The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (14 page)

Alsair would let him escape to run or crawl a
few steps, only to pounce on him again. He tossed the child in the
air, eliciting terrified screeches. Gerard caught some of the words
the sailors were shouting.

“A hand! Let’s have a hand!”

“I’ll give him another turn of the
glass.”

“No a half turn.”

“A paw, a paw!”

“Take an ear!”

“No, tail, tail, tail!”

Gerard realized that they were offering
suggestions as to what should be the price of escape and also
taking bets on how long the foxling would survive this treatment.
At his elbow, Silveo gave a strangled gasp. Gerard glanced at him.
His eyes were so dilated they looked black. Gerard had seen Silveo
angry, but apart from that moment on the deck of the
Fang
before they left, he’d never seen him lose control. He looked like
he might now.

“Let it go!” Silveo screamed. “It’s a panaun
for Priestess sake. Let—it—go!”

Alsair turned to face him, the foxling firmly
under one paw. He grinned, his eyes wild. In the sudden silence, he
said, “Perhaps I’ll snip off his pretty tail and cram it down his
throat. Then we’ll see whether he’s got anything clever to say.”
With that, he reached down with his beak and severed the foxling’s
scrawny brush of a tail. The child’s shriek of agony mingled with
Silveo’s cry of fury. A knife flashed in the air, but Alsair had
already shot into the dark sky, taking the tail with him and
leaving the foxling child in a puddle of blood.

Gerard was so shocked and horrified that for
a moment he couldn’t move. He glanced at Silveo, trembling with
rage.
He
has
to know I didn’t plan this.
He strode
forward in the silence and scooped up the whimpering foxling. It
struggled for a moment, pleading inarticulately through tears. It
was so thin and tiny, it felt lighter than the coat on his
shoulders. He walked away from the cluster of shelts on the dock,
feeling Silveo’s eyes on him as he passed.
Was this you twenty
years ago? Were you ever this small, this helpless?

He walked until he was almost back to Ocelon
Town. Then he knelt and set the little foxling on his feet. The
child stood there shaking, eyes downcast. He was still sniffling,
and mucus dribbled off his chin. Gerard wiped it away with his
sleeve. He tilted the child’s face up. The round eyes met his,
frightened, infinitely distrustful. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Anything broken?”

The foxling did not answer him, so Gerard
felt his arms and legs. The child flinched at every touch, but he
seemed only bruised and cut, apart from the bloody stump of his
tail. It was oozing, but not gushing. Gerard had seen shelts lose
tails, and he knew the foxling would probably live, even without
medical attention. However, the wound would heal better with a few
stitches and he said so. “Anyone could do it,” he told the child,
“Just use thread and a needle boiled in water. Cut the stitches out
when the skin has closed over the bone.”

The foxling nodded, his huge eyes never
leaving Gerard’s face. “Where can I take you where you’ll be safe?”
asked Gerard. “I’ll take you anywhere; just tell me.”

The foxling shook his head. Gerard didn’t
know whether this meant he didn’t want Gerard’s help or he knew of
no place safe. Suddenly, he seemed to realize that no one was
holding onto him. He leapt back, nearly stumbled, then darted away
into the night.

Chapter 17.
Aftermath

Paper is used in Wefrivain only for the most
ephemeral purposes or for documents never intended to leave a safe,
dry place. Paper deteriorates and warps too rapidly in the sea air.
Books are never constructed out of paper. They are too expensive,
as each one must be copied by hand. Book pages are made of heavy
vellum, which can survive brief submersions in salt water and
prolonged submersion in freshwater. Vellum is specially crafted
leather, which can be made of any creature, but in Wefrivain is
most often taken from sheep or zebra skins.

—Gwain,
The Truth about Wyverns

For the next three days, Silveo drove
everyone on the ship mercilessly. He set the rowers to work, and
Gerard heard that one slave in the hold died from the strain of
their frenzied pace. It was true that they were tacking into the
wind and oars would increase their speed. However, there was no
emergency that required it. Silveo snapped at everyone, even
Farell, who was normally exempt from his more cutting remarks.

Nothing pleased him. He caught at the
smallest mistakes of knotting or sailwork, berated anyone
responsible, and sometimes those who were not. He managed to make
one of the cabin boys break down in open tears over a tiny error in
sanding the deck. In addition, he did not appear to sleep, but
paced the ship at all hours, looking for someone to upbraid.

He’s punishing them,
thought Gerard.
Because half the ship participated in Alsair’s little stunt.
Alsair wisely failed to make an appearance. Without him, Gerard had
no way of leaving the ship to relieve the tedium, but at least this
time he had Thessalyn. He convinced her to stay in the cabin those
first few days, reluctantly outlining what had happened on the
pier.

For a long time afterward, she sat in
silence. “Poor little foxling,” she said at last, and Gerard heard
genuine tears in her voice. “I wonder if something like that
happened to Silveo. Is that why he hates griffins?”

Gerard shrugged. “Perhaps.”

She was silent again for a long time. “Alsair
is out of control,” she said at last.

“Yes.” Gerard would not have admitted it to
anyone else. “Silveo was almost…well, not quite friendly, but we
were almost working together. And then this. I think he blames me,
may even think I set Alsair up to it.”

“Give him a few days to calm down,” said
Thessalyn. “Have you apologized?”

Gerard shook his head. “‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t
mean anything to Silveo. I tried to apologize for what I said to
him before we left, and he just sneered.” Gerard took a deep
breath. “I realized something when I was talking to him at the
estate—a lot of his apparently frivolous behavior is actually quite
calculated. This pushing for speed, for instance. He wants shelts
to think it’s because he’s lost his temper, and partially it is.
However, he also wants to work them so hard that they don’t have
time for gossip. Ships are gossipy places—nothing else to do.
Silveo was humiliated on that pier, and if they have time to
embellish the story, he stands to lose a lot of respect. The Watch
doesn’t like serving under a foxling, but they respect his wit and
they fear his cunning. They’re proud of him in a way. He makes them
laugh, makes their enemies look ridiculous. But they’d also turn on
him. He knows that.”

Later that day, Gerard cornered one of his
old subordinates and demanded to know what the sailors were saying.
Silveo had not managed to totally quash talk of the incident.
Alsair’s behavior was too sensational
not
to talk about, and
Gerard didn’t need anyone to tell him that the sailors considered
him the victor of some kind of contest. He learned from his old
shipmate that the general opinion of the lower deck was that Gerard
had planned the demonstration and that the threat had been most
clever. It had been directed at the little foxling, not at Silveo,
though the real intent was obvious.

Silveo has to know at least some of what
they’re saying,
thought Gerard. Faster and faster they sailed,
until four days out, with barely a watch of sleep per night, the
sailors were saying very little.

It was Thessalyn who brought things to a
halt. She came out of her cabin on the evening of the fourth day,
in spite of Gerard’s protests, and set up her harp on the deck.
She’d spent much of the last few days carefully oiling it to
protect the instrument from the salt air. Her strings had been
perfectly tuned and the elegantly curving wood shined to a lustrous
gloss. In the dusky light, with blue moon rising over the water,
and the ship skimming along like a bird, she began to play. Gerard
sat down beside her, where he could actually feel the vibrations of
the harp coming up through the deck.

She did not sing, just played a rich and
complicated piece that mingled with the creaking of the sails and
ropes and the occasional call of a sailor or a sea bird. None of
the sailors came on deck to listen. Sleep was too precious, but all
superfluous noises ceased as they strained to hear. Silveo had been
up in the rigging, and he jumped down onto the deck a few paces
from Thessalyn. Gerard thought for a moment he would tell her to
stop playing, but then he paced away to the upper deck, down again,
around the mizzen mast, down below deck, where he was gone for
quite a while.

He kept coming back, though, and finally he
stopped leaving and just leaned on the rail to listen. Thessalyn
played one song after another—no words, just music. When Gerard
looked at Silveo again, the admiral had sat down against the side
of the ship, leaned his head back, and shut his eyes. A moment
later, he slumped onto his side and curled up, his tail wrapped
around his body. Farell came over, saw him, and practically tiptoed
away. Gerard heard him mutter, “Thank the gods. Finally!”

Chapter 18. Maps and a
Library

Wefrivain is a crescent of thousands of
islands, many of them tiny. There are six Great Islands—Maijha
Minor on the eastern edge, followed by Maijha Major, Mance, Haplag,
Lecklock, and Sern. Each of these island kingdoms have hundreds of
smaller holdings. In addition, there are several dozen small,
independent kingdoms, most of them near the center of the crescent,
well away from the Great Islands. The sea is rougher outside the
crescent, and outer islands are more likely to be uninhabited.

—Gwain,
A Guide to Wefrivain

Half a watch later, Farell had gone around
the ship reducing sail, slowing their pace, and redefining the
lengths of the sailors’ shifts so they could rest. He stopped to
talk to Gerard about some points of navigation—the first
acknowledgement that Gerard was more than a passenger. While they
were talking, Silveo twitched and sat up. Farell looked instantly
on edge. The admiral struggled to his feet and came over to
Thessalyn. She looked up from re-tuning her harp.

“Silveo?” Gerard still didn’t understand how
she sometimes knew who was approaching her. She claimed to
recognize footfalls, but if so, she could hear many sounds beyond
his ears.

Silveo smiled dozily. “Thessalyn.” He yawned.
“I think I owe you more chocolate.”

“There’s more?” she asked in delight.

“Yes. Good night.”

He went slowly off to his cabin, and Gerard
heard Farell breathe a sigh of relief.

* * * *

The next morning someone knocked on Gerard’s
door very early. Reluctantly, he left his warm nest, composed of
three parts blankets and one part Thessalyn, and answered the door.
It was one of the cabin boys. “The admiral wants to see you, sir.
He says to bring the map. He said you would know what that
means.”

Gerard was momentarily lost. Then he
remembered the map on the wall of the teahouse. One of the first
things he’d done when he got back to his cabin was draw the outline
of the island as he remembered it. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he
said and closed the door to dress.

Thessalyn stirred in the bed. “What’s
happening, Gerard?”

Gerard hopped around for a moment in one pant
leg. “Apparently, Silveo’s speaking to me again. I think you fixed
him.”

Thessalyn giggled into a pillow. “Oh, good.
The price is chocolate.”

Gerard smiled. He had a hard time thoroughly
hating anyone who was kind to his wife. He wondered if Silveo knew
that.
Probably.
Nearly everything Silveo did seemed to
involve several layers of intent.

Gerard had never been in Silveo’s cabin, only
the outer office, where he’d been berated several times as a watch
master. He knew from others’ accounts that the inner office was
also a library, but he was unprepared when he entered to find
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Like all ship libraries, they had
cabinet doors that could be closed during rough weather. Several
chests stood along the walls, overflowing with scrolls and
loose-leaf documents. Several books were open on the floor. Through
the far door, Gerard could see that the same clutter continued into
the bedchamber beyond.

A large map table took up one side of the
inner office. It had obviously been intended for a shelt of
Gerard’s height. Silveo was sitting on it, his back against the
wall, one knee drawn up, and a snowstorm of maps strewn around him.
He was wearing a sailcloth tunic and britches so ordinary that
Gerard might not have recognized him at a distance.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Silveo didn’t look up from the chart he was
studying. “Did you draw that map from the wall of the
teahouse?”

For answer, Gerard came over and laid it
down. Silveo rocked forward and crouched over the paper. Then he
slapped another down beside it. “There’s mine. Looks about the
same.”

Gerard nodded. Silveo had actually caught
more of the details of the coastline. “I was talking to Farell last
night,” Gerard said carefully. “We’re not heading for
Lecklock.”

“No.” Silveo looked up and grinned. “We’re
headed for Mance. I think I found the island.”