The Quartered Sea (10 page)

"Are you sure that's not just wishful thinking about the good old days?" Benedikt muttered, punching his pillow. "All the elders in my village insisted the fish had fewer bones when they were young." Then he realized how that might be interpreted and winced.

"Age," Tadeus said dryly, "gives perspective. Kovar sees us as a group and wants to forge a group identity."

"We're all part of the pattern."

"So he keeps saying. But I'm afraid he only sees the pattern, not the parts. He's always been the cautious type, and now he's trying to make us all as cautious as he is."

Benedikt rolled over onto his back and stared up at the night. "Not all of us."

"No. Not all of us." Dry became positively desiccated. "If I wasn't so old…" Tadeus laughed as Benedikt mumbled an apology and went on in a lighter tone. "… and if I Sang water, I'd be going with you. Excitement, adventure, new lands, new people…" He rolled the list off his tongue. "… new songs…"

"I'm not going for a song." At the other end of the loft, someone began to snore and was quickly silenced by a thrown boot, the tone and timbre of the thud unmistakable to bardic ears. Beside him in the Bard's Corner, Benedikt could hear only the silken whisper of Tadeus' breathing, could feel him waiting patiently for the rest of the answer. Before Benedikt could stop it, the past, so long pressed into dark corners, began to spill from his mouth.

"I was nine years younger than my closest brother—there were three of them—Pavel, Dusan, Nikulas—then me. I spent my entire childhood trying to catch up and never being quite good enough. They could do so many things that I couldn't. They were natural sailors, all three of them, right from the time they could walk. Nikulas a little younger even than that, if the stories were true. And they weren't just great sailors, they had an amazing affinity for fish. Any boat my brothers crewed came back riding so low in the water a fly landing too heavily would swamp it. You can imagine how popular they were in a village totally at the mercy of the sea.

"By the time I was old enough to go out, Pavel and Dusan had their own boat and there was only Nikulas left to spread the bounty among the fleet. You see, until they'd saved enough to go out on their own, Mother kept them rotating between the boats so no one boat had the advantage. My father was the village factor, and my mother's planning provided a solid power base for him to work from.

"They all expected to gain as much from me as they had from my bothers, but the first time I crewed, the boat nearly sank beneath me." He could still remember the gray swells, growing, rising, the fishing boat thrown from crest to trough as though caught between the paws of a watery cat. More confused than afraid, unable to concentrate on the tasks at hand, he'd lost an oar overboard, tangled the anchor line almost beyond salvaging, and had driven a triple hook deep into the ball of his foot. "Subsequent trips were worse, if anything, and finally the entire village decided I was a jinx. After the second time an abnormally high tide wiped out the drying racks, I wasn't even allowed to work on the beach. My father would've taken me with him, but the others were afraid I'd jinx his trading."

A familiar hand reached out of memory to stroke his hair. "
Sorry, son. Do you understand why you can't go?"

Of course he'd understood. Did understand. His father had sided with the village. Against him. Although they were
all
very sorry for him, of course, and they always found him work to do far away from the water.

"You do understand why the sea behaved the way it did?" Tadeus asked softly.

Blankets clutched in damp fists, Benedikt realized he didn't have to answer this new question—the compulsion forcing his disclosure had passed. But once again Tadeus was waiting and, somehow, that seemed to be reason enough. "Karlene explained about the kigh when she tested me, how my talent attracted them."

"I hope she explained that only a very powerful talent would cause the kigh to show such an interest before your voice changed."

"Don't worry, she explained it all and everyone was very impressed." He paused to enjoy the memory of his moment in the center of the Circle and laughed bitterly at how quickly it passed. "They were impressed until they found out that I could only Sing water."

"I am not." Drawing in a deep breath, Benedikt cursed himself for picking the scabs off his past. "If you must know, I volunteered because Her Majesty believes in me."

"When no one else did?"

"No!" The silence reminded him that bards can hear a lie. But he'd heard it himself, he didn't actually need reminding. "If I Sang air…" And then he remembered. "If I Sang air," he repeated smugly, "I'd be just another one of Kovar's drones."

"What are you talking about?"

It was the first time he'd ever heard Tadeus sound unsure. He wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever heard Tadeus sound unsure. "You said that Kovar's trying to make us all as cautious as he is. He teaches caution to the fledglings, and after they start Walking, he keeps at it with the air kigh. I don't Sing air, so I didn't get the reinforcement. He hasn't conditioned me to sing the same song as the rest of you."

Bedding whispered as Tadeus shifted on his pallet. "Do you have proof of this?"

"You Sing air. How often does he tell you to be careful? How many of the bards he trained have volunteered for this voyage? Only me. Because I don't Sing air."

"I think that's a tad simplistic…"

"You would.
You
Sing air."

"Do try to remember who your friends are."

The edge beneath Tadeus' gently chiding tone cut through his confidence and Benedikt felt himself deflate. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"Yes, you did, but I accept your apology. And I admit you may have a point."

"Well, thank you very much," Benedikt muttered.

"Don't sulk, Benedikt. It's quite unattractive." After a moment, he added, "Are you sure you're not going on this voyage to prove to Kovar he can't push you around?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know." Benedikt sighed and laced his fingers behind his head. "You're beginning to sound like Magda."

"Which reminds me, she wants to see you as soon as you get back to the Citadel. She wants to impress on you how important your going on this expedition is to the queen, and, given Her Majesty's recent state of mind, how important it is you don't allow Kovar to talk you out of going."

He'd been trying not to think of what would happen when he got back to the Citadel. "The queen believes in me. I won't let her down."

"Yeah? Then you oughta pay more unenclosed attention 'cause I can hear about one word in ten. Buzz, buzz, buzz; voyage. Murmur, murmur, murmur; prove. Mutter, mutter, mutter; might be better. It's driving me nuts!"

"I've always said you had a touch of bardic talent…"

"I don't give a crap about bardic talent, Tadeus. Not now. It's the middle of the unenclosed night, and
I've
got to do a full day's work tomorrow, unlike some decorative bits of fluff."

"Perhaps we'd best call it a night," Tadeus admitted, dropping his voice directly into Benedikt's ear. "Good night, Benedikt. Good dreams."

"
It might be better if you believed more in yourself
." Did he want to continue the argument past that point? "Good dreams, Tadeus." A few minutes later, he frowned. "Tadeus? Did Magda send you all the way out here to find me?"

"I doubt I'll see you again before
Starfarer
sails," Tadeus said, rain beading on the waxed leather mask tied over his eyes, "so I'm going to gift you with my advice. Keep singing 'The Dark Sailor' if you want to, but remember that when you do, you're invoking a desperate desire for home, not a sense of adventure. If you're trying to change people's opinions about this voyage, you'll have more luck if you engage their hearts, if you get them to wonder about what's over the horizon." He grinned suddenly. "If, however, you're just trying to overwind Kovar's strings, then carry on as you were."

Benedikt protected his eyes with a hand as Tadeus' hood billowed out against the direction of the wind and the rain began to fall every way but down. "He seems angry enough now."

"What, this?" A quick four notes and the air around them stilled. "That wasn't Kovar. I'm heading for Ohrid and Annice seems to think I'm part packhorse. At least once a day she comes up with new lists of things I should bring with me. I'd ignore her, but I have no real desire to have her change the weather patterns over half the country." As a light breeze touched Benedikt's worried frown, Tadeus sighed. "I'm kidding. And now, as we've both got a long, wet walk before us, I suggest we say good-bye and get started." Reaching out, he gripped the younger man by the shoulders. "One last bit of advice; you're a bard now, Benedikt, let the past go."

"Concentrate on what I can do, not on what I can't." Benedikt snorted and stepped back. "Easy to say when you can do what I can't."

One ebony brow rose above the mask. "I was under the impression that, at the moment, you were proud of not Singing air, proud to stand apart from Kovar's caution."

As he turned into the angle of the rain, he tried to decide how he felt about having Tadeus' company in his rebellion. He was defying Kovar to go on this voyage because the queen believed in him; Tadeus would have gone for a song.
It's easy for Tadeus, he Sings air. He doesn't know what it's like not to be able to do something every other bard takes for granted
.

Three days later, with the smoke from Elbasan's chimneys smudging the evening sky behind him, Benedikt stood in the shipyard and stared at the
Starfarer
. She'd been painted pale blue and cream, the castles trimmed in a darker blue, and it seemed as though half a hundred pennants flew from every line.

"Beauty, ain't she?" said an admiring voice.

Shifting his pack, Benedikt turned.

"She's the best we ever built, I'm tellin' ya." Hands on her hips, the woman beside him kept her gaze locked on
Starfarer
. "Rides them waves so pretty you'd almost think she were Singin' the kigh."

There
was
a certain music in the way the water lapped against the painted wood, in the shump, shump of the heavy rope bumpers rubbed between the ship and the pier, in the dance of the pennants in the evening breeze. For the first time since Vidor, he felt a touch of the joy that had come with the news he'd been chosen.

"Yer sailin' on her, ain't ya?"

Surprised, he took a closer look at his companion. The leather apron streaked with tar and the sawdust in her close-cropped hair supported her statement that she worked at the shipyard. As far as he could recall, he'd never seen her before. "How could you tell?"

She smiled broadly enough to show a missing molar. "I know the look. You know 'When the Work is Done,' bard?"

"Of course I do."

"Then we should get along just fine." A callused fist thrust toward him. "Emilka i'Dasa. Call me Mila. I've signed on as ship's carpenter. I helped build her, so I figured I'd best make sure she makes it home."

Mila laughed. "We get a lot down here lookin' at her. Some of 'em, they look all disapprovin', faces scrunched up like an old apple, like they think we're wastin' time and money even buildin' her. Some of 'em, usually them that's too old or too young, look kinda wistful, like they can see the adventure but they know it's not for them. And a very few folk, the ones that're goin', they smile and their eyebrows kinda dip down in the middle like they're thinking'…" She paused, caught Benedikt's eye, and turned his gaze back toward the ship. "They're thinkin' about all that water out there and they're thinkin',
I thought she'd be bigger
."