Presently we donned oiled sharkskins, and walked down to the dock.
The sea, pebbled and scythed by the deluge, blended into an auburn distance. Westward, beyond the points and spits of rocky bays, the sun was lowering itself on the silver wires of the rain. My guide, a crippled Hessek cutthroat missing a selection of items from his anatomy, indicated the shipping with a portion of finger.
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“There, Lauw-yess. The Tiger or the Southern White Rose both trade with the outer islands.”
“Master wants to go farther south than islands,” rapped one of my bandits in inventive Hessek.
The retired cutthroat marveled at me, and rubbed his broken nose with his left hand, from which all members but the thumb were missing.
“The Lauw-yess wishes to go south and west, then, to the big land there, the land with the white mountaintops? That’s a journey of many months, lord, or more. Gold there, and gems they say. Only one ship ever went there and came back rich.”
“What ship is that?” I asked him.
“Dead ship now,” he said, “and the crew-” He made a gesture that meant “Prison” or “the rope,” in other words the law of the Masrians. “Yet,” he added, “Lanko might risk the voyage. He’s had bad dealings with Masrian patrols, and could do with ocean between them and him. If you can pay-”
“Pay?” demanded the talkative bandit. “The blood-brother of Darg Sih to pay?”
In fact, I had come from my tomb with some money in my belt; not that I had thought to provide for myself, it had merely been there. When I attempted to pay for my keep among the Sri, I had found the coins put back, with the finesse of a slit-purse, in my pocket the next day, and the next, and at length I had given in to their generosity. However, if I had sufficient to reimburse a pirate captain for a many-month excursion into the unknown remained to be proved.
“Take me to Lanko and we’ll argue it out.”
My guide said he would rather I went without him, Lanko being a man of uncertain mood. His vessel lay around the nearer point, in a cove, obviously hiding from Masrian lookouts.
In the driving rain, therefore, my escort and I picked our way around the point, over black and white sands, and up a narrow by-water, which assured me at least that Lanko’s navigator knew his trade.
There was a break in the cliff; the ship stood against the silver brownness of the sky, black on the rain light, great sailed, as if he were primed to be off again, asleep with one eye open. If I had needed a portent to tell me, here it was. This was the ship as I had foreseen it on Peyuan’s island, ex-
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act in every detail, as the Vineyard had not been. The ship that would lead me to Uastis.
It was two masted, like the Vineyard, but with only one bank of oars, built tall, nevertheless, tall and knife-slender, a greyhound of a ship ready to run.
A man challenged us as we went along the bank.
The bandits grew vociferous; it appeared Lanko disclaimed fealty to any other than himself. I dissuaded them from brawling, and we got aboard.
A number of sailors, Seemase from their look, stood and stared at me and at Darg’s ranting soldiers. I noted some of the watchers had that unmistakable top-heavy build of the oarsman, though none were shackled and did not seem to be slaves.
The man returned, and told me Lanko would see me alone. The bandits roared and snorted with the false but lethal, hastily conjured fury of professional villains. Finally, I got into the midships cabin, and the door was shut.
None of Charpon’s luxury here. Plain furnishings, a deal jug of liquor of the kind with stoppered mouthpieces from which to drink. Lanko himself was a tall Seemase, Conqueror blood somewhere, with a lard face and canny eyes.
He glanced me over, and said, “Sri, eh? Bit of a way from your wagon, eh, conjurer?”
I thought, I killed Charpon for a ship I never had to use. That crime sticks in my throat because it was futile, as much as anything. And here is a new Charpon. His ship I must have, but I won’t kill him, not I, nor any other I send as a deputy of my cowardice.
I said, hi the Seemase tongue Lyo had inadvertently taught me, “I want transport on your vessel, Lanko. How much?”
“Huh! You speak Seemase, do you, boy? Not money, though, I think. I carry no passengers.”
“One passenger,” I said.
“Where to, Sri-man?”
“South and west.”
“No land there,” he said.
“Three or four months out, there’s land.”
“You’re speaking of the continent where the gold grows in apples on the trees, and the whales swim alongside and lay down their bones for you on the deck, and in winter the girls sit up on floating pillars of ice in the water and show you their goodies.” He unstoppered the jug, drank, and stoppered
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it. “More ships go that way than come back. Plenty of stories come, but no men.”
“One ship got rich there.”
“Rich, and the Masrians had it from them.”
“I heard,” I said, “that you’d be glad to put some sea between yourself and the Bar-Ibithni patrols.”
“So I would,” he said. “You clever lad.”
He had a knife and he was going to instruct me with it. I felt this from him like a sudden heat in the cabin. I had wondered what I should do in this sort of situation, and now I found out. As the knife ripped upward toward my face, I caught and spun it from his grasp, untilizing the energy of my will more quickly than ever I could have acted with my body.
He snatched himself away from me, and his chair went over. His cunning eyes showed calculation rather than alarm.
“I said you were clever,” he said. “Now magic a mouse out of my ear.”
“I’m not a showman, neither your enemy,” I said. “State your price, or let me work my passage. If you won’t go westward, take me as far as some isle where I can find another ship that will.”
He picked his knife up from the floor and stuck it in the table. There were marks there where he had done it before. He did not bother with the fallen chair.
“Why do you want to go west to a land four months from Semsam?”
“That’s my affair.”
He smiled at the knife. I thought, in a desultory, pointless way, I could dispense with all this, bind him to my service, hold him to it, and kill him if he failed me. Somewhere a voice answered: Char pan, Long-Eye, Lyo, Lellih. Malmiranet.
“You’re set on going anyway, to evade the Masrian patrol. Why not pick up some gold while you’re about it? By the time you get back, they’ll be through hunting your ship. If they have not, you can buy them off with your riches.”
“You have it worked out for me, do you not, Sri-man?” he said. He looked at me smiling, then, “Can you row?”
It was like fate catching hold of my arm.
“I can row. But not as a slave.”
“None of my rowers are slaves. This is a free ship. I’m one man short since the stenchful soldiers chased us. That’s my
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offer, then. You for the oar, and I’ll carry you for your usefulness. When we reach the isles, we’ll see.”
“Very well” I said.
“Very well,” he parroted. He dislodged the knife and pointed it at me. “What else can you do, wizard? Charm fair weather for us? Call breakfast fish from the sea?”
I thought, / could walk it. Three months stroll over the azure ocean, fly up and lie on a cloud when I grew weary, couple with mermaidens when I itched. My Power seemed abruptly preposterous, funny. It had never seemed so previously.
“You employ me as oarsman. Nothing else.”
On deck, I read the name of the ship, written along the inside of the bulwarks as well as without: Gull. At long last, a ship named for the sea.
It was still raining in the hour before sunup when Gull edged from the cove.
His sails (he, too, was a male ship) were the dull graygreen of open autumn water, a camouflage. I was below, and did not see the headlands slick away into the rain, nor the sun come up at length on the larboard side.
I had pulled this oar, or the forerunner of this oar, part of a day aboard the Hyacinth Vineyard, Charpon’s ship, that the portent of this. But no shackles now, and no Comforters with their eager flails. These were free men, though no doubt escaped galley slaves off other vessels, putting their compulsory education to use.