Paragaea (25 page)

“Well, then,” he said amiably, slapping Spatha on the shoulder, an avuncular grin on his wide face. “Why didn't you say so?”

He turned to the deckhands, who hung back uneasily, eyeing the newcomers.

“Cast off, you swabs!” he said. “We've cargo to deliver, and paying passengers to transport!” Tyrel turned back to the company. “If you've been embroiled in any…local difficulties, shall we say, it might be best if you went below until we were out of sight of land.”

The shipmaster gestured with his double chin to the dock, where a trio of scimitar-wielding constables had just skidded into view.

“A fine idea,” Leena said, hunching low. “Lead the way.”

“Welcome to the good ship
Acoetes Zephyrus
, my lady,” Tyrel said with an oily smile, and pointed towards the hatch. “Your cabin awaits.”

Some time later, the shipmaster joined the company down in the hold, where they sat amongst casks and crates, tending to their wounds.

“We got clear of the waters of Masjid Empor without coming to the attention of the barques and corvettes of the harbor patrol. We're making for the open sea, so it should be safe for you to come topside now, if you like.”

“Our thanks for your pains,” Hieronymus said.

“Oh, I've suffered no pains for your sake yet, and I don't intend to start.” The shipmaster gestured at the hold around them. “My hold was already full of cargo, and I was just waiting for my ne'er-do-well nephew of a first mate, who is no doubt away carousing on the town, to return from shore leave. But I'll pick him up on the return trip, if he should survive that long. It'll break my sister's heart if I have to tell her that her wee lad has come to a bad end, but into every life a little rain must fall, after all. And besides, if he survives it might help to
strengthen the boy's character a bit. Of course, come to think of it, I'm now left a bit shorthanded. I don't suppose any of you lot have any sailing experience, do you?”

Hieronymus smiled broadly. “I spent better than fourteen years before the mast,” he said, “working my way up through the ranks of my nation's navy from the position of midshipman to first lieutenant, and it's been too many years since I felt the roll of the waves beneath my feet.”

“Well, I don't know I have such a dire necessity for a first lieutenant,” Tyrel answered guardedly. “What I really need is help with the more, shall we say, taxing tasks of a deckhand. This is a fairly green crew, most of them come aboard in the last months, and I've always a need for a skilled pair of hands in the rigging, or working the bilge bumps, or even swabbing out the deck.”

If anything, hearing a list of the onerous tasks of a common sailor only caused the smile on Hieronymus's face to widen. “I'm your man, Captain,” he said with a gleam in his eye.

By the time Leena and the others came topside once more, they were out of sight of land, the clear blue waters of the Inner Sea stretching out to the horizon in all directions. The sky overhead was clear and bright, with only a few low clouds to the north, hugging the coastline.

Leena heard a rumbling she initially took to be distant thunder, but which she quickly discovered was the growling of Balam's stomach. She realized that they'd not eaten before they arrived in Masjid Empor, considering that their last attempt to break their fast had been interrupted by their unexpected arrest.

“Have you anything to eat?” Leena asked the shipmaster as he joined them on the deck.

“And I wouldn't say no to a drink, myself,” Hieronymus put in, licking his dry lips.

“Oooooh,” burbled the voice beneath the damp robes. “A dram of spirits would
so
ease my jangled nerves.”

“Afraid not, all,” Tyrel said with a shake of his head. “I'm a strict adherent to the doctrine of the Meliorists, and I'll not allow any intoxicants on my ship, no matter how much my crew…or my inadvertent passengers…might grumble.”

“Wha-at?” said the voice beneath the robes, and a webbed hand appeared from between the folds of cloth, grasping at the shipmaster. “But I'm
thirsty!”

“If you're thirsty, mate,” Tyrel answered, not without compassion, “it's not spirits you'll be needing, now is it?”

The robed figure gave a howl of disconsolate pain, and slumped off to sulk in the shadow of the wheelhouse.

“What kind of creature
is
that?” Leena asked.

“I thought you knew,” Balam answered.

“It is an Ichthyandaro,” Spatha said, saying the word like it was a curse.

Leena glanced at the robed figure, a confused expression on her face.

“That there, lassie,” Tyrel explained, “is a genuine fish man. Their kind tends to have a weakness for alcoholic spirits, though their bodies tolerate the stuff not at all. Tends to dry them out, you see, which is bad for the gills.”

“Gills?” Leena looked closer at the sulking figure, and at last understood the need for the dampened robes.

That night, while the others enjoyed their evening meal under a cloudless sky, Leena spent her time studying the constellations. Many of the arrangements of stars seemed somewhat familiar, similar to those she
knew from Earth's night sky, but subtly altered, their positions in the heavens and their relation one to another changed.

When the others went below, to hang hammocks between the bulkheads and swing off to sleep, Leena stayed topside, her eyes on the heavens. In the strangeness of the past months, it was sometimes easy to forget that she'd so recently slipped the bonds of gravity, and traveled beyond the horizon. That she'd traveled so far beyond the horizon, she now reflected, and found herself on an alien world, however, was a fact she could never escape.

Perhaps, then, this oracular forest towards which they sailed would hold the answers to the riddle of Paragaea, and the key to her safe return home. If she'd deserved a promotion to senior lieutenant for the successful completion of the Vostok 7 mission, surely she'd merit a commander's star for discovering a whole new world.

Commander Akilina Mikhailovna Chirikova. It was a long distance to travel from the dirty-faced urchin who'd nearly died in a hail of incendiaries during the Great Patriotic War. A long distance, indeed.

The next morning, Leena came on deck to find the robed figure huddled in the lee of the wheelhouse. The cloth of its robes had dried out in the night, and the fabric covering its head, chest, and left arm had been shrugged off. Its skin was ashen and gray, and while it appeared to be unconscious, its extremities trembled uncontrollably.

“You there,” Leena said, turning and pointing to a sailor swabbing the deck with a bucket and mop. “Get me a bucket of water, if you would.”

The sailor looked at his mop and his bucket in turn, shrugged, and dropping the mop to the deck carried the bucket over to Leena.

“Thank you.” Leena took the bucket from the sailor's hands and, without preamble, upended it over the trembling figure on the deck. The brackish water splashed over the fish man, partially soaking the robes.

Leena turned, and handed the bucket back to the sailor. “More, please,” she said firmly, and then turned her attention back to the trembling figure.

After a half-dozen buckets, at which point the sailor's rather slow-witted patience seemed to have been mostly exhausted, the fish man began to sputter, and rose up on its elbow.

“Wh-where am I?” the fish man said, voice tremulous.

“You're on board the
Acoetes,”
Leena replied soothingly. “A dhow sailing on the Inner Sea. Do you remember how you came to be here?”

With Leena's help, the fish man rose into a sitting position, and then stood up on unsteady feet. On rising, the robes slid down off his slight frame, and standing unclothed, it was clear that he was a male of the species. Also, she could now see that fins ran along the back of his calves, and behind his scalloped ears were gills, swollen and reddish-raw. His skin was all over mottled and ashen, looking sickly and gray.

“I was arrested? Wasn't it?” the fish man said uncertainly. He swayed unsteadily with the rocking of the ship, squinting his dark eyes at the sea all around them. “In some city or other?”

“Masjid Empor,” Leena said, nodding. She gave the fish man an arm to steady him. “My name is Leena. My friends and I escaped from imprisonment, and you joined us.”

The fish man's head swung around on his thin neck like a balloon in a high wind, and he regarded Leena with one eye squeezed nearly shut and the other one opened wide. “Did I now? That sounds like it must have been exciting.”

Leena smiled. “Perhaps a bit. And what is your name, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Kakere.” The fish man paused for a moment, as though considering whether that was true or not, and then nodded. “Yes. Kakere.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Kakere.”

“Likewise, I'm sure.” The fish man tried to take a step forward, and nearly pitched face-first onto the deck, saved from falling only by Leena's quick intervention. “Thank you kindly,” he said, nodding languorously. “Now, do you know where I might find a drink on this tub?