I shook my head definitively. 'Never work. I won't do it.'
Prima Rhannet arched sun-gilded brows. 'No?'
'No.'
Nihko promptly hooked my feet out from under me and heaved me over the rail.
Water is hard. It felt like a sheet of hardpacked dirt when I landed, smashing into it flat on my back. For a moment nothing in my brain or body worked. I was so shocked I didn't even breathe-and then I realized I couldn't.
Water is hard. And when you land in-or on –it the way I did, taken completely unaware and utterly inexperienced with such things as flying followed by swimming, you get the air knocked right out of your lungs.
Then, of course, I sank.
SEVEN
AFTER I had swallowed enough saltwater to founder a dozen ships, I felt hands touching me. Pinching me. But I'd already exhausted strength with remarkably dramatic and equally ineffective struggles, and had reached the point where it seemed much easier simply to let go. Because the lungs weren't working at all anymore, and pretty much everything had grayed to black.
Something seized my hair. It yanked. Then something else pinched my chest again, and it yanked.
Not breathing didn't bother me in the least-until I was hauled by rope up the side of the ship, banging dangling limbs; jerked painfully over the rail; dumped unceremoniously on the deck. Whereupon someone set about pummeling my abdomen and ribs until I felt certain the cook was simply tenderizing my hide before chopping it up and tossing it into the pot.
About this time my lungs decided they wanted to work again, and in the middle of whooping for air, my belly expelled the ocean.
This time several hands shoved me over onto my side, so I wouldn't choke. Supposedly. I'd already gagged and coughed and choked enough to die three times over. But eventually the spasms passed, air made its way back into abused lungs, and I lay there in a tangle of knotted rope, sprawled facedown on the deck with absolutely no part of me beyond those lungs capable of moving.
Someone bent over me. I felt forearms slide beneath my armpits, then elbows hooked. I was heaved up from the deck like so much refuse and set upright on my feet with belly pressed against the rail and held firmly in place, where I was permitted to view what had very nearly been my grave. It didn't look any better from above than it had from inside.
'The ocean is large,' Prima Rhannet said lightly, 'and between here and Skandi there is much of it. Shall we begin again?'
I was so muddled with the aftermath of confusion, shock, and near-drowning that I could barely remember my name, let alone what we were talking about. Standing upright seemed a fair achievement. Speaking was beyond me.
'Is he always this stubborn?' she asked.
Del said, 'Yes.'
That raised a croak of protest from me. Where in hoolies was she as they heaved me into the ocean?
'Perhaps you might suggest to him that he had best do what we ask,' Captain Rhannet said. 'This was your idea, after all.'
I realized it was Nihko who pinned me against the rail. Or held me up, depending on your point of view. I was wet. So was he. One big hand was knotted into my hair, holding my skull still. Wobbly as I was, it wouldn't take much to dump me overboard. Again.
'Stubborn,' he said, 'or stupid.'
'Well,' Prima observed, 'the same has been said of you.'
The first mate laughed. 'But none of them has lived to repeat the calumny.'
Calumny. A new word. I'd have to ask Del what it meant.
'So,' the captain began, talking to me this time, 'shall you count the fish for us again?'
I spat over the side. That for counting fish.
Of course, it was much less intended as an insult than the clearing of a throat burning from seawater and the belch that had brought it up. I did the best I could with the voice I had left. 'Being rich,' I managed, 'has its rewards.'
Nihko grunted and turned me loose. I promptly slid to the deck and collapsed into a pile of strengthless limbs and coils of prickly rope.
After a moment, Del squatted down beside me. 'They're gone, Tiger.'
Here. Gone. What did it matter?
'You can get up now.'
I wanted to laugh. Eventually I managed to roll from belly to back. The sun was overhead; I shut my eyes and draped an arm across my face. 'I think I'll just … lie here for a while. Dry out.'
'I expected them to beat you up,' she explained, 'not throw you over the side.'
Ah. Vast difference, that.
'But now they'll take us to Skandi, which is where we meant to go in the first place, and we can get on about our business. I think it is easier than seducing people who may not be seduceable, and trying to steal weapons from large men who wish to keep them.'
I lifted my arm slightly and squinted into the face peering down from the sky. Against the sun, she was an indeterminate blob. 'This was your idea of keeping me alive?'
She appeared to find no irony in the question. 'Yes.' A pause. 'Well, not precisely this. '
'Was that you who pulled me out of the water?'
'Nihko did.'
'He was the one who flung me into it.'
'Well,' Del said, 'I suppose it was rather like watching a bag of gold sinking out of reach.'
'And where in hoolies were you while this was going on?'
'Watching.'
'Thank you.'
'You're welcome.' She put her hand on my shoulder and patted it. 'It takes longer than you think to drown, Tiger.'
Well, that made all the difference in the world.
'So,' I said rustily, 'we scam a dying old woman who happens to be very rich, and very powerful, with no living heirs but the grandson of a distant cousin from an offshoot branch of the family she detests-and then Prima Rhannet and her Blue-Headed Boy will turn us loose.'
'That is the plan,' Del affirmed.
'Nothing to it,' I croaked, and dropped the arm over my eyes again.
Several days later, at dawn, I stood at the bow of the ship as we sailed into Skandi's harbor. There were, I'd learned, two Skandis. One was the island. One was the city. To keep them straight, most people referred to the city as the City. This had moved me to ask if there was only one city on the island, because if there were more, calling one city City among several other cities struck me as unnecessarily confusing, but Nihko Blue-head and Prima Rhannet simply looked at me as if everyone in the world knew Skandi was Skandi and Skandi was City and all the other cities were cities. Period.
I then reminded them that if I were to portray myself as a long-lost relative of some old Skandic lady, in line to inherit all her Skandic wealth and holdings, it might be best if I, supposedly Skandic myself, knew a little something about Skandi and Skandi.
Whereupon Prima merely said that it would be best if I remained ignorant, because knowing a little might be more confusing than knowing nothing. Whereupon the first mate suggested I was admirably suited for the role
