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Chapter Forty-Three



The boatman glanced behind him, as if he feared that a mass of riders might appear on the plains between them and the distant and irregular bump on the horizon: the Vallishan city of Natnusarn. When he turned back, he did not look directly at Druadaen or anyone else in the group but stared at the white-flecked surface of the Serpent River instead. “That’s not a lot ye’re offering.”

“It seems a fair sum,” Elweyr said calmly. “We asked around in Marshakerra when we debarked, and then yesterday when we arrived in Natnusarn. We’ve offered you half again as much as hulls on this stretch of the river get for passengers. Or so we’re told.”

The younger fellow standing behind the captain of the boat smiled slightly and shrugged. “But you see, the cost is not just for passage.”

“No? Do you provide entertainment, too?” Ahearn asked sardonically as he eyed the worn, flat-bottomed cross between a barge and lighter.

The captain looked up quickly. “The only entertainment there’d be is angry soldiers chasin’ us with swords and spears. Not my kind of amusement, frankly.”

Umkhira crossed her arms. “Whose ‘angry soldiers’ would those be?”

The captain looked no less stunned than if Raun had spoken. “Do I really have to answer…‘it’?” he asked the rest of the group.

S’ythreni stepped forward so quickly that she was nose to nose with him before he could gasp. “Yes. Yes, you do,” she whispered with the smile that always made it necessary for Druadaen to suppress a shiver.

But he put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back gently. “Captain, we are a fellowship, and you either address—and treat—all of us equally, or we shall bid you calm waters and take our leave.”

The grizzled riverman shook his head, glanced at the younger man behind him. “Do you reckon we have to take ’em, Jaffet?”

Jaffet schooled his face to patience. “We need passengers as well as freight. Assuming you mean to keep running this boat.”

The captain chewed at irritated gums with yellowed and incomplete teeth. He stared at the shabby hull with a look that Druadaen had seen on the faces of boatmen the world over: resentment fused with dogged determination, but running beneath both was desperate attachment, the kind which a beleaguered parent might feel for a wayward child. The captain would probably have scuttled the boat himself if he could have afforded—and been able to bear—doing so.

He turned back the group, eyeing them suspiciously. “Well, if ye step on my boat, you know I’m in charge, aye?”

They nodded. “You come well recommended,” Padrajisse added.

He glared at her, then faced Druadaen and Ahearn frankly. “Recommendation or no, I can’t say I welcome your custom. Wouldn’t take your coin at all if I didn’t have to.”

“I feel so very welcome,” S’ythreni almost purred.

“And well you should, since I’ll be risking me life to carry you up this river.”

Druadaen raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Surely, that is an exaggeration.” The younger man looked away, tried very hard not to smile.

But the captain chewed at his gums a bit more and then stared hard at Druadaen. “First things first: our chances of staying alive are rosier if she can keep quiet.” He jabbed his finger at Padrajisse without looking at her.

The sacrist looked too aloof to be offended. “You do not like my frankness?”

“I like your frankness just fine. It’s your accent that makes me worry.”

“Ah.”

“Yes: ‘ah.’ Corrovani have no friends in the court of Grand Potentate Ralyk Kartitham the First.” He barely stopped himself from spitting.

Druadaen found it interesting that any of Vallishar’s rulers bothered to number themselves; it was almost unheard of that any family stayed in power long enough to put a second person on the rather gaudy Vallishan throne. “So, no friends in court, but what about out here?”

The captain shrugged. “More, but still not many. Nothing personal, o’ course. But being a friend to you lot is being no friend to myself, if you catch my drift.”

“We do indeed,” Ahearn assured him with a hand on his shoulder. “And fear not, I shall do the talking.”

“Enough for all of us,” Elweyr added, and returned his friend’s affronted glare.

The man carefully removed the swordsman’s rough hand from his sloping shoulder and glanced almost shyly at S’ythreni. “Ah, eh…mistress, you might want to cover those lovely, fairy ears of yorn.”

“And I might want to cut yours off for even making that suggestion.”

“I make it for your own good,” he protested, holding up both palms in warding. When he saw that his plea for reason had no impact, he widened his appeal. “It’s for the good of all of us, really.”

“Why?” Umkhira asked. “Are Iavarain thought to be close allies of Corrovane?”

“Well, not anymore, but the legends tell of just that, don’t they? An’ sure but it’s certain that you’ve no truck with the Kar Krathauans, nor they with you.”

The young fellow Jaffet added over the boatman’s round shoulder, “And if you aren’t friends of that grim folk…Well, they do tend to see the world in absolutes.”

S’ythreni’s mouth was a grim slit. “Very well. I shall comply. At least until we reach open country.”

“I’m very grateful, I’m sure, Mistress Fairy.” He looked around the group, a sudden pang of what might have been conscience distressing his features. “You’re sure you want to cross over into Kar Krathau? It’s not as if—”

“Uncle,” muttered Jaffet, “if we don’t have passengers—”

“Hush with you! I’ve run this boat for twenty-three years and know when we need coin and how much. And stop callin’ me yer uncle. We’re barely related.”

“But mother is your cousin—”

“Second cousin, and right now, I’m wishing she wasn’t.” He turned his back on the fellow. “If you’ve not been to Kar Krathau, you should know this for your own good: they’ll take even less kindly to you than Kartitham’s swells and toadies would.”

“We are quite aware of that. And if we could follow a different path, we would. But current conditions made that impossible.”

“Ah!” said the captain. “You mean that fuss up around the Channel Cities. Still going on, I hear. Well, if go you must, then we must be going. Now. The longer we stand here jabbering, the greater chance that someone will take notice and take word to them what might wish to spoil your trip.”

* * *

Three days into the unspoiled trip, the captain’s self-styled “nephew” approached the group during a relatively peaceful moment and asked who, exactly, had recommended their boat.

Ahearn kept his face genial, but his tone was cautious. “And what’s it to you?”

Jaffet shrugged. “Well, if I don’t know who did us that kindness, I can’t very well buy him a drink.”

Umkhira frowned. “Could that not be seen as a bribe? An encouragement to continue and even increase the praise he shared?”

“Possibly. Although in Vallishar, you’ll find that bribes usually precede the favor they purchase.” Even Umkhira smiled at that. “As I say, it’s just to offer thanks, really. It doesn’t often happen that you are recommended by people you don’t know.”

Umkhira’s smiled faded. “Is everything so driven by money in your land?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t it everywhere? It would be nice if it was otherwise…but it’s not.”

Ahearn’s eyes were hard. “Given your ‘uncle’s’ recommendations against crossing over the border, maybe it wasn’t a ‘friendly’ tip, if you take my meaning.”

Jaffet blinked. “So, they were hoping that by taking you over the border—?”

“That you and your ‘uncle’ would wind up as food for the fishes,” Ahearn said, laying his index finger alongside his very straight nose.

The nephew looked like he was on the verge of vomiting.

“Pay no heed to the swordsman,” Padrajisse muttered in prim indignation. “He sees schemes in everything. No doubt because he has no shortage of his own.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, though,” Jaffet mumbled in distress, “particularly when it comes to the vipers who control the river traffic in Marshakerra. Gods, I thought I was helping my uncle—well, my relative—when I encouraged him to sell you passage. But I might have signed his death warrant.” Then he had a further thought that opened his eyes even wider. “And mine!”

“I doubt it,” Elweyr said quietly, calmly. “We’re almost sixty leagues over the border. Haven’t seen a patrol. There’s no boat shadowing us—”

“How would you know?”

“Trust me: I know. And that bridge we just passed—the only one over the river, yes?—didn’t even have guards on it.” Elweyr shook his head. “Ignoring the fact that the people who recommended your boat are known to a captain we trust, it’s hard to see how their suggestion could be the start of a plot to attack you. We’re too far away from the border now, and there’s no sign of anyone following us. If they intended this to be a dangerous voyage for you, I suspect they’re leaving the danger to chance encounters with Kar Krathauans and river pirates. Assuming there are any.”

“But rest assured,” Ahearn followed quickly, “that whatever threat might arise—whether by intent or by chance—we are more than capable of dealing with it.” Druadaen may have been the only one of the group not to roll his eyes.

Jaffet nodded but was still scanning the shores nervously. “My thanks. And to answer your friend’s speculation, there are river pirates, but they tend not to operate this far north.”

“Why?” asked Druadaen. “In the past hour alone, we have seen far fewer farms and riverside…cottages.” He had almost used the far more accurate word shacks. “Usually, pirates make their bases in just such remote areas.”

“With all respect, that’s as might be elsewhere, but on this stretch of this river, there’s nothing a pirate would want north of the bridge.”

Elweyr’s eyes were carefully blank. “I heard one of the oarsmen calling across to the last boat we passed, about half a mile after the bridge. If I understood the dialect correctly, he said he was taking a cargo of copper downriver. That sounds fairly valuable.”

Frowning, Jaffet asked, “Do you remember the word he used for ‘copper’?”

“There’s more than one?” S’ythreni asked.

Elweyr frowned until his memory cooperated. “Fadanig.”

The nephew’s nod suggested that was the answer he had expected. “That is the word for copper ore straight from the mine. Before any smelting. A great deal of work before the metal can be separated from it.” He shrugged. “And pirates don’t like work.” He looked admiringly—enviously?—at Elweyr. “You have an excellent ear for languages.”

Elweyr waved a dismissive hand…which elicited a proud bellow from Ahearn: “That’s because he speaks ’em all or seems to! Has his nose in a book every bit as much as the Dunarran!”

So much for not mentioning my origins, Druadaen thought. Then again, as the fellow’s uncle pointed out, traveling up the Serpent River with a Lightstrider, an aeosti, and a prickly Corrovani sacrist are more or less a guarantee that everyone we pass will stare at and remember this boat.

However, although slightly surprised by Ahearn’s revelation, Jaffet was more fixed upon Elweyr. “Are you a scholar, then? A linguist?”

Before Ahearn could answer, Elweyr said, “Yes.” His tone was so flat that even Ahearn understood that further commentary was very much not wanted.

But the “nephew” was undeterred and began pointing out how the language had changed as they crossed the border, which increased as they drew further away from Vallishar’s heavy Ballashan influences. Kar Krathaun owed more of its vocabulary and structure to Yrsyr and a good number of bastardized Amitryean loan words.

When he had finished, only Elweyr was actually listening to him. Druadaen had kept half an ear on the conversation but had been watching the changing banks and terrain beyond. The eastern side of the river now appeared uninhabited.

“So,” Elweyr said a few moments after the bright-eyed “nephew” had concluded, “are you a scholar also?”

That elicited a radiant—and surprisingly full-toothed—smile. “No, but I hope to be. Someday soon.”

Druadaen saw the careful nods of the rest of the group, knew that they meant the same thing that his own polite smile did: this fellow was well into his twenties and for him to leave his livelihood as a second mate on a riverboat for a life of scholarship would require a miracle.

“Well,” Elweyr started with miserable awkwardness before stopping and beginning again. “Well, I hope you shall find a way to start upon that path. Soon.” His concluding smile was as brittle as his nod was stiff.

Happily, Jaffet either took no note of Elweyr’s discomfort or blithely ignored it, discoursing instead on the region through which they were passing. After warning them all that he had rarely come so far up the Serpent River, he proceeded to provide a wonderfully detailed overview of it. Including that it was almost universally suspected that the Kar Krathaun protectorates to the north sent agents to purchase the bronze weapons crafted along Vallishar’s border, which were then sent up-country until, just before the so-called Last Ford, they were covertly ferried across to Bent parties on the eastern shores of the Serpent River.

Which, Druadaen realized, was why the right bank was unsettled. Although the Bent chieftains no doubt understood they were not to attack humans within the borders of Kar Krathau or its allies, their warriors were probably far more likely to disregard—or simply forget—that prohibition.

So it was understandable when, two days later, the captain told them that he could no longer anchor overnight in the shallows on the east bank; they’d have to make camp on the west. Jaffet nodded forlorn agreement behind him.

“Why change now?” Padrajisse asked with a hint of impatience.

The captain pointed upstream toward the forests and rugged country that ranged across the northern horizon. “Because we are nearing Bent country, Sacrista. And tomorrow, we’ll reach Last Ford. End of our journey together, and a little too close to their roving for comfort. Desperate ones hang about the shallows, wait to waylay those such as us. And sometimes they get impatient and wander down the eastern bank, scouting for a likely mark.”

Ahearn’s eyes narrowed. “Now, I’m not liking this a bit, Captain. I still say we’re safer on the eastern bank.”

“Are you mad?”

“Well…that’s a different topic. But I’m smart enough to see that we have an ur zhog in our group, and she has more chance interceding for us on the east bank than we have any chance reasoning with the gray-armored grimboys on the west.”

Jaffet looked at his uncle. “He’s probably right,” he muttered.

“Boy, I’ll not have you taking sides against me! I’m your uncle, godsdammit!”

“Wait: you told me not to call you my unc—”

“Be drowned for a darger, you!” the uncle swore, forgetting there was an ur zhog standing only a few feet away. “If I say the danger is greater on the eastern bank, you can trust my blood and years that I’m not mistaken.”

“Captain,” said Druadaen calmly.

The man whirled back to face him, face as red as a boiled lobster.

“Captain,” Druadaen repeated in the same tone, holding the other’s gaze steadily.

The older man calmed down. “You’ve a piece to speak?”

“More of a question, actually. How often do the Bent come this far south of the ford?” When the captain looked away uncomfortably, Druadaen followed with, “Come, I don’t mean to pin you down. Just a round number: How many times a year?”

The older man didn’t meet his eyes. “Two, maybe three times.”

His “nephew” raised his eyebrows. “Three times?”

“Well,” the captain spat, “it’s happened. Once. Or so they say.”

Druadaen nodded. “Let us say three times a year. And how often do Kar Krathaun patrols check this part of the river?”

The captain looked away again; his muttered words were inaudible.

“What’s that?” Druadaen asked.

“At least once a moonphase,” Jaffet provided. “Sometimes every week.”

“I see. Thank you,” Druadaen said calmly. “So let’s say just once a moonphase. That makes approximately twenty-five times a year. Which is to say it is at least eight times more likely that we will have an unpleasant encounter on the western bank than on the eastern.”

“But…but, on the east…Damn it, man: they’re Bent! Don’t you understand? Not Lightstriders like her. They’re Rots and even Reds!”

“And I can set markers that are common among all our peoples,” Umkhira replied. “They will be well beyond the limit of our camp, so any urzhen will see them in advance and know to avoid us or that we mean h’adzok.”

H’adzok?” he echoed, baffled.

“That we are a camp of truce. That we do not consider them foes and that our presence is not a challenge. Although if the information shared by your—er, relative—is accurate, it is they who would be walking unannounced in the lands of their ally, Kar Krathau. So only lawless outcasts would ignore those markers. And only if their need is so great that they cannot afford to heed them.”

Druadaen looked back at the captain. “Do you have further objections?”

“And are you really going to argue with well-armed customers who have only paid half their fare?” whispered Jaffet.

The older man chewed savagely at his gums. “It’ll be the death of us all, I wager, but I see I’m the only sane soul on this wretched boat.” He glanced at S’ythreni in what looked like a last bid to find an ally.

But she shrugged. “Sorry to say so, but I agree with the others.”

He shook his head. “Ye’re fools, every sodding one of yeh. Maybe I’m just getting skittish in my old age, but damn if we’re not safer among our own kind. Broadly speaking, that is. Sweepman, a point to starboard and make for the eastern bank. Let’s look for a likely place to make camp for the night.”


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