“I must get to Port Thayes as soon as I can.”
Raffalon gestured eloquently at the thickets that lined the stream on either side. Fulferin subsided, but the thief saw a flicker of calculation in those definitely-not-otherworldly eyes and surmised that the same thought about having someone to leave for the anthropophagi had just crossed Fulferin’s mind. The god’s man gestured in a way that invited his rescuer to lead them on.
An hour’s more walking brought them to a weir that cut across the stream at a place that must have been the beginning of a stretch of rapids before the barrier was put in place. When they scrambled up they saw that the weir had created a long and narrow lake. On one of its shores, surrounded by weed-choked gardens and orchards of unpruned fruit trees, stood a moldering agglomeration of vine-draped stone walls, spiral towers, cupolas, colonnades, peristyles, and arcades.
They explored and found that one of the towers had been built with defense in mind—probably some generations ago when the Vandaayo were only an inchoate nuisance. It had a stout door and hinges so well greased that they had not rusted. In the basement, the stored food had long since rotted, but the wine in one of the butts was still potable.
Erminia said that she would gather fruit from the orchards if someone would come and keep watch. Raffalon volunteered. Fulferin said that he would climb to the highest point of the tower and stand sentry, calling out if he spied any Vandaayo coming their way. The thief doubted that the god’s man would make so much as a squeak, and when he and the woman reached the fruit trees he climbed the highest and kept a lookout.
Erminia found apples, persimmons, karbas, and blood-eyes, wrapping them up in her shawl. She called up to Raffalon, who climbed down to rejoin her. The thief thought this might be an opportune moment to test the extent of the young woman’s gratitude for his having delivered her from the Vandaayo cooking pot. She was not his type, but she was here.
A moment later, face smarting from a hard-handed slap and hip aching from a knee that he had avoided just in time, he understood that Erminia drew sharply defined limits. Angered, he briefly considered enlisting Fulferin’s help in mounting a concerted assault on the innkeeper’s daughter’s virtue. But the thought of any cooperative endeavor with the god’s devotee gave him more qualms than did the concept of forcing her acquiescence.
He showed Erminia two palms in token of surrender and accompanied her back to the tower, where they bolted the door and climbed the spiral staircase to the top apartment. Here they found Fulferin, not on the alert but at ease amid the dust, sprawled on a grimy divan, drinking from a wineskin he had filled from the ample supply downstairs.
The windows were glassless, but the season was mild. Raffalon cleared a table and Erminia spread her harvest on it. They found chairs and Fulferin came to join them, bringing the wine. The young woman went to rummage in a sideboard and came back to the table with a stout cook’s knife. But instead of using it to cut the fruit, she showed the point to each of the men in a meaningful way, then tucked the blade into her kirtle.
They ate in silence, passing the wineskin around. The liquid had a tinge of the vinegar to it but was otherwise drinkable. Finally, his stomach full and his blood warmed by the wine, the thief pushed himself back from the table and regarded the god’s man.
Fulferin looked back with an expression that said he did not invite the curiosity of strangers. Raffalon ignored the implied rebuff, and said, “Your god made an arrangement with me. Having rescued you, I am sure you will want to help him honor it.”
The worldly eyes narrowed. “What arrangement?”
“He is a god of luck in small things. He said that, if I aided you, he would henceforward bless me with his intervention. I believe his influence has already served me, and it will grow even stronger once you have revived his powers.”
Fulferin shrugged. The matter clearly did not engage his interest.
Erminia said, “What is this god talk?”
Fulferin seemed disinclined to answer. Raffalon succinctly described the series of events that had brought them all together. He saw no profit in disclosing the god’s willingness to sacrifice her.
The woman leaned forward, her heavy brows downdrawn. “What is this rite that will restore the god’s strength? And what, by the way, is his name?”
Raffalon realized that the question had not come up and turned to Fulferin, his face forming an interrogative. Again, the god’s man showed no inclination to continue the conversation, but when pressed, he said, “Gods who do not hear their names from worshippers gradually forget them. It is akin to falling into a deep sleep, from which it is difficult for them to wake.”
“So the rite will wake him up?”
The god’s man shrugged. “I am no expert.”
When the thief questioned him further, he displayed annoyance and made gestures that said the inquisition was an affront.
“Why this reluctance?” Erminia said. “Are you not this god’s devotee, dedicated to restoring his powers? Speak!”
But Fulferin did not. Instead, with a gesture of irritation, he rose from the table, taking his satchel and its precious contents with him, and went up the small flight of stairs that ended in a door that opened onto the flat roof.
Raffalon watched him go and was prey to dark thoughts. Fulferin was not the man the god thought he was. He remembered how careful the fellow had been not to touch the idol, which would have given the deity access to his innermost thoughts.
The thief made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. His gaze slid sideways toward Erminia. The woman, sitting with her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table, had also watched Fulferin depart. Now she threw a look Raffalon’s way, tilting her head and moving her mouth in a way that said she knew something.
“What?” he said. “What do you know?”
But now her face said she was keeping the information to herself.
Raffalon grunted. “Next time I rescue people from the Vandaayo’s cauldron, I mean to be more choosy.”
That won him a short laugh from Erminia, but the sound lacked humor. She took a final apple and went to sit in one of the open windows, where she could keep an eye on one of the approaches to the estate. Raffalon took the embrasure opposite. As the day wore on, one or the other would come back to the table for a swallow of wine or a piece of fruit, but otherwise they kept their separate vigils.
At nightfall, Fulferin came down from the roof. They did not seek to light a fire, the windows being unblockable. Raffalon said he would take the first watch. Erminia said she would take the second. Fulferin shrugged and lay on the floor, his satchel for a pillow.
After three hours without incident, Raffalon woke the woman—carefully, because she slept with her knife to hand—and disposed himself to sleep. Fulferin snored loudly in a corner, but it had been a long day following a short night’s sleep, and that in a tree. The thief soon fell into oblivion.
He awoke in the full light of morning to find Erminia shaking him. “Get up!” she said. “The bastard has betrayed us!”
He sprang to his feet and followed her to a window. The sun was a good handsbreadth above the forest canopy. Below, in a leaf-strewn, flagstoned courtyard, a fire smoldered, sending a tall column of gray smoke into the still air. Of Fulferin, there was no sign.
“The Vandaayo will have seen the smoke,” said the woman. “We have to get out of here!”
Raffalon was already moving toward the staircase. He picked up his wallet along the way, then went leaping down the stairs, Erminia close on his heels. At the ground floor, he found the stout door open, its lock crammed with mud.
Outside, the thief hopefully kicked aside the smoldering fire, then went to an ornately perforated garden wall and peered through one of the openings. Across the lake he could see motion in the tree line. In a moment, it had resolved into the shapes of the Vandaayo. They plunged into the water, trusting in the amphibian strands of their ancestry to sustain them. It would not take them long to cross the distance.