“Thank you.”
The waiter came with a fresh carafe and filled both cups. “Could they have been drowned?”
Knobby shook his head. “Hard to see how.”
“You talked about tides. And you said there’s an underground lake.”
“No tide is going to come up so fast that you can’t get away from it.”
Chaka felt a chill edging down her back. Her food lay half finished on her plate. “What about the books?” she asked. “What happened to them? The ones on the landing—?”
“We took them back to the Mindar. The captain thought they were probably valuable, so we took everything.”
“Did you happen to notice what they were?”
“I’m not good at reading, Chaka,” he said. “I’m not sure. The captain mentioned some titles. War and Peace was one of them. And Don Somebody-or-Other. Bleak House. Something called Commentaries on the Constitution.” He made a face as if thinking about it required a major effort. “That’s all I can remember. It mean anything to you?”
“A little. What happened to them? After you got back to the Mindar?”
“Vic threw them overboard.”
“Who? Who threw them overboard?”
“Endine. He came out on deck one day and chucked them all into the water. Every last one of them.”
Chaka’s spirits sank. “You’re not serious.”
“After all the trouble we went to. I could have tossed him into the water. But yes, that’s exactly what happened. He brought them out on deck in piles. And he threw them over the side. One by one.”
Chaka stared at him. “You’re sure? You saw this happen yourself?”
“Yes, I’m sure. We all stood there and watched him.”
She listened to people talking around them. Someone’s father was threatening to cut off an inheritance. “He didn’t destroy them all,” Chaka said. “He got back home with a Mark Twain.”
Knobby shrugged. “Well. All I know is he got rid of a lot of them.”
“You said the bodies, all except Shay’s, were found in the rooms? Not in the corridor?”
“Yes. The rooms. They were big rooms. Bigger than this place. And two stories high.”
“What was in them? The rooms?”
“Just books. And some Roadmaker junk. Lot of those gray boxes you find everywhere.”
“Books?” She came alive. “Where are they now?”
“Where are what?”
“The books. The other stuff.”
“Still there, I suppose.”
“You left it?” Chaka couldn’t believe her good fortune.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t have been worth anything to anybody. They were in pretty bad shape.”
“Why?”
“It was damp down there. Wet. Everything was soaked.”
Chaka squeezed her cup until Knobby gently disengaged her hand. “Easy,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“You said before the books were okay,” said Chaka.
“I said the books on the staircase were okay.”
“All right. Thanks, Knobby.” She passed him a gold coin. “We’re going to lease a boat and go bade up there.”
He was careful to keep the coin concealed as he slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t think you’ll be able to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody’ll go. The place is haunted and everybody knows it.”
“Okay. But if I’m able to get a boat, would you show us where this door in the cliff is?”
“I already told you, I won’t go near it.”
“There are two more of those,” she said, looking at his pocket.
“Doesn’t matter. Listen, in case you think I’m just a damned fool, a storm blew up on the way back and we nearly got wrecked. Any kind of bad luck on open water and these boats go down like rocks. Add the currents. And whatever lives in that cliff up there.” He took a long pull of the wine. “Tell you what I will do: I’ll make you a map. Take you right to it.” He nodded. “But I won’t go back. And you might think it over, too, even if you are able to get somebody crazy enough to take you.”
27
Knobby was right. Of the half-dozen captains they were able to locate, only one showed any interest in making the voyage north. This was the commander of the Irika, a listing, battered, foul-smelling cattle hauler. The description, Chaka thought, also fit the captain, an overbearing female with red-lit eyes and crooked teeth. But Quait surprised her by breaking off negotiations after an amicable price had been reached. “That one smelled gold,” he explained later. “She’d have hit us all on the head, taken her fee plus whatever else she could find, and dropped us overboard.”
But they were weary of land travel. If Knobby’s map was accurate, they were still over five hundred miles from their destination. Straight line. Thirty days travel at a minimum. Possibly with the requirement to build another boat at the end of it.
“I’m almost tempted to try our luck with the Irika,” said Flojian. “If they were to prove untrustworthy, we could disarm them easily enough. In fact, it would give us an excuse to seize the boat.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Chaka with sarcasm. “Then we can take it up the coast. Do we even know how to turn on the engine?”
“Yes,” said Flojian. “Actually, I think we do.”
“It’s too complicated,” said Quait. “They will try to jump us. We’d have to keep watch over half a dozen people for a couple of weeks. We need a better idea.”
“I might have one,” said Chaka. “There’s a town about thirty miles northeast. Bennington. I think we should ride out that way.”
“To what purpose?” asked Flojian. “It’s where Orin Claver lives.”
“Claver?” Quait needed a moment to recall where he’d heard the name. “The inventor of the steam engine.” Flojian smiled uneasily. “The rider in the balloon.”
Like Oriskany, Bennington consisted of a cluster of farms surrounding a fortified manor house. But Bennington was not on the frontier, and the continuing battles being waged against marauders by the Judge were a very occasional thing here. Visitors could feel the sense of tranquility that overlay the countryside. There was no sign of patrols along the approach roads, and children played unsupervised in the fields. Pennants fluttered from the stockade walls, and the gates were unguarded. This was open country, about equally divided between forest and cultivated plots.
Claver lived in a cottage on the main road about an hour east of the manor house. “It’s easy to find,” a cart driver told them. “Just look for the obelisk. You can’t miss it.”
It would indeed have been difficult. The obelisk was visible for miles. It soared into the bright afternoon sky, by far the highest structure in Brocket! and its attendant territories. A town had once lived on this site, but it lay buried now beneath low rolling hills, its presence marked only by the monument. There was a plate, carefully preserved, before which they lingered:
WE’LL SEE WHO’S COIN’ T OWN THIS FARM.
Claver’s cottage was one of several occupying nearby hilltops. But his was easy to identify: The fields surrounding it were unworked, and in its rear a wooden frame rose higher than the trees. An enormous bag had been draped across the frame. It was the balloon.
There were several sheds, a barn, and a silo. They dismounted, knocked on the front door, and, receiving no answer, walked around back. The sheds were filled with engines and vats and tubs. Every building had a workbench.
and the floors were often covered with shavings, the walls discolored with gray-brown splotches. At one wooden table, a row of beakers held liquids of various colors.