The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (21 page)

High above on the mountainside, the shadows of the bugbears were still as they stood silently watching. The rest that had started to climb were nearly down into the yard. Tilda looked across at them. She set her gun down on its stock and dug a ball out of a pocket. She started to reload.

“
Tilda,” Dugan said for the third time.

“
I know,” Tilda said, though she was not sure what she meant. When her gun was reloaded, she turned and walked away into the woods.

Chapter Twelve

It had been so long since Zebulon Baj Nif had slept in a bed that when he awoke he had no more idea of what he was lying on than of where he was.

Something lumpy but soft, yielding in some places but firm in others. Zeb hoped faintly for a woman before realizing it was only a mattress, irregularly filled.

He opened his eyes one at a time, and blinked in the faintest light. There was a curving wooden wall on one side and a coiled hammock hanging above him, though he was on a bunk. Zeb became aware that his whole world was gently rocking.
Hospital wagon
, he thought. But no. The constant sound in his ears was not the creak of wooden wheels or the whine of an axel needing grease. It was the slap of waves on a hull. The roll of the sea.

“
Fatch ipi thrajipi
,” Zeb muttered in Minauan, a phrase it would not do to translate. His voice cracked and rasped dryly.

Wood scraped wood, and Zeb craned his neck sideways. On the other side of the narrow room beneath a high porthole, a figure stood but remained indistinct in the meager light. Two steps brought it bunk-side and Zeb narrowed his eyes as it, she, knelt.

“
Drink,” a vaguely familiar voice said, female and accented. A tin cup touched Zeb’s lips and he pushed himself up to his elbows to gulp the metallic-tasting water. When the swallow of water was gone, the figure withdrew and rummaged around somewhere. Sparks were struck, a candle flickered to life, and the Far Western woman with the long, black, unkempt hair stood on her tippy-toes in the center of the room to pass the flame to a lantern swinging from the ceiling.

Memory trickled back to Zeb more than it flooded. He raised his right arm and stared at the inside of his right elbow. Not a scratch. When he moved it though he saw the scarring to either side of the joint, faint white spider webs on his tan skin. The movement was painless.

“
It is well?” the woman asked in Codian, returning to kneel beside the bunk and grasping Zeb’s wrist without asking. She manipulated the arm some more, bending the joint and moving it side to side. Zeb could not have stopped her had he wanted to, as he presently felt about as powerful as a sickly kitten. The woman peered at his elbow as would a carpenter who had just blown the sawdust off a fresh piece of work.

“
Who are you?” Zeb asked, mouth no longer dry but his voice still rough. The woman blinked at him.

“
You do not remember?”

“
I do,” Zeb said. “But I never got a name.”

The woman let his wrist go, and Zeb’s arm flopped limply back to the mattress. She stood, wearing her trousers with the patched knees and a long shirt with a rough, thigh-length hem, likewise beige and equally shapeless. She bowed from the waist.

“
I am called as Amatesu.”

“
And you still say you’re not a priestess?” Zeb croaked.

Amatesu straightened and looked thoughtful, giving her small mouth a pretty purse.

“
I am not a cleric in the way of Noroth,” she said. “Not dedicated to a single god of your Ennead. I am
shukenja.
I am…a talker. With the spirit world.”

Zeb had no idea what that meant, though if the arm which he had thought was sure to be an amputation job was healed, he was fine with whatever Amatesu wanted to call herself.

“
But you did fix my wing here, right?”

Amatesu blinked. “Wing?”

“
Arm, I mean. It is just a…manner of speaking.”

“
You do not have wings.”

“
No, I know that…” Zeb sighed and with a grunt he managed to sit up slowly and turn sideways on the bunk, shaking bare feet out from under a coarse blanket and placing them on the deck flooring. He extended his right hand.

“
I am just trying to say thank you, is all.”

Amatesu took Zeb’s hand and give it one quick shake. Her hand was small but her grip strong, and Zeb had an uncomfortable memory of her fingers inside his right elbow. Another sensation distracted him however as his bottom shifted against the mattress under the blanket.

“
Am I naked?”

Amatesu nodded. She released his hand and pointed to the end of the bunk.

“
There are some clothes in the…box. Locker. They are gathered from the sailors.” Amatesu wrinkled her nose. “Yours from before were…not good. I had to burn them.”

Zeb was not quite there yet. “Sorry. Who exactly took my clothes off?”

“
I exactly did.”

“
And…” Zeb sniffed the air and faintly smelled lavender. “Have I been…bathed?”

“
Yes.”

Zeb was nonplussed, but Amatesu’s face was utterly impassive.

“
Okay then,” he finally said. “Well, if you ever need the favor returned…”

Amatesu blinked, and for just a second Zeb thought she almost smiled. Almost. But she was quickly back to business, nodding at the porthole.

“
I suspect you have many questions. I shall let you dress, and you may find me on the…” she waved a hand at the ceiling. “Top floor.”

“
Deck.”

“
Deck. Thank you.”

With a final brief bow Amatesu turned to leave the room, stepping smoothly into her clunking wooden sandals without a break of stride.

The clothes in the locker were freshly cleaned, dark trousers with cuffs a bit too long, and an off-white billowy shirt that was too tight through the chest. Zeb could not comfortably close the eyehooks higher than his breastbone, and felt ridiculous with a plunging neckline.

His boots, armor, and helmet were wedged under a stool bolted to the floor, and as he pulled them out, Zeb blinked in surprise. Boots polished and re-soled, ring-mail links cleaned, oiled, and sown onto a new leather jerkin well padded across the shoulders where his old one had long since worn out. Even the Ayzant helmet with the nubby point of a broken spike had a fresh linen lining and new cords attaching the leather neck guards to the steel cap.

There was however no sign of Zeb’s axe, dirk, crossbow or quarrels.

Zeb slid the ring-mail on, mostly to address his neckline issues, and was surprised to find that it fit perfectly. He had a strange feeling that his unconscious body had recently been a tailor’s mannequin.

Or perhaps not so recently. Standing tall to peer out through the porthole, Zeb saw only blue sky and water, no coast. Apart from that, moving around had started his stomach to rumbling for he was famished. He blew out the lantern and stepped out of the cabin through a door that did not fit very well in its jamb.

He was in the middle of a passageway, stairs and daylight at one end but the rest lost in darkness. He walked for the light with both arms extended to trail along the walls and the additional cabin doors, though the rocking of the ship was quite modest. A big vessel, then.

Halfway to the light, Zeb stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and though it was warm, he shivered. He turned and stared down the passage behind him but saw only darkness, and heard only the creaking of the ship. He went on, looking back every few steps, and mounted the worn wooden stairs as fast as still wobbly legs would take him.

Topside was sunny and canvas sails flapped overhead on two masts, one front and one back, or fore and aft if Zeb had the lingo correct. He emerged on the forecastle and a few sailors loitering about looked over at him, none seeming to be surprised. They were in main swarthy men with skins baked by the sun of what Zeb at least hoped was still the Norothian Channel.

Amatesu was approaching from above-deck cabins to the aft, but before she reached him Zeb headed for the starboard gunwales, the opposite side from his porthole below. He was relieved to see a dark line of coast on the northern horizon, though it was far away. Too far to swim, for sure. They were sailing west. Amatesu arrived with a deep wooden bowl, steam floating up and carrying the smell of clams. She handed it over with a spoon and Zeb had bolted half of the thin chowder before mumbling thanks. Amatesu waited, looking toward the coast with her lank hair blowing wildly about her face.

“
How far are we out of Larbonne?” he finally asked.

“
Four days.”

Zeb blinked and swallowed a spoonful without chewing.

“
Today is…the Twenty-second Day of Eighth Month?”

Amatesu frowned. “I do not know your calendar well, but that sounds right.”

“
And I’ve been down all this time?”

“
For four days. You needed rest.”

Zeb nodded, thoughtful. Hungry as he was he was not actually starving, but he was too embarrassed to go any further into detail on just how Amatesu had handled his care and feeding for all that time.

When the bowl was empty a nearby sailor stepped over and held a hand out. Zeb gave him the bowl and said “
Bekhem
,” in Zantish. The man answered “
Na darin
,” which sounded like the Channelspeak that was a blend of about a dozen coastal languages. The fellow took the bowl back aft, where Zeb now noticed the Far Western swordsman he had last seen four days ago, standing by the open hatch to the galley with his arms crossed over his ornate breastplate. His two swords were still at his belt though the man did not wear arm or leg greaves at present, nor his helmet. He was bald apart from a long, tight topknot, and was looking in Zeb and Amatesu’s direction with an impassive face. Zeb sighed.

“
Okay. So I remember the two of you came looking for me by name, with the platoon. And I guess the boys let you take me after I passed out.”

“
We, I lied to them,” Amatesu said, though it did not sound much like an apology. “They were told we would bring you back to them in a day or so.”

“
Uh-huh. And I am here because I can speak Codian and Zantish?”

Amatesu nodded. “I speak Codian, as poorly as you can tell. But our employer speaks only Zantish.”

“
Our?”

“
Mine and his…the lordship Uriako Shikashe.” Amatesu indicated the swordsman across the deck with a polite and somehow formal roll of her wrist, then met Zeb’s eyes levelly. “And now of yours, as well.”

Zeb sighed through his nose. He had gotten his fill of working for Ayzants back in Larbonne.

“
And, pray tell, just who and where is this employer?”

“
The Madame Nesha-tari Hrilamae. She does not like the sea, and so remains below the decks.”

Remembering his shiver down there, Zeb almost had another one. But that was well down his list of problems at the moment.

“
So where are we going?”

Amatesu nodded toward the prow and the west. “We shall make land in the Codian city of Souterm in a handful of days.”

“
And what is the job?”

Amatesu did not answer that, but only looked out over the water.

“
I am not sure I should say. That should be for the Madame.” She looked back at Zeb. “But your part will be just that of…how is it called, when one talks two languages between two who do not?”

“
Translator.”

“
You will be the translator. The job is for Uriako-sama and for myself.”

Now Zeb looked out to sea, which made sense as that was just where he felt himself to be.

“
Okay, then.”

“
I am right in thinking ‘Oh, Kay’ means yes?”

“
It does,” Zeb said. “Or come to think of it, it is more like saying fine. As in, I feel okay, or I am okay with the plan.”

“
Okay,” Amatesu said and nodded.

There was more Zeb would have asked but Amatesu waited only a moment before she turned away and walked across the wide, swaying deck to where Uriako Shikashe watched and waited.

*

Amatesu stopped and bowed formally to Uriako-sama who scarcely nodded in return, arms still crossed and eyes narrowed at Zebulon Baj Nif.

“
What does he say?” Shikashe asked in formal Ashinese.

“
He asks where we go, and what we are to do there. He does not, however, inquire as to payment.”

Shikashe’s dark eyes flashed toward Amatesu and one finely-plucked eyebrow arched.

“
What do you take this to mean?”

Uriako Shikashe and Amatesu had known each other for decades and journeyed together for years. While their backgrounds were very different they had come to find that in many things what each of them knew or did not know was complementary. Shikashe knew how men behaved while they were together at war. Amatesu knew other things.

“
It means that as soon as we make landfall and the opportunity arises, Zebulon Baj Nif intends to run.”