Ezasper would be Protector. Shavian would be Protector. Gendra would be Protector. Each of them knew it, was certain of it, glorying both in the absolute sureness of it and in the fact that no one else knew.
Koma Nepor would be Marshal of the Towers. Glamdrul Feynt would be Marshal of the Towers. They chatted with one another, laughing, each glorying in the other's eventual discomfiture.
The general would use his position to rectify distortions and lies. He thought of this as he listened to Bormas Tyle, who was certain he would soon become general. The two of them stood together in a window aperture with their cakes.
General Jondrigar even made a little jest about the flower chaplet he had worn.
They laughed.
And Tharius Don stood alone, happier than he had been in fifty years.
From behind the curtain a querulous old voice exclaimed, "What's everyone laughing about? Tell me the joke. Tell me," and several Jondarites went to busy themselves within.
To the assembled council, Lees Obol's command only seemed amusing, and even the general smiled. How could any one of them explain his joy? Each, knowing the reason for his own, thought better to pretend it was inexplicable.
The euphoria passed. Voices died down. The babble gave way to whispers, winks, nodded heads. Cups were set down on the waiting trays. Servitors scurried about with napkins to brush up the crumbs. The carts went screeching away, complaining into the vaulted silences.
Ezasper Jorn hesitated in the doorway long enough to whisper to the Chief of Research, "As soon as she's well gone, Koma. As soon as she's well gone." And they, too, departed in good humor.
Above, in his guest suite, Tharius Don sat down with Pamra before the fire while Lila waved her hands at the flames and chortled in words he could not understand.
"Let me tell you about the Talkers," he said gently, watching her face to be sure she paid attention.
But she, nodding and making sounds as though she were listening, heard very little that he said. She was far away, in some other world.
17
At the end of each month those aboard the Gift celebrated riotously on the extra day. Eenzie the Clown juggled hard melon and eggs on the main deck, discovering the eggs in the ears of the boatmen and losing them again down the backs of their trousers. On this occasion, Porabji brought out a great crock he had had fulminating in the owner-house and poured them all mugs of something that was almost wine and almost something else, cheering as Glizzee, though in a different way. Thrasne himself had taken a generous amount of the gift Glizzee from the locker and given it to the cook for inclusion in whatever seemed best.
They played silly games and sang children's songs and ended by pouring wine on the new boat and naming it the Cheevle, which, said Eenzie, was the name of the delicious little fish that thronged the streams of the steppe. She mimed taking bites out of the new boat, making them all laugh. They took the canvas cover off the boat and sat in the hull, wrapped in blankets against the night chill, singing River chanteys and old hearthside songs. By the middle of the night they were all weary but wonderfully pleased, and most of them wandered off to their hammocks or bunks.
Thrasne came to himself atop the owner-house, staring at the stars, humming tunelessly, almost without thought. Medoor Babji found him there, came to stand beside him at the railing, leaning so close her bare arm was against his own and the warmth of them both made a shell around them.
"Babji," he sang, more than half-drunk. "Ayee, aroo, Babji, Babji." He smiled at her, putting an arm around her.
She did not answer, only pressed closer to him, knowing what would happen and willing that it happen. When he put his lips on hers, it was exactly as her body had anticipated. His mouth was sweet, wine smelling, his lips softly insistent. He cupped her bottom in his hands, pressing her close to the surging hardness of him.
When he moved toward the Cheevle, toward the blankets piled in the bottom of it, she did not resist him. When he laid her down, himself above her, and found a way through their clothing, she did not say no. She cried out, once, at a pain that quickly passed, then all thought ceased.
It was a long time later she opened her eyes to see the stars again. She was cradled on Thrasne's shoulder, his right arm under her and around her, blankets piled atop them like leaves over fallen fruit. No sound on the ship except the water sounds, the creak of timbers, the footsteps of the watch on the forward deck, the rattle of ropes against wood.
"Babji," he said again, not singing, in a voice totally sober and a little disconsolate.
"What?" she said, knowing he had been awake while she slept. "What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking about what you said the other day, Medoor Babji. About the two kinds of people in the world. Those like you and me, who see puncon jam on our bread, and those others who see other things. I have been thinking about that. Those of us who see jam are the most numerous, I know. But does that mean the jam is really there?"
She stared at the silhouette of his face against the night sky. "Does it not, then?"
"I don't know. After a great, long time thinking of it, I could tell myself only that. I don't know."
He brought her closer to him, reached down to arrange the blankets against the night's chill. The wind was cold, his voice was colder yet. "It was Pamra's madness made me think of it. She does not see the world as we do. As you and I see it. As the boatmen see it. As your people see it. And so we call her mad. She will not come into the world I wanted for her, so I call her mad. She will not love me and bear my children, so she's mad. She talks with dreams and consorts with visions, so she's mad. I was thinking of that as I lay here, listening to you sleep."
She did not reply, halfway between sobbing and anger, not knowing which way to fall. After what had just passed between them, and it was Pamra in his mind still!
She took refuge in silence.
He went on, "The Jarb Mendicants could come with their blue smoke to sit beside me and tell me, 'Yes, she's mad.' But what would it mean, Medoor Babji? It would mean only that they see the same dream I see, not that the dream is real. So ... so, if I were to share her dream, couldn't that be as real as my own?"
"How?" she asked him, moving from sadness to anger. "Your good, sensible head wouldn't let you do that, Thrasne."
"If the Jarb root gives one vision of reality, perhaps other things give other visions. Glizzee, perhaps."
"Glizzee is a happy-making thing, truly, Thrasne, but I have never heard that visions come of it."
"Then other things," he said thoughtfully. "Other things." He looked down at his free hand, and she saw that he held a jug of the brew old Porabji had made.
"Other things."
She moved away from him, less angry now, though he did not seem to care that she went, for he began to lace up the canvas cover of the little boat. In the owner-house she undressed and braided the long crinkles of her hair into larger braids to keep them from tangling while she slept. Perhaps tomorrow she would cry. There was a bleak hollow inside her full of cold wind. Perhaps she would not get up at all.
Eenzie stirred. "Doorie? Where've you been? Up to naughty with the owner, neh?"
"Talking," she said tonelessly, giving nothing away.
"About his madwoman, I'll wager," Eenzie said with a yawn, turning back into sleep. "He has nothing else to talk about."
The morning found many less joyous than on the night before, with Obors-rom leaning over the rail to lose all he had eaten for a day or more.
"It's that brew of old Zynie's," he gasped. "I should have had better sense than to drink it."
"Perhaps," Thrasne suggested, "you should only have had better sense than to try and drink it all." Medoor Babji was passing as he said it. He saw her and looked thoughtfully at her, half remembering he had done something unwise, perhaps unkind. He needed to apologize to her for whatever it had been, if he could only have a moment to remember. She stared through him, as through a window.
"It is never wise to
drink too much of old Porabji's brews," she said. "I have had a word with him." She passed Thrasne by, not stopping, and he stared after her in confusion. The night before was not at all clear to him. Part of it, he thought, he might have dreamed. And yet something was owed because of it, he thought.
Something needed to be done.
Late that afternoon came wind. It was no small breeze. At first they welcomed it behind them, but the sailors soon began to shake their heads. They reefed the big sail, leaving only a small one at the top of the mast to maintain way. Later the wind fell, but the sailors did not put the sail out again.
"Storm," said one of them to Thrasne. His name was Blange, a laconic, stocky man who looked not unlike Thrasne himself. "Last time I remember the clouds lookin' like that" - he gestured to the horizon, where a low bank of cloud grew taller with each passing hour - "last time we were lucky enough to get behind an island and ride it out. Five days' blow it was, and the ship pretty battered when it was over. I don't like the looks of that."
Certainly if Thrasne had been near Northshore, he would have tried to get behind something. He didn't like the looks of it, either. The sky appeared bruised, livid with purpling cloud, darted with internal lightning so that sections of the cloud wall glowed ominously from time to time, a recurrent pulse of pallid light that was absorbed by the surrounding darkness as though swallowed.
The River surface looked flat and oily in that light, full of strange, jellylike quiverings and skitterings, as though something invisible ran across the surface.
Swells began to heave at the Gift, lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping.
"What's it likely to do?" Thrasne asked.
"It's likely to give us one hell of a beating," Blange replied.
"Then let's get that little boat off the owner-house roof," Thrasne commanded.
"We don't need that banging around."
They lowered the Cheevle into the water, running her out some distance from the Gift at the end of a stout rope. The two boats began a kind of minuet, bowing and tipping to one another across the glassy water between.
The wall of cloud drew closer even as they worked, still pulsing with intermittent light, muttering now in a growl that seemed almost constant. Obers-rom and the other boatmen were busy tying everything down that could be tied down and stowing everything else in the lockers and holds.
"Best take some of the spare canvas and nail it over the hatches," one of the sailors told Thrasne.
"Surely that's extreme?"
"Owner, if you want to keep your boat and our lives, I'd recommend it. I'm tellin' you everything I know, and I don't know half enough."
Thrasne stared at the wall of cloud. Perhaps the man was one of those doomsayers the River bred from time to time. On the other hand, perhaps he wasn't. Blange wasn't a young man. He had scars on his face and arms - from rope lashes, so he said. His hands were hard. One thing Blint had always said: "You pay a man for more than his strong back, Thrasne. You pay him for his good sense if he's got any."
So. "Tell Obers-rom what you need, Blange. I'm going to see what's going on in the owner-house."
What was going on was a card game among four of the inhabitants and naps for the other two.
"Thrasne," burbled Eenzie the Clown. "Come take my hand. I'm being beaten, but you could fight them off...."
"Yes, Thrasne," Medoor Babji said in a chilly voice. "Take Eenzie's cards and we'll do battle."
He shook his head at her, scarcely noticing her tone. "No time, Medoor Babji. The sailors tell me we are probably going to be hit by a storm. They say a bad storm. Anything you have lying around should be put away.''
The sound of hammers came through the wall, and old Porabji sat up with a muffled curse.
"What're they doing?" Eenzie asked, for once in a normal tone of voice.
"Nailing canvas over the hatches to keep water out."
"Waves?"
"I don't know. I've never been in a bad storm. Rain, I suppose. Waterspouts, maybe. I've seen those." Thrasne was suddenly deeply depressed. The Gift was about to be assaulted and he had no idea how to protect her. "If things get violent, you might rig some straps over the bunks and strap yourself in. Less likely to be hurt that way, I should think." He turned and blundered out, needing to see what Blange was up to. Surely there would be something he could do.
When he emerged from the owner-house door, he was shocked into immobility by the wall of black that confronted him. The Gift rocked in a tiny pocket of clear water. Straight above them Potipur bulged toward the west, pushing his mighty belly toward the sunset in a tiny circle of clear sky. Elsewhere was only cloud and the ceaseless mutter of thunder. At the base of the cloud lay a line of agitated white, and Blange pointed this out, his face pale.
"There's the wind," he said. "Those are the wave tops, breaking up. It will be on us soon." He turned away, shouting for men to help him cover the other hatch.
"The ventilation shafts," Thrasne cried suddenly. "We have to cover the ventilation shafts."
"I'll help," said a small voice at his side. Medoor Babji. "Taj Noteen and I will help you. We can do the front shaft." Indeed, she knew well where it was, for she had sat there many an hour during the voyage, watching as Thrasne himself had once watched. Birds. Waves. The floating stuff that the River carried past.
"Get tools from Obers-rom," Thrasne said, hurrying away to the aft shafts, one eye on the rushing cloud.
Obers-rom gave them a hammer, nails - worth quintuple their weight in any nonmetal coin. "Take care," he growled at her. "Don't drop them, Medoor Babji. These are all we have." He sent one of the other men to carry the cleats.
She and Taj Noteen scrambled across the owner-house roof and dropped onto the grating above the shaft. They would have to squat or lie on the grating and lean downward to nail the cleats across the canvas. There were not roofs for two of them.
"Get back up," she grunted. "You can hand me the cleats as I nail them." She spread the canvas beneath her, holding it down with her body, pressing it against the outside of the square shaft, reaching behind her to take the cleat.
The wind struck. The Gift shuddered, began to tip. Medoor Babji cursed, thrust the hammer between her body and the canvas, and held on. Above her, Taj Noteen shouted, but she could not understand what he was saying.
The wind got under the canvas, lifted it. Her hands were clenched tight to it, her eyes shut. Only Taj Noteen saw her lifted on the bellying sail, lifted, flown, over the side and down into the chopping River. The water hit her and she screamed then, opening her eyes, seeing the loom of the Gift above her. Under her the canvas bulged like a bubble, air trapped beneath it, floating her. She was moving away from the boat. Away. She screamed again, soundless against the uproar of the sudden rain.
Then something struck the canvas, brushed it away, brushed it again. The Cheevle. It bowed toward her once more, and she grabbed the side, lifted by it as it tilted away from her, pulling herself in. The canvas was tangled around her legs.
It followed like a heavy tail, and she rolled onto the cover of the Cheevle. The wind stopped, all at once, and glassy calm spread across the waters.
Medoor Babji shouted. There were figures at the rail of the Gift, staring at her.
Blange shouted at her. "Get under the cover, Babji! Get under it and lace it up. The wind is coming back. There's no time to pull you in...."
She had scarcely time to comprehend what he had said and obey him, hurriedly loosening the lacing at one side of the little boat enough to crawl beneath it. She lay in the bottom of the boat, on the blankets tumbled there, and tugged at the lacing string with all her strength, pulling it tight again only moments before the wind struck once more. It was like being inside a drum, then, as the rain pounded down upon the tight canvas, and she clung to the lacing strings, flung this way and that by the wind, protected from battering only by those tumbled blankets and the wet canvas that had almost killed her, then saved her from drowning.
There
were sounds of thunder, muttering, growling, sharp cracks like the sudden breaking of great tree limbs. After one such crack her ears told her the Cheevle was moving, racing, driven by the wind. She imagined the Gift also driven, wondering briefly if one of them preceded the other or whether the wind sent them on this journey side by side. After a time the violent rocking stopped. The rain continued to fall in a frenzy of sound. Lulled by the noise, by the dark, by her fear and the pain of her bruises, she fell asleep, still clinging to the lacing strings of the cover as though they held her hope of life.
Aboard the Gift, darkness fell like a curtain, rain-filled and horrid. Wind buffeted them. The old boat creaked and complained, tilting wildly on the waves. They had seen Medoor Babji crawl beneath the cover of the Cheevle. They had no time to worry about her after that. In breaks in the storm they managed to cover the forward ventilation shaft. The hammer and nails were caught between the shaft and the forward wall of the owner-house. Except for Thrasne, and for the steersmen, struggling mightily to keep them headed into the waves and wind under only a scrap of sail, the others went into the owner-house and cowered there, waiting for something to happen. Thrasne lashed himself to the rail and peered into blackness, seeing nothing, nothing at all, rain mixed with tears running down his face. He could feel the pain in the Gift, and he was awash with guilt for having brought her on this voyage.
After an endless time, the wind abated. The rain still fell in a solid curtain of wet.
Men went below and came back to say there were leaks - none of them large, but still, water was seeping into the holds. They set up a bailing line, using scoops to clear the water, chinking the seep holes with bits of rope dipped in frag sap.
Night wore on. The rain softened to a mere downpour, then to a spatter of wind-flung drops. Far to the west the clouds parted to show Abricor, just off full, descending beneath the River. In the east, the sky lightened to amber, then to rose.
Thrasne untied the knots that held him to the railing, coiled the rope in his hands, and staggered up to the steering deck to relieve the men there and give orders for repairs. He was half through with it, Obers-rom busy in the hold, Blange and a crew restacking the cargo to make room for caulking, when he chanced to look over the railing to the place the Cheevle swam along in their wake.
The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore Page 35