Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) (30 page)

“I know. And they know it, too. More likely they’re preparing to defend themselves. This emperor hasn’t conquered anything yet; he has to prove himself somehow.”

Yelangese history was not my strong suit in those days (nor is it much stronger now), but I could follow Aekinitos’ point. The Yelangese Empire was and is a large polity; it reached that size courtesy of the emperors of the Taisên Dynasty, who energetically expanded their territory through the conquest of places like Va Hing. Indeed, it had become
de rigueur
for an emperor to annex new lands and their inhabitant peoples, if he wished to maintain his status in the eyes of his own subjects.

But Yelang had reached the point where further expansion had become difficult. Their neighbours on the Dajin continent—Vidwatha, Tsholar, Hakkoto—were not small states, easily overrun by the Yelangese army; conquering them would be difficult and costly, and by no means assured to succeed. The emperor might well cast a speculative eye toward the Broken Sea instead, for all that his people were not the best sailors. The Raengaui island cluster would be a trivial territory in comparison with the size of the empire itself, but at least it was a conquest, and one he could achieve with relative ease—now that Waikango was his captive.

We were on the far side of the cluster from Yelang, though. “I can’t imagine this is a useful place to prepare for war,” I said. “Not as isolated as it is. Unless the rest of the Raengaui region has been overrun already?”

Aekinitos sighed and slapped the rock upon which he sat—a rare gesture of frustration. “From here, we can do nothing more than guess. The fleet you saw might be refugees, or emissaries come to beg for aid. Or there might be an entire war fleet beached on the far side of Lahana.”

I hoped not. Or if there was, I hoped they would wait to launch until after the
Basilisk
was repaired and we were clear of the whole region. “How long will it be before the ship is ready?” I asked.

“Too long,” he said grimly.

*   *   *

You might think my two recent brushes with death—three, if you count the dengue fever—would be enough to dissuade me from foolish action for a time. Then again, if you have been reading this series from the first volume, you might not.

In my defense, my next piece of recklessness did not originate with me. The thought had crossed my mind some time before, but I had dismissed it; Suhail was the one who returned to the idea, investigated it, fixed his will upon it … and then persuaded me to join him.

He had scoured the waters of Keonga’s encircling lagoons in search of archaeological remnants, but had found very little. “If I could use the bell, I might find more,” he told me at one point. “If there is anything here, it is likely buried in the silt of the lagoons; I would need to pump the water away to see. But without the bell…” He shrugged. The unavailability of the bell was no one’s fault. Even if my excursion to view sea-serpents had not left it sunk on the fore reef, it would have done him no good until the
Basilisk
was afloat once more. And possibly not even then, I thought: if the remains were all within the lagoons, our ship could not reach them regardless.

With little to do archaeologically, Suhail had lent his hand where he could in the repairs, but he was neither carpenter nor sailor. And so he had taken to ranging restlessly about the island, going everywhere that was not forbidden to him and taking up every physical challenge he could find.

It was no surprise that this included the sport of
se’egalu
. Suhail loved the water nearly as much as my son did, and surf-riding appealed very well to a spirit that craved adventure. He grasped the principles of it fairly quickly, though his finesse could not match that of the more experienced Keongans, and he was forever trying to coax me into trying it myself.

I always demurred. Our stay on Keonga had greatly improved my swimming skills, but not the point of attempting to conquer the waves. And I did not see the point of teaching myself the practice of
se’egalu
when there was work that could better occupy my time.

The same could not be said for another, more hazardous maritime sport.

I knew something was afoot, because Suhail grew even more restless than usual. He prowled about our camp like a cat trapped inside on a rainy day, unable even to concentrate on his efforts with the Draconean script. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, knowing that he was sidling his way toward a decision, and that I would hear of it when he was done.

Indeed, I saw the moment it occurred. I happened to be taking a break from my sketching of the fire-lizard bone fragments, standing up to ease my back. Suhail had been sitting on the beach, legs drawn up before him and bare feet buried in the sand, arms propped on his knees with a stick of wood in his hands. This he had theoretically been whittling into some kind of useful or aesthetically pleasing shape, but that purpose had faded from his mind, for the knife had for several minutes just been carving strips off the wood, without any apparent direction from above. Then he stopped—stabbed the knife down into the sand—and stood, hurling the stick into the breakers with an easy, side-armed swing.

He turned and saw me watching him. The grin that spread across his face filled me with both excitement and foreboding. “Mrs. Camherst,” he said. “Have you ever wanted to ride a dragon?”

My thoughts were full of fire-lizards, who are much too small to ride. I sputtered something less than entirely coherent, not seeing his true meaning.

“The Keongans do it,” he said, when it was clear I did not understand. “They have been telling me about it. The sea-serpents, Mrs. Camherst.”

Now I recalled. One of the islanders had leapt aboard a serpent to steer it away from us when Suhail and I escaped the diving bell. According to the boys who kept watch for the beasts, it was a thing the younger and, I thought, more brainless island fellows often did.

Unfortunately Suhail asked this question in front of my son, who was quite young and in certain respects entirely brainless. (I do not say this as condemnation. All of us are in certain respects brainless when we are children: witness some of the things I did as a young girl.) Jake had been amusing himself with his collection of marine objects, which had grown to truly stupendous proportions since our arrival on Keonga. Now he leapt to his feet with a whoop. “Oh please! Can we?”

“
You
most certainly cannot,” I said. Suhail’s eyes had popped at the mere notion; no Keongan who is less than fully grown would ever dream of trying to undertake such a challenge.

My refusal, of course, set off an argument. By the time I was done convincing Jake that he had no business anywhere near sea-serpents, we had gathered Abby and Tom as an audience … and Jake had found a new goal to pursue.

“You
have
to, Mama,” he said. “It’s research! Right? You can’t pass it up when it’s a dragon! It’ll be just like when I rode the dragon turtle, but
better
.”

There was much more, all in the same vein; if I did not know it for a physical impossibility, I would have said he did not pause for breath anywhere in the next five minutes. Suhail soon gave up on waiting for Jake to wind down and just spoke over him. “You cannot be certain when the serpents will migrate onward. The opportunity to try this may be passing fast.”

“The opportunity to get myself killed, you mean,” I said, my voice tart. “I seem to find those often enough on my own.”

Suhail laughed. “But always in pursuit of your work, yes? Your talkative son is right about one thing; it
is
research.”

“What could I possibly learn about a sea-serpent while dangling from one of its tendrils that I could not learn by watching it from a more sensible vantage point?”

“What it is to
be
one,” he said. “The sensation of racing through the water, the movement of its muscles beneath you. Could you understand a horse merely by watching it run?”

I silently damned him for the comparison. In all our wide-ranging conversations, I had said nothing of my girlhood love of horses, which had for a time been my substitute obsession when dragons were forbidden to me. He had lighted upon it by chance. Suhail was right; although I had learned a great deal by observing horses, drawing them, talking to those who knew them, and so forth, there
were
insights that only came from close contact.

And fundamentally, the answer to his question was yes: I wanted to ride a dragon.

Tom shook his head the instant I looked at him. He did not enjoy being in the water, no matter how enthusiastically Jake expounded upon its pleasures. I liked it well enough, but— “I am not that strong of a swimmer,” I reminded Suhail.

I was weakening, and he knew it. Had I truly dismissed the notion, I would not have raised so pragmatic an objection. Suhail’s grin grew wider. “Your son says you are much better. And I will help you—they tell me it’s safer when two go together.”

“Help me!” I said. “I seem to recall prohibitions against contact between us.”

The wry twist of Suhail’s mouth said he had been considering that very question, and had found a questionable way to answer it. “I am told you are neither male or female, but
ke’anaka’i
. I know of no prohibitions against contact with such.”

It was a semantic game … but one for which I had no good rejoinder. To deny my status as
ke’anaka’i
would be unwise; and I could hardly claim to be a man, or a close relative of his by blood or marriage.

Suhail waited until I met his gaze, then said quietly, “I will not let you drown.”

My breath caught in my throat. It was only with effort that I managed to say, “When it comes to being eaten by a sea-serpent, however—then, I suppose, I am on my own.”

*   *   *

Let it never be said that I court my own death without proper planning.

The young Keongan men who ride sea-serpents are the kind who take great masculine pride in displaying their courage, strength, and endurance. They go into the water naked, as if for an evening swim, and do not complain about the cuts they suffer from the jagged edges of the serpents’ scales.

I felt no need to display anything about myself, and so I advised Suhail to wear more clothing than he was accustomed to when swimming. “It may weigh our limbs down,” I said, “but we will reap the benefit in keeping our skin something closer to intact. Sharks may not come near the serpents, but I do not want to test that by shedding any more blood than I have to.” We discussed the possibility of gloves as well, but ultimately discarded it: too much would depend upon the security of our grips, which would be compromised by the wet leather.

The greatest amount of serpent activity had been seen on the leeward side of the island, some distance from ill-omened Rahuahane. (This was not surprising. Presuming that Heali’i was correct, I expected that bearing females had gone there to lay their eggs.) A Keongan wishing to ride one of the beasts will go out with several canoes, whereupon the men in them will commence one of their chants, calling a serpent to the surface.

“It’s possible that actually works,” Tom said, upon hearing of it. “They place a drum on the bottom of the canoe and beat a rhythm; that would carry through the water. Perhaps the serpents have been trained to respond to it.”

“Trained how?” I said doubtfully. “They derive no earthly benefit from cooperating; by all accounts, the serpents do not much like being ridden. And I have not heard it said that the Keongans punish them for failing to appear when summoned.”

Tom shrugged, granting the point. “Then it is just tradition.”

Once a serpent appears—if one does—then the would-be rider waits at the side of his canoe for it to come near. The Keongans assured us the serpents “rarely” attacked canoes, unless provoked; the vessels are too familiar a sight, and moreover stay on the surface of the water, which is a zone the beasts take little interest in. (Most of their prey is to be found at least a meter or two beneath the surface.) As soon as the serpent draws close, the rider dives in and swims like mad toward the creature, aiming to catch hold of two tendrils.

“It is
very
important to catch two,” Suhail told me. “If you hold only one, you will be thrown from side to side as the serpent moves, and have no control. With two, you can keep yourself steady—more or less.”

I suspected it would be less rather than more, at least in my case, but it was still good advice. The skilled riders, we were told, could even use the tendrils to steer the serpent where they wished it to go—at least in general terms. “Could we not have someone skilled to go with us?” I asked.

Our guide in these matters was a brawny fellow more than two meters tall. He towered over me as he chuckled. “Every man must prove himself first.”

“I am not a man,” I said, but this made no impression on him. No one was allowed to take the easy road; Suhail and I must face this on our own.

We were not a subtle calvacade, making ready for the endeavour. Nearly every man from the
Basilisk
was there, along with my son and Abby, Heali’i and Liluakame, and a great crowd of Keongans aside. They were eager to see the foreigners test themselves against the serpents of the deep. I thought at first, when I heard the drums and saw the procession wending toward us in the early light of morning, that the chief had come for the same reason.

But his mien was too forbidding for that. Pa’oarakiki stopped some distance away and said—I paraphrase enormously, Keongan oratory being a long-winded thing—”You may not do this.”

In suitably polite language, Suhail asked, “Why not?”

“Because you are foreigners,” the chief said.

He went on at greater length; it was something to do with lack of respect for the gods, though we had followed all the instructions given to us beforehand, including prayers and a sacrifice of flowers to the sea. Perhaps he knew my heart was not in the ritual. Suhail was questioning him with a barrister’s patient logic, attempting to elicit an explanation of why exactly it was impermissible for us to ride the sea-serpents; but I could soon tell there
was
no explanation, save that this man did not want us to.