Ruiz sat in the bow, watching a seabird wheeling high above the mast. He remembered earlier, less complicated times: the dusty roads of Pharaoh, the Expiation at Bidderum, the paddock in the Blacktear Pens where he had nursed Nisa back to health and where they had become lovers, Corean’s silk-upholstered apartment where he and Nisa had spent their longest time alone together… and best of all, the barge trip through beautiful wild country to SeaStack.
It occurred to him that he had never completely enjoyed those sweet lost days — at the time, he had been so full of schemes, so taut with violent anticipation, so wary of his enemies, that the best times had slid away from him, leaving only a sketchy residue of memory. Of course, he and Nisa were still alive because of these relentless preoccupations, so perhaps he had made a fair bargain. Still, he wondered briefly if it was the best possible bargain. He thought of that starry night on the barge, when he lay in Nisa’s arms. He remembered feeling that if he were to die in that moment, he might never find a more suitable moment in which to depart his long strange life — that a measure of safety from future evils could be found in such a death.
Ruiz shook his head angrily. Such thoughts were a slow poison, a weakness that would steal away his future with Nisa. He must cling to his wariness, his treachery, his brutality — until a time came that those qualities no longer served them, until they could finally escape from Sook and return to some less dangerous world.
He looked at her as she slept, her head pillowed on her hands, her features obscured by a tangle of thick black hair. All he could see of her were her slender strong arms and the white vulnerable curve of her neck. He felt an odd constriction of his throat, a mixture of grief and tenderness so powerful that his vision swam with tears. He was astonished; he hadn’t cried since his long-ago childhood.
He was distracted by a sudden change in the pitch of the boat’s engine, which then rapidly lost speed and began to emit an unpleasant grinding sound.
“What is it?” he asked Gunderd, who had leaped to the nacelle and flipped up the latches.
Gunderd grunted noncommittally and ducked his head into the engine compartment.
The engine fell silent. From the compartment came a series of peevish clatters, and then Gunderd emerged, face blackened with grease. “Dead,” he muttered. “Wasn’t the fuel cell, after all.”
“Now what?” asked Svin the cabin boy, suddenly looking even younger.
“Now we put up the sail and hope this wind holds.”
Ruiz helped Gunderd retrieve the gear from the cuddy. They assembled the jointed spars and set the brown lateen sail. Gunderd sheeted it in and the boat moved off, though more sedately than before.
Ruiz looked over Gunderd’s shoulder as he fiddled with the boat’s minimal navigation module. “Just enough juice left to run this for a few hours,” he said, adjusting the scale of a small electroluminescent screen. Gunderd’s thin brown finger stabbed at a cluster of wavy lines at the upper right-hand corner of the chart. “Here, the edge of the Dayerak Shelf.” His finger moved down. “Here, us.” A tiny green dot marked their position, two hundred kilometers off the Namp coast.
Gunderd shut down the display. “We’ll save the power until we get into the shoals — that’s when our piloting must be accurate.” He grinned. “There’s not enough juice for the radio — but that’s a small loss, since at the moment our only potential rescuers have pointy teeth and big appetites.”
Ruiz smiled back. “Have you always been a philosopher?”
“Always. But back to the matter at hand… can you steer a course?”
“More or less.”
“Good!” Gunderd patted Ruiz tentatively on the shoulder. “Will you stand a watch at the helm? Jeric and I have been alternating since Loracca foundered, and we’re both tired. Svin is unreliable — we might wake to find ourselves sailing back to the Blades — and Marlena seems to be present in body only. Einduix… well, he is as he is. Whatever that is.”
“I suppose so,” said Ruiz. He was tired, too; he had been unwilling to test Jeric’s restraint so early in their association. Still, he couldn’t refuse to do his fair share; that would only inflame the resentments against him.
He shifted aft and took the tiller from Jeric, who relinquished it with a grimace of barely restrained violence. The seaman went forward, where he glared truculently at the Pharaohans before settling himself on the floorboards. Dolmaero, who was apparently recovering at last from his bout with seasickness, returned an expression of wary reserve. Molnekh grinned cheerfully and nodded a greeting.
Nisa, who had awakened during Gunderd’s examination of the engine, looked bewildered… and then disdainful. She rose unsteadily and came aft to sit near Ruiz.
He couldn’t help smiling.
But then his attention was caught by the glitter of Jeric’s eyes within his hood, and by the ugly comprehension that came over Jeric’s face as he looked from Ruiz to Nisa. A chill touched Ruiz, and he wondered how best to deal with the seaman. Sooner or later he must sleep, and what would happen then?
Chapter 3
Ruiz steered until dusk shadowed the waves. The wind had held steady from the west all day, and the boat had made surprisingly good progress, cutting a sizzling white furrow through the sea.
When Gunderd relieved him, he took Nisa’s hand and led her forward. Dolmaero sat on a thwart, gazing out at the crimson and gold sunset. The Guildmaster seemed much recovered — perhaps the easier motion of the boat under sail had helped. Ruiz was relieved; he wouldn’t want to lose Dolmaero’s comforting presence.
“So,” said Dolmaero, when they had settled themselves, “how are we doing?”
“Well enough,” said Ruiz.
“In what way will our situation next deteriorate?” Dolmaero asked. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but I’d like to know what new torments await us.” Ruiz saw that the Guildmaster had yet to recover his equilibrium. Ordinarily Dolmaero would never have spoken so bitterly.
“Actually, I hope for improvement soon,” said Ruiz. “At least we’re alive, which is more than can be said for the rest of Loracca’s company.”
“Yes,” said Molnekh. “Let’s be thankful for that.”
Ruiz nodded. He was very tired; if he did not rest soon, his judgment would begin to deteriorate dangerously. “Listen,” he said. “I need to sleep for a bit. You’ll have to take turns watching the crew. Especially Jeric. The others may be harmless. Dolmaero, you take charge of setting the watches. When Gunderd needs me at the helm again, he’ll tell you. You wake me; don’t let him or one of the other crew near me.”
He settled himself in the curve of the bows and shut his eyes. Almost instantly he slept.
When he woke, it was to a feeling of intense danger and a tumble of unidentifiable bodies, rolling over him in the darkness. He rose up, striking at the nearest — but at the last instant he diverted the blow so that his fist clanged uselessly into the lifeboat’s alloy. He couldn’t tell who his attacker was, or even if he was being attacked. Maybe he was being defended.
Before he could sort out the situation, something cracked against the back of his head and he fell bonelessly into the boat’s bilge, his last emotion an unfocused astonishment that he had been so easily bested.
When he regained consciousness, he was still astonished — though now the source of his amazement was that he was still alive. He still lay in the bilge, but his head rested in Nisa’s lap. She looked down at him with a mixture of relief and apprehension.