in Death’s Harbour. The bottom is deeper than anyone here ever set a line.
Scooped out by the currents, I suppose. The fish won’t shoal there, so it’s no
use to us. But a Beysib trawler went there last month, and it’s coming back now
slower than there’s any reason for. Except that it’s going to arrive tonight,
and the moon is new again tonight.’
‘Star’s aboard her, then?’ Samlor asked and sipped more ale. The brew was
bitter, but less bitter than the gall that flooded his mouth at the thought of
Star in Beysib hands.
‘I think so,’ Hort agreed. ‘Anbarbi didn’t approve. Of any of it, I think,
though none of them said what was really going on. We’d seen the boat at sea, my
father, all of us from Sanctuary that go to sea ourselves. That’s what we talked
about, though they didn’t much want to talk. But from what Anbarbi let drop, I
think there was a child on the trawler. At least when it put out.’
‘And it’ll dock here this evening?’ the Cirdonian said. He had set down his mug
and was flexing his hands, open and shut, as if to work the stiffness out of
them.
‘Oh -‘ said Hort. He was embarrassed not to be telling his story more in the
fashion of an intelligence summary than of an entertainment with the discursions
which added body to the tale and coin to the teller’s purse. ‘No, not here.
There’s a cove west a league of Downwind. Smugglers used it until the Beysib
came. There are ruins there, older than anybody’s sure. A temple, some other
buildings. Nobody much uses them now, though the Smugglers’11 be back when