WHEN LYRA TOOK the Morgol’s guards into Caithnard later that evening to look for lodgings, Raederle followed them. She had left, in front of Rood’s horse in the College stable, a small tangle of bright gold thread she had loosened from her cuff. Within the tangle, in her mind, she had placed her name and an image of Rood stepping on it, or his horse, and then riding without thought every curve and twist of thread through the streets of Caithnard until, reaching the end, he would blink free of the spell and find that neither the ship nor the tide had waited for him. He would suspect her, she knew, but there would be nothing he could do but ride back to Anuin, while Bri Corbett, under the urgings of the Morgol’s guard, sailed north.
The guard had not been told. She heard fragments of their conversation, their laughter under the hollow, restless boom of the sea as she rode behind them down the hill. It was nearly dark; the wind dulled her horse’s steps, but still she kept, as Lyra had advised, a distance between her and the guard. She felt, all the way into Caithnard, the touch of the Morgol’s eyes at her back.
She caught up with the guard at a quiet side street near the docks. They were looking a little bewildered; one girl said, “Lyra, there’s nothing but warehouses here.” Lyra, without answering, turned her head and saw Raederle. Raederle met her brief, searching gaze, then Lyra looked at the guard. Something in her face quieted them. Her hand tightened and loosened on her spear. Then she lifted her chin.
“I am leaving tonight for Erlenstar Mountain with Raederle of An. I am doing this without permission from the Morgol; I am deserting the guard. I couldn’t protect the Prince of Hed while he was alive; all I can do now is find out from the High One who killed him and where that one is. We’re sailing to Kraal in her father’s ship. The ship-master has not yet been informed. I can’t . . . Wait a minute. I can’t ask you to help me. I can’t hope that you would do such a shameful, disgraceful thing as leaving the Morgol alone, unguarded in a strange city. I don’t know how I can do it. But what I do know is that we can’t steal a ship by ourselves.”
There was a silence when she stopped, but for a door rattling back and forth somewhere in the wind. The guards’ faces were expressionless. Then one of them, a girl with a silky blond braid and a sweet, sunburned face, said fiercely, “Lyra, are you out of your mind?” She looked at Raederle. “Are you both out of your minds?”
“No,” Raederle said. “There’s not a trader in the realm who would take us, but my father’s ship-master has already half an inclination to go. He could never be persuaded, but he could be forced. He respects you, and once he grasps the situation, I don’t think he’ll argue much.”
“But what will the Morgol say? What will your own people say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
The girl shook her head, speechless. “Lyra—”
“Imer, you have three choices. You can leave us here and go back to the College and inform the Morgol. You can take us by force back to the College, which would greatly exceed your duty and would offend the people of An, not to mention me. You can come with us. The Morgol has twenty guards waiting in Hlurle to escort her back to Crown City; all she has to do is send word to them, and they’ll join her at Caithnard. She’ll be safe. What she will say to you, however, if she finds that you have let me go off by myself to Erlenstar Mountain, I would not like to hear.”
Another girl, with a dark, plain face, and the rough timbre of the Herun hill towns in her voice, said reasonably, “She’ll think we’ve all deserted.”
“Goh, I’ll tell her it was my responsibility.”
“You can hardly tell her you coerced us all. Lyra, stop being a fool and go back to the College,” Imer said.
“No. And if you touch me, I will resign immediately from the guard. You’ll have no right to use force against the land-heir of Herun.” She paused, her eyes moving from face to face. Someone sighed.
“How far do you think you’ll get, with the Morgol’s ship half a day behind you? She’ll see you.”
“Then what have you got to worry about? You know you can’t let me go to Erlenstar Mountain by myself.”
“Lyra. We are the chosen guard of the Morgol. We are not thieves. We are not kidnappers.”
“Then go back to the College.” The contempt in her voice held them motionless. “You have the choice. Go back to Herun with the Morgol. You know as much as anyone what the Star-Bearer was. You know how he died, while the world went about minding its own business. If no one demands answers from the High One about the wizard who killed him, about the shape-changers, then I think one day much too soon a hundred guards at Crown City will not be enough to protect the Morgol from disaster. If I have to walk to Erlenstar Mountain, I’ll do it. Will you help me or not?”
They were silent again, lined against her, Raederle saw, like warriors in a field, their faces shadowed, unreadable. Then a small, black-haired girl with delicate, slanting brows said resignedly, “Well, if we can’t force you to stay, maybe the ship-master will bring you to your senses. How do you propose to steal his ship?”
She told them. There was grumbling, argument over the method, but it lacked fire; their voices died away finally. They sat waiting resignedly. Lyra turned her horse. “All right, then.”
They fell into casual position behind her. Raederle, riding beside her, saw in a wash of inn-light, that Lyra’s hands were shaking on the reins. She frowned down at her own reins a moment, then reached across to touch Lyra. The dark head lifted; Lyra said, “This is the easy part, stealing a ship.”
“It’s hardly stealing. It’s my father’s ship, and he’s in no position to quibble. I don’t—there’s no one in An who will judge me, but you have your own kind of honor.”
“It’s all right. It’s just that I’ve trained for seven years in the Morgol’s guard, and in Herun I have thirty guards under my command. It goes against all my training to leave the Morgol like this, taking her guard with me. It’s unheard of.”
“She’ll be safe at the College.”
“I know. But what will she think of me?” She slowed her horse as they came to the end of the street and saw the King’s ship in the moonlight, pulling restlessly at its anchor. There was a light in the charthouse. They heard a thud from the deck, and someone said, panting, “That’s the last of Rood’s books. If we all don’t find ourselves, along with them, at the bottom of the sea, I’ll eat one, iron bindings and all. I’m going for a quick cup before we sail.”
Lyra glanced behind her; two of the guards dismounted, went soundlessly after him as he strode whistling down the dock. The others followed her and Raederle to the ramp of the ship. Raederle, hearing only the slough of water, the rattle of chain and her own quiet steps, glanced behind once to make sure they were still there. She felt, at their eerie silence, as though she were followed by ghosts. One slipped away at the top of the ramp to check the deck of the ship; the other two went with Lyra to the hold. Raederle waited a few moments for them to do their work beneath the deck. Then she entered the chart house, where Bri Corbett was exchanging gossip and a cup of wine with a trader. He glanced up, surprised.
“You didn’t ride down alone, did you? Did Rood bring the horses up?”
“No. He’s not coming.”
“He’s not coming? Then what does he want done with all his things?” He eyed her suspiciously. “He’s not going off somewhere on his own like his father, is he?”
“No.” She swallowed the dryness from her mouth. “I am. I’m going to Erlenstar Mountain; you will take me as far as Kraal. If you don’t, the Morgol’s ship-master, I’m sure, can be persuaded to take over the ship.”
“What?” Bri Corbett rose, his grey brows lifting to his hairline. The trader was grinning. “Someone else sail your father’s ship? Over my dead and buried bones, maybe. You’re distraught, child, come and sit—” Lyra, spear in hand, slid like a wraith into the light, and he stopped. Raederle could hear his breathing. The trader stopped grinning. Lyra said, “Most of the crew was below. Imer and Goh have them under guard. They weren’t taken seriously at first, until one man got pinned to a ladder with an arrow in his sleeve and his pant leg—he’s not hurt—and Goh shot the cork out of one of the wine kegs with another. They’re pleading for someone to put the cork back in.”
“That’s their ration of wine for the journey,” Bri Corbett breathed. “Good Herun wine.” The trader had edged to his feet. Lyra’s eyes moved to him and he stilled.
Raederle said, “Two guards followed the man who left the ship; they will be finding the rest of your crew. Bri, you wanted to go to Erlenstar Mountain anyway. You said so.”
“You were—you weren’t taking me seriously!”
“You might not be serious. I am.”
“But your father! He’ll curse the teeth out of my head when he finds out I’m taking his daughter and the land-heir of Herun on some misbegotten journey. The Morgol will have Herun up in arms.”
“If you don’t want to captain the ship, we’ll find someone who will. There are plenty of men in the taverns, on the docks, who could be paid to take your place. If you want, we’ll leave you tied somewhere along with this trader, to assure everyone of your complete innocence.”
“Roust me from my own ship!” His voice cracked.
“Listen to me, Bri Corbett,” she said evenly. “I lost a friend I loved and a man I might have married somewhere between Isig Pass and Erlenstar Mountain. Will you tell me what I have to go home for? More endless silence and waiting at Anuin? The Lords of the Three Portions bickering over me while the world cracks apart like Morgon’s mind? Raith of Hel?”
“I know.” His hand went out to her. “I understand. But you can’t—”
“You said you would sail this ship to the High One’s doorstep if my father had asked. Did you ever think that my father might find himself in the same danger Morgon was in? Do you want to sail comfortably back to Anuin and leave him there? If you force us by some chance off this ship, we’ll go by other means. Will you want to go to Anuin and give Duac that news, on top of everything else? I have questions. I want answers to them. I am going to Erlenstar Mountain. Do you want to sail this ship for us, or shall I find someone else to do it?”
Bri Corbett brought his clenched fist down on the table. He stared at it a moment, red, wordless. Then his head lifted again slowly; he gazed at Raederle as if she had just come in the door and he had forgotten why. “You’ll need another ship at Kraal. I told you that.”
“I know.” Her voice shook slightly at the look in his eyes.
“I can find you one at Kraal. You’ll let me take it up the Winter?”
“I’d rather . . . I’d rather have you than anyone.”
“We don’t have supplies enough for Kraal. We’ll have to stop at Caerweddin, maybe, or Hlurle.”
“I’ve never seen Caerweddin.”
“It’s a beautiful city; Kraal at Isig—lovely places. I haven’t seen them since . . . We’ll need more wine. The crew’s a good one, the best I’ve ever sailed with, but they worry about essentials.”
“I have some money, and some jewels. I thought I might need them.”
“You did.” He drew a long breath. “You remind me of someone. Someone devious.” The trader made an inarticulate protest, and Bri’s eyes went to Lyra. “What,” he inquired respectfully, “would you like to do with that one? You let him go, and he’ll be pounding at the College door before we get out of the harbor.”
Lyra considered him. “We could tie him, leave him on the docks. They’ll find him in the morning.”
“I won’t say a word,” the trader said, and Bri laughed.
Raederle said quickly, “Bri, he is the one witness to the fact that you aren’t responsible for this; will you remember your own reputation?”
“Lady, either I’m going because half a dozen half-grown women took over my ship, or because I’m mad enough to want to take Mathom’s daughter and the Morgol’s land-heir up to the high point of the world by themselves. Either way, I’m not left with much in the way of a reputation. You’d better let me see if my crew’s all here; we should get underway.”
They found part of the crew arriving, escorted up the ramp by two of the Morgol’s guards. The men, at the sight of Bri Corbett, broke into bewildered explanations; Bri said calmly, “We’re being kidnapped. You’ll be getting extra pay for the privilege. We’re heading north. See who is missing, and ask the rest of the men in the hold if they would kindly come up and do their jobs. Tell them to cork the wine; we’ll get more in Ymris, and that they’ll get no sympathy from me if they lay a finger on the Morgol’s guards.”
The two guards looked questioningly at Lyra, who nodded. “One of you stand at the hatch; the other watch the docks. I want this ship under guard until it clears the harbor.” She added to Bri Corbett, “I trust you. But I don’t know you, and I’m trained to be careful. So I’ll watch you work. And remember: I’ve spent more nights than I can count under the open sky, and I know which stars point north.”
“And I,” Bri said, “have seen the Morgol’s guards in training. You’ll get no argument from me.”
The crew appeared, disgusted and puzzled, to be dispatched to their duties under the watchful eyes of the guard. One last sailor came up the ramp singing. He eyed the guards with aplomb, winked at Lyra, and reached down to Imer, who was kneeling and tying the trader’s wrists, lifted her chin in his hand and kissed her.
She pushed him away, losing her balance, and the trader, pulling the rope off his hands, caught her under the chin with his head as he rose. She sat down heavily on the deck. The trader, tripping a sailor in his way, dove for the ramp. Something he scarcely saw, glistening faintly, fell in front of him as he ran down the ramp. He ignored an arrow that cut into the wood a second before his foot hit it. The sailors crowded curiously to the rail beside the guards as they shot. Bri Corbett, shouldering between Lyra and Raederle, cursed.
“I suppose you shouldn’t hit him,” he said wistfully. Lyra, signalling a halt to the shooting, did not answer. There was a sudden cry and a splash; they leaned forward out over the rail. “What ails the man? Is he hurt?” They heard him cursing as he splashed in the water, then the drag of a mooring chain as he pulled himself back up. His step sounded again, quick, steady, and then there was another splash. “Madir’s bones,” Bri breathed. “He can’t even see straight. He’s coming back toward us. He must be drunk. He could tell the world I have the Morgol, the King of An and fourteen wizards aboard, for all anyone would believe his tale. Is he going in again?” There was a muffled thud. “No; he fell in a rowboat.” He glanced at Raederle, who had begun to laugh weakly.
“I forgot about the water. Poor man.”
Lyra’s eyes slid uncertainly to her face. “What . . . Did you do something? What exactly did you do?”
She showed them her frayed cuff. “Just a little thing the pig-woman taught me to do with a tangled piece of thread . . .”
The ship got underway finally, slipping like a dream out of the dark harbor, leaving the scattering of city lights and the beacons flaring on the black horns of the land. Lyra, relaxing her guard when the ship turned unerringly northward and the west wind hit their cheeks, joined Raederle at the side. They did not speak for a while; the handful of lights vanished as the cliffs rose under the stars to block them. The jagged rim of unknown land running like a black thread against the sky was the only thing to be seen. Then Raederle, shivering a little in the cool night wind, her hands tightening on the rail, said softly, “It’s what I’ve been wanting to do for two years, since he lost that crown somewhere around here in the bottom of the sea. But I couldn’t have done it alone. I’ve never been farther than Caithnard in my life, and the realm seems enormous.” She paused, her eyes on a moonlit swirl and dip of froth; she added with simple pain, “I only wish I had done it sooner.”
Lyra’s body made a rare, restive movement against the side. “How could any one of us have known to go? He was the Star-Bearer; he had a destiny. Men with destinies have their own protection. And he was travelling to the High One escorted by the High One’s harpist. How could we have known that not even the High One would help him? Or help even his own harpist?”
Raederle looked at her shadowed profile. “Deth? Does the Morgol think he is dead?”
“She doesn’t know. She—that was one reason she came here, to see if the Masters had any knowledge of what might have happened to him.”
“Why didn’t she go to Erlenstar Mountain?”
“I asked her. She said because the last land-ruler who had gone to see the High One was never seen nor heard of again.”
Raederle was silent. Something that was not the wind sent a chill rippling through her. “I always thought Erlenstar Mountain must be the safest, the most beautiful place in the world.”
“So did I.” Lyra turned as the small, dark-haired guard spoke her name. “What, Kia?”
“The ship-master is giving us quarters in the king’s cabin; he says it’s the only one big enough for us all. Do you want a guard during the night?”
Lyra looked at Raederle. It was too dark to see her face, but Raederle could sense the question on it. She said slowly, “I would trust him. But why even tempt him to turn back? Can you stay awake?”
“In shifts.” She turned to Kia again. “One guard at the helm in two hour shifts until dawn. I’ll take the first watch.”
“I’ll join you,” Raederle said.
She spent most of the two hours trying to teach Lyra the simple spell she had worked on the trader. They used a piece of twine the intrigued helmsman gave them. Lyra, frowning down at it for some minutes, threw it in the path of a sailor who walked over it and went serenely about his business.
The helmsman protested. “You’ll have us all overboard,” but she shook her head.
“I can’t do it. I stare and stare at it, but it’s only a piece of old twine. There’s no magic in my blood.”
“Yes, there is,” Raederle said. “I felt it. In the Morgol.”
Lyra looked at her curiously. “I’ve never felt it. One day, I’ll have her power of sight. But it’s a practical thing, nothing like this. This I don’t understand.”
“Look at it, in your mind, until it’s not twine anymore but a path, looped and wound and twisted around itself, that will bind the one who touches it to its turnings . . . See it. Then put your name to it.”
“How?”
“Know that you are yourself, and the thing is itself; that’s the binding between you, that knowledge.”
Lyra bent over the twine again. She was silent a long time, while Raederle and the helmsman watched, then Bri Corbett came out of the charthouse and Lyra tossed the twine under his boot.
“Where,” he demanded of the helmsman, “in Hel’s name are you taking us? Prow first into the Ymris coast?” He stepped unswervingly to the wheel and straightened their course. Lyra got to her feet with a sigh.
“I am myself, and it’s an old piece of twine. That’s as far as I can get. What else can you do?”
“Only a few things. Make a net out of grass, make a bramble stem seem like an impossible thorn patch, find my way out of Madir’s Woods, where the trees seem to shift from place to place. . . . Little things. I inherited the powers from the wizard Madir, and someone—someone named Ylon. For some reason neither of my brothers could do such things, either. The pig-woman said magic finds its own outlet. It used to frustrate them, though, when we were children, and I could always find my way out of Madir’s Woods and they never could.”
“An must be a strange land. In Herun, there’s very little magic, except what the wizards brought, long ago.”
“In An, the land is restless with it. That’s why it’s such a grave thing that my father left his land indefinitely. Without his control, the magic works itself loose, and all the dead stir awake with their memories.”
“What do they do?” Her voice was hushed.
“They remember old feuds, ancient hatreds, battles, and get impulses to revive them. War between the Three Portions in early times was a passionate, tumultuous thing; the old kings and lords died jealous and angry, many of them, so the land-instinct in kings grew to bind even the dead, and the spellbooks of those who played with sorcery, like Madir and Peven . . .”
“And Ylon? Who was he?”
Raederle reached down to pick up the twine. She wound it around her fingers, her brows drawn slightly as she felt the tangle run deceptively smooth and even in her hands. “A riddle.”
Imer came then to relieve Lyra, and she and Raederle went gratefully to bed. The easy roll of the ship in the peaceful sea sent Raederle quickly to sleep. She woke again at dawn, before the sun rose. She dressed and went on deck. The sea, the wind, the long line of the Ymris coast were grey under the dawn sky; the mists along the vast, empty eastern horizon were beginning to whiten under the groping sunlight. The last of the guards, looking bleary at her post, glanced at the sky and headed for bed. Raederle went to the side feeling disoriented in the colorless world. She saw a tiny fishing village, a handful of houses against the bone-colored cliffs, nameless on the strange land; its minute fleet of boats was inching out of the dock into open sea. A flock of gulls wheeled crying overhead, grey and white in the morning, then scattered away southward. She wondered if they were flying to An. She felt chilly and purposeless and wondered if she had left her name behind with all her possessions at Anuin.
The sound of someone being sick over the rail made her turn. She stared mutely at the unexpected face, afraid for a moment that she had stolen out of the harbor a ship full of shape-changers. But no shape-changer, she decided, would have changed deliberately into such a miserable young girl. She waited considerately until the girl wiped her mouth and sat down in a pallid heap on the deck. Her eyes closed. Raederle, remembering Rood’s agonies when he sailed, went to find the water bucket. She half-expected, returning with the dipper, that the apparition would have vanished, but it was still there, small and inconspicuous, like a bundle of old clothes in a corner.
She knelt down, and the girl lifted her head. She looked, opening her eyes, vaguely outraged, as though the sea and ship had conspired against her. Her hand shook as she took the dipper. It was a lean hand, Raederle saw, strong, brown and calloused, too big, yet, for her slender body. She emptied the dipper, leaned back against the side again.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She closed her eyes. “I have never, in my entire life, felt so utterly horrible.”
“It will pass. Who are you? How did you get aboard this ship?”
“I came—I came last night. I hid in one of the rowboats, under the canvas, until—until I couldn’t stand it anymore. The ship was swaying one way, and the boat was swaying another. I thought I was going to die . . .” She swallowed convulsively, opened her eyes and shut them again quickly. The few freckles on her face stood out sharply. Something in the lines of her face, in the graceful determined bones of it, made Raederle’s own throat close suddenly. The girl, taking a gulp of wind, continued, “I was looking for a place to stay last night when I heard you talking by the warehouses. So I just—I just followed you on board, because you were going where I want to go.”
“Who are you?” Raederle whispered.
“Tristan of Hed.”
Raederle sat back on her heels. A memory, brief and poignant, of Morgon’s face, clearer than she had seen it for years, imposed itself over Tristan’s; she felt a sharp, familiar ache in the back of her throat. Tristan looked at her with an oddly wistful expression; then turned her face quickly, huddling a little closer into her plain, shapeless cloak. She moaned as the ship lurched and said between clenched teeth, “I think I’m going to die. I heard what the Morgol’s land-heir said. You stole the ship; you didn’t tell anyone in your own lands. I heard the sailors talking last night, about how the guards forced them to go north, and that—that they were better off pretending they wanted to go in the first place, rather than making themselves the laughing-stock of the realm by protesting. Then they talked about the High One, and their voices went softer; I couldn’t hear.”
“Tristan—”
“If you put me ashore, I’ll walk. You said that yourself, that you’d walk. I had to listen to Eliard crying in his sleep when he dreamed about Morgon; I would have to go wake him. He said one night—one night he saw Morgon’s face in his dream, and he cou . . . he couldn’t recognize him. He wanted to go then, to Erlenstar Mountain, but it was dead winter, the worst in Hed for seventy years, old Tor Oakland said, and they persuaded him to wait.”
“He couldn’t have gotten through the Pass.”
“That’s what Grim Oakland told him. He almost went anyway. But Cannon Master promised he would go, too, in spring. So spring came . . .” Her voice stopped; she sat absolutely still a moment, looking down at her hands. “Spring came and Morgon died. And all I could see in Eliard’s eyes, no matter what he was doing, was one question: Why? So I’m going to Erlenstar Mountain to find out.”
Raederle sighed. The sun had broken through the mists finally, patterning the deck through the criss-cross of stays with a web of light. Tristan, under its warm touch, seemed a shade less waxen; she even straightened a little without wincing. She added, “There’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.”
“It’s not me, it’s Bri Corbett.”
“He took you and Lyra—”
“He knows me, and it’s difficult to argue with the Morgol’s guards. But he might balk at taking the land-heir of Hed, especially if no one knows where in the world you are. He might turn the ship around and head straight for Caithnard.”
“I wrote Eliard a note. Anyway, the guards could stop him from turning.”
“No. Not in open sea, when there’s no one else we could get to sail the ship.”
Tristan glanced painfully at the rowboat slung beside her. “I could hide again. No one’s seen me.”
“No. Wait.” She paused, thinking. “My cabin. You could stay there. I’ll bring you food.”
Tristan blanched. “I don’t think I’m planning to eat for a while.”
“Can you walk?”
She nodded with an effort. Raederle helped her to her feet, with a swift glance around the deck, and led her down the steps to her own small chamber. She gave Tristan a little wine, and when Tristan reeled to the bed at a sudden welter of the ship, covered her with her cloak. She lay limp, to the eye scarcely visible or breathing, but Raederle heard her voice hollow as a voice out of a barrow as she closed the door, “Thank you . . .”
She found Lyra wrapped in a dark, voluminous cloak at the stern, watching the sun rise. She greeted Raederle with a rare, impulsive smile as Raederle joined her.
Raederle said softly, so that the helmsman would not hear, “We have a problem.”
“Bri?”
“No. Tristan of Hed.”
Lyra stared at her incredulously. She listened silently, her brows knit, as Raederle explained.
She gave a quick glance at Raederle’s cabin, as though she could see through the walls to the inert form on the bed, then she said decisively, “We can’t take her.”
“I know.”
“The people of Hed have already suffered so much over Morgon’s absence; she’s the land-heir of Hed, and she must be . . . How old is she?”
“Thirteen, maybe. She left them a note.” She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “If we turn back to Caithnard now, we could talk to Bri until spiders spun webs on him, and he would never agree to take us north again.”
“If we turn back,” Lyra said, “we may find ourselves face-to-face with the Morgol’s ship. But Tristan has got to go back to Hed. Did you tell her that?”
“No. I wanted time to think. Bri said we would have to stop for supplies. We could find a trade-ship to take her back.”
“Would she go?”
“She isn’t in any condition to argue at the moment. She’s never been out of Hed in her life; I doubt if she has any idea of where Erlenstar Mountain is. She’s probably never even seen a mountain in her life. But she has—she has all of Morgon’s stubbornness. If we can get her off one ship and onto another while she’s still seasick, then she might not realize what direction she’s going until she winds up back on her own doorstep. It sounds heartless, but if she—if anything happened to her on the way to Erlenstar Mountain, I don’t think anyone, in or out of Hed, could bear hearing of it. The traders will help us.”
“Should we tell Bri Corbett?”
“He would turn back.”
“We should turn back,” Lyra said objectively, her eyes on the white scrollwork of waves on the Ymris coast. She turned her head, looked at Raederle. “It would be hard for me to face the Morgol.”
“I am not going back to Anuin,” Raederle said softly. “Tristan may never forgive us, but she’ll have her answers, I swear by the bones of the dead of An. I swear by the name of the Star-Bearer.”
Lyra’s head gave a quick, pleading shake. “Don’t,” she breathed. “It sounds so final, as if that is the only thing you will do with your life.”
Tristan slept most of the day. In the evening, Raederle brought her some hot soup; she roused herself to eat a little, then vanished back under her cloak when the night winds, coming out of the west pungent with the smell of turned earth, gave the ship an energetic roll. She moaned despairingly, but Bri Corbett, in the chart house, was pleased.
“We’ll make it to Caerweddin by midmorning if this wind holds,” he told Raederle when she went to bid him good-night. “It’s a marvellous wind. We’ll take two hours there for supplies and still outrun anyone who might be following.”
“You’d think,” Raederle commented to Lyra when she went to borrow a blanket, since Tristan was sleeping on top of hers, “all this was his idea in the first place.” She made herself an unsatisfying bed on the floor and woke, after a night of sketchy sleeping, feeling stiff and slightly sick herself. She stumbled into the sunlight, taking deep breaths of the mellow air, and found Bri Corbett talking to himself at the bow.
“They’re not out of Kraal, they’re not Ymris trade-ships, too low and sleek,” he murmured, leaning out over the rail. Raederle, trying to keep her hair from being whipped to a wild froth in the wind, blinked at the half-dozen ships bearing down at them. They were low, lean, single-masted ships; their billowing sails were deep blue, edged with a thin silver scallop. Bri brought one hand down on the rail with a sharp exclamation. “Madir’s bones. I haven’t seen one of those in ten years, not since I’ve been in your father’s service. But I didn’t hear a word of it at Caithnard.”
“What?”
“War. Those are Ymris war-ships.”
Raederle, suddenly awake, stared at the light, swift fleet. “They just ended a war,” she protested softly to no one. “Hardly a year ago.”
“We must have missed trouble by a cat’s breath. It’s another coastal war; they must be watching for shiploads of arms.”
“Will they stop us?”
“Why should they? Do we look like a trade-ship?” He stopped then; they stared at one another, shaken by the same realization.
“No,” Raederle said. “We look like the private ship of the King of An, and we’re about as conspicuous as a pig in a tree. Suppose they want to give us an escort to Caerweddin? How are you going to explain the presence of the Morgol’s guards on—”
“How am I going to explain? Me? Did I hear any complaint about the color of my sails when you overran my ship and demanded I take you north?”
“How was I to know Ymris would start a war? You were the one gossiping with that trader; he didn’t mention it? You didn’t have to keep so close to the land; if you had kept more distance between us and Ymris, we wouldn’t be running into the Ymris King’s ships. Or did you know about them? Were you hoping we’d be stopped?”
“Hagis’s beard!” Bri snapped indignantly. “If I wanted to turn around, there’s not a guard trained yet who could stop me, especially not these—the only thing they would shoot to harm aboard this ship are knotholes and corks, I know that. I’m sailing north because I want to—and who in Hel’s name is that?”
He was staring, his face a deep, veined purple, at Tristan, who had staggered out to throw up over the rail. Bri, watching, swallowed words, making little, incredulous noises in his throat. He found his voice again as Tristan straightened, mist-colored and sweating.
“Who is that?”
“She’s just a—a stowaway,” Raederle said futilely. “Bri, there’s no need to be upset. She’ll get off at Caerweddin—”
“I won’t, either,” Tristan said slowly but distinctly. “I’m Tristan of Hed, and I’m not getting off until we reach Erlenstar Mountain.”
Bri’s lips moved without sound. He seemed to billow with air like a sail; Raederle, wincing, waited to bear the brunt of it, but instead he turned and exploded across the deck to the helmsman, who jumped as if a mast had snapped behind him, “That’s enough! Turn this ship around. I want her prow in the harbor at Tol so fast she leaves her reflection in the Ymris water.”
The ship wheeled. Tristan clung with tight-lipped misery to the rail. Lyra, taking the last few steps to Raederle’s side at a slide, saw Tristan and asked resignedly, “What happened?”
Raederle shook her head helplessly. The fierce blue of the Ymris sails came between them and the sun then; she groped for her voice. “Bri.”
One of the war-ships, cutting so close she could taste the fine, sheer edge of its spray, seemed to be bearing to a single point in their path. “Bri!” She caught his attention finally as he bellowed at the sailors. “Bri! The war-ships! They think we’re running from them!”
“What?” He gave the ship that was tacking to cut them off an incredulous glare and issued an order so abruptly his voice cracked. There was another lurch; the ship lost speed, slowed, and as the Ymris ship matched its pace they could see the silver mesh and sword hilts of the men aboard. Their own ship stopped and sat wallowing. Another war-ship eased to the windward side; a third guarded the stern. Bri dropped his head in his hands. A voice floated over the water; Raederle turned her head, catching only a few crisp words from a white-haired man.
Bri, shouting back an acquiescence, said briefly, heavily, “All right. Head her north again. We’ve got a royal escort to Caerweddin.”
“Who?”
“Astrin Ymris.”