Several doors opened off a narrow hallway. One of the doors stood open, and we went in.
This cabin was larger than mine. Paintings graced the walls, and Hlanan sat cross-legged on a wide, spacious bunk, next to neatly folded counterpanes. Behind him the little window they called a scuttle stood open, and salt air blew in, ruffling his fine brown hair.
When he saw me he smiled a welcome, and gestured toward one of the carved shelves near the painted ceiling. There perched a long-bodied bird with brilliant white feathers tipped with dark gray shading to black, a seed-picker’s beak and eyes like the ruby in Rajanas’s ring.
“This is Tir, Lhind,” Hlanan said, pride warming his quiet voice.
“Good mor-row, good mor-row,” the bird croaked.
Staring in fascination, I entered slowly. Memory stirred in me, just as it did when I heard certain kinds of music. Had I ever seen such a creature? I was instantly sure I’d dreamed of one.
The bird fluttered its wings, then flew from its high perch to the edge of a chair near me. It looked at me from one eye then the other, and without warning a voice said inside my head:
Hrethan!
The same voice that had spoken in my head the night of the pirate attack. This time, the voice radiated recognition.
Yes, you hear me. You are Hrethan, in false guise—
Though I had always been able to hear the thoughts of creatures, never before had one contacted me. And no one, ever, had questioned my disguise.
I clapped my hand over my ears and backed away. When I saw Hlanan react with alarm, I realized he hadn’t heard the words—he’d been startled by my movements. His smile faded into question, and Rajanas’s eyes narrowed intently.
I dropped my hands and pretended to stumble against the strong yawing of the yacht. Turning my eyes to the bird, I answered in my mind: I deny I am anything but what I appear.
You are Hrethan, the bird answered, flapping its wings agitatedly.
Afraid it would squawk its words out loud, I shouted in my mind, DON’T TELL THEM. And, because I was frightened by this totally unexpected attack from an unexpected source, I tried to force the other mind out. Something flicked down inside my brain, like a little door or an inner eyelid, and once again I heard only my own thoughts.
The bird promptly shrilled in distress.
“What’s wrong, Tir?” Hlanan asked in a soothing voice, his eyes wide with question, his manner evocative of surprised wariness as he flicked glances from the bird to me and back again. Holding out his arm, he murmured, “Lhind is our friend. Don’t be frightened.” He spoke like one would quiet a frightened baby.
So he and the bird didn’t talk mind to mind. He had no idea what the bird thought— how much the bird knew.
I edged toward the door as the bird settled on Hlanan’s arm and croaked, “Lhind good! Lhind good!”
Hlanan’s perplexity eased to a tentative smile, but his gaze was still speculative as he said, “There. Whatever happened, it’s all right now.”
But it wasn’t. The bird kept flapping and trilling.
“Must be his smell,” came Rajanas’s dry voice—from right behind me. Even more quiet than I, he’d moved to block the door. “The distinctive aroma of vintage thief would upset anyone, obviously even a bird.”
“Rather smell than have the face of a wart-nosed slime-dweller,” I retorted under my breath.
“What’s that you’re muttering?”
“I wish you’d take that cowl off, Lhind,” Hlanan interrupted Rajanas’s laughing challenge. “It rides so low on your brow I find it difficult to read your expression. Perhaps you aren’t really scowling as much as it makes you look—” As he spoke, he reached toward me, as if to help me take it off.
“No!” I said, and I dove under Rajanas’s arm toward the door.
At once those steel-band fingers closed on my arm, and Rajanas pulled me back in. I twisted around and kicked his shin so hard I bruised my toes.
Giving a grunt of surprise, Rajanas thrust me further inside the room and let me go. So they wanted a fight? Backing up so I could keep them both in view, I whipped out my knife and crouched, waiting.
“What? Where’d he get that knife?” Hlanan said, looking from the flapping bird to me. “Tir? What’s wrong?”
Rajanas sank down onto a stool bolted to the bulkhead, eyeing me in faint surprise. “Probably has a dozen of ’em in those clothes,” he said with a soft laugh. “So you think the prospect of a bare head is a matter for steel, eh, my noisome young miscreant?”
Hlanan sighed. “Put away your knife, Lhind. I am sorry. I should have remembered that even an underage, half-starved thief has a sense of dignity. If you object so strenuously, then we shall allow the subject to drop.”
Rajanas laughed, waving a hand lazily at me. “As well. Doubtless whatever he hides is sufficiently loathsome if he prefers that grimy item as a mask.”
“Loathsome toe-mold yourself,” I snorted, walked slowly past him. He did not move, merely watched. Keeping a suspicious eye on him, I reached the doorway, then ducked out, slamming the door behind me.
I headed for the deck, limping on my numb foot, but when I reached the stairway to the open air, I faltered. Nobody was following me, and I knew the only way to get answers to some of the questions crowding my mind would be to catch the cause unawares. So I sneaked back and listened at the door.
They were not speaking in Chelan.
“—slippery little bug,” Rajanas was saying.
“And his remarks and actions remind me very much of us when we were that age,” Hlanan returned. “You should know as well as I do that people with lives balanced between hunger and danger grow up a lot faster than most.”
“Or they don’t grow up,” Rajanas acknowledged, with one of his sardonic laughs. “So what are you thinking now? You know your thief has led a thief’s life. He’s entertaining, but useless.”
“No, that he’s not. Have you forgotten his illusion when the Brotherhood attacked us?”
“His one trick. And it is a good one, I’ll admit. But of what use to us? The sooner you give up this foolish plan of yours, the sooner we can get back to matters of real import, such as Dhes-Andis’s prospective fleet—”
“Or what to do with Kressanthe,” Hlanan replied calmly.
“You invited her aboard, you entertain her. You have no title, so you’re safe enough from her designs.”
“Ilyan, we couldn’t have left her stranded in Tu Jhan.”
Ilyan? Had to be a private or inner-family name. Nobles had them, and others who had public faces, I’d discovered. Ilyan for intimates, Rajanas his family name, and that nasty princess had addressed him by a territorial name, as if his importance was measured by what he owned.
For a delicious moment I imagined binding magic onto all three of his names while he was present, so that, oh, every time he tried to speak, snakes would fall from his lips, or he’d fold his arms and cluck like a chicken, but he’d probably find the snakes funny, and Hlanan would give me one of those looks, partly question, partly puzzlement, maybe a little sad. I hated that . . . that expectation that I had a better nature.
“Why not?” Rajanas said, blithely unaware of my fulminations. “Kressanthe has plenty of money, a powerful father to keep those thieving City Magisters from touching her, and I still maintain she only came to the regatta to nose around. The question is, for whom? We really should have left her on the dock. She could have bought her own ship.”
“But she appealed so directly,” Hlanan replied with a sigh. “I could not turn her down, not in any way that would not register as offensive when the reasons were conveyed back to her father. It is beyond necessary that no more attention be called to your activities than would normally accrue to a nobleman on a pleasure cruise. It’s bad enough we’re forced to carry Geric Lendan with us, but at least he’ll find nothing of interest aboard the yacht. And carrying her ought to kill any rumors about our being on secret missions.”
“Perhaps. But she’ll repeat everything that my dear ‘cousin’ Geric gets these lackwits to say over drink.” He gave the word cousin some extra drawl. “And she’ll even carry back tales of this accursed mudball of a thief you’ve thrust on us. What a pleasant cruise we’re having!”
Hlanan laughed, sounding free and boyish. “But Kressanthe’s gossip is all to the good,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
Rajanas replied ironically, “Yes, I’d momentarily forgotten how valuable it will be to have us laughed out of the Imperial Court once the tale of our cat-and-mouse game with one undersized thief gets around. How better to keep up the appearance of a couple of bumbling wastrels?”
Hlanan laughed again, then said, “Come. Halt your gloomy mood with the midday meal. Let’s find Thianra. Maybe she can sing you into smiles again. I heard her picking out some new pieces.”
Quick as thought I hopped up the stairs to the deck.
The problem with eavesdropping, I thought aggrievedly as I massaged my throbbing toes, is that you can’t take revenge for insults that you were not supposed to hear.
Limping swiftly back to my own cabin, I thought over what the two had said. What did it mean? And how could I use it against that Rat-Spawned Rajanas?
I felt the sun warm on the back of my cowl, and fought the urge to lift the hair that lay squashed against my spine. Scratching crossly, I reflected that the only bad thing about taking a bath every year or so is the itching in the warm weather. Each year I forget how much I hate summer until it threatens to come again. The sense of being smothered in all the thicknesses of my disguise nearly overwhelmed me.
Nasty as it was, it was also safe.
Fighting against a mood worse than any Rajanas could be suffering, I jammed my hand inside my trousers to shift my gear around more comfortably, and my fingers closed on Yellow Smock’s money bag. Why, I’d almost forgotten it!
I thought angrily that this just showed how unsettling this adventure had been—imagine letting a take go this long before being explored!
First I went back to the cabin door and threw the bar, then I opened the bag onto my bunk. The wealth of glittering coins improved my mood with a bounce. Counting carefully, I came up with half a twelve of silvers and three-twelve and four lecca. More money than I’d seen at one time for quite a while.
Raising my eyes to the window, I saw a startling sight.
The horizon was no longer a flat blue, water dissolving into firmament. A line of dark mountains now stitched sea to the sky.
I moved toward the scuttle, as if pulled by an invisible thread. Mountains! It had been several years since I’d seen any. The sight inspired both fear and longing. In my earliest memories the fear had driven me to run away from mountains and hide. Those were my earliest distinct memories.
Restlessness itched at me, worse than that on my skin. I scratched irritably at my hood, wishing I could tear off my cumbersome clothing and loosen hair and tail. The itch subsumed the fear, freeing a desire to break through the fog of half-memory and puzzlement that surrounded my early years, and figure out who I truly was, and wherefrom I had come.
I glanced back at my wealth on the bunk. Whatever I’d said to Hlanan, I knew I was done with Thesreve. It was time to run again.
A knock at my door caused me to sweep the coins back into the bag. I got the bag stashed in my trousers again before I unbolted the door.
To my surprise it was Hlanan, bearing a tray of food.
“I thought you might like a noon meal,” he said, coming inside.
“Doesn’t it bother anyone, your waiting on me like this?” I asked.
“I have not asked. Does it disturb you?” he replied.
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “A few scraps thrown my way would be more in keeping with what I’m used to. This makes me feel something bad is about to happen.”
“I cannot ask Rajanas’s servants to wait on you, and I am not the sort of person who flings scraps. You’ll have to do with me. I noticed yesterday that you do not eat either chicken or fish.” He looked at me questioningly as he set the tray down on the little table.
I shrugged, uncomfortable with any kind of personal questions. “Disagrees with my innards,” I muttered, and filled my mouth with food so I wouldn’t have to talk.
“And,” he said, when he saw I was not going to amplify, “I wanted to have a chance to talk to you alone. I have a proposition for you.”
“Prop—” I coughed on a wad of bread.
“—osition,” he finished encouragingly. “Business. For which you’ll be paid. Well, I might add.” His voice changed to question, his gaze narrow and watchful. Whatever was about to come out was clearly important to him.
I scowled at him. “What.”
“There is an ancient book of spells I would like more than anything to have in my possession. I need someone who knows a bit about magic as well as about the, ah, mechanics of stealing.”
Relief whooshed through me. Now, at last, he made some kind of sense. “So you nobbled me because you need a thief,” I said.
He smiled a little. “Well, yes. In part. The main part,” he hastened to add.
“But a book? Books don’t bring any kind of price.”
“A book of spells,” he repeated. “Very powerful ones. And I would reward you with six crowns. Uh, empire-struck gold crowns, not the silver-mixed ones used in the islands.”
I calculated rapidly. “Six? But I can’t read. What if I find the wrong one? I never go back to a house, especially some magician. I don’t want to end up as a footstool.”
“Ah yes, I’d forgotten that you can’t read.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Then I will teach you.”
I frowned, aware that he’d offered those golden crowns mightily easily. Whole houses were bought and sold in Thesreve for about that price, and to look at him there in his plain clothes one would have assumed he hadn’t ever seen two together.
Setting aside this incongruity for later mulling, I went into bargaining mode. “Six . . .” I said, letting the word stretch out doubtfully. “That’s not much when you add in all that sweat-work and time wasted learning a thing I won’t have any use for in the future . . .”
“Double, then,” he said promptly. “To cover the time you waste learning to read.”
“Done,” I said, before he could back out, and I actually felt a brief twinge of remorse. He was too honest to be a good bargainer, and I figured he’d regret this bargain when he’d had time to think it out. Well, let him learn a lesson now. Maybe it’ll save him some real grief later.
“Good,” he said, dropping his hands to his knees, and looking well pleased with himself. “We will be sailing into Letarj in the morning. We will leave from there straight for Imbradi, where we will form our plot. Our lessons shall begin on the way. Right now I’ll tell Rajanas that you’ll be accompanying us to his capital.”
I snorted a laugh. “Better you than me,” I said. Irritating as the thought of more of Rajanas’s company was, it was cheery to reflect that his disgust on hearing the news would be at least as strong as mine. And in his capital, I would feel no compunction whatever about embarking on a strenuous quest to increase my wealth.
Hlanan left. I wandered back to the scuttle, pleased—and somewhat relieved—to have a plan of action. The sight of the mountains woke up that old yearning, and daydreams? Memories? Images flooded my mind, strong currents of air over deep, shadow-hidden valleys. Snow gleaming on rocky peaks in pale light. Gliding, high and wide . . .
That bird-voice sheared into my thoughts. Hrethan, hear me! I would rather die than harm you. Hrethan spared our kind again and again in the past. They alone of your kind share the skies with us. Any aid I can give you I will, now and until breath is still, and all time stands before the Maker-of-Life. Command, and I hear.
What’s Hrethan? I cried back.
You, the bird returned.
Are there others? I asked cautiously.
Yes. Far and far. And then, to my surprise, the bird caused me to see again those mountain peaks and valleys.
I turned away, my heart hammering with fear, wonder, and questions, the foremost being: if these were memories, when, where, and how did I end up where I was?
You are like, and yet different, Tir amended.
And so I was forced out, is that it? To wander about on my own, to guard my own life or lose it, and no one to watch or care? Is that it?
The bird had no answer.
Old grief lay right under the memory-stirrings. I squashed it down again, and busied myself with rearranging my stash, and recounting my coins. Those, at least, were solid. Understandable. Real.