21

Sharina woke up abruptly. She felt motion beside her and thought that Nonnus must be rising also.

Nonnus was already gone; the motion was the dugout heeling. The wind had backed and now blew from the north.

The hermit stood on the other side of the mast, freeing the lifting fall. Asera and Meder sat close together in the far stern. They didn't offer to help; Nonnus didn't need or want their help anyway. The nobles' eyes were bright and nervous. Their stance reminded Sharina of a pair of marmots tensely aware of the hawk soaring overhead.

Sharina knew why they were afraid. Her own heart thrilled to the change in the wind, but she was miserably ashamed that she hadn't prevented Meder from working the magic she knew had brought that change.

She climbed across the bundled supplies to Nonnus. He could get along without her help also, but she at least knew how to be useful. The fall was reeved through a single block at the masthead. Sharina gripped the spar with both hands and added her strength to the process of raising it and the wet sail while the hermit tugged on the rope. If nothing else, she took some of the strain off the mast.

The canvas began to fill as soon as it rose, shaking salt droplets over Sharina. The spar lifted above the reach of her hands and she stepped back. The breeze was steady though light.

"Not the weather I would have expected," Nonnus said mildly from behind the curtain of the sail. He bent to snub the fall around the bitt at the foot of the mast. "It should serve our purpose so long as it continues; and if it ends, there's still the norther to expect."

Sharina crawled under the lower edge of the sail. The sky was noticeably brighter but the sun hadn't yet risen. The horizon was a rolling unmarked darkness around them.

Asera held the tiller. Meder was tightly beside her, his hands clasped.

"Good morning, Master Nonnus," Asera said as the hermit came back to take over the tiller and the sheets clewing the sail. Normally the nobles would have passed silently along the opposite side of the dugout's narrow hull; this morning they didn't seem ready to go forward at all.

"Good morning mistress, master," Nonnus replied with careful neutrality. "I need to be in the stern to handle the sail."

Meder swallowed and rose to a crouch. He scuttled forward without meeting the hermit's eyes. Asera released the tiller—it was lashed to move only in a short compass anyway—and said, "Yes, of course," as she got up. Though her progress was as stately as the close confines allowed, Sharina could see tension in the line of the procurator's back.

Meder's chest of paraphernalia was tucked under the edge of a cargo net, but it wasn't under the same net as it had been at midnight when the wizard went sternward to take over the watch. Sharina swallowed as she noticed the change. The hermit's eyes flicked over the case but nothing in his set, bleak expression indicated that he'd noticed anything different.

And perhaps the sun would rise in the west this morning. . . .

Nonnus adjusted the angle of the spar, then unshipped the tiller and added the rudder's help to the dugout's slow change of direction. They heeled hard onto the starboard outrigger. Sharina handled the lines to the lower edge of the sail, flattening its angle gradually as the clumsy vessel came about. Too abrupt a change of tack wouldn't overset them—the outriggers prevented that—but it might crack or unstep the mast.

As Nonnus adjusted the spar, his eyes on the line at which spray flew from the canvas, he said, "There's a smear of blood here on the sternpost, Meder."

"I cut my hand," the wizard called in a high-pitched voice from behind the sail. "I cut the back of my hand on a splinter, that's all!"

Sharina turned her face outboard to hide her expression. She felt sick at her inaction the previous night; sicker yet that she was pretending to conceal what the hermit already knew. "Nonnus—" she began.

There was a line of white off the starboard bow. Sharina hopped onto the crosspole which attached the outrigger to the hull, gripping the starboard mainbrace. It wasn't an illusion, nor was it a line of white gulls waiting for full dawn to rise from the swell where they'd spent the night.

"Land!" Sharina called. "Land to starboard! Look, Nonnus, land!"

Nonnus jumped onto the gunwale and leaned outward. He didn't have a sheet or cable to hold on to, but he stretched his javelin behind him in his left hand to balance the weight of his head and torso. He teetered there, frightening for Sharina to watch.

The hermit dropped back into the stern and adjusted the set of the sail still further. He said nothing.

Asera and Meder ducked beneath the canvas as Sharina came back aboard. The nobles' expressions added a mixture of hope and puzzlement to the previous fear.

"Is it really land?" Meder blurted.

"It appears to be, yes," Nonnus said. He tweaked a clew before Sharina squatted to take the line again. "There shouldn't be an island in this part of the sea."

The procurator scowled. "How can anybody tell where we really are? The sky's been overcast ever since we left Tegma."

"Yes, Tegma," Nonnus said with a humorless grin. He handed the lines to Sharina. "I assure you, procurator, I know where we are. And I know that Tegma wouldn't have risen without wizardry."

"I didn't make this island rise!" Meder said. "I had nothing to do with this!"

"I don't suppose it matters now, does it?" the hermit said without emotion. He adjusted the spar, holding the tiller between his side and left arm.

"I didn't do this," Meder whispered, but the looks he and Asera exchanged were full of doubt.