The captain shot an amused glance at Del. "I might pay to see it. Would you?"
"No," Del answered promptly. "But I would collect the coin-and a portion of the wagers-for allowing others to."
"Nah," I retorted. "It would be over before anyone could pay."
Nihko smiled blandly. "Likely so. You would be too busy losing the contents of your belly to offer a decent fight."
I scowled at him blackly, mostly because I was feeling a trifle queasy. Again.
"Out," the captain said crisply. "Up on deck. Now."
Up on deck, now, in the clean, salt-laden air, I could breathe again. A stiff breeze whipped hair into my eyes. I crossed my arms and leaned my spine against the rail, affecting a nonchalance I didn't really feel, especially with the deck heaving beneath us and the rail creaking a protest under my weight. But such poses are necessary; and either they believe you, or they know exactly what you're about.
Nihko and his captain knew exactly what I was about. But they let me have the moment regardless. "So?" I began. "What is it you plan to do with us?"
The woman's pale eyes glinted. "I told you to find a way to buy your freedom."
"You did."
She glanced briefly at Del, as if seeking an indication I'd told her what the captain had said about being interested in my companion rather than in me. Del, who didn't know any such thing-we hadn't gotten that far, and I wasn't certain I'd have told her anyway-merely looked back. Waiting. Which she does very well.
After a moment the captain smiled a little and met my eyes. "And so this woman has done it for you."
I didn't know if that was for my benefit, or the truth. She knew I knew what she meant, even if Del didn't; if Del did, well, it made for an interesting little tangle.
I refused to play. Besides, as far as she knew, Del and I weren't on friendly terms. "Whatever the woman offered was without my knowledge."
"Men do precisely that for women often enough." But the captain indicated the first mate with a tilt of her head. "Nihko says you are Skandic."
"I might be. But Nihko doesn't know that I am. No one does, including me."
"That does not matter. Explain it, Nihko."
Blue-head explained it.
By the time he finished, I was shaking my head. "It'll never work. It couldn't work. Not possible."
"Everything is possible." The captain was unperturbed by my refusal. "Certainly this is. Because it might be true." She smiled, eyes bright with laughter. "A man with no past could be anything at all."
"Or nothing." I shook my head again. "I'm not a mummer. I could never pull this off."
She captured whipping hair, pulled it forward over a shoulder and began to braid it into control. "There is no mummery involved. We are not asking you to be-or to behave as-something you are not."
"That's exactly what you're asking."
"You present yourself as what you are." The captain paused in her braiding to meet my eyes. "Or, rather, we present you as what you are."
"Your captive?"
Unprovoked, she went back to braiding hair. "I am known in the city."
I made it into an insult. "Undoubtedly."
She continued serenely. "I am known for precisely what I am. It would be accepted by all the families as truth: Prima Rhannet seeks to spit in her father's eye by parading herself, her crew, and her lifestyle throughout the city: an ungrateful, unnatural, outcast daughter who ignores custom to present herself to one of the finest families of the city."
"That's you," I said. "What about me?"
"Who presents herself to one of the finest families of the city in order to reap a reward of such incredible value that in one undertaking the ungrateful unnatural outcast daughter outdoes her father." She did something with the end of the braid to keep it intact-how women do that is beyond me-and waited for me to respond.
I nodded, understanding. "This is personal."
"It is many things," she-Prima-said. "It is a means to make coin; the reward would be incalculable. It is a means to spit in my father's eye; because no matter that I was so crassly rewarded, I would still be acknowledged as the woman who returned to the Stessa family something of great value: the means to continue the line."
"A line near extinction, as you have explained it." I shook my head. "It will never work" I glanced at Del. "Tell her."
"But it might," Del said mildly.
So much for help from that quarter.
"Nothing need 'work,' " Prima elucidated. "It need only be believed."
"For how long?"
"Long enough for us to receive the reward, accept the public gratitude of the Stessa metri, to hear of my father's resentment, to resupply the ship …" She made a graceful gesture with one hand. "… and sail away again."
"Leaving me behind?"
"Leaving you behind with a dying old woman-a dying old rich and powerful woman-whose only goal now is to find a legitimate way to continue the family line. If you see no advantage in that, you are truly a fool."
I shook my head definitively. "Never work. I won't do it."
Prima Rhannet arched sun-gilded brows. "No?"
"No."
Nihko promptly hooked my feet out from under me and heaved me over the rail.
Water is hard. It felt like a sheet of hardpacked dirt when I landed, smashing into it flat on my back. For a moment nothing in my brain or body worked. I was so shocked I didn't even breathe-and then I realized I couldn't.
Water is hard. And when you land in-or on –it the way I did, taken completely unaware and utterly inexperienced with such things as flying followed by swimming, you get the air knocked right out of your lungs.
Then, of course, I sank.
SEVEN
AFTER I had swallowed enough saltwater to founder a dozen ships, I felt hands touching me. Pinching me. But I'd already exhausted strength with remarkably dramatic and equally ineffective struggles, and had reached the point where it seemed much easier simply to let go. Because the lungs weren't working at all anymore, and pretty much everything had grayed to black.
Something seized my hair. It yanked. Then something else pinched my chest again, and it yanked.
Not breathing didn't bother me in the least-until I was hauled by rope up the side of the ship, banging dangling limbs; jerked painfully over the rail; dumped unceremoniously on the deck. Whereupon someone set about pummeling my abdomen and ribs until I felt certain the cook was simply tenderizing my hide before chopping it up and tossing it into the pot.
About this time my lungs decided they wanted to work again, and in the middle of whooping for air, my belly expelled the ocean.
This time several hands shoved me over onto my side, so I wouldn't choke. Supposedly. I'd already gagged and coughed and choked enough to die three times over. But eventually the spasms passed, air made its way back into abused lungs, and I lay there in a tangle of knotted rope, sprawled facedown on the deck with absolutely no part of me beyond those lungs capable of moving.
Someone bent over me. I felt forearms slide beneath my armpits, then elbows hooked. I was heaved up from the deck like so much refuse and set upright on my feet with belly pressed against the rail and held firmly in place, where I was permitted to view what had very nearly been my grave. It didn't look any better from above than it had from inside.
"The ocean is large," Prima Rhannet said lightly, "and between here and Skandi there is much of it. Shall we begin again?"
I was so muddled with the aftermath of confusion, shock, and near-drowning that I could barely remember my name, let alone what we were talking about. Standing upright seemed a fair achievement. Speaking was beyond me.
"Is he always this stubborn?" she asked.