Moonrise

dullness for some time, with the Wolf-General's Boston to deal with.'

'Yes… And if they go, you will remember they are savages, however clever and well-read their chieftain?'

'I'll remember.'

'They live by signs we never see.'

'I know it… And Nancy – all of them – will come to say good-bye to you and the baby.'

Patience led him down from the dais, stood looking at him for a moment, a cool regard. Then she said, 'I will never see you again, unless in Maxwell's dreams,' and swept into his arms like a lover, hugging him close. Her body was startlingly small and slight. There was no human odor, not even of her breath, only the white scents of ice and stone. 'I have two sons,' she said, looking up into his eyes, her own dark as dug coal.

'Yes,' Baj said, and kissed her forehead. 'And I, a Third-mother.'

'And would you have killed me at the Pens?'

'… Yes, if not for that little time to consider.'

'Then you are Sam Monroe's son, more than Toghrul Khan's.'

'Perhaps.'

'Prince,' Patience sighed, and left his arms, 'I remember the boy I first saw fleeing through a windy day in the southern mountains, afraid, exhausted. But still, the man he was to become rested waiting in him like a shaft of stone. – The boy now is worn away by Lady Weather, and the man revealed… Do you understand that the brave woman you killed at the Pens – the women we killed – were soldiers as much as any swordsmen, any halberdiers? They died of necessary war; and you – like the rest of us – simply an instrument.'

'And no tragic figure?'

'Only if you're foolish enough to choose it.'

'Oh,' Baj said, '- I doubt if I'm done with foolish choices.' He stepped up to the dais again, to the side of Maxwell's massive bed, leaned over and kissed the great warm round of the baby's cheek. 'Farewell, my brother. Dream safety for our mother… and luck for me.'

The giant child sighed, its eyes slowly opened, a pale wondering blue and soft with sleep. Perhaps seeing Baj, perhaps not, but only the vaulted lamp-spangled ceiling of its creche.

CHAPTER 30

Captain Pruitt, Sunriser and almost sixty, styled himself 'Commodore'- though only to himself to ward the laughter of other fisher and sealer captains. At what was considered on the coast an advanced age, he owned three boats clear of debt. Sloops to sail blue sea or white ice – though ice-rigged now, as usual off New England. Ice- rigged to run days out to the great storm-split leads, with wet-rigging ready – once skates were up and stowed – to fish them.

Three boats and decent crews for every one – bits of seal-stuff born in two bosuns, though only evident in their odor.

Pope was at sea. Parson in the yards with cracked strakes, but Priestess – all ancient sacred names – Priestess was afloat, fresh scraped, caulked, and sounded, cord lines and hook-wire spooled, and provisioned for many weeks on sea ice to sea leads, for whenever came the cod.

… Buzz and buzz had sounded at the coast – with Bostonians in flight from their disaster. Pigeons also had come flying. But the city – under Sunrisers or Moonrisers – still must eat, and more and better than occasional musk-ox or caribou. Cod was the matter. And seal meat. And whale. So bitter buzzing beside the point – and history turned on its back – still the coast would fish, the coast would hunt and whale, and the men and women of the coast would be paid for it.

Captain (Commodore) Pruitt, a hard-hander but fair enough to his crews, had come down Priestess's gangway, still considering the luck of being necessary – and almost thirty frozen miles from unlucky Boston-town – when he saw an odd group waiting down the dock in day's-end light.

Waiting – with two caribou sledges just swinging away through fine blowing snow, leaving them standing with nothing but their bundles. And their weapons.

… As he was no fool in finding fish, so Captain Pruitt was no fool in avoiding ugly weather. He had a nose for it – and therefore turned back to climb aboard Priestess as if he'd recalled further business on her.

'You!'

It was one of those You's – this called in a young man's voice – that brought bad news with it. Pruitt sighed, signaled a seaman by her rail to keep sorting hooks by sizes, then turned to walk down to them.

'… I have work to do. What's your business?'

A man – undoubtedly the caller of 'You'- said 'Good evening,' and smiled at him, a smile that made Captain Pruitt no easier. This was a young man, scarred and weary, perhaps also injured in the Boston fighting. He wore rich furs, and – hinted gleaming at his throat – apparently fine chain-mail under them. Wore those and a wicked rapier, also a long-blade knife.

Bad enough, but his company was worse. Some sort of Moon-riser girl – likely a little fox or coyote in there – also armed. Still grimmer, a Person the size of a small berg, with an ax to match, and six… seven Shrike tribesmen grinning, file-toothed.

Bad weather.

'I have to attend my work, so say what you have to say.'

'You are the captain, the owner of that boat?' A nod to Priestess.

It occurred to Pruitt to lie to this young man – and he might have, but there was a look in those dark and slightly slanted eyes that said, 'Don't trouble. I know command, and you were giving orders to that crew.'

'Yes, I own her. And so what?' A fine little WT phrase.

'The boat seems sound…'

'Is sound,' Pruitt said. 'The best.' Then uneasily regretted the boast.

The young man nodded. 'People told us so at Bay Dock… We are ordered out of Boston, and wish to leave this coast.'

'Then hire a vessel to skate you down to Map-Carolina, and do not trouble me.'

'We wish to own, not hire, Captain. We've been shown what's to buy along these piers, and were told to come see this boat – smart, just stocked for weeks of fishing – and it does suit us.'

Pruitt was so startled, he was silent for a moment.' 'Suits you' for what?'

'For crossing the Ocean Atlantic. For going to Atlas-Ire and England, then perhaps the supposed Europe.'

It seemed a speech in a dream, and took Captain Pruitt a moment to accept. '… Well, not in my boat. Not in my Priestess in any way at all! Our people fish or hunt the ice, and always have – and any gone past the Banks are never heard from after. But not in my boat in any case.'

The big Moonriser – some bear in there for certain – muttered something, and the young man looked at Pruitt in a concerned, almost a sad sort of way. It was not reassuring. 'Captain,' he said, 'we will buy your boat.'

'No, you will not.'

The Shrikes appeared to grow restless, shifted so like a pack of wolves that it was striking.

'Forgive me for insisting,' the young man said, bowed as if out of a story-book, then held out a heavy jingling pouch. 'Here is part of our very generous pay from Sylvia Wolf-General, the same who orders us gone. Thirty-seven Boston golds.' He held the pouch out – and when Pruitt didn't take it, let it fall to the dock planking.

'You fucking seal-pup.' Pruitt kicked the pouch a little way – but not out onto the ice. 'I sell no boat to you at all!'

The young man shook his head. 'Think again, sir.' The sea wind blew his breath in frost. 'I believe that pouch would buy you the building of even a better. And I do know boats; know them well. I've sailed and skated for years