The Quartered Sea (45 page)

"I don't like it here very much," he admitted to Xhojee's window. The new life he'd made for himself had turned out to be one he didn't want to live. Problem was, he didn't think he could stop living that life and keep living.

Living the tul's lie would have been easier.

He dreamed that night about the day he'd left home for the Bardic Hall—except in the dream he wasn't fourteen and he was wearing a sawrap and braids. Karlene didn't seem to notice, but Benedikt cringed every time she looked at him, expecting her to laugh.

"The training's going to be pretty intensive for the first couple of years," she said as she settled her pack on her shoulders. "You'll learn to control your voice, listen to the kigh, recall, witness, command, charm, and probably pick up a second instrument. It's funny," she turned to him and smiled, "but every new bard that comes in already plays something."

"Why is that funny?" he asked, pulling at his sawrap and hoping they wouldn't meet anyone on the road. With every step he took it got shorter.
If this keeps up, I'll be wearing nothing more than a belt and sandals long before we get to Elbasan
.

She slipped off a necklace of polished shells that one of the village women had given her just before they left. "Hold out your hands." When he did, she draped the necklace over his palms. "Think of this as our way of life here in Shkoder. The shells are all the bits and pieces that way of life is made of and the bards are the string, holding everything together."

"I'm going to learn to be string?" Suddenly realizing his hands were wet, he looked down at what he held and saw that the shells were turning to water that dripped through his fingers and sank into the packed gravel of the causeway.

The causeway was in Petayn and Karlene had never been in Petayn.

It didn't seem to matter because Karlene was turning to water, too. He tried to scoop her up, contain her somehow, but the ground absorbed her too quickly, and he was left holding nothing but another piece of damp string while the xaan's wagon came crashing toward him.

Heart in his throat, he woke up drenched in his own sweat, still hearing the thunder of the runaway wagon. Then he realized, it was thunder indeed and, although his room was so hot and so damp it was like trying to breathe underwater, he managed to draw in a calming breath.

"Other guys my age dream about sex," he sighed, getting out of bed and padding naked to the balcony.

Lightning flashed, close enough to illuminate the courtyard in stark black and white. Thunder crashed, and the sky opened. Benedikt spread his arms and welcomed the deluge. A hundred kigh flowed over him, into and around each other, continually replaced, continual sensation. He thought of Karlene turning to water and slipping away and wished that he could join her. Then it almost seemed like he had; as his knees buckled, he grabbed the railing to keep from falling.

The hundreds of kigh continued, and arousal began to build again.

And again.

Finally, he realized that if he wanted to survive the night, he had to get out of the rain. He fought his way back to the safety of his room, sinking down cross-legged to the floor as his legs gave way beneath him on the other side of the raised threshold. After a while, when his breathing returned to normal, he grinned and murmured, "Nothing left but another piece of damp string. I hope it was as good for Karlene."

He felt better than he had in a long time. He was tired, but the kigh seemed to have washed away mental clutter along with physical tensions. For the first time in ages he was thinking in one language instead of bits and pieces of two, even the dream had been in Petayn.

If he was looking for the symbolism behind the dissolving shells, he didn't have to look far since it seemed that Shkoder had, indeed, disappeared.

The string remained.

Bardic oaths weren't made to Shkoder, they were just made.

"I'm going to learn to be string?"

Benedikt swallowed a lump in his throat and stared down at his wet hands. Without Shkoder, he was no less a bard. He'd been asking the wrong question all along.

"Not what would Bannon do," he told the rain. "What would Benedikt do?"

Without a visible moon or stars he had no idea of how much time he had until dawn. All he could do was hurry and hope he had enough.

At least it doesn't take long to dress
… In sawrap and sandals, he scooped the queen's coin off its hook and dropped it over his head. With the coin's cool weight scything a familiar pattern against his chest, he shrugged into the priest's robe and slipped silently out past the string of bells into the corridor. He felt bad about leaving the pipes behind, but when it came right down to it, they weren't his, they were the xaan's.

The house was completely quiet and absolutely dark. One hand against the wall and the other holding the robe away from his legs, Benedikt moved as fast as he could through the blackness. One door, two doors, three doors, and nothing. Given room enough to spread, the darkness seemed to gray over the stairs to the first floor.

The doors would be guarded. Two by the front portico, two by the kitchens, two by the stables. It would have to be through the front, then.

Giving thanks that the Petayns went for cluttered color not furniture, Benedikt made it safely though the public rooms to the front of the house. Standing on the half flight of stairs that led down to the ground floor, he could see the dark of armed figures through the open stonework to either side of the door.

He wished now he'd paid more attention to either of the guard Seconds when they'd complained about night watches. He had no idea when or how often the watches changed.

Although, as I've no idea what unenclosed time it is now, it wouldn't help if I did know.

The sound of the rain covering any noise he made, Benedikt moved as close as he could get to the door without actually touching it, and began to Sing.

After a few moments, the guard on the right shifted in place and muttered, "Xaantalicta save me, I can barely keep my eyes open."

"Your eyes close, and the xaan'll sew them shut," the other hissed. "You don't sleep until your watch is done."

Had it not been raining so hard, Benedikt doubted that his lullaby would have worked, even adapted to the situation. But the kigh seemed to lend him strength and finally, his pectoral chiming softly, the guard on the left sagged down out of sight, murmuring, "Glad that's over." The guard on the right, already on the ground, only snored in reply.

Still Singing, Benedikt opened the door, stepped over an outflung arm, and hurried toward the edge of the portico. Masked by rain and hood and gauze he changed his Song slightly and, in spite of the danger, waited until he was sure both guards had roused before moving on.

Benedikt strained to catch the last word, but it disappeared under the weight of the falling rain. Now he was safely away from the xaan, there was only one place he could go where she wouldn't be able to get her hands on him again.

Balankanche.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started while Benedikt was still in amongst the expensive shops. He hadn't gone much farther when the sky cleared, and he saw, to his horror, that the east had begun to gray.

Eyes locked on the dawn, he picked up his robes and ran. He didn't see the other priest until he was almost on top of her.

She whirled around as he skidded to a stop, arms windmilling.

"Is that you, Aralich? I thought you weren't going to…" And then she noticed his feet, and his hands, and his height. "You're not…"

Desperate, Benedikt flung back his gauze with one hand and hers with the other. He got a momentary glimpse of a middle-aged face twisted with anger, then he caught her gaze in his and said,
"You see only a priest of Xaantalicta—one of many. No differences."

He'd never been good at Command, but need lent him strength.

"Watch where you're going," the priest snapped, her gauze falling back into place as she pushed past him. "Honestly, if you young priests were where you were supposed to be on time, you wouldn't have to run all over Atixlan every night. Things weren't like this when I was young, I'm telling you. If this is what the change is going to bring…"

At which point her voice merged with the distance and the sound of Benedikt's sandals against the street.

As shutters were thrown open and the day began, he had to slow to a walk. His Song could distract from his size and his sex but not at a dead run—he simply didn't have breath enough for both.

It was farther to the docks than Benedikt remembered, and the sunrise services of Tulpayotee were well underway before he reached the relative safety of the warehouses. With trade slowed by the rainy season, there shouldn't be many people about, but he kept Singing anyway. It would only take one person saying, "Strange looking priest," to draw a crowd and end his one chance to save himself and Balankanche.

As he emerged out onto the docks, a group of karjen, hurrying along the harbor's edge, barely glanced at him. A carpenter, passed him by muttering about the hour and swinging her hammer so that it Sang counterpoint for a measure or two. Two cats, intent on a pile of fishguts, ignored him completely.

The docks of the great houses held no ship smaller than the
Kraken
. Size didn't matter—the kigh would take anything that floated anywhere he asked. The problem was, ships like the
Kraken
had crews on board at all times. Probably no more than two or three people if they weren't expecting to sail that day, but that was two or three people more than Benedikt wanted to handle. Once on the open sea, he would need all his strength and then some to control the kigh.

One of the smaller fishing boats would have been perfect, but with the fleet already out, he had to fall back on his second choice, the pilot boat. Unfortunately, at low tide without a mast, it was too small to be seen above the edge of the piers. Logic said it should be tied up near shore, but to be certain he didn't miss it, he'd have to go all the way out to the very end of each pier and look down.

Keep calm
, Benedikt told himself, fighting the urge to run.
There's nothing unusual about a priest walking around the docks
.

At least he hoped there wasn't.

The pilot boat that had taken the
Kraken
in and out of the harbor hadn't been left tied at House Kohunlich's pier.

As he passed the
Kraken
, the hair on the back of Benedikt's neck lifted and when he turned, pulled by the feeling that something was very wrong, he saw the ship's master standing at the rail. Although he held a steaming cup of something in one hand, he wasn't drinking. He was staring directly at Benedikt. Because he'd seen a too tall, too male priest of Xaantalicta only days before, the Song had to work harder to convince him he wasn't seeing it again.

Feeling a little light-headed—he'd never realized it was possible to both Sing and hold his breath—Benedikt gripped the queen's coin through his robe and Sang a little louder, loud enough to cover the sudden increased pounding of his heart.

"I see." Shecquai tucked into the crook of her elbow, the xaan stood, shook out her robe, and strode toward the door. Without breaking stride, she beckoned Serasti up beside her. "Send half the guards not on duty to the docks now. Remind them that Benedikt will be wearing the robes of a priest of Xaantalicta. They're to hold every priest they find. The rest of the guard will be with me."

The house master shook her head. "But your brother, peerless one."

"What about him?"