“Without my nose!” she sobbed.
“It’s a pretty nose. Maybe he’ll let me keep it for a souvenir.”
Teenae spat gruel at him but became infected by the great laugh as he had wanted her to.
“What’d he say to you?” asked the boy who was taller than she. “A mean wind he is. He struts ’round on deck and makes pious sayin’s at us like as if we don’t’ve enough with settin’ and riggin’.”
“He told me the Kaiel are rotten liars and Mnankrei are saints,” she laughed.
Arap glanced over his shoulder furtively. “Us underclan folk get to see the rope-deck. Saints. I’ll tell you. Do my soul a favor for the poor folk of Sorrow. You’re gettin’ off the ship and you c’n warn ’em. Next midnight we’re to shore and burnin’ the granary on the peninsula, so’s we c’n tack ’round and sell ’em wheat. That’s what we’re here for. Keel-haul the Stgal. Old Lace Beard can’t kill a tender meal like you, but he c’n starve a thousand without sheddin’ a tear.”
She started to comment, and he slammed a hand over her mouth. “You want ’em to serve me for soup? Now how ’bout a little kiss ’fore I go?” He put his arm around her.
“Don’t you touch me.”
“What a silly pout for a chained-up girl to say.” He kissed her and it was the kiss of a large boy who had been too long away from home and was hungry to be tender to a woman. Death didn’t seem so close when somebody kissed you like that.
“When is Oelita coming aboard?” asked Teenae.
“It’s all set for after sunup.”
“And when is Tonpa going to chop off my nose?”
“Soon as the woman leaves.”
“Why don’t you take off my manacles?”
“You’re thinkin’ escape,” he grinned.
“I’m thinking about my nose!”
“I’d be skinned alive and rolled in salt, was I to unfetter you.”
“You could always run away with me.”
A pale beam from Scowlmoon reflected off the brig wall, so faintly illuminating her legs that the scarified design of them was invisible, leaving only the shape of legs like those of a young child. He felt his lust rouse. He could do what he wanted and there would be no painful consequences. Slowly his hand touched her thighs, caressing them, moving slowly down to the manacles, knowing that she would not stop him while he was close to doing what she wanted him to do. She remained silent. Excited fingers worked with the locks around her ankles. “I sh’dn’t be doin’ this,” he said hollowly.
“The wrists, too,” she replied.
“No,” he said.
He put his arm around her as gently as he could and with all the care his hand knew, caressed her body. She sent him neither resisting signals nor encouraging signals. The total power of his situation annoyed him. Having that much power was never any fun. He wanted her to like him. Slowly he won her body, while he restlessly suppressed the surf of his own desire. Once, with a barely perceptible motion, she snuggled up to him. Triumph welled in the sailor. It was going to be worthwhile.
“You smell funny,” she said clinically.
Ashamed, he remembered that he hadn’t bathed. He moved away.
“Don’t go away,” she said, alarmed.
But he left in panic and found another part of the ship where he could wash himself in salt water. He scrubbed the important parts of him until they were red. Then he came back with some old blankets so that she could have a pillow and found her struggling with the hand manacles. She was crying.
“You came back,” she said petulantly.
“I got blankets to make you more comfy.” And he put the blankets on the deck and molded her into them and tried to take her, but she kept her legs closed.
“How can I hold you if you don’t take off these damn hand manacles!” There was a thread of anger in her voice.
He hurried to unlock them, and she held him and they maneuvered for a less awkward position and he held her tightly while his lust commanded him because he was afraid that she might run away too soon. “You’re a pretty woman. I c’d go for you. You’re the prettiest I’ve ever had.” He kept talking to her to try to make her feel loved the way women liked, and the more passively she took his thrusts the more talkative he became. For a while he was swallowed up in his own pleasure but after the release came and he found this sweating woman in his arms, lying with her head tilted, her mind somewhere else, he grew affectionately worried. “What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, babe?”
“About my nose,” she said quietly.
She listened carefully as he told her how to escape. She had to wait until he was off watch. Then she had to count the next guard’s pacing. When he had passed the fourth time she was to count to fifty and then throw off her still unlocked shackles and push open the porthole, which Arap would have unlocked, and then jump into the sea and swim ashore.
The time came. She counted to fifty by the thumping of her heart and made for the tiny hole in the side of the ship and slithered out, hanging for a moment by her fingertips before she dropped feet first into the moonlit bay. She had never swum before in water over her head, nor in anything bigger than a river pool. It did not matter. She was ready to fly if she had to.
The salt water closed around her head and she bobbed to the surface, hearing cries from the upper deck. Her plunge had been seen. For one heartbeat she felt what it must have been like for her husbands to grow up in their creche, outwitting the death trials. Terror and hope. Then her o’Tghalie mind took over. This is what she had been bred for. This was a problem. Without even knowing how she did it, her body created a powerful swimming stroke that pulled her through the water at minimal energy cost.
17
The carnivorous nota-aemini will never attack one of its own kind and so that innocent and delicious beetle known as the false nota-aemini has prudently disguised itself to resemble its enemy. Yet life is too restless to allow a solution to exist for long. The narkie, a much smaller prey of the nota-aemini, now has a subspecies which imitates the harmless symbiotes of the false nota-aemini — but in order to survive this new home, where none of the narkie’s natural foodstuffs exist, it has developed a taste for its host’s brains,
GAET RODE THE FIFTH model of the gossamer skrei-wheel through Kaiel-hontokae, attracting stares and a wake of children who followed him for blocks on end with their high excited laughter. The tri-wheel had independent suspension for its two front wheels and nine gears in a compact gearbox plus a rudder wheel larger than on earlier models. The frame had been extended and was capable of carrying freight.
Sometimes Gaet had to lift it over obstacles, but it was well suited to the mountain roads maintained by the Ivieth. It was not the latest model. The best creators of the local og’Sieth clan were already working on a stripped down bi-wheel for rapid personal transport which had no suspension and was evidently capable of maintaining a vertical balance by gyroscopic action similar to the forces that balanced a top. Progress was being delayed by a problem with the new lightweight gears which should have worked well but in practice had an unfortunate tendency to jam and even snap.
The journey through the city reminded him of nothing so much as the shoulder-hitching he’d done on the backs of Ivieth runners as a child, except that on a straight stretch of the main road he could reach a terrifying speed that was faster than any man could run. He had been told by Benjie, the og’Sieth’s local craftsmaster, to give his skrei-wheel a rough workout since much more information about its wear modes was necessary before they dared put the device into production. It wouldn’t do to have fifty of them that all needed the same replacement part every week.