It was the largest and strangest ship Wren had ever seen. Ever since she was a little girl in Ysland, the stories and pictures of the warriors’ longboats had loomed large in her imagination, tales of narrow ships bristling with oars and spears, bearing only a single mast and square sail, gliding silently as serpents up the rivers of Alba to strike at the people of Edinburgh and other southern towns.
But this ship before her now, this La Rosa de Valencia, was more than thirty paces long and six paces wide, and it rode high in the water bearing two masts and triangular sails like the wings of gulls. Omar called it a caravel, a trading vessel from the distant land of Espana, which was just as cold and hard as Vlachia, where they worshiped the same nameless God, though they served another church.
The captain was a small, sharp-eyed man named Ortiz, and Omar negotiated their passage rather quickly in fluent Espani, and soon Wren was climbing the narrow, bouncing plank to the deck of the ship. Ropes slapped, canvas flapped, and chains clinked, and within a few minutes the merchant vessel was gliding away from the port of Varna and heading out into the Black Sea. Dark gray clouds filled the sky, and a sharp chill rode the breeze from the north, whipping the dark waves into pale green foam.
Wren stood at the railing and watched Varna shrinking behind them, a gray collection of walls and roofs dressed in snow with a dozen trails of smoke rising from its chimneys. Omar stood beside her, gazing out at the sea.
“I thought I would feel better when we got back on the water again,” she said. “I thought I’d feel safer. But now all I can think is that there might be a walking corpse hiding down in the hold, and as soon as we go to sleep, it will tear out our throats.”
Omar snorted. “That old teacher of yours told you too many ghost stories. Trust me. No stumbling dead people slipped on board when the sailors weren’t looking. We’re perfectly safe here.”
“I guess so,” Wren said. “Why do you think every town we saw was empty, except for Varna?”
“I talked to the captain about that.” Omar nodded at the little Espani standing by the wheel on the quarter deck. “Unlike the inland towns, all of the ports around the Black Sea are in the habit of burning their dead instead of burying them. There’s a lot of worry about plague rats and fleas and tainted food, especially on the boats coming up from Turkiya and Babylonia. Apparently, the Eranians sometimes send sick men and animals across the sea on purpose.”
“Oh.” Wren tore her eyes away from the little Vlachian town and looked across the dark waves that seemed to stretch on forever to the south. “Are we close to your homeland yet?”
“Very!” Omar smiled. “Crossing the white sea and the length of Europa was the lion’s share of the journey. We’ll be in Alexandria in just a few more days.”
A sailor passing behind them with a heavy coil of rope over his shoulder paused and tapped Omar on the arm. “Did the captain say that?”
“Well, no,” Omar said. “But I’ve been crossing the Black Sea and the Middle Sea since before you were born. I know it well enough. It only takes a few days.”
“Heh, yeah, well, maybe in peace time.” The sailor hopped his coil of rope higher on his shoulder to keep it from slipping. “But with all the checkpoints and inspections in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, you’ll be lucky to see Hellas before spring.”
Omar’s smile faded. “You’re joking. You’re exaggerating, yes?”
“Only a little.” The sailor grinned and went on about his work.
Omar gave Wren a very unhappy look and then strode off toward the quarter deck. Wren watched him talk to the captain, watched his dramatic hand gestures and head rolling and pacing about the deck, and listened to his voice muffled by the constant shushing off the hull against the waves. A sudden gust of wind threatened to push back her scarf, and she grabbed it to keep her ears hidden. After a few minutes, Omar returned, planted his hands on the railing, and glared at the sea. “He wasn’t joking.”
“What’s going on?”
“War. War is going on, little one.” Omar sighed. “To reach the southern seas, we need to pass through the Bosporus Strait. On the northern shore is the Hellan city of Constantia, and on the southern shore is the Eranian city of Stamballa. Both are large, wealthy, and cultured places, places that I wanted you to see.”
“But they’re at war?”
Omar nodded. “Again.”
“What happened the last time they were at war?”
“People died.” Omar turned his back to the sea.
“Would it be faster if we leave the ship and travel by land?”
“No. If there’s a war on, then there’ll be checkpoints and inspections in every town, at every crossroads, and at every bridge for hundreds of leagues. At least at sea, they can only stop you when you try to go ashore.” He shook his head. “We’ll stay aboard, and just wait it out. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, an excuse to explore Stamballa while we wait for the ship to clear customs.”
“Just Stamballa? What about Constantia?”
“Whatever else I may be, I am still a southerner. The empire is my home, and her enemies are, after a fashion, my enemies. I don’t think I’d be very welcome in Constantia right now.”
“Oh.” Wren chewed her lip. “What about me? I don’t look very southern, do I?”
“No.” Omar smiled wryly. “But as long as you’re with me, you’ll be fine. No one will bother you as long as I am there. Although, just to be on the safe side, I think you ought to wear these.” He held out his brass-rimmed glasses with the blue lenses.
She took them with a pout. “They look silly.”
“Maybe, but they’ll attract less attention than those bright gold eyes of yours. Did you know that you squint a lot during the day?”
Wren nodded. “The sun does hurt my eyes more than it used to.” She slipped on the glasses and took a moment to settle them on her nose and in the braids of her hair on the sides of her head where her ears should have been. The glare of the sunlight on the water and the clouds and the distant snowfields dimmed, and everything took on a soft blue tint. “Hm. I guess that is a little better.”
An entire land of southerners, of people with brown skin and black hair and funny accents. No more snow. No more cold. At least in the north I could hide my ears and blend in, even better than him. But now…
The little Espani caravel rocked and dashed across the dark waters of the Black Sea, and they sighted many other ships out on the horizon. Wren described their masts and sails and flags to Omar, and he told her which were Europan and which were Ifrican, calling them brigantines and xebecs and carracks. Most were merchantmen, but a few were fishers or trawlers with huge booms and nets dragging behind them.
After a while, Omar went below to take a nap, leaving Wren alone to stare at the thin black line of the western shore.
How many other towns are out there? How many are empty? And how many are clinging to life at the edge of the sea? Maybe when summer comes, the buried dead will thaw a bit, enough for the aether to leave their bodies and let the dead rest in peace.
Maybe.
Eventually Wren went below as well and found Omar snoring violently in a hammock swinging over a row of barrels that smelled faintly of salted pork. She climbed up into another hammock beside him and stared with her fox eyes into the deep shadows of the hold, wondering if Omar was right, if it really was safe on the ship, if they really were alone. She was still wondering when she fell asleep.
The rest of the day and the night and the following morning passed quietly and sleepily. Wren took long naps, ate sparingly, and spent only a few minutes here and there on deck to gaze at the waves and stars before going back to her swinging hemp bed above the salted pork.