Rift (16 page)

It was as happy a time as Nerys could remember in her life. The Inland Sea lay smooth before them, with scudding clouds chasing one another in its mirrored surface, while a two-day warm spell buoyed their spirits. Their good luck had begun with the discovery of the skiff. It had been well hidden in bracken near the shore, but the camouflage was no match for Thallia’s
expert eye. Tarred and caulked with great care, the boat would be a great loss to its owners. Though a lopsided trade, Nerys left her best knife in its place so no claver could call them thieves.

The old maps showed that the Inland Sea stretched six hundred miles from the Tethys Ocean to the Tallstory River, a swift road toward orthong lands. And though Whale Clavers were expert sailors, they would not likely pursue the women this far west, into the bloodlands, where things were red that should be green. Nerys shrugged off thoughts of pursuit, bending with relish into the oars and pulling hard. They were free of those places and those times. Offering satisfying confirmation was the evidence of their full bellies and meat to spare in their packs, thanks to Anar’s hunting prowess.

Add to that the fish that Eiko was now pulling up from her trawl line, and they could eat until they were sated. Eiko gutted her king salmon and passed hunks of fish around the boat, even handing off to Anar first. With her exploit Anar had become a member of the group. The girl seemed to recognize her new status, lately taking on a grown-up demeanor, applying herself to needful work: mending Thallia’s pack, cleaning the fish, and sharpening their hunting knives. Nerys approved of her conduct, but with a twinge of regret that her childhood was over so soon.

“Look, Anar,” Nerys said. They were in sight of the giant terraform factory, the great ruin told of by claver traders. Anar, with slavish attention to duty, looked up for a moment, then went back to gutting fish.

“No, Anar. Look at this thing.” The air factories were a rare enough sight that no twelve-year-old should miss it for the sake of a chore.

Pulling close to the beach, they could see the chimneys soaring above the compound of vats, tanks, and turbines. Pipes looped throughout like a nest of resin-hardened snakes. The multi-color-coded components
peeked through a carpet of red fur, old Lithian moss that for some reason seemed to like the terrafactory.

“It’s pretty,” Anar observed.

From the looks on Thallia’s and Eiko’s faces, it seemed they shared opposite sentiments. Even to Nerys it seemed that the planet had brazenly marked this place as Lithian territory. Not enough that Terrans sickened and died; now Lithia must drape the old wonders in her mantle. Nerys rested on the oars. She’d seen this moss once or twice before. Thick as whale blubber, it sprouted rubbery threads with luminous, bulbous heads to attract insects. When flying insects landed, a fatal glue held their feet fast, allowing the moss to absorb their bodies into the carpet. A chemical factory on a chemical factory, Nerys thought, and said so.

“What is a chemical, Mama?” Anar wiped her hair from her eyes, and strained as though to see the insects with their feet trapped in goo.

“Yes, give us a science lesson, Nerys,” Eiko said, with an eyebrow raised at Anar’s ignorance.

In truth, Anar
was
ignorant, a little more so than Nerys had been at her age. That was the way of it, she remembered her father saying, that Nerys knew less than she ought, and that every generation lost a little more of science, of crafts, of technical things. The claves had abandoned schooling under the incessant demands of farming, foraging, and hunting. But one thing Nerys’ clave still taught was reading. By age seven every child could read, and every family boasted ownership of five or six books, however tattered. Anar and her peers, however, had little interest in books, and her father would not force her to study.

Nerys concentrated on answering Anar’s question. “A chemical is a mixture of elements so that you get certain characteristics. Like salt … I think.”

Anar nodded absently, squinting at the factory while Thallia resumed course. “If we turned on the
factories again,” her daughter said, “maybe we could make Lithia go back like she was.”

“We don’t know how to turn them on anymore.” It embarrassed her to say so to Anar, to admit her ignorance in the shadow of their ancestors’ great feat. “But even if we did know, it wouldn’t help. The terrafactories were like peeing in the ocean. In the end, they failed.”

“What she’s trying to say,” Thallia broke in, picking her teeth with a fish bone, “is that Lithia is going back like she was, a thousand years ago. And not a damn thing we can do, chemistry or no chemistry.”

Eager to shed the somber mood, Nerys rowed on, and Anar went back to gutting her fish and watching the entrails swirl in the vortices from the oars. Meanwhile, Nerys and the other women kept sharp watch on the shore for any orthong, premature though that search might be. They were many miles, perhaps half a continent, away from the orthong lands in the north. That was fine with Nerys. Let the scabs wait for their chattel; she was in no hurry to glimpse their white hides.

Late in the morning a heavy fog moved in from the east, enveloping them in a woolly curtain. At the oars, Eiko moved them closer to shore, where they might stay on course by following the coast. The slap of the oars and the slur of their boat upon the water were the only sounds for several hours, as their instincts kept the party quiet and they crept along the shallow waters near the beach. Once Nerys called a warning as Eiko rowed them near the mast of a sunken ship, where a great horizontal pole could have rammed Eiko’s head, had she not ducked when she did. After that, Eiko pulled out farther, and they kept the shore in view as rips in the fog permitted.

Anar rebraided her mother’s brown hair, as she loved to do, forming it into one long plait fastened with deer hide. That done, Nerys settled herself into the
bottom of the skiff to rest. Drowsy from their meal of fish and the morning’s toil, she dozed. Anar took a turn at the oars, making little progress, but good enough for the whiteout conditions.

A harsh slap of water. Nerys bolted awake. Anar was replacing a loose oar in the gunwale, but Nerys took the oar from her, signaling quiet. She listened.

Again the splash of water, just off their bow. Nerys nudged Thallia, who awoke, drawing her knife.

Then, from the recesses of fog loomed a huge shape. Eight oars could be seen, resting upon the water. And then a giant barque emerged from the fog. Eiko sprang up as Anar screamed and they heard great thunking splashes: the barque’s sailors jumping into the water.

Eiko grabbed the other oar from its socket and lunged at the first head to break the surface of the water. The sailor swam out of reach while others grabbed hold of the bow. Thallia’s knife caused a yelp at that end, while Nerys’ oar made contact with a bearded face lunging for the stern. Next it was Eiko’s turn to ward off a starboard swimmer, and then Thallia’s at her end. Someone laughed, and in a rage, Nerys knew both that they were hopelessly outnumbered and that the sailors mocked them, taking turns at their forays instead of rushing them all at once.

The looming square sails of the barque snapped in the light wind and its mast creaked as one swimmer called out, “I want the lass in the stern!” Another hooted, “I’ll take her there first!” Nerys’ heart shrank into a small cold stone, and her hand went to the berries in her pocket. She would slit Anar’s throat, by all that was holy, before she would let them ravage the child. They would both die this hour, and by her own hand. Bellowing in grief, she threw her oar at the nearest swimmer and drew her knife.

Too late. The sailors had tired of their play and in the next moment upended the boat, spilling all four of
them into the water, and someone with arms like an orthong grabbed her and pulled her down, down, far into the water. Choking, she fought him, but all in slow motion and without effect, having lost her knife. He was drowning her, filling her stomach with bitter water. And then she felt a yank on her arm, and she was floating to the surface, where she broke into daylight. Her fist made contact against a bearded jawbone, and then a whack of a hand against her head drove her nearly senseless.

She felt the clasp of a net around her, as the women were hauled up the deck of the ship, where they tumbled onto hands and knees, coughing and retching amid bass jeers and laughter.

Nerys faced a big leather boot with a silver-capped toe. Finding Anar beside her, she struggled to her feet, meeting her captor eye to eye.

He was a black-skinned man with hair gathered into a tail. Though he was tall and muscular, she longed for one last fair fight. “A game of swords for our lives,” she said to him. Meanwhile she searched her pocket, but the berries were gone.

“You had your fight, and lost,” he replied in a rich baritone. The other crew stood back from this man, who looked like he might lead them.

“It was two to one—no fair contest unless your men are half the ones I’ve known.”

This drew loud and merry response from the deck, filled with sailors of surpassing ugliness, many bearing hideous scars and heads shaved and tattooed. A breeze pierced Nerys’ wet clothes, drawing off her body heat and cooling her heart. She looked for a quick death, for any opening to that silent land where they had been heading, it now seemed, since they’d left their clave.

Thallia stepped forward. “I am the best fighter. Who is yours?”

A woman moved up beside the black man. Her yellow
hair was woven into a hundred loose braids. She wore leather top to bottom, bedecked with an array of knives. “What is your clave?” she demanded.

Thallia stood as tall as this giant, and raised her chin, saying, “We are a new clave, in the care of the Lord.”

The blond woman sneered. “You are scab-lovers running, and liars as well.” She belted Thallia across the head with her fist, but Thallia held her ground.

“Captain Kalid!” someone shouted. “Let’s see what we fished up! Less talk, more skin!”

The dark man was apparently the captain. He turned slowly to take in the acclamation greeting this idea, while Nerys held Anar at her side, hugging her fiercely.

“Your berries,” she whispered to her daughter.

A ripping sound, and Eiko was struggling as a sailor lunged forward to grab at her shirt.

“Lost, Mama. They’re all lost,” Anar said in dismay, as though she had the sense to be disappointed.

Kalid turned back to the women, who now stood back to back facing the surrounding crew. “So,” he said to his men, “you want a reward for your fishing, do you?” He grinned as his men responded. “Well now. We will see.” He turned to the women. “But first, answer. Where are you menfolk?” He spoke with elaborate politeness, putting on a show of power for his men and his captives.

“Dead,” Nerys said. “Now, in search of a new clave, we’ve come from the great ocean—and this is all the welcome our feat earns.”

“The ocean, is it?” the blond woman said, clearly disbelieving. “In a rowboat?” Here the men laughed and she strutted for the benefit of her audience.

“And how did your menfolk die?” Kalid asked.

“They starved. There was no food, so they begged us to go,” Nerys said. “And without men to slow us down, we came so far in only a week.”

The pirates laughed at her wit.

“And now what name shall we give your little clave?” The captain was toying with them, but Thallia answered, “Warship Clave.”

The sailors roared at this notion, casting up additional suggestions, such as “Rowboat Clave,” and others more salacious.

Kalid laughed and nodded. Then, as the crew quieted, he said: “Here is my command. You six who took a swim may have the women for your pleasure until we dock. I do not reward those who were afraid to fight this battle.” He turned to fix the grumbling men with a challenging stare. “Except the girl, whom no jinn would dishonor, without leave of Lord Dante.” He flicked his eyes over the unruly men, silencing them. “Take them below, my swimmers. But no savagery. If Dante takes a fancy to one of these warriors we want no scar or ruin to answer for.”

The blonde stomped her feet. “They are scabbers!”

Kalid met her eye to eye. “Dante will decide, if you serve him still.” He smiled at her with equal mixture of challenge and cheer, until she stalked off.

Their captors led them below, locking Anar in a small hold. The men were hungry for their pleasure, and Nerys submitted for Anar’s sake, while she plotted her revenge on each of the stinking beasts in turn.

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