fleeting between the tables. A big fellow in the blue of a sailorman reached out and cuffed Pando alongside the head.
“Bring me a flagon, you rast of an imp of Sicce! Hurry, you little devil!”
Pando picked up his tray and what glasses were not broken. Someone else — a newcomer off the ships
— kicked him irritably as Pando bumped into his legs; but that was a reflex action. Tilda put a hand to her breast. Her violet eyes were large with anguish. Her supple voluptuous mouth shone, half open, pained, vulnerable.
I stood up.
Old Nath waddled across. “Now, Dray, please. .!”
The sailorman laughed coarsely among his mates. He was big and bluff, with the tattoos across his forehead and cheeks that some sailors believe indicate heightened sexual potency or, perhaps, will give them immunity to the demons and risslacas of the seas.
“You, Nath, have a stinking clientele in here, lately.”
“Please, Dray-”
I went across to the sailor who was already roaring for the little rast of a waiter and picked him up by the scruff of his blue tunic. He started to thrash his legs about so I clouted him — once was enough -
and carried him outside horizontally. It was done quickly and decently, and old Nath put his hands together and cast his eyes up to Zair and Grodno.
Outside I stood the big fellow up and said, “You hit a young boy, you kleesh. This may be wrong, it may be savage and barbaric, it may be against the divine dictates of Zair; but I do not like men like you who hit young boys.”
So, somewhat sorrowfully, for I know I sinned, I struck him in the belly. I stood aside as he was noisily and smelly sick. Then I kicked him where Inch had kicked the assassin and told him to clear off. I went back into
Pando na Memis said to me as I sat down: “That was the captain of an argenter, you know, Dray.”
“I should hope so,” I said. “Nath runs a respectable house.”
Tilda said she was tired and we all stood up as she left the table. The night roared on and presently, mindful that I must see about a ship the next day, I, too, went to bed. Tilda stood by her door, beckoning to me. She had waited for me to retire. A lamp burned in her room. I had made plenty of noise coming up the stairs. Even then, I believe I knew what she was going to ask me. I sat on the bed, but Tilda prowled restlessly. She wore a long gown of jade, a green glinting and glorious. How strange, how incongruous, that I, Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy, dedicated to the utter destruction of the Green of Grodno, could sit and watch and not be moved!
Her ivory skin gleamed against the silk. Her black hair swirled as she walked. She prowled like a caged leem, like one of those leem stalking in the leem pit below the palace of the Esztercari in far Zenicce when my Delia clung in the cage above their ferocious fangs and claws.
“You need not whisper, Dray. Pando is fast asleep and it will take the wrath of the invisible twins to wake him. I sent him up to bed after — I saw that.” Her voluptuous lips tightened. “I saw that, and I made up my mind.”
I said, “What kind of life can he have, out here, on the frontier, Tilda?”
She clenched and unclenched her hands. She padded up and down those carpets of Walfarg weave, up and down.
“Old Nath runs a respectable house, for Pa Mejab. Yet already you have seen what can happen, Tilda.”
I tried to make my face smile for her; but I gave that up, and said flatly and, I fear, brutally: “You must take him home and claim what is his right.”
Her white hand flew to her throat. She halted, stricken, and gazed at me, those violet eyes enormous in her white face.
“What? You know — how can you know?”
“It is not difficult, Tilda. By Zim-Zair. His father must have been a man!”
“He was! Oh, yes, he was! Marker Marsilus! Who would have been Kov of Bormark this day, had he not died out here in this pestiferous hell-hole. And Pando is his son.”
“You mean, Tilda, that your son Pando is really Pando Marsilus, Kov of Bormark. He is, rightfully and legally. Is this not so?”
She looked at me, still and alert, like a risslaca watching a bird. “He is, Dray Prescot. Rightfully and legally.” She took a breath so that the green gown moved and slithered. What she said next rocked me back with surprise.
“I am going home to Tomboram and I am going to claim what is his right for Pando. Dray Prescot -
will you come with me and help Pando and me? Will you be our champion?”
CHAPTER NINE
Ochs, Rapas, and Fristles do not make good seamen. Chuliks may be trained, given the methods to which I had been born and grown accustomed, the system of the late eighteenth century, consisting of the lash, the starters of the bosun’s mates, a wall of marines — and the lash. Rum, in its counterfeit of shipboard wine, also helped.
As a consequence the vast majority of the crew of
No captain in his right mind would enroll a Fristle. I saw one being aboard — he was not Homo sapiens
— who interested me mightily. His body was square in the sense that the distance across his shoulders, waist, and hips was the same, and equaled the distance from his neck to his upper thigh. He had but two arms, and they were as long and thin as Inch’s, while his legs, also long, were nearly as thick as Inch’s, which is another way of saying he was spindly-legged in the extreme. His face bore a cheerful rubicund smile at all times, his ears stuck out, he had a snub nose, and he could run up the ratlines and around by the futtock shrouds into the top with the agility of a monkey. This man, one Tolly, was a member of the race of Hobolings, inhabiting a chain of islands that I have mentioned, that ran parallel to the northeastern coast of Loh from the tip of Erthyrdrin southeastward to the northwest corner of Pandahem opposite the land of Walfarg.
This argenter was about a hundred and thirty feet long — Captain Alkers told me she was a hundred feet on the keel — and almost fifty feet on the beam. She was thus little more than twice as long as she was broad. Captain Alkers also said she was eight hundred and fifty tons burdened; but this I tended to doubt. She was a fat, wallowy, comfortable ship, with good stowage place below. We quartered ourselves aft, within the three-decked aftercastle, and our cabins were of a roominess that at first amazed me, used to far more cramped quarters. One