The Water Road (21 page)

Ushan jumped in and said something,
in forceful tones that sounded angry. Midway through, she leaned forward in her
seat, as if she was delivering a scolding. Goshen translated it calmly. “We are
aware of Tolenor, child. It is the city built in the Bay of Sins after our
defeat generations ago. I can see what you were told of us while you were in
that place, Antrey. We are Neldathi. We are not ignorant.”

Antrey felt ashamed and humiliated.
Of course they would know what Tolenor was, if any clan did, given their
proximity to it. She turned to Goshen and asked him, “Sorry? How do I say I’m
sorry?” After a brief lesson, she turned back to Ushan and said, “Apologies,
Great Mother.”

Ushan asked another brief question.
“What did you do in the city?” asked Goshen.

“I was taken in by a kind man who
worked for the Triumvirate,” Antrey said, then paused for Goshen’s translation.
She wanted to measure Ushan’s reaction to that before going on. The answer did
not upset her, so Antrey continued. “He took me into his home, taught me how to
read, and gave me a profession. He was the clerk for the Grand Council of the
Triumvirate, responsible for keeping all of its records. I was his assistant.”
Antrey waited while Goshen translated.

Ushan made a longer speech this
time, reverting to her more calm and lilting tone, although the pitch of many
of the words remained low. “This man showed you kindness above your station,”
Goshen said for her. “It is my understanding that those of your kind are…” he
paused for a moment, unsure how to proceed. He looked at Ushan pleadingly,
swallowed hard, and continued, “That those of your kind are more often used for
the carnal pleasures of others north of the Water Road.”

“Yes, Great Mother,” Antrey said.

Ushan asked another question, this
one a little more emphatic than some of the others. “If that is the case, then
why did you leave the city and this kind man who had shown such great pity for
you?”

Antrey stood for a minute, frozen,
unable to answer. She knew the time would come when she would have to tell her
story, but this was not it. There were too many people here. Too many
unfriendly faces. Hirrek, in particular, for all his mother’s grace and
civility, seemed on the verge of rage. Before she could answer, Ushan turned to
Goshen and addressed him directly. “What did she say?” Antrey asked him.

Goshen turned to her and sighed.
“She asked if I had learned anything from the belongings which you carried when
Hirrek and the hunters found you.”

Antrey had completely forgotten
about her things. Her satchel had not been with her when she awoke, but she did
not think to look for it or ask about it. Of course, her journal was in there.
If Goshen could read Altrerian as well as he spoke it, he must know what had
happened.

Goshen turned back to Ushan and
began to engage in conversation with the old woman. Antrey grabbed him by the
arm. “What are you telling her?” At nearly the same time, Ushan asked a
question that Antrey thought must have been similar.

“One moment, please, Antrey,”
Goshen said. He turned back to Ushan, said something in a high tone and then
turned to face Antrey. “I have told Great Mother than you wish to know what is
being said about you. She agrees that you should know. This will take some
time, however,” he said.

“I’m in no hurry,” Antrey said. “So
what have you told her so far?”

“I have told her that you killed
Alban,” he said, as coolly as if he was describing the weather. “Shall I
continue?”

Antrey nodded. It couldn’t get any
worse.

Goshen settled into an easy rhythm
of telling Ushan something in the Dost tongue, then translating it for Antrey’s
benefit every few sentences. “This man Alban was not the good man Antrey said
he was,” he said. Antrey flinched at that description, but decided not to stop
him. Seeing her story through someone else’s eyes might be useful. “She killed him
with his own weapon, called a pikti, the traditional fighting staff of the
Triumvirate Sentinels.”

Ushan interrupted with a question.
“Why would she do such a thing?” Goshen translated.

“According to her personal
history,” he said, “she discovered a terrible secret about the Triumvirate.
About the Sentinels and about the Neldathi. The secret angered her. That her
Alban would try and justify it or defend it showed that he was not the person
Antrey thought him to be. The pikti was near at hand. Antrey acted out of
righteous rage and anger.”

Antrey had to admit she liked
Goshen’s gloss on the events. He focused on what motivated her, not the details
of her actions themselves. And he ignored completely, for now at any rate, her
later reflections on the justness of what she had done.

Ushan looked at Antrey with weary,
knowing eyes, and asked another question. “Is this true, Antrey, what Goshen
has told us?”

“Yes, Great Mother,” Antrey said.

Ushan shook her head slowly, then
leaned over towards Kajtan. They exchanged a few words. When Hirrek tried to
eavesdrop on the conversation, Kajtan pushed him away forcefully, sending him
off the bench backwards. It was all Antrey could do to suppress a laugh.

When she had finished consulting
with Kajtan, Ushan stood and faced Antrey. She towered over her in a way that
no Sentinel on the streets of Tolenor ever did. She spoke in slow, dignified
tones that conveyed an authority to anyone who heard them, regardless of
whether they understood the words. When she was finished, she looked towards
Goshen and nodded.

Goshen said, “As a halfbreed,
Antrey, you have no place here. Whatever others have done to you, or might do
to you, the Dost will not harm you or put you in danger. But you are not
welcome in our camp or in our land. When the sun reaches zenith tomorrow, you
must leave. Until then, you may remain in the meeting hall or in the company of
Goshen. Go nowhere by yourself.”

Stunned by the decree, Antrey just
managed to say, “Yes, Great Mother,” before Ushan walked out of the tent, with
Kajtan and Hirrek closely following. The others took their leave a few moments
later. Antrey simply stood where she was and wondered what she would do next.

When all the others had gone,
Goshen walked to the tent entrance, stuck his head out, and then came back
inside. He walked back over to Antrey and sat down on one of the long benches
in the gallery near where Antrey stood. “Come, sit,” he said, gesturing for her
to sit down beside him. Antrey did, without really thinking about it. “Now that
we are alone, Antrey, we have much to discuss,” he said with a sly grin.

Traf told them it would be five
days, perhaps a week—two weeks at the outside—before the
Kanawha
arrived
in Innisport. Once the flatboat navigated the Bay of Sins and was actually
churning up the Water Road, of course. To Strefer’s ears, it sounded as if
there was a distinct possibility they might never reach Innisport, much less
Oberton. But Rurek did not seem concerned, so she assumed he must know
something she did not or had more confidence in the old captain and his boat.
That was what she told herself, at least.

So Strefer settled into a routine,
as much as she could. As far as she could tell, she and Rurek were the only two
paying passengers on board. In addition to Traf, she had seen three other men,
all of whom were members of the crew. One of them was an Islander and Strefer
thought she might track him down one night to talk about his home islands,
since she knew little about them. If there was anyone else on board, Strefer
had not crossed paths with them.

That was largely due to the fact
that she spent most of her time locked in what passed for her stateroom. It was
unclear what function the room served under regular conditions. Surely a vessel
of this size could not afford to sail up and down the river with empty rooms.
It had a small hard bed and a tiny round table, but otherwise was bare. Strefer
wondered if it actually belonged to one of the crew members and hoped she had
not displaced anyone. When Traf showed them the room, Rurek pronounced it
suitable because the door had a working lock on it. He slept in the common room
across the hall, so he could be as close as possible if trouble arose. By this
point Strefer thought that was unlikely, but she appreciated the way Rurek had
thrown himself into his role as guardian.

Rurek’s paranoia, or alertness,
depending on one’s perspective, could be suffocating. If it were up to him, she
would stay in her little room at all hours of the day until they reached
Innisport. That Strefer demanded some freedom frustrated him. The small
porthole next to the bed provided some idea of what was going on outside, but
not much. She had extracted two concessions from Rurek. One was that she ate
with him and the crew in the common room that doubled as Rurek’s quarters. As
long as they were all together and Rurek was there, what could possibly happen
to her? The other concession she extracted was scheduled walks up on deck three
times a day—twice during the daylight and once at night. They were Stefer’s
chance to get some fresh air and try and get her bearings in the world.

The boat’s deck wrapped around the
pilothouse where Traf did his work, as well as the steam engines that drove the
Kanawha
’s rear paddlewheel. At first, the thwapping of the wheel on the
water nearly drove Strefer out of her mind, but she quickly learned to tune it
out. Sometimes, when she was walking around the boat, she would stop at the
stern and lose herself in the hypnotic repetition of the wheel and water.

Generally, on her first trip around
the deck, she favored the port side of the boat, which provided a view of the
Neldathi lands. This was the first time she had ever really looked at and
studied those mountains, which rose up out of the horizon as if they were reaching
for the sun itself. The landscape was dotted, every few hours, by one of the
Triumvirate forts along the river, some more impressive than others. Traf,
Strefer noticed, gave the forts a wide berth. She wondered if that was standard
for him, or done on behalf of her and Rurek.

During her other trip around in the
daytime, Strefer lingered on the starboard side, looking north. At first, the
Endless Hills were a poor substitute for their massive cousins to the south.
Once they neared the River Adon, however, the north provided signs of life that
were absent in the south. That was doubly true at night, when the lands to the
south remained pitch black. Islands of light showed up north, however, as the
boat passed villages and other small settlements.

On this night, she had paused to
look north as the
Kanawha
thwapped its way past Tomondala, the first
major city on their route. The city was aglow with pale light from gas lamps
and other lanterns, from homes and streets. The docks were aglow as if for a
holiday celebration when they passed, each pier lit up to ensure boats arriving
and departing did so without incident.

Rurek found her there, leaning
against the deck railing. “Quite lovely, isn’t it?” he asked.

Strefer jumped just a bit, startled.
Although Rurek made it his job to keep tabs on her, the more time they spent on
the river and the more it seemed that they were safe, the less she saw of him.
“Don’t sneak up on a girl like that, all right?” she said, catching her breath.
“Especially when you’ve been avoiding me the past couple of days.”

He slid in beside her and leaned
over the railing. “I haven’t been avoiding you, exactly. I’ve been gathering
information, such as I can. Besides, as long as you’re locked up in your room,
you’re pretty safe. No point in bothering you.”

Strefer smirked. “What kind of
information have you been able to find on this tub?”

“Not much,” he said, giving her the
answer she expected. “But that’s not really a bad thing. There’s no talk, no
gossip going around. That means none of the crew are giving us a second
thought.”

“Did you expect we would be a topic
of discussion?” she asked.

Rurek shrugged. “You never know.
I’m still worried about the guys in your apartment.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Obviously,” he said. “I keep
thinking about the background. Who’s behind them? Who’s paying them? Why were
they so blatant and sloppy about the break-in?”

“Fascinating details, I’m sure,”
Strefer said. Now that they were on the run, she was less worried with the
motivations of those who might do them harm.

“Maybe not to you,” Rurek said,
“but they might tell me something about the resources behind them. Whether
whoever is after you…after us…has the ability to move information more quickly
than we can.”

“How?” Strefer asked. “What are you
talking about, mind walkers?”

“Well, officially, only Sentinels
can be active mind walkers,” Rurek said.

That did not comfort Strefer. “What
do you mean, officially?”

“I mean if you, Strefer Quants,
reporter for the
Daily Register
, ask the Sentinel Public Information
Office about mind walkers, you will be told that only Sentinels can be mind
walkers. Or, more correctly, anyone who shows a proficiency for mind walking
will become a Sentinel. But if you poked around some and asked questions in
other places, you’d find something different.”

“Oh, really?” Strefer asked. Maybe
once this crisis was resolved, she would move on to this story.

He turned and faced her. “Do you
have any idea how hard it is to uncover that ability in people? It’s not
obvious just by looking, like with the halfbreeds. It takes testing,
evaluations, and lots of time. Some people don’t show any ability for mind
walking when they’re tested. Others deceive the testers, for whatever reason.
Rumor has it that there are mind walkers out there beyond the control of the
Sentinels. Used by criminal organizations, or legitimate ones, to give them an
edge over competitors. Nobody really knows for sure.”

“Hmm,” Strefer said.

“But even putting that to one side
for a moment,” Rurek said, “a faster boat than this one on the river or a fast
horse through the hills could get someone to Innisport ahead of us. Although
that assumes they know where we’re headed. If you had a network of mind
walkers, however, you could send out the information to lots of places. After
all, if someone wanted to make life difficult for us, they wouldn’t have to
send their own minions.”

“Just let people know there’s a
price on my head, right?” Strefer asked before he got any further.

“On our heads, you mean,” he said.
“Whatever happens to the two of us, whether we make it to Oberton in one piece
or if we don’t make it that far, we’re both likely to meet the same fate.”

“Sorry,” Strefer said. It was easy
to forget just what she had gotten him into. “So why didn’t we have Traf drop
us off here?” she asked, waving at the glowing city in the distance.

“Have you ever tracked anything,
Strefer?” he asked with a slight grin. “Animal? A person? Anything?”

She shot him a look. “I wasn’t born
into the Guild of Hunters, you know.”

“If you had been born into the
Guild of Hunters, you would know that when you’re tracking something and you
know where it’s going, the best thing to do is follow the most direct path.”

“You think they know we’re headed
for Oberton?” she asked, in a panic and much louder than she meant to. He
gestured towards her to keep it down. “What makes you think that?”

“No, no, I don’t think they know
where we are headed, ultimately. But if I were them, I’d think you were headed
one of two places. One would be back home, to the Guildlands. The other would
be to the Arbor, somewhere. It’s such a good place to hide out.”

“So instead of going direct to
Oberton…” Strefer started to say.

“We sail right on past the cities in
the Arbor and to Innisport. Then we’ll backtrack into the Arbor and to Oberton.
It should throw off anybody who’s following us.”

Strefer sighed. She could not argue
with Rurek’s logic, but it prolonged the entire process, which made her
nervous. The sooner they were in Oberton, regardless of what actually happened
there, the better. She decided to shift the topic of conversation to take her
mind off the whole mess. “So, in your intelligence gathering, did you learn
anything juicy about the crew? Or Traf?”

Rurek shook his head. “I have a
hunch, but that’s all,” he said, pausing for a moment. “Of course, my hunches
are usually pretty good.”

“I see,” Strefer said, smiling. “Do
tell.”

He leaned in close to her. “I think
they’re smugglers. At least to some extent,” he whispered.

“Seriously?” Strefer said,
struggling to keep her voice down. “Wouldn’t it be beyond stupid to bring a
Sentinel on board when they were smuggling something?”

Rurek smiled, shifting his weight
onto the pikti that was always in one hand. “Remember what I said before about
how most people don’t really know what Sentinels do? Smugglers aren’t any
different. Who’s to say that Traf knows Sentinels are law enforcement officers
in Tolenor? You’d think he would know, given how often this ship docks there.
Maybe he figures that by doing me a favor, I can do him one down the road
somehow.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much
chance of that at this point,” Strefer said, her thoughts directed back towards
Rurek’s plight since he threw in with her.

“Don’t talk like that, Strefer,” he
said. “I made the choice, not you. I made it knowing that, in a few days, I’ll
be officially declared a deserter and my career as a Sentinel will be over.
Most likely. So, no, I’ll probably never be in a position to actually help Traf
out. Not legitimately, anyway.”

Try as she might, Strefer couldn’t
shake off the fact that she was the cause of Rurek’s trouble. She tried to
change the subject again to get her mind off it. “So what’s with you and Traf?
You’re from completely different cities in the Arbor, but you seem to get along
well. Shouldn’t you be at each other’s throats over the honor of your homelands
or something?”

He laughed. “Is that what they
taught you in that Guild school? That the Arborians are no better than the Neldathi,
weighed down by violent petty squabbles? As if the rest of you didn’t go at
each other over some slight or another for years and years.”

Strefer instantly felt ashamed, not
for asking the question, but for asking it in the way she did. “Well, what I meant
was…” she said, before Rurek interrupted.

“It’s been more than a hundred
years, you know, since the Confederation was established,” he said. “Did we
fight each other a lot before that? Of course. Do we still do it now? Of course
not. We haven’t been at each others’ throats for two or three generations now.
At least two, anyway. But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up all the prejudices
that fueled that stuff. All that violence and political maneuvering had to be
replaced with something. So we argued about the numerous and pointless ways
that our home city is better than any other. But it’s all talk. Having said
that, all those years of conflict made us a little more careful with our words
than you lot or the Telebrians. We don’t naturally filter ourselves well.” He
laughed again.

“Correction noted,” Strefer said,
nodding out at the passing riverbank. “Sorry.”

“Will you stop saying that?” Rurek
said, casting her a pleading look before continuing. “At any rate, neither Traf
nor I actually live in our home cities anymore, or even in the Arbor at all.
Kanawha
is his home, for the most part. As for me, it’s been years since I left
Tolenor. That was home, as far as I was concerned, until a few days ago.” He
turned and faced out, looking out towards the glittering lights of Tomondala.

Strefer knew it was time to stop
digging. Rather than trying one more time to shift the conversation to
something lighter and more pleasant, she said nothing. They stood together in
silence and watched as
Kanawha
glided up the river, the paddlewheel
thwapping away.