Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) (14 page)

There my mind worried incessantly at the problems that beset me. Aekinitos, Abby told me, had taken the
Basilisk
out for trading; he would return in a few weeks and see where matters stood. Although I initially cursed him roundly for abandoning Tom at such a critical time, I had to accede to his logic; they could do nothing for Tom that they had not done already—the hotel had a doctor who was probably superior to the
Basilisk
’s in any case—and Aekinitos could not afford to sit in harbour doing nothing. I mean that quite literally: it takes a great deal of money to keep so many men fed, to say nothing of the pay they are owed, and had he kept the
Basilisk
in Seungdal the entire time, our expedition would have ended in bankruptcy. So long as Aekinitos was earning money
somewhere,
he could give both us and himself a financial reprieve.

But this did not solve the underlying problem, which was that we were growing alarmingly short of money. The bribe in Yelang had gone almost entirely to waste, the changes to our itinerary had thoroughly mangled our budget, and doctors do not come cheaply. I sat on my sickbed, staring at maps, and thought with bleak resignation that we would have to abbreviate our journey. I did not know what sorts of trading opportunities Aekinitos might find in the Broken Sea, but it was not a region we could sweep through in a week—not even if we ignored both the sea-serpents and the fire-lizards that dwelt on the volcanic islands. If we bypassed it entirely, however, the remainder of our voyage might yet be saved.

These were not thoughts I enjoyed having. It felt like admitting defeat, in a way I had not done since the beginning of my grey years, when I attempted to forswear my true interests in favour of more ladylike behaviour. But it was no virtue to forge ahead and deepen our difficulties; better to salvage what I might from the situation, while I still could.

*   *   *

I owe Jake a great deal for his actions during that time: first because he kept me company even when I was not good company to keep, and second because, once I regained a modicum of strength, he insisted on dragging me from the hotel into the streets of Seungdal. Without his determination, my voyage might have been far shorter and less interesting, and my own life less complete.

Abby had of necessity allowed Jake to run about on his own while she looked after Tom and myself, but Jake had taken his freedom with surprising maturity. He showed me about the place, indicating which merchants he had dealt with in obtaining food and other necessities; he spoke none of their language and they spoke none of his, but gestures will go a surprisingly long way in bargaining. Even that small grounding, orienting me in the crowded and unfamiliar maze of the harbour islet, did a great deal to make me believe that this problem, too, could be surmounted.

My optimism did not long outlast my strength, and the latter flagged with alarming rapidity. Jake, carefully solicitous, was about to lead me back to the hotel when he gave a sudden yelp of recognition and dove into the waterfront crowd.

His abrupt departure left me off-balance and grasping for the nearest wall. I could not spot him in the press, and called out his name with growing alarm. Then my searching gaze lit upon a face that I, too, recognized.

“Mrs. Camherst!” Suhail said, his familiar grin spreading across his face. It faltered, though, when he took in my state. “Are you well?”

I let go of the wall, intending to tell him that I was fine, but gave the lie to those words before I could even speak them. As Jake said later, I turned an alarming shade of paper-white and swayed like a reed. Suhail was there in an instant, one hand on my elbow, the other on my waist, first catching and then guiding me to a seat on the nearest crate.

When I was sure of my stability, I said, “I have been ill.”

“I can see that,” Suhail murmured. “Please forgive me. I would not ordinarily touch a woman outside my family, but—”

I waved away his apology before he could finish it. “I had rather you catch me than let me fall down in the street. If propriety takes issue with that, it can go hang.” I drew in a steadying breath. “Forgive
me.
I was clearly too ambitious in coming out today.”

“Are you in the quarantine hotel?” Suhail asked, and I nodded. “Let me help you back.”

A minor comedy ensued, in which his sense of good behaviour, my own determination not to be a complete milksop, and Jake’s eager gallantry all collided in their rush to determine whether I could get home without leaning on Suhail again. Jake ended up being my support, for all that he was less than half my size, and I could not decide whether I was relieved at not needing a grown man to keep me on my feet, or humiliated that I needed to lean on my own son.

Once back at the hotel, Suhail offered to leave and come back when I was feeling better, but I said, “No, no. I only need to sit for a little while, and perhaps drink something. It gave me quite a turn, seeing you—not that it was unpleasant! Just a surprise.”

Suhail nodded, glancing about the unimpressive lobby as he took his seat. “And your companion? Is he here as well?”

“He is recovering,” I said, and gave him the briefest outline of our recent misfortunes.

Suhail listened with a grave expression, and shook his head when I was done. “Truly, you have both been very lucky. I have had dengue myself, some years ago, and although I survived, others with me were not so fortunate.”

“Did they shave your head, too?” Jake asked.

I could have quite cheerfully strangled my son in that moment, for his question caused Suhail to look first at him, then at me; and after a moment he realized that the kerchief beneath my hat was not covering a very large volume of hair. To his credit, however, he did nothing more than nod in silent acknowledgment of my loss. To Jake he said, “They did not. But they did tie me to the bed, to keep me from scratching myself bloody.”

As I had frequently been tempted to do the same to myself, I could sympathize. “How long did it take you to recover?” I asked.

“To be on my feet, only a few days. But I was tired for a fortnight after. Your companion…” Suhail paused, the tip of his tongue resting against his lip as he thought. Then he shook his head. “I cannot remember the name of it. There is an herbal concoction, common in this region, which will restore his strength more quickly.”

I sighed. “I already asked the doctor here, and he had no suggestions.”

Suhail waved this away. “Any herbalist here should know it. If you ask them, they can tell you.”

“If I
could
ask them,” I said, too tired to hide my frustration.

“Then I will do it for you. If you would like.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, apart from the belated realization that perhaps he was overstepping his bounds. That was not at all what put me aback, though. I knew from our interactions in Namiquitlan that he spoke the Coyahuac tongue quite well. His Scirling was accented but grammatically impeccable, and one could presume a mastery of his native tongue of Akhian. “How many languages do you
speak
?”

Suhail cocked his head to one side, eyes fixed on a high corner of the room, as if counting silently. “Speak? Or should I also include the ones I can only read?”

“Good heavens,” I said, marveling. “I have never learned any language as well as you speak mine, let alone so many beyond it. I haven’t the head for such things.”

He shrugged, seeming unimpressed by his own ability. “I have always enjoyed languages. They are like ciphers. When I was a boy, my father—” Upon that word, Suhail stopped. For the first time in our acquaintance, I saw a hint of bitterness cloud his normally bright disposition.

Jake rescued us both from that awkward moment. “Can I go with you?”

Suhail blinked, momentarily confused. Then he recalled the offer he had made, before we embarked upon our tangent. “You should perhaps stay with your mother.”

My words overlaid my son’s, both of us assuring him that I was perfectly capable of sitting quietly in a hotel without supervision. “Besides,” I said when I was done, “Abby is upstairs with Tom.” (She had proved a patient nursemaid, having worked for a family with sickly children before coming to mine. Such labors are often unappreciated—especially with patients as grumpy in their recovery as Tom became—and so I want to express my gratitude toward Jake’s governess here, for all posterity.)

I think Suhail had exaggerated in saying that “any herbalist” should know the concoction, for he and Jake were gone quite some time. They returned victorious, however, and whether Tom’s subsequent improvement was due to the medicine or his own stout constitution (which had shrugged off wyvern poison with remarkable ease), I was nevertheless grateful to Suhail for his aid.

He returned the following day, and found me well enough to feel that I could not bear facing the quarantine hotel’s dreadful food yet again. They had, during my illness, fed me a broth made with pig meat in it. In Dajin lands, where few people are Segulist or Amaneen, pigs are quite commonly used for food, and Abby had been too distracted with her duties to realize. When I heard about it afterward, I was nearly ill in a new way, and scrubbed my mouth thoroughly before I consumed anything else. After that, I insisted on pig-free meals, but what I was given in its place was scarcely more appetizing.

We went therefore to Suhail’s hotel—myself and Jake; Tom was not yet recovered enough to leave his bed, and Abby would not leave him unattended—and found it, unsurprisingly, to be much better than our own. I would gladly have shifted there as soon as Tom was judged no longer a risk, but our strained finances weighed heavily upon me. The quarantine hotel at least had the virtue of being cheap.

The server at this establishment greeted Suhail with familiarity and seated us right away. Once settled, I asked, “How long have you been here? He seems to know you quite well.”

Suhail thought it over. “A month? No, not quite so much.”

My brow furrowed. “Are there ruins here of particular interest? I do not recall hearing of any.” Akhia was no more a favoured ally of Seungdal than Scirland was, but I knew it was possible for individuals to gain permission to move about more freely. Perhaps he was attempting to obtain such a permit.

But he shook his head. “There is only record of one ruin here, and it is long since gone. The Jeonhan Dynasty had it dismantled, stone by stone, for being idolatrous. No, I am … not exactly here by choice.”

“Were you shipwrecked?” Jake asked.

Suhail laughed. “Only in a manner of speaking. I had a disagreement with the captain of the ship I was on. The end of the disagreement was that he put me ashore here, to find new passage as I might.”

“That’s not like a shipwreck at all,” Jake complained, as the server arrived with bowls of soup Suhail assured us were entirely free of pig.

The beef stock and cabbage were very welcome after my illness, even if the quantity of pepper was rather more than I liked. My eyes watered a little as I said, “But surely it should not take a month to find passage off this island—not with the number of ships that come in to port. Where are you trying to go?”

Suhail had no apparent problem with the pepper; Akhians like their food well spiced. He ate quick, tidy spoonfuls in between bits of his answer. “It isn’t my destination that poses the problem. It’s my baggage.”

When I gave him a mystified look, he elaborated. “A device I had made for me by an artificer in Tuantêng. It was the source of my disagreement with the captain, for the size and weight of it made him very unhappy. Have you ever heard of a diving bell?”

“I have!” Jake said, before I could admit my ignorance. “It’s a big dome of metal. You sink it down into the water and it keeps the air inside, so you can go swimming out and come back for air.”

“That is the general idea, yes, although the details are more complex—especially with the diving bell I had made. A friend of mine designed it, and—” Suhail caught himself and waved the rest away. “You would not be interested in the technical details. The heart of the issue is that with the addition of this bell, my baggage became rather more substantial than it had been, much to the displeasure of the captain. And although I offered to pay him well for his trouble, he chose rather to seek new employment.”

Jake looked very much as if he wanted to argue the assertion that he would not care about the technical details, but I had something else on my mind. “Why burden yourself with such a thing, though? I thought your interest was in archaeology.”

Suhail’s grin spread across his face, as if he could not hold it in. “How else am I to study the ruins underwater?”

“Draconean ruins?” I asked dubiously. “Whyever should they—oh. Of course they would not
build
underwater. You mean that the ruins have been drowned since their day, like the lost city of Cyfrinwr.” Despite my usual disinterest in ancient civilizations, the notion intrigued me. “
Are
there such ruins? Or are you hoping to find some?”

“I know there are several,” Suhail said. “Scattered throughout the Broken Sea.”

Jake was bouncing in his seat at the thought of this. Draconean ruins on land held only moderate savour for him, but underwater? He could imagine nothing finer. For my own part, I was arrested by a sudden thought.

The Broken Sea. To which I very much wished to go … assuming our finances could support it. In the meanwhile, here was Suhail: with money, but no ship.

I almost asked him there, in the middle of our luncheon, without pause for consideration or consultation with my fellows. But it was not the issue of what Tom would say, nor Aekinitos, that stopped me that day. Rather I found myself questioning my own impulse. I had enjoyed Suhail’s company in Namiquitlan, and certainly he had been good to us here in Seungdal—but I knew from personal experience that a ship is not a spacious home to share with a near stranger. We had our share of tiffs with the crew, and they fell under Aekinitos’ authority, which meant he could punish them when necessary. How would we handle it if we came into conflict with Suhail?