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.”
Shikashe smiled very slightly at one side of his mouth.
“That will not be a problem, by then.”
“No,” Amatesu agreed. “By then, Madame Nesha-tari shall have made herself known. After that, the man will not go anywhere.”
Amatesu glanced at the deck beneath her feet and made a small gesture with one hand, two fingers bent under her thumb and two extended. It was not a gesture typical of any shukenja school, but from a far more ancient peasant tradition. It was meant to ward away evil.
Chapter Thirteen
The bugbears did no more cavorting. Those that had climbed down into the palisade gathered around the dead one Tilda had shot in the mouth, roared at the sky and beat their great fists against their broad chests. When they climbed back up the same way they had come down two carried the dead one between them. Tilda watched from the pine woods across the chasm and would not have thought such an ascent possible until noticing that the bugbears used their large, hairy feet just like a second pair of hands.
The sun went down a few hours later and the night was illuminated by the panoply of stars and a waxing moon. The sky had looked too crowded to Tilda ever since she had left the great capital city of Miilark. She left the trees and stared down into the dark chasm. Dugan watched her from nearby. She turned and moved toward him, leaned her gun against a tree and removed her pack. She left her cloak, several daggers, and her club, though she shifted her sword to her back. She put a candle in her boot.
“There is no point, Tilda,” Dugan said. She didn’t look at him but moved back to the chasm’s edge and lowered her legs over the side, boot-tips probing for purchase.
The climb in the dark was bad, but not the worst Tilda had made. She had ascended the Ghost Mountain as part of her Guild training and the coral edges of that familiar peak were like knives in places. She had finished that climb with bleeding hands and feet for her gloves and boots had been shredded. Here, there were loose stones and soft-packed dirt she had to avoid, but the fact that doing so required her full attention and left her no room to think was actually a relief.
Centuries of rain and snowmelt had made the bottom of the crevasse concave rather than sharp, and Block’s body was easy to find once the candle was lit, lying beside the shattered wreckage of the drawbridge. It was bad.
The captain’s kitbag was nearby, the thing Tilda had to have. She opened it and found both pistols were broken, but she left them and the loose parts inside as they might be repairable. The map cases, the coin purses, and most importantly the money belt of Miilarkian banknotes were fine. There was an empty silver wine-flask, dented now, with an embossed gold seal of a Miilarkian ship on either side. Tilda looked at the flask, and toward the body, but ultimately dropped it back into the bag, closed the clasp and slung the strap across her back.
Miilarkians did not bury their dead in the ground, their final rest was at sea. There was a particular two-day long route out from the capital city taken by white funerary barges twice every tenday, past a holy islet where white albatrosses roosted and ashes were scattered on the waters. Tilda had no idea what dwarves did with their dead, but to her Captain Block was as much an Islander as was she. Yet she could not reduce the body to ash, and merely setting a fire that would burn out was unbelievably morbid.
She did the only thing she could think to do, drawing her sword and jamming it into the ground at the Captain’s feet. She went into a coin purse in the kitbag, holding the candle close. She found one of the few gold coins, a bright Codian Sovereign with the Book-from-the-Water design of the Code from the Lake on one side and the young Emperor Albert in profile on the reverse. She closed her hand around the coin, shut her eyes, and spoke in Miilarkian.
“Gracious Miisina, Our Lady of Coin. This I ask. When the snows of the mountains melt and this passage runs in stream, let its waters to river fly, thence to Channel, thence to the great Ocean you have made Ours. Let the soul of this good Islander be borne by the Wind, to its home. This I ask. For this I pay.”
Tilda knelt and placed the coin on the ground. She set a water-smoothed stone atop it. She stood, wondering why she could not cry. She wanted to, but knew the Captain would have shaken his head and growled. Probably told her she was an idiot. There was work to be done, still.
She sniffled. Once. Tilda rubbed her nose on a sleeve and blew out the candle. She turned to make the climb back up.
Dugan was waiting when she neared the top, though the night was surely past its mid-watch by then. He extended an arm when she drew near and after a moment of hesitation she clasped hands and let him pull her up
