Saturdays at Sea

by Jessica Day George

  They had all talked about going to the village to find out if their suspicions were correct when they got to Grath. They thought that if these people were the old griffin riders, they would surely let the new griffin riders in the gates. But once they had gotten to the Sanctuary, in the excitement and stress of getting the ship built and meeting Lulath’s family, they had not spoken of the closed village at all.

  “But you’re going now? Without us?” Celie asked.

  “It is being better this way,” Lulath pleaded. “My father is saying, if these are truly being those who did flee because of the blackblister, they are being cowards all, and he is wanting to speak to them. I am taking two tax men to say at last, will you pay some taxes to your king where you live now, and some of the soldiers, in case there is being a small fight. But my darlings are here in the safety.” He held out his hands to encompass them all, even Rolf and Pogue.

  This rather pleased Celie. Previously, only the dogs and Lorcan had been referred to as Lulath’s darlings. It was nice to know that he loved them as much as his girls and his griffin. With anyone else, Celie would expect to be regarded as better than an animal, but Lulath had so much love for animals that it was really very flattering.

  Rolf and Pogue looked as though they felt the same way. But Lilah? Not as much.

  “You can’t do this to me,” she said to Lulath. “What if you die? And I’m left wondering what happened to you. Or how it happened to you.”

  “You . . . want to see him die?” Rolf asked, mystified.

  “No,” Lilah said impatiently. “I want him to live, which is why I don’t want him out of my sight!”

  They all just stared at her, except for Lulath, who sighed.

  “My Lilah, my delight,” he said, “I am sorry that you are having worry over this. But the king my father has commanded this so.” He raised one hand to cut her off. “And it is not being because my father, he is having other sons and so is wanting to be rid of me,” Lulath said.

  Celie glared at her sister. Had Lilah really said such a thing? Lilah gave her a defiant look in return. It seemed that she had.

  “It is being,” Lulath went on, “because I am having the Ethan write down for me the common phrases of the tongue of his land, and I am being, with my many mistakes even so, a negotiator known of keenness,” he said with dignity.

  “You’ve been learning Arkish?” Celie said in amazement.

  “Is there anything you don’t know about?” Rolf said with a whistle. “The villagers are going to be dumbstruck!”

  “I hate you all!” Lilah announced. Then she burst into tears and fled.

  Chapter

  5

  The next day the entire court (and most of the palace animals) gathered to see Lulath and the tax collectors on their way to the griffin riders’ village. The griffins had made an uneasy peace with the dogs, but everyone nevertheless kept their eyes open for any sign of a fight.

  Celie had her hand firmly on Lorcan’s harness, and Lilah stood on the other side of her betrothed’s griffin, also keeping him in check. Her eyes were red, and she looked like she hadn’t slept.

  Which was not good, because Lorcan was becoming a problem.

  The moment he’d seen Lulath step out in his riding clothes, he’d begun dancing around, clearly anticipating an outing. Though he couldn’t yet carry Lulath long distances, he made it known (by hissing at Lulath’s horse) that he wanted the prince to ride him on the first leg of the journey.

  When Lulath had led him gently over to Lilah and Celie and told him to be the best griffin in the world and stay with the princesses, Lorcan had known immediately that he was being left behind, and he hadn’t liked it one bit. Lulath had given him firm instructions, and Celie had put a hand on his harness, and he’d settled for a moment—but only a moment.

  “My son, go forth and treat with these neighbors,” King Kurlath was intoning in Grathian for the benefit of the court. “Learn the intent of their hearts, and ensure that we will continue together in peace.”

  “O my father, and my king,” Lulath replied, “I do this gladly, and shall return soon with news, news that I pray will bring joy to all who hear it.” He embraced the king, who kissed him on both cheeks.

  Lorcan scraped his front talons across the white paving stones of the courtyard. Celie pressed down on his back, pinning him in place.

  “Return to us safely and soon, my son,” Queen Amatopeia said. She embraced Lulath and kissed his cheeks as well.

  “Please my mother, look after my beautiful bride-to-be, who is more precious to me than my own life,” Lulath said. It was the formal way of speaking, but Celie could hear the real emotion in Lulath’s voice.

  Lorcan lashed his tail and stretched his neck in a way that was all too casual.

  “She is as my own daughter, and will be treasured near to my heart,” Queen Amatopeia replied, as was expected. She reached across Juliet’s back and took Lilah’s hand, which wasn’t part of the ritual, and Celie saw a single tear drip down Lilah’s cheek.

  Celie reached over Lorcan’s back to touch Lilah’s shoulder. Unfortunately, it gave Lorcan the chance he’d been waiting for.

  He exploded out from between Celie and Lilah and burst right past Lulath. With one flap of his wings he soared to the top of the coach that would carry the two tax collectors and settled himself there, his talons digging into the wooden roof.

  “Lorcan!” Lulath cried, waving his arms. “You come down here right now!”

  “Lorcan, here, boy,” Celie called. She pulled a pouch of dried figs from her sash and waved them at the griffin. “Your favorite! Come down!”

  Now the other griffins began to squawk, wondering if they, too, needed to be upset. Lulath, Celie, and Lilah all gathered around the coach, trying to coax Lorcan down with promises of various treats—and the occasional threat of no treats if he didn’t comply. Barking erupted from the coach, and Celie opened the door to see Lulath’s dogs peeking out of their traveling baskets. Lulath had said that he would take them so that Lilah needn’t worry about his griffin and his dogs, but Celie suspected that he just couldn’t have parted with Lorcan and his girls all at once.

  The four little dogs leaped down from the coach and turned to look up at the roof. Lorcan leaned his head over the edge and screeched at them. JouJou yapped fiercely, and Lorcan pulled back.

  “I’ll put them back in their baskets,” Lilah said.

  Just as she stooped to gather them up, Lorcan leaped down from the coach. Nisi barked now, and he cowered before the tiny, bow-bedecked creature. She strolled over and climbed up onto his back. The others followed, sitting on his legs and rump. Lorcan looked at Lulath and made a piteous noise.

  “You’ll have to leave the girls.” Lilah sighed.

  Celie set their travel baskets down by Lorcan. Then she picked up JouJou and stuck her under one arm so that she could take hold of Lorcan’s harness with the other.

  “It’s going to be all right,” she told Lulath.

  He hugged Celie, then turned and tenderly kissed and hugged Lilah.

  “It is best, Father, that I leave quickly, I think,” he called in Grathian.

  Lulath mounted his horse, and so did the soldiers who were guarding the party. The tax collectors hurried to get inside the coach. Celie supposed this arrangement was better for everyone: the girls would help keep Lorcan under control, and the tax collectors wouldn’t have to share the coach with four dogs.

  The court gave a cheer as the horses left the gates, and Celie and the Glower family joined in. As soon as the gates closed, Celie led Lorcan and the others to their garden. Lilah brought Juliet and Dagger, Pogue came with Arrow and Rufus, and soon Queen Celina and Lady Griffin joined them.

  “Here we all are,” Rolf said, rather glumly.

  The dogs played on the grass, and Lorcan joined them. Celie stayed within reach, ready to leap at his harness if he showed signs of trying to follow Lulath now. Lady Griffin, who normally didn’t pay attention to Lu
lath’s girls, since she was not allowed to eat them, positioned herself nearby as well, and kept one eye on Lorcan in a motherly way.

  “I think we’ll be all right,” Celie said. “We can do this.”

  “We don’t have much of a choice,” Lilah pointed out.

  “The good news is, I don’t have to sit here moping,” Pogue said. “I’ve got to get back to the ship to help.” Then he made a hasty bow toward Queen Celina. “If that is all right with Your Majesty?” he quickly asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, smiling. “You know how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve done, Sir Pogue.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Pogue said. He straightened and turned to Celie. “Do you want me to leave Arrow?”

  “Please,” Celie said. “I may need him to sit on Lorcan.”

  Bright Arrow was younger than Lorcan, but already bigger. In fact, he was nearly as big as Lord Griffin, and showed no signs of stopping soon. He ate twice as much as Rufus, and was muscular and sleek at the same time. He looked exactly like one of the fighting griffins depicted on the tapestries back in the Castle.

  “If you children are engaged here,” Queen Celina said, “I believe I’ll go to my lesson with the Royal Wizard. He’s teaching me all about poison,” she said brightly.

  “Mother!” Lilah said, shocked.

  “And the antidotes,” their mother said, waving her hand. “Don’t fuss, Lilah.”

  Lady Griffin got up to follow Queen Celina out of the garden. As she passed, she carked some instruction to Lorcan, who ducked his head as though chastened.

  “Stay here, Lady Griffin,” Celie coaxed.

  The griffin queen gave her a superior look, and Queen Celina looked over her shoulder. “No,” she said. “Best to let her come with me. She’s half wild herself.”

  They lined up the rest of the griffins, and Celie tried to teach them commands involving a short word and a hand gesture that would make the griffins pounce, or strike with a talon. It was actually quite fun, especially when they tied cushions to Rolf and got him to be the villain the griffins would attack. Lulath’s girls watched from the safety of their baskets and swished their plumed tails and barked in approval from time to time.

  By the time they’d exhausted the griffins—and Rolf—Celie was very pleased. They’d all learned some of the commands, and she was convinced that Rufus was a prodigy. He grasped the commands much faster than the others and was always ready to jump on Rolf when instructed. He was also older than the others, but she pushed that thought aside. Rufus was the best griffin, and that’s all there was to it.

  “I’m going to go show Pogue,” she said, calling Arrow and Rufus to her with a flick of the wrist, a command they had just learned.

  “Want me to come?” Rolf asked.

  “If you want,” Celie said, but she looked at Lilah as she said it. Juliet and Lorcan were curled up and looked like they might be falling asleep with the girls piled on top of them, so Lilah mouthed that she would be all right.

  Celie hopped on Rufus, and Rolf got on Arrow’s back and whistled for Dagger, which made Lorcan stir but not wake, fortunately. Together they flew down to the shipyard, thus avoiding having to call for a coach and footmen and possibly put on new clothes. It was much easier to do things with her brother, Rolf, than with pretty much anyone else she knew, except for Pogue, and she said as much when they landed.

  “Ah, yes,” Rolf said, nodding his head. “Pogue.”

  “What about him?” Celie demanded.

  “Oh, nothing,” Rolf said innocently. “Except that you’re getting to be very grown-up, and Pogue . . . well, here he comes,” Rolf said, smothering a laugh with one hand.

  Celie turned to look. Pogue was headed toward them, as Rolf had said, clapping for Arrow, who ran to greet his person. Pogue had his hair tied in a topknot the way the Grathian sailors did, and he had taken off his shirt in the heat. Celie felt her cheeks go warm.

  She wasn’t sure where to look as she told Pogue about the griffin training and put Arrow through his paces. Then Pogue offered to show them the work that had been done on the ship that day.

  “If you recall,” Rolf whispered as they followed Pogue to the ship, “I once predicted this would happen. And now it’s going to be nothing but sighs and playing with your hair and Lilah teaching you how to flutter your eyelashes.”

  Celie’s entire face was burning now. “Ugh,” she said. “That’s not . . . he’s my friend!”

  She jumped onto Rufus’s back and flew up to the deck of the ship.

  Chapter

  6

  The next day Lorcan was still very fractious, and Celie hardly dared to let him out of her sight. The others, too, were keeping their griffins close, in case they joined Lorcan in his mutiny. Instead of letting them fly out from the garden, they made them sit at their feet on the lawn, while the humans spoke nervously of what do to.

  “The only thing to be doing is to be viewing the ship!” Orlath cried from the gate to the garden. “We are having such building as will make the finest of tours now!”

  They all stood up, but were clearly not as enthusiastic as Orlath had hoped.

  “But all is being grim,” Orlath said, looking baffled. “All is being strange! But no! It cannot be such a thing! It is a time of shipbuilding! Of ship viewing! Of joy!”

  “Of joy,” Lilah echoed, sounding as though she didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  But once they were at the shipyard, the sight of their ship drove thoughts of Lulath’s potentially dangerous mission from their minds. The ship truly was magnificent: rising high and proud on the shore of the harbor, distinctive from the other ships being built because of the variety of wood being used. The Grathian wood shone a light golden brown, while the Sleynth was a dark peat color, and the Arkish and Hathelocke parts gleamed reddish in the sun.

  “A thing of the greatest beauty,” Orlath said, throwing his arms wide.

  The Glower family stood there and took it in, every inch of it. Celie was about to say something, to ask if it was supposed to look that way, when Pogue jogged over to them.

  “I know, I know it’s hideous,” Pogue said. “I mean, I don’t have much to compare it to, but from what the other men are saying, it’s a monster cobbled together from old parts, and shouldn’t even float.” He grinned.

  “What?” Lilah looked from Orlath to Pogue, her mouth open. “A monster? But what should we do? How do we fix it?”

  “I like it,” Rolf said as they all went closer to the ship. “It has . . . character.”

  “Of naturalness it will be sailing on the ocean with grace,” Orlath said. “I am not knowing any other way of building such a ship!” He shook his head and laughed. “But it is sure that this is being the only ship of its like to sail.”

  “It’s perfect,” Celie said at last, making up her mind.

  And it was.

  Care had been taken to preserve symmetry. There were just as many Sleynth planks as Grathian making up the hull, so that the ship had a striped appearance rather than one of patchwork, which Celie had privately feared. As they climbed the plank to the deck of the ship, they saw the brass instruments that had been taken from one of the towers in the Castle being mounted on swiveling stands. There was a stack of what Pogue told them were called belaying pins off to one side, waiting to be put along the sides of the ship for the sail ropes to be tied to. The pins were Hathelocke made, old, and of richly polished red wood, but the rails they would be set into were golden Grathian wood.

  “It’s perfect,” Celie said again.

  “I don’t know,” Lilah said, biting her lower lip. She pushed her heavy curls back from her face, a nervous gesture that almost—but not quite—dislodged her tiara. “What if they’re right?”

  “But, Lilah,” Celie protested, “it’s exactly what we wanted! It’s a ship made of all the parts of all our lands!”

  She windmilled her arms, trying to embrace the ship the way the Grathians always seemed to e
mbrace anything that pleased them. But really, she was trying to cover up something: she felt it, too. The ship wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

  “I just don’t know,” Lilah said slowly.

  “It’s not alive,” Rolf said bluntly. “It’s not like the Castle.” He rocked back on his heels, his thumbs in his belt.

  “I was wondering about that,” Pogue said. “I can’t feel it myself, you know. But I wanted to ask one of you what you felt.”

  “But what is being happening?” Orlath said. “For it was a certainty that the very sticks of the wood in the shipyard are having the best effects on my our Glower family.” He frowned around. “What is being done that it is gone to sleep now?”

  “How do we wake the ship up?” Pogue said.

  He and Orlath turned and looked at Celie. So did Lilah. And Rolf.

  Celie just looked back.

  “I’m not a wizard,” she said finally. “And I’m not the Builder of the Castle.”

  “Yes, but—” Rolf began, but Celie cut him off.

  “Don’t you dare say the Castle loves me best,” she told him. “This isn’t the Castle! And you’re the heir; the Castle loves you, too.”

  She didn’t want to sound childish, but she was getting just a trifle annoyed with everyone turning to her all the time for answers. It made her feel stupid when she didn’t have any. And how could she possibly have one in this case? She knew just as much about the building of the Castle as they did, and she’d never even been on a ship before. She had no wisdom to offer.

  “Why don’t we show you around?” Pogue said. He waved a hand and started toward the upper deck without waiting to see if they would follow. “The wheel is from the Builder’s original ship, as you know,” he began.

  And so they took a tour of the new ship. There were still things that weren’t in place. The doors weren’t hung, for instance, but they had been stood in the rooms that they belonged to. The mast wasn’t in place, but was waiting on the hard-packed earth of the shipyard, beside the figurehead, which Pogue told them would be the next-to-last part of the ship added, the sails being the last.