Once he was aboard, though, he saw that he had greatly underestimated the vessel’s size. There was much more of it below the water line than was visible from dockside. Two parallel corridors ran its length, with a host of small low-ceilinged cabins branching off from them, and a series of spacious cargo holds at front and back. Nortekku and Thalarne were going to share a cabin near the ship’s bow. “This will be a little complicated,” she told him. “Kanibond Graysz knows that I’m the wife of one of the backers of the expedition. I’ve booked only one cabin, and they’ve let me know that they can’t or won’t make another one available. But I don’t dare try to pass you off as Hamiruld.”
“Shall we just say we’re very good friends?” Nortekku asked.
“Don’t joke. I’ve let it be known that we’re brother and sister. When we’re in public, make sure you behave that way.”
“I hate telling lies, Thalarne. You know that.”
“Tell this one. For me.”
“Can we at least be a particularly friendly brother and sister, then?”
“Please, Nortekku.”
“What if anyone passing our cabin at night happens to hear sounds coming out of it that might not be considered appropriate for a brother and sister to be making?”
“Please,” Thalarne said, as irritated as he had ever heard her sound. “You know how badly I wanted you to accompany me on this expedition. But stirring up a scandal won’t achieve anything for anybody. I don’t think anybody’s going to care, but we need to observe the forms, anyway. Is that clear, brother?”
He forced a grin. “Completely, sister.”
Their cabin was ridiculously tiny. The two narrow bunks, one above the other, took up more than half of it. They had one small cabinet for their possessions, and a washbasin. There was scarcely room to turn around in the middle of the floor. The atmosphere in the room was pervaded by the thick, piercing odor of some caulking compound, close to nauseating at first, though Nortekku found himself rapidly getting used to it. A single slitlike opening, not even a hand’s-breadth wide, was their window to the outside world. When he pushed the shutter aside a harsh stream of cold air, salty and acrid and unpleasant, drifted in through it, filling the room with a rank, heavy smell that cut through the other one. The smell of the sea, he thought. Of multitudes of fishes, of seaweed, of scuttling sea-creatures moving about just beyond the hull. He had never smelled anything like it before, insistent, commanding, hostile.
The Bornigrayans, Kanibond Graysz and Siglondan, had the cabin just across the corridor. They would have made a far more plausible brother-sister pair than Nortekku and Thalarne: indeed they might almost have been twins. They both were small and fine-boned, both were white-furred, though not from age, both had small alert close-set eyes, his a sharp yellow, hers blue-green. Their faces were cold and pinched, and when they looked at you out of those small bright eyes it was in what struck Nortekku as a shifty, calculating way, as though they were measuring you for some kind of swindle. He found himself taking an instant irrational dislike to them.
But they were affable enough. They greeted Thalarne warmly and showed no sign of surprise that she had suddenly produced a brother as a traveling companion. Wisely, she introduced him as the architect that he was, rather than as any sort of archaeologist, but explained that he had a deep and abiding interest in Great World history—a hobby of his since childhood, she said and had begged her to be taken along. If they had any misgivings about that, they said nothing about them. They talked mostly about the excitement of what lay ahead, the great discoveries that were certain to be made. Not that Nortekku had an easy time understanding them: the language spoken in Bornigrayal was essentially no more than a dialect of that of the West Coast, but the pronunciation and placing of accents differed in a number of significant ways, words were often slurred, other words were entirely unfamiliar, and at all times the two Bornigrayans spoke so quickly that Nortekku found himself lagging a sentence or two behind. Still, they produced a flask of superb Bornigrayan brandy, of a truly extraordinary smoothness and tang, and the four of them solemnly raised a toast to each other and to the success of the expedition. No one who would share brandy of that quality with people they barely knew could be altogether bad, Nortekku decided.
As the Bornigrayans poured a second round there came the shattering sound of the ship’s horn, three mighty blasts. Then the whole vessel began to quiver and from somewhere far below came the drumbeat pounding of the engines. The journey was beginning.
Within moments Nortekku heard a frightful creaking sound that he realized must be the first movements of the ship’s two great paddlewheels. They went up on deck to watch as the ship pulled out. There was room for perhaps eight people up there, along with a couple of lifeboats, a sputtering oil lamp, a bell hanging in the bow. The planks were stained and unevenly laid. A flimsy-looking rail was all that guarded the deck’s margin.
The day was cold, the sky bleak, a few wisps of snow swirling about. Ominous green lightning was crackling far out at sea. Quickly, but with a troublesome sidewise swaying motion, not quite sickening but distinctly unsettling, the ship moved away from Bornigrayal and on into the gray, unwelcoming ocean. This close to land the water was fairly calm, but dismaying-looking waves were curling along the surface out by the horizon. There would surely be worse to come. The sea is very wide, Nortekku thought, and our ship is so small.
“You look unhappy,” Thalarne murmured at his side.
“I think this is scarier than flying, and flying is scary enough. But if your airwagon falls out of the sky you die right away. I suspect that drowning is slow and hideous.”
“No doubt it is. So let’s try not to drown, all right?”
Gloomily he said, “Wouldn’t one good wave be sufficient to turn this ship upside down?”
She looked entirely unperturbed about that: amused, even, by his fears. By way of dismissing them she invented even worse ones for him, slimy sea-monsters rising from the depths and swarming across the deck, or gigantic ocean-going birds swooping down from on high to carry off unsuspecting passengers, or a sudden whirlpool in the sea that would suck the ship down like a ravening monster. He admired her casual attitude—outwardly casual, at least—toward the perils of the sea, and felt abashed for his own faintheartedness. But he went on feeling miserable all the same, and before long returned to their cabin, pleading chill.
At twilight the eastern sky dimmed swiftly, deep blue streaked with red, then a brooding grayish purple, then black. All sight of land had disappeared. They were alone in a seemingly endless expanse of water.
But as one day slid into the next no sea-monsters turned up, nor whirlpools or other menaces, and though a storm swept over them on the fourth or fifth day out, lifting awesome waves that went crashing across the ship’s bow, the crewmen behaved as though they were unconcerned and nothing untoward occurred. Nortekku felt himself sliding into the rhythm of the voyage. His fears subsided. Despite all the constraints that their brother-sister masquerade entailed, it was delightful to have Thalarne close beside him all the time, delightful to know that night after night he could climb down from his upper berth and find her welcoming arms outstretched to him.
He was discovering, though, that that closeness was not without its drawbacks. In the cramped cabin they got on each other’s nerves all too easily. She had brought a little collection of books, as much as she could gather on short notice about the Great World and Sea-Lords in particular the day she had left for Bornigrayal. During the long hours of the day Nortekku studied them avidly, for what little good that did: they all had the same information, most of it sketchy and speculative. Often, though, Thalarne wanted to consult them too. Somehow whichever book he happened to be reading was the one she needed to look at, right now—or the other way around. Often that led to sharpness between them.