“Oh?” Bea raised her eyebrows. “Like the secrets you and Pil have been sharing?”
I waved that away. “That was a mystical discussion, not a bunch of secrets.”
Bea lifted her jaw. “Our conversation is for people who have lost their children. Not for people who’ve murdered their children.”
Halla grabbed Bea’s arm, but the small woman didn’t take her eyes off me.
I nodded for a few seconds, wondering why I wasn’t cutting Bea’s throat. When I accepted that she wasn’t dead, I tried to think of something that would make her jump overboard, but before I was done, the wind swung around to blow hard from due north. The ship heeled over as the sails cracked like thunder, and everybody who wasn’t a sailor tumbled to the deck.
Coog shouted only two orders, but the crew was already taking in sail. Within a few minutes, we had recovered and were sailing close to the wind, not quite northwest. Even though we were gaining some northward distance, the wind was blowing the ship itself back south. I estimated that one mile of northward travel would require us to sail five or six miles back and forth into the hard breeze.
If the wind didn’t swing back around, our three-day crossing had just become a two-week journey. That would delay us awfully, but my real concern was that I’d be forced to kill every person aboard before we made land.
Bea grabbed my wrist hard. “Did you do this?”
“Not me. It was coincidence, and it saved you from my harsh retort.” I pulled her hand away, not too rough. The swells had grown, and the ship was pitching. I shouted at Halla, “We’re going to lose a fair amount of time if this persists.”
Halla shrugged. “Can you change it?”
I had been assessing the possibility. Altering the wind for two days would require a lot more power than I had. “I fear I can’t.”
Halla shrugged again.
Kneeling on the deck, Whistler bent over and vomited. I hauled him up to the gunwale so he could puke over it. He threw up with a sound like being hit in the stomach with a haunch of meat. Then, Halla flung herself at the ship’s side and vomited over it.
I turned and found Pil sitting on her butt on the wet deck, looking as green as a dead frog. I gave her a hand up, and she joined Halla and Whistler. All three of them hurled over the side as if that’s what they’d been born to do.
Bea glared at me, unsteady on her feet but composed.
The wind suddenly shifted five points so that we were headed straight into it. It jarred every timber in the ship, but I felt glad about it, since we’d be able to sail near northward again. The captain ordered the ship to come about on the new heading, and the fresh wind sent us bounding right along.
Two minutes later, the wind shifted straight into our faces once again. The captain came about, searching for the best heading he could make. No more had he settled onto the new course than the wind swung again so that we faced right into its eye.
“I do not know why you might be doing this,” Halla yelled into my ear, “but if you are, then I will throw you into the ocean.” She bent over the gunwale again.
“I’m not.” I reached out and pulled four white bands, one after the other. I flung them out and twisted for a minute. Then point by point, I swung the breeze back to the southeast. The captain and crew came about to head due north.
Five minutes later, the wind freshened to a gale and whirled all the way back to the north. It slammed the ship to a stop, shivering as if it had run onto a sand bar. The sails all popped and went slack for a moment before billowing backward.
“You!” a man’s deep voice roared from the waves off to starboard. “You, sorcerer! Cease. Stop farting around with the wind. It’s aggravating and stinks like a shark’s bowels!”
Before I could scan the water, a woman’s voice shouted from off to port. “It’s not merely aggravating. It’s arrogant, petulant, and, even worse, it’s useless! Desist, or you’ll regret it.”
I peered over the portside. One hundred feet away, the head and naked upper body of a stunning, pale woman stood up from the water. I wouldn’t say she floated. The waves surged around her, but she stood as motionless as a rock.
From the other side of the ship, the man yelled, “You! Be polite! You’d better not be staring at my wife’s bosom! Just come over here and look at me and pretend she’s a beautiful voice with no bosom at all.”
Both Whistler and Pil answered that by vomiting. I heard the sailors shuffling around and exclaiming in the most profane terms from behind me. It sounded as if they’d all crowded themselves under the stern deck. I stepped forward to the prow so I could stare out both sides of the ship without scurrying back and forth like a squirrel saving for winter.
A hundred feet to starboard, the head of an elephant seal floated up and down on the waves. In a man’s voice, it shouted, “Good, just keep looking over here. And stop this five-times-damned-to-Krak screwing around with the wind! It’s exhausting.”
TWENTY-THREE
Back when sorcery flourished, the second greatest threat to new sorcerers was bumbling around with mystical spirits. The greatest danger to sorcerers was trading away all their humanity, wandering off, and dying of exposure. But spirits wiped out a lot of sorcerers in their first year.
Most spirits appear perfect and beautiful, and even the homely ones are exotic. Just by standing there and existing, spirits beguile new sorcerers the way shiny, jagged things beguile toddlers. The teachers of sorcery explained how to deal with spirits and other supernatural creatures. They taught that lesson last of all, just
