The Blackgod

certainty, inhuman in scope, but it still gave him joy.

Footsteps approached; the ghost of the blind boy identified them instantly, knew the cadence of walking like a name from first introduction, and so Ghe did not turn but called out, instead, a soft greeting, enjoying the sigh of air across the moving barge. “Lady Qwen Shen,” he remarked. “You stir at an odd hour.”

“As do you, Lord Yen.”

He half turned his face toward her so that she could discern his sardonic grin. “No lord I, Lady.”

“Is that so? I wonder, then, why the emperor gave this expedition into your hands.”

“Your husband is the captain, madam.”

“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “My husband. Perhaps we should speak of him.”

“Speak, Lady?”

The corners of her mouth turned up, and he noticed, once again, her great beauty, the slightly … exotic air about her.

“The emperor told you that he would furnish you with a barge to pursue your quest—and the trappings to go with the barge. A crew, a captain. My husband, Bone Eel, is just such a trapping.”

Ghe scratched at the scar on his chin. “Then who gives these soldiers their orders?”

“Bone Eel does. But he gives the orders I suggest, and I suggest what you tell me to. That is how command works on this vessel.”

“That seems needlessly elaborate,” Ghe observed. “Is Bone Eel aware of this arrangement?”

“Aware?” Ghe turned so that he could see the lady's eyes sparkle as she spoke. “He is barely aware that breath passes in and out of his lungs. He is quite unaware that he never conceives an idea of his own. The emperor has given him a charter to sail up-River to 'Wun and parts beyond' as the emperor's ambassador. It is up to you and me to determine to what 'parts beyond' we shall navigate.”

“No offense, Lady Qwen Shen, but wouldn't it have been simpler to put Bone Eel—or some other captain— directly under my command?”

“Of course not,” she said, turning her face to catch a zephyr sighing across the water. “No lord would suffer to be commanded by a commoner—and a commoner cannot command a royal barge. Believe me, this is the best arrangement that can be made. Your directives will be carried out, never fear.”

He simply nodded at that. “The emperor explained our true mission?”

She solemnly returned his nod, and her voice husked lower still. “His daughter,” she all but mouthed.

Ghe nodded. “You've said enough.” But his brow stayed bunched in consternation.

“Don't worry,” Qwen Shen soothed. “This is a charade I am accustomed to. You and I will captain this vessel quite efficiently.”

“An honor,” Ghe said, but what he thought was that he was at this woman's mercy and a bit of his earlier elation faded. A gull cried in the darkness, and far out across the River's supine majesty, Ghe could see another, smaller barge moving with the current. He wondered if it, too, had dragons leashed beneath its bow—or if it moved at the behest of more mundane forces.

“Bone Eel does not know?”

“As I told you,” she answered. “Nor anyone else save the old man. You must tell him to watch his tongue.”

Ghe flashed her an evil little smile. “No one has to tell him to keep his mouth darkened. He usually only opens it to insult or argue. But I will make certain he understands our situation, anyway. Just so long as you understand that he is not to know I have any real role in this expedition. He believes me to be an engineer with some love for Hezhi, that is all.”

He was aware of her regard spidering about him as they spoke, walking delicately here and there. Often it touched lightly on his throat. He kept his own gaze studiously out and away. When he did glance at her, the intensity of her inspection disturbed him.

“What of you, Lady? What do you think me to be?”

She was silent, and the boat glided on for a time, before she turned to him frankly and answered that question by asking her own.

“May I touch your flesh?”

“What?”

“Your hand. I wish to touch your hand.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if it is cold.”

“It is not,” he assured her. “It is the temperature of flesh.”

“But I want to touch it,” she insisted. “I want to know …”

“You want to know how the flesh of a ghoul feels?” he hissed.

She did not flinch from him. “Yes.”

He darted his hand out, swiftly, so that she would understand that he was more than Human as well as less, and he gripped her hand in his with enough strength to hurt her. She gasped but, other than that, did not complain.

“That is how my flesh feels.” He grinned savagely.

She closed her eyes but did not jerk away as he thought she might. “You were wrong,” she told him instead, and he suddenly felt her other hand, the free one, tracing along his knuckles. “Your flesh is warmer than that of a man.”

He released her hand with a dismissive thrust. “Does that satisfy your curiosity, madam?”

She rubbed her abused hand absently with her other. “No,” she said. “Oh, no. My curiosity is just beginning to awaken.”

And she favored him with her own sardonic smile as she retraced her path to the colorful pavilion beneath which her husband slept.

Ghe, for his part, stood rooted where he was long after sunup, nursing his astonishment into anger, the anger into rage. If Qwen Shen were going to play games with him, she would regret it. He planned a number of inventive ways to make her do so, and then, as more sailors began to move about the deck, checking the depth with long poles, casting out nets, or merely watching the River and shore for dangers, Ghe went below to speak with Ghan.

“SHE is not near the River, you can be certain of that,” Ghan told him—a bit warily, Ghe thought.

“Why is that?”

“I am Forbidden, so I will not delve in great detail into the subject. Suffice to say that she fled not Nhol so much as she fled the River, and to return to him would thwart all of her hopes.”

“Then we shall not return her,” Ghe assured him. “We will find her and warn her of the priesthood and its plans.”

“I don't see how the priesthood can find her.”

“They have ways.”

“And you know that the temple's expedition goes up-River rather than overland? That is why the emperor outfitted a barge for our journey?”

In fact, Ghe had not thought much about why he requested a barge; it had seemed the natural thing, at the time. Now he realized that he might have let the River God betray himself; the River could only conceive of up-River and down-River, and so naturally Hezhi must be in one of those directions. Ghe's sense was that she was up-River, but now it dawned on him that the River's belief in this matter—even filtered through him—was not trustworthy. The River did not know where she was.

His only clues were visions the River had been sending him in the past few days. Unlike the first—which had been about the River himself—these pictured a man, a dark, wild man on a striped horse who rode with companions dressed, like himself, in barbaric costumes. It seemed to Ghe—in this dream—that the wild man knew where Hezhi was, was somehow like himself: an extension of the River's purpose into places where he could not flow. But the River gave him precious little information otherwise. And he needed information, something to make Ghan think he knew more than he did.

The man on the horse reminded him, almost against his will, of the little statuette he had given Hezhi, the