The Sea Thy Mistress (9 page)

The night before he and Cathmar were to go into Eiledon, Cahey sat before the fire sewing shoes. He wasn’t yet as much of a cobbler as he’d like, but he was improving over last year. Soon, he thought, he’d be better than passable.

This, however, would do for now.

By the time dawn had begun graying the horizon behind the dunes, several small pairs of shoes joined food, coats and other things on a handcart in the cobbled yard. Cathmar, tugging a hat over oiled curls, appeared in the doorway. A pack dragged his shoulders back, the belt cinched above his hips. The hat and coat were camouflage, nothing more, but Cahey was glad to see Cathmar wore them. Early on, after he’d changed but before Muire bought a Rekindling, he’d flaunted his difference, walked barefoot in snow and made a spectacle of himself. But now that she was gone it seemed right to obscure himself.

He was not, after all, so special.

Cathmar tugged the door closed and locked it, pocketing the key with concealed pride. In his turn, Cahey concealed amusement. Cathmar was thirteen, and Cahey had only just turned the key-ring over to him. A sign of incipient adulthood, which the boy gloried in. That made Cahey’s anticipation of what came next all the more enjoyable.

Cahey tugged a long bundle out of the handcart and handed it to Cathmar as Cathmar came up beside him. Cathmar took it, unquestioning, and weighed it across his palm. His hand stroked blue silk and silver silk cordage, and when he looked up again he frowned. “This is elaborate.”

Something rare, in the simplicity of their lives. “It’s a gift,” Cahey said. “Open it.”

Cathmar slipped the knot with his teeth, unwinding the tasseled cord. He slung it over his shoulder while he worked on the silk, which was fine enough that Cahey could see the gray pale brightness of morning twilight through each draped layer. He knew the moment when, the wrappings still half-on, Cathmar knew what the present was, because he glanced up at Cahey through his eyelashes, tilting his head incredulously.

“It was your mother’s,” Cahey said. “Draw it out.”

Now silk fell in indigo coils. Cathmar stood among them, sheath clutched in one hand, the other closed on the wire-wrapped hilt of a sword. He tugged, gently, and the sword slid into his hand with a sound like flicked crystal.

He held it, weighing it on his palm, and Cahey heard him take a deep breath and keep it in. Deep in the obsidian blade, a pale blue spark ignited, raced the length of the fuller, and filled the sword with Light.

That held breath hissed out again. Cathmar asked, “What’s her name?”

“Nathr,” Cahey said. “It means—”

“ ‘Adder.’ ” Cathmar nodded. “Why now?”

“It’s time,” Cahey answered, uncertain how to tell his son that he just knew, with a
swanning
certainty set bone-deep. “She was always meant for you. See? She knows your hand.”

Cathmar stared at the sword. Then, as if he’d been doing it all his life, he slid the blade back into her sheath and hooked the sheath on his belt, where the sword would hang beside his thigh. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some charity done.”

*   *   *

Within its walls, Eiledon hunched on both banks of a wide, slow, mud-colored river. From his vantage point on a hilltop, Cathmar watched a caravan roll up the road toward it, and a flying taxi glittering in the sun as it described an arc over the city. The walls were brave with banners, and the same stiff breeze they floated on blew the river water cascading from the floating island of the University into rainbow arcs, veils like silk scarves in all seven colors. The river Naglfar seemed not to notice the perpendicular bend in its path as it leapt the empty gulf that bisected its broken bed, flowing directly upward hundreds of feet, crossing the University campus, and then plunging down again to wear a rocky cauldron deep into the bedrock under the city. Many—if not all—Eiledain must live within the sound of its thunder, though from this distant vantage Cathmar could hear only a faint rumble and so it seemed dreamlike, unreal.

From this height, Eiledon behind its veils seemed like a city made of patchworks of several other cities. A squat medieval town with close-leaned roofs and walls of stone and timber huddled at the feet of soaring arcologies, their glass and metal towers maintained by the technomancers and engineers still trained at that unearthed University. Stone and brick masonry high-rises and factories lined up martially along the riverfront, and Cathmar could make out the erratic leaning roofs and walls of a shantytown in the shadow of the University.

Though it was yet early, the valley road below was crowded. In addition to the caravan with its drakes and dogs and outriders, there were mule-carts, hovers and horsemen, solar trolleys ticking along at their incremental, inexorable pace. And people on foot, dozens into hundreds, arriving for the winter carnival.

The day was still new when Cathmar and his father arrived amid the crush of people seeking entrance at the gates. The bottleneck ate up a few moments, but the gate guards with their automatic weapons weren’t searching anyone today and Cathoair was a known face. The two of them were passed inside without questions.

The walls were ancient, once crumbling and tumbledown but now patched with construction less than fifty years old. Those walls described the same arc as the shimmering curtain of light—the Defile—that circumscribed the city. Cathmar might have flinched from the green incandescence, but he had passed through it before with his father and knew it would not harm him.

Inside, he spent a few happy moments listening to his bootheels click on the cobblestones of the paved city streets, while beside him his father hauled the handcart, wheels rattling. Cathmar bounced on the balls of his feet and swung his arms.

Finally. Something
different
for a change.

*   *   *

Helios the moreau, black-maned and golden-eyed, met them just inside the Wolf Gate, an irony not wasted on Cahey. They were expected, and approximately four hundred pounds of former Black Silk saw them through the winter carnival crowds jamming the streets without misadventure. The lion topped Cahey by a head, and was easily twice as wide; people just seemed to melt away in front of him. They had no trouble bringing the cart through at all.

“Thank you,” Cahey said.

“Easier when you loom,” Helios answered. “It’s harder to claim they didn’t see you coming. And if they really
don’t
see you coming”—his grin bared chipped yellow canines as thick as Cahey’s fingers—“they’re awfully apologetic.”

The chuckle was a profound bass chuffing, deep enough to make the space inside Cahey’s lungs feel strange.

Inside, Helios guarded them through the Wolf Gate neighborhood as far as the Riverside Market, where Borje the bull met them and admitted them through a makeshift barrier into the carnival grounds. All around the market square the creaking machinery of thrill rides whirred; the voices of candy-sellers and barkers boomed. Cahey pretended serenity, but really it all made him want to put his back to a wall.

Borje was the only moreau Cahey had ever seen bigger than Helios, and as Helios laid his massive, furred fingers against the back of Borje’s bifurcated hoof Cahey wondered that the transformation they had both endured seemed to have wiped out any trace of natural suspicion between predator and prey.

“This it?” Borje asked, while Helios took a step back to make room for Cahey.

“The whole wagon,” Cahey said. He dropped a hand on Cathmar’s shoulder when Cath came up beside him, and felt the young man straighten.

Someone was watching him. Cahey always knew. In this situation, that was no surprise: two big moreaux and a couple of humans standing by a handcart drew attention. But he turned left and right, as if stretching, to see if he could catch a glimpse. No luck.

Borje folded black-bronze arms, hide shining over forearm muscle. “This isn’t the biggest wagon this year.”

Cahey grinned. His hand went up reflexively, to cover the missing teeth, and he forced it back down again. Ridiculous vanity. “Good.”

Ten years before, that had not been the case, but now what passed for Eiledon’s affluent—and even more so, the working poor—turned out with what they could give. Cahey was endlessly surprised by the basic generosity of people, when they were given half a chance and a decent example. He should probably consider himself fortunate that their rottenness, as easily and frequently provoked, never came as a shock.

“Dad—,” Cathmar said, whatever he’d been about to say interrupted as Helios spun around and roared, “Hold it right there!”

Cahey whirled, pushing Cathmar behind him. Cathmar went, but Cahey didn’t expect him to stay there. Maybe it would buy him enough time to deal with the threat while Cathmar was making up his mind—

But there was no threat to deal with. Helios was already finished with it.

It wasn’t that Cahey had forgotten about Black Silk, precisely—what they were, how inhumanly fast and impossibly strong. It was just that it had been a long time since Cahey himself had become something equivalent to those elite among the moreaux. So when he saw that Helios had a black-haired kid about Cathmar’s age pinned against the side of the cart by one twisted arm it took Cahey a moment to lock his surging adrenaline back down, to calm himself and accept that somebody else just as competent had already handled the problem.

Helios’ mane shook forward around his snarling face, the tawny shoulders dark in fragile morning sunlight. Breath steamed in jets from flaring nostrils as the lion leaned over the kid, rumbling.

“Helios,” Cahey said. “Don’t break him.”

“Just putting the fear of me in him,” Helios said, taking a half step back on padded feet. He hauled the kid up, and the kid staggered with him, sprawling feet kicking a tumble of shoes and boxes of biscuits that had fallen out from under the tarp on the handcart.

Helios gave his captive a little rattle—little by Helios’ standards. It lifted the kid off his feet, and he squealed. “You’re stealing from a charity, kid.”

Cahey frowned at the thief’s worn shoes, too-short trousers, ungloved hands. He tilted his head back and looked at Helios. Helios huffed and stared up at Borje.

Borje nodded. He gestured with a hoof and Helios let the boy find his feet again. “You follow us,” Borje said. “You’ll get fed, new shoes. We’ll get you a sweater. You run, you get nothing. Maybe the kitty here”—Helios curled his lip at Borje—“will run after you. They do that, you know.”

The kid’s complexion was too dark to show blanching, but Cahey saw him sway on his feet. Hunger or fear, it didn’t matter. He leaned away from Helios’ grip, staring down at the stones, hiding his face behind a snarl of forelock.

Cahey said, “What’s your name?”

Cathmar touched his father’s elbow. “He’s a thief,” he said, behind his hand. “Are you going to reward that?”

Cahey touched Cathmar’s shoulder and murmured, “I’m going to prevent it. Wait, please.”

Cathmar grimaced, but subsided.

“Young man,” Cahey said—stepping forward, letting a little of the Light show in his eyes—“tell me your name.”

The boy’s eyes lifted. The side of his face was bruised, and so was his free wrist. He licked split lips. When he opened them, Cahey thought at first it would be to curse. But he swallowed, looked down again, and muttered, “Kirwin.”

“Just one name?” In the old days, that would have meant he was lower-caste, not truly considered human. The Technomancer might be gone, but the prejudices lingered.

Silently, the boy nodded.

“Me, too,” Cahey said, folding his arms. “Mine’s Cathoair.”

48 A.R.
Winter

Merry wasn’t on the pier that day: a storm was tossing the harbor, and all but one of Newport’s six fisher-captains were in the little pub that opened its doors on the landward side, presenting a stolid, broad-shouldered bulk to the ocean. Cahey found her hunkered over a bowl of steaming tea that smelled also of whisky.

She smiled when he came into the cramped, dark pub, Cathmar a step behind, and she straightened on her bench. “Come over,” she said. “Sit; I’ll buy you a drink.”

Cahey shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m a very easy drunk,” he said. “Best if we stick to tea.” He pulled out the opposite bench for Cathmar before sliding in himself. The captain signaled the server for them while they got settled.

Merry glanced over at the boy. “Cath, you’ve gotten real big. You must be eating whatever Borje does.” She chuckled when Cath blushed, blood tinting mahogany skin. “You boys aren’t reconsidering taking up sailing, are you? I’ve been thinking that fishing is no life for a middle-aged woman. I might be looking for someone to pilot my boat for me.”

“I stay off the sea,” Cahey said.

Cathmar shook his head quietly. “I’m not much of a sailor.”

Merry shrugged. “You tie a good knot. I’ve seen enough on the nets to know. I could teach you the rest.”

Cahey looked over at his son. Cathmar seemed to be considering it, and shook his head. “I think I can do more good here,” he said. “Or in Eiledon.”

The tea came, and Cahey sipped it. It was weak. “I did come to talk to you about something, though.”

Merry raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”