Children of Earth and Sky (14 page)

Not a time to ponder that. And it hardly signifies right now.

The raid leader says they will accept fourteen bales. And six hundred serales for the doctor's wife. Otherwise she goes with them.

Marin lets his anger overflow. It is real and satisfying. A decent man, a
necessary
man, lies dead on his ship.

He snaps, “You will take your goods, fourteen bales, that is accepted, and leave us. You killed her husband! The goods are all you get.”

“No, gospodar. Respectfully, they are not. You are not able to stop us from doing whatever we want, and you know it. I am extending a courtesy. Receive it as such. I have no idea what that woman's family will pay to have her back, but it is surely more than six hundred. It will be on your head, what follows, if you do not—”

“I had not taken you for a fool. You seize a high-born lady from Mylasia after murdering her husband and you believe the Holy Patriarch and the emperor will protect Senjan from the fury of the Jaddite world? Do you?”

He says it loudly. A tactic. He knows his words will register—and disturb the raiders, however well they hide it.

He pushes harder. “You killed your own man. Because you
know
what he did was a Jad-cursed wrong. Your task is to ensure that the world sees you are aware of it! Not to make it worse by abducting a grieving woman. Think, man! How much hatred can the heroes of Senjan survive?”

He lets mockery show in the way he says
heroes
.

You didn't become a raid leader by being easily outfaced. The other man remains calm, shakes his head. “That one, the doctor, was from Seressa. For what they did to us this spring we will be forgiven our own anger, I think. We will address the hatred of the world for a man slain by ill chance if we must. But six hundred serales for the woman, gospodar, or she comes with us.”

Marin looks away, to where two men lie dead. And so he actually sees the moment when the woman stands up, small, golden-haired. The blood soaking the lower part of her robe disturbs him. It is so wrong.

He has duties. To her, to his ship, to those with cargo being carried. You are not permitted very often to give voice to what you feel.

He says, “Four hundred serales, fourteen bales. Go. I undertake to report that the man who killed the physician was immediately
slain by one of your own, and that you expressed regret. You have my word on it.”

A hesitation. Four hundred is much less than they might get if her family is truly wealthy, but it will take months, ships and messengers, and Senjan needs money and goods to sell for food right now.

“
No!
” Marin hears. The word is shouted. “No! Do not!”

It is the Senjani woman's voice, the one with the bow. He looks quickly over, sees what she sees.

And, “
No!
” he also cries.

—

LEONORA WILL NEVER
understand why she stopped, one foot actually on the ship's rail, the green sea below her. It will come to her in dreams, that moment.

It had nothing to do with the voices crying out in horror. Of course they would be horrified to see her at the railing near the prow, preparing to step up—and go down to her release.

It had nothing to do with them. No, it was as if she suddenly felt
resistance
, pressure, a force of denial. It was as if she was being told she
could
not leap, that the sea was not—yet?—her home, her rest, an ending.

Something was pulling her back, a dragging weight, or perhaps it was more like a barrier, a wall—she could never shape a proper image, afterwards.

Confused, frightened, she stood at the rail, breathing hard. She hadn't been afraid. She had been so sure . . .

She saw the small Senjani boats below, saw sunlight on the sea. She looked up. A fair morning sky, thin high clouds, light breeze in the sails, seabirds around the ship. Brightness. The god's sun in the east, over water, over land she could not see. She had walked towards that light.

And had been stopped, somehow, from going over the side and down into the deep.

It was the captain, the burly, bearded, gruff man named Drago, who reached her first, running.

“My lady!” he cried. He extended a hand but stopped, not touching her.

Leonora felt strange. She probably looked it, she thought.

She said, clearing her throat around a difficulty, “I . . . am not doing it. I thought I would. But I find I can't.” He wouldn't know what she meant by
can't
. He would misunderstand.

“Jad be thanked, signora. Please. They are not taking you. The pirates. You are staying with us.”

“Why will that matter?” she asked him, unfairly.

Unfair, because he'd have no answer to give. How could he possibly understand her life? She was a deception on his ship's deck, and she had nowhere in the world to go.

The sea had seemed a destination.

The artist came hurrying over, still white-faced, more so now, in fact. Another sweet man? There seemed to be some of those. It didn't matter.

Leonora let him take her down below this time, to her cabin. Hers alone now. She closed the heavy door and sat on her cot, feeling the motion of the ship like a cradle. A child's cradle. Somewhere in the world there was a child in its cradle, there were many of them . . .

She did not weep. It was too strange for tears.

She thought of the water all around them. It was cold and deep, and would have been an answer.

—

ZADEK, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

I don't know.
His voice in her head was hesitant.

She was going over the side.

I saw. She changed her mind. It is a fearsome thing to do.

Did she? Change her mind?

She felt him hesitate again.
What do you mean?

I don't know what I mean! But it looked, or, it didn't look as if . . .

Danica stopped. Her grandfather was silent. There was something different in him now, too, she didn't know what. She was frightened. It had been clear that the other woman had been ready to leap into the sea rather than be taken hostage or be bought back for coins—or even live without her husband.

Was that it? Could someone love another person so much?

And when she'd stopped, in the act of mounting the rail, it had seemed as if . . .

Danica turned her mind away from thinking about it. There was something difficult here and it disturbed her.

They were concluding the negotiations, Hrant Bunic and the shipowner named Djivo. Danica looked around. She saw that the other raiders seemed even more uneasy now, carrying tension like a bow strung too tightly.

Some had been ordered below to bring up the goods they were taking. Fourteen bales of cloth. It was a large number. If the material was good they would sell it farther up the coast for considerable value. It probably was good. An early ship, the Dubravae would have had their pick in the marketplace.

Then something else fell into place for her—and a new fear came. She became aware that some of the other raiders were eyeing her, looking away when she glanced at them.

She went over to where she'd thrown aside her hat. She picked it up and put it back on, so she'd look more like a man, a boy, an ordinary raider from Senjan.

By the time she'd finished tucking her hair back, aware she was still being looked at by those she'd sailed and rowed beside, Danica had realized that her life was going to have to change. Right now.

She felt the thump of her heart like a drum hit hard.

There was no twisting away from this. She'd just killed Kukar Miho—whose family had been in Senjan since the walls were built,
some said. He had five brothers and a powerful father, uncles, many cousins.

She had herself. Their family, three of them—mother and grandfather and her—had come to Senjan only ten years ago, and she was alone.

Sometimes you did certain things and everything altered. She straightened her shoulders. She walked over to Bunic and the merchant. They were standing quietly, the captain with them, negotiations were over, consequences being implemented. Goods and gold for Senjan, within reason, that the world might remain in balance.

They turned as she came up.

Danica said, looking at Marin Djivo, “You swore you would report we killed the man who slew the doctor, that we are sorry for it.”

He had very blue eyes. He said, “I did, and I will. Are you the one who put arrows in the Seressinis in your bay?”

She ignored that, though it was surprising to be asked. She turned to Bunic. A breath. Some things you said, there was no going back, after.

“We'll need more than him saying it. Someone has to go to Dubrava and express our regret.”

“What? Who would go there to be hanged?”

“No one. But I'll go, with assurances from this one that I won't be hanged.”

“
Why?
” Bunic asked.

But he was clever, a good leader, and she could see that he was working it through, that he already understood, in fact.

“Because I killed Kukar,” she said.

“So you come to us and apologize? So that we will see you are sincere?” the merchant asked. “I suppose that might—”

“No,” Danica said. She was looking at Bunic, at the comprehension in his eyes, and an unexpected sadness. “No. I come to you because I'll be killed in Senjan by his family. I can't go home.”

There was a silence. The ship's captain, the stocky, broad-shouldered one, cleared his throat. “Ever?” he asked.

“Who can speak to
ever
,” Danica said.

Oh, child
, she heard within. She'd been waiting for him.

Hush, zadek, or I will not be able to do this.

Child
, he said again, then was silent.

She could feel his pain, though. And her own, heavy, a cannonball, an anchor going down and down into the sea.

Bunic said, “I will speak for you at home, Danica. You stopped a great deal of bloodshed this morning.”

“Mostly theirs,” she said. “Not ours. They will say that in Senjan. And you know the Miho family. Whatever you say, will it stop them?”

She had never seen Hrant Bunic look sorrowful. He did now, at the very edge of finishing a hugely successful first raid of the season.

“They would really kill her?” the merchant asked. He was looking at Bunic.

“I . . . it is likely,” Hrant said finally. “We are a hard people.”

“A hard people,” Marin Djivo repeated without inflection. He turned to Danica. “You wish to come to Dubrava, to speak to the Rector's Council about Senjani contrition. And then?”

“And then I have no idea,” Danica said.

Which was only the truth.

—

LATE IN THE DAY
, towards sundown. It is colder. Marin is at the prow, wrapped against the chill. They are running southeast now, crossing towards home with the sails up and a good wind. There is always trepidation when a ship leaves sight of land, even in the home sea, but they do know these waters.

The raiders are gone, north towards Senjan. They took their slain man to bury him at home. Drago has overseen the wrapping of Doctor Miucci's body. He will be laid in Dubrava's cemetery
outside the walls, then exhumed and sent back to Seressa if a request comes.

This has happened so many times, Marin is thinking. Their ships have been boarded, men have died in raids, they have often lost far more than they did this morning. Darkness awaits even the sun as it goes down. Change and chance are the way of the world, and more so for those living on disputed borders, or venturing to sea. And Dubrava—their small republic caught between powers—partakes of both these things. The borderlands and the sea.

So does Senjan, it occurs to him, but he doesn't linger on that thought. He isn't feeling kindly towards the heroes. Not today.

“Were you going to fight him?”

She has a silent tread. He turns as the woman—her name is Danica Gradek, he now knows—comes up beside him. Her dog is with her. A big wolfhound, not one you'd want angry with you.

He shrugs. “Did you kill those men in the dark this spring?”

He isn't sure why he's challenging her, but you don't always know why you do what you do.

She looks at him. “Why do you care? You want to hang me? Right in the harbour? Or hand me over to Seressa to do it?”

In the wind and the snap of the sail and with the birds crying, he has to strain to hear her. He remembers that her life has changed today—forever, it might be—as much as the other woman's has.

He says, “You have my word. I will say what happened, what you did, how it saved lives. I will swear it before an altar when we land, if you like.”

“Men can lie at altars as easily as anywhere else.”

She looks out at the sea. There is only the sea ahead and behind now. Waves white in wind.

After a time, he says, “My father told me of a saying once. That the world is divided into the living and the dead and those at sea. He didn't know where it was from.”

She is silent. Finally says, “If I hadn't killed Kukar, and you'd fought him . . .”

“I was angry.”

“I saw.”

“Drago would have drawn his sword, then others.”

“And our men. We'd have killed many of you.”

“I am going to say all this to our council, Danica Gradek. Why are you . . . ?”

The birds around the ship are diving into the waves to emerge, wet and wheeling. He sees one with a fish caught, as it rises. Dive and rise, over and again.

She says, “I need a reason to have destroyed my life.”

“You are too young to think that. You have altered your life. Not the same.”

“Here's an arrogant man. To tell me what I've done or not done.”

He smiles. He says, “Well, we're arrogant in Dubrava. Not as bad as the Seressinis, but . . .”