Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

went about their business as if there were no robed woman clinging to the timbers of their ship. It seemed she was invisible to them.

“She’s fading,” said Stoyan, and before our eyes the dark figure wavered and broke up and vanished. “Do we tell him?”

“Maybe we don’t need to,” I said, seeing Duarte coming across the deck toward us. I addressed the captain with what confidence I could muster. “There could be plague all the way along this shore. You realize that, I suppose?” I said. “Landing anywhere nearby might risk the lives of your entire crew. May we see your maps?”

Duarte was looking haggard. “Why not?” he said flatly, as if it hardly mattered.

Pero showed us our current position on the map and the site of the stricken village. I shivered to think of that. Plague had spread across our region more than once and had swept whole towns and districts bare of living souls. It was indiscriminate, taking men, women, and children alike, the poor, the wealthy, the wicked, and the saintly. That settlement had looked so small. I imagined the inhabitants perhaps gathered at their little mosque to pray, fewer by the day. I imagined mothers watching their children die or children left alone, confused and helpless. The worst thing was, there was nothing to be done about it. To land and offer assistance was to invite a death sentence. Still, it had felt bad to sail on by.

I found what I thought was the big headland, and beyond it a pair of narrow, slitlike bays. The map was lacking in detail. I could not tell if any paths led up the mountains from one or the other of these.

“You could put in here,” I said, stabbing the spot with my finger. “There may well be a way up into the mountains, perhaps a path that meets the one you intended to walk. And the ship could anchor in the second bay, out of sight. Of course, you may find plague in the settlement over the pass; it might be everywhere in the region. That’s your risk, which I suppose you must take on behalf of your whole party. You could always sail back to Istanbul, taking care to evade the Mufti’s vessel. You’ve got a fine crew. They could do it.”

Duarte looked at me, his dark eyes inscrutable. “Put yourself in my place,” he said, for once not mocking but entirely serious. “What would your decision be?”

I blinked, surprised. “I could not make it so quickly,” I said. “I know which choice is right but…I understand what it means to be dedicated to a mission, too. My head and my heart would do battle over it. I would need time to decide.”

“I have no time. We are here, and sooner or later the other ship will find us. If we go ahead, it must be quickly.”

I looked at Duarte closely. There were lines on his face that I had not noticed before, grooves between his nose and the corners of his mouth that made him look older. His dark brows were drawn into a frown. “You have a little time,” I said. “Until we sail around the headland and into the bay, and then until we see if there’s a path. You could talk to your crew.”

He gave a curt nod, then turned his back and went to the rail, where he stood looking ahead as the Esperanca sailed on a steady course toward the promontory. I remembered how I had said before that I believed his crew would die for him. That was what he had to decide now: whether to put them in the path of death.

Without further talk, Stoyan and I went down to the cabin. It was cold. Out on the water, at times it was hard to believe the season was late spring. I held my cloak around me, watching Stoyan as he stood by the porthole staring out. He was tall enough to do so without standing on anything; indeed, he had to stoop a little.

“This is hard for Duarte,” I said. “It’s one thing asking his men to defend him against attackers; I expect they do that quite often. It’s quite another expecting them to enter what may be a plague village. What if he got there with Cybele’s Gift and found everyone dead?” A shiver ran through me; I could see the scene, what should have been a triumph turned to ashes. “He can’t attempt the climb alone. That would be foolhardy. If he sails back to Istanbul, he’ll be sacrificing the mission. And putting himself in the way of the Sheikh-ul-Islam.”

“So what would your answer be?”

“I don’t know. Imagine watching a friend die of plague, knowing you could have prevented it. Can a mission really be worth that?”

“I ask myself,” Stoyan said solemnly, “what would my choice be if I had to risk the lives of companions, of friends, in order to find my brother. Not so long ago, I would have told you yes, I would do so without hesitation.”

I waited for more, but it was not forthcoming. “And now?” I asked him.

“I believe that, like you, I could not do it. That I could not bear what might ensue. And that wounds me; it is as if I have set Taidjut aside.” His voice was full of pain now.

“Then we must both be glad the decision is not ours to make,” I said quietly. “Do you think of him all the time? Taidjut?”

“I count the grief I have caused, the losses, in my quest to find him. Salem bin Afazi, slain through my neglect of my duties, because I asked for leave to follow a thread of information. Your father, alone and unprotected in Istanbul because I did not keep a proper watch on you. Others before. I have acquitted myself miserably, Paula.”

I stood and laid a comforting hand on his back. “You’ll find him, Stoyan,” I said. “You’re strong of heart. And you’ve acquitted yourself bravely. When things went wrong, it was not your doing. It’s my fault entirely that you and I are in our current predicament.”

I pondered the future. If Duarte decided not to risk the climb, we could be back in Istanbul sooner than we had expected, and I would be able to end Father’s anxiety. He and I would sail back home, and Stoyan could pick up his search for his lost brother again. That was good. But I was filled with sadness: for those who were suffering in that little village, for Stoyan and Taidjut, for Duarte, torn between the duty laid on him by his friend’s sacrifice and his responsibility to his crew. And what about Cybele’s Gift? How could I set aside my own mission? How could I ignore my sister?

“Maybe the decision will be made for us,” I said. A cold feeling came over me, a certainty that what I had just said was true. “Maybe…” No, I refused to believe the plague had somehow been sent so that we would land in another bay, take another path, do the will of the Other Kingdom. That was too dark a possibility to be contemplated.

“What is wrong, Paula?” Stoyan turned, putting a hand on my shoulder.