Inda (44 page)

The larboard watch had to tighten everything down and lower the boats, while the starboard watch lined up for pay.

The larboard rats groaned and cursed. Inda said nothing, but as soon as his job with the signal flag was over, he swept a spyglass over the crowd lining the nearest dock.

No one there for him. Of course no one was there. For a short, fierce time he loathed himself for being stupid enough to have expected anything else, but the anger gradually faded into the old numbness, and he made himself busy until the bosun tweeted the signal for the larboard watch to line up at the capstan for their pay. As he held out his hand for his share of coins, Inda thought,
If she knew, Tdor would be here.

It was true. Little else made sense, but that was true enough to ease some of the constriction in his heart. And more true, he thought as he dropped down into the long launch, and took up his oar at the third mate’s hoarse shout, life was easier with friends. Even if it didn’t make sense.

He glanced across at sturdy dark-haired Jeje, and behind her Tau, who had taught him how to navigate in strange harbors. There was Dasta, his hawk nose lifted as he surveyed the town for family, and Yan, the quiet Chwahir boy.

So I will stay with Tau,
he thought. Searching inside, he found that the prospect did not hurt; he knew that he, Tau, Dasta, Jeje—if her relatives let her loose—and the others would find things to do. They’d laugh. Odd, how many jokes they already had, jokes that had nothing to do with academy jokes and slang. Though he was very close to his ancestral home, no one would know, and his secrets would stay secrets.

As the boat slowed to weave in and out of harbor traffic, some of the hands sat upright, one or two waving to people on the dock. Right before Inda, at mid-oar, sat yellow-haired Dun, the carpenter’s mate hired the same day as he. A strong man of medium height and build, seen most often in defense drill—for he shot a good bow—Dun had been kind to Inda in an absent sort of way over the long cruise.

They had to pull in their oars to permit a fast little trysail to pass. Dun turned his head to scan the harbor, and caught Inda’s gaze. “Find a place to stay, young Elgar?”

From his accent in Dock Talk, he was Iascan—southern Iascan—though he spoke Iascan with the slurry northern intonations.
I’ll have to get used to hearing the sounds of home again,
Inda thought. Out loud he said, “Sure.”

Dun gave a nod, and squinted out over the harbor. His yellow hair was tied off in a stiff, four-strand queue like a sailor’s, and he wore sailor’s gear, but he still sometimes reminded Inda of a plainsman. He said, “So what did you think of your first voyage, eh?”

Inda lifted a shoulder. He said what he thought he was expected to say. “I liked it right enough.”

“Get drunk?” Dun smiled. “They always get the rats drunk at least once. A tradition, though every captain hates it.”

“Just one time, during the first winter.” Inda grimaced and looked down, his upper lip lengthening for a moment. That day still knifed him in the heart: walking round a corner in a strange city and seeing a scruffy brown dog pee against the side of the building. He’d heard Dogpiss’ laugh so clear, so sharp! To get away from that pain he’d let Scalis and the other forecastlemen talk him into drinking whisky-laced punch until he found that though he couldn’t see, and he had to puke, drink didn’t numb memory. If anything it made it worse.

But he’d never tell anyone that. “What I liked best was that I saw Sartor. Oh, just the coast, but still.”

Dun grunted, wondering what had caused that long pause, the desolate gaze a thousand years beyond the horizon. He knew the boy wouldn’t talk, so he just said, “I think everyone ought to see Sartor once. Whatever your family name or place, we all connect there somewhere, if you go far enough back.”

The third mate bawled, “All right, mates, if you don’t want to sleep in the boat, let’s put a little back into it.”

The way was clear. Dun picked up his oar. Within a short time they pulled up dockside and clambered out, some of the crew making flourishing bows to Tau, who flushed but did not retaliate; even Tau knew, after all this long voyage, that the teasing—except from Norsh—had dwindled to mere habit.

Dun was lost almost immediately in the crowd. Inda, Tau, Yan, and Dasta watched, grinning, as a group of short, barrel-shaped, deep-voiced people who looked just like Jeje trundled up in rolling sailors’ gaits, all talking at the same time.

She threw a roll-eyed glance over the shoulder of a brawny-armed aunt who was squeezing the breath out of her, and the boys knew they wouldn’t see much of her for a time. Faura smiled in satisfaction.

They started down the dock to the street, all of them feeling the ground heave beneath their feet. Inda and Dasta stamped; only Tau walked with no less grace than usual. Faura hung back, watching Tau and thinking,
I’ll have him all to myself with that frog of a Jeje out of the way, and why does he talk to her so much anyway
?

Tau led the way down a back alley that smelled strongly of fish, to the main street of the harbor. Up on the hills behind the harbor one could make out the round shapes of Iascan houses, but here they were square, built on a grand plan that the young travelers now recognized as modeled on Sartoran and Colendi buildings.

Tau paused to peer through the tall ground-floor windows of a prosperous pleasure house. His laughing grin of triumph back at the other two caused a passing woman to falter in her step and then blush and hasten on when she saw by the nature of his clothing that he was underage.

Tau ignored her. “Plenty of company within,” he told his two companions. “That means Ma will be in a welcome mood.”

And indeed he was right. The golden-haired, beautiful Saris Eland scudded lightly across the shining floor, her draperies fluttering like the butterfly whose name she had adopted, and embraced Tau with tender emotion. She gave no sign that she had seen them through the window. Or that she had seen the woman’s reaction to Tau and his studied lack of response; that she observed Faura’s hungry gaze on her son.

Tau mumbled something and she turned her glorious golden eyes onto Inda and Dasta, saying, “Of course, my darling. Your-your mates are welcome here! Take them back to your room, and I’ll order you a supper. You must be hungry!” She walked away, her skirts whispering over the shining floor.

“Food,” Dasta murmured, his eyes wide and glistening. “Real food? No gruff? No rocks?”

Tau grinned. “No gruff, no rocks. Sleeping as late as we want. No night watches, no rope’s end. No prison, either. We can run all over the harbor, and nobody can make us pick up a rope.”

Dasta rubbed his hands. “That,” he said, “is what I call liberty.”

Chapter Four

D
UN the carpenter’s mate entered a small, weather-beaten inn behind the grand main avenue. The inside was dark, and the few customers all seemed to be landsmen.

In the far corner near the kitchen partition, facing the room with his back to a wall, sat a tall, long-faced man with gray-streaked dark hair, wearing anonymous Runner blue: Captain Jened Sindan.

Dun slid into the seat opposite.

“Welcome, cousin,” Sindan said.

“How is the family?” Dun replied in the pure central-plains Marlovan of their ancestors, his posture altered, though he still wore the loose clothing of a sailor. Now he was Hened Dunrend, King’s Runner.

The short, buxom woman who trod heavily to their table did not betray the slightest interest in them or their conversation; if she understood Marlovan, she gave no sign. She stated—in flat southern Iascan—“The supper is either fish cakes with cabbage balls or chicken pie. We have summer ale, brown porter, and white wine from the north.”

The men ordered, the woman trod heavily back toward the kitchen, boards creaking beneath her feet.

“Is he alive, Dunrend?” Captain Sindan asked, leaning forward, his voice low.

“Yes. Do you want me to show you where?”

Sindan shook his head. “I must not risk being seen. Tell me everything.”

“That encompasses much,” Dun said. He paused.

Creak, creak,
the floorboards groaned, announcing the advent of their porter.
Thunk, thunk.
The mugs clunked down, and
creak, creak,
the woman retreated.

Dun smiled a little. “He was desperately unhappy in the beginning. But broke his isolation by befriending the wildest of all the rats, one named Tau, the one I’d least expected.”

“Misery,” Sindan repeated, taking no interest whatsoever in Tau. “He said nothing?”

“Not a word. Not one single word about his family, friends, or what brought him there.”

“So they don’t know, then,” Sindan said, relieved.

“Oh, they suspect he’s a Marlovan, but he doesn’t know that. The name he chose, I should mention, is Inda Elgar.”

“Elgar.” Sindan frowned. “Too easy to put that together with the missing son of the Adaluin of Choraed Elgaer.”

“But you have to remember how profoundly uninterested they are in Marlovans as individuals. To north coasters, in particular mariners, we are a mass of ravening villains, bent on nothing but conquering—what is it? Did I say something?”

“My news,” Sindan murmured, “can wait.”

Tromp, tromp.
Two plates slammed down.
Tromp, tromp.

“How did they find out he’s a Marlovan? Language?”

Dun’s fingers scrabbled emptily at his waist, where of course there was no sash and no knife and hadn’t been for two years. But speaking Marlovan again, smelling home food, brought back the habit he had so carefully suppressed. “No,” he said, using the fork to spear a cabbage ball. “It was his fighting. Which in turn got him promoted into the forecastle watches.”

“That means nothing.”

“Forecastle sailors are usually men, and big, for they are accustomed to handling the anchors and the head sails. In heavy weather . . . well, think of fighting to control, say, four runaway horses, all that wild strength connected by one rope, while balanced on a tree branch in a high wind.”

Sindan nodded once. “Understood. So, to the fighting.”

“He got angry and duffed a bigger boy. So the captain wanted him with the forecastle. Those men are largely responsible for repelling boarders on merchant ships.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the forecastlemen ran Inda, as you’d expect. Here’s this small boy, knows nothing about the sea, and the captain insults them with him instead of the sturdier shiprats. Inda said nothing. He never does. Just watched the repel-boarder drills, bad as they were. Did his part if told to move. But I’m not telling it a-right. He has this hothead friend Tau that I mentioned, run a lot by the biggest of the mids, who command the rats and oversee watches. Think of them as senior horsetails, training for command.”

“Ah.”

“The biggest is this one called Norsh, who had been riding Tau, Inda’s friend. Riding hard. There’d been two fights before we were hired on. So anyway, there’d been another tussle, and Norsh used his rank to get Tau roped. Inda didn’t say anything, but on the next real shooting drill, when Norsh was jawing at him, he turned away and shot fast, hitting the barrel—they float a barrel in the water with a target painted on—time after time, his form perfect, straight line fingertip to fingertip, just as we’re taught, and I was so careful not to show though they have me on that crew. It was a sting, and the forecastle howled.”

Sindan frowned. “So he was betrayed by his training?”

“Only in a sense. Merchant sailors are untrained. Some captains won’t even give them arrows, because they can’t be retrieved from the water, so they go up onto the mast-heads—few of them even have longbows—pull the strings a few times, and that’s drill! Ours shoot, but they send poorly made arrows out without any sense of aim, figuring they have to hit something. To them Marlovan means skill with weapons. They don’t recognize anything like styles of fighting.”

“Good.”

“So to resume, Norsh couldn’t thrash Inda for frost, because he’d followed the orders of the drill captain, and the forecastlemen were all shouting their approval. So Norsh says he will show Inda how to fight hand to hand.”

Sindan toyed with his knife. “And?”

“Well, at first Inda just stood there taking it, because he thought he had to. Rank’s privilege of punishment, that much he understood. It’d been impressed on him that you can be rope-flogged for insubordination. And he’s used to it from his brother, no doubt.”

“You are right.”

“It’s a bad way to train,” Dun said, his tone serious. “I didn’t see it until I got away. This tradition of boys beating boys in the families of rank, one day it’s going to cause big problems.”

“Already has. Go on.”

“So the boy said nothing, just stood there silent, taking it, until Scalis, uh, he’s the captain of the forecastle watches, well, he said, ‘This here’s drill! Go to it, boy!’ And Inda was like an arrow to the mark. They’d never seen anything like it. He was wild, his style reminding me more of the women’s Odni. That is, he did not have the knives, but it was the way he used his hands. Flowing like water, hands and kicks.” He demonstrated with the heel of his hand to his own chin and breastbone. “He had a broken wrist by then, not that he noticed. But he blackened one of Norsh’s eyes, knocked the wind out of him, and Norsh went down hard twice. The second time Inda flung himself onto his neck. The men all stood around with their mouths gaping. But before Inda could do Norsh serious damage—before I could find some way to intervene without betraying my origins or orders—that hand gave way and he dropped like a rock on top of Norsh.”

Sindan looked grim again.

“As soon as he woke up he apologized to Norsh for losing his temper, the first mate and captain approved, and so Norsh was forced to let it end there. The forecastlemen did not. They started teasing the training out of him, a block here, a strike there. Their fighting drill is not much beyond ‘Wade in and swing whatever weapon you’ve got, roaring like a bull.’ Inda sees that, and it seems a part of his nature to organize, to teach, perhaps to command. One day, finally, he showed one of the men staff work. Once his wrist had healed he was leading the drills, and they were like colts in clover.” Dun gave a rueful smile. “They have no idea what it is, of course, or only enough to permit themselves to think it, like his shooting, some sort of general ‘Marlovan’ defense. Their mouths are full of curses like ‘drunk as a Marlovan’ or ‘stinking as a Marlovan horse turd’ but they’re doing academy scrub drills, only without drums, calls all in Iascan, if you can imagine such a thing.”