Captain Migritt dozed in his cabin, the cook cooked in the galley. Within a labyrinth of tackle stowed in the glory hole, Pooh was stalking a rat. The gnarled little gnome was about the most entertaining person aboard—Rap had already spent hours with him, hearing his yarns, chuckling at his ribaldry. No one ever talked to gnomes, and yet they were friendly, easygoing folk once you got past their odd customs and their stench, and once they got over their surprise and suspicion. He liked Pooh.
And there were voices, all over the ship . . . He could muffle them. and ignore them, if they did not talk about him. But some of those voices did talk about him, often, and then the conversations were as hard to ignore as if they were right at his back.
Now, down in the princess’s cabin, all three of them were on about him again.
Gathmor, gruffly: “Yes, he’s changed. Do you think any man could suffer as he did and not change?” Sagorn, supercilious: “It was not that. When he first recovered he was not like this. It was whatever he saw in his vision that did this to him.”
Princess Kadolan, concerned: “Then we must try to find out what he saw and see if we can help.”
Then both men together, saying that they had tried. Gods!—how they had tried, Gathmor and all of the five by turns! Cursed mundane busybodies.
He had never asked to be a mage. Had the princess given him a choice, and had he been in fit state to think, he’d have refused the third word of power in the dungeon. He had really wanted to die then. He had never wanted occult power at all, except that he’d thought he could help Inos. So he’d trapped Sagorn with a dragon and become an adept. That was not a memory he cherished. Serve him right—see what it had brought him! Inos had a kingdom now. She had a royal and handsome husband, at least in name. Maybe she would be content with that? No, not Inos. She was too much a real woman not to want to have a real marriage, with children and … and a real husband. Gods! Why did a man have to fall in love? He drummed his fists on the rail. Why must a churl fall in love with a queen, and then not have the wit to know it and tell her so at once, so she could laugh and thank him politely and lay the whole matter to rest right away?
Then he’d have stayed in Krasnegar and been a wagon driver.
Then she’d have married Andor. What business of his if she had?
What could he do now? Cure her burns, yes. Easy. That would be no harder than smuggling her aunt out of Arakkaran, which he had accomplished with no trouble at all. He couldn’t remove her husband’s curse, nor win back her kingdom—a mere mage could not take on the Four, no one could. Anyway, he wasn’t going to be around much longer and she must have resigned herself to losing Krasnegar when she married that big barbarian . . . chain a man down and mash his bones? Inos had not known about that, her aunt said, and her aunt never seemed to tell a lie. She bypassed the truth when it was bothersome, but he had not seen her lie.
And here she came now, swaddled in wool and leather, a rolypoly figure staggering along the deck to speak to him. Her white hair was blowing like a flag and her cheeks were rosy as sunsets already. So now it must be her turn to try and comfort the moping faun.
He steadied her a little—not so much that she would notice—but he did not turn. When she arrived at his side and grabbed at the rail, he glanced around as if he had not been watching.
“Ma’am!”
“Master Rap!” She was beaming. She obviously enjoyed sailing. “This is wonderful weather! Is this your doing?”
“A little of it. Not much.”
A gust of cold spray came over the side and he deflected it from both of them. She noticed and laughed shakily.
“Oh! Oh, that’s splendid! You are a very helpful traveling companion!”
“I won’t be much use ashore, I’m afraid. I shan’t dare exert power there. Especially when we get near to Hub.”
“Of course, I quite understand. I am so excited! All my life I, have wanted to visit Hub. I never thought a mage would turn up to escort me—it’s quite like a poet’s romance!”
She smiled at him with faded blue eyes, the worry and inquiry quite obvious behind the feigned cheerfulness.
He would not think about Hub. Silence fell.
“I had a long chat with Captain Migritt at dinner last night,” the princess said. “About Shimlundok. That’s the eastern province of the Impire. Even after we reach Ollion, you know we still have to cross the whole width of Shimlundok Province, more than a thousand leagues!”
Rap had eaten dinner with Pooh, down in the cable locker, but he had heard most of the conversation anyway. “What’d he tell you, ma’am?”
“Well, he suggested that we start by sailing up the Winnipango. It’s navigable for a very long way now, he says, since the new locks were put in. Well, they’re not really new, because they were built by the Impress Abnila . . .” The captain had also admitted that it was a very roundabout way to travel, slow at the best of times, and impassable when the military had need of it and cleared civilian traffic out of the way. “But then Doctor Sagorn pointed out that the Winnipango is a very winding . . .”
Small wonder the sorcerous rarely made friends with mundanes.
It was a shame that Lith’rian’s boat had been left behind in Arakkaran—to sail up a long, long river in that might be fun. Of course the shifting winds would snarl all the other travelers, and the magic might attract the notice of the warlock of the east. Even a much lesser sorcerer would be dangerous to a mere mage. The boat was gone anyway. Rap discarded a vain dream.
The princess finished repeating what she had learned about the Winnipango. “So Doctor Sagorn suggests that we should purchase a traveling coach and proceed overland. He thought you would probably be able . . . consent to drive it for us.”
“It would be a real pleasure, ma’am. I’d like that.”
“Oh, that’s good! Do you suppose Master Gathmor will wish to remain in our—your—company?” Nothing was going to detach Gathmor from Rap now, although his craving for revenge on Kalkor was sucking him into waters deadlier than he could imagine.
“He might just agree to dye his hair and face,” Rap said, “and if Darad could hold him still for long enough, I could remove his mustache.”
“Oh!” Then she realized that he had actually made a joke, and laughed a little too hard.
“He can be our footman, then.” She smiled, hesitated. “Master Rap, would you forgive me a personal question?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Those marks-the tattoos around your eyes. I understand that those were put there without your consent . . .”
He removed the tattoos and she blinked, and then laughed again, nervously.
“If I may say so, you are much better-looking without them.”
He would never be better-looking than almost anyone else except a troll, so why did it matter? She was trying to imagine him sitting beside Inos on a throne for two, and that wasn’t going to happen.
“I can’t make them go away, really away,” he explained. “They’ll reappear as soon as I forget about them, or go to sleep. And a sorcerer might notice the magic—in a way I’m more conspicuous without them than I am with them. Conspicuous to people who matter.”
She nodded and apologized, but he left the tattoos invisible for now.
“I used to wonder,” she said hastily, “why Sultana Rasha did not just make herself young and beautiful and leave it at that.”
He hated talking about sorcery now. “I’m sure she could have. I wondered the same about Bright Water. I’m sure she could make herself younger with a sorcery, and it probably wouldn’t be very noticeable to another sorcerer, not as detectable as magic. But suppose sometimes she wants to look herself again, or chooses to look like someone else entirely? Then she’d have to cast another sorcery on top of the first. Pretty soon they’d pile up like overcoats.”
“What would happen then?” the princess asked, looking worried.
“I have no idea, ma’am, but you couldn’t keep changing a gown into a coat and then . . . a nightshirt, maybe . . . and so on, and not have the cloth fall apart on you eventually, could you? So I think that sorcerers probably just use magic on themselves, not sorcery—temporary, not much more than illusion. Like what I just did to my face.”