The little man waved at her and she waved back, then he turned his head over his shoulder and spoke to the mule. “The maretuse,” he said, “has agreed to feed you, Mule.”
The mule opened his mouth. Opened and opened and opened his mouth.
The maretuse struggled to move but he could not.
The little man swelled and changed until heesh was Tungjii male and female in hisser favorite wrinkled black. Ignoring the terrified man, Tungjii walked over to the long window. Heesh opened it and picked up the gardener’s daughter.
“Dragon,” she said.
-Yes, ‘ Tungjii said, “a very hungry dragon. You want to come with me?”
“Uh-huh. Dada too?”
“Not this time. Do you mind, little daughter?”
She looked gravely into hisser eyes, then snuggled closer to himmer. “Uh-uh.”
Tungjfi began walking up the air, grunting and leaning a little forward as if heesh were plodding up a steep flight of stairs. At first the gardener’s daughter was afraid, but Tungjii’s bosom was soft and warm. She relaxed on it and felt safe enough to look over hisser shoulder.
Fire spread fron one edge of the world to the other. “Dragon?”
“The Dragon Sunfire. He is living there now.”
“Oh.”
And to this day Ambijan is a desert where nothing much grows. The few Ambijaks left are wandering herdsmen and raiders who worship a dragon called Sun-fire.
“Dragons too? What a world.” He rose from the coil of rope where he’d been sitting, stretched, worked his shoulders, glanced at the black sea rolling ahead of them. The Godalau was still out there, swimming tirelessly along. “Barbequed peasant. Rather hard on those who disturb the status quo, don’t you think? I’ve known a few emperors who needed a bit of disturbing.”
She hitched a hip on the rail, took hold of a handy shroud. “It’s a story. Probably didn’t happen. Could happen, though. Don’t go by heesh’s looks, Tungjii is dangerous. Always. The one who told me that story, he was a dancer whose company I was traveling with right then; Tungjii was his family patron. That gardener’s daughter, you remember? When she was old enough Tungjii married her into Taga’s family and promised to keep a friendly eye on them. They learned fast not to ask him for help. Heesh always gave it, but sometimes that help felt like five years of plague.” She ran her eyes over Daniel Akamarino, looked puzzled. “Which makes me wonder why he fetched you here. Him or some other god.”
-Why not accident? The god snatched for whatever he could reach.”
“You haven’t met tigermen or ariels or some of the more exotic demons sorcerors can whip into this world with something less than a hiccup or a grunt. And that’s nothing to what a god can do when he, she or it makes up its corporate whatever to act.”
“Don’t tell me it’s him,” Daniel jerked a thumb toward the cramped quarters belowdeck. “Just because our names match?”
“Who knows the minds of gods, if they’ve got minds which I’m not all that sure of, or why they do what they do?” Her hands had long palms, long thumbs, short tapering fingers; they were strong capable hands, seldom still. She ran her fingers along his forearm, feathery touches that stirred through the pale hairs. “Why you?” Her mouth had gone soft, there was a thoughtful shine to her eyes.
He trapped her hand, held it against his arm. “Why not.” Still holding the hand, he moved around so he could sit on the rail beside her, relaxing into the dip and slide of the boat. He slid his hand up her back, enjoying her response to his touch; she leaned into him, doing her version of a contented purr as he moved his fingers through the feathery curls on her neck.
Lio Laux came up on deck, moved into the bow and stood watching the intermittently visible Godalau, then he drifted over to Daniel and Brann. “I thought you were swinging it some. Not, huh?”
“Not. When do we make the Cove?”
“Hour or so before dawn, day after tomorrow.” His ear dangle flashed in the moonlight, brown gleams slid off his polished bald head. His eyes narrowed into invisibility. “Given there’s no trouble?” There was a complex mixture of apprehension and anticipation in his voice.
Brann’s head moved gently in response to the pressure of Daniel’s fingers. “I haven’t a notion, Lio Laux.” Her deep voice was drowsy, detached.-“We have… eyes out… should something show up… we’ll go to work… no point in fussing… until we have to. ‘
Lio Laux pinched his nose, considered her. “Let’s hope.” He walked away, stopped to talk to the blond boy, the one-eyed Phrasi, the Cheonene, the members of his crew still on deck now that the sandbars were behind them, then he went below again.
“This boat’s too crowded,” Daniel murmured. “Unless the hold…”
Brann grimaced. “Wet. Smelly. Rats.”
“Offputting.”
“If you’re older than fourteen.”
“Me, even when I was fourteen, I didn’t turn on to rats.” He stopped talking, moved his mouth along her shoulder and neck; close to her ear, he murmured, “What about putting Danny One in with the rats?” He moved his hands over her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples.
She shivered. “No…”
“Be right at home. Rat to the rats.”
She pulled away from him, strode to the bow. After a minute she ran shaking hands through her hair, swung around. “I can dispense with you a lot easier than him, also with stupid comment.”
Daniel watched her stride across the deck and disappear below. He scratched his chin. “Didn’t handle that too well, did you.” He looked down at himself, thumbed the bulge. “Danny’s blue tonight, ran his mouth too long too wrong.”
The Wounded Moon shone palely on the long narrow Skia Hetaira as she sliced through the foamspitting water of the Notoea Tha, and touched with delicate strokes the naked land north of the boat, a black-violet blotch that gradually gained definition as the northwestering course of the smuggler took her closer and closer to the riddle rock at the tip of the first Vale Finger, rock pierced again and again by wind and water so that it sang day and night, slow sad terrible songs and was only quiet one hour every other month.
Brann sat on the deck, her back against the mast; the melancholy moans coming from the rock suited her mood. Ahzurdan said the air was clotted with ariels, a great gush of angry angel forms passing to and from Silagamatys, carrying news of them to Settsimaksimin, helping him plan… What? Ahzurdan was working with half the information he needed, he didn’t have the name of the talisman Maksim wore, he didn’t know how far Maksim could press Amortis. He had a strained weary look, but he wouldn’t let her feed him energy as she did the children, though she offered it (having energy to spare after prowling the foggy streets of the water quarter after the others went back to the Blue Seamaid); he was in a strange half-angry state she didn’t understand, though she couldn’t miss how deeply he was hurting. He was carrying the full load of defending them and neither the children nor Danny Two were helping the situation with their irrational hates-no not exactly hates, it was more a fundamental incompatiblity as if they and Ahzurclan were flint and steel bound to strike sparks whenever they met. She looked up. The children were flying overhead, elegant albatrosses riding the wind, circling out ahead of the ship, drifting in and out of knots of cloud, cutting through the streams of ariels they couldn’t see. She felt rather like a juggler who’d been foolish enough to accept the challenge of keeping in the air whatever her audience threw at her. Any minute now there might be one thing too many and the whole mess would drop on her head.
She listened to the moaning rock and found the sound so restful she drifted into a doze in spite of the damp chill and the drop and rise of the deck under her.
Some time later, she had no idea how long, Ahzurdan was shaking her, shouting at her. As soon as she was awake, he darted away from her to stand in the bow, gesturing in complex patterns, intoning a trenchant series of meaningless syllables interspersed with polysyllabic words that meant something to him but made no sense in the context