Then he eased his way to the railing just forward of midships and looked back to the west. Only a rapidly dispersing plume of mixed gray and black smoke remained of the pirate vessel.
9
The sun on Jeudi-the second Jeudi Quaeryt had spent on board-had been blistering hot, especially in the late afternoon, so hot that the fantail locker was still radiating heat well after sundown. That was only one of the reasons why Quaeryt stood on the poop, just short of where the two railings met on the forward port corner, looking out into a darkness little relieved by the reddish crescent of Erion. The other reason was that the captain had asked him to stand a watch as the port lookout and offer navigation calculations.
So far, over the past glass, he’d seen no other vessels and no inclement weather creeping up from any horizon, not that he would have expected that, not on a cloudless night with a mild following wind and only moderate swells.
According to the tables, at the longitude of Cape Sud, on Jeudi, the twenty-sixth of Juyn, Artiema should rise at two quints past eighth glass. By checking the deck glass, illuminated by a shielded lantern, Quaeryt could then determine how far west the Diamond was from the cape. That was only an approximation, of course, because even in a stabilized box, the glass sands did not run smoothly, but it was a start. Then, by sighting both moons, he could get an idea of their latitude.
“Scholar … I thought you might be here.” Ghoryn’s voice was barely audible above the sound of the ship cutting through the increasingly larger swells that the Diamond was encountering as the ship neared Cape Sud.
“It should be a bit before Artiema rises, but I wanted to sight Erion first.…” Quaeryt glanced toward the horizon again.
“Where do you feel we are?”
“I’d say we’re seventy to eighty milles west of Cape Sud, and twenty south. I’ll know better when I see Artiema.”
“Oh? And why do you think that?”
“The captain wants to be far enough offshore for us not to be seen, but not too far, just beyond sight from the cliffs. He’d be holding a course a half point north of southeast to keep us even with the coast.…”
Ghoryn chuckled. “We’ll see in a bit, won’t we?”
“That we will.”
“Don’t see many scholars at sea,” offered the first mate.
“I’ve never run across another scholar who went to sea,” admitted Quaeryt. Or much of anywhere if they didn’t have to. “Then there are more sailors than scholars.” He grinned in the darkness. “Why do you think that might be?”
Ghoryn laughed. “Most folk would say that there’s need of more sailors, and perhaps a need for fewer scholars.”
“Well put,” agreed Quaeryt. “There’s a need for scholars, but too many scholars in one place are like too many cooks in the kitchen.”
“You never did say much about why you needed to get to Tilbora. Not that I heard, anyways.”
“No. I didn’t. I think I told you I had a patron who commissioned a more recent history of Tilbor.” Quaeryt kept scanning the sea to port. He was still supposed to be a lookout.
“He’d pay for that?”
“Of course. Why do you think the frontispieces of so many books give the name of the patron who commissioned the work? That’s so that everyone who reads it for generations to come will see his name.”
“Sounds sort of like Naming,” mused Ghoryn.
“Ah … but he can claim that he is merely advancing human knowledge. A patron isn’t erecting a huge stone monument that everyone would immediately see as evidence of selling one’s integrity to the Namer.”
“A clever way of Naming, then. And you’d do it?”
“What’s a name in a book compared to saving knowledge that would otherwise be lost?” asked Quaeryt. “We all have to do things that aren’t ideal. Don’t you think that there were probably some crewmen on that pirate vessel that had little choice if they wanted to survive? But didn’t the good of saving the Diamond and her crew and cargo outweigh the evil of killing a handful of comparative innocents among the guilty?”
“You scholars … you could argue that Erion was the spirit of mercy, and not the great red hunter, and then you’d make out Artiema to be the evil moon.”
“I could,” replied Quaeryt with a laugh, “but I wouldn’t. There’s a big difference between light gray and black, and sometimes there’s an even bigger difference between those who claim to follow pure white and those who prefer slightly grayed white.”
“I have the feeling you’re not a follower of the Nameless, then.”
“Oh … but I am.” At least of the tenets, even if you’re unsure if there even is a Nameless. “Life is shades of gray. Those who claim to follow the absolute of pure white are disciples of the Namer, because insisting on absolutes in an imperfect world is another form of Naming.” He glanced eastward again, catching a glimmer of pearly white on the horizon, just about where he expected it. He’d have to approximate, because moonrise was calculated as that time when the highest limb of the moon’s orb cleared the plane of the horizon, and that was almost impossible to determine precisely from a ship’s deck, even one pitching so comparatively slightly as was the Diamond.
“Excuse me,” he said to Ghoryn before hurrying across the deck to the lantern-lit glass.
He checked the time-two and a quarter quints past.
“Where are we, scholar?” asked the mate, who had followed Quaeryt across the deck to stand behind the helm.
“If the glass is correct, we’re closer to Cape Sud than I’d thought, more like sixty milles, and I’d judge we’re closer to thirty south of the cape.” Quaeryt shrugged. “That’s an approximation, though.”
Ghoryn nodded. “We both have us close to the same position.”
“We don’t seem to be traveling that fast.”
“Captain knows the currents.”
Quaeryt had to admit he hadn’t thought about currents. He just laughed softly.
“Glad to see there are some things you don’t know, scholar.”
“There are more than a few.” Far more than a few. Quaeryt walked back to his position as lookout.
The mate did not follow, but retreated belowdecks, as if the only reason he’d come up had been to check moonrise. But then, it probably had been.
10
Once the Diamond Naclia rounded Cape Sud, she faced heavy seas and headwinds, day in and day out. Quaeryt had to lash himself into his bunk every night, waking up frequently, and rising with bruises in places he hadn’t had bruises since his last voyage, some ten years earlier. By the end of every day his clothes were damp, if not soaked, and nothing seemed to dry completely. The fare was salted mutton and hard biscuits, with occasional dried lemon and orange rinds. All in all, sailing the three hundred milles from Cape Sud to the calmer waters off Estisle took over a week. During that time, Quaeryt reflected more than a few times on the reasons behind his trip … and upon Vaelora’s missive, clearly an expression of interest of some sort. But what? And why?
The skies were gray as Shuld guided the Diamond around the northern tip of Estisle and toward the harbor at Nacliano, but the early-afternoon air was warm and dry, for which Quaeryt was thankful.
Nacliano was the oldest port on the east coast of Lydar. Even before Shuld eased the Diamond into place at the end of a pier that creaked with every swell that rolled under it, Quaeryt was reminded of that antiquity by not only the odors, but by aged brown and gray stone buildings that jumbled themselves across the hills on the north side of the River Acliano. From the pier, the patchwork of roof tiles was all too obvious. There also seemed to be little rhyme or reason as to what ship was moored where on what pier. Inshore from the Diamond was a fishing craft, little more than fifteen yards from stem to stern, and opposite was a broad-beamed three-masted square-rigger.