Once they had passed the braided chains of islands, it was livened by little else.
Except for the sailors, none of them had ever been out of sight of land. Even the sailors had experienced this seldom and briefly, for the islands were thickly scattered in their chains, few of them isolated enough to require long sailing without a few rocky mountaintops or rounded hills in view. Now, however, they were beyond the last of the islands.
Each day at dusk, the winds began to blow from behind them, from Northshore. Then the sails would be set to take the wind almost full while the rudder slanted them against the tide, and all night long the watch would stand, peering ahead into nothing but water. In the mornings, the wind would reverse, blowing toward them, and the sailors would curse, setting the sail to let them move slightly forward and down tide. Thus they moved always away from Northshore, sometimes a little east, sometimes a little west, cleaving to a line that led southward—southward into what? None of them knew.
“This man who saw Southshore—Fatterday? Why didn’t the Queen of the Noor hire him for this voyage?” Thrasne asked after a particularly frustrating bout of tacking.
“When they sought him, to send him to us, he was gone, Thrasne. Noor scouts looked everywhere for him. All the Melancholies were sent word to watch for him, but he has not appeared.”
“Sounds like a madman. Perhaps he is in a Jarb House somewhere.”
Medoor Babji shook her head at him. “Then he will never come out, except as a Mendicant.”
“You won’t know him then, if he does. All dressed up the way they are, with those pipes in their mouths most of the time.”
“Only when madness is about, Thrasne owner. So they say. They smoke the Jarb root only when madness is about, for they are vulnerable to visions.”
“The Mendicants? Truly? I thought they were supposed to be the only certifiably sane ones.”
Medoor Babji perched on the railing, teetering back and forth with a fine disregard for the watery depths below, setting herself to lecture, which she often enjoyed. “The way I have heard it is this: There are two types of people in the wide world, Thrasne owner. There are those like you, and me, and most of those we know, who see the world the same. I say there is puncon jam on the bread, and you say it, too; we both taste it. Then there will be one who says there is an angel dancing on the bread, and another who says there is no bread at all but only starshine in the likeness of food. Those are the mad ones. So, the mad ones go to a Jarb House and live in the smoke, and they become like you and me, eating puncon on their bread. But if they come out of the house, they see angels again, or lose their bread entirely. But some of them come out with pipes in their mouths which they light when madness threatens. And they go throughout the world selling their vision of reality to those who are not sure whether they are mad or not.”
“And with the money they build Jarb Houses,” concluded Thrasne, amused despite himself. It was the first time he had been amused in a very long time.
“Don’t laugh! It’s all true. Moreover, those who come out as Mendicants can see the future of reality as well as the present. That’s what they are paid for. So it is said. Now, I said don’t laugh.”
“I wasn’t laughing,” he said. “I was wishing Pamra could come into a Jarb House, somehow.”
“No.” Babji shook her head, sending her tightly twisted strands of hair into a twirling frenzy around her back and being sure he heard what she said. “That is a vain hope, Thrasne. She would not stay. It is not our world she wishes to see.”
Upon the River day succeeded day upon the Gift. At the end of the first week they had made a modest festival, and this habit continued at the end of each week that followed. On the morning after one such celebration, a hail from the watchman brought them all on deck.