by K. J. Parker
Right up to the last minute, when Kudei threw Aidi the rope, there was the chance that one of the indentured men - for the life of him, Kunessin couldn’t recall his name - was lying down in the sloop’s waist, out of sight. But the first words Kudei said to him were, “We lost Picron Oistun,” and Kunessin caught himself thinking: that’s right, Oistun, it was on the tip of my tongue.
“Lost?” he said.
Kudei nodded. “We ran into heavy squalls on the way home. Things haven’t worked out too well, I’m afraid.”
“As bad as that.” Kunessin frowned. If Kudei had said it was a nightmare, a total fucking disaster, that would have meant sea-sickness, some tiresome problem with the rigging, squabbling among the crew. “Things haven’t worked out too well” was about as bad as it could get.
“Where’s Muri?” he asked.
“He’ll be all right,” Kudei replied. “Really, we should get him to the house as quickly as possible. Aidi’ll know what to do.”
Muri was sitting in the waist of the sloop, his back to the mast. “I’m fine, really,” he protested, but when he tried to get up, he failed dismally. It took three of the indentured men to carry him to the house.
“My own stupid fault,” he explained. “Fell out of the rigging, landed on my back, took a bit of a bump.”
Aidi leant over him, his face blank. “Can you move your legs?”
“Of course I can,” Muri said.
“Two days ago he couldn’t,” Kudei said quietly. “Now he’s got a bit of feeling back in his toes.”
“More than a bit,” Muri protested. “Mostly itching; it’s driving me crazy.”
Kudei sighed. “You know Muri,” he said. “Discomfort isn’t something you hoard; it’s for sharing with your friends.”
Kunessin looked round. Menin wasn’t there, of course; she was out in the woods with her basket. Muri didn’t seem to have noticed her absence. “We’d better get the sloop unloaded,” he said.
Kudei smiled. “That won’t take very long,” he replied.
He wasn’t far wrong. Afterwards, Kunessin hustled the indentured men out of the house, and A Company held a staff meeting.
“The journey out wasn’t so bad,” Kudei said, “not till we ran into a bit of a squall, third day out, which shook us up and dumped us way off course, about a day’s sail north-west. Which wouldn’t have been the end of the world,” he added, “except then we got becalmed, not a breath of wind for three days. Food all gone, water looking a bit sad; it was just as well the wind suddenly picked up in the middle of the night, ended up taking us straight there. By then, of course, we weren’t exactly at our best; also, we’d had to dump quite a lot of the trade goods over the side during the blow-up. Truth is, we didn’t manage to strike a particularly good deal with the chandlers, about a third less than we’d hoped for.”
Aidi was scowling. Kunessin said, “Not your fault. If you had to dump the stuff . . .”
“We should have done better,” Kudei said. “But anyway, we loaded what we’d got and patched up the sloop as best we could. The locals said we should be all right coming back, so we decided to take a chance and make a run for it. That was a week ago.”
Alces nodded. “What happened?”
“Same again,” Kudei replied. “Nasty storm second day out. That was when Oistun . . .” He frowned. “A big wave came up and sort of hooked him off the deck, all very quick, nothing we could do about it. Anyway, that left us short just when we needed every pair of hands, so Muri went charging up the rigging, slipped—”
“I was careless,” Muri said.
“Luckily, the wind died down soon after that,” Kudei went on. “Trouble was, it went to the other extreme. Stranded us for four days. We’d had the sense to lay in extra water, but we lost a full cask overboard during the storm. Also, ten barrels of flour smashed open and completely spoiled, some other stuff as well. Fact is . . . Well, you’ve seen for yourself. What with two storms and making a pig’s ear of the trade, I reckon we’ve got about half of what we were banking on getting, if that. Oh, and you can forget all about the bacon and the salt beef, we lost all that. Flour, oats, beans, I think we salvaged one barrel of malt. Otherwise . . .”
Silence for a moment or so; then Kunessin said firmly, “It could have been worse. And anyway, we haven’t done so badly while you’ve been away. In fact, I’d say we’ve proved we can pretty much fend for ourselves if we have to, so it’s not nearly as critical as it might’ve been.”
Aidi, who’d been frowning, said: “Exactly how much—?”
Kunessin cut him off. “We’ll worry about that later. Aidi, what’s the matter with Muri? You’re the doctor.”
Aidi shook his head. “If only,” he said. “Patching up cuts is one thing. Anything I do’ll probably just make it worse. Wait and see’s all I can suggest, really.”
“I’ll be fine,” Muri said loudly. “It’s not like there’s any bones broken.”
“Tell him to stop being brave, Teuche, before I break his neck,” Alces snapped. “Look, this could be serious. We ought to take him to the mainland, find a doctor.”
Kudei snorted with laughter. “For crying out loud, Fly,” he said. “We only just survived one trip, and you want us to go back? We’ll be lucky if any of us makes it. Besides,” he added, talking over Alces’ objections and Muri’s protestations of rude health, “I’ve been to that town, and I wouldn’t trust one of their doctors to butcher a hog. No kidding, Teuche, that’s a rough old place.”
Kunessin turned to Aidi. “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”
“No,” Aidi said firmly. “Too risky. We’ll stay here and see what happens.”
“Thank you,” Muri said gravely. “If I’d had to go back on that bloody boat, I really would’ve been ill.”
“All right,” Kunessin said, shaking his head. “We’ll give it three days. If you’re no better, we’ll take you to the mainland. By the sound of it, we need that long to get the sloop fixed up.”
In the event, Muri was back on his feet within forty-eight hours, which was just as well. Nobody was prepared to waste gold-panning time on ship repairs. Even Terpsi Cerauno put away his bow and headed for the river, and Clea made quite a scene when Kunessin forbade her to join in. By the time Muri was up and about again (and the first thing he did was grab a tin plate and hobble off down the river-bank), the only man not working the strike was Kunessin himself. He was still going through the motions of cutting timber for his fence, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it.
“Come with us,” Alces urged him. “An extra pair of hands—”
“I’m not just a pair of hands,” Kunessin snapped back angrily. “This is my island, in case you’ve forgotten. You want to spend all day up to your knees in mud, you carry on. I’ve got better things to do.”
Next morning, though, he waited till everybody was gone, then took a tin plate and crossed the yard to Aidi’s forge. It was dark inside, so he opened the shutters. Every surface was thick with dust - the floor, the bench, the face of the anvil - and the hearth was white with ashes, like snow on a meadow. He looked round until he found what he’d been looking for: a small swage block and a round-nosed punch.
An hour later, he closed the forge door carefully behind him and followed the well-worn path to the river.
Aidi was the first to see him; he was standing in mid-stream, brown water just over his knees, holding a pan full of sludge. His face was streaked with wet brown silt, and his clothes were sopping wet.
“Teuche,” he said. “What brings you here?”
By way of answer, Kunessin handed him the plate. Aidi saw that five evenly spaced concentric grooves had been hammered into it; a neat job, he had to admit. “What’s this in aid of ?”
Kunessin grinned. “Progress,” he said. “The idea is, when you shake the plate around, the heavy gold gets dislodged and falls into the groove. Then, when you sluice it off in the water, you don’t have to worry about losing what you’ve just got
out. Ought to speed things up, don’t you think? Also, it should take most of the skill out of it.”
Aidi was impressed, he could tell; that rather tight-lipped look. “Good idea,” he said. “Smart but simple. Better try it and see if it works.”
It worked. At the end of the day, Kunessin had sifted more gold dust than anybody else, and all the indentured men were crowding round him to get a closer look at the wonderful grooved pan, imploring him to tell them how he’d made it. Kunessin referred them all to Aidi, their resident craftsman, who’d be happy to make similar pans for all of them.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
Cerauno looked away. “I had to take my turn in the river,” he said. “Otherwise there’d have been trouble.”
She frowned. “You’re excused, surely. Somebody’s got to get the food.”
He shook his head. “Not since the boat came back,” he said.
“We still need fresh meat,” she said. “That little bit of flour’s not going to last long.”
“That’s not how they see it,” he said irritably. “Anyway, I’ve been hitting the deer pretty hard; it’s just common sense to rest it a few days. Otherwise they’ll cross the valley and be long gone.”
She gave him a mildly contemptuous smile. “We’re on an island, remember?” she said. “It’s not like they can get away.”
He shivered impatiently. “Look, I know what I’m doing, all right?” he said. “I don’t tell you how to pick mushrooms.”
She was silent, hurt, offended. He took a deep breath and apologised. “It’s not like I want to work in the river,” he went on. “I’d far rather be out here. But I don’t want them picking on me, saying I’m not pulling my weight.”
“You don’t have to excuse yourself to me,” she said, looking away. “Doesn’t matter to me what you do.”
He winced at that, feeling both annoyed and guilty. “Well, I told them I’ll be up the woods for the next three days, and they didn’t give me any trouble over it, so . . .”
She smiled at him, which made him feel uncomfortable, so he asked: “How’s your husband?”
“Oh, fine,” she said quickly. “Comes home in the evenings wet through, happy as anything.”
“He’s a grafter, I’ll give him that,” Cerauno said. “None of them can keep up with him, not even the general.”
“We don’t have to talk about Muri,” she said.
He felt threatened, and realised it was because she’d said the name; not Captain Achaiois, but Muri, as though Terpsi Cerauno and the captain knew each other as equals. He wasn’t quite sure why this should bother him, but to be on the safe side he apologised again.
“You make it sound like he’s something special,” she said. “He’s not. The rest of them treat him like rubbish. Don’t let him finish what he’s saying, don’t listen to him. He does all the work and lets them push him around. He’s a fool.”
Cerauno wanted to walk away. It wasn’t right, her talking like that. He liked the captain. He wasn’t right up himself like the other four, and he listened to what people said. He wanted to tell her not to talk like that, but he didn’t think he could.
“I’ve got to go now,” he said, and she froze, the way he did when he’d made a noise and the deer lifted its head. He felt a sudden surge of fear, which he couldn’t account for.
“See you tomorrow, then,” she said. Her eyes were very wide; she was concentrating on him.
“I expect so,” he replied, picking up his bow and quiver.
“Good luck.”
He nodded clumsily and walked away, not looking where he was going, straight into a tree root, which tripped him and made him stagger. Feeling ridiculous, he lengthened his stride, not caring about making a noise. At that moment, the very last thing he wanted to do was shoot a deer.
When he’d gone, she stood up and walked slowly down the path, swinging her basket by the handle. Deer had made the path, though there weren’t any left in this part of the wood now. She’d lost sight of him among the trees, but it was easy to see where he’d gone, if you knew what to look for. She thought briefly about the boy who’d taught her, back in the beech woods above Faralia. He’d been nice, but one day he’d tried to kiss her, and she’d hit him on the side of the head with a stone. He hadn’t made any trouble about it, even though she’d hit him quite hard, and he ended up losing the sight in one eye; he was afraid of her after that, and told everyone he’d fallen and banged his head on a rock. Still, he’d been useful. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t know how to follow a trail.
She followed him all morning, staying well back and keeping quiet. She saw him shoot a roebuck as it grazed on the sugary buds of a willow, down by the river. She didn’t look away as it kicked and stretched on the ground. She noticed that he held back until it had stopped moving, instead of running in and finishing it off. He broke the shaft of the arrow, trying to pull it out. That made her frown. Clearly he didn’t know that you were supposed to push the arrow into the wound and out the other side, to keep the barbs from digging in. Her uncle had taught her that. She wondered if there was some way of telling him without letting him know she’d been following him. His clumsiness offended her; a man should know how to do things properly, and she couldn’t help thinking just a little bit less of him for breaking the arrow. But, she persuaded herself, he couldn’t be blamed if nobody had taught him the right way (though it was perfectly obvious, really, so he should have been able to figure it out for himself).
She watched him paunch and dress the carcass, then quietly drew away and left him, making her way back to the path. She found a big patch of tree fungus, nearly enough to fill the basket, and a bed of watercress where one of the streams had flooded over the winter, so that was all right. She thought about her husband - how could a grown man fall off a mast and hurt himself like that? - and thinking about him made her feel cross and unhappy. It’d have served him right if he’d fallen on his head and broken his stupid neck. He’s a grafter, I’ll give him that, he’d said. None of them can keep up with him, not even the general. She scowled at the thought. It was stupid to work so hard, much harder than the others, and not get anything extra for it. They took advantage of him, because he was stupid and anxious to please, and the harder he tried, the more they looked down on him. And they’d have let her work in the river along with the men if only he’d stuck up for her; but he’d said no, the work was too hard for a girl (at least, that was what he’d meant; he’d tried to make it sound nice, but she knew what he was really saying). That made her think about the other girls, which made her even more sad. Chaere was spoilt and stupid, Clea was common, Enyo was moody and stressed all the time, and she couldn’t stand Dorun - so calm, so sensible, keeping them all in order like a shepherd’s dog. She’d seen Dorun looking at her; too shrewd by half. Not that she was ever nasty, not out loud to her face, but she didn’t need to be. She was horrible, the worst of all of them, and if something were to happen to her . . .
No, she thought, mustn’t think like that. If you start hating someone it shows in your face; people can tell, no matter how careful you are. Her uncle had always been able to tell just by looking at her. Maybe Dorun was the same, she thought, in which case things could get very awkward indeed. Suddenly she smiled (she had a nice smile, people said). If something were to happen to Dorun, maybe it’d happen to Muri as well - a plague, maybe (she wasn’t quite sure what a plague was; some kind of illness), or a fire, or pirates. It’d be so helpful if people could just die sometimes.
She thought about that for a while, turning it over in her mind as if chewing something delicious; she thought about the fire that had burnt up all the food, and imagined someone, the general presumably, gravely announcing to the company that his wife and his dear friend Muri had been killed in the blaze. Then everybody would’ve been really nice to her, the tragic young widow, and of course Dorun wouldn’t be there to suspect her of not really being sad at all. They’d be so kind - people could be
very kind, but usually only when something bad had just happened, which was sort of stupid, because you’d be too upset to enjoy it - and so long as you were careful and didn’t overdo it, you could make it last ever such a long time. And Terpsi would be nice to her, he’d have to be. She thought about that. Of course, it was wicked to want something bad to happen to anybody, and she took a moment to feel properly ashamed. That said, it wasn’t as though Muri, or Dorun for that matter, had any real claim on her, not like family. She’d seen how family could be: sons waiting for their fathers to die so they’d get the farm, daughters hating their mothers for years and years, cooped up in the same house together; husbands and wives were just as bad, brothers and sisters. Compared to all that sort of thing, wanting the death of a relative stranger wasn’t really so bad; and it wasn’t like Muri was some young man with all his life in front of him. Quite the opposite: he’d been a soldier, after all, and she didn’t like soldiers. They were killers, people who came and burned houses and drove off cattle and spoiled everything, so really, you couldn’t feel sorry for them. (She thought of her soldier, in the cave, and for some reason that made her think of Terpsi. She wondered: am I falling in love?) And then her mind turned to the gold, the immense fortune, and she found herself speculating: if one of them were to die, would his share in the gold go to his widow? Common sense said no, it wouldn’t, it’d be divided up between the survivors; but hadn’t the general said something about that - the company, with each of them having so many shares, which could mean it was like a farm or a business, and wives could inherit.
She scowled. She badly needed to know which it was, but of course she couldn’t very well ask, or at least it’d have to be done right, and that would mean being nice to Muri, pretending she was worried in case something were to happen to him and she’d be left. Already, she was phrasing the question in her mind, choosing the right tone of voice, the right expression to wear. It’d be awkward, she decided, but she could probably manage it, and then she’d know.