“Not many of you southern lads speak so well,” the captain said. “What are you doing with this pardine?” He turned to the Dancing Mistress. “Begging your pardon, my lady.”
“No pardon required,” she said graciously. “Green was my very apt pupil in Copper Downs.”
The look in his eyes told me I’d just risen considerably in status. “We’re well under way, even with stopping to take you on. So you’ll all be coming north. We call at Lost Port, then Copper Downs, then home to Dun Cranmoor.”
“I can guarantee you triple fare when we land at Copper Downs,” the Dancing Mistress told him.
“Or we’ll work for it now,” I added. “I am an experienced cook, both in palace and aboard ship.”
“What of your father here?”
Father? I wondered for a brief desperate moment, before I understood the man’s assumption. “Chowdry?” I looked at him. He stank with fear sweat. How had I let this happen? The Goddess had her purpose for Chowdry, of course, but it would be a long time yet before I could glimpse Her plan. “We will account for him.”
“Sir,” said Srini. “I am speaking for Green and her companion. If they stand for the Selistani, I would consider him stood for.”
The captain frowned. “You three are on your parole. Srini, if they jump, you’ll meet their fare out of your own pay.”
“Yes, sir,” the purser said.
“Thank you,” I added.
The Dancing Mistress simply bowed her head.
With that, the hearing was ended. We were now aboard Lucidinous as something midway between prisoner and passenger.
We were shown to quarters. Chowdry bunked with the deck idlers with their hammocks slung near the bow. The Dancing Mistress and I were given a small space below, amid a crowd of grumbling servants within a windowless cabin that stank of sweat and old hair.
Copper Downs was my path home to Kalimpura once more. Perhaps my life was to be traced in a circle. At my quiet request, Srini found me supplies from the sail maker-even with a kettle, Lucidinous spread canvas when the winds favored her. During the quiet watches I sewed another, cruder version of the blacks I had worn as Neckbreaker.
As the voyage progressed, the Dancing Mistress and I continued to discuss the politics of the city. I could tell that she suspected Federo of something-old trust breached-but it was just as clear that she wanted me to make my own judgments. Chowdry joined us often enough, but he was sullen and withdrawn, obviously lost in regret over his impulse to follow us up the ladder.
All in all, it was a better voyage than I could have asked for.
I did not leave the ship at Lost Port. Neither did the Dancing Mistress. Captain Barks hadn’t forbidden it, but I saw no point in risking his wrath. Instead we remained unusually at leisure, and talked about cities.
“My people do not raise stone halls,” she told me. “We never have. Whatever god first set monkeys free with fire in their hands and ideas in their heads created city builders. It is humans who do this. That is why you outnumber all the other races of the world combined.”
“In all the plate of the world, do you suppose that is true?”
The Dancing Mistress looked at me sidelong. “Perhaps not a hundred thousand leagues east or west, no. But you could not travel that far in your lifetime.”
I smiled at her. “A fast ship and a good crew.” Far away from Choybalsan, the Bittern Court, and all the ghosts already following me, though I was not yet sixteen summers old.
“Until you reached a desert or a mountain spine your hull could not cross. There you would not speak the language, or know the money. You would wind up begging beside some purple dock amid people who speak with feathers and curse one another with flowers.”
I could imagine worse fates. I’d delivered worse fates. Even now, her words that day sometimes call to my heart, though I’ve long since set myself a different course. Then, I merely said, “I am not made to be a sailor on the seas of fate in any case. The Goddess has sent me, you have called me. Someday I will go back to Kalimpura. I know my life.”
“No one knows their life, Green. Not until it is done and some grandchild marks a line or two upon their grave.”
When landfall at Copper Downs was upon us, I begged a favor of the Dancing Mistress. “Do not yet tell Federo I am returned, please.”
“I am not so certain what is the right thing to do here.”
“Nor am I. So let us start with the simple things. You are going to find or send for funds to pay our passage. Chowdry is going ashore with us. You will need all of our fares.”
The Dancing Mistress frowned thoughtfully. “That might make it easier, if I can speak of him. I will need to send word.”
An idea occurred to me, something between fatal idiocy and clear-eyed brilliance. “I will go. As Neckbreaker. My Petraean is as good as any native’s.”
A strange smile crossed the Dancing Mistress’ face. “It will be a test of your ability to pass.”
I nodded and set to dressing. Sometimes I still missed my belled silk, but I’d tried to remake it so many times that the cloth seemed to exist only as effort, not as a reward.
With my face covered, I climbed back to the deck and stood by the rail. We approached Copper Downs in the watery gray light of a lowering rain.
Even with the weather, I could see much of the city as we edged into the harbor. My memory of the bells proved true-buoys, other ships, warnings ringing from rocks, welcomes sounding from the shore.
All that was missing was the clop of Endurance’s bell. The ox was so far away now, dismissed from my dreams along with everything else from those days once I’d gone back and found the misery in which my papa lived. The sound of the harbor reminded me of how much I’d missed them when Federo had first brought me across the sea almost thirteen years ago.
I had few tears left, but the rain made my cheeks slick all the same.
Copper Downs spread before me. Metal roofs gleamed in the rain. Masts bristled along the docks, though not half what I was used to seeing at the Avenue of Ships in Kalimpura. Many moorings were empty as well. Some of the warehouses had burned and not been rebuilt, though judging from the waterfront bustle, that fighting was long since settled.
Two years settled? I wondered.
The Dancing Mistress found me again as Lucidinous slowed to dead in the water just off the docks.
“Srini gave me a chit of our accountings for the voyage.” She passed me a pair of papers folded together, which I slipped within my blacks. “I have written a note requesting the disbursement.”
Making a new port was one of the busiest times for a purser. That Srini had found any moments to spare for her was good. Well, good and the captain’s orders. “Where do I go?”
“The treasury is in the Ducal Palace-the only place with strong rooms not serviced from the payroll of some trading house or great family.” Concern edged into her voice. “Will that sit well with you?”
I felt a rush of memory. “The palace is just a place like any other.” Untrue, but it was also what I must say.
She blurted her next words. “Find the Spindle Street entrance, and ask there for Citrak or Brine. They will know my hand and sign.”
“What surety will they require from me?”
“My note should be sufficient. If they ask, your name is Breaker.”
Bells rang from the poop. The kettle belowdecks shrieked as Lucidinous crept to her tie-up. The rail was lined with sailors and passengers. Copper Downs might as well have been the vessel’s home port. Longshoremen and dock idlers crowded the quay-crowded in the northern sense, at any rate-while vendors and prostitutes and others of the usual dockside sort waited close behind with their colored rags and bright slips of paper.
Once we were secured to the bollards, a plank went down. Srini and two burly hands stood there to watch who and what came off and on. As I understood it, they would first let the crush of people clear, then release those hands that were to take leave in this port. After that, the dockside cranes would bring out the cargoes. Lucidinous might be on her way by tomorrow.