I shut my mouth. I always thought it was hardest for her. Calla, Chasco, Shree had all known my father before the Pain became a part of him; even I could remember a time when he was no more than a little strange. But Katlefiya was fifteen, ten years younger than I, and our father had been extremely peculiar all her life. Her first specific memory of him was on the night of blood and fire when we left the Mamelons of Itsant behind us, with a death count that probably topped three hundred. My first memory of him was on a different night of blood and fire, but it had made less of an impression on me; and of course I had better memories of him to balance it.
I can hardly recall how it felt to be a Vassashin child-messiah. For the first five years of my life, my world was divided between those who fell to their knees at the sight of me, whom I ignored, and those who actually mattered—my mother, my tutor, the Divinatrix Valsoria, and a few high-ranking Daughters of Fire, none of whom took any nonsense from me. It never occurred to me that other children might live any differently. Nor did it occur to me to wonder who my father was until he actually appeared.
Manners, archery, prayers, training in ritual and ciphering and dancing and the significant Vassashin art of oratory—one day I was learning etiquette from my Vassashin tutor, and the next, Chasco was teaching me how to tack into the wind. The intervening night of blood and fire exists in my memory as a few scattered pictures, nothing more; my first detailed recollection is of the day we crossed the outer boundary of the known world.
According to Chasco's log, this was about four days after Vassashinay dropped under the horizon behind us, an early afternoon that burned under a molten sky, with a hot steady westerly filling the sails of the lorsk and drying the sweat on our faces. My mother was down in the cabin finding her sea-belly, which she wanted to do in privacy, so the rest of us were under orders to amuse ourselves quietly on deck. Chasco was on the little foredeck with me, showing me how to tie sailors' knots. Shree was in the stern minding the tiller and keeping a watchful eye on my father across the roof of the squat deckhouse. My father, propped against the bowrail a few feet from our lesson in knots, was alternately watching us and scribbling in his notebook.
It was already hard for me to remember a different life. After the routines and restrictions of the Sacellum, the boredom of being worshipped, the constant cloying attention of scores of Daughters, it was a strange kind of freedom that I was finding on the tiny lorsk. I was not told that our position was perilous and our future uncertain.
"Chasco," my father said abruptly, "we'll be passing the south point of Zaine in an hour or so."
Chasco put down the death's-head knot he was tying for me and got to his feet to look around. "Will we indeed?" he said. "If you're right, then we need to decide now, Lord Tigrallef. Once we're past Zaine, we don't know what we'll find."
My father stoppered his ink, closed the notebook and put both items carefully down on the deckboards. There was something odd and deliberate about all his movements in those early days, before he taught himself to block out the confusion of the Pain's multiple layers of vision. He tugged me to my feet, closer to the bowrail; I could just see over the weatherbeaten edge of it to the sea that glared around us. "Look, Vero," he said, "and tell me what you see."
"No." I wanted to return to Chasco's enchanting knots. Also, I was still trying to decide whether my father fitted into the category of people I had to listen to. He did not fall to his knees at the sight of me, which pointed in one direction, but at least twice in those four days I had seen him fall to his knees anyway, with his hands shaking and great balls of sweat rolling down his face. His lips had moved as if he were praying, and experience had taught me that people who prayed could mostly be discounted. Shree and Chasco, however, whom I had easily classified as to-be-noticed, talked to him as I'd seen the Daughters of Fire talk to my erstwhile godmother, the Divinatrix, which seemed to indicate that Tigrallef was to-be-noticed as well. He smiled at my refusal, with such good humour that I contrarily decided to oblige him and peered over the rail.
"Do you see any land?" he asked.
"No."
"Chasco?"
"No, Lord Tigrallef."
"The odd thing is," my father said reflectively, "that my eyes used to be much worse than yours, and yet I can see Zaine very well."
"Zaine? Where?" Shree was edging towards us along the narrow walkway that ran along the side of the deckhouse. He joined us at the rail and looked keenly to the north. I remember how close and heavy the air felt, pressed down by the copper sky and not at all cooled by the sultry breeze. "I don't see any land," Shree said.
My father pointed to the north-northeast. "There it is, that darkness along the waterline. Those are the clouds of Zaine, Vero."
Chasco said, "All right, my lord, we'll take your word for it. Are you sure you want to bypass the islands? We could still reach the cape on this wind if we started tacking now."
"We don't want to go there," my father said. "They've got no food to spare, believe me, and the water isn't worth having. Too many bodies rotting in the sinkholes. The plague's raging there, and not just the Vassashin chorea: plagues are very sociable, they keep each other company. Anyone who doesn't dance himself to death could end up perishing of the squits, or maybe the sweats or the Storican pox. They're digging a mass grave on the edge of that little beach, do you see it?"
"What little beach?" said Shree.
My father sighed. "I keep forgetting. Never mind. But I think we'll bypass Zaine, and you'd better pile on some more sail, Chasco, or whatever you can do to make this tub go faster, otherwise that rather large Zainoi wind-galley is going to cut us off."
"What Zainoi wind-galley?" said Chasco.
My father sighed again.
There were two lessons for me in this. Shree and Chasco, both of whom were larger, handsomer, stronger and overtly more significant than my father, nevertheless raised the aft highsail simply because he told them to. Lesson one, therefore, was that my father was in charge. Second, there actually was a Zainoi wind-galley, though it was another half-hour or so before the rest of us spotted it. It saw us at about the same time; a distant flashing at its sides showed that the oars were being unshipped, and it changed course in our direction almost at once. Thus, lesson two was that my father really could see the things he claimed to, even when no one else could.
My mother wandered palely on to the deck just after Shree first sighted the Zainoi ship, and came to stand by my father and me in the bow. "What do they want, Tig?" she asked. "Are we in danger?"
He put his arm around her. "The future," he answered, "is still something I can't see, by grace of the Old Ones. I can see they're quite a rabble, though. Refugees from the dancing plague, I guess, all of them men—the least they'll want is our stores to help them on their way. They'll probably want to take you too."
"Not alive, they won't."
My father smiled and clasped her hand. Watching jealously, I saw her turn to him to say something else, but she caught her breath instead. All of us were sweating in the cauldron heat of that afternoon, but my father was drenched, as if he had just climbed back on board after a dip in the sea. Still smiling at my mother, he bit his lip hard enough to start a thin dribble of blood running down to his chin.
"Oh gods," said my mother, "it's happening again. Shree, come quickly!"
Tigrallef thudded down on to the deck, cupping his head. Shree, arriving from below with our pitiful stock of weapons, dumped them in a heap and leapt to my father's side. I sat down close by, where I wouldn't miss anything.
Glancing over her shoulder at the approaching wind-galley, my mother knelt on the deck. "Keep hold, Tig," she said. With Shree's help, she dragged him away from the rail and propped him against the side of the deckhouse. "Keep hold," she said again. I had no idea what she meant.
The Zainoi galley was gaining on us, its oar banks glittering as they shuttled in and out of the water. Chasco came around from the stern, shaking his head when he saw the state
my father was in, frowning as he picked through the small heap of weapons and selected a dagger long enough to be called a short sword. The galley was close enough now so that I could distinguish long forked beards on the faces of most of its crew. Their shouts came clearly across the glassy water.
"Don't worry, Tig," my mother was saying. She was still half-supporting my father, but I could see her eyes working critically through the pile of knives. My father looked even worse: hunched and trembling, wild-eyed, sodden with sweat, bearded with blood.
"Calla," I asked, "why is he being like that? Is he afraid?"
"No, Vero," she said, "he's not afraid. Keep hold, Tig."
I wriggled closer. "Why do you keep saying that? What's he supposed to keep hold of?"
"I'll explain later."
"He shouldn't bite his lip like that."
"Later, Vero."
"But why is he—"
"Later, Vero! Come sit over here." She pushed me against the deckhouse wall beside my father, propped him against me, then scrambled to the weaponry and snatched up a handful of knives. Leaning around my father's shaking body, I could see the wind-galley was only seven or eight lengths away, bearing down on us on a nearly perpendicular course as if to ram us with its blunt prow. Several men with clubs and swords in their hands were grinning in the bow.
My mother, Shree and Chasco were piling the throwing disks in the scuppers; a powerful voice bellowed in the wind-galley, and Shree bellowed back. Another sweep of the oars—the galley leapt a length closer. "Vero, go below," my mother cried to me. She had a knife in each hand, and three more quivered on their points in the rail beside her.
Another length closer, almost within throwing distance. Beside me, my father stirred.
"Help me up, Vero," he said hoarsely, "she's doing her best to stop me." Somehow I understood he was not talking about my mother. I watched him tip drunkenly towards the deck on to his hands and knees and begin to work his way up from that position. Fascinated, I put my shoulder under his groping hand. With that support he managed to rise to a crouch, then painfully straightened his body. He shuffled forwards a few steps and, spreading his arms for balance, twirled clumsily on one foot. The effect was so comical that I laughed out loud.
"Vero," he grated, "dance with me." He twirled again and made a series of little hops, swaying his upper body. I laughed at him again, then looked guiltily at my mother. She had her back to us, facing the wind-galley, which surged so close while I watched that I could actually smell the fork-bearded assassins in the bow. The largest and fiercest of them was petrified in the act of raising a grappling hook over his head; his eyes were fixed on my father. His gaze swivelled to me, so I did the first few steps of a Vassashin courting dance for his benefit, and he gasped and dropped the grappling hook into the sea. A chorus of many voices rolled out from the galley, counterpointed by frantic splashes and the clattering of wood. For some reason the wind-galley was falling over itself to get clear of us, oars tangling as the rowers fought to back water.
Of our armed defenders, Shree recovered first. He turned his back on the wind-galley while it was still sorting itself out, tossed his knives down and propped himself by his elbows against the bowrail. "Tig," he said, "that's the worst Crane Dance I've ever seen—assuming it's intended to be the Crane Dance. How's the boy going to learn? Watch me, Vero, this is how it's done."
He stepped away from the rail and began a series of movements that had a generic resemblance to my father's but were much more graceful and controlled. This led to a renewed outbreak of howling on the Zainoi wind-galley, which I imagined was applause. Watching Shree's feet closely, I did my best to follow his steps. I did not look at my mother in case she tried to order me below deck again.
But she didn't. She said, "Let's show them the other courting dance, Vero, the one Silvir was teaching you." She had left her post as well, though her knives were still lined up in a point-down row in the railing. She put her arms around my father and guided him through the dance—he sagged against her and kept stepping on her toes. After a while she steered him back to the shade of the deckhouse, helped him collapse on to the boards and slid down beside him to cradle his head in her lap. "That was clever, Tig," I heard her murmur, "unless you really do have the plague."
He did not answer. His eyes were closed, his breathing ragged.
Shree carried on at my insistence, with a sombre look in the direction of my father, though he cheered up at last and even showed me some Sherkin dances that were far too energetic for the southern climate and tired us both out nicely. Chasco declined to join in on the excuse of minding the tiller. He said he couldn't dance to save his life, that it was a good thing we'd done it for him. When I remembered to look for the wind-galley, it was a toy shrinking rapidly to the northwest.
And so it was, late that afternoon, that I danced my way across the invisible line that divided the known world from the unknown, while my father twitched in his sleep in my mother's arms. It was to be nearly twenty years before we crossed back again, and by then my dancing days would be over.
* * *
2
WE BADE GOODBYE and good riddance to Tata on the same night that Tigrallef blasphemed the Shining Ansatz, and set our course eastwards for the Island of Gil. After groping without guides through the unknown world, travelling through a geography familiar to our elders felt like a stroll in a pleasant garden.
The late spring weather which had caught up with us in Tata continued to be brilliant. The shallow seas supplied us so abundantly that we hardly needed to touch the leathers of dried meat in the hold until we grew thoroughly sick of fish. Only twice did we sight pirates and both times the sleek Fifth outran them without much effort. The prevailing winds, which were fair and strong, enabled us to work our way east by easy stages, watering mostly on islands that were empty or only sparsely inhabited, bypassing Plav and Zelf altogether. With hindsight, this was a mistake.
As we neared the Archipelago, my father was in two minds. He had a sentimental desire to see Exile, where he grew up, if only to make sure it had recovered from the effects of seventy years of Flamens; but Gil was so close now, and the Pain was intermittently so crushing, that he decided the diversion would not be worthwhile. Calla and Chasco, on the other hand, thought it might be wise to put in at Sathelforn itself to get some idea of what was happening in Gil, and we duly set a course in that direction.
What put us off at the north end of the Archipelago was the sight of three large black windcatchers, obviously naval but not flying Satheli colours, heading up the Forn Channel behind us. We pulled into a cove to hide while they sailed past, and decided, after viewing the arrays of spearchuckers and bouldershots on their various fighting decks, that it might be more prudent to find out in Gil what was happening in Sathelforn. In the end we avoided both Sathelforn and Exile, which also proved to be a mistake, a grave one, and made our last watering stop on a deserted islet at the southern tip of the chain. Three days later, on a limpid summer morning some five weeks after leaving Tata, we at last approached the Island of Gil.
Only Chasco and my father were in calm spirits as we waited to catch the first glimpse of the Gilgard across the sea. Chasco was sitting at the wheel, though the breeze was of the cooperative sort that left nothing much for him to do. Tigrallef was sitting not far from him in his special chair on the afterdeck, chatting about the tablets from Nkalvi between skirmishes with the Pain.
It was bolted to the deck, that chair, and fitted with restraints made of padded leather—when my father designed it, he aimed as much for comfort as for strength. Of course, the bindings would have been as effective as so much cornsilk if he really lost hold; anyhow, he'd invented a cunning little device that enabled him to manage the bindings without help from a second pair of hands. No, the chair was only meant to slow him down, to keep him from blundering about the deck in a blind daze if the Pain addled him without warning, to save the rest of us the trouble of nursemaiding him or the inconvenience of
fishing him out of the sea.
That day, only he and Chasco could work up any interest in the Nkalvi texts. Shree was pacing the decks from bow to stern and back again; Calla was mostly haunting the bow, peering impatiently through the slight morning sea mist ahead of us. Kat and I were high up on the crosstrees, supposedly on lookout for the Gilgard, but also monitoring the activities of a fishing fleet not far to the south and marking off the succession of minor navigation points as we sailed past them. Primarily, though, we were keeping out of Calla's way.
This was because our mother was working through a series of difficult and contradictory frames of mind as we drew near to her birthplace. One minute she was anxious to have the Fifth shine from a swabbing the like of which it had never seen since it left the shipyard in Amballa, in order to impress any friends who may have survived the Sherkin oppression, the liberation, the Flamens, the plagues and the subsequent two decades of Gil's history, a period we knew woefully little about. The next moment, she was sure we should sail into Gil incognito, avoid all old acquaintances, skulk about the city in disguise. The moment after she'd wonder if we shouldn't omit Gil from the itinerary altogether, especially as Tigrallef seemed to have no very clear notion of what to do when we got there. She accosted Shree at the foot of the mast, just below us.
"No," Shree said. "Whatever it is, the answer is no."
"I just think we need to be better prepared," she said.
"How? In what way? You've been through it a hundred times with me, and a thousand times with Tig. We're as well prepared as we ever are for a landfall."
"But it's Gil we're going to, you Myrene ice-trog, not some scummy midden on the edge of nowhere."
"So?"
"We should be better prepared than usual," she repeated. Her voice was at its flintiest.
Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain Page 2