"By two minutes. Fancy some rough and tumble, eh?"
I halted. "Not especially."
"Some sublimated eroticism? Grope and squeeze?"
"How dare you!"
'Well, what do they get up to when you join the guild? Strip you naked and prod you with a windlass handle? Splice your mainbrace, whatever that means?"
"What makes you think they get up to anything? Well, they don't. So there."
"And pigs can fly." Had he slunk down to the quayside, and spied on me? Or had he just happened to notice that the Ruby Piglet was in town? Or neither—since it's often said that twins are empathic? Well, there was precious little empathy going on right now! At first I couldn't understand it.
He pointed his spyglass at me. "Seriously, Sis, you need a tumble. You'll probably have to learn to fight with knives, if you're going on a boat."
"Oh, I see. I see. You're bloody jealous—because after I've been to Gangee and back, in another week or two I'll be sailing smoothly into Verrino, while you'll still be stuck here burning your eyes out staring at sweet all. Don't worry, Capsi: when I'm home, from Umdala, in six months or so, I'll tell you what your darling Verrino's all about."
His lips whitened. "Don't you worry. I'll be there by then."
"In that case," and I peeled off one shoe, then the other, "you'll be needing these, and more!"
The first shoe missed him, bouncing off the wall where he had his pen-and-ink panorama of nowhereland, the opposite shore, tacked up. But the second crashed into his spyglass, spinning it from his hand, with a subsequent tinkle of glass. Curiously, he disregarded its fate. At first, anyway; what happened after, I don't know, for I was already fleeing from the room. No, I wasn't fleeing. I was withdrawing in haughty dudgeon.
During my hastily organized going-away party the following evening Capsi hardly spoke to me at all. Then, when I was on the point of leaving the house the morning after, with my duffle bag over my shoulder—which wasn't too traumatic a parting, from Mother and Father's point of view, since the run to Gangee and back was short— he winked at me, and whispered, "See you in Verrino."
"I'm sailing upstream first," I reminded him. "See you back here in three weeks."
"Don't be too sure of that, Sis." And he dealt me a playful punch on the shoulder.
* * *
Learning the ropes on the Saily Argent was no less—and no more— strenuous, muscle-forming, et cetera, than I'd expected; and of course there were no knife fights among the crew, or any other such garbage. Being a riverwoman was just work, with free time sandwiched in between.
The spring winds were blowing leisurely downstream, so our course—allowing for the long slow curves of the river one way, then the other—was basically west of south away from shore for a stretch till we were just over a third of a league out, then east of south back inshore again; repeat ad infinitum. Downstream river traffic at this season kept to a narrower sailing corridor nearer midstream, though always shunning by at least a sixth of a league the vicinity of the black current.
The dusty complexion of the country did not change markedly till we were almost at Gangee itself; then quite suddenly green hills bunched up, and foliage proliferated, and the semi-arid land disappeared—not to be seen again should we sail on as far as Ajelobo. For the Pecawar section marks the closest approach to civilization of the eastern deserts that parallel the whole course of the river from tropics to cooler north, generally at from ten to fifteen leagues' distance.
What was beyond the eastern deserts, further to the east? There was no way of knowing. Some expeditions had gone into the deep desert, in the past. One or two disappeared; one or two returned with the hard-won but unexciting news that the desert just went on and on.
Gangee, anyway, is on the very edge of the southern tropics, and is rather a fly-blown town, of sandstone buildings and rank weeds. It has neither the scoured dry neatness of Pecawar—with its shady arcades and secluded retreats of courtyards and fountains—nor the luxuriant bloom-bright tangle of cities further south. It's neither one nor the other; so it's weedy rather than lush, and stony without bothering to beautify. Still, I visited the bazaar, and the rather clammy river-aquarium with all its exotic southern species—frills and teeth and blobs of paint—next to its collection of dourer northern specimens.
Then it was time to sail back down midchannel to Pecawar again.
The Sally Argent carried a complement of twenty, with one berth still empty; and on the whole my riversisters treated this apprentice in a brisk and friendly way. The boatswain, Zolanda, was a bit of a sod at times, usually in the mornings, as though she always woke up with a headache (and perhaps she did); but my special friend was a rigger, Hali, a dumpy but energetic twenty-year-old with curly black hair and milky opal eyes: depending upon the light these either looked enchanting, or else slightly diseased with incipient cataracts.
The voyage downstream was straighter sailing than all the tacking upstream had been, and swifter with the tail wind. And less than a third of a league to port flowed the black current—which was the closest I had ever seen it, though it wasn't close enough for it to seem anything other than a thin strip of crepe ribbon laid along the entire midriff of the water. Actually, the current was about a hundred spans wide.
Remarkably, now that I thought of it—for it wasn't something that one generally wondered about in Pecawar, with only one sample of barren shore opposite—there was no river traffic at all discernible across the water to the west, not even the smallest inshore fishing craft, so far as I could see. What's more, there seemed to be no villages on that other bank—let alone towns—yet the land was obviously inhabited, judging by the occasional wisp of smoke and, once, a tower on a hilltop way inland. Didn't they know what boats were, over there? Or that there were tasty fish in the river? (And who were "they", anyway?)
I was relaxing on deck, soaking up the spring sunshine with Hali during a slack time two days out of Gangee, and staring vaguely at the black current—which was so much a natural part of the river that it was hard to remember that it meant: madness, and death—when the events of my secret initiation popped back into my mind, prompting a question that I hoped was discreetly phrased, so that it didn't violate my oath on The Book.
"Did you ever eat a black slug, Hali, before you joined the guild?" I asked quite lazily and casually.
And no sooner had I asked the question than I felt as sick as though I had indeed just crammed a garden slug, fresh from a bed of lettuce, into my mouth and was trying to swallow the slimy thing. I had to scramble up, rush to the rail and vomit over the side.
Hali was behind me, steadying my shoulders. "All of us," she whispered, "ask the question once. I was wondering when you would, Yaleen. You see, we are of the river now; and we obey its rules—we break them at our peril."
The convulsions in my guts were easing.
"Riverside?" asked a familiarly abrasive voice. It was Zolanda, of course. "What, on this titchy little swell?"
She stared at me coolly, as I wiped my mouth; and I realized that she was offering me an excuse—because she must have known.
"I'm all right," I mumbled.
"Too much basking in the sun, that's your trouble. Get some work done." And she set me a whole heap of tasks.
Of course, my vomiting was probably all psychological. To violate an oath, or try to circumvent one—particularly one taken on The Book of the River, which is our whole life, and all there is for us—is a pretty slimy thing; and essentially in such situations one punished oneself, and sharpish too. So that night in my bunk, as we rode at anchor, I experienced an awful dream in which the black current reared up high out of the river like a serpent, developed a gaping mouth, full of void, and descended on me blindly.
I woke up with a cry, convinced that I'd been about to die. Soon a scantily-clad Hali was comforting me; and presently she was doing so a little too intimately for my taste—or for my depths of inexperience—so that I cooled off from her somewhat for a f
ew days, though we still remained friends. And the dream did not recur; because it didn't need to. I worked at being a good boatwoman.
And so back to Pecawar, to pick up a load of spices.
And home for one night. I even invited Hali home, reasoning that if she liked me, she might like my twin brother too.
And Capsi had gone. Quit the nest. Trekked off northward, leaving his panorama of the further shore and his home-made spyglass behind as though they were but childish toys.
I had to spend some time consoling and reassuring Mother and Father—not so much because Capsi had absconded (a man eventually ought to leave home), nor even because he had departed unwed, as because of the double desertion within such a short span of time. True, / would be returning home, but the voyage down to Umdala and back was a matter of months, not weeks. And who knew whether I would be returning on the Sally Argent at all? Or if I did stay with the boat, whether it would be sailing as far upriver as Pecawar the next time?
I told Father that I would try to look out for Capsi in Verrino, though this was a fairly vain undertaking since we would be sailing into and out of Verrino before Capsi could possibly have reached the town on foot. I was careful not to promise to find him, even on the return trip.
So the overnight stay was a rather muted affair, even though Hali did her best to sparkle. I was only too glad to say goodbye the next morning.
You can spot Verrino from a long way upriver on account of its Spire, the natural rocky column rising from a particularly steep hill behind the town. On top of the Spire, up hundreds of steps with only a guiderope to stop you falling off, was where the little band of observers lived in presumably spartan circumstances, staring across at the further shore through telescopes till their eyes grew dim. From the town itself one couldn't see anything of their activities, and the steep steps were quite a disincentive to further investigation. I did climb up as far as the base of the Spire itself, then gave up, feeling obscurely that I had done my duty. In any case it was quite impossible that Capsi could be up there yet.
So I turned my attention, instead, to exploring the town proper: a pleasant bustling twisty up-and-down place, with sudden arbours and piazzas, wooden footbridges hung with clemato and cisca-vine crossing over alleys, which in turn tunnelled through rock or under buildings, themselves to emerge unexpectedly at rooftop height: rooftops crammed with terracotta urns of fuchsias. After the flatness of Pecawar, I adored Verrino, though the place made my calves and ankles ache. The people scampered everywhere, chattering like monkeys, many of the men with laden baskets balanced on their heads, the further to defy gravity—though no one that I saw ever went so far as to shin down vines as a short cut from one level to the next.
Yet scamper about though they might, it certainly wasn't fast enough for boatmistress Karil, who by the second day was grumbling about demurrage charges, and by the third was inveighing that we would have to spend the whole damn week here, the way things were going.
What was holding us up was a large consignment of spectacle lenses from the glassworks and grindery inland—another reason, by the by, in addition to the towering vantage point of the Spire, why the observers congregated above Verrino—and since lenses are such a costly item compared with their size, and since they were bound all the way to Umdala, Karil was loth to sail off and leave the freighting to a subsequent boat, thus losing a handsome percentage.
So the crew were free to roam—one or two to go looking, speculatively, for possible husbands; those older women such as Zolanda, who were already married with a husband ensconced in some far port, to go hunting discreetly for a spot of carnal appeasement and amorous intrigue with married men; and some of the younger women with whoever took their fancy.
Naturally, married men whose wives were absent were bound to be the husbands of other riverwomen; and you might have thought it was rather poor form for one riverwoman to have fun with another riversister's man while she was away. But actually this was something of a game and generally winked at; and when I came to think of it, it made sense. Some women might be away for months, even as long as a year, and during this time obviously they nursed desires—as did their spouses back home. Better, much better, that there should be a kind of covert swap arrangement, all within the embrace of the guild, even if nobody admitted it publicly.
But besides these stranded husbands, there were always a number of adventurous and available young men—who could hardly look to the girls of their own town to marry; and this firm custom cast a risky pall over seducing those girls, or even flirting too boisterously.
So the next secret of the guild that I learned—from Hali, who else?—was how to avoid getting pregnant in foreign ports, a skill without which these shore-leave adventures could have proved bothersome. A drug, which in river argot was simply called "Safe" —thus keeping it our own preserve, should shore ears be wagging— could be extracted by boiling up the entrails of the barbel-fish.
Not that it was any crime to become pregnant, though given the exertions of our work this could end up by "beaching" a riversister for quite a while; and you would sometimes see girl children on passing boats, though generally all kids were left at home in the husband's care.
Girl children: that was the real problem. Boy children could no more sail the river repeatedly than could youths or grown men— which would mean that boys bom or wombed on the river would, when they grew up, have to walk all the way to a future wife's town, should she care to put up with this inconvenience for the sake of love; and sometimes the river might even take exception to a male foetus well before its term, making the mother miscarry; and who was to know whether a foetus was male or female? So a riverwoman contemplating pregnancy generally arranged this with some care, and beached herself for the full term. Many riverwomen played it safe permanently; and would only consider adopting a family. And many never bothered marrying at all.
So, on what was to be our penultimate evening in Verrino, Hali winked at me. "Let's try the night life out," she said, and handed me a little blue phial of fish juice.
I accepted it laughingly, only partly out of bravado.
"Why not?" I winked back, and drank it down.
A couple of hours later we were in a busy wine-arbour lit by fairy candles, bantering with a pair of slim handsome brothers with coppery skin, lambent eyes and pert tumed-up noses—with the banter gradually becoming more serious, though of course destined to remain a game; whatever happened, a game. I was a little tipsy, and my partner, with whom I danced a few turns, said that he was called Hasso—and maybe he really was called that. I kissed him, and when I next paid attention, Hali had vanished from the arbour along with her new friend.
Hasso murmured sweetly, "I know somewhere."
"I know lots of places," I said, rather wickedly. "Pecawar, Gangee. . . ."
But he took my repartee in good part; as indeed he would, since he was anxious to please me.
And not so many hours later we were at that somewhere, the two of us—it was an attic room, window choked with nightscented clemato, reached by a long thin bridge—and I was discovering that I didn't know everything, though I was quick to learn.
Nor did he know everything; though the gaps in his knowledge were other than mine.
"Must be marvellous, river travel," he nuzzled in my ear. Or something to that effect; I was on the point of swinging round to approach him by another route.
"Must see all sorts of things on the far bank, while sailing." He was leaving out the personal pronouns, perhaps without realizing he was doing so. As I surmised presently, he thus drew back from actual spoken breach of faith.
"Cities and such—"
At this stage I wasn't offended; I simply thought that since the aura of the river was about me, this was turning him on as much as my young charms.
"Ah, beyond the black current—"
I thought, capriciously, of telling him what that current tasted like, but I had no particular desire to test whether I would vomit as readily on
shore as I had on the boat. Besides, I already had my mouth full, being otherwise occupied.
He relaxed with a groan.
"Tell me something that's seen over there, eh? Something wild and wonderful. Anything at all."
I broke off abruptly, squirmed aside and found my clothes. I knew now. It was no coincidence that Hali and I had fallen in with these two personable brothers at the wine-arbour. They'd been looking for such as us. Or rather, for such as me: someone new and naive, freshly filled with all the wonders of the river and its sights, and probably boastful. No doubt the other brother was simply keeping the more experienced Hali suitably occupied, while Hasso set out to pump me on behalf of the observers up there on the Spire. . . .
I didn't cry or make a fuss or accuse him, consoling myself with the thought that / had pumped him. Dry.
"Have to get back," I lied. "I'm on nightwatch."
Why any boatmistress should order nightwatch kept in a harbour, I had no idea; but it was the first thing I thought of.
Hasso propped himself on his elbow, grinning. "Are you sure you have to get back to your ship, little Yaleen?"
"My boat, " I corrected him hotly. "Shorelubber!"
And in another moment I fled past the veils of clemato, whose smell seemed cloying now, and over the high slim wooden bridge, alone.
I'd wondered whether or not to tell Hali of my suspicions; however it was the wee hours before she returned on board and by then it had occurred to me that she might imagine I was rationalizing some sort of sexual disaster; which I was not, by any means. So in the end I pretended to be asleep, and said nothing at all.
And early in the morning the padded boxes of spectacle lenses arrived. Almost immediately afterwards we cast off and set sail downstream, for all points north to furthest Umdala.
I didn't return to up-and-down Verrino for a whole year, by which time I was no longer just an apprentice but newly held my guild ticket; nor was I on the Sally Argent any more.
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