My father listened to the chant, nodding his head to the rhythm, and when we were finished, he clapped his big hands once.
“Very good!” he said. “But look you, it’s ren-far-el-den-sa-fa-yu, not ren-far-el-den-sa-sa-yu.”
“We are corrected,” said I. “Thank you.”
His father pointed a thick finger at me. “The god knows when you care enough to make it right.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Pastas has always had the best people in his service,” said my father. “His priests are the most important citizens of the district, who give their time and money freely.” A look of scorn crossed his face. “Not like those monks who serve the Pilgrim, and who are supported by our taxes no matter what the King claims. Let King Stilwell but stop his gold one day, and those monasteries would be deserted the next.”
I had heard these opinions before, and Kevin too. But the recollection of the festival and its Mermaids brought an uncomfortable memory to my mind.
“Father,” I said, “I should forewarn you of the possibility that you may receive a call from Master Greyson.”
The master Butcher frowned. “The surveyor? What’s the trouble?”
“A misunderstanding. You may remember that Greyson’s daughter Annabel is a Mermaid this year and . . .” My poise faded under my father’s cool eye. I put on my innocent-choirboy face. “She asked me to adjust her costume,” I said.
“And you adjusted more than that, I suppose.”
“It is possible Annabel will refuse to give my name,” I said. “In which case your peace will not be disturbed.”
My dad had received fathers on my behalf before, and did not seem unduly disturbed. “Greyson, eh? I had thought the next would be old Driver, Bethany’s father.”
“It fell out otherwise,” I said. I looked at my father. “At least I may be saved by my reputation as a steady, sober young fellow, walking the streets with his nose in a book of law.”
He answered only with a sardonic laugh, just at the moment when Mrs. Vayne’s boy arrived carrying the first basket of pearmains, and I took the opportunity to say good-bye and make my exit into Princess Street. I and Kevin turned toward the Harbor Gate.
“Annabel Greyson,” Kevin said. “I thought she fancied Richard Trotter.”
“His name did not come up.”
“And her father caught you? What happened?”
I preferred not to relive my moments hanging off the roofbeam. Instead, I looked at Kevin. “Are you well shod?”
Kevin glanced down at the glossy boots that rose to his calves. “I believe I am.”
“Those boots are too heavy,” I said. “They’ll slow you down.” I smiled. “Remember, when Sir Stanley sets his dogs on us, I need not run faster than the dogs, but only faster than you.”
“The boots serve as armor against their bites,” Kevin said. “These are good leather.”
“We’ll see.” I passed among the carts and wagons that labored through the great River Gatehouse, and from the paved apron outside I looked up at the great red brick city wall, thirty feet high, with fifty-foot towers at regular intervals. The wall’s outlines were blurred with vegetation, grass, and bushes and even a few small trees growing through cracks in the masonry.
“Look at all that rubbish,” I said. “Time for another Beating of the Bounds.” In which packs of the local children were gathered together and marched to every important point of the city, then beaten with willow withes until they could remember Rose Street from Turnip Street, the Gun Tower from the Tower of the Crescent Moon. After which they were lowered on ropes from the battlements to clear away all the vegetation that had grown up since the last cleaning.
I still remembered the whipping I’d received from old Captain Hay, when at the age of ten I’d been driven from one tower to the next. Hay had laid on as if he were flogging a mutineer.
That had been eight years ago. There hadn’t been a Beating of the Bounds since.
I would speak to my father about it. It wouldn’t do for the city to look so unkempt—and I was happy the cleaning job would be undertaken by a different generation.
CHAPTER TWO
I leaned against the weather gunwale and smiled up at the sun. Loafing about in boats is perhaps my second-greatest pleasure, and my pleasure was only increased by the knowledge that I was sparing myself a day copying documents.
Kevin tucked the tiller beneath his arm. “Do you think the god truly cares whether we sing sa-sa or sa-fa?” he asked.
I squinted into the bright morning sky. “I think if the god truly cared about his worshipers and his city, he wouldn’t let the harbor silt up.”
“True.”
“My father hopes that we’ll be struck by a strong-enough storm to blast open a new deepwater channel. Perhaps he even prays for it.” I looked at my friend. “Does your father pray for such a thing?”
“My father owns ships. He does not pray for storms.”
“In any case, let us pray there are no storms today.”
Kevin surveyed the brilliant blue sky, the small clouds perched high in the inverted azure bowl overhead. “I hardly think prayers are necessary.”
“Pray, then, that when we meet Sir Stanley, he isn’t carrying his gun.”
The sailboat raced along the channel, carving a perfect silver wake behind. Tall reeds rustled on either side. Doomed, I thought.
The city of Ethlebight had at last come to the end of its centuries-long crawl down the banks of the Ostra. Below Ethlebight the river spread into dozens of small fingerlike channels separated by reefs of silt, each islet crowned by golden-brown reeds. The once-open bay had filled with alluvium, and even the strong tides couldn’t keep it clear.
The winding channels, surrounded by reeds taller than a man, were a daunting maze that required an experienced pilot, but it was the silt that would choke the life out of the city. Already there was no passage deep enough for a galleon, and with the galleons gone, Ethlebight had lost its deep-sea trade with foreign nations. Only barges, pinnaces, hoys, flyboats, crumsters, and other such small craft could now hope to gain the port, and ere long Ethlebight would become a city of ghosts. This sad truth was why my father had encouraged me to adopt the law as my profession, as a lawyer could work and lodge anywhere.
I loved my home city, but perhaps my fantasies were beginning to overleap its walls. I could feel another world beckon, a world with more scope.
The tide had started to ebb before Kevin and I had set sail, and the current helped draw the boat out through the vast, rattling sea of reeds. The channel split before us, and we bore right and were at once confronted by a pinnace aground. She was a handsome little vessel, with a vermilion hull and a broad ochre stripe, and on her canvas shimmered the waves’ reflection. She had backed her sails and put out a kedge anchor in hopes of towing herself off, but was almost certainly stranded till the next high tide.
“Eighty tons,” Kevin judged. “Too big for the port.” There was sadness in his voice.
The pinnace flew the ensign of Loretto, the kingdom with which Duisland had been at war at least as often as it had been at peace. In times of conflict, my city’s merchants abandoned their countinghouses for their quarterdecks, and sent their ships to seize the commerce of Loretto, or the Armed League of the North, or Varcellos, or any other nation declared an enemy by the King. The harbor of Ethlebight filled with their captures, the warehouses were stuffed with plunder, and the pockets of the sailors grew heavy with silver. The privateers of Ethlebight were famous for bringing the wealth of other nations to their city.