I said, "So you'd like to take a ship through this Maelstrom, to see what's on the other side?"
She nodded absently, then grinned suddenly. "To tell you the truth, Easterner, what I'd really like to do is design a ship that can stand up to it. My great-great-uncle was a shipwright. He designed the steerage system for the Luck of the South Wind, and served on her before the Interregnum. He was aboard her when the breakwaves hit."
I nodded as if I'd heard of the ship and the "break-waves." I said, "Have you married?"
"No. Never wanted to. You?"
"Yes."
"Mmmm," she said. "Like it?"
"Sometimes more than other times."
She chuckled knowingly, although I doubt she did know. "Tell me something: Just what are you going to Greenaere for?"
"Business."
"What sort of business has us delivering you as cargo?"
"Does the whole crew know about that?"
"No."
"Good."
"So what sort of business is it?"
"I'd rather not say, if you don't mind."
She shrugged. "Suit yourself. You've paid for our silence; we have no reason to report every passenger to the Empire, and certainly not to the islanders."
I didn't make an answer to this. We spoke no more just then. Currents and hours rolled beneath us. I ate more salted kethna, fed Loiosh, and slept as night collapsed the sea into a small lake which fed waves to the bow of Chor-ba's Pride, who excreted a narrow wake from her stern.
Around noon of the following day we spotted land, followed by a few scraggly masts from the cove that was our destination. The sky seemed high and very bright, with more red showing, and it was warm and pleasant. The captain, Trice, was sitting up in what I'd learned was called the fly bridge. Yinta was leaning casually against a bulwark near the bow, shouting obscure information back to the captain, who relayed orders to those of the crew who were piloting the thing, or rigging lines, or whatever they were doing.
During a pause in the yelling, I made my way up to Yinta and followed her gaze. "It doesn't look much like the stem of a banana," I remarked.
"What?"
"Never mind."
The captain yelled, "Get a sound," which command Yinta relayed to a dark, stooped sailor, who scurried off to do something or other. Greenaere, whose tip I could see quite well now, seemed to be made of dark grey rock.
I said, "It looks like we're going to miss her." Yinta didn't deign to answer. She relayed some numbers from the sailor to the captain. More commands were given, and, with a creaking of booms as the foresail shifted, we swung directly toward the island, only to continue past until it looked like we'd miss it the other way. It seemed a hell of an inefficient way to travel, but I kept my mouth shut.
"You know, boss, this could get to be fun."
"I was thinking the same thing. But Id get tired of it, I think, sooner or later."
"Probably. Not enough death."
That rankled a bit. I wondered if there was some truth in it. I could see features of the island now, a few trees and a swath of green behind them that might have been farmland. A place that small, I supposed land would be at a premium.
"A whole island of Teckla," said Loiosh.
"If you want to look at it that way."
"They have no Houses."
"So maybe they're all Jhereg."
That earned a psionic chuckle.
An odd sense of peace began to settle over me that I couldn't figure out. No, not peace, more like quiet—as if a noise that I'd been hearing so constantly I'd come to ignore it had suddenly stopped. I wondered about it, but I had no time to figure it out just then—I had to stay alert to what was going on around me.
There was an abrupt lessening of the wave action on the ship, and we were enclosed in a very large cove. I had seen the masts of larger ships; now I saw the ships themselves—ships too large to pull up to the piers that stuck out from the strip we approached. Closer in, there were many smaller boats, and I thought to myself, escape route. In another minute I was able to make out flashes of color from one pier, flashes that came in a peculiar order, as if signals were being given. I looked behind me and saw Yinta now next to the captain on the fly bridge, waving yellow and red flags toward the pier.
The wind was still strong, and the sailors were quite busy taking in sails and loosening large coils of rope. I moved toward the back and wedged myself between the cartons where I'd started the journey.
"All right, Loiosh. Take off, and stay out of trouble until I get there."
"You stay out of trouble, boss; no one's going to notice me. " He flew off, and I waited. I saw little of the happenings on the ship, and only heard the sounds of increased activity, until at last the sails seemed to collapse into themselves. This was followed almost at once by a hard thump, and I knew we had arrived.
Everyone was still busy. Ropes were secured, sails were brought in, and crates and boxes were manhandled onto the dock. At one point, there were several workmen on board at the same time, their backs to me. I went below with Yinta, who pointed to an empty crate.
"I'm going to hate this," I said.
"And you're paying for the privilege," she said.
I fitted myself in as best I could. I'd done something like this once before, sneaking into an Athyra's castle in a barrel of wine, but I expected this to be of shorter duration. It was uncomfortable, but not too bad except for the angle at which my neck was bent.
Yinta nailed in the top, then left me alone for what seemed to be much longer than it should have been; long enough for me to consider panicking, but then the crate and I were picked up. As they carried me, I was tempted to shout at them to try to take it easy, since each step made a bruise in a new portion of my anatomy.
"I see you, boss. They're carrying you down the dock now, to a wagon. You've got about three hundred yards of pier ... okay, here's the wagon."
They weren't gentle. I kept the curses to myself.
"Okay, boss. Everything looks good. Wait until they finish loading it."
I'll skip most of this, okay? I waited, and they hauled me away and unloaded me in what Loiosh said was one of a row of sheds a few hundred feet from the dock. I sat in there for a couple of hours, until Loiosh told me that everyone seemed to have left, then I smashed my way out; which is easier to say than it was to do. The door to the shed was not locked, however, so once my legs worked, it was no problem to leave the shed.
It was still daylight, but not by much. Loiosh landed on my shoulder. "This way, boss. I've found a place to hide until nightfall."
"Lead on," I said, and he did, and soon I was settled in a ditch in a maize field, surrounded by a copse of trees. No one had noticed me coming in. Getting out, I suspected, was going to be more difficult.
This particular bit of island was heavily farmed; very heavily compared to Dragaera. I wasn't used to a road that cut through farmland as if there were no other place for it to run. I wanted to be off the main road, too, so I wouldn't be so conspicuous, which left me walking parallel to the road about half a mile from it, through fields of brown dirt with little shoots of something or other poking out of them and feeding various sorts of birdlife. Loiosh chased a few of the birds just for fun. The houses were small huts built with dark green clapboard. The roofs seemed to be made of long shoots that went from the ground on one side to the ground on the other. They didn't look as if they would keep the rain out, but I didn't examine them closely. The land itself consisted of gentle slopes; I was always going either uphill or down, but never very much. The terrain made travel slow, and it was more tiring than I'd have thought, but I was in no hurry so I rested fairly often. The breeze from the ocean was at my back, a bit cold, a bit tangy; not unpleasant.