But we skirted the sea – which was very wet, very icy, with colours like tea and lime-juice in it now, seen so near. We went along a strip of sand and over slippery pebbles and black stones. Around a curve of headland, I saw a ship on the water. Ah, we were going to the ship.
I didn’t cry. It was as if I’d known somehow this would happen.
It had to be too simple just to kidnap me and carry me off to be killed in the City, where just possibly I might escape or Argul rescue me.
No, no, I had to be re-kidnapped again, and put on this rotten ship with its mucky old stained sail, taken off somewhere with this ship’s crew who all looked completely dangerously mad.
We rowed out in a leaky boat.
They pushed me up a ladder – not easy to climb, hands tied, shaking, the sea going glump-whump, everything rocking.
(‘Enormous seas, Claidi,’ said Argul, in my mind. ‘Miles of water and sky.’)
Something, some bird, flew over, shrieking. A gull. I didn’t know it was. I didn’t ask, or care. They bundled me into a dark cabin and slammed the door, and there I was.
YET MORE TRAVEL OPPORTUNITIES
When I think about it now, I think I should just have jumped into the sea. That’s what a proper heroine in one of the House books would have done. (Although naturally a handy passing boat or giant fish would then have rescued her immediately.) I’m not a heroine, anyway. I’m just Claidi.
Anyway I didn’t, did I.
How long did it last, that thing they called a voyage? Months, years.
Oh, about twenty-five or six days, maybe. I kept count the way the (in-a-book) captive is meant to, by scratching on the cabin wall by the wooden chest. I did it promptly every morning, without fail. And then, obviously, being me, being Claidi, I forgot the number the moment we got off the ship.
But, about twenty-five, thirty days. Perhaps.
Oddly, I sometimes thought about Chospa. It seemed so unfair, because, through no fault of his own, he’d be in trouble all over again. I could cheerfully have punched him on the nose myself, but at least he’d been honourably doing what he thought he should.
Instead of Chospa, there were Yazkool and Hrald. (The ballooneer hadn’t joined the ship. I don’t know what his plans were but I hope so much they went wrong.)
I hated them, Y and H. Was allergic to them. Not just because they’d made my escape-chances totally hopeless, either. They were so smug and – royal – always cleaning their nails, their teeth, brushing their hair, complaining about the way they had to ‘make do’ on the ship. And at the same time so smilingly-mysterious about what they were up to. That is, what they meant to do with me. Of course, I had asked.
The moment they opened the cabin and said I could come out now, since there was nowhere to go (obviously having never read any of those jump-overboard books I had) I asked them.
‘Where are you taking me, and why?’
‘Why not let it be a wonderful surprise?’ suggested leering Yazkool.
‘Tell me now!’ I cried. I meant to sound like the Wolf’s Paw, or apprentice Wolf’s Paw, I’d been. I didn’t manage it. The ship was also pitching about, and although I found I was (thank heavens) a good sailor (that is I didn’t want to throw up) I could hardly keep on my feet – even now they’d untied my hands.
Hrald looked bored. ‘I’m off below,’ he said.
Yazkool beamingly said, ‘Lady Claidissa, why not think of this as being an adventure for you?’
Hrald, who hadn’t yet gone, added, ‘And much nicer than being imprisoned for life in the City cellars, wouldn’t you say?’
‘How did you know where I was? How did you find me?’ I gabbled. They were already staggering, sea-legs almost as hopeless as mine, down the deck.
One of the wild sailor-people undid a hatch, and they stepped-fell through and were gone.
I made the mistake of looking round then. I didn’t throw up, but I nearly screamed.
Everything was galloping and tilting this way, that way. The vast mast, with its dirty sail, seemed to keep going to crash right over on us all. Waves a hundred feet high (they can’t have been, but looked it) kept exploding up in the sky and hurling spray into the ship and all over us.
No one seemed upset. Cheery sailors strode bow-leggedly up and down, or scrambled across rope-arrangements on the mast, calling merry, other-language insults, and singing.
Water sloshed down the deck, ran into the cabin, then, as we nose-dived the other way, ran out again.
In fact, it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked that first time. But it took me hours to get used to it, and by then the wind had settled down a little (temporarily), and the sea was flatter. This too then happened to me. My brief anger went out. I felt flat and utterly lost.
Obviously, the ‘voyage’ was disgusting. It would have been, even if I’d wanted to do it.
I’ve read or heard these stories of glorious days on board ships. Blue waters, amazingly-shaped clouds, dolphins (?) and other fish – or sea-animal-things, leaping, the comradeship of sailors. This wasn’t my experience.
The sailors fought a lot.
I think it was boredom. They never seemed to do anything useful, but they were always either rushing acrobatically about, or sitting playing dice or card games, or even peculiar guessing games (I’d picked up some of their language by then).
Yazkool told me (he and Hrald kept coming and talking patronizingly to me, as if I should be flattered by their attention) that the sailors have nine hundred and seven words for Sea. Perhaps it was a lie. They certainly had about a thousand filthy words for Go Away, or Idiot! (Dagger would have loved it, memorizing them for future use.) (I mustn’t think too much about Dagger. Or Siree. Or
