He stopped talking as she stopped the probing and pummeling and began passing her hands over him. Warmth that was both pleasure and pain (the two twisting inextricably in the flow) passed into his feet and churned up through him until it flooded into his brain and turned into pure agony; he dissolved into white fire, then darkness.
He sat sipping at hot tea, dawn red in the window. Pale blond preteens in green-gray trousers and tunics, the changechildren were sitting on the floor, leaning against Brann’s knees, watching him. Brann held a bowl of tea cradled in her hands. “The physical part of it is gone,” she said. “That’s all. You could have done that yourself. No doubt you have.”
“After the third relapse, trying it again didn’t seem worth the cost.”
“I still don’t understand what more you think I can do.”
“Nor I.” He smiled wearily. “In the depths of self-disgust after one too many binges, I returned to the ways of my ancestors and cast the lots. And found you there as my answer. Being with you. Staying with you.” An aborted shapeless gesture with the hand holding the teabowl. “A parasite on your strength.”
“Hmm.” She finished the tea and set the bowl beside her on the bed. “I don’t know the Captains these days. Any ship in port going south that made good time and won’t sink at a sneeze, whose master is a bit more than a lamprey on the hunt?”
“Ju’t Chandro told me you had a fondness for sailing men. Was he casting a net for air?”
“Hmf. Do you love every son of Phras you meet? Come with me to the wharves and tell me who’s who.”
“I may travel with you?”
“For whatever good it does. Besides, all you’ve told me so far is that Maksim has apprentices around to do the scut work and a taste for the occasional orgy. Not much help there.”
“You’ll get everything I know, Brann.”
“Ah well.” A tight half smile. “When I’m not sleeping with the Captain, life on shipboard tends to get tedious.” She examined him, speculation in her eyes.
Ahzurdan felt a quiver in his loins and a shiver of fear along his spine, one of his grandfather’s more lurid tales flowing in full colors through his head. He gulped the rest of his tea; it was cold, but he didn’t notice. That white fluff, it looked like she’d shaved her hair off not too long ago, though why she’d, do that… She wasn’t beautiful, not in any ordinary sense, handsome perhaps, but there was something he couldn’t put into words, a vitality, a sense that she knew who and what she was and rather liked that person. A disturbing woman. A challenge to everything he’d been taught about women. His mother would have hated and feared her. There were knots in his gut as he snatched brief glances at her; what she seemed to be expecting from him was more often than not something he couldn’t provide, he didn’t want to think about that, she made him think, she made him want the smoke again, anything to fill the emptiness inside him. Discipline, don’t forget discipline, ignore what you don’t want to see, you’re a man with a skill that few have the gifts or intelligence or tenacity to acquire, that’s where your worth lies, you’re not a stud hired to service the woman. Ah gods, it’s a good thing you aren’t, you couldn’t earn your pay, no, don’t think about that. I owe you, Maksim, you played in my head and in my body and threw both away when you were tired of them. Maksim, Malcsimin, you don’t know what’s coming at you… He rose. “Time we were starting. I still have to ransom my gear from the House and the tide turns shortly after noon.”
4. ON THE MERCHANTER JIVA MAHRISH (captain and owner Hudah Iffat, quartermaster and steward, his wife Hamla), THREE HOURS OUT OF JADE HALIMM, COAST HOPPING SOUTH AND WEST TO KUKURAL, HER LAST PORT BEFORE SHE TURNED NORTH AGAIN.
SCENE: Brann below, settling into her cabin. Ahzurdan on deck driving off stray ariels, setting wards against another attack on her. Yaril and Jaril watching him, wondering what he’s up to.
Ignoring the noisy confusion at his back where the deck passengers were still getting settled into the eighteen square feet apiece they bought with their fares, Ahzur-dan stood at the stern watching the flags on the Rogan-zhu Fort flutter and sink toward the horizon, frowning at the ariels thick in the wind that agitated those flags and filled the sails. Born of wind, shaped from wind, elongated asexual angel shapes with huge glimmering eyes, the ariels whirled round the ship, dipping toward it, darting away when they came close enough to sense what he was. Tapping nervously at the rail, he consid-ered what to do; as long as Brann stayed below, the ariels were an irritation, no more. He swung around. The changechildren were squatting beside the rail, their strange soulless crystal eyes fixed on him. No matter what Brann said, they didn’t trust him. “One of you,” he said, “go below and tell her to stay where she is for a while.” Neither moved. He sighed. “There are spies in the wind.”
They exchanged a long glance, then the girl got to her feet and drifted away.
Ahzurdan turned to the sea again. For a moment he continued to watch the ariels swirl overhead, then he reached out, caught a handful of air and sunlight and twisted it into a ward that he locked to the ship’s side. He began moving along the rail; every seventh step he fashioned another knot and placed it. He reached the bow, started back along the port rail, careful to keep out of the way of the working sailors.
Halfway along, Jadl stepped in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“Warding.”
“Against what?”
“Against what happened before. This isn’t the place to talk about it. Let me finish.”
The boy stared at him for a long breath, then he stepped aside and let him pass.
Ahzurdan finished setting the wards, then stood leaning on the rail watching the sun glitter off the waves, thinking about the changechildren. He knew what they were and their connection to Brann. His grandfather had been fond of them, in a way, also a little frightened of them. That fear was easy to understand. Earlier, before coming on board he’d tried a minor spell on Jul! and nothing had happened. More disturbing than that, the boy in his mastiff form had whipped through his force shield without even a whimper to show he noticed it. The children must have been fetched from a reality so distant from this and so strange that the powers here (at least those below the level of the highgods) couldn’t touch them. Not directly. Very interesting. Very dangerous. He collected his wandering thoughts, twitched the wards to test them, then went below satisfied he’d done what he could to neutralize anything Settsimaksimin might try.
Port to port they went. Lindu Zohee. Merr Ono. Halonetts. Sunny days, warm nights. A chancy wind but one that kept the ship scudding along the coast. Brann stayed onboard in each of the ports, safe from attack behind the wards but restless. Ahzurdan watched her whenever he could, curious about her, perplexed by nearly everything she did. She liked sailors and made friends with the crew when she could have been talking to the cabin passengers. There was an envoy from the Jade King aboard; he was a fine amateur poet and musician and showed more than a little interest in her. There was a courtesan of the first rank and her retinue. There was a highmerchant who dealt in jades, calligraphy and elegant conversation. Brann produced an embroidered robe for the dinners in the captain’s cabin, a multitude of delicately scribed gold bracelets (Rukha Nagg he thought when she let him examine them, part of a daughter’s dowry), and a heavy gold ear ornament from the Panday Islands (he was intensely curious about where she got that, only a Panday with his own ship could wear such an ornament, there was a three day feast involved, a solemn rite of recognition and presentation; most Panday shipmasters were buried with theirs; a lover perhaps?). Her hair was growing with supernatural speed, but it was still a cloud of feathery white curls that made her eyes huge and intensely green. She looked vital, barbaric and fine; he had difficulty keeping his eyes off her. She played poetry with the Envoy, composing verse couplets in answer to his, she spoke of jade carvers with the merchant, though mostly about ancient Arth Slyan pieces and the techniques of those legendary artisans, she questioned the courtesan Huazo about the dance styles currently popular, brought up the name of a long dead Hina player named Taguiloa and grew excited when Huazo told some charming but obviously apocryphal tales about the man (another lover?) and went into what Ahzurdan considered tedious detail about his influence on her own dancing. The dinners were pleasant and Brann seemed to enjoy them, but she went running to the crew when she had a moment free. He didn’t understand what she saw in them, crude vulgar men with crude vulgar thoughts, and at the same time was jealous of their ease with her. The first few days he had fevered images of belowdecks orgies, but his training did not allow him to distort or reject what was there before his eyes no matter how powerfully theory and emotion acted on his head. Misperceptions weren’t problems of logic or aesthetics to a sorceror, they could kill him and anyone near him. She traded stories with the crew, showed off her skills with rope, needle and palm; her hands were quick and graceful, he watched their dance and deplored what she was doing with them. She was almost a demigod, not some miserable peasant or artisan grubbing for a living.