The Waters Rising (57 page)

She went away, shaking her head slightly, worrying at the idea of Justinian away somewhere, in danger. Abasio and Xulai went in the other direction.

Across the bay, on the ridge they had left only an hour or so before, a small carriage surrounded by an orderly pack of wolves arrived. Carriage and driver sat there for a moment while the driver stared at the rising waters and across at the pale blotch on the hillside that was all she could see of the white-towered building she was looking for. After a time, she detected the road to her left and she and the wolves started down the hill toward the road that led around the bay. No doubt there would be some game in those forests across the way that would feed her charges so she would not have to frighten the lady of the house.

I
n Ghastain, Mirami was forbidden to leave her quarters, over her vehement protests. The following morning, when the king went to question her himself, she lay on the bed, barely breathing, a terrible smell coming from her with each exhalation, like rotten meat. At first, when closed in this suite of rooms yesterday afternoon, she thought she had caught Chamfray’s illness. Then she had wondered if the illness had not been directed at them both. Briefly, she had thought of Alicia, but she knew of no poison that did this, and very shortly later she was barely conscious and could say nothing. King Gahls fidgeted and fussed; one of his advisers suggested that this felicitous coincidence be put to use and the Tingawan emissary be summoned as witness. The emissary came to see that Mirami was obviously dying; she had not even the strength to deny she had killed Xu-i-lok when the question was asked. Though Precious Wind had long ago told them the truth, the emissary pretended to be satisfied. Bear was not the only vengeance seeker who was now following Alicia on her way back to the Old Dark House. Several very highly trained attachés to the embassy were keeping both Bear and Alicia company on the way.

I
n Merhaven, late at night, when no one was moving about in the town, the shipping office of Tingawa in the person of the ship’s captain received a delegation: Precious Wind, whom he had met long ago; Abasio, whom he had not; Xulai, whom he knew of but had never met. The ship must be readied to leave, he was told.

“Except for food stores, the
Falsa-xin
is ready. It has been ready for almost twenty years,” the captain growled. “My hair was black when we arrived here. The crewmen were young. We are older now, some of us have died; they’ve been replaced. The sails and cables have rotted; they’ve been replaced. We have a new mainmast. Last season we hauled her up onto the beach and scraped her bottom. I have almost renamed her
Baywind
instead of
Daywind
. Everything is as I promised my lord Lok-i-xan, head of Clan Do-Lok. We do not break oath.”

“You will need hay,” said Abasio. “I’m taking my horse.”

“Ridiculous,” said the captain.

“Either he takes his horse, or I don’t go on the
Daywind,
” said Xulai firmly. “Then you will have broken oath.”

The captain took a deep breath and bowed slightly. “Of course, ma’am. Hay.” He should have expected this. Clan Do-Lok never did the thing expected. “Just one horse?”

“We had another, and a mule. They will be cared for here.”

“You will need a good deal of meat,” said Precious Wind. “I’m taking a dozen wolves.”

The captain grimaced and looked at Xulai, his mouth agape.

“Yes, she is,” said Xulai. “I’m taking my fisher, as well.”

The furry thing on her shoulder wiggled its nose at the captain and remarked, “Actually, if you can do some fishing en route, the wolves and I can probably do very well on fish. Fresh fish is preferable to salt meat, certainly.”

Though imperturbability was one of the requirements of command, the captain took a moment or two to admit to himself he had heard the creature speak. “Give me a day or two,” said the captain. “We didn’t plan on livestock. And, as for the wolves, do they need to be . . . caged?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Precious Wind. “Not so long as they don’t get really hungry.”

“About . . . sanitation?” the captain went on doggedly.

“The wolves will poop where I tell them to poop,” said Precious Wind.

“The horse likewise,” said Abasio, trying to control laughter. “Have you a poop deck?”

“I don’t poop at all,” said the fisher in melancholy tones. “For some reason, it isn’t necessary for me.” Then, seeing the four pairs of eyes fixed wonderingly on him. “Well, one likes to experience everything, doesn’t one?”

“No,” said Abasio firmly. “Fisher, there are many things you don’t want to experience. Loss, grief, pain for a start . . .”

“Weariness,” said Xulai. “Trouble, hatred . . .”

“Sending former friends into danger,” said Precious Wind. “Be content, creature. You are better off than most of us.” She turned to the captain. “Sir, aside from these unexpected quadruped guests, we will put you to no trouble. But, please, put it about in the town that you and your men are weary of waiting and have decided to return to your own country. Say nothing about anyone going with you.”

The captain frowned at her. “And how do I explain hay?”

“Say you’ve purchased a couple of fine horses to take home with you. Tell people they’ve been stabled over at the Watch House. The lady Genieve will confirm it, if anyone asks. As for whatever meat we take, it could be for the crew, and the fisher is right. Fresh fish is preferable to salt meat.”

“It’s strange,” said the captain, “but the oceans are not as salty as they were in my youth. It’s easier now to soak salt meat and make it palatable.”

They left the captain and rode back to the Watch House.

“Is it true, about the oceans not being as salty?”

Abasio nodded. “The deep waters rising had no salt in them. One could almost drink the ocean water now.”

Genieve awaited them. “When will you go?” she asked.

“A couple of days,” Precious Wind replied. “Will you come with us, Genieve? You would be welcome.”

She shook her head. “I knew you would invite me, but no. No. My people are here. My children and grandbabies live nearby. They depend upon me. I will stay with them. I think it’s likely the waters won’t come much farther, not in my lifetime, at least. I remember Justinian telling me about Tingawa. The islands are mountainous, I know, but still, they are islands. Will you find any land left there, when you return?”

Precious Wind answered. “Tingawa also extends onto the neighboring continent, ma’am. Much of that area is mountainous. The low-lying islands were being depopulated even before I left there. Those left are not so heavily populated that there would not be room for all Tingawans on the continent, if it becomes necessary.”

“Still, I will remain here with my family and my people. They were my husband’s people, and before he died, he passed his duty toward them on to me.”

“As it should be,” said Precious Wind approvingly. “Now, it may be that Bear—you met him, he brought you Justinian’s greeting here some days ago?”

“The big, angry man. Yes, he did.”

“If he returns, tell him we have gone but that another ship is coming for him from Tingawa. We cannot wait for him, but we will not abandon him or our people who are at our embassy here in Norland. Tell him to wait for us here. But do not talk to him or anyone about the ship that is leaving. Do not say we went aboard it. The captain got tired of waiting, and he left. He bought a couple of horses. You’ve been stabling them for him. He took the horses with him. Everyone in Merhaven will have heard of that before we go. Can you trust your people to stay silent about our having been here?”

Genieve nodded, saying in a serious voice, “Only Dobbich and Mrs. Bang are here just now. Both are trustworthy. And when your friend comes, he may stay here with us. I will give him the message.”

And that was all there was of it. A few nights later, the ship sailed in darkness, with no one to witness Blue’s difficulty getting through the door of one of the four little cabins opening onto the deck, now his stable. Three other cabins were for Precious Wind, for the wolves, and for Abasio and Xulai together. The wolves greeted the straw-bedded little room they were to use as a den with suspicion. Precious Wind threw a blanket upon the straw and lay down upon it. They lay down around her. If she was there, they were satisfied. When she knew the wolves were comfortable without her, she would sleep in her cabin. There was no hurry. She could sleep anywhere.

There was no moon. The sky was overcast. Men at the capstan trudged silent circles, first to pull up the anchor that held them near the pier and then to pull the ship away from the pier by winding up the fat cable that led to a second, larger anchor sunk far out in the bay. Abasio pointed the big cables out to Xulai, reminding her of the rope nets holding the cliff villages in place. When they were above the larger anchor they trudged again, coiling that rope into its cable tier and hoisting the anchor into its chains. The captain gave his orders in a low voice; the seamen did not shout or whistle as they loosed sails and tugged them to catch the offshore wind, turning the ship and tacking it slowly out of the bay. When morning came, the ship had gone west beyond the edge of the world, and only one woman, standing alone in the tower of the Watch House, had seen it go.

F
ar out in the western sea, as the sun rose, Xulai came on deck to see a familiar figure standing at the rail. She stopped, breathless, as he turned.

“Father!” The word she had never used came without thought. She threw herself into his arms, feeling his wet face pressed to her forehead. “Where have you been?”

“Xulai, Xulai, Daughter, oh, if you knew how long I’ve wanted to call you that . . .” They clung together wordlessly.

Finally, she managed a coherent thought. “But here? Why didn’t we travel together? Why didn’t we—”

“Shhh. We couldn’t.” His arms tightened around her. He held her away from him, looking into her eyes. “So many things I wished for that I couldn’t . . . Couldn’t let you know who you were. Couldn’t let anyone know. Couldn’t show you any affection more than I might show a stranger. But I’ve been here, child. I started the journey two nights after you left. Hallad, Prince Orez, arrived that same night to keep Woldsgard safe. This is where your mother told me to go, to keep me safe and to confuse things.” He wiped his eyes, half laughing. “Oh, didn’t we spend decades confusing things! I’ve spent so many years making false trails I may never be able to travel openly anywhere!”

“How did you get here?”

“I came south, within easy distance of the Old Dark House but west of it, along the mountains. A couple of my Men of the Mountain from the high north were with me for most of the trip, scouting ahead, cleaning up our trail behind. That’s one route, close behind the Old Dark House, where they’d never suspect I would go! From there, day by day, I kept on through the forests to the Lake of the Clouds, then east to Elsmere and on to Merhaven, and then, at night, onto this ship. Years ago, Xu-i-lok wrote a letter for me to carry, telling the captain what to do with me. I have been just another of the seamen for some time now. Every now and then they have to take the ship out into the sea to be sure it’s still seaworthy. I am actually learning how to set sails and which rope to pull when they yell at me. It took some getting used to, being yelled at.”

“You came all that way alone? But you didn’t go to Genieve?”

“It was best so.”

“Why didn’t we go to Tingawa years ago? Why didn’t we bring my mother? Why—”

“Shhhh.” He drew her over to a covered hatch and sat her down upon it. “We followed plans, dear one, plans centuries in the making. Plans made by the clan Do-Lok. Oh, child, they’ve been trying to solve this one for over a hundred years.”

“What ‘this one’?”

“The problem of what mankind does with the waters rising. What does he do when there is no more dry land, dear heart? Oh, not in my lifetime or yours, but soon after. No way to stop the waters rising. No way to go back to the planet we used to have. No way to undo all the things we did wrong. Clan Do-Lok has been trying to work this one out for a very long time. You’re part of the solution, as was I. First Xu-i-lok and I, the man who loved her, to create you. Then you and Abasio . . . we had to wait for Abasio. He was a person they knew had to exist, somewhere. Statistics, they said. Statistically, he had to exist! First they had to find him! Then they had to get him to Woldsgard. We couldn’t leave Woldsgard until that happened. And it might not have worked. You might have hated him. Oh, I was so thankful to meet him, there at the gard, to know you liked him.”

“Love him, Father.”

“Even better then, my child. Even better. Oh, so good to say that something is going well! Precious Wind, she was part of it, a good part of it. Even Blue, the horse, he’s turning out to be part of it too. And you had to be old enough to understand and strong enough to endure . . .”

“To do what?” she cried.

“To create a new human race,” he said. “People who can live in the sea.”

“And all this terror, this being frightened, was
planned
?”

“No. None of the horror was planned, not by
us.
Just as the water goes on rising, so there are forces on earth who don’t want us to survive. That much was known. We
did not
know
who they were! Where were they? Why were they? Those things weren’t known then and aren’t really known now. To begin with we didn’t know about the duchess or her mother. We still don’t know where they got their powers or their ideas. Decades ago Prince Lok-i-xan sent someone to cross the Stony Mountains and locate the man who
statistically had to be there.
He turned out to be Abasio, but they had to locate him and send him in our direction. He had to come and meet you. It had to be voluntary.”