Even supposing anyone survived so long, Cuillioc knew that his crippled armada would be several days at sea. And thus the wicked conundrum: whatever privations the rest would have to endure, those who were strong enough to row must eat and drink to keep up their strength, though they took in more poison in the process. After torturing himself over that question for the better part of an hour, he had finally arrived at this uneasy compromise between conscience and necessity, sending out his armed scavengers to raid the larger houses, to pillage the cookshops and food stalls in the bazaar—to go anywhere that food might be gathered quickly and in sufficient quantities—reasoning that those things the people kept for themselves would be at least more wholesome than the supplies they had sent to the palace.
So now his men went from house to house, forcing a way in, emerging shortly afterward with whatever they could carry off, then loading their plunder onto one of the donkey carts they had commandeered earlier. Otherwise, the streets were silent and empty. The inhabitants had been mysteriously quiet ever since the ship-burning.
He arrived at the docks without incident, walking into a scene of milling confusion. Torchlight burned on the waters of the bay and wherever puddles of sea-spray had formed on the marble piers. The air stank of wood smoke, boiling tar, and burnt rope, but it was beginning to clear.
Squinting in the bright light, the Prince took charge. Before very long, he had managed to organize things so that a steady stream of people and supplies was being loaded aboard the remaining galleys in a more or less orderly fashion. At the same time, he sent out men in rowboats to clear away the wreckage of scorched timbers and other debris lest it foul the oars when it came time to depart.
Yet it was a delicate balance to keep everyone moving, to convince them of the urgency without starting a panic. Perhaps he was aided by the effects of the poison, which made so many of them docile, too dull-witted to ask the sort of questions that would create an uproar.
The eastern sky was glowing like a furnace, turning the waters of the bay to molten copper, before they had finished loading. The rising sun found them still hard at work, none of the ships ready to depart.
During a momentary lull in the activity on the docks, Cuillioc paused to listen, conscious of an increased hustle and bustle in the adjacent streets, a noise that overwhelmed even the clamor of seabirds.
He turned to get a better look, and an extraordinary sight met his eyes: richly dressed merchants mounted on camels; princes and nobles of the city seated in howdahs atop great elephants or riding in gorgeous zebra-drawn litters. Advancing in stately procession, they skirted the wharves, heading for a short stretch of beach following the curve of the bay. Once they reached the beach, they settled down to wait on the sand, with no other purpose, so far as he could see, but to watch the invaders depart.
“They think us a spectacle arranged for their amusement,” hissed a voice behind him, and Maël, the older of Iobhar’s acolyte-servants, moved past, shaking a bony fist at the growing crowd on the beach.
Cuillioc nodded grimly. He had a sudden bloody vision of what would happen if he sent a hundred or so able-bodied men in among the spectators—a thought he entertained for only a moment before letting it go and turning back to his task. Although the provocation was extreme, he was neither vicious enough nor foolish enough to order a massacre.
The morning light, at first so gentle on the skin, had hardened and become crueller by the time the last of the sick and dying were carried aboard the galleys, the oar ports opened, and the oars slipped into place.
Then everyone waited for the Prince to give the final order.
Cuillioc boarded his flagship, followed by the priest and his attendants. It was his misfortune that Iobhar’s galley had been destroyed in the fire, that courtesy demanded he be offered a place on the Prince’s own.
Yet it was likely to be a brief voyage, Cuillioc consoled himself with grim humor, and it hardly seemed possible that Iobhar’s presence could make things any worse than they already were.
He took a last look around him, searching for familiar faces, counting heads, making certain that all the surviving members of his household were present and accounted for, that none of his attendants, sick or well, had been mistakenly left behind. One face was missing.
“Does anyone know if my page came aboard?”
No one did know, and a quick search of the ship failed to locate him. Cuillioc ran a hand through his hair, torn between the danger of any further delay and those same odd impulses that had caused him to take the young thief under his protection in the first place.
“Would you risk the lives of so many, merely to go back for a little gutter-rat your mother’s laws have already condemned?” asked Iobhar. He had previously drawn up the hood of his cowl to protect his white skin from the sun; now he lowered it, leaned closer, and pitched his voice so low that only the Prince could hear him. “He hardly looked capable of lasting the night when I saw him. Yet on the very small chance he has survived this long, his friends in the Citadel can do more to keep him alive than we can.
“Perhaps,” he added carelessly, “they will even choose to do so.”
Aware that the furiádh spoke good sense, Cuillioc reluctantly gave the order to loose the chains and raise the gangplank. In a few moments more, the oars had been raised and the drumbeat began. Slowly, and not at all smoothly, because the rowers were so inexperienced, the oars fell and rose, fell and rose, and one by one the ships slipped away from the quay, their shadows running before them.
Cuillioc now had the leisure to take note of his own condition, to recognize that he himself was far from well. The day was warm—only moments before he had been sweating—but now his teeth were rattling inside his skull and he shivered inside his padded armor. Even when someone produced a lightweight cloak and he gathered it around him, the shivering continued. His world was beginning to fragment, separating into a series of brief, bright moments with blanks in between, and it grew increasingly hard to keep track of consecutive events.
Deciding it was too much effort to go so far as his own cabin, he found a place to sit on the deck, with his back to a water keg. Resting his head against the barrel, he closed his eyes. The rusty-hinge voices of the gulls slowly faded, and he slipped into a quiet, dark place.
A movement of air across his face brought him abruptly back. Stumbling to his feet, he was astonished by how distant and tiny the domed roofs and crazy leaning ziggurats of the city had already become. While he dozed, the flagship and two other galleys had reached the mouth of the bay and were about to cross into the light-drenched waters of the open sea. He had been roused by a strong breeze blowing across the bow from the southwest.
Up on the bridge, the ship’s master shouted an order to raise the sail and ship the oars. At the same time, men on board the two galleys just ahead and directly behind performed the same actions. When the great squares of scarlet silk began to fill with wind, Cuillioc felt heartened in spite of himself.
He inhaled deeply, savoring the brisk salt air. Even the motion of the ship felt good—and why not? Island born and island bred, he had been taught to regard the great ocean-sea encircling the world like a serpent biting its own tail as his second home. In truth, he felt easier out here with the wind and the waves than he had ever felt in his mother’s palace at Apharos.
Perhaps, he thought, I need not die after all. If the air of Mirizandi was pure poison, might not the fresh ocean breezes serve as a powerful medicine? Already he felt stronger.