He closed his eyes and hoped for a few hours of undisturbed rest.
Nisa felt no urge to sleep. Since boarding the barge, she had slept poorly, despite her deepening exhaustion. Nothing in her previous life on the desert world of Pharaoh had prepared her for this hideous wasteland of water. It was so unnatural. The ocean struck her as some sort of vast malevolent being, its greasy skin forever heaving and twitching, as though it would shrug them off if it could.
The accommodations were far from ideal. Once she had been a princess, the favored daughter of the king. Now she slept on the floor of a stable reeking of manure and vomit.
On the few occasions she had fallen into an uneasy slumber, she had dreamed unpleasant dreams. The slaver Corean, the slayer Remint, the pirate Yubere — all these dire faces circulated through her nightmares in a slow ominous pavane.
She felt abandoned and alone. Ruiz Aw, whom she had once loved and trusted with her life, had permitted terrible things to happen to her. And now he ignored her, except for an occasional knowing smile. He seemed full of a brittle insincere courtesy.
Presently he would allow some new torment, and she didn’t think she could stand it.
Ruiz woke with a sense of wrongness. The stall was dark, and the motion of the barge had worsened.
He sat up and rubbed at his eyes. The wind’s sound had risen to an evil shriek; clearly the weather had deteriorated badly during his nap.
“What’s wrong?” asked Dolmaero, who huddled against the hull, eyes wide. “What’s happening now?”
“It’s just some wind,” Ruiz said, getting up. A sudden lurch threw him toward Nisa’s corner. He caught his balance easily, but not before she raised her arms in a defensive gesture, her face abruptly fearful.
He wanted to kneel down beside her and try to convince her that he was the same Ruiz Aw she had trusted before. But she turned her head away and looked at the bulkhead with ostentatious fixity.
Despair nibbled at him, for reasons he could not quite understand. After all, this disengagement — though painful at the moment — would in the end be the best thing for her. What had he expected, if they survived and managed to escape from this terrible world? Had he really been naive enough to believe that Nisa, a slave, a primitive from a low-tech client planet, would somehow adapt to the complicated life of the pangalac worlds? Would she have a realistic chance to be happy, with Ruiz Aw? Or he with her? Absurd, absurd.
He shook his head and turned away. “I’ll go on deck and see what’s happening,” he said. “Meanwhile, there’s probably nothing to worry about. We’ve been lucky with the weather, so far….”
Ruiz made his way up through a mob of panicky Immolators. He reflected that human beings could be very strange. All these men and women claimed to be going eagerly to the abattoirs of the Blades; still, they feared drowning. It seemed to Ruiz that drowning was not an unattractive death, in comparison to most of the varieties of death to be found on Sook.
On the top deck the motion was very bad, and Ruiz clung tightly to the rail as he looked out over the dark gray waters. The wind had veered and was blowing strongly off the land; his lips were already gritty with dust from the deserts of Namp. Twilight was approaching, and he found it difficult to judge the height of the waves, but the wind was beginning to blow the foam into long white streaks.
The Loracca was making heavy going of it, taking the swell on her high quarter, twisting in the troughs, her hull groaning with the strain.
Ruiz frowned and wiped at his eyes. The Loracca plunged along, spray drifting up from each shuddering impact with the sea. He wondered how much strength remained in the old barge’s bones. Presumably her owners had been desperate for a cargo, to have accepted the Immolator charter — not a promising thought. Her engines beat steadily, at the moment, but he worried about what would happen if she lost steerageway and lay at the mercy of the waves.
He began to feel a certain degree of pessimism. The sky had an unhealthy bruised look, and conditions had worsened noticeably since his arrival on deck.
A familiar anger began to grow in him; once again Ruiz Aw found himself at the mercy of events beyond his control.
He could see Gunderd in the brightly lit wheelhouse — but the second mate seemed very busy, moving between the course computer and the chart readouts, his usually cheerful face drawn with fatigue.
Ruiz considered going forward; perhaps Gunderd would have encouraging news. However, the captain had posted two armed deckhands by the wheelhouse door, apparently taking precautions against interference by hysterical Immolators. One of them saw Ruiz watching, and made a shooing gesture with his nerve lash.
Ruiz hunched down into his now-damp Immolator robe and went below, where he made reassuring noises at the others and tried not to think of what might happen if the storm continued to worsen.
The barge’s motion grew increasingly violent as the night wore on. Dolmaero again became sick, but was considerate enough to crawl outside before attempting to empty his already dry stomach.
Ruiz asked Molnekh to go with him. “Don’t let him hang over the rail; we’ll lose him for sure.”
Molnekh nodded cheerfully; of all the Pharaohans, he seemed the most adaptable.
The sound of retching diminished, washed away by the shriek of the wind.
Ruiz realized, with both anxiety and a small degree of hopeful anticipation, that he and Nisa were alone together. Perhaps now might be a good time to try to find out what was wrong — why she was so distant.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Not good.” Her voice was flat; she did not look up.
She seemed uninterested in conversation, but Ruiz gathered his determination. They might all sink to the bottom of the sea tonight; this could be his last chance to try to set things right. He moved a little closer to her, so that he wouldn’t have to shout over the wind, and settled down with his back braced against the bulkhead. “You’ve never told me what happened to you in SeaStack,” he said.
“You never asked,” she said.
He was heartened by the small anger he heard in her voice. Anger seemed far better than indifference. “May I ask now?”
She looked at him, eyes wary. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“What happened after you were taken from the pen?”
She drew a deep breath. “The slayer Remint… you know of him?”
“Oh yes,” he said, suppressing a shudder. “I know of him — but he’s dead, I think.”
“Really?” She almost smiled. “I wouldn’t have thought anything could kill him…. Anyway, after he took us from the pen, he chained us and delivered us to Corean.” She fidgeted, her hands knotting together in her lap. “She put me in a machine and asked me questions. Somehow, I couldn’t refuse to answer; it was as if my tongue belonged to her. I had to tell her everything.”
Ruiz identified the emotion she felt: It was guilt. “Oh no, Nisa — you did nothing wrong. It’s very difficult to lie to a brainpeeler — it takes a lot of practice. Special training.”
“Oh? Can you do it?”
“I have… in the past. What happened then?”
She shrugged. “Very little. Remint put us back on his boat and took us to another place. We waited there until you came for us.”
“Were you badly treated?”
“I was alone in the cell. There was nothing in the cell but a bed and a toilet.” Her beautiful mouth trembled. “I was alone.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruiz said. “I came as soon as I could.”