The Quartered Sea (16 page)

"Fish shit," grunted Mila, leaning into the galley to refill her plate. "The stuff may smell good, but it tastes like boiled bilge water and sawdust."

"That, my dear, is because you have the palate of a barnacle."

"And I ain't given' it back neither." She flicked Benedikt's coin as she passed. The first day out she'd drilled a hole in the gold Jelena for him so that he could hang it about his neck. "We coulda just had Cookie talk at the sails and saved yer voice."

"I have a dream, friend bard." Pjedic began when they were alone again. "Someday, I'll find a way to keep the beans both fresh and dry and I'll open a small place just up from Dockside, where discriminating patrons can enjoy a cup of sah together with those of like mind."

"Witnessed," Benedikt told him and raised his cup.

As the days passed, he never tired of the constant play of light and color on the bellying square sails; silver in moonlight, black in starlight, cloth of gold at sunset, white as the clouds themselves at noon. Occasionally, a black squall came up from windward but passed harmlessly with only a brief lashing of rain—the crew stripping down to stand naked in the fresh water. For days the sheets and braces needed no attention except to alter the nip on the block so they wouldn't chafe through. One by one, the crew brought their stories to where Benedikt stood in the bow, leaning over the rail and watching the silver flash of kigh dancing in the bow wave.

"There's little enough adventure at sea, if'n yer lucky. No, it's once you make landfall, that's where the adventures start. I recalls once landin' in the Empire, Sixth Province, Harak it was. There was an army garrison there, and I met me a corporal, not real tall but oh, so pretty…"

"Me da was a sailor. Me ma never knew which sailor, but I guess it's in me blood…"

"Yer family's fisher folk? Well, fillet me sideways—mine, too. Let ya in on a secret, though. I can't stand fishin'. Love the sea, can't stand fishin…"

"Them birds up there? Look sorta like brown gulls? We call 'em sky rats. I shot one once. Cross bow. Slapped it right onta the deck. Tasted like fish shit…"

"My family wanted something better for me, but I can't think of anything better, can you? With a fair and steady wind singing in the rigging…"

Sometimes, Benedikt forgot why they were there, forgot the dark sailor, forgot the search for the unknown, forgot the young queen waiting patiently back in the Citadel surrounded by stone instead of sapphire white-capped sea. When the glint of gold against his chest jolted his memory, guilt swept away in the rush of great waters alongside. At night, he watched wide-eyed as familiar constellations twisted and new ones appeared.

After ten days, the captain had the bottom sounded, but they were deeper than the line.

That afternoon, Benedikt climbed to the stern rail and found the mate there before him, glowering back at their wake. "What's wrong?"

The mate shook his head without turning. "It's this unenclosed wind. It keeps up, we'll never beat back against it."

Back. It was first anyone had mentioned going back.

That night the wind changed. Tacking against it,
Starfarer
made less distance but the mate stopped glowering.

Five days later, Benedikt began to notice a growing unrest in the crew. They'd been out of sight of land much longer than any of them had been before, and he began to hear the words, "go back," muttered more and more often.

No. He wasn't going to fail at this as well. He would not return empty-handed to the queen. Using the familiar tunes and rhythms of the chanties, he began tease the crew with the possibilities lying ahead. Some were absurd, some were obscene, and some appealed to that most basic of emotions: greed.

"Do I understand correctly; you're telling my crew there's gold in the land of the dark sailor?"

The dawn choral had been sung, the sun was safely in the sky. Benedikt turned to the captain and shrugged. "I've also told them there'll be three-legged whores and rivers of beer."

"And you may continue to do so with my blessing." Her tone suggested she knew full well why he'd been singing such songs. "But I don't want them thinking of gold when we…"

"Land ho!"

The cry from the ship's top brought everyone out on deck, jostling, crowding at the rail, squinting into the distance.

Benedikt felt some of the tension leave the muscles of his back. Unfortunately, the land turned out to be no more than a cloud bank above the western horizon.

"It's an unenclosed shame," the mate told him as
Starfarer
returned to her original course and her crew returned to abandoned tasks, "but it's not unusual. You stare at the same unenclosed sea, day after day. You strain your eyes for a sign that the Circle hasn't shit you out to rot alone. You start to see what you want to see." His teeth flashed white in the shadow of his beard. "Me, I wouldn't mind seeing that unenclosed river of beer."

The air hung hot and heavy as Benedikt walked to his place on the bow rail. Like most of the others, he wore only a pair of thin cotton breeches and sweat clung to his exposed skin like a film of oil. Swinging aside the queen's coin, he scratched at the damp hair on his chest with one hand and let his weight drop forward onto the other arm. The clouds on the horizon had grown darker and closer and were unmistakably not land.

"If we turn around right now, we'll be home by Third Quarter."

He could only see her hands without turning but there was no mistaking the voice. Mila.

"I'm not sayin' he'll have found another bedmate by then, but the longer we're gone, the better the odds. You know what I mean?"

"If you're worried about keeping his affections, why did you leave?"

She sighed. "I never really had his
affections
. And I figured this might impress him, you know. Dangerous adventures, finding a new land."

"I thought you came to keep an eye on your ship?"

"That, too."

"When
Starfarer
sails back into Elbasan Harbor," Benedikt told her, dropping into a storytelling cadence, eyes locked on a kigh beckoning to him from just below the surface, "with all flags flying and a thousand strange and wonderful new things crowding the decks, it won't matter if he's taken another bed-mate. He'll be so impressed that you've been to the other side of the world that he'll be impressed right out of the arms of that bedmate and back into yours.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He could hear the smile in her voice. "Then I guess we'd better get somewhere so's I can bring him back somethin' pretty." She picked at a scab on the back of her left hand for a moment. "You leave someone behind, Benedikt?"

About to say no, he found himself thinking of Bannon.

"I'm not trying to get rid of you. "

"Good."

At the time, he'd thought it a threat. He'd stood and watched Bannon walk away and wondered why the other man was so angry. All at once, he wasn't sure that the heat had come from anger. Had Evicka, with her teasing
Are you excited? Then look behind you
. sensed something?

He'd never been a great percussion player but, even so, this had to be the worst timing ever. Here he was, sailing across uncharted seas toward an unknown shore and suddenly realizing… what?

Fear, anticipation, desire—he didn't know which—dragged a chill down his spine.

Mila pulled an answer out of his silence. "What, no one? A good-lookin' young guy like you?"

Her tone pulled his head around. She smiled knowingly at him. "It's okay. You don't got to tell me. You left without anything settled between you." The scab came free, and she rubbed at the pale, new skin beneath. "I guess we both got someone we think we got to impress."

Chapter Five

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THE first violent squall came on them so suddenly, it split the main course and blew the furled forecourse and mizzen out of their gaskets, whipping them to ragged ribbons in a few moments. Stripped down to bare poles.
Starfarer
scudded before the wind, laboring heavily.

"Bard!"

Attempting to make his way aft without being decapitated by a line or flung overboard, Benedikt jerked toward the sound, lost his balance, and fell into the aft castle, slamming his shoulder against the wood. Strong fingers wrapped around his arm and dragged him into a more-or-less upright position.

A wave, crowned with foam and anchored in darkness, broke over the side, smacking the Starfarer down into the sea. The crew, fighting desperately to secure the whirling, striking snake's nest of ropes, hung on to what was at hand as the rushing water wrapped around their waists and tried to drag them into the depths.

Miraculously,
Starfarer
fought her way free, groaning and shaking but gaining the surface. As certain death poured back off the decks, the pin Mila held broke. She had no time to scream as the water closed triumphantly around her.

Shoving himself away from the captain, Benedikt Sang.

Almost absorbed back into the sea, the wave paused and reformed into a vaguely human shape, the struggling figure of the ship's carpenter clearly visible inside. A featureless face turned toward the bard.

He added a command to the Song.

The huge kigh hung motionless beside the ship for a moment, then it leaned forward and dropped Mila out onto the deck.

Benedikt saw her cough once, twice, and that was all the attention he could spare as the kigh turned toward him again. He added layers to the Song, and a second kigh rose to join the first, then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. For every kigh there was one less wave.

Finally,
Starfarer
bobbed gently, ringed by a barrier of translucent bodies that kept the waves at bay. Essentially, the kigh listened to the same Song that had held the flood from Janinton; essentially, in the way that
Starfarer
and a river-boat were sister ships.

Janinton had been exhausting only because of the time he'd spent Singing. This was different. Benedikt had never had to reach so far into himself to find a Song. Among those who believed all things were enclosed in the Circle, all kigh were said to be part of one greater kigh. A Song to any one kigh, was believed to be a Song to them all. Benedikt had never doubted that.

These kigh had never been Sung to.

They listened, intrigued, but he could feel how precarious the balance was. His Song weighed against the violent passions of the storm. He had to do something, something more to hold their attention.

So he Sang seduction.

The captain backed away as a translucent hand reached out to lap its fingers against the bard's bare chest. She watched, concerned, as, eyes closed, Benedikt moved out onto the main deck and each of the kigh wrapped their touch around him in turn. If they were responding to him, the wet cotton breeches made it quite clear he was equally responding to them.