Isles of the Forsaken (16 page)

“Harg, let go of her!” Tway ordered. “Stop touching her, she’s out of control.”

He drew back, the sensation of her lips on his still vivid, and let Tway come between them. “Don’t let her hurt herself,” he said.

Tway shook the Grey Girl by the shoulders and said sternly, “Spaeth, control yourself.”

Spaeth closed her eyes and grew absolutely still, sinking back on her heels in the grass. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was strained with the effort it took to check her instincts.

Harg and Tway looked at each other. “What are we going to do with her?” Tway whispered.

Letting out a long breath, he said, “We can’t turn her over to Goth’s bandhotai again. She’ll never be safe with them; just look at her. We’ve got to get her off the island for a while.”

It looked like a thousand objections were crowding to Tway’s tongue, but she never uttered any of them. At last she nodded. “They’ll go berserk, but you’re right. Until this blows over.”

Down in the harbour, Harg knew, the
Ripplewill
waited to take on cargo for the return run to Thimish. “We can’t go back through the village,” he said. “I don’t want to run into those soldiers, and we can’t let the elders see Spaeth leave. Tway, you’ve got to take a message to Torr. Tell him I’ll join him, but he’ll have to pick me up at Lone Tree Point. You can tell him about the Inning and the soldiers, but don’t tell him about Spaeth yet.”

“Can you manage her without me?” Tway said, glancing at Spaeth dubiously; but the Grey Girl looked calm again—so calm exhaustion seemed to be overtaking her.

“I think so,” said Harg. “It’s the only choice. When you’re going through the village, stop at Goth’s and pick up some of her things. Give them to Torr, but don’t tell him what they are.” For an instant he thought about telling her to get someone to tip the Tornas off about where to find their Inning. It seemed like the decent thing to do; but he quickly dismissed it. As soon as they found Nathaway, the scapegoat hunt would start; they might not even let
Ripplewill
leave.

“All right,” Tway said, and rose to leave. Harg caught her hand.

“Tway. Thanks,” he said.

She paused for a moment, looking down at him with an expression too complicated for him to parse. Then she quickly leaned forward and kissed him, just as Spaeth had, on the lips. She left without a word. He watched her go, wondering if he had been missing something about Tway all these years.

After Tway left, Harg settled down to wait. Spaeth had fallen asleep on the grass, and he didn’t want to rouse her right away, since it could take hours for Torr to make the rendezvous. Watching her sleep, he could see Goth in every line of her face. She had that same paradoxical blend of power and innocence. The ardency and recklessness that Goth hid so well were right on the surface for all to see. For the second time in two days he wished he had never seen her, and yet couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Three hours passed before the
Ripplewill
rounded the headland west of Lone Tree Point, edging forward on staysails. Harg and Spaeth were waiting on one of the sandstone ledges that angled down into the water from the mouths of the rocky caves on the point. He had roused her over an hour ago and walked her down to the shore half-asleep; but now she was beginning to wake. She saw the boat and glanced at him, then looked away, wincing at sight of his face.

“That bad, eh?” His lip and eye had begun to throb in earnest now; he could tell they were swollen.

“You’ll have a black eye,” she said, her back turned.

When the ketch came close enough, he whistled and waved. He saw a flash of sunlight on Torr’s spyglass, and then the boat’s anchor went down. The crew launched a small rowboat from the foredeck as efficiently as if they made clandestine pickups all the time.

Harg didn’t know the woman in the rowboat, and they exchanged only cursory words as he and Spaeth climbed in and started back across the choppy waves to the
Ripplewill
. As they approached, Harg saw two people standing at the gunwale watching them approach, Torr and—

“Tway!” he shouted. “Blood and ashes, what are you doing here?”

“Did you think I was going to let you two go off to Thimish alone?” she shouted back. “I can’t think of two people who need more looking after.”

“Torr! Why did you let her come?”

“Have you ever tried to stop her?” Torr replied. He was looking curiously at the second passenger in the rowboat, the one he didn’t yet know about. As they came alongside and the seawoman shipped the oars, Harg swung himself up onto the deck, then turned to grasp Spaeth’s hand and help her on. Torr said, “Wait a minute, Harg.” His voice was hard and suspicious. “You’re welcome, you know that. But her—” There was something almost superstitious in his look. “What is she, Yora’s dhotamar?”

“No,” Harg said, “and we mean to keep it that way.” He pulled at her wrist and she stepped lightly up on deck, facing Torr.

“What are you getting me into?” Torr said, his eyes flicking from Harg to Spaeth and back again. “I’m already skating against Inning law by taking you. If I help her escape, all of Yora will want to nail my hide to a tree.”

“Don’t worry, it’s me they’ll blame,” Harg said, a little bitterly.

In a low tone, Torr said, “Is she your bandhota?”

It was Spaeth who answered. “If he was, do you think I’d let him walk around looking like that?”

Torr was momentarily distracted by the sight of Harg’s face. “They really worked you over, didn’t they?”

“Not as much as they wanted to.”

The skipper turned back to Spaeth. “Listen, lass, I don’t know what this is about or why you’re following him . . .”

“You have to take me, captain,” she said with a quiet certainty. “There are larger things at stake here.”

There was a pause. Torr looked at Harg again, as if his premonitions now extended to them both.

“Torr,” hissed one of the crew. “We’ve been spotted.”

As the others turned to look, Harg shoved Spaeth down into the cockpit. “Into the cabin,” he hissed at her, and only then turned to look up. But it wasn’t one of the Yorans, as he had feared. Far away on the hillside by the Whispering Stones, four men in uniform had stopped to look down at the boat so suspiciously at anchor where there was nothing to anchor for. Someone must have told them where to search for the Inning. It would only be a matter of minutes before they found him.

“Torr, we’ve got to get out of here!” Harg said urgently.

“Ashes!” Torr swore. “By the root, Harg, I hope I don’t regret the day I met you. Cory, get the anchor. Galber, mainsail.” Tway had already grabbed the oars from the boatwoman, and Harg leaped to help raise the rowboat on deck. For a few minutes the ship was a silent flurry of work as the mizzen sail went up and the jib billowed out in the breeze. Soon Harg felt the boat heel to starboard and gather way under him. The choppy rhythm of the inshore waves yielded to the slow roll of the ocean.

And suddenly, he was on his way to a destination he had never intended to seek. As recently as last night he had felt that his future lay on Yora; but here he was, as sure as if some unseen force had interceded to propel him. It was almost a giddy feeling to think of surrendering to it, and letting it blow him forward, to surf on a great grey wave of history.

*

When Yora was just a low grey bump on the horizon, Spaeth came up on deck, feeling a little lightheaded from the strong odour of dreamweed in the hold. She stood looking back toward Yora. She had never seen it from this angle before. Never in her life had she been so far away from it. The thought made tears rise into her eyes. She was leaving the island that loved her, to go into a world where the land would not even know her name.

Exile seemed like an appropriate penance. She felt a biting regret about everything that had happened the previous day. There was nowhere her thoughts could turn without making her wince. Jory. Nathaway. Harg. Herself most of all. She had acted so badly, shame smothered her spirits. It was not a familiar feeling.

Tway poked her head out the companionway, and saw Spaeth. She held out a cloth bag. “I stopped by your cottage and picked up some things for you,” she said. “I didn’t know what you would want.”

Taking the bag, Spaeth said, “Thanks.” There was something hard and heavy in it, so she drew back the string and looked. Tway had put in Goth’s bowl and knife, the instruments of dhota. The sight made Spaeth feel like a stranger to herself. They were not hers; they could never be hers. When she looked up again, she felt with a bitter ache that she was leaving her childhood behind on Yora. Ahead lay only the life of a Grey Lady, sacrifice and duty.

Wanting to get away, she went to the windward rail and sat, looking out at the dark waves rushing toward them from the west. They looked like they were in a hurry to get somewhere, impatient with the boat in their way. One of them crested and bared white fangs at her, then gathered its muscles and leaped onto the deck beside her, sitting down and beginning to dry its fur with its tongue. Spaeth glanced around in dismay, but none of the others on deck appeared to notice the horned panther beside her.

“Well? Are you satisfied?” she said to Ridwit in a low voice.

“Not really,” said the cat.

“I gave you what you wanted. You asked for the Inning, and I brought him to you.”

“And then you changed your mind,” Ridwit said. “That was a very foolish thing to do.”

Bitterly, Spaeth said, “But you took him anyway.”

“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes glowed like amber lamps.

“You mean he’s not dead?”

“No.” Ridwit’s tail flicked with frustration. “He didn’t taste good.”

From the tail, Spaeth knew the god was lying. For some reason, the Mundua hadn’t been able to devour him. Spaeth felt a rush of relief. She hadn’t killed him, then. She brushed water off Ridwit’s back. Under the guard hairs, the cat was perfectly dry.

“It was more amusing to let him escape anyway,” Ridwit said. “We’ll eat him later, when he’s aged.” She was bluffing, as gods will do when thwarted. She went on, “I don’t know why you wanted to save him. They are hateful creatures.”

“He fought so hard to stay himself,” Spaeth said thoughtfully. “Harder than I would have been able.”

“That’s what makes them dangerous. They believe more than anything that they are real. It’s closing off the doors into other possibilities. And you thought
we
were a threat.”

The panther looked away, sly and secretive once more. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Everything worked out anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Spaeth asked suspiciously.

“We have better things to think of than you.” She bared her fangs. It looked almost like she was laughing. A pang of alarm passed through Spaeth.

“What has happened?”

“We have found an ally,” Ridwit drawled.

“A human ally? In this circle?”

“Yes.”

This was chilling news. It was precisely what the Grey People had been created to guard against—the danger that a human being, corrupted by pain and power, would consent to be a tool of the forces of disorder in their perpetual war for control of this circle. Time and again over the centuries, the greatest of the Lashnura had had to sacrifice their own lives to cure such flawed humans, and make them whole again.

“Why are you telling me?” Spaeth said.

Ridwit turned to look at her with a taunting grin. “Because there is nothing you can do about it. You Grey Folk are degenerate. Once you ruled this circle, now you are all slaves to your bandhotai. Your Heir of Gilgen is a prisoner and a fool. Soon, even you are going to find someone whose pain appeals to you, and then you’ll give in like all the rest. Now that we have an ally to do our work, we have nothing more to fear from you.”

“Who is it?”

Ridwit looked at her with disgust. “You must think I am as much of a fool as you.”

“Is it a man or a woman?” Spaeth said. “Adaina or Torna?”

Ridwit rose and laughed—a night-black, feral sound. “Find out yourself, if you care so much.” She crouched, muscles rippling beneath glossy fur, then sprang into the sea. The wave passed on under the hull and was gone.

Spaeth sat staring out across the water. The cold wind seemed to pierce through her clothes now. She needed to find someone to tell, someone who would know what to do. It was news that called for the intervention of greater powers than she.

Ripplewill
scudded forward across the waves, propelled by the tension between wind and sea, drawing power from the clashes born of the boundary. This whole world was the same, a boundary line, precariously poised on the edge of annihilation. Only humans had the power to tip it over the edge. She looked at the others on deck, suddenly suspecting them all. Her eyes rested longest on Harg where he stood at the bow, looking forward. But no, that would be too simple. Ridwit would not have risked telling her if he were the one.

She hated the panther’s malicious humour then, for giving the warning to her, the least likely of any Lashnura to know what to do about it.

They were trying to kill him with contrasts, Goth thought as he stepped from the palace into the garden. A breeze fresh from the invisible sea stirred his clothing, still musty with sweat. Above him the birds were warbling promises they could never keep, and the trees rustled as if they were not, like everything else here, prisoners.

They had sent him straight from their Hospital of Justice to regain his peace of mind in a garden. He had been in the clean, sunlit hospital for ten minutes before he had realized that the gleaming instruments set out on white linen were not made for mending bodies, but for rending them. The cultivated Inning doctor who toured him around never used the word “torture.” He called it “correctional science.”

“It is a far more efficient and rational method of criminal justice than incarceration,” the doctor said. “It is more effective as a deterrent, it operates faster, and it is far less costly. Lock a man up for ten years and he comes out as incorrigible as before. But a month here will break even the most defiant and courageous criminal, and make him abject and compliant. Pain has a remarkable transformative power. We have refined our methods to work efficiently on the mind, for that’s the point, isn’t it? Anyone can break a body. We want to modify the man.”