by John Booth
“The Captain’s cabin is the obvious place. The trouble is that it is below the bridge and relatively small. I got into Sorn’s suite from above because I could descent to it from the side of the boat. I’m much more likely to be discovered if I attempt the same route for the captain’s cabin because I would be going over right in front of the bridge.”
“Sorn might take them with her if she goes into Wegnar, once we have docked,” Daniel reasoned. “I think it would be better if we don’t try anything tonight and go into the town to look around instead.”
“Gambling?” Jalia asked, hopefully.
“You don’t need me for that.”
“We shall split up then,” Jalia said firmly and cheered by the prospect. “I shall go out to earn the money we need to live and you can go and do whatever it is you do, just so long as it does not involve employing the services of any big breasted women.”
Jalia pouted at Daniel. “It doesn’t, does it?”
Daniel threw his pillow at her and a short fight ensued. This led to other things.
“See, I told you that they are just the right size,” Daniel said a short time later.
The Steam Dragon’s horn sounded in a series of blasts, to be echoed by a set in almost the same beat from far in the distance. Daniel opened his eyes, trying to remember where he was. Jalia was draped over him, her head lolling on his chest. She appeared to be fast asleep.
As Daniel tried to get up, Jalia resisted and clung onto him, her fingernails biting like teeth into his flesh.
“That’s the Flying Kite, the Steam Dragon’s sister ship. We’ll miss it going past if we don’t get up,” Daniel said as he shook her.
“So, two boats are going to pass each other on a river. Is that worth getting dressed for? It’s all very well for men, you don’t leak afterwards.”
“Put a pair of Hala’s knickers on,” Daniel said unsympathetically as he finally managed to pry Jalia off him.
“The things I do for you,” Jalia complained as she dragged herself from the bunk. Despite her complaining, she dressed remarkably quickly and finished ahead of Daniel. “Come on then,” she chided, “Boys are either too fast or too slow. With you, I’ve got the worst of both worlds.”
Daniel grinned as he tied the last of his bootlaces and stood up. “They say that practice makes perfect.”
“Do that again? With you? In the same year?” Jalia asked in mock horror.
“Well no, of course not,” Daniel replied with equal horror in his voice. “I shan’t be ready again until at least next spring. Perhaps you could get the Captain or Don to tide you over.”
“Idiot,” Jalia said as she opened their cabin door.
Hala was rubbing more of Daniel’s ointment into Nin’s wounds when they heard the boat horns. Nin’s wounds were much better, though it looked as if his back would carry a scar from Yan’s first strike.
“You have to go,” Nin told her, lifting up onto his elbows and wincing.
“But I was just going to give you some more pain relief,” Hala said with a sly grin.
“You can come back afterwards. In fact, I insist on it. But don’t miss the passage of the boats. It’s a highlight of the journey and I’d be up on deck myself right now, if it didn’t hurt so much to move. I never tire of watching it, nor do the rest of the crew.”
“Will you be all right on your own?” Hala knew Nin needed help if he wanted to get up.
“I can do it myself if needs be.”
“Don’t you dare,” Hala said primly. “That’s my job now.”
“Go on, hurry up. The Steam Dragon will be receiving the message bag when the boats pass. That’s my favorite part,” Nin urged.
Hala left the room.
“You forgot your knickers,” Nin shouted out to a closing door.
Cara and Don were in the dining room finishing a late lunch when the horns sounded.
“Why doesn’t Jalia like me?” Cara asked plaintively.
“Possibly because you throw yourself wantonly at her man,” Don said in a philosophical manner.
“I do not,” Cara exclaimed in outrage. “I’ve not touched Daniel, well not often and not in that way at all, worse luck.”
“I thought you were going to invite him to suckle on your breasts at breakfast.”
“Don! I wasn’t. I only wanted to show him my bruise.”
“I believe that your shirt can be lifted from below as well as pulled down from the top.”
Cara had the grace to blush. “I suppose I do fancy him…, a little,” she agreed and sighed. “I shall have to be more careful in future. I don’t want Jalia to hate me.”
“Does that mean you intent to stop making plays for Daniel or do you plan to make sure Jalia isn’t around when you make them?” Don asked, as he knew his sister and her passing obsessions.
“We have to get out on deck or we shall fail to find somewhere good to watch.” Cara dragged her brother to his feet and out onto the deck.
Tonas heard the horns sound from his cabin. Wilf and Tred had joined him for a quiet game of dominoes and they were hunched around a small circular table.
Wilf looked up in annoyance. “I suppose we shall have to go and watch,” he grumbled. “I knew something was going to happen the minute my luck changed.”
“Then we have a lot of time yet, brother.” Tred laughed. “Because you are certainly going to lose this round as well.”
“We should go,” Tonas said decisively, rising from the table. “There may be a message for my father from our contact in Slarn, and I will need to collect it before the Captain opens it.”
“He wouldn’t do that. It’s against the rules of the Boat Company,” Wilf said.
“He is certainly doing things to Gally Sorn that I’m sure the owners of the Boat Company have strict rules against,” Tonas replied. “I wouldn’t trust him farther than I could throw him.”
“Then we had better get up there quickly,” Tred said, grinning, “Because that isn’t very far.”
Gally Sorn lay on her bed, re-imagining old conquests in vivid detail when the horns sounded. It took a real effort to stop what she was doing. She sighed as she rose, pulling her skirt back into place and straightening her clothes.
As she washed her hands in the marble basin, she wondered what her father’s orders would be this time. He always interfered with her plans. He treated her as if she was still a little girl being instructed to go her uncle’s bed. She would have gone even without her father’s command, but he ordered her so that he could appear in control.
She plunged her face into the cold water, as she did not want anybody to see it flushed from her recent activity. There were some reputations she didn’t want to acquire. After drying her hands and face, and checking herself out in the mirror, Gally left her suite to join everybody else out on the deck.
Sila Klint was reading a book on the history of Slarn she had borrowed from Captain Toren when the horns sounded. Books were not common among the ordinary people and she had been surprised when he offered to lend it to her. She had asked him for any information on Slarn and the book was proving to be a gold mine, a thing she knew all too well how to exploit. Though it was forty years out of date, she knew the families it described would still be in positions of power. More than anything else, it gave her a feel for the dynamics of how power was wielded in that peculiar city.
Slarn was unique to her knowledge. The islands that made up the city Telmar resulted in a sharing of power they called democracy. After all, how could any one person take control in a city where every district was an island that could exist independently of the others? You couldn’t even blockade an island as the citizens all owned boats. Telmar had proved perfect for the mine owners as each could take possession of an island and not feel threatened by the others.
Slarn, on the other hand, had been designed to create three equal power bases by the Magician Kings, who had feared what a single autocrat might do with the power of the river gates. Sila was amaze
d that the system had survived for so long after the Magician King’s fall. As the magician families previously in power were killed by the Fairie, non-magical families rose to prominence to take their place.
The physical shape of the city demanded three ruling families who would be in permanent competition with each other. Over the centuries, one family had taken control for a few years, but then one of the Triums would rebel and the situation would swiftly return to the status quo.
Sila was so lost in admiration for the cunning of the Magician Kings that Alin Bredan was forced to tap her on the shoulder to bring her out of her reverie.
“What now?” she snapped.
“The horns are sounding. The Steam Dragon is about to pass one of its sister ships. It’s reputed to be an imposing sight.”
Sila looked over to the table, which held stacks of coins, neatly positioned after being counted. Alin had recounted them at least three times that morning.
“Put the money back in the bag then. We hardly want to advertise its existence, do we? Then let us join the other gawping passengers.”
As the horns sounded, Jant walked into Dor’s cabin.
“Where have you been, Jant? I thought you were supposed to be protecting me?”
“Sometimes victory is best achieved by surveying the terrain before a battle takes place, my lord,” Jant replied. “And you had Mal to guard you.”
“Do you think there will be a message for us?” Dor asked him irritably. “Sometimes I suspect that I am merely a pawn in my father’s bigger game.”
“That is the nature of families who manipulate power. Do you think that Gally Sorn does not have a puppet master of her own?”
“Hers can’t be worse than mine,” Dor snapped. “Well, let’s get up there. I would hate for Gally Sorn to recognize the seal on my letter.”
“Your father is hardly stupid enough to put the family crest on any letter he sends, my lord,” Jant pointed out. “And it will almost certainly be addressed to me and not to you.”
“Whatever.” Dor strode from the room.
Sala Rotiln, Halad al’Faran and Jak Venjer were already on deck and waiting when the horns sounded. They picked a good position to watch from behind the bridge on the starboard side. It was impossible to tell what Jak was thinking, hidden as he was in hood and cloak, but Sala and Halad looked anxious. Halad tapped his fingers against the rail they were leaning on.
“Are you expecting any particular news, Halad?” Jak asked in a voice that could have been used as an example of imperturbability.
“No, why do you ask?” Halad replied, his voice slightly higher and faster than normal.
“Oh, no reason at all.”
“It is always exciting to get news from home,” Sala told him. She wore sensible clothes, perhaps because there was often a problem with spray whenever these boats crossed paths. Sala had picked out a leather jerkin decorated in patterns with sequins and the odd semi-precious stone. She wore what would be considered riding trousers, if they had not been cut so tight that it was a wonder she could breathe.
“Personally, I always find it an annoyance,” Jak said. “There is always somebody back home demanding something. I would be just as happy if the Boat Company lost the letters along the way.”
The passengers were gathered on the same stretch of deck as Sala. Don and Cara were the first to arrive, but others followed quickly after them.
Most of the crew gathered on the deck above them, which was set back by the width of the walkway around the boat. Captain Toren had taken the wheel for the encounter while Seb Halder, the first mate, stood on the walkway and got ready to keep his Captain informed of just how close the boats were getting.
For the first time, the passengers saw the other boat as it came around a bend in the river. It was the Flying Kite. Where the Steam Dragon’s hull was steel finished to polished silver, the Flying Kite’s hull had been annealed to a light yellow. If it hadn’t been for its size, the passengers might have thought a giant butterfly was bearing down on them.
It appeared that the boats had taken up a collision course in the middle of the river and were moving as fast as their engines could take them. Jalia nudged Daniel and pointed to the deck above them. Daniel’s eyes widened and he poked Hala who had arrived next to them and told her where to look.
On the deck above, a man in a metal cage was using controls to move a large metal boom out over the river like a giant jousting pole. A similar boom was being deployed on the Flying Kite. The only difference between the two was that the Flying Kite’s boom had a large sack hooked over the end of it.
The sister ships moved closer and closer. Jalia was certain they were going to collide and was wondering if jumping into the river was the best escape plan. She started to climb over the rail when Daniel’s hand pulled her back.
“They are going to miss each other,” he said. As soon as Daniel spoke, Jalia knew he was correct. The boats were going to miss each other by about fifteen feet. At the angle the booms were positioned their tips were going to touch as the boats went by.
Now that the boats were closer, Jalia spotted a significant difference between them. While the number of passengers on the Steam Dragon could be counted on less than three hands, the Flying Kite was overloaded. There were even tents on the top deck near their boom and some of their crew were keeping the passengers away from the boom by forming a human chain.
It was impossible for the passengers not to hold their collective breath as the booms touched each other lightly and the bag was transferred. Then the boats rushed past each other and the Steam Dragon swayed in the disturbed waters in front of it.
Seb Halder had shouted numbers at the Captain, as a measure of the gap between the boats, and then the boats were past each other and everybody cheered.
“Did you notice?” Daniel asked.
“Rich refugees,” Jalia said confidently and Daniel nodded. Things in Slarn must have deteriorated if so many of the well-off in the city were getting out.
The boom had been swung back to the upper deck and the bag removed and passed down to Captain Toren. Packages were passed out to Jak, Sala, Halad, Gally, Tonas and Jant. Dor and Mal were nowhere to be seen. Jalia noted that the Captain also received a number of thick envelopes, which he passed over to Seb Halder for safe keeping.
“That’s a lot of people getting messages considering how few of us are onboard,” Daniel said.
“None of them looked too happy to be receiving them,” Jalia replied. “I thought Gally Sorn was going to spit at the Captain when he handed her one.”
“Jalia, are you wearing a pair of my knickers?” Hala accused as a gust of wind blew Jalia’s skirt upwards. “Just don’t expect me to wash them for you if you are.”
“Oh, I think you will Hala.” Jalia smiled at her. “Because otherwise we shall have to discuss why you aren’t wearing any at all right now, and you were when you left the cabin this morning.”
Hala blushed and nodded her head, praying that that would be the end of the matter.
6. The Five Gem Coin
“There it is,” Hala shouted excitedly from where she had watched the Flying Kite go past six hours earlier.
Daniel and Jalia stared up the river along the line she pointed. There was little to see but trees along the northern bank of the river. Then they saw what she was meant. It took them a few seconds to work out what it was they were seeing.
“It’s a stone canal jutting out into the river, I think,” Daniel said first. “It doesn’t look wide enough to take Steam Dragon though. It looks like a jetty”
“Nin says there will only be a few feet to spare on either side when we go down it. He told me exactly what to look for,” Hala explained.
“It is good to find that Nin is teaching you something more than how to take off your knickers,” Jalia said dryly. Hala’s face blushed for the second time that day. She wished Jalia would stop going on about it. It was not as though he had done anything more than look.
“How come we can’t see Wegnar?” Jalia asked. All that was visible were two parallel white lines of solid stone heading off into the forest, running as straight as a die.
“Nin says that Wegnar is a couple of miles north of the river. The canal connects the river to the town,” Hala explained with a touch of pride in her voice. It was good to be a source of information. It made Hala feel important.
“The banks of the Jalon must have eroded since this thing was built. Look how far it juts out into the river,” Daniel pointed out. “It must be incredibly strong not to have collapsed.”
It was difficult to judge the scale of things, as there were few visual guides except for the trees on the banks. Even then it was difficult to know how big a particular tree was. Now that they getting close to the ancient channel, it was clear that Daniel was right. It was also possible to see for the first that the walls and bottom of the canal were made from one continuous piece of stone. The Magician Kings had cut or magicked an elongated U of stone to form the channel. There were no breaks or interlocking pieces; it was just one continuous length stretching out into the forest.
Jalia did not envy Captain Toren’s job as he steered the Dragon into the channel with consummate skill. The most dangerous part was when the Dragon was half in and half out of the channel and still subject to the flow of the river.
The ribbon of stone and water stretched out into woodland. At the far end of the channel, they could see a building with two towers, one on each side. It wouldn’t be until they were much closer that they would be able to see that there were actually four towers, the second two hidden behind the first.
“That’s the Keeper’s Palace,” Hala told them with great satisfaction. “You can’t see it yet, but there is a circular lake at the end of the canal and the Keeper’s Palace is at the far end of that. There are lots of other buildings around the lake, but this waterway was designed so that all you can see is the Palace until you get closer.”