Sapphire
staggered along, leaving a trail of bobbing brass and copper behind her. Brota avoided Nnanji’s eye.
Suddenly there was no wind. The sails flapped listlessly, the ship lost way and then wallowed in waves outrunning the storm. Pots dropped alongside now stayed there, no longer falling astern.
“What’s happened?” Nnanji demanded suspiciously.
“It is the calm before the storm. We expected it. When the wind comes, it will be from behind us—and strong. That’s why I said that we may not be going to make it. All we can do now is wait.”
They could also shorten sail. Tomiyano’s whistle shrilled, and the hands started for the ratlines. Nnanji shrugged and went back to heaving cargo overboard.
“ . . . nothing of which I may be ashamed . . . avoid no honor . . . ” declaimed a voice below them, a deep voice, but faint; audible now only because the wind had dropped.
“What’s
that
?” Brota exclaimed, taken by surprise.
Nnanji looked uncomfortable. “It is Lord Shonsu. He is repeating the code of the swordsmen. Usually what he says makes no sense, but today he keeps quoting bits of the code.”
Brota and Nnanji looked at each other uneasily. “Like a prayer?” she muttered.
A prayer for forgiveness?
Above them the sky grew steadily blacker, and to the west was the father of all blacknesses.
Brota yielded the tiller to Tomiyano and Oligarro. It might take both of them to hold it when the time came. The air was calm, humid, and menacing.
Sapphire
drifted aimlessly on the great River.
Little deck cargo remained, all securely tethered. The dim deckhouse was packed tightly, and when Brota and Nnanji went to inspect it they could not see the patient. Jja was sitting in a far corner on a chest. Shonsu lay at her feet, safely barricaded behind it. She smiled bravely across the forest of pots at them. “The sorcerers will find it difficult to reach my master here,” she said.
Brota made a cheerful reply, but if they had to abandon ship there would be no quick way to get Shonsu and his slave out of that corner. Nnanji did not seem to have thought of that. She wondered if Jja had.
“ . . . sutras of the swordsmen . . . the will of the Goddess . . . ” the sick man said.
Then the wind came.
Tossing and rolling, creaking angrily in every timber and rope,
Sapphire
ran before the storm. Brota huddled in a leather cape in the shelter of the deckhouse wall and wept for the old ship. It had been an unkindness to load her so, a breach of trust. At every roll or pitch, there was a muffled clashing of metal from the cabins below, but Tom’o was magnificent. His grandfather could have done no better, reading the air by the look of the water, angling the old vessel along the edge of the wind, arrowing toward Wal, staying out of the calm before them and out of the fury behind.
Still there was no rain, only cold blasts of wind and darkness, pitchings and creakings. Wal gleamed in sunshine ahead of them for a while, growing closer now, but oh! so slowly. The tower became obvious, an ironic beacon of hope. Then the shadow fell on Wal, also, and only the distant mountains knew sunlight. The children were already stowed in a dinghy. The adults stood by the rails and tried to seem unconcerned as the storm pursued them, marching on pillars of lightning across the waters, grumbling thunder like a cursing of giants.
Wal looked much like Aus, wooden walls and red tile roofs. There were no ships at anchor here; all lay safely moored at the dock, stirring nervously as the waves grew. Tomiyano took
Sapphire
in and found a berth.
Then he marched angrily down to the deckhouse to hide his face from the sorcerers. Brota, watching him go, suddenly realized that he was going to be shut up in there with Nnanji. There was room for two people inside the door, but not much room. She shouted, and the captain paused, nodded, and passed his belt and dagger to Oligarro. Then he stamped inside and shut the door. She went over and stood close by, just in case there would be trouble; but the sailor was unarmed, the swordsman could not easily draw his sword under that roof—and if he tried, Tom’o would snap him like a twig before he succeeded.
Through the shutters she heard only silence and a distant, hoarse rumble: “ . . . sutras of the swordsmen . . . ”
Brota stayed by the deckhouse door to watch over Oligarro, a heavyset, white-haired man, quiet spoken; usually reliable, but cursed with an unpredictable temper. The docks were deserted before the coming storm, strangely empty, dust blowing over the stones, the litter, and the horse droppings. The only visible life was a slave gang carrying timber from the next ship and loading it on a wagon. The horses had been removed to safety, but slaves were waterproof and did not shy at thunder. Thunder! It rolled almost unceasingly from the coal-dark sky that hung tike a black tent overhead.
Brota and Oligarro . . . everyone else, adults and children, had fled below to tidy up down there and rejoice at reaching safe haven. She supposed it was safe, glanced up unhappily at that all-seeing tower, so like the tower at Aus, but here doubly ominous in the gloom, black on black. She hoped that the sorcerers’ rules would be the same here, that a swordswoman was safe on board. Then she saw that one other person had stayed—Katanji was sitting cross-legged in the sheltered spot below a dinghy, watching and grinning like an imp, disappearing as the lightning threw shadow over him, reappearing in the subsequent gloom. He was not wearing his sword, so he should be all right. Sharp kid; he liked to see, liked to know.
Then a port officer arrived, and the plank was run out for him. He came hobbling up slowly, an emaciated old sailor of the Third, and she disliked him on sight. He paused to make the salute to a superior to Oligarro, his brown robe writhing around his thin shape, his eyes watering in the wind. His name was Hiolanso. Shonsu had said that the port officer in Aus was a sorcerer. If this was also one, he had chosen a much less attractive shape—meager white hair, scraggy neck, many wrinkles, and liver spots.
Oligarro responded as captain of
Sapphire
.
Hiolanso bid him welcome to Wal on behalf of the elders and the wizard, then headed for the deckhouse, seeking shelter. She stepped in front of it to block him. Frowning, he eyed her face-marks and saw who made the decisions. He saluted wryly and she responded.
“You are aware that swordsmen are not allowed ashore, mistress?”
“I guessed as much.”
Hiolanso looked suspiciously at the deckhouse, turned to study the deck cargo and then to face Oligarro. “You seemed heavy laden when you came in, Captain. Low in the water?”
“We made it,” Oligarro said without expression.
The old man made a twisted smile and shouted over the wind, “Then let us do our business quickly. I have no wish to hang around in this weather. The fee is twenty golds.”
“Twenty!” shouted Brota and Oligarro together. Thunder bellowed above them in celestial outrage.
“I have never heard of such a fee for a ship this size!” Brota roared.
The officer smiled again, suddenly illuminated by lightning. He winced at the ensuing noise and then said, “Nevertheless, that is the fee—today.”
Oligarro was turning red. “It is absurd! We cannot pay!”
“Then you must leave.” he must be listening behind the door. Was this old man a sorcerer?
“I have five golds here,” Oligarro said, blustering and uncertain. “Take it and be gone.”
“Twenty.”
They had no choice and he knew it. Brota glanced down at the dock, and there were four or five youths standing there, accomplices undoubtedly. The old crook would order their lines cast off if they did not pay him. She had met corruption before in port officers, but never this blatant, never with a monster hanging over the River and waiting to smash her ship.
“I must go and get the money, then,” she said, flashing a warning glance at Oligarro. Veins bulged in his ruddy, stolid face.
“Be quick! Or I shall make it thirty.” Hiolanso was shivering in the cold.
Angrily Brota gave Oligarro another meaningful look, then stamped away, heading for the companionway door. She hoped he was using his head—don’t lose your temper, keep that man out of the deckhouse. If that scoundrel discovered a highrank swordsman on board, his fee would become fifty at once. But the money was in her cabin, aft, and the passages were cluttered with copperware. Katanji scampered ahead of her and held the door open against the gale.
She muttered thanks. She had gone only two steps when he said, “I have fifteen golds here, mistress.”
She swung round, unable to see him properly in the dark.
“That would be a kindness,” she replied.
“Two silvers?”
“You’re as bad as he is! All right, two silvers.”
He chuckled and counted fifteen coins into her hand. She wondered how a mere First could have so much. These swordsmen tossed money around in a way she found disgusting. Sharp kid—not many people would have seen the opportunity for fast usury.
Lightning and thunder greeted her again as she staggered back across the deck, noting Oligarro’s surprise at her speedy return. She handed over the money.
“I hope your stay at Wal is profitable, mistress,” Hiolanso said mockingly. “I bid you good day, Captain.”
He bowed and turned.
He walked three steps and stopped.
A man was coming up the plank.
When he reached the deck, he paused, standing tall and sinister in the darkness, motionless except for the whipping of his gown, arms folded inside his sleeves, face invisible inside his sorcerer’s cowl. Then a flare of lightning showed his red robe and a momentary glimpse within the hood: heavy black eyebrows, a square, strong face, confident and severe.
The darkness returned, and he glided forward through the thunder as if he moved on wheels.
“Return the twenty golds to Mistress Brota, Hiolanso,” he said.
Brota shivered and not from the wind. He knew her name? The port officer’s teeth were chattering, and his hands trembled visibly as he reached in his leather pouch and counted out the money.
“My apologies, mistress, Captain,” the sorcerer said in a deep, hard voice. “The elders and the wizard have been much concerned at the corruption among their officials. Now we have caught one and he will be punished. We offer the shelter of our port for your ship, and there will be no fee.”
“Punished how?” Brota asked, thinking of the many times she had cursed officers.
“That’s up to the court.” The sorcerer turned his hood slightly to study the criminal. “At least one hand in the fire, and for so large a theft, probably both.”
Hiolanso’s squeal of terror was drowned out by a mind-shattering peal of thunder. He dodged around the sorcerer and bolted for the gangplank.
The sorcerer swung round to face after him and raised an arm. Thunder roared again, deafening. A cloud of smoke swirled for an instant and was wiped away by the wind.
The plank was empty. The fugitive had totally vanished.
Brota heard a whimper of terror and realized that it was coming from herself. Now it was Oligarro’s teeth that were chattering.
Tap . . . tap
. . . Rain was starting.
The sorcerer turned to the sailor and made the salute to a superior. “I am Zarakano, sorcerer of the Fifth rank . . . ”
Oligarro’s voice quavered as he responded. The sorcerer looked to Brota and made the salute to an equal, and her voice was no steadier. The port officer had disappeared before her eyes. It was true, then. She had not believed in sorcerers before she met Shonsu. Now there was one on her deck and he had destroyed a man on her gangplank. One instant there had been a man running down the plank; next instant, only smoke. Never in her life had she worried that she might faint, but the thought now crossed her mind.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap tap tap
. . .
“Let us take cover for a moment,” Zarakano said. He reached for the deckhouse door handle, and Brota was too paralyzed to do anything. The wind grabbed the door and hurled it open with a crash.
Nnanji stood in the entrance, his arms folded, his face a pale blur in the gloom—for an instant. Then lightning flared again, highlighting him in a brilliance of red hair and orange kilt against a million flames of copper. A murderous explosion of thunder rattled the whole ship. The sorcerer recoiled in surprise, started to raise an arm, and then lowered it. This was no water rat swordsman he was seeing—harness, kilt, even the proper boots. Sword. For a moment nobody moved or spoke, and die wind suddenly dropped—the calm before the storm again; silence, no thunder.
“ . . . no less than justice . . . ” That was Shonsu, still raving in the far corner.
Nnanji could not draw under that roof.
Swordsman and sorcerer faced each other for a long, blood-freezing minute, then the sorcerer made the acknowledgment of an inferior. Nnanji’s face was unreadable in the gloom. He paused, then made the salute: “I am Nnanji, swordsman of the fourth rank . . . ”
There had been much talk about sorcerers on
Sapphire
lately—Katanji had passed on the stories. Had swordsman and sorcerer ever saluted each other like this? Water rats did not count. This was a meeting of snake and mongoose, and the mongoose had saluted.
“I am Zarakano, sorcerer of the fifth rank . . . ” The snake responded.
“I will be evermore true to . . . ” growled Shonsu in the background. Lightning sizzled and thunder bellowed simultaneously, drowning him out.
Tomiyano was keeping to one side, still invisible, but what if the sorcerer went into the deckhouse and saw his branded face? What if he heard Shonsu and recognized the code of the swordsmen?
Plop! Plop
! Huge drops began to hit the deck.
Without taking his eyes from Nnanji, Zarakano asked, “How many free swords are you carrying, mistress?”
“Only Adept Nnanji and a First,” she muttered, wondering if Katanji was back on deck, wondering if the sorcerer’s powers could detect her lie. The rain noise was beating louder, and the wind rising again, muffling Shonsu’s mumblings.