The Sea Thy Mistress (10 page)

He nodded, and smoothed a thumb along the perfectly polished wooden table, the center inlaid with blue tile. “I’ve been thinking. You’ve wanted me on board your ship for years now, and we both know I’m never going to do that. Why don’t I help you find somebody—somebody young, you can train yourself—and you’ll be helping a kid out of the city and into something like a life.”

“It’s not an easy life,” she said, holding her drink to her lips, allowing the fumes to rise up her nose. She sighed and took a sip, set it aside.

“I’m sure I could find somebody. A good kid. And fishing’s a better life than hooking. Or stealing.”

She laughed. “Cahey, you don’t have to save everybody on the planet.”

He finished his tea. “Actually,” he said, “I do. One at a time. It’s my job.”

He felt her studying his face, suddenly struck quiet. “You’ve got a kid in mind already.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “Kid’s got a history. I’ll warn you.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got a history, too. Show me somebody alive who doesn’t.” She shrugged, shook her head, swirled her drink. At long last, she nodded. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“That’ll have to be enough.”

Merry didn’t look away. The weathered creases in her olive-brown skin got a little deeper. “You’re a religious man, aren’t you, Cahey?”

“You could say that,” he admitted. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re really different from the old priest who used to live in your house, is all. He wanted everybody to Believe. Not that he was as bad as some, mind you, and that moreau Borje is all right. But you—you just do stuff for people, whenever you can. Why is that?”

It was a pretty good question, and he gave it the favor of a long, thoughtful consideration before he answered. Cathmar bounced ever so slightly on the old wooden bench beside him. “Somebody set a good example for me, a while back. I’m trying to live up to her, is all.”

She chewed that over for a bit before she nodded. Then she jerked her head to the side and grinned. “Go on, get. Your kid is bored. Send your little lost lamb along to me, I’ll see what I can make of her. Him? Him.”

49 A.R.
Summer

Early-summer sun tugged at the short coils of Cathmar’s hair, provoking him to restlessness. The rays angled in under the wide overhang of the cottage’s blue tile roof, and he ducked his head to keep it out of his eyes, trying to make his voice carefully casual. “I was thinking,” he said, tying another knot in the fishing net draped over his thighs, “that I could go up to the city tomorrow. If I left early, I could be home by dark.”

His father, closer to the woodshed, struck the edge of a log with his axe, sending split pieces flying. He turned his head and raised an eyebrow at the boy, studying him, sucking on his lower lip. Cathmar concentrated on keeping his face casual.

“Huh,” Cahey said. He laid the axe aside. “Home by dark?”

The boy nodded, feeling sudden unreasonable hope. He had not expected to be allowed to go alone. Not for a year or two yet. Maybe longer.

“What do you want to do there?”

“Go to market,” Cathmar said. “Hear some music. See…”

“Somebody other than your sweaty old man?” Cahey dragged the back of his right hand ostentatiously across his forehead, grinning. He wasn’t sweating. He bent down to pick up the wood, thinking about it for a long time, and Cathmar could almost see him adding up years in his head.

Cathmar held his breath. Finally, his father picked up the scattered sticks of wood. He considered them for a moment before throwing them at the woodpile one at a time. He said, “Take the small ’screen; call if you need me. Bring trade for a taxi home, just in case. Don’t go anyplace you don’t know your way. All right?”

Cathmar jumped up and ran to hug him.

It was the only city Cathmar had ever seen, but he knew from the weave that it was a very large city indeed.

He started down the hill.

Eiledon. A much more interesting place than home.

Odors and sounds tickled his fancy as he made his way down Boulevard toward the market. Even early in the day, it was crowded with people: women, men and a few moreaux. The latter favored him with brief acknowledgments as they passed—the flick of ears, the direction of their whiskers. Moreaux, technomantic constructs that they were, lived until they were killed. Eiledon was still home to many old enough to remember having served with Aunt Selene, old enough to remember Cathmar’s mother and father.

Not a one of them pointed Cathmar out to any of the humans in the market. It might not have been safe, after all, to draw attention to him. Humans could not be trusted as moreaux could. And the moreaux were bred secret-keepers.

Nathr had become such a constant presence on his hip that Cathmar felt off-balance without her now, and Cathoair always went armed. Cathmar’s father said the swords were part and parcel of being einherjar; they came with the duty of it, and were a protection and a tool.
Tool
was probably the right word, because Cathmar knew his father didn’t hold Alvitr in esteem or affection, as the Vikings and jarls in old stories held their swords, but he did take meticulous care of the blade.
“Your mother gave it to me,”
he’d say, as if that trumped all other considerations.

And in this, Cathmar mimicked him.

But Cathmar wasn’t accustomed to being among so many armed people, alone. At first, it seemed everyone he passed openly wore firearms and knives, and it made him wary, like a constant reminder of the edge of the precipice. He didn’t see another sword, though, and before too long the presence of the weapons settled into the background noise it was when he came here with his dad.

The streets were not so busy today as when they usually came. A little thought led Cathmar to conclude that this was because usually they came on carnivals, festivals, or high market days when folks streamed in from all over the countryside for an outing.

Cathmar didn’t need to eat, and his father wouldn’t let them waste food that could go to people who couldn’t survive without it, so the first thing he did was trade some of his salt for a berry pie. He devoured it in a side street.

Musicians drew his attention next. Cahey couldn’t sing, either, although he enjoyed trying occasionally, and Cathmar knew from Selene that Muire had teased him about it. Cathmar himself had a crystal-clear tenor. It had never broken, but one day six months previous he had woken up and it had been two octaves deeper than before.

He stood on a street corner for over an hour while the sun rose high enough to slant between the towers and touch the street, first listening to a violinist and then to a flautist ply their trade. He gave them little bags of gritty pewter-colored seasalt, too: it was easy enough to make.

Finally, tiring of the market as the day grew warmer, Cathmar wandered toward parts of the city where his father had never taken him—west into the old city, crowded as it was along the south bank of the river.

The streets were narrower here, a labyrinth that seemed intended for foot traffic rather than vehicles. Cobbles worn smooth with the passage of years formed the pavement, and the buildings—dressed stone, hung with gargoyles and decorated with stone trellises—almost touched overhead. Cathmar reached up to brush his fingertips against the rusted metal of a wrought-iron staircase clinging to the face of one.

He didn’t see the men until they were alongside him, and one laid a mock-friendly hand on his shoulder. The man stank of gin and something harsher, and there was food smeared in his untrimmed beard.

“Boy,” the man said, “are you looking for somebody?” He leaned down slightly to peer into Cathmar’s eyes, breath reeking. The boy jerked his arm back out of the man’s grasp and started to reach for the hilt of his sword.

Someone else grabbed him from behind. “Oh now,” said a deeper and less drunken voice, breath hot on the back of Cathmar’s neck.

“Let me go.…” His voice did not come out on the strong and confident note he had anticipated. He was tall for his age, but both these men were bigger.

Something twisted in his stomach as he remembered a number of times his father had halted in the middle of a story with a phrase much like “but you don’t need to know about that.”

The first man came forward to block his escape as the second one pulled Cathmar back into an alley. “We’d hate to have to hurt you, little one. Don’t fight us, do what we say, and you’ll be home safe with Momma soon.”

The boy yanked his mother’s sword from her sheath, ducked, and drove himself head-first into the man in front of him. Pain marked his upper arms as he dragged them out of the grip of his second attacker. Cathmar knocked the first man down, surprising them with strength beyond that of a normal adolescent boy, and slashed the first one’s thigh with Nathr, swinging wildly, forgetting everything his father and his aunt had ever taught him about fighting.

The second one made a grab for his arm again and Cathmar’s sleeve ripped from shoulder to elbow, spinning him half around before he tore himself loose. He caught a glimpse of a third man behind the second and brandished the sword, blade meeting only air.

Somebody yelled, “Kid,
this way
!” A young voice, a girl’s voice.

He took a chance and bolted toward it.

The girl caught his arm when he pelted past her, running beside him, long legs matching him stride for stride. She was blond, he saw out of the corner of his eye, blond and tall and wearing a green tunic and sturdy brown boots.

He didn’t see much else of her as she clung to his ripped sleeve, shouting directions in whispers. “Come on; come on!” she demanded, pulling him down one side street after another. Behind him, for a long while, he could hear at least two sets of running feet.

I’m going to have to come up with some sort of explanation for the sleeve,
he thought inanely.
I can never tell Dad about this; he’d kill me.

He still had the sword in his hand, and when the girl pulled him into a doorway he took the opportunity to shove Nathr back into her sheath. His rescuer flattened him against the portal with her body. “Breathe quiet,” she said.

The appointed task wasn’t made any easier by the pressure of her small breasts against his chest when she leaned into him. He concentrated on the sound of her breath: deep, even, unwinded by ten minutes’ hard run hurtling garbage and skidding around corners. He tried not to think about the way she smelled. Like flowers and rainstorms. But more so.

She was taller than he was, perhaps a year or two older. Hair the color of wildflower honey was drawn back in an elaborate braid threaded with golden ribbons. Her eyes sparkled, bright blue, set off by the green of her tunic.
Don’t think about the way she smells. Or you’re going to embarrass yourself in a moment.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “You’re brave
and
cute.”

He bit his tongue.

“And,” she continued, a moment later, “you like me.” She cocked her head to one side, listening for any sound of pursuit. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

“Good,” she said. “Come with me.” She smiled at him, and he followed her almost without thought.

She led him down another labyrinth of side streets and stood watch while he slithered through a cobwebbed basement window she showed him. There was a hop down to the cement floor inside, but it wasn’t far.

The legs between the boots and the hem of her tunic were long and muscled like a dancer’s. He had a lovely view of them in the moments after he turned back to help her and before she finished wriggling through the window.

He suddenly couldn’t breathe, but he managed to catch her by the waist and soften her fall.

She tilted her head at him, tossing her braid back over her shoulder. “I’m so much trouble,” she said. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Mardoll,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Cathmar.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Unusual name. You’re an angel, aren’t you?”

He rocked back on his heels, stammering. She kept her grip around his neck. He was acutely conscious of the slight dank smell of the basement and the light trickling through the high, filthy windows. Most of the room was shadowed.

“Your sword,” she said. “The statues of the angels have swords like that. Crystal.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything else to add.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

He was looking into her sea-blue eyes. He didn’t want to take his hands off the soft, strong curve of her waist. He suddenly realized more sympathy for his father than ever before.

She swept in and kissed him once. Her mouth seemed to have an intelligence of its own, teeth nibbling his lip like hungry fishes until he relaxed and let the searing slickness of her tongue flicker into his mouth. Her fingers knotted in his short hair, holding his head immobile while she explored his mouth with her own.

He leaned into the kiss, barely remembering to breathe, head full of the scent of dried herbs and thunderstorms.