Page 167

He glanced starboard again. The damned serpent was pacing him, staring up at him all the while. He looked away from it.

Somehow it reminded him of the tattoo down the boy’s face.

It was just as inescapable. He shouldn’t have done it.

He regretted it, but there was no changing it, and he knew he’d never be forgiven for it, so there was no sense in apologizing.

Not to the boy or his mother. They’d hate him for it to the end of his days.

Never mind that it hadn’t really hurt the boy; it wasn’t as if he’d blinded him or cut off a hand.

It was just a mark. A lot of sailors wore a tattoo of their ship or the ship’s figurehead.

Not on their faces, but it was the same thing.

Still. Keffria was going to throw a fit when she saw it.

Every time he looked at Wintrow, all he could imagine was his wife’s horrified face.

He couldn’t even look forward to going home any more.

No matter how much coin he brought home, all they were going to see was the ship’s tattoo on the boy’s face.

Beside the ship, the serpent’s head lifted out of the water and regarded him knowingly.

Kyle found his angry stride had carried him the length of the ship, up to the foredeck. His son huddled there. This was his heir. This was a boy he had envisioned taking over the helm some day. It was just too damned bad that Malta was a female. She’d have made a much better heir than Wintrow.

A sudden flash of anger jolted through him, clearing his thought.

It was all Wintrow’s fault. He saw that now.

He’d brought the boy on board to keep the ship happy and make her sail right, and he’d only made her bitchy and sullen.

Well, if she wasn’t going to sail well with the boy aboard, then there was no reason he had to put up with the puling whiner.

He took two strides and seized Wintrow by the collar of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.

‘I ought to feed you to the damned serpent!’ he shouted at the startled boy who dangled in his grip.

Wintrow lifted shocked eyes to his father and met his gaze. He said nothing, setting his jaws firmly into silence.

He drew back his hand, and when Wintrow refused to cower, he backhanded his son with all the force he could muster, felt the sharp sting in his own fingers as they cracked across the boy’s tattooed face.

The boy flew backwards, his feet tangling in his clanking fetters, to fall hard on the deck.

He lay where he had fallen, his defiance of his father perfect in his lack of resistance.

‘Damn you, damn you!’ he roared at Wintrow and charged down on the boy.

He intended to heave him over the side and let him sink.

It was not only the perfect solution, it was the only manly thing left to do.

No one would blame him. The boy was an embarrassment, and bad luck besides.

Get rid of the whimpering boy-priest before Wintrow could shame him any more.

Beside the ship, a death-white head reared suddenly from the water, jaws gaping expectantly.

The scarlet maw was shocking, as were the red eyes that glittered so hopefully.

It was big, bigger far than Kyle had thought from his glimpses of it.

It kept pace with Vivacia easily, even as it reared such a great length of itself out of the water. It waited for its meal.

The tangle had been following its provider into what Shreever now recognized as one of its resting places when Maulkin suddenly arced himself in a hard loop and veered away. He drove himself through the Plenty as if chasing prey, yet Shreever saw nothing worthy of pursuit.

‘Follow,’ she trumpeted to the others, and set out after him.

Sessurea was not far behind her. In a few moments she became aware that the rest of the tangle had not complied.

They had remained with the provider, thinking only of their bellies and the pleasures of growing and shedding and growing yet again.

She thrust their betrayal from her mind and redoubled her efforts to overtake Maulkin.

She caught up with him only because he paused abruptly. Everything about his pose suggested fascination. His jaws were wide, gills flared and pumping as he stared.

‘What is it?’ she demanded, and then caught the tiniest flavour in the water. Shreever could not decide what it was she tasted, only that the sensation was a welcome and a fulfilment of a promise. She saw Sessurea join them, marked the widening of his eyes as he too was seized by the taste.

‘What is it?’ he echoed her earlier question.

‘It is She Who Remembers,’ Maulkin said in reverent awe.

‘Come. We must seek her.’ He did not seem to notice that of all his tangle, only two of his followers had joined him.

He had thought only for the hanging scent that threatened to disperse before he could track it to the source.

He drove himself onward with a force and speed that Shreever and Sessurea could not match.

They trailed him desperately, trying to keep sight of his golden false-eyes as they flashed through the murk.

The fragrance grew stronger as they followed him, almost overwhelming their senses.

When they again overtook Maulkin, he was hanging at the respectful distance from a provider who shone silver through the murky Plenty.

Her scent hung thick in the water, sating them with its sweetness.

Hope was a part of that scent, and joy, but thickest was the promise of memories, memories for all to share, knowledge and wisdom for the asking. Yet Maulkin hung back, and did not ask.

‘Something is wrong,’ he bugled quietly.

His eyes were deep and thoughtful. A flickering of colour ran the length of him and then faded.

‘This is not right. She Who Remembers is like to us. So all the holy lore says. I see only the silver-bellied provider. And yet, all my senses tell me that She is near. I do not understand.’

In confused awe they watched the silver provider as she moved languidly before them. She had a single attendant, a heavy white serpent who followed her closely. He hovered at the top of the Plenty, lifting his head out into the Lack.

‘He speaks to her,’ Maulkin blew out the thought softly. ‘He petitions her.’

‘For memories,’ Sessurea filled in. His ruff stood out in a shivering frill of anticipation.

‘No!’ Maulkin was suddenly incredulous, almost angry. ‘For food! He petitions only that she should bestow food upon him, food that she finds undesirable.’

His tail lashed the atmosphere so suddenly and savagely that it thickened with muddy particles.

‘This is not right!’ he trumpeted. ‘This is a lure and a cheat! Her fragrance is that of She Who Remembers, and yet she is not of our kind. And that one speaks to her, and yet not to her, for she does not answer, and it was promised, forever promised, that she would always answer one who petitioned her. It is not right!’

There was great pain in the depth of his fury. His mane stood out wide, welling toxins in a choking cloud. Shreever wove her head aside from it. ‘Maulkin,’ she besought quietly. ‘Maulkin, what must we do?’

‘I do not know,’ he replied bitterly. ‘There is nothing of this in holy lore, nothing of this in my tattered memories. I do not know. For myself, I shall follow her, simply to try to understand.’ He bugled lower.

‘If you choose to return to the rest of the tangle, I will not fault you. Perhaps I have led you awry. Perhaps all my memories have been a deception of my own poisons.’ His mane went suddenly limp with disappointment.

He did not even look to see if they followed him as he trailed after the silver provider and her white escort.

‘Kyle! Let him go!’ Vivacia shrieked the words at him, but there was no command in them, only fear. She leaned wildly to swat at the white serpent. ‘Go away, you foul thing! Get away from me! You shall not have him, you shall never have him!’

Her motion set the entire ship to rocking.

She unbalanced her hull, making the entire ship list suddenly and markedly.

She flailed at the serpent, ineffectual slapping motions of her massive wooden arms that rocked the ship wildly.

‘Get away, get away!’ she screamed at it, and then, ‘Wintrow! Kyle!!’

As Kyle dragged Wintrow toward the rail and the expectant serpent, Vivacia threw back her head and shrieked, ‘Gantry! In Sa’s name, get up here! GANTRY!’

Throughout the ship, other voices rose in a babel of confusion.

Crew members shouted to one another, demanding to know what was going on, while in the holds slaves screamed wordlessly, terrified of anything, fire, shipwreck or storm, that might come upon them while they were chained down in the dark below the waterline.

The fear and misery in the ship was suddenly palpable, a thick miasma that smelt of human waste and sweat and left a coppery taste in Kyle’s mouth and a greasy sheen of hopelessness on his skin.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Kyle heard himself shouting hoarsely, but was unsure of whom he ordered. He gripped Wintrow by the front of his tattered robe. He shook the unresisting boy, yet it was not the boy he battled.

Gantry was suddenly on the deck, barefoot and shirtless, the pale confusion of interrupted sleep in his face.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, and then at sight of the serpent head that reared up near deck-high, he cried out wordlessly.

In as close to panic as Kyle had ever seen the man, he snatched up a polishing stone from the deck.

Two-handed he gripped it, and then he reared back and threw it at the serpent with such force that Kyle heard the cracking of his muscles.

The serpent evaded it lazily with a gentle sway of its neck, and then slowly sank back down out of sight beneath the water.

It was visible only as an unevenness in the pattern of the waves.