Singer from the Sea (46 page)

The others went, but Aufors stayed.

“So you’re still digging,” the Captain murmured.

“Shouldn’t I be?” he replied angrily.

“Yes, Colonel. Of course you should. You’re angry with me because you think I should have told you many things you weren’t told. I was under orders not to do so. You and I, sir, we obey orders, do we not?”

“Usually,” Aufors grated, thinking to himself that there were a good many he would not obey, including ones that put his fellow men into harm’s way.

“Also,” the Captain went on, “you are in love with your wife, you delight in your son.”

“You may be sure I’m going after them.”

“Oh, yes, and you’re also curious about what’s going on, just as I have been for years, except that I’ve not had the resolution to do anything about it except listen to whispers. That’s all I know: whispers. There is one aboard, however, who might know more than I. Ask the doctor, Colonel.”

“Ask him what?”

The Captain grinned mirthlessly, his skull face reflected in the dials before him, fixing Aufors with glittering eyes. “I’ve always felt the doctor knew more than the rest of us about P’naki.”

In the throne room at Havenor, the Lord Paramount was receiving a report from one of his spies, a man the Prince would have been unhappily surprised to see kneeling subserviently before His Majesty.

“Well, Wiezal! So Prince Delganor is now separated from the ship and from his men!” The Lord Paramount sat up quite straight and settled his crown straight on his head. “How did you find that out?”

“You asked me to arrange to keep tabs on the mission, Your Majesty. Accordingly, we put listening devices on the ship, and we stationed men all along the islands to relay the message along the Stone Trail, to Frangía, and thence to Bliggen, and thence up the road to Havenor. We receive the message only a few hours after it has left the vicinity of Mahahm.”

“But the Prince is currently with the Shah? Correct? And the Shah does not want any trifling with … P’naki?”

“It’s rather confusing, Your Majesty, full of noise and cross talk, and our off-world technicians have to sort it all out when we receive the record here. All we really know is that the Prince, the Marshal, and the Invigilator are with the Shah, that the Marshal’s daughter has run away, and that her husband will no doubt go looking for her.”

“Always running off, that one, isn’t she?” said the Lord Paramount in an interested voice. “Ran off from Delganor, before. Said at the time she had good sense. Well. Events have conspired to give us an opportunity!”

“Indeed, Your Majesty.”

“And quite good time, too. Delganor was becoming … almost overt. Are my good little Frangians out there, Wiezal?”

“Waiting, Your Majesty.”

“Let them come in. And stay to listen.”

They came in, three lean, browned men with squinty eyes and callused hands. They bowed. The Lord Paramount nodded.

“Shipment on the way, is it?”

“The supply ships are halfway to Mahahm, Your Majesty,” said their spokesman. “Trip shouldn’t take much longer, depending on the wind.”

“Slight change in plans,” said the Lord Paramount. “I presume you can communicate with your ships?”

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty. Indeed.”

“One of my airships is moored on an island near Mahahm. When your ship gets there, send someone ashore and give the Captain this message: He and the ship are to return to Bliggen at once, without waiting for the Prince. If he asks for a code phrase that tells him the message is really from me, tell him ‘Down with sneaks and lurkers.’”

“‘Down with sneaks and lurkers,’ your Majesty?”

“The Captain will know the message is from me. Then, when your ships arrive offshore of Mahahm, they should send a little boat ashore and tell the Shah’s man that payment is to be made directly to them, not returned by Prince Delganor in the airship. Understand?”

“Perfectly,” said the spokesman.

“Payment is to consist of the usual shipment of P’naki, twenty jars, well sealed, the Marshal and the Invigilator, alive and in good condition, and the dead body of Prince Delganor in any condition at all, so long as one can ascertain it is indeed the Prince. Your people are not to unload the food or other supplies they are carrying until payment is received. Now, pay attention. The substance in the jars is extremely condensed when you receive it. It gets prepared for use here in Havenor. Warn your people not to unseal it on the ship. Damp air destroys the efficacy, and none of us want to see more of our people dying of batfly fever.”

“We understand, Your Majesty.”

“Once they’re sure they have the Prince, they may dump his body overboard,” continued the Lord Paramount, “Suitably weighted. And as always, we do not talk about our arrangement.” He looked significantly at the Aresians on either side of the door, each with a hand on his weapon. “Do we? My cousin, the Duke of Frangía, would be most upset if he learned I had delayed his return to the provincial throne because of my gratitude to the Mariner’s Guild of Frangía.”

They replied in unison, “Silence is sworn, Your Majesty.”

“Thus Frangía continues in peace in the Whatever.” The Lord Paramount smiled. “As it has for some time now.”

“Peace and Whatever,” they intoned, bowing themselves out backwards.

Wiezal was summoned forward from the corner in which he’d placed himself.

“Have I forgotten anything?” asked the Lord Paramount.

“Not if it works,” said Wiezal. “You’ll have the Prince done for, you’ll have your shipment you want, and you’ll have the Marshal and Invigilator back.”

“It’s true that I’ve asked for the Marshal back,” said the Lord Paramount fretfully. “But I’m not at all sure I want him! The man is as thick as craylet bisque! Asked him once if his daughter was a good candidate for …” His voice faded, as though he had forgotten what he was
saying. He nodded, then said jerkily, “Well, he didn’t follow me at all.”

He stared distractedly at Wiezal, who responded by looking puzzled. He was puzzled more and more lately, when it came to things the Lord Paramount ordered or said or claimed he had said. The man was getting … well,
forgetful
was the most tactful word Wiezal could think of.

The Lord Paramount came to himself with a start. “I’m rambling. Just rambling. He’ll be wiser now. I’m sure Rongor has put him in the picture. That’s an Invigilator’s job, right? Thick as craylet bisque. Amazing.” He sat back on his throne and reached for the top catalog on the pile.

Wisely, Wiezal went.

G
ENEVIEVE WOKE IN THE MARAE
. F
OR A LONG TIME SHE
lay in the tall stone room with her eyes half closed, listening for Dovidi’s breathing, only slowly realizing that he wasn’t there. Her throat tightened as she tried to remember where she was, when she was: not on the ship, not in Mahahm-qum, not on the desert. Panic ebbed. She was at the marae, and three days had passed since she fled the city.

She opened her eyes to stare upward. Pallid light gathered once more around the high window through which the cool of the night had flowed, as into a well.

“With one frog in it,” she murmured.

“What frog?” asked a familiar voice from across the room.

She sat up, pushing her tangled hair away from her face. A woman occupied the chair across the room, hands lying in her lap, sandaled feet together beside a cloth bundle, face quiet. Genevieve had never seen her before.

“I was thinking the room is like a well,” confessed Genevieve. “It is full of night cool, and I am the frog in it.”

The woman smiled, very slightly, as though smiling were an alien habit, one she had only recently learned of. “Well, there are at least two of us frogs, relishing the cool of the morning. Have you rested?”

“I must have. I didn’t wake.” Without warning, her eyes filled with tears. “I woke up thinking of Dovidi. I’ve left him. I’ve abandoned him….”

“You feel guilty over that?”

“Of course I do. He’ll think I’ve abandoned him.”

“No. He won’t. Babies recognize things they have seen, smelled, tasted, or felt, but they don’t remember them separate from the event until they are older. Don’t you believe Awhero will keep him safe?”

Genevieve searched inwardly for the answer to that, finding a complete certainty. “I know she will if she can.”

“Then blame your hours of sleep on your confidence in her. Unless you believe it is your duty to be forever guilty of some unspecified sin. Some women do. If you are one of them, you will be little good to us or yourself.”

Though the woman had spoken as though, she didn’t care, she was watching Genevieve with concentrated attention.

Genevieve thought about this, running her fingers into the tangled mass of her hair. “No. That’s not my duty, but I grieve over his absence. I miss him. He has been with me a while now, inside or beside.”

“Of course you miss him. If you had been less intelligent about his safety, you might have brought him with you as a foolish woman would, putting instinct ahead of good sense. If you had done that, neither of you would have survived. A baby wailing in the sands and those winged hunters would have been on you in moments. You were right to let him go. The old woman was right to take him.”

“Do you know her?”

“Certainly I know her. Awhero is what you might call a ham, an eccentric, a woman who has grown to love the part she plays. She has virtually invented the role of malghaste for others to copy, but she is nonetheless reliable. The child will be all right: dirtier than with you, more shared among caretakers than with you, passed about a great deal more from one to another, no doubt, but all right.”

Genevieve took up her comb and applied it to the tangle,
working the snarls out. “I must get word to my husband …”

The woman shook her head, slowly. “There’s no way we can do that. Our runners tell us that the ship left the city three days ago. He knows you’re alive, and that is enough for now.”

“There was fighting!” she cried, suddenly remembering.

The woman made a shushing motion with one hand. “The Colonel was not injured in the fighting. In fact, all the Havenites survived except three….”

“Who?” she cried. “Who was killed?”

“The two guards who were with your father and a man of religion who was killed after the ship left, despite his being, I am told, a member of the nobility. Your father and the Prince are now the guests of the Shah, and they are unharmed. Our messengers tell us that everyone who survived the initial encounter, Havenite or Mahahmbi, is irritated beyond measure, for many died by the guns of the ship, and those deaths, at least, were not supposed to have happened.”

Genevieve gritted her teeth at this cool analysis. “What was supposed to have happened?”

The woman grimaced. “Judging by prior and similar events, you and your family were to have been taken for an … exemplary use. After which your father was to have seen where his interest lay and the Prince was to have moderated his demands. Since your husband made himself unavailable for sacrifice, however, the religious gentleman took his place. Much, one supposes, to his dismay.”

Genevieve could not control her annoyance. “Whoever you are, you seem very cool about all this. Does any of it matter to you?”

A curious expression fled across the woman’s face, a mere flicker, leaving it as impassive as before. “My name is Melanie, Marchioness, and you do not yet know me or mine well enough to ask that question, much less to judge us. What you confront here, we have confronted for many lifetimes.”

Genevieve gritted her teeth. “I’ll try to get to know you better, but I beg you, don’t call me Marchioness. I did
nothing to earn the title save be born to it. I would as soon never have had it since it brought me to the notice of the Prince. I did everything I could to escape the Prince while remaining true to a vow I made my mother, long ago.”

The woman’s voice softened. “So it seems.”

“Then you know a great deal more than you did last night!”

“Ah, well, we made detailed inquiries during the night. All the bloodshed took place three days ago, but Mahahm-qum returned to peace promptly. The thrice yearly Time-of-Renewal was upon them, four days of ritual and mystery, and when that time comes, calm must prevail. On the third day, today, the Shah himself goes out into the desert, and he could not do so if there were unrest. If he did not go, the hopes and dreams of those close to him would wither, resulting in a loss of support, which would dismay as nothing else does.” Her mouth twisted, as though she wanted to spit. “Even as we speak, the Shah is welcoming the aspirants whom he will lead into the desert with the candidates. While he does so, the city holds its breath, waiting.”

“I’m missing all the fun?” said Genevieve, watching her informant through narrowed eyes.

“Ha,” the woman barked. “Fun of the Shah’s sort? Yes. And be everlastingly grateful for that.”

“Are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

“You don’t know what it’s about?”

“How could I?”

“I have no way of knowing what you know or don’t know, not yet. In any case, we can do better than tell you. Today, you will see for yourself.”

“We’re going back to the city?” she asked, dismayed despite herself. Her body still ached from the struggle to gain this refuge.

“Not to the city, no, and you won’t have to walk.” The woman stood and came to peer into Genevieve’s face. “You’re still weak; your face is burned, your lips are raw. Walking on deep sand is difficult and exhausting. You probably ache.”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, take comfort. Today will require little physical strain.” She returned to the bundle and took it up, delivering it into Genevieve’s hands. “I’m returning your soft robe. The stuff you spilled down your front wouldn’t have killed you, but if you’d drunk it, you wouldn’t have had the wits to escape. We know that drug; the soporific effect lasts for days. Now, put it on. There’s a new pair of sandals inside. We’re expected at breakfast.”

“My hair.” Genevieve tugged at a recalcitrant snarl with fruitless tenacity. “I was too sleepy to braid it.”