumbled where the mates couldn’t hear them.
Pirvan had done his share of making the alliance with Jemar acceptable, using Grimsoar One-Eye to spread rumors of shares of rich treasures. Everybody knew that sea barbarians had entire shiploads of gold hidden in remote anchorages. Everybody also knew that sea barbarians usually managed to cheat honest sailors in the end.
But everybody also dreamed that, just this once, the sea barbarians might be honorable or the honest sailors quicker to snatch. After all, wasn’t the man who’d swum ashore and saved them all a professional thief, shrewder and even more alert than the sea barbarians themselves?
Pirvan was willing to let the sailors believe that. He himself would be entirely happy if circumstances did not require him to match wits now or at any time with Jemar the Fair. The man so far hadn’t done anything to deserve it, and Pirvan also knew who was likely to come out ahead if the matter was put to the test.
He looked over the side. They were coming up to the head of a small bay, hardly more than an inlet. A bonfire on the shore illuminated calm, almost oily water dotted with dead trees and other debris. It also lit up a handful of ramshackle huts, and beyond them a more substantial log wall with guardhouses at the gates and corners.
“Ten fathoms, gravel,” the leadsman called.
Before the sea barbarian could say anything, Pirvan heard in rapid succession:
“Douse the foresail!”
“Back the mainsail!”
“Down the anchors!”
Sails flapped and anchors went away with a squeal of rope on wood and the splash of massive weights hitting water. The ship stopped almost as abruptly as if it had run aground. Then a different voice called:
“Prepare to lower boats.”
They’d bought (at an only moderately outrageous price) an old harbor guard barge for bringing the dragon out to the ship, if he couldn’t fly. They’d also towed it all the way across the gulf, since it was too big to hoist aboard. Pirvan had heard the mates and helmsmen cursing it for days.
It was also much too clumsy for a shoreboat. Lanterns aft showed sailors hefting the longboat out of its chocks and bending the hoisting lines to the mainmast. Pirvan grinned at the sea barbarian.
“I think our captain knows his business,” he said, then scrambled down the ladder. If they were hoisting out the boats already, anyone assigned to the landing party had best be down amidships before the mates started wondering where he was.
* * * * *
The water shoaled rapidly soon after the longboat left the ship. The boat actually ran aground far enough out that the landing party had to wade through soupy water to a beach hardly firmer than the water.
Tarothin was the last one ashore, stepping as if he were walking on eggs and almost daintily trying to keep a leather bag and staff out of the water. Sailors would gladly have carried both, except that he’d warned them not to touch either.
Tarothin otherwise had been leading an easy life for the last week, and without complaint from anyone. It was known that he might be the key to fulfilling whatever bargain had been made with the Karthayans. Nobody cared to think about what might happen if Tarothin failed.
The Karthayans could certainly make themselves memorably unpleasant, Pirvan knew. From the shore he could see the blue stern lights burning aboard the two harbor guard galleys at the mouth of the inlet. Those galleys had followed Golden Cup all the way from Karthay, their decks crowded with guardsmen and their rowing benches creaking under free weapons-trained rowers.
No galley afloat could successfully ram Golden Cup, but those two alone could pour a hundred fighting men onto its decks if it’s captain tried to escape without the dragon. More galleys were surely lurking offshore, and even if Jemar was with them he would hardly take on Karthay with only one ship and no support from his other captains.
Golden Cup’s captain was going to bring out the dragon if he wanted to come out at all.
The path up from the beach was wide enough for wagons and almost firm enough to walk on comfortably. Crawling and flying insects, drawn by the fires, buzzed and whined. Pirvan and Haimya soon looked as if they’d been in a battle, with the slime from swatted insects on their faces and arms.