Master Cathan had been right: the ship was magic. But it was the kind of magic that Celie and her family were familiar with, the magic of Castle Glower. The ship truly was a part of the Castle, as they had hoped, and it had let them know that it wasn’t happy. Unlike the Castle, it didn’t seem to be able to grow a new room or make itself bigger or smaller, but apparently what it could do was make the entire Glower family testy and prone to fighting.
“But now I feel like a new man,” Rolf marveled again, nearly a week later, picking up a basket of nails and staggering toward the ship.
“One day you will be the new man,” Orlath said. “But today you are still I think the old boy.” He laughed and took the heavy basket from Rolf and hooked it to a rope for one of the men to haul up the side of the half-built ship.
Rolf blushed and muttered something, and Celie and Pogue exchanged grins when he wasn’t looking. But Orlath just clapped him on the shoulder and laughed again.
“It is good, to be being feeling so better,” he said. “It is good to be doing of a thing that someone is having in love.”
“What?”
“It’s good to have a passion in life,” Orlath said in Grathian. “Like myself and ships, or Lulath with his wars.”
“That’s still being much weird me,” Rolf said in Grathian. “Lulath being this battle expert.” He shook his head in bemusement.
“Why else would he name his griffin Lorcan the Destroyer?” Orlath said, shaking his own head.
“Who was Lorcan the Destroyer?” Celie asked with a grunt. She was sitting in her usual spot atop a pile of lumber under the watchful eye of the figurehead and trying to master a series of knots that Orlath had showed her with a piece of rope.
“My brother will having the telling to you,” Orlath said. “I would rather be talking of the ship and the sea!” He made a sweeping gesture, a smile splitting his face from ear to ear.
“I don’t know that I have a passion for all ships,” Rolf said, getting back to their earlier conversation. “I’m mainly interested in this one.”
“Ah, but that is what I meant,” Orlath explained, switching to Grathian. “Your passion, your life, it revolves around your beloved Castle Glower. You are the keepers of the Castle, the scholars of its history, and when you are far from it, you are unhappy. And when the ship, made from its very bones, is displeased, then you are the only ones who can guess this!”
“I am supposing this we are,” Rolf said, looking pleased. “Aren’t we so, Cel?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, still trying to get the knot right. She pulled one of the ends, and the whole thing fell apart. “Drat!”
“Like this,” Pogue said, setting down the long curved piece of wood he had braced on his shoulder. He took the rope from her and held it up. “Over, under, around, and through, that’s the way we like to do,” he chanted, and then showed her the finished knot.
“Did you really just say that?” Rolf said, and burst out laughing.
Pogue turned red under his tan. But Celie took the rope, studied the knot, and then managed to do it herself, saying the rhyme under her breath. She mutely held it up to show Rolf, and to make him stop laughing. He clapped when he saw, but he was still laughing.
“Of a sureness I should be knowing that Sir Pogue would have the gift of it,” Orlath said with enthusiasm.
Yet another nice change was that Prince Orlath thought Pogue was astonishing. He had sung his praises to the skies upon hearing that this noble knight, trainer of griffins, builder of ships, had been born in a blacksmith’s cottage. He had been quick to share stories of sea captains he had known, and heroes of Grathian legend, who had risen from humble beginnings to greatness.
Orlath listened to everything Pogue said, and carefully considered each piece of the ship they had brought from Sleyne, making it clear that he wanted to use everything they had. He wanted to know the history of the Castle, of Hatheland and the Glorious Arkower, and it was Pogue he wanted to hear it from. Celie and Rolf translated, but Pogue was picking up Grathian very quickly. He had already begun learning the important ship-related words from the Grathian workmen, and Orlath wasn’t the only one impressed by how quickly Pogue was soaking up words and whole phrases.
“Now, Celie, once you figure out the knots, we will teach you the lines and rigging, and what the various sails are for,” Orlath said in Grathian. He had also expressed great delight and admiration for Celie’s mastery of his language, and usually addressed her directly in it. “But that will have to wait until there are sails in place!”
“Maybe I could learn to use a hammer?” Celie asked eagerly. “I would really like to hammer some of the parts of the ship!”
“That would to me be the alarming,” Rolf remarked.
“I am sure nothing would please the ship more than to have all the family help,” Orlath said. “We shall teach them many things about building a fine ship, Sir Pogue!”
“But not now,” Celie said with a sigh.
She pointed up the road from the Sanctuary. A royal coach was coming toward them. A footman leaped down from his perch on the back of the coach as soon as it stopped, but the door burst open before he could reach it. Out poured four familiar small dogs—Lulath’s own dogs—followed by their master and Lilah.
“What joys, friends!” Lulath exclaimed. “What growth of the ship!”
His mouth was smiling, but Celie could see that there was no smile in his eyes, and Lilah looked like a thundercloud. The dogs milled around, yapping and causing problems, until Rufus led them over to a pile of lumber to play hide-and-go-seek, and then the people were free to talk.
“Are you being coming to look at this, the growth of your ship?” Orlath said. “Will this my fair sister see her gift?” He held out an arm to lead Lilah toward the ship for a tour, but she shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re all working hard, but really we came to—well, I wanted to ask Rolf and Celie to—”
“To be speaking of the sense into my brain,” Lulath said, cheerfully enough. But Celie still thought his eyes looked shadowed.
“What is it?” Pogue asked. “What’s happened?”
“It is being no large thing,” Lulath said.
“It is!” Lilah protested. “It is being—I mean, it is a very large thing!”
“Just stop being coy and tell us what it is, then,” Rolf said in frustration.
The frustration was partly because Dagger had tried to hide with Nisi in the lumber and gotten stuck. Celie helped pull the small griffin out, while Lilah collapsed atop a barrel of nails.
“Lulath is going to lead an envoy to the village by the sea,” Lilah said, her tone heavy with meaning.
Celie and Rolf looked at each other, faces blank. They were standing right by the sea themselves. Most villages in Grath were by the sea.
“The village by the sea,” Lilah said with even greater emphasis.
Celie was still confused. It didn’t help when Lilah pointed up the shore, to the east. It really didn’t help when Lulath gently took her arm and moved it so that she was pointing more toward the south.
“What are you talking about?” Rolf asked.
“The griffin rider village,” Lilah said at last. “You know? Lulath is going there tomorrow. alone.” She gave Lulath a dire look.
“You’re going to the griffin rider village?” Celie’s voice squeaked on the last word. “Can I come with you?”
“I want to go,” Rolf declared.
“So do I!” Pogue added, while Orlath looked on in bemusement.
“And I want to go as well,” Lilah said with asperity. “I don’t even care about the village itself! I don’t want him to go alone! You have to help me talk sense into him!”
“I am not being alone,” Lulath said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “I am being with the many guards, and the . . .” He frowned. “The . . . men who are taking the money for my king?”
“Tax collectors?” Celie supplied.
“Yes,” Lulath said with a more genuine smile.
“Why now?” Celie asked curiously.
“An excellent question,” Lilah agreed.
For many years there had been a village on the coast of Grath where the people spoke a language no one else could decipher, never allowed strangers within the village walls, and paid no taxes to the king of Grath. Lulath had once attempted to visit them, to try to learn their customs, but they would not allow even the jolly prince to enter.
Just recently, after returning from Hatheland and hearing the language spoken by Ethan, who had come to Sleyne to help care for the griffins, Lulath had realized where the people of this village were from. They were the last of the griffin riders, those who had followed the unicorns to the sea with the last of their griffins, and then stayed there as their griffins (and many of their own people, probably) had fallen ill from a plague called blackblister that they had brought with them from Hatheland.
They had all talked about going to the village to find out if their suspicions were correct when they got to Grath. They thought that if these people were the old griffin riders, they would surely let the new griffin riders in the gates. But once they had gotten to the Sanctuary, in the excitement and stress of getting the ship built and meeting Lulath’s family, they had not spoken of the closed village at all.
“But you’re going now? Without us?” Celie asked.
“It is being better this way,” Lulath pleaded. “My father is saying, if these are truly being those who did flee because of the blackblister, they are being cowards all, and he is wanting to speak to them. I am taking two tax men to say at last, will you pay some taxes to your king where you live now, and some of the soldiers, in case there is being a small fight. But my darlings are here in the safety.” He held out his hands to encompass them all, even Rolf and Pogue.
This rather pleased Celie. Previously, only the dogs and Lorcan had been referred to as Lulath’s darlings. It was nice to know that he loved them as much as his girls and his griffin. With anyone else, Celie would expect to be regarded as better than an animal, but Lulath had so much love for animals that it was really very flattering.
Rolf and Pogue looked as though they felt the same way. But Lilah? Not as much.
“You can’t do this to me,” she said to Lulath. “What if you die? And I’m left wondering what happened to you. Or how it happened to you.”
“You . . . want to see him die?” Rolf asked, mystified.
“No,” Lilah said impatiently. “I want him to live, which is why I don’t want him out of my sight!”
They all just stared at her, except for Lulath, who sighed.
“My Lilah, my delight,” he said, “I am sorry that you are having worry over this. But the king my father has commanded this so.” He raised one hand to cut her off. “And it is not being because my father, he is having other sons and so is wanting to be rid of me,” Lulath said.
Celie glared at her sister. Had Lilah really said such a thing? Lilah gave her a defiant look in return. It seemed that she had.
“It is being,” Lulath went on, “because I am having the Ethan write down for me the common phrases of the tongue of his land, and I am being, with my many mistakes even so, a negotiator known of keenness,” he said with dignity.
“You’ve been learning Arkish?” Celie said in amazement.
“Is there anything you don’t know about?” Rolf said with a whistle. “The villagers are going to be dumbstruck!”
“I hate you all!” Lilah announced. Then she burst into tears and fled.