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“AMBER!” DUN HAD STARTED to come around from his daze. “We’ve left Amber!”
“If Amber is anyone you care about you’ll lower your voice. We may be being followed.”
“Hells,” Padg said, “we can’t go back.”
“We can’t leave her!” Dun cried.
“I believe we just have,” Myrch said and returned to pushing the raft along with something long that made an odd short scrape on the bottom with each push.
Dun drew breath to speak, then stopped himself. What was there to say? He slumped, head propped against one of the edges of the raft. The raft smelled oily. Dun found himself twiddling with the bindings that held the raft together. Although the poles themselves were natural, some large river reed Dun guessed, the binding material was not. One of those “found” cords that was plaited and sold by some folk. A mix of different materials whose individual manufacture was long lost. It was strong enough, it had that for it, although depending on what mix of fibers made it up, it had the occasional surprise: becoming unexpectedly loose, getting tighter as it rubbed, even becoming permanently knotted once tied. Dun preferred ropes make from plant fiber. You knew where you were with that.
Something flat and long landed on his chest with a thud.
“Make yourself useful. Steer,” Myrch said.
“Steer it yourself.”
He felt the thing lifted off him. “Give it here,” Padg said, quietly. “I’ll do it.”
“Get over it quickly,” Myrch said. “We don’t have the luxury of time to mope.”
“Leave him alone,” Tali said, distant.
They sank back into a gentle rhythm. The bump-scrape of the punting pole, the occasional splish of Padg performing a small course correction to Myrch’s grunted orders.
“If we need to be so stealthy,” Padg said after a while, breaking the bump-scrape rhythm. “Why is our punt-pole so damned noisy?”
“Do you know, that’s the most sense any of you has spoken. Do you know how to scull, with oars?”
“Of course I know. I’m Bridge-folk. Bridges tend to go over rivers.”
“Good,” Myrch said. “You scull, I’ll attend to the pole.”
The bump-scrape stopped, to be replaced with the gentle swish-splish of Padg sculling from the back of the raft. After some rustling and Myrch making some kind of subvocal yell, there was a kind of brief hissing, ripping noise from whatever Myrch had found, another subvocal noise of what could perhaps be satisfaction, and then quiet again. The bumping noise, dampened, resumed again, the scrape had ceased entirely.
“So after all this fuss, are we actually being followed?” Tali said.
“Not anymore, no,” Myrch said. “Thankfully, since stealth is not our strong point.”
“Damn, and I’d have guessed politeness,” Padg said.
“Sarcasm on the other hand,” Tali said.
“Ah, yes,” Padg said cheerily. “We’re rather good at that.”
They settled into a quiet rhythm of a bump of pole then a swish of oars. Bump, swish. Bump, swish. Dun thought of a heartbeat followed by a rush of blood. Maybe they were like some kind of bug in the bloodstream of the Dark; bump swish toward what kind of dark heart? Dun desperately wanted to cling to being awake, keeping some kind of angry vigil, as if allowing himself to drift off would let his memory of Amber ebb. In the end, his fatigue overtook him.
He woke some time later having the oddest feeling that something had changed. He yawned and stretched. As his consciousness returned, he began to get the oddest feeling; he could only just feel where the roof was above him. It was there, but far away, and the floor, all of the floor, was moving. He sat up slowly but found he still had to balance himself. The odd moving floor was making bizarre echoes, his air-sense and hearing were not telling him the same as his balance.
“It’s called the Sea of Sevens,” Myrch said. “To my knowledge, the largest body of water in the Dark.”
“I heard Gatryn sing a song about it once,” Tali said. “He knows all the old songs.”
“The Alchemist knows much more than that,” Myrch said in an odd tone that invited no questions and ended the exchange.
Dun was lost in the slap and slosh of the water on the raft. “It’s amazing.”
“It’s amazing how you’ve ducked your turn for so long,” Padg said. “Grab hold.” He poked Dun with the end of one of the oars which the other dutifully took.
The rowing resumed. Dun realized there was no bump noise anymore. “No pole?”
“Too deep,” Myrch said.
“The songs said it goes down forever,” Tali said.
Myrch made a low snort.
“Any fish in it?” Dun said.
“Fish, sure,” Myrch said, like a response to a challenge. There was further rustling from his end of the raft. “Hey, hold this.”
Dun felt Tali shift to the end of the raft and a slight tweak in their course. Then the distinct plop of a baited line being dropped. Dun nearly smiled. He remembered fishing with his father when he was small. They sat close on the bridge. He remembered his feet swinging, and he could feel the warmth of his fathers arm against him. Oddly, he even remembered some of what they talked about. How fish were smart, was it? Dun wasn’t so sure. They wound up with enough of them to eat, but his father was quietly certain. It might seem like the odds are always stacked against the fish, but they can outsmart even the best fisher-folk. Maybe swim the wrong way, maybe not fall for the bait, maybe even wriggle off the hook at the last minute. The smartest fish could even have the bait and not bite the hook.
“There you go!” Myrch said, a mix of genuine pleased and smug. “Tooth-fish.”
“Really?” Tali said.
“Yup.”
“Didn’t realize fish was so much your thing,” Padg said.
“If you weren’t such a peasant, you’d know what one was,” Tali said.
“Er, I do. Scaly, finny things. Wet heads.”
“Tooth-fish, you idiot pup. I’ve never found one, much less tasted it,” Tali said.
“It’s massive!” Dun said as he felt the weight of the fish rock the raft.
“A delicacy throughout the Dark,” Myrch said. “But oddly, for some reason only ever found in this lake. Rarely swim out of it. Highly sought after, so anyone with anything to trade or fight with will mostly get them before they get all the way down to the Bridge. This cycle we eat like kings.”
The fish had some weight to it and just needed skinning. Tali offered to do that straight away. She muttered something about making finings with some unspecified part of the innards that Dun didn’t want to think too deeply about. And once he’d tasted the fish, he was distracted from any thoughts like that. It was delicate, and they ate it raw. It had a sweet and meaty texture. He now knew what the fuss was about. The one fish Myrch had caught was enough to feed all four of them, with some left that Tali salted and rolled into a cloth from her kit. Dun wondered how many trade tallies what they’d just consumed would muster. Pleasantly full, he drifted back to sleep.
