10

Sharina steadied the water cask, one of those they'd brought from the trireme, while Nonnus tapped the upper hoop in place with mallet made from a vertebra and a dorsal spine of a large fish. "The seams are holding," the hermit said, "but I'm going to look into the casks the Folk hollow from whale bones. I don't trust these staves not to shrink if they're in sunlight for too long."

"I don't see what possible difference it makes," Asera said bitterly. She held herself as though she were cold, despite the warmth of the bright sun. "We'll never be rescued from here. You said yourself that there's no chance of civilized people coming this far north."

In the week they'd spent with the Floating Folk, the procurator had lost her fear of imminent death. She hadn't become more hopeful, though, and she had the energy to be angry about the situation.

Members of Motherhugger's extended family relaxed in the pleasant weather. More of them were in the water, sporting on pontoons or just swimming, than were aboard the houseboat. Motherhugger himself sat in the waist of the boat with three of his wives. The women were crushing seaweed in bone querns while the chief sipped from a bronze goblet, the loot of some ancient shipwreck.

The prepared weed fermented into the mildly alcoholic beverage that Motherhugger was drinking. It was reserved for chiefs and their special favorites, but Sharina wouldn't have been willing to try the stuff even if she'd been permitted to. The women started the fermentation process by spitting into the crushed leaves. The drink was green, fibrous, and smelled to Sharina like the brownish gunk that seeped from the bottom of wet haystacks.

"I don't expect other people to rescue us, true," Nonnus said equably. He worked around the hoop, tapping on one side and then the other. He never struck quite at the same place; Sharina's thumb braced the point on the circlet of pegged willow opposite to each blow. "But that was never my thought, mistress. We haven't come this far to spend the rest of our days wheeling under the Ice Capes. When the chance to leave comes, we'll have our provisions ready."

Twenty or so members of Motherhugger's household used their leisure to stare at the islanders. Nonnus had appropriated a corner of the houseboat's forward deck for him and his entourage. Their gear was lashed to bone extensions the hermit had raised from the ship's ribs: the houseboats didn't have railings, even on the decked portions.

The islanders slept there also, in part to prevent theft. The wooden casks were valuable and their few bits of metal even more so. Most of the iron tools Sharina had seen Motherhugger's family use were made out of nails pulled from the drifting wreckage of islander vessels that had been nailed rather than pegged.

She didn't know what they'd do if the weather changed—she for one would prefer going over the side to sheltering in the noisome caverns belowdecks—but she trusted the hermit to respond to whatever need arose. He'd said he'd barter for hides to make an actual deckhouse if they were still among the Folk by the time of the fall storms.

Nonnus straightened and tested the cask's lid by pressure from his thumb. It remained firm. They'd filled it, he and Sharina, the previous day with blocks of ice they'd chipped from the berg. She didn't think she'd ever be able to competently handle a pontoon like the one she'd borrowed, but at least she'd managed not to overturn it. The single outrigger didn't support you if you let your weight shift to the wrong side.

"Nonnus," she said in a low voice. "Sleepsalot claimed that we wouldn't be permitted to leave the village. Is that true?"

"That's the Law," Nonnus agreed calmly. He examined the cod-drying rack he'd built from baleen strips and flicked a bit of cod into the water. "Cut the fillet too thick on this end and it was starting to spoil."

The islanders had no surplus they were willing to trade, so Nonnus' bargains were his labor—and once that of Sharina to mend nets—against some bit of material he wanted from the Folk. His skill and the Pewle knife's steel blade accomplished more in an hour than a day of desultory labor by a member of Motherhugger's family.

Besides, the Floating Folk rather liked to watch outsiders work. The islanders were now members of the tribe by Law, but in truth a Folk village was a society more parochial than the most rural hamlet on Haft. The rule was intended for Folk fleeing other tribes because of a feud, though Nonnus said there'd been other cases of outlaws from the islands finding haven of sorts in the floating villages.

A small shark turned onto its back to suck the meat down in a swirl of bubbles. Fish swarmed about the houseboat, fattening on offal dumped over the side. Children splashed in the same waters, oblivious of the possible risk. Sharina hadn't seen any seawolves or large sharks, though. The Floating Folk were the top predators in the regions they frequented.

"If you're caught leaving a village," Nonnus said, smiling slightly toward Sharina over the top of the drying rack, "you're a traitor and the whole tribe eats you. I wouldn't choose to be caught, no. Better to wait for a norther . . ."

His gaze drifted toward Meder.

"As I recall saying some while ago," Nonnus concluded, his tone flat, his eyes hard.

The wizard sat a little apart from the other three. He'd spent part of each day since their arrival with Leadsthestars at the royal residence, ferried there and back in one of Longtoes' catcher boats. Asera sometimes talked to him privately, but Sharina noticed that Meder had lost all sign of subordination to the procurator since he began meeting with the tattooed woman.

"I wonder what he trades the old woman for the things she gives him?" Sharina murmured to Nonnus, glancing sidelong toward the wizard. Asera was close enough to hear the words, but she didn't object to the question.

From each visit to the catamaran Meder had returned with some new piece of equipment to replace the gear Sharina threw into the sea. He now had an athame of walrus ivory; its blade was honed to a real edge. The hilt was fretted into the semblance of a pair of demons gnawing at one another's bellies.

Leadsthestars had also given Meder a whale-vertebra brazier and a string of pouches made from the swim bladders of large fish. Inside were powders whose colors were visible through the translucent container. At intervals—as now—Meder lit a fire of whale blubber and burned a pinch of powder in it; but he never chanted aloud.

"He's a powerful wizard, Tenoctris said," Nonnus answered as he checked the bung of the second water cask. "Leadsthestars is pleased to meet him, I shouldn't wonder. She's probably as much alone here as I was in the borough—"

He paused and grinned at Sharina. "But that was my choice."

Blue smoke puffed from the brazier as Meder dropped something on the flame. The dry powder had been red. "We can't choose Meder's path for him," Nonnus said softly, still looking at the wizard.

Most of the Folk kept a cautious distance from the islanders. A boy of three or four, red-haired with freckled shoulders and arms like all the Folk, was the exception. Meder fascinated him. He lay for hours with his chin on his hands, looking up at the young wizard across the brazier.

Meder had shouted at the boy when first he appeared. One of the women crushing seaweed had walked over to the pair and clouted Meder with a pestle carved from whale jawbone. Nonnus sponged and bound up the wizard's bloodied scalp while he was unconscious; after that Meder pretended to ignore the boy.

"He says he'll get us out of this place," Asera muttered. "But he's said that before, and every time we find ourselves in a worse place yet."

"You've noticed that too?" Sharina said sarcastically. "I should take all that stuff away from him and throw it into the sea the way I did the chest!"

Meder added another ingredient to the bubbling flames. White smoke rose oddly, clingingly, as if unwilling to leave the brazier. Wizard and child stared intently as the smoke twisted itself into a shape as vaguely humanoid as a mandrake root, then dissipated with the suddenness of snow melting in water.

"No," Nonnus said. "We should choose our own paths and let others choose theirs."

Without any change of tone he went on, "Sleepsalot's catcher boat is on its way here from the residence."

Asera caught danger in the implications of Nonnus' words, though there was nothing in his tone to cause alarm. "What do you mean?" she said, leaning forward unsteadily to peer over the bow.

Sharina put out a hand to keep the other woman from overbalancing. She didn't like Asera: days in an open dugout had caused the apparent majesty of a royal procurator to decay faster than a beached fish in the summer sun. She'd still feel obliged to jump in after Asera if she were drowning, so it was easier to prevent the situation from arising.

"We can deal with Sleepsalot," Nonnus said quietly. He held his javelin again. "I didn't say that we had to let others choose paths for us."

Motherhugger's family viewed the arrival of their neighbor's boat without overmuch interest one way or the other. One of Sleepsalot's wives waddled to the rail and displayed her buttocks to the catcher boat. Children in the water dived about it; one grabbed a paddle by the blade and tried unsuccessfully to wrest it away. Sharina couldn't tell how much was horseplay and how much might indicate real hostility between the families.

Sleepsalot sat in the stern of the catcher boat with Threefingers in the bow as before. Threefingers hadn't signaled with the ammonite-shell horn, though it rested on the frames beside him. The shell must be a considerable weight even though the internal walls had been knocked out to create a musical instrument.

Sleepsalot directed his paddlers to the bow of the houseboat, ten feet from the islanders. Threefingers tossed a hawser around the high prow and tied it off to hold the catcher boat. Sharina wondered why the crew was showing greater concern than they had at the royal residence.

"What are you doing here, Sleepsalot?" Motherhugger demanded. He stood at the break of the waist, watching the other chief and the dozen members of the boat's crew clamber onto the deck. Motherhugger didn't bother to climb up to meet Sleepsalot eye to eye. "You still owe me five feathers of baleen. Are you here to pay?"

"My business isn't with you, Motherhugger," Sleepsalot said airily. "Anyway, Blackteeth was supposed to pay that as part of the bride-price for my sister. Go talk to him."

The visitors advanced in a line abreast. Sleepsalot halted six feet in front of Nonnus and put his hands on his hips. "So, Pewleman," he said. "I'm going out after whale tomorrow. The Law gives me the right to pick a man from another family to make up the crew of my boat. I pick you for my harpooner."

"You can't challenge!" said Threefingers on the other end of the line from his father. "It's the Law!"

Almost everyone on the houseboat was watching the confrontation; people came out from the beneath the decks and many of those in the water squirmed aboard. Asera moved to put the drying rack between her and the rank of Sleepsalot's crew, all of them trying to look threatening to cow Nonnus.

Sharina stepped to the hermit's side and pulled the hand axe from its loop. Nonnus rolled his face upward and started to chuckle. The laughter sounded real to Sharina.

Sleepsalot seemed startled. He was watching the steel point of the javelin glittering on the hermit's shoulder. Sharina knew that was a mistake: the weapon would go where Nonnus sent it. Sleepsalot should have been watching Nonnus' eyes.

"It's a dangerous post, harpooner!" Threefingers said angrily. He shook his own harpoon, but he was extremely careful to keep the point vertical so that Nonnus couldn't claim it was a threat and grounds for a challenge. "Standing up there in the prow where somebody might bump you overboard by accident!"

Sharina heard Meder chanting behind her in a low voice, but she didn't dare turn around now. She understood that Sleepsalot and his son were actually bargaining with Nonnus: frightening the hermit so that he'd agree to hand over an item of value.

Agree to hand over Sharina herself.

They didn't know Nonnus. When they realized their threat wasn't going to work, anything could happen. The rules that prevented a member of the Folk from stabbing another member almost certainly wouldn't apply if the hermit were foolish enough to turn his back now.

"I'm honored that you would choose me to join your fine crew, Sleepsalot," Nonnus said politely. The remnants of laughter still lubricated his voice. "I'm afraid that I won't be able accept, though. You see—"

"You can't refuse!" Threefingers sputtered. "It's the Law that we can take you!"

"Unfortunately," Nonnus said in the tone of an amused adult talking to a child, "I'm just on my way over to the royal residence to challenge Longtoes for the kingship of the tribe. Tomorrow, well, things will be different, you see. Since it's the king who decides the crews of boats for the hunt."

The fire in Meder's brazier hissed angrily around whatever he'd added to the flames. Sharina smelled a bitter odor but her eyes continued to scan the line of Sleepsalot's crew.

Sleepsalot eased back, probably unconsciously. "You have to defeat all the King's Sons to challenge the king!" he said, but his confidence was clearly bluster.

"I don't think the King's Sons look like much, do you?" Nonnus said nonchalantly. He spun his javelin between his thumb and two fingers, then transferred it into his left hand behind his back, still spinning. "Of course . . ."

The woman beside Sleepsalot turned so that the twenty-armed starburst tattooed on her shoulder was toward the hermit. Sharina remembered what Nonnus had said about the Folk worshipping the monsters of the deep.

". . . it might be that Longtoes will decide to make you the harpooner in a boat that I captain, tomorrow," Nonnus said, grinning at the chief and spinning the javelin back into his right hand. "If Longtoes did that, why, I wouldn't feel a need to challenge him."

Sleepsalot's jaw dropped. He looked as though the hermit was dangling him over the open jaws of a seawolf—which was pretty close to the reality of the situation. The members of his crew were backing away noticeably; even Threefingers was looking at his father as if they'd met for the first time.

"Barbathiathiao brimaiao chermari!" Meder shouted, completing his incantation. The fire hissed, then cracked as sharply as a blow on the ear.

All of Sleepsalot's crew retreated. Sharina risked a glance behind her.

A cloud of pulsing white smoke rose from the brazier. It was humanoid in shape and already the size of a man as it continued to grow. The child jumped to his feet to stare at the image wide-eyed. Meder grabbed the boy by his long hair.

Nonnus stepped sideways so that he could look at the wizard without turning his back on Sleepsalot, though the chief and his people weren't the threat they might have been a minute earlier. "Meder!" the hermit said. "Put the boy down! I've got this under control."

The child screamed and kicked. Meder punched him with the butt of the athame, then held the point to his throat.

Meder's eyes were wide with fear and anticipation. "You have to give us your boat and let us go!" he called to Sleepsalot. The image of smoke gyrated as though it were dancing on top of the fire. It was about seven feet tall; hulking, faceless, the arms and torso much longer than the legs.

Threefingers and Sleepsalot exchanged glances. The younger man laughed and stepped forward, careful to skirt Nonnus. "Or what, islander?" Threefingers said. "If you think your tricks—"

Meder flushed. He thrust his ivory blade through the child's throat in a spray of blood. The child's screams ended in a gurgle, but Sharina screamed in his place.

A spurt of dark blood from the neck arteries splashed onto the fire. The brazier geysered red flame as though the blood had stoked the fire instead of quenching it. Liquid sparks spewed in all directions, some charring the whaleskin decking while others went over the side to sizzle in the water.

Meder stood unharmed and unmoving in the midst of the blaze, though the dead child's hair was beginning to burn. The image of white smoke dissipated.

The sea roared. A humanoid shape formed from water as red as flame. It caught the houseboat's gunwale in one hand and pulled itself up on deck. Its limbs rippled bonelessly.

Sleepsalot shouted and stabbed the creature in the chest. The harpoon stuck as though thrust into warm pitch. The creature roared. Seizing Sleepsalot by the scalp and one shoulder, it pulled his head off.

Meder laughed like a demon. He tossed the child's corpse away. The fire had vanished. The brazier was shards of blackened bone, destroyed by the powers it had initiated.

Threefingers flung his harpoon into the creature's back and leaped over the far side of the houseboat in a dive as graceful as a tern's. Sleepsalot's crew ran for the bow, some of them jumping into the water while a few tried to get into the boat. The creature caught two of the hindmost and crushed them together in its arms.

Dropping the corpses, the creature took the hawser in its hands and drew the bow of the catcher boat out of the water. The three crewmen aboard her went over the side. They swam toward the houseboat hundreds of yards distant instead of trying to reboard Motherhugger's vessel. Members of Motherhugger's family were in the water also or poised to dive.

The creature dropped the whaleskin rope and turned toward Nonnus. The hermit cocked the javelin to throw. Sharina stepped in front of him, facing the creature.

Meder shouted a word lost in thunder. The creature's form sagged like wax in a fire. The color washed away. The figure became water, sooty water, splashing across the deck and over the houseboat's side.

Sharina dropped the hand axe. She turned sobbing and threw her arms around Nonnus. All she could see was the face of the boy as his cries drowned in his own blood.

"The past is past, child," the hermit whispered. His ribs beneath his coarse black tunic were as hard and ridged as the bark of an oak tree. "For the child, for you and me. The past is past."

He shifted slightly as he turned his head, though Sharina was still blind with tears and memory. "As for Meder, well, we all have our ghosts. But I'll pray for the soul of his as well as for my own."

"I had to do it," Meder said in a high-pitched voice. "Procurator, you saw that there was no choice. You saw that!"

"Help me load our provisions onto the boat, child," Nonnus said softly in Sharina's ear. "They won't come chasing us, I think."

He sighed. "Skin boats don't sail much better against the wind than a dugout does, but we'll manage. With the help of the Lady, we'll manage."