On Blue's waters (39 page)

No, it really could not be like that, because we would still be a hundred pages at least from Seawrack, the bat-fish, and the floating isles. Back with Mucor and Maytera, in all likelihood.

At any rate, we-I-bought a species of pudding there on market day. I had never seen one like it before, and the woman selling them said they were good (naturally) so I took a chance and traded a silver earring for one. It was dried meat pounded to powder and mixed with fat and dried berries of several kinds (two black, one red and deliciously tart, and one green and fruity as I remember). Not bad-tasting, but a moderate slice of it left me feeling overfull for two days, and it was too much like what we had been eating, the breakbull meat Seawrack had smoked.

That night-I shall never forget it-Krait woke me. Or it might be better to say that by trying to approach me while I slept he stirred up Babbie enough to wake me. “I’ve found it,” he told me. “Pajarocu.”

I started to reply, but he laid a finger to his lips and motioned toward the stern.

“It’s a long way. It will take ten days or more.”

My heart sank. I had been thinking that Seawrack and I would have another month of travel at least. “The lander’s still there?”

“Yes.” He looked around cautiously at the other boats as he spoke, his reptilian eyes gleaming in the Greenlight; and I wondered why he should be afraid that the people on them might hear him, when I knew that Seawrack could not. “They still have quite a few empty places, too. About half, a woman told me, even though their town is full of men who have come to make the trip.”

“What sort of a town is it? A real town like New Viron? Or is it more like this?” By a gesture I indicated the huts at the water’s edge.

He grinned. “It’s more like one of ours, Father dear. You won’t like it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why should I tell you and have you call me a liar to my face?”

“You are a liar, Krait. You know that much better than I do.”

He shrugged and looked angry.

“Did you talk to He-hold-fire?”

“No. Just to whoever was still awake and willing to trade a bit of gossip with me.” He watched me silently, weighing me in scales that I could not even imagine. “Are we going to take Seawrack with us?”

I hedged. “Let’s hear what she has to say. I don’t think she wants to go.”

“She wants to do what you want her to do. Why force her to guess what it is you want?”

“Then I won’t. I won’t take Babbie, either. This whole continent seems to be covered with trees.” I was thinking of Babbie living the natural life of his kind in the forest. I did not know whether there were wild hus on Shadelow, but it certainly seemed like a place where he could live happily.

“Was it like this around Pajarocu?”

“More so. The trees are bigger up the river. Bigger and older, and not so sleepy.”

“Then I’ll let him go. Free him. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”

“I should’ve told you we can’t take him anyway. No animals. You could sell him to somebody there, perhaps.”

I shook my head. Babbie was my friend.

“Seawrack’s going to be the problem. I don’t think you realize it yet, Horn, but she is.”

I wanted to say that she had not been a problem until he came, that she had helped me in all sorts of ways, but it would have been such an obvious opening for him that at the last moment I did not speak.

“An aid and a comfort.” He grinned again, fangs out. “Don’t jump like that. I can’t read your mind. I read your face.”

“You saw the truth there,” I told him. “How do we get to Pajarocu?”

“I know something about human ways, as you’ve seen. But you, being human, not only know them but understand them. Or so I assume.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Sometimes. I like that. Have I ever told you how much I like you, Horn?”

I nodded. “More often than I’ve believed it.”

“I do. The thing that I like is that I can never tell when you’re being truthful. Most of you lie constantly, as Seawrack does. A few of you are practically always truthful, this Silk you like to talk about would seem to have been one of those. Both are boring, but you aren’t. You make me guess over and over.”

I asked what his own practice was, although I knew.

“The same as yours. That’s another reason to like you. Seriously now, you need to think about your woman, not as I would but as you would. She’s a human being, exactly as you are. Don’t settle for an easy answer and put it out of your mind.”

“I do that too much.”

“I’m glad you know it.”

I sat on the gunwale. “What is it you’re trying to get me to say? That I need your advice?”

“I doubt that you do. I merely think that you haven’t thought as much as you should about the situation she’ll face, left alone in Pajarocu.”

“She’ll have Babbie to protect her.”

“So much for a life of woodsy freedom. You wanted to know how to get there. Up the river, right at the first fork and left at the second. I know that’s not what your map shows, but I followed the rivers to get back here. That’s it, and a long fly it was.”

“Do you think they’ll let three of us, all supposedly from New Viron, have places on the lander?”

Krait nodded. “It’s barely half full, I told you that, and they’ll want to go before winter, since nobody’s likely to come after the bad weather sets in. The ones who are there already are getting impatient, too. If they wait much longer, they’ll be losing more than they gain.”

Evensong came. This time I watched her slip through my window. When peace returns (if it does) I’m going to have another sentry in the garden. Or bars on these windows. Bars would be more practical, I suppose, but I cannot forget how I hated the bars on the windows of my manse.

I told her that it would be hours yet, and I wanted to get a few hours sleep before we went out. She said she did, too, but her sister-wives would not let her. She asked who would wake us when it was time, and I told her I would wake myself.

As I now have. We will go soon. I will wake Evensong and give her the note I have prepared, a blank piece of paper with a seal. She will leave by the window, bring her note to the sentry at my door, and demand to be admitted. He will refuse. I will open my door (pretending that their voices have awakened me), look at her paper, get dressed, and leave with her. We will meet the head gardener at the lower gate.

Just writing those words made me think of the garden at my manteion at home. We sprats said Patera Pike’s garden, and then almost without a pause to catch breath, Patera Silk’s. With barely another pause, we are old, the garden a ruin (I sat there for a while just the same), and that spot, in which some nameless much earlier augur had made his garden, a hundred thousand leagues away or some such ridiculous number. “Do you imagine that a man of your age will find another woman as young as she is?” Krait asked me. He wanted her on the lander, of course; I know that now. “Or one as beautiful?” Trying to be gallant, I told him there were no other women as beautiful as Seawrack.

Nor are there.

Evensong is as young-I would not be surprised if she were a year or two younger. Nettle was never beautiful or even pretty, but my heart melted each time she smiled. It would melt again if I could see her smile tonight.

I must have a needier, and get it without taking it from someone who will use it against the enemy.

We cannot surrender. I cannot. Because I could not leave Pig blind, these people were able to bring me here, and so ended any chance of success I might have had. You could argue that I owe them nothing, and in a sense I believe that it is true; but to say that I owe them nothing is one thing, and to say that they deserve to be despoiled, raped, and enslaved is another and a very different thing.

All this time I have tried to be Silk for them. I have thought of Silk day and night-what would he do? What would he say under these circumstances? On what principles would he make his decision? Yet to every such question there is just the one answer: he would do what was right and good, and in doubt, he would side against his own interests. That is what I must do.

What I will do. I will try to be what he tried to be. He succeeded, after all.

I have been pacing up and down this big bedroom. This palatial bedroom my oppressors built for me. Pacing in my slippers, so as not to wake Evensong or let the guard at my door know I am awake. When I came here I was a prisoner-a prisoner who was respected, true. I was treated with great kindness and even reverence by Hari Mau and his friends, but I was a prisoner just the same. I knew it, and so did they.

Let me be honest with myself, tonight and always. With myself most of all. That has changed, had changed even before the war. I am their ruler, their caldé. I could leave here at any time, simply by putting a few things into saddlebags, mounting, and riding away. No one would lift a finger to stop me. Who would dare?

I said I could; but I cannot. A prisoner is free to get away if he can. I am no prisoner, and so I cannot. I said I owed them nothing; let that stand. Better-I owe this town and its collective population nothing, because I was taken from the
Whorl
against my will. But what about the individuals who make up the town? Do I owe Hari Mau and my troopers nothing? Men I have bled with?

What about Bahar? (I take one example where I might have a hundred.) He was one of those who forced me to come here. At my order he bought a boat, boarded it, and left his native place, reminding me forcefully of a man named Horn I used to know. I have not the slightest doubt that he has been working at his task, and doing it as well as it can be done. Three boatloads of good, simple, cheap food so far, and it would not surprise me if three more docked tomorrow. At my order he went without a word of protest, leaving his shop to his apprentices. Do I owe Bahar nothing?

Say I do. It is wrong, but say it.

What about my wives? Pehla and Alubukhara are with child. I have lain beside every one of them, and whispered words of love that to many men mean nothing at all. Am I, their husband, to be numbered among those men?

I say that I am not
. Neither were the teachings I tried to pass along to my sons things that I myself did not believe. I am a bad man, granted. Sinew always thought so, and Sinew was right. I am no Silk, but am I as bad as that? I left Nettle, but I did not leave her to be raped and murdered.

Lastly, Evensong and all the people of Han. Say that she counts only as a wife, that she means no more to me than Chandi. Does she mean less? She has a mother and a father, brothers and sisters, two uncles and three aunts, all of whom she loves. They are at the mercy of a tyrant, and if Gaon loses or surrenders they will remain at his mercy.

If we win, there will be no difficulty about getting a needier, or anything.

I have been writing here, I see, about that town on the river. It seems so very long ago.

Where did I put Maytera’s eye? In the top drawer at the back, to be sure. Should I put it in a saddlebag now? How happy she will be!

And my robe. I must have my robe and the corn. Where is that?

Found it-back of wardrobe. I put Olivine’s eye in the pocket. On Green I learned the secret the inhumi wish nobody to know. I promised not to reveal it, but who will ever read this, besides me? Although I swore, I did not swear not to reveal my oath. I can threaten them as well as save them, and I will do both.

We must win this war.

Then I will go home.

BROTHERS

A
fter writing those words, “Then I will go home,” I threw away the last of Oreb’s quills. I am writing with the gray feather of a goose now, like other men. And there is so much to write about before the great day comes-the day when I can leave this place-that I hardly know how to begin.

That small boy, the gardener’s grandson, said I was the Decider. One of the things I must decide (one of the smallest and least important) is how much I should set down before I go. Since I fully intend to carry this account away with me, you may say that it makes very little difference what I decide; but I enjoy a certain rounding out in such things, a sense of completion. Clearly I cannot set down everything, but I hope to carry it to the point at which the lander left Blue. There were many days on the lander that I would far rather forget. Surely the best way is to end before I reach those; and after that I will write no more.

Before I begin, however, I ought to write about what the three of us did last night. That, at least, will not take long. Everything went as planned-Evensong bringing the note, and so on. The head gardener was there to meet us, leading a scrawny, docile old cow. Off we splashed through the warm rain. Prying up the stone was a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated, I having seen four workmen handle those stones without much trouble. I do not think the gardener and I could have managed without Evensong’s help. With it, we scarcely got it up. He dug. He has been digging all his life, and he knows his business.

I had half expected to find no more than the corpse, a thing like a dried jellystar, of someone like Krait. It was an inhuma, and seemed more nearly the mummified remains of a child. Possibly she tried to make me think she was human, as they commonly do, even as I lifted her from her grave. If she did, she succeeded horribly.

Evensong and I tried to talk to her. (I had meant for Evensong to keep watch, but it was raining so hard that I could scarcely see the cow. She could not have seen someone coming until he bumped into her.) It was hopeless; the inhuma was too weak to speak a word. I put her on the cow’s back and pressed her mouth to the unlucky cow’s neck. I have washed my hands a dozen times since.

She fed for what seemed to us, soaked and steaming as all three of us were, a very long time. She became somewhat larger, and perhaps somewhat lighter in color, although it was not easy to tell by the light of Mehman’s sputtering lantern; but that was all.

Then…

I doubt that I can set it down in ink in any meaningful way-I wish I could make you see it as we did. Two things happened at once, but I cannot write about them both at once; one must be first and the other second. Nettle, will you ever read this? What will you think of me?