Anyway, the sailors were rowdy. H and Y strolled about, discussing how shirts were cut and trimmed in the City that year, or how this water was too salty to shave properly. Some days the sea was blue – but never for long. Storms came regularly. Hrald (another lecture) told me it was the Stormy Season.
Once or twice, when they cornered me, I confronted them.
‘Did you both enjoy life in the Wolf Tower City?’ I demanded.
‘What other life is there?’ drawled Yazkool.
‘At any moment,’ I yapped, ‘the Tower Law could have picked you out for some terrible fate.’
‘Oh, it did once. I had to marry some girl.’
What could I say to that? I’d seen the Law force a child to wear, day and night, the costume of a snail, with the shell. Or send a man swimming up and down the River, allowed only to rest briefly, when ‘exhausted’, for ever.
‘It’s probably nicer there now,’ I acidly remarked, ‘since I stopped the Law.’
‘It’s much the same,’ said Yazkool. What an okk.
Hrald said, ‘Anyhow, the Law may be re-invented.’
That shut me up. I hadn’t thought of that.
Surely it would be impossible? All those names to gather again – besides there had only been single copies of the Books of Law – and I’d destroyed them. Or had Ironel lied to me? Were there other copies? I nearly burst into tears, this idea was so depressing. I wouldn’t let them see, of course. I looked out to sea, as if indifferent, and said, ‘Well, if your City is stupid enough to do that, it serves you all right.’
Which was, and is, true. I’d given them a chance, more than they’d had since the Law began. A chance is just about all you ever get.
The cabin (I’d seen a cabin before, on the river ship which first carried me to the City) was quite large. I had it to myself. From that I decided, wherever they were taking me, they were supposed to take care of me. Not damage me or insult me beyond a certain point. (As if being abducted wasn’t the worst thing they could have done, short of killing me.)
There was a (lumpy) bed and the wooden chest, with things in it that had fairly obviously been put there for my ‘comfort’.
In the wall (the ship’s side) was a round window, glass criss-crossed with iron, through which I could admire the endless jumping dolphin-less sea.
I didn’t stay in the cabin very much.
When I did, I could be private. (H and Y brought me meals, I didn’t have much to do with the sailors, or wasn’t allowed to.) But when alone, I sometimes started to cry. Well.
So I tended to go out on deck, where people could see me, and I had to not cry.
I did glance at this book a couple of times. Wondered if I ought to write in it, couldn’t bring myself to.
Argul knew about this book. (Nemian had called it my ‘Diary’. He would. It wasn’t. Isn’t. I don’t know what it is. My long letter to you, perhaps, if you ever read it.)
Argul just accepted I’d written things down in a book. He didn’t ask about it or want to read it. Yet he wasn’t dismissive either. But that was … well, Argul.
Argul.
I took it with me to the wood pool because I was going to write down a few things about my wedding day, some as they happened.
And when we left the pool, I stuffed it in the pocket of my Wedding Dress, which by three days into the voyage was spoilt, dirty, sea-stained and torn.
The horrible idea I keep getting is that I brought this book with me to the pool, and then put it in my pocket – not out of old habit, but because I somehow knew this would happen.
Y and H were having lunch on deck, in an odd hour of sunshine.
Blue sky and sea. Gentle lilts from the ship. Even the sailors were mostly below at a meal and quiet.
I went and sat with my captors. They instantly made room for me. Y even passed me a glass of wine. They’d actually expected me some time to come over to them – the extra glass, their unsurprise. I mean, they’d ruined my life, but they were so wonderful, how could I go on ignoring them?
‘You see, it’s a nice day today, Claidissa.’
(They always call me that, my full name, which I’d only learned months before, and not got used to – or was ever sure I liked.)
‘Is it?’
‘She’s never satisfied,’ said Yazkool, who, as I approached, had been going on and on (again) about the salty shaving water.
‘How strange, isn’t it,’ I said, ‘that I’m not satisfied? Everything’s so lovely, isn’t it? I’m kidnapped and trapped on a stormy ship and going I don’t know where or why or to what. Funny me. Wow.’
Then I wished I hadn’t spoken. They’d think I was trying to have a conversation with them, flirting even. (They both think they’re gorgeous. They aren’t. Oh well, to be fair, they might have been all right, under other circumstances.)
Hrald said, however, ‘No, we’ve been childish, haven’t we, you must be miserable.’ Then he grinned, naturally.
Yazkool said, ‘You see, Claidissa, the City was all rejoicing and fireworks, but the people at the Top,’ (it had a capital T as he said it) ‘they weren’t happy. You have to have rules, Claidissa. Or where would we all be, I ask you?’
The people at the Top? Who? Ironel – I thought she was at the Top. Nemian – no. Though a prince, he was just as much a slave, in a way, as I was, to the Law.
Did it matter anyway?
Only the result mattered. This.
Hrald finished picking at his food, pushed plates aside. He took out one of those City dainties, a twig-thing
