Killashandra (21 page)

“Catch you next trip, Jorell?” Lars called to the man steering the harbor boat out toward the anchored ships.

“Gotcha, Lars!”

“There’s Keralaw,” Killashandra said, pointing to the woman who was ladling hot soup from an immense kettle into bowls.

“You can always count on her hospitality,” Lars said and they altered their path to meet her.

“Carrigana!” Keralaw paused in serving a family group and waved one arm energetically to catch their attention. “I’d no idea where you’d—” She halted, eyes goggling a bit at the garland about Killashandra’s neck, staring at Lars’s matching one. Then she smiled. She patted Killashandra’s arm approvingly. “Anyway, I put your carisak with mine on the float to the Ridge. Will I see you two there?” Her manner bordered on the coy as she handed them cups from the bag at her side, and poured the hot soup.

“After we’ve sailed the
Pearl
to the Back,” Lars said, easily but Killashandra thought his expression a trifle smug, as if he liked surprising Keralaw. He blew on his soup, taking a cautious sip. “As good as ever, Keralaw. One day you must pass on your secret recipe. What’ll Angel do in a crisis without you around to sustain us!”

Keralaw made a pleased noise, giving him a dig in the ribs before she sidled up to Killashandra. “You did better
on the shore than I did from the ship!” she murmured, winking and giving Killashandra an approving dig in the ribs. “And,” she added, her expression altering from bawdy to solemn, “you’re what he needs right now.”

Before Killashandra could respond to that cryptic comment, Keralaw had moved off to the next group.

“With Keralaw in the know,” Lars said between sips, “storm or not, the rest of the island will be informed.”

“That you and I have paired off?” Killashandra gave him a long stare, having now decided what the special blue garlands must signify in island custom. It was presumptuous of him, but then, he was also presuming her acquaintance with island ways. The account, when rendered from her side, was going to be heavy. “You’re remarkably well organized here …” She let her sentence dangle, implying that she’d been elsewhere to her sorrow.

“Angel’s not often in the direct path, and the storm may veer off before it hits, but one doesn’t wait until the last moment, not on Angel. Father doesn’t permit inefficiencies. They lose lives and cost credit. Ah, Jorell’s back. Hang on to your cup. We’ll need them later.”

The harbor skip waited for them and its other passengers in the choppy waters. Lars bent to rinse out his cup and Killashandra followed suit, before swinging over the gunwales of the water taxi. Willing hands pulled them aboard.

There was a lot of activity on those ships still left in the harbor, but many had already started for the safety of the protected bay. Lars chatted amiably with the other passengers, naming Killashandra once to everyone. The approaching storm worried them all, despite the well-drilled exodus. It was considered early in the season for such a big blow: odds were being given that it would veer west as so many early storms tended to
do; relief was felt that neither of the nearer two moons was at the full, thus affecting the height of the tides. The pessimist on board was sure this was the beginning of a very stormy winter, a comment which caught Killashandra’s interest. Winter? As far as she knew, she’d arrived in Optheria in early spring. Had she missed half a year somehow?

Then the taxi pulled alongside a sleek-lined fifteen meter sloop-rigged ship, and Lars was telling her to grab the rope ladder that flopped against its side. She scrambled up, almost falling over the life-railing, which she hadn’t expected. Then Lars was beside her, cheerfully shouting their thanks to Jorell as he deftly hauled the ladder inboard and began to stow it away.

“We’ll rig the cabin before we sail,” Lars said, nodding astern toward the hatch.

Killashandra didn’t know much about ships of this class but the cabin looked very orderly to her, arranged as it was for daytime use. She went to the forward cabin, and decided that she had been in the top right-hand bunk. She turned back, to approximate the view she would have had, and decided that the
Pearl Fisher
had conveyed her to that wretched little island.

“Update!” Lars said as he came down the companionway, talking to the handset. He listened as he did a cursory inspection of the nearest cupboards, smiling as he turned toward her. “Alert me to any changes. Over.”

He put the handset down and, in one unexpected sweep, hauled her tightly into his arms. His very blue eyes gleamed inches above her face. His face assumed the expression of a sex-mad fiend, his eyes wide in exaggerated ferocity, as he bent her backward in one arm, his other hand stroking her body urgently. “Alone, at last, m’girl, and who knows when next we have the privacy I need to enjoy you to good advantage!”

“Oh, sir, unhand me!” Killashandra fluttered her eye
lashes, panting in mock terror. “How can you ravish an innocent maid in this hour of our peril?”

“It seems the right thing to do, somehow,” Lars said in a totally different tone, releasing her so abruptly she had to catch herself on the table. “Curb your libido long enough for me to make the bed you’re about to be laid in.” He flipped the table onto its edge, gestured for her to take the other side of the seat unit which pulled out across the deck.

Simultaneously they fell onto the bed, and Lars began his assault on her willing person.

The summons of the handset brought them back to reality that had only peripherally impinged on their activities. Lars had to steady himself in the lurching ship to reach the handset. He frowned as he heard the update.

“Well, beloved, I hope you’re a good sailor, for it’s going to be a rough passage around the wing. That storm is hurrying to meet us. Neither a veer nor a pause! Grab the wet weather gear from that cupboard. Temperature’s falling and the rain’s going to be cold.”

Fortunately Lars gave clear instructions to his novice crew and Killashandra coped with her tasks well enough to gain his nods of approval. The
Pearl Fisher
was fitted to be sailed single-handed, with the sheet lines winched to the cockpit and other remotes to assist in the absence of a human crew. Lars beckoned Killashandra to join him in the stern as the anchor was lifted by remote. Another hauled the sloop’s mainsail up the mast, Lars’s pennon breaking out as the clew of the sail locked home.

The wind took the sail, and the ship, forward, out of the wide mouth of the harbor, which was now clear of all craft. Nor did there seem to have been anyone to notice their delay. The beach was empty of people. The shuttered shops and houses had an abandoned look to
them. The tide was already slopping into the barbecue pits and Killashandra wondered just how much would be left on the waterfront when they sailed back into Wing Harbor.

Killashandra found the speed of the
Pearl Fisher
incredibly exhilarating. To judge by the rapt expression on his face, so did Lars. The fresh wind drove them across the harbor almost to its mouth, before Lars did a short tack to get beyond the land. Then the
Pearl
was gunwale deep on a fine slant as she sped on a port tack toward the bulk of the Wing.

It was an endless time, divorced from reality, unlike cutting crystal where time, too, was sometimes suspended for Killashandra. This was a different sort of time, that spent
with
someone, someone whose proximity was a matter of keen physical delight for her. Their bodies touched, shoulder, hip, thigh, knee, and leg, as the canting of the ship in her forward plunge kept Killashandra tight against Lars. Not a voyage, she realized sadly, that could last forever but a long interval she hoped to remember. There are some moments, Killashandra informed herself, that one does wish to savor.

The sun had been about at the zenith when they had finally tacked out of the Wing Harbor. It was westering as they sailed round the top of the Wing with its lowlands giving way to the great basalt cliffs, straight up from the crashing sea, a bastion against the rapidly approaching hurricane. And the southern skies were ominous with dark cloud and rain. In the shelter of those cliffs, their headlong speed abated to a more leisurely pace. Lars announced hunger and Killashandra went below to assuage it. Taking into account the rough water, she found some heat packs which she opened, and which they ate in the cockpit, companionably close. Killashandra found it necessary to curb a swell of incipient lust as Lars shifted his long body against hers to get a better grip on the tiller.

Then they rounded the cliffs and into the crowded anchorage which sheltered Angel’s craft. Lars fired a flare to summon the jitney to them, then he ordered Killashandra forward with the boat hook to catch up the bright-orange eighty-two buoy to starboard. He furled the sail by remote and went on low-power assist to slow the
Pearl
and avoid oversailing the buoy.

Buoy eighty-two was in the second rank, between two small ketch-rigged fisherboats, and Killashandra was rather pleased that she snagged the buoy first try. By the time Lars had secured the ship to ride out the blow, the little harbor taxi was alongside, its pilot looking none too pleased to be out in the rough waters.

“What took you so long, Lars?”

“A bit of cross-tide and some rough tacks,” Lars said with a cheerful mendacity that caused Killashandra to elbow his ribs hard. He threw his arm about to forestall further assaults. Indeed they both had to hang on to the railings as the little boat slapped and bounced.

For a moment, Killashandra thought the pilot was driving them straight into the cliff. Then she saw the light framing the sea cave. As if the overhang marked the edge of the sea’s domination, the jitney was abruptly on calmer waters, making for the interior and the sandy shore. Killashandra was told to fling the line to the waiting shoremen. The little boat was sailed into a cradle and this was drawn up, safely beyond the depredations of storm and sea.

“Last one in again, eh Lars?” he was teased as the entire party made its way out of the dock and started up the long flight of stairs cut in the basalt. It was a long upward haul for Killashandra, unused to stairs in any case and, though pride prevented her from asking for a brief halt, she was completely winded by the time they reached the top and exited onto a windswept terrace. She was relieved to find a floater waiting, for the Backbone
towered meters above them and she doubted her ability to climb another step.

Polly and other trees lined the ridge, making a windbreak for the floater as it was buffeted along, ending its journey at a proper stationhouse. Killashandra had profited by the brief rest and followed Lars’s energetic stride into the main hall of the Backbone shelter.

“Lars,” called the man at the entrance, “Olav’s in the command post. Can you join him?”

Lars waved assent and guided Killashandra to an ascending ramp, past a huge common room packed with people. They passed an immense garage, where hundreds of packets resembling some strange form of alien avian life dangled weightless from their antigravs.

There was a storm chill in the air and Killashandra was aware of symbiont-generated inner tension as her body sensed the impending arrival of the hurricane.

“The command post is shielded, lover,” Lars said, catching her hand in his and stroking it reassuringly. “Storm won’t affect you so much there. I feel it myself,” he added when she looked up in surprise at his comment. “Real weather-sorts, the pair of us!” The affinity pleased him.

They reached the next level, predominantly storage to judge by the signs on the door on either side of the wide corridor. Lars walked straight for the secured portal at the far end, put his thumb on the door lock which then slid open. Instinctively Killashandra flinched, startled by the sight of the storm-lashed trees, and the unexpected panoramas, north and south, of the two harbors. Lars’s hand tightened with reassurance. On both sides of the door, the walls were covered by data screens and continuous printout as the satellites fed information to the island’s receivers. The other three sides of the command post were open, save for the circular stairs winding down to the floor below.

Olav was on his feet, walking from one display to the next, making his own estimate of the data. He looked up at Lars and Killashandra, noting with the upward lift of one eyebrow the bruised garlands they wore. He indicated the circular stairway and made a gesture which Killashandra read as a promise to join them later.

They crossed the room, Lars pausing to read the displays at the head of the staircase. He made a noncommital grunt and then indicated that she should precede him. Therefore she was first in the room, grateful that only large windows north and south broke its protection from the elements without, while a fire burned in a wide hearth on the eastern wall. The western wall was broken by four doors, the open one showing a small catering area. But Killashandra’s attention was immediately on the occupants of the room, three men and the most beautiful woman Killashandra had ever seen.

“Nahia! How dare you risk yourself!” cried Lars, his face white under his tan as he brushed past Killashandra. To her complete amazement, he dropped on one knee before the woman, and kissed her hand.