Burning Tower (11 page)

“They're very particular about getting things exactly right,” Burning Tower observed. “You're like that, Sandry.”

Absently, Sandry said, “Well, maybe I am.” Had he forgotten anything? This trip made him nervous. He'd met few magicians in his life. Morth had been a maniac. Egmatel was something of a fraud. What would scores of wizards be like?

Burning Tower said, “The sailors, they're keeping lists in their heads, aren't they? Do this, do that, or the boat doesn't go. It's like that in the caravan too. Everything has to be just so, or the beasts misbehave, things fall off, a wagon rolls down a hill. What I noticed about the people who serve you in Lordshills…” Burning Tower's hands moved, reaching for words, concepts. “They're not following a list. They follow orders. They do what it takes to make you—us—comfortable.

“Sandry, the people who do the work at Road's End…they don't travel. Sometimes they resent it, that they don't have a wagon or a piece of one. Why are your servants so…?”

“A good servant gets to thinking that he runs a household, and
that's
what drives
him.
Her. Aunt Shanda's chef. Chalker. The others…well, they want us happy,” Sandry said.

“Right! Why?”

Sandry wasn't used to thinking in these terms. He said, “I guess they don't want to go back where they came from.”

“And?”

What was she getting at? “I'm tasked with finding a place for a kinless woman who got taken pregnant by a Lordkin lover who cared enough to ask for a favor. Maybe I can…anyway, a lot who serve us are like that. Something drove them away. They don't always tell us. The rest…if they lose their place in Lordshills…they're either kinless or Lordkin. If they're kinless, they'll be back in the hands of the Lordkin. If they're Lordkin, that can be bad too. Lordkin women do all the work they can't lay off on kinless. Lordkin men maim and kill each other. Didn't your father tell you—”

“Well, I know he left, and he rescued Mother. They don't talk about it much.”

“And,” Sandry said diffidently, “I don't
really
know how they think. We have to guess. Tower, tell me about your half sister.”

Burning Tower laughed. “I'll let her mother speak for me.”

The Bison Tribe shaman was watching sailors swarm over the decks, but she'd heard. She said, “Clever Squirrel was Bison Tribe's shaman a year ago, when I couldn't travel. Early this year, she traveled west with the Pumas to visit Morth. She wants the spell that unravels failed spells. Had to follow him to Avalon to get it.” She looked around. “Squirrely's powerful. More than me. Much more than me. Why not? She's Coyote's daughter.”

“How does that work?”

Reluctantly at first, Twisted Cloud told of the wild night her father Hickamore, the Bison Tribe shaman, led his fifteen-year-old daughter and a twenty-year-old Lordkin into a hillside thick with raw gold. Hickamore died when wild magic renewed long-forgotten spells. Coyote possessed Whandall Placehold. The god dazzled and seduced Hickamore's daughter. The next morning, Willow claimed Whandall as her man before Bison Tribe.

“She might have thought
I
was going to claim him,” Twisted Cloud said. “We conceived Squirrely that night. She and Blazes are half sisters because Coyote was riding Whandall.”

“I didn't hear this story until I was pretty old,” Burning Tower said, “and I didn't know why Twisted Cloud never claimed the gold in the hill. She's the only one who knew, barring Father—”

“Hush, child,” said Twisted Cloud.

“Sorry.”

Sandry grinned at them both. “There's a story here?”

Sails rose aloft and caught the wind. There were shouts from the stern deck. People on the docks did things with ropes, then shouted again.

“Well. Raw gold carries manna, you know, but the magic is uncontrollable,” Twisted Cloud said. “Wizards go crazy at the touch of gold.
Spells
go crazy. Not many can handle it. Still, even wild manna may heal or rejuve-nate or—anyway. What I told Burning Tower, in an incautious moment—”

“We're off! We're sailing!” Burning Tower exclaimed. The docks were flowing past them. “Sorry.”

“Please,” Sandry said, “go on.”

Twisted Cloud thought a bit before she spoke. “People give raw gold to a shaman. Payment for spells, services. A shaman uses the manna and leaves refined gold behind. I found out that night that raw gold makes me horny. I always get pregnant when I'm around it. After five children, I knew I didn't want any more to do with raw gold. The gold stayed put, and my father's skeleton too, until Whandall needed it twenty years later.

“My oldest child is Clever Squirrel, and she is Coyote's daughter, sure enough. She'll find what that cursed bird is hiding if anyone can.”

For a time they enjoyed the view of land sliding past, waves growing larger, the sails belling over them, the to-and-fro surge of a ship cleaving water. Sandry's belly grew uneasy. He thought he was hiding it until Twisted Cloud laughed and touched his ears with her fingertips, and then it was all right.
Hah! Wagons must wobble too.

At midmorning, the sails hung slack and the ship slowed. Shouting wafted up from belowdecks.

“Curse,” Twisted Cloud said quietly.

“What?” Tower asked.

“The oarsmen. They hate. They can't do anything about it, so
I
have to feel it.”

Sandry looked into the midships pit where twenty oarsmen were at work. Two rows of men manned the oars: not enough to manage a decent speed. An oarmaster was cracking air over their heads with a lash. “Without them, the ship doesn't move,” he said. And then he sucked air.

The girls looked at him. Sandry said, “Regapisk.”

Regapisk, no longer Lord, was second on the port side, nearly naked, sitting on a yellow cloak or blanket. A mottled blue bruise marked his face. Regapisk snarled; his muscles bunched. He pulled, then lifted the oar, then pulled. The oar surged, lifted, dropped, surged in tandem with the rest.

Regapisk was better at rowing than Sandry would have guessed.

The women were looking at him. Uncomfortably, Sandry said, “Skip it. Twisted Cloud, what can you tell me about this wizards' gathering?”

“No magic,” she said. When Tower and Sandry both laughed, she said, “I'm the one who has to remember. The locals are very hard on anyone who uses flagrantly powerful magic.”

“What do they do?”

“I don't know,” the shaman said. “Nothing esoteric, I'd guess. Drowning, maybe.”

 

The wind picked up an hour later. The ship heeled over at a different angle and seemed to be struggling, and the shelter of the small cabin was welcome. Wind whistled through the small round windows carved into the side of the cabin.

Servants had been setting the table in the forecabin. Now they took out little wooden rails and set them into holes in the table so that the food and drink wouldn't slide off. “Lunch is served,” a white-coated crewman said. He bowed. “Ladies. Lord Sandry, the captain would like a moment with you back aft, if you please.” He pointed to the rear of the ship.

There was a narrow walkway on either side of the oar pits. The sailor had indicated that Sandry should take the walkway on the right, the high side of the ship as it leaned far over. The oars had been brought into the ship now, and the oarsmen were slumped in place, not looking up. All but Regapisk, who looked around warily. Sandry didn't think he'd looked up at him.

The captain and two officers were at the back of the ship. There were two more men holding wooden bars thicker than spears. These were attached to posts that went down on each side of the ship.

“Steersman, bring her up, there!” the captain shouted. “Lee steersman, haul in hard!”

“Aye aye.” The man on the low side of the ship was straining. “Maybe need some help here, skipper.”

The captain nodded, and another crewmen went over to help. They strained at pulling on the wooden contraption.

The steersman on the high side of the ship seemed relaxed. “No bite on the windward side,” he shouted.

The captain nodded. “Stand by. Okay, lads, steady as she goes. Ah. Lord Sandry.”

“Captain Saziff. Are we in trouble?”

Saziff grinned. A big man, gold earrings, a bright red shirt of what was probably silk, and a dark wool coat with gold lace on the sleeves.

Sandry nodded to himself. He could understand dressing to impress the men….

“Trouble, My Lord? Not in this little blow. Not trouble, just delay. How bad do you need to get there before dark?”

“Well—we were told we'd be there with plenty of daylight.”

“Wind, My Lord. Not from the usual direction today. We'll get there, but we'll have to tack a lot. Be surprised if we're there before dark.”

“Have we choices?”

The captain nodded. “For four gold, I can hire mers to help us.” He shrugged. “Ordinarily I'd just do it and eat the cost, but we just had a bad run up the coast, and I can't afford it. I told your harbormaster this is a tricky time of year for the Avalon run. Usually the wind is steady from the west, but it's backed around southerly now.”

Whatever that means,
Sandry thought. “Isn't this your regular run?”

“Bless you, no, sir. There's not enough traffic from Tep's Town to Avalon to support a regular run! I'm headed to Condigeo and Black Warrior and then on further south to Two Capes. May even run right on around and up north on the inside, if I can get cargo. No, we were chartered to take you over and bring you back, and we'll do that, all right, but we won't make the harbor tonight without help from the mers.”

“And they charge four gold?”

“Might be less, but once you hire them, you'd better have the money,” Saziff said. “And I don't have it, My Lord.” He grinned. “Tell you what, though—for four gold I can get you into the harbor ahead of time and we can have a bit of a show for the ladies as well.”

Four gold. Sandry doubted they'd paid more than ten gold for the whole passage. But there was no way to know if the captain was telling the truth or not, and it would cost more than four gold to stay an extra day in Avalon, from everything Sandry had heard. “All right.” He dug into his pouch. “Four it is.”

The captain took the money without expression. “Raililiee, take over,” he said.

One of the officers said, “Aye aye. I relieve you, sir.”

“I'm going forward to negotiate with the mers. Stand by to trim sails.”

“Aye aye, skipper.”

Saziff led the way forward again. Sandry looked down at Regapisk. By both law and custom, they shouldn't speak or even recognize each other. Sandry remembered, years ago, some older boys were pounding on him. Reggy made them stop and helped him clean up his clothes. There were probably other things Reggy had done for him over the years, but that was the incident Sandry remembered best.

They reached the foredeck. “Ladies,” the captain called. “Come see something you've never seen before!”

Tower and Twisted Cloud came out to watch. The captain leaned down over the bow rail. Sandry leaned over too and was surprised to see a big fish swimming there.

A big fish, as big as Sandry, maybe bigger.

The captain shouted something, and the fish stood up on its tail, most of its body out of the water, and skittered alongside the ship.

“Oooh!”
Tower shouted.

The captain shouted something else, and then threw a rope over the side. There was a big loop woven into the end of the rope, and the other end was tied to a big post on the deck. The fish made strange noises. Its toothy mouth was grinning widely.

Another of the big fish came up and put its bill into the rope loop. It began to swim, and the boat heeled over even more.

“Trim sail!” the captain shouted.

Crewmen did things to the sails. The boat came more upright. The big fish pulled, and the captain threw more lines off into the water. Other fish put their bills through them and began to pull.

“On course now,” Saziff said. He clapped his hands.

More fish leaped from the water. They would charge at the boat as if they would hit it, then dart off just at the last moment. Others jumped right over the ones pulling the boat. Tower and Twisted Cloud cheered.

“Smart fish!” Tower said.

“Not exactly fish, My Lady,” the skipper said. “They're mers, of course. Lots of names for them, I guess dolphins is the most common. They breathe air like you and me.”

Twisted Cloud was staring at them. “Magic, lots of magic, but only the ones that are pulling, not the others. The others don't seem to be magic at all.”

Saziff shrugged. “Don't know, My Lady. Used to be no one would take ship without a wizard aboard, but last ten, twenty years now, they're mostly just passengers, nothing for them to do. I never did know much about magic anyway.”