'Oh, we will walk. But only on surfaces that have been blessed.'
'Blessed?'
'By the priests.'
'You have priests who bless your floors?'
'Priests who weave the carpets in the patterns of the heavens.' He glanced skyward briefly.
I made a sound of disgust. 'Let me guess: they're blue.'
Nihko smiled. 'Only their heads.'
Of course I'd meant the rugs, but'that no longer mattered in view of his comment. And his head. 'Don't tell me you're a priest!'
His expression was serene. 'If you can be a messiah, surely I can be a priest.'
That shut me up. But only for a moment. 'So, your Order makes a nice living supplying men to destroy ships, steal booty, and kill passengers?' I arched brows elaborately. 'A rather violent priesthood, wouldn't you say?'
That earned me a baleful glance. And silence.
'So, what becomes of the mats at the end of the day? Doesn't the blessing wear out? Or does this poor man have to scrub the mat each night, before picking up passengers tomorrow?'
'He will scrub it, yes. And each first-day he will take it to the nearest priest to have the blessing renewed.'
'Once a week.'
'So I said.'
'For a price, I assume.'
'Do you know of anything in this life that bears no cost?'
'You're sidestepping,' I accused, 'like someone in the circle who doesn't want to start the dance. So, this man pays to have his mat blessed each week so that blue-headed folk like you don't have to walk in the dirt.' I nodded. 'Sounds like a racket to me.'
Nihko scowled blackly. 'You would name faith and service to the gods a racket? '
'Sure I would. Because it is.'
His expression was outraged. 'You blaspheme.'
'But only if there are gods. And only if they care about such things.' I shrugged. 'I'm not certain they give a sandrat's patootie about anything we do. If they exist.'
'You are disrespectful, Southroner.'
'I am many things, Blue-head. So far the gods haven't bothered to complain.'
'You are a fool.'
'That, too.'
With a mutter of disdain, he subsided into silence. I sighed and twisted to look back the way we'd come. Already the edge of the cliff receded. Beyond it I could see nothing but a blindingly blue sky, and wisps of steam rising from the smoking islands in the middle of the cauldron of blue-green sea.
Oh, bascha, I wish you were here. As much to share Skandi with me as to be free of Prima Rhannet.
After wending through the twists and turns of narrow, packed cart– and walkways, we left Skandi-the-City behind entirely. In its place was a rumpled land of worn, rocky hillocks made of dark, thin soil and heaps of pocked, crumbly stone. The top of the island swelled from the cliff toward the sunrise, crowned with a bulbous but smooth- flanked rise that could not possibly qualify as a mountain, and yet was paramount nonetheless. Between the city and the soft-browed peak stretched acres of land that had broken out in a plague of rounded, basketlike heaps of greenery. A rash of wreaths, set out in amazingly symmetrical rows. As we passed the field nearest the road, I leaned somewhat precariously over the edge of the cart to get a closer look.
Baskets. Big baskets. Big living baskets; the vine limbs had literally been woven into a circle and groomed to grow that way permanently. I realized the cart-bench itself was made of the same vine.
I had seen many strange plants in my life, having been North and South, but never vines coiled upon the ground into gigantic wooden pots. 'What in hoolies are those?'
Nihko spared the edge of the track a glance. 'Grapes.'
'Grapes?' It astonished me. Every vineyard I'd ever seen boasted upright vines trained to grow along the horizontal, like a man standing with arms outstretched.
'Skandi is a land of winds,' Nihko answered absently. 'The vines here are too tender to be grown as other vines are, lest the wind strip them away. So they are cultivated low upon the ground.'
There wasn't so much wind right now as to risk the vines. A breeze blew steadily, but it wasn't hearty enough to shred vegetation. The baskets of woven grape vines, crouched upon the ground, barely stirred.
'So,' I said, 'just why is it we can't walk on the ground? Unless it's blessed, that is. Didn't you and I walk off the ship and across the quay to the bottom of the cliff?'
'The wind and saltwater rots the mats,' Nihko explained, 'or we would not be required to tolerate that soiling. Thus the custom of cleansing at the top of the cliff.'
'But why would we be soiled just by walking?'
He glanced at me sidelong. 'In your land, do your priests or kings set bare flesh to muck-laden ground?'
'We don't have kings,' I said absently, 'and all of the holy men I ever saw were willing to walk anywhere.'
Nihko made a soft sound of disgust. 'But they are foreign priests. I should not be surprised.'
'You walk on the boat, priest. Or have you somehow had it blessed?'
'Ship,' he corrected automatically. 'And that is not Skandi. Nowhere is Skandi but Skandi.'
'Ah. Doesn't count, then, what you do elsewhere, only what you do here.' I nodded sagely. 'Very convenient.'
He hissed briefly. 'Convenience has nothing to do with it!'
I laughed at him. 'Here you are refusing to soil yourself by setting foot to ground that hasn't been properly blessed, and yet you carve open the bellies of men and spill out their innards, or lop their heads off. Isn't that just a little messy?'
Nihko sealed up his mouth again into a thin, retentive seam. He opened it only to say something curtly to the molah-man, whose head was turned slightly in our direction as if he listened closely. The man's head snapped back around in response to Nihko's tone. I saw him make a hand gesture, and then he tugged at the molahs to encourage a faster pace.
Something to be learned of Nihko Blue-head, it seemed. And if I got lucky, maybe it was something I could use against him.
Smiling, I relaxed against the woven-limb back and let the sun beat on my face.
TEN
I'D THOUGHT this place called Akritara was a village, or settlement. Instead I discovered it was a collection of rooms all interconnected like a bulbous hive, sprouting multiple mounds of arching roofs and rounded domes on half-levels, like a pile of tumbled river stones. The arched roofs were painted white, the domes blue. Perched atop a hillock and surrounded by miles of ground-level wreaths of grapevine, Akritara looked precisely what it was: the preeminent household of Skandi.
So, Prima Rhannet and Nihko Blue-head didn't just intend to pass me off as a descendant of a wealthy house, but heir to the house.
'Never work,' I murmured.
Nihko said nothing to me, though he spoke to the molah-man, directing him in a clipped, authoritative tone. On board the ship, as first mate, he'd been at ease with second-command, accepted by the crew as one of them and yet the captain's most trusted man. But ever since we'd set foot on Skandi, Nihko had behaved differently. I
