'Some catch we've made tonight, lads.' Concern shaded a man's good-humoured rumble.
'Best get him dry, Da.' Brisk hands hauled Kheda up to a sitting position. Someone else tugged at the belt around his waist. He managed some inarticulate protest and pushed whoever it was away.
A slap stung his cheek. He blinked and saw a young man's face scowling in front of him. 'You let us get you dry and warm or we'll throw you back over the side to feed the eels.'
That futile struggle had been the last effort he could summon up. Kheda nodded dumbly and closed his eyes in dazed confusion.
May as well cooperate. What is this boat? Fisherman? Is that fish I can smell?
Someone stripped off his sodden clothing and wrapped a length of coarse cotton around him. Remorseless hands rubbed at his back and arms, pounding the feeling back into his insensate body.
'Here, drink this.' The first voice, the older man, closed his hands carefully around a wooden beaker and guided it to his mouth. The rising steam told him it was steeping thassin leaves.
Good for shock and exposure.
Kheda gulped at the hot liquid, feeling its course down his gullet and into his stomach burn like fire. After a few moments, he began to feel some connection between that warm core and his outer skin now slowly reviving under the merciless assault of his rescuers.
'Thank you,' he croaked.
'What happened to you?' A lamp swung nearer and Kheda saw four inquisitive faces looking down at him. The eldest was plainly father to the other three, whose eyes were wide with curiosity. The youngest member of the family was kneeling before him, a girl whose face was creased with concern.
Kheda managed a smile, cheeks stiff and lips cracked.
'What was it? Shipwreck? Fallen overboard?' persisted the father.
Kheda took another swallow of the warming drink. 'I must get to the Shek domain,' he managed to say, voice hoarse.
'Must you indeed,' retorted the fisherman.
'I must—' Kheda cleared his throat and took another drink. He was too exhausted for subterfuge. 'It is a matter of life and death.'
Wagering your life against the certainty that you're doing right; that's supposed to be trial enough.
'Is it now?' One of the sons sounded a sceptical echo of his father.
'I don't suppose he was swimming in the open seas for fun,' the girl countered.
'We could swing over that way.' The eldest boy looked at his father. 'We could look for coral crabs.'
That's what that rank smell is: crab baskets. I remember it from the harbour at the rainy-season residence.
Kheda finished the drink and gave the cup to the girl. 'Thank you,' he said sincerely.
'You should get some rest,' she told him sternly, before pointing at a heap of nets and sailcloth. 'You'll be out of everyone's way over there.'
Kheda briefly considered trying to get to his feet. Then he opted for half crawling, half shuffling on his knees before collapsing on to the comparative softness of rope and canvas. The girl fluttered around him, pulling at the damp cotton swaddling him. With an exasperated hiss, she gave up and draped a fold of sailcloth over his legs.
'What do we do with him come morning?' The fisherman and his sons had returned to the more immediate business of sailing their boat.
'Set him ashore or find someone else to take him on his way, wherever that may be,' the father replied. 'I won't risk the ill-luck that comes with hindering him, if whatever drives him is truly life or death.
Or you can hand me over to some Danak trader, to be made zamorin and sold for a slave. Who knows?
Kheda really couldn't bring himself to care, so let sleep claim him with an oblivion as final as drowning.
Chapter Thirteen
Such a narrow strait, and it might as well be a thousand leagues wide.
Kheda sat cross-legged on the steeply shelving sand and burned with frustration. The dark, shingle-strewn bay opposite was twin to the one where he sat, the shallow waters between greenly opaque in the aftermath of the morning's violent storm. There were a few differences, crucial for anyone hoping to make that short crossing. An ominous grey-stone building stood foursquare at the water's far edge, its roof walk patrolled by armoured men, windows no more than arrow slits. The double gates were locked in a forbidding barrier of black wood and iron studs in contrast to the open doors and shutters of the simple houses clustered some way beyond. More of the single-roomed dwellings stretched up a curving track and spread out along the shore on either side. Swiping away insistent sandflies, Kheda watched children scampering to play in the lull between the rains, men and women idling after the noon meal that had brought them respite from their mundane tasks. Kheda's belly had been empty and griping since dawn and hunger distracted him yet again.
I don't recall ever being so famished. I wonder what they've been eating. Well fed and well defended, there's no reason for these people to have a care in the world. Not with that fortress protecting Shek Kul's residence. No ship's going to land on that side of the strait without permission, without falling to a hail of arrows from the watchful rampart.
The galleys and countless smaller boats jostling for anchorage in these waters knew better than to try, clustered instead on this side of the narrow seaway. There were intimidating guardians of the warlord's peace here too. Kheda looked dourly at the heavy triremes drawn up at either end of the beach where he sat. Beyond, fast triremes patrolled the more open waters, on the lookout for any opportunist vessel taking a course it shouldn't.
'You look very serious, friend. Get caught without shelter in this morning's downpour?' As unkempt as Kheda, another of the pathetic human flotsam washed up on the shore dropped down to sit beside him. 'Me too,' he said ruefully, gesturing at the sodden, tattered tunic draped across his bony arm.
Kheda hadn't bothered to try drying his clothing. The humid air hung around like a damp blanket in any case. He nodded at the heavy trireme closest to hand. 'I was wondering if anyone had ever managed to hide themselves aboard one of those.' It was the only vessel he'd seen making the infuriatingly short crossing in the day and a half he'd kept his vigil.
His companion laughed out loud. 'Not that I ever heard.' He shrugged pale brown shoulders. Like so many in these reaches he was light-skinned enough to pass for a sun-darkened mainlander. 'Some say there are domains whose trireme captains will take a bribe to carry a passenger unbeknown to their lords but I wouldn't risk it myself.' He shook his head with a shiver. 'Not and get thrown over the side at the first hint of trouble. Anyway, there's no chance any of Shek Kul's shipmasters would do such a thing.'
'I don't doubt that,' Kheda admitted ruefully.
Not with the power and competence of Shek Kul's rule so indisputably apparent in every move his people make, every word they speak. His all-pervasive authority makes any claims of the Daish domain look no better than Chazen Saril's ramshackle governance. You've nothing left to bribe your way aboard with either.
The fisher family that had saved him had more than earned their set of crystal cups. Set ashore on an islet ringed by busy fishing vessels, Kheda had been forced to give up the canthira goblet for a frustratingly short passage to a trading beach. Each of the vizail bowls had carried him a little further east and finally, the single gold bell that he'd hoped to give Janne had been the price of passage here. Now he'd arrived in Shek Kul's domain, he had nothing. Kheda fingered the ivory hung around his neck.