The Spark

by David Drake

  I wondered if Baga knew anything about cooking. It didn’t seem likely. Besides, he must be used to the boat’s converter after years of eating from it.

  Frances didn’t seem like a cook either, and I wasn’t going to disturb her anyway. Let her think she was safe from me in her room if she liked.

  Well, she was safe. Just not for the reason she thought.

  I remembered that Guntram had done something about the wine because he’d told Frances that he would. I hoped she was pleased with it—and I wished it had occurred to me to ask him about the rest of the menu.

  Still, there was one more place I could go for help. I slid into a trance again.

  “Boat,” I said. “The food isn’t very good and I don’t know how to make it better. Do you have other meals in your files that we can try?”

  “Master, you and your fellow have returned my systems to optimum condition,” the boat replied. “You did not reset the converter menu, however. Its current settings reflect the degraded condition in which it had been operating before your repairs. Would you like me to return the menu to its original settings? You will still be able to modify it according to your personal preferences.”

  “Boat, I’d like that a lot,” I said. “Thank you!”

  I wasn’t exactly hungry, but the original mutton stew hadn’t encouraged me to eat very much. The new version was great, the best I’ve ever had, and Buck liked it too.

  * * *

  I slept in a room with the door open—that was where Buck curled up most of the time too—but when I was awake I stood or sat in the aisle. It was confining—I usually get a lot of exercise—but it wasn’t boring because I spent most of my time in the boat’s structure.

  I could be inside the structure six hours out of eight—that was about what I averaged—for the rest of my life and I still wouldn’t have learned everything about it. I’d know a lot more when we arrived on Marielles than I had when we left Beune, though, and there was a lot I was learning that’d make me a better Maker generally.

  Maybe Guntram’d been right when he said I could have repaired the color projector. I remembered structures that’d baffled me; now that I saw how similar structures were completed in the boat, they made sense.

  Well, maybe I’d find another fragment like the one he’d gone off with. I’d like to repair one myself and give it to Guntram, to show how much working with him had taught me about how to teach myself more.

  * * *

  The second day out, Lady Frances opened her room. I wasn’t in a trance, though I was about to go into one. I looked at her and said, “Hello, ma’am. Is your wine all right?” I wasn’t sure we’d remembered to tell her after Guntram tried to fix the taste. It’s the same as not doing it if you don’t tell the other guy what you’ve done.

  “Yes,” she said. She stuck her head out the open side but her body was still in the room. “Quite satisfactory, thank you. And did he improve the meals as well?”

  “That was me,” I said, feeling proud of myself. “Well, it was the boat, really. I just asked it for help and it fixed things. The food really was awful before, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Frances. Her tongue touched her lips. “I thought I should thank whoever was responsible. I don’t want you to misunderstand, though; even though I’ve opened my compartment for the moment, I have a knife—”

  She brought her right hand into sight. The knife had a four-inch blade with a double edge.

  “—and I’ll use it if I have to!”

  “You won’t have to, ma’am,” I said. “And the boat says we’ll be on Marielles in two days.”

  I turned my head. Buck heard us talking and came out of our room. He tried to stick his nose under my right arm; I rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Ah, ma’am?” I said, looking up at Frances again. “There’s a mechanical lock on your door. See beside the upper left corner of the door? Your left. It looks like a twisty star—that’s it. If you turn it, the door can’t be opened except by you.”

  She looked where I’d said, but her eyes kept flicking back to me like she thought I was trying to trick her. I kept rubbing Buck’s neck. He liked it and I figured it made me seem as harmless as could be. That’s what I was, after all.

  When Frances turned the star with her left hand, paired lugs pushed out from the jamb. If the door had been closed, they’d have slid into mortises.

  “But I’ve been locking it,” Frances said, frowning.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “But I’m a Maker. The mechanical lock doesn’t go through the boat’s systems, so I can’t touch it.”

  “I see,” said Frances. Her voice had no expression at all in it.

  She went back inside her room. After a moment, she closed the door.

  * * *

  It was less than two days after that when the boat told me that we were arriving on Marielles. I came out of my trance just as Baga stood up to open the outside door.

  CHAPTER 12

  A View of Marielles

  It must’ve rained recently because there were puddles on the bare ground I saw through the boat’s open door. The sun was shining now, though.

  We were in the landingplace, where we’d have arrived if we’d come to Marielles by the Road. It looked pretty much like the others that I’d seen—bigger than Beune’s and the neighboring nodes in the Marches, but not nearly so big as Dun Add’s. The city was a sprawl of shanties a quarter of a mile up a wide gravel path, but there seemed to be solider buildings inside that rind.

  I could see twenty-odd people—some of them merchants and three or four travellers, but at least half of them just lounging around. Ours was the only boat.

  Buck hopped out past me, sniffed a tuft of coarse grass, and lifted his leg. I stepped out too, then thought of something. I moved to the side so that Lady Frances and Baga could get out if they wanted to, then leaned against my hand on the boat’s side and went into a trance.

  “Boat?” I said. “Is there another boat here on Marielles?”

  “Yes, Master,” the boat said. “The boat that was here when I came to Marielles before is still here. That boat had earlier visited Holheim while I was there.”

  Somebody was speaking to my body. I’ve got a lot of experience of working while there’s stuff going on around me, so it wasn’t going to bring me out of my trance until I was ready to come out.

  “Thank you, boat,” I said. “Can you get—will the other boat give you—the information in its log? I need to know where it’s been in order to find the lady we’re looking for.”

  “Yes, Master,” the boat said. “I have that information.”

  I thought for a moment about going off straight to find Lady Eloise without bothering to talk to people on Marielles, but I decided that we’d just go on the way we’d started. “Thank you, boat,” I said, and I let myself slide back into Here.

  “Pal, what are you playing at?” Frances said. She was pinching my sleeve between thumb and forefinger; I guess she was about to tug it since speaking hadn’t brought me around.

  I was still a bit dizzy from the trance, but I grinned at her and said, “I’m not playing, ma’am. I’m doing my job. The boat that your sister went off in is here in Marielles.”

  “Is Eloise all right?” Frances said. Her fingers on my sleeve spread; she grabbed my arm without seeming to know what she was doing.

  “Ma’am, I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re on the way to learning. One step at a time.”

  My eyes had cleared. The people who’d been on landingplace when we arrived had drifted closer. A boat attracted gawkers even at Dun Add, and on Marielles there weren’t any officials to hustle them away until the formalities were taken care of.

  I let Lady Frances deal with the people. Most of them were just curious, but a few wanted to sell her something—or sell me something.

  I got offered gewgaws carved from bone (I wasn’t sure what the bone was), fresh oranges (which I bought one of, though I suspect I could’ve got
ten two or even three for the copper I paid), and the virgin sister of the little boy offering shawls painted with the haloed face of a woman. I’d have clouted the boy, but he was twelve at the oldest and skinny, and it isn’t my business to decide how people in Marielles live.

  “Come along, Pal,” Frances said. “Baga will watch the boat, but I want you with me when I demand an explanation from Prince Philip.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. When we were alone, I’d tell her that we’d shortly know the route the boat with Eloise and her guard had taken, but for right now going along with whatever she said seemed the best plan. She was steaming again.

  Six men wearing blue berets came trotting up to us along the broad path from the town. They pushed through the spectators. The man at the head of them had three goose feathers in his beret, and the modular shield and weapon on his breast was chrome plated.

  All six of them were armed, but only the guy beside the leader seemed to me like he’d know what to do with his weapon. The others were scruffs, and two of them didn’t have shields.

  “I’m Lord Camm!” said the leader. “Prince Philip has directed me to bring Lady Frances to him at once.”

  Which meant that one of the idlers had recognized the boat or maybe Frances herself and had gone racing back to the palace. It wasn’t much over a month that she and the boat had been here before.

  “That’s good,” said Frances, “because I certainly want to see him.”

  She started up the path to town; one of the armed scruffs had to jump out of her way. Frances wasn’t very big, but neither is a hornet. She was a right determined woman, which you could tell just by looking at her.

  I started to follow, but Baga called from the door of the boat, “Pal? Can I talk t’ ye?”

  I looked at him and called to Frances, “Milady? I’ll catch you up. There’s a problem with the boat.”

  I didn’t know what Baga wanted. I was pretty sure he wasn’t worried about the boat, which was in great shape. I knew that from the boat’s own lips. Well, you know what I mean. Baga wasn’t one to push himself into things, though, and if he called me, I’d see what he wanted before I went into town.

  “Look,” Baga said when I got up to the door, “that guy whose leading the soldiers?”

  “Lord Camm?” I said.

  “I never caught his name,” Baga said, “but I’ve seen him. He was the boatman who came for Lady Eloise. He wasn’t but there and gone on Holheim and I was trying to get this old girl—”

  He patted his boat. I’d never thought whether it was male or female.

  “—back in shape to carry Lady Frances, which took me a month. But I saw that boatman and it was this Camm. I thought you’d want to know.”

  I looked after Lady Frances and her escort vanishing into the town. I wondered if she’d even missed me.

  “Thank you, Baga,” I said. “I surely did.”

  I clucked to Buck and we set off after the others at a trot.

  * * *

  I was expecting what looked like a palace, since Marielles’s ruler was a prince. When I got into the downtown, I wouldn’t have been able to tell which of the buildings was the right one except that some of the people who’d gone off with Frances and the soldiers were still waiting to get in.

  It was two stories of rust-colored brick with stone transoms, just like the buildings on either side of it. There were bars on the upper-story windows, but that was standard on both sides of the street.

  Instead of guards at the entrance, there was a fussy little man seated behind a sloping desk with a ledger open on it. He’d been passing the locals in with just a tick on the left-hand page, but when I got to him he sat up straight and said, “And who might you be?” in a tone that sounded more like an insult than a question.

  “I’m Pal of Beune,” I said. “I’m with Lady Frances.”

  The fellow sniffed. “All right then,” he said, writing out an entry on the right-hand page.

  Buck stayed close by my left knee as we went in, like he usually does when we’re in a crowd. I suppose if I’d been thinking about it, I’d have left him in the boat with Baga. That hadn’t crossed my mind, though.

  “Hey, you can’t take that dog inside!” the clerk said. I ignored him. I didn’t guess he was going to try conclusions with me, and if somebody else did, well, I’d deal with whatever came up.

  Beyond the anteroom was a set of stairs going up to the right and a short hall into a double-height room where I saw the people I was following. The fancy chandelier didn’t put out as much light as the windows in the roof cupola. Even with about fifty people standing in it, the room didn’t feel crowded. I moved up behind Frances at the front so I could look over her shoulder. Lord Camm was on her right and the other fellows with weapons close by.

  Instead of a throne, there was a polished wooden table. The young fellow sitting behind it had wavy blond hair and a bushy moustache. He didn’t have a beard, though. A beard would’ve helped with his weak chin.

  A woman was on the other chair behind the table. She was a stunner with dark hair and the whitest skin I’ve ever seen on a human being. She was beautiful, but I wouldn’t call her pretty or even attractive except in the way a leopard is.

  She seemed to me older than she was trying to look. She was sure older than the man.

  “Well, Lady Frances,” the blond man said, “I didn’t expect to see you back in Marielles so soon. Have you brought my dowry?”

  “I’m still looking for my sister, Philip,” Frances said in that fractured croak of hers. “Since the boat that took her off Holheim is here, I think this is the right place to start. Don’t you?”

  “I told you on your previous visit that the boat hasn’t returned to Marielles,” Philip said. His voice started out high-pitched and got even squeakier as his face turned red. “Nothing has changed since then!”

  “I now know that the boat is here!” Frances said. “That’s changed! What have you done with my sister?”

  “I’ve been told—” Philip said.

  “You’ve been lied to or you’re a liar!” said Frances. She was really something when she got started. “Where is my sister, Philip?”

  Philip had gotten angry, but he was now slanting back in his chair as if he thought Frances was going to come across the table at him. I didn’t think that, but it might’ve crossed my mind if it’d been me she was shouting at.

  “Lady Frances,” said the woman, “we’ve been polite to you thus far, but if you’re going to shout your nasty delusions—”

  “Ma’am?” I said, loud enough to stop her. “It’s not a delusion. Our boat has talked to the boat that took Lady Eloise. It’s here, and I guess I could find it in a day or two. Less if y’all would give me a bit of a hand.”

  The white-skinned woman stood up. I’d thought of a leopard when I first saw her, and she was a really angry leopard now. Her face didn’t look a bit pretty.

  “Camm, get that commoner out of the room if he can’t keep his mouth shut while his betters are talking!” she said.

  Camm turned and put a hand flat on my chest. I grabbed him by the wrist as he started to shove. He yelped and jumped back. I stopped twisting but I didn’t let go of him until I was sure he wasn’t going to push the matter.

  “That’s rich, Hellea!” Frances said. “You calling someone common? You’re a common whore!”

  Philip was standing also, but he didn’t seem to have much useful to say. I was keeping an eye on the guys in blue berets, especially the one who maybe knew what he was doing, but they were waiting till they knew better what was going on.

  I didn’t put my hands in my pockets, but I was ready to do that in a hurry. It was more or less an accident that my shield and weapon were in the jacket I’d put on when we reached Marielles. I hadn’t been wearing it during the voyage, and they were still there from when I’d boarded.

  “We don’t have much rank on Beune,” I said, not quite so loud as when I was breaking in on Hellea, “but I guess
I qualify as gentry back home. Lord Camm, if you want to come out to your jousting ground, we can settle this like warriors.”

  I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen after I spoke. I said it because it was true and it was what came to mind. If Camm was going to threaten me with his weapon, he needed to know that I was willing to dance to that tune.

  The hair along Buck’s spine was up. I was the only fellow in the room with his dog present. The tall warrior at Camm’s side glanced at Buck and put his hand on Camm’s arm, pulling him back just a hair. He knew what’d happen if they started something with me now.

  Hellea snarled something in Philip’s ear, keeping her eyes on me. In response, Philip squealed, “Lady Frances, you are no longer welcome in this court! Please take yourself and your companions off Marielles immediately!”

  “I’m not going until—” Frances said, then gulped as I pulled her backward with my left hand.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “we’re leaving now. Turn around and get out, and I’ll be out behind you. Now.”

  She looked up at my face, then said, “I’m going,” in a softer voice than she usually used. I let go of her and started backing out.

  The fellow holding Camm’s arm grinned at me. I thought of Duncan and wondered what this guy’s story was. Nobody came after us, but I didn’t relax till we got to the boat and I told Baga to close the door.

  * * *

  Even before the door closed, Lady Frances turned to me and said, “Master Pal, if you think I’m going to give up the search for my sister—”

  “No ma’am, I don’t,” I said, “and—”

  “—just because—”

  “Ma’am, hush!” I said. “Talk to Baga or talk to Buck or talk to yourself! I’m going to find out from the boat where your sister is.”

  I sank down onto the floor cross-legged. If I’d had to I’d have gone into my room and locked Frances out, but her face got quiet again and she nodded.

  “All right,” she said. I was already slipping into my trance.

  “Good afternoon, boat,” I said. “Can you retrace the route of Lord Camm’s boat between here and Holheim?”