Commitment Hour

Reluctantly, I placed the spear shaft into her outstretched hand. She immediately swung the tip of the weapon into position for a downward jab.

'Now you handle our gear,' she said. 'Get everything inside Mistress Gull.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Stand guard. Whatever it is, maybe it's only curious about Mistress Gull. If it's just having a look, I won't provoke it. But if it decides to attack…'

She readjusted her grip on the spear handle.

Trying not to make noise, I leaned over the side of the boat and laid our remaining cargo on the landing stage: the Chicken Boxes and my violin case. As I clambered out myself, I glanced back toward the land. All of Tober Cove had clustered on the beach, shading their eyes and peering at us, no doubt wondering what we were up to. If they got worried enough, a few fishermen might venture out in a boat to ask what was wrong… but that was a last resort. People past the age of Commitment were forbidden to approach Mistress Gull, for fear of scaring her off forever.

Holding my violin case by the handle, I wrestled with the Chicken Boxes until I had one under each arm. Cappie remained as still as a cat watching a mouse, spear at the ready. Now that I was on the landing stage, I could see what she was looking at: a dark blob as big as a man below the surface of the water. In the shadows beneath Mistress Gull, the blob was greener than the water itself.

The butterflies in my stomach fluttered furiously. I had a nasty suspicion what I was looking at.

'Get on board,' Cappie ordered grimly.

Weighed down by the Chicken Boxes, I plodded up the steps to the entry. Mistress Gull's interior was a smaller version of Master Crow's, tinted white instead of black: rows of plush chairs covered with a feathery padding that muted sounds to a whisper. I stashed the Chicken Boxes under a pair of seats and belted my violin securely into a seat of its own. The quiet emptiness of the cabin had an eerie quality to it — in my previous years, traveling with Master Crow, there were always the other children, rustling and shuffling, chattering in subdued voices.

I went to the door and called down, 'Ready.'

Cappie glanced at me and nodded. Then suddenly she raised her spear high. I had time to shout, 'No!' before she thrust with all her might at the dark blob in the water.

Violet flame exploded upward. The head of the spear must have vaporized instantly — hot gas blew from the lake's surface like a geyser. By then, however, the violet fire had continued up the spear shaft, incinerating wood to ash in the blink of an eye. Cappie screamed as the blaze ripped into her hands, burning bright purple for a lightning flash. Then the flame faded and she crumpled to the deck, her hands black and smoking.

With one jump I leapt down beside her, grabbing her arms by the elbows and thrusting her hands into the water. Steam curled up lazily. Cappie's eyes flickered toward me, then slipped shut. Her whole body slumped, fainting from pain.

'Damn,' I whispered. 'Damn.'

I had seen many cremations up on Beacon Point: all the Tobers who had died in the twenty years of my life. The bodies were wrapped in winding sheets before they were put on the pyre… but sometimes the sheets fell open, exposing a bare arm or leg to the flames. I had seen skin turn brown and tight like a roast, sizzling until it split.

Cappie's hands were worse than that.

In front of me, a green helmet broke the lake's surface. Moments later, a second head appeared close by: Steck wearing a glass-faced swimming mask. She had metal tanks strapped to her back and a mechanical contraption thrust into her mouth — no doubt an OldTech scuba device, like you read about in books. Rashid had nothing like that; presumably his armor, supplied to the Sparks by traitors from the stars, had its own air supply.

'Why did she do that?' Rashid demanded. His voice boomed hollowly inside the helmet. 'Couldn't she guess it was us?'

'Perhaps,' I answered bitterly. 'But I think she decided you needed a lesson. Don't you know it's blasphemy, trying to interfere with Mistress Gull?'

'I'm not interfering!' he growled. 'How often do I have to say I'm just here to observe?'

'Tell that to Cappie. Or Bonnakkut or Dorr.'

'She was the one with the spear,' he protested. 'And she knew about my force field — she saw it on the river bank.'

'But she didn't see it later, when it vaporized all those arrows. She didn't know what it could do.'

I hadn't told her. When I talked to Cappie about what happened in the woods, I'd spent all my time describing how quickly Bonnakkut had taken the gun as a bribe — jealous backbiting, instead of telling Cappie what she needed to know.

Steck pulled the scuba gadget out of her mouth. 'The people on the beach have seen us,' she said, pointing. 'They'll be putting out boats in a minute.'

I turned around. Men were running down the docks, heading for the perch boats. It wouldn't take long for them to slip the mooring lines and grab the oars.

Rashid grabbed the edge of the landing stage and heaved himself out. 'We were just going to ride the pontoons,' he said, 'but it looks like we'd better head inside.'

'You want to ride in Mistress Gull!'

'Yes,' he snapped. 'We'll see this through all the way.'

'No!'

'Don't be stupid,' Steck said to me. She pulled herself up on the landing stage too; since I'd last seen her, she had abandoned her green dress for a skintight suit of green rubber. 'If you wait for the boats to get here,' she said, 'they'll all try to spear Rashid. Is that what you want?'

'And the best thing for Cappie,' Rashid put in, 'is to get her to Birds Home. Look at her hands, Fullin! Even my brother the Medicine-Lord couldn't repair that damage. But if she Commits male or Neut, she'll be all right. Uninjured and whole.'

I wanted to scream curses at them both; but I gritted my teeth and said, 'Fine — come to Birds Home. Straight to the sanctuary of the gods. Let them decide what you deserve.'

TWENTY A Mechanical Welcome for Rashid

Steck and I carried Cappie up the steps into Mistress Gull. Cappie was not entirely unconscious; her eyes were closed, but she groaned as we gingerly tried to maneuver her into a seat. I strapped her in, then took the place beside her.

'You'll be all right,' I whispered to her. She merely grimaced, either because she disbelieved me or because she was too lost in pain to hear.

'What happens next?' Rashid asked, flumping into the seat behind me and unscrewing his helmet. 'Do we push a button to show we're ready to take off?'

'Mistress Gull knows when we're ready,' I told her.

'Then why isn't she moving?'

'Fasten your seat belt,' Steck murmured.

'Oh.'

I heard the click of a metal buckle. Immediately, the entry door slid shut. Outside the window, the rubber boat partly deflated itself and slipped into a housing in one of the pontoons. Although I couldn't see the other side of the plane, I knew the landing stage would be retracting back into the other pontoon; Mistress Gull gave a tiny shudder as the platform locked itself into place.

'The fishing boats are still coming,' Rashid observed.

He pointed out his window. Four perch boats slashed through the light waves, each rowed by six men. The men had their backs toward us… but I didn't have to see their faces to know they were blazing with fury. Spark Lord or not, Rashid had violated the most sacred moment in the life of our village. Tober Cove would not forgive.

'They're too late,' Steck said. She had taken off her swimming mask and now unbuckled the scuba tanks. Just the buckles on her left — rather than take the tanks off completely, she slipped the strap off one shoulder so she could swing the tanks around to one side. It didn't look like a comfortable position — she could only sit halfway back in her seat. Still she muttered to herself, 'Good enough.'

Even as Steck spoke, Mistress Gull began to move. The motion was so smooth, I didn't feel it; I could only tell we had started by looking out the window, seeing the perch boats fall back even as the men continued to row with angry strength. Water skipped beneath us, the waves streaked with spills of noon sun… and then we were airborne, angling up into the sky.

Rashid put his hands to his ears and began swallowing hard. 'What are you doing?' Steck asked.

'Getting ready for the pressure change.'

'There is no pressure change,' Steck told him. 'This isn't some rinky-dink OldTech plane — the League of Peoples made it perfectly pressurized.'

'Damn!' Rashid said. 'All my life, I've been waiting for a plane ride, and my ears don't even pop?'

The expression on his face suggested he was telling a joke, or at least trying to lighten the mood. I didn't want to be lightened. Turning back to Cappie, I stroked her arm soothingly, trying not to look at her blackened hands.

She whimpered.

We flew north, faster than any mortal bird. Quickly we passed the litter of tiny islets that dribbled out from the end of our peninsula… over Manitou's Island… over the great north channel and on to the rugged timberlands: trees and lakes and rocks, a region barely penetrated even in OldTech times.

'Good place for a secret installation,' Rashid whispered to Steck. 'Do you think anyone lives down there?'

'A few,' Steck answered, 'but not many. OldTech times lasted just long enough for the local people to forget how to live off the land. They got used to hunting with guns instead of arrows. Then, during the Desertion, most old-timers decided to pack up to unpolluted territory out in the stars. The rest came south after the collapse.'

'How do you know all this?'

'I traveled up this way after getting banished from Tober Cove.'