Lal says that I was indeed draped over a log when she fished me out, holding on so tightly that I went round and round with the log as it spun and rolled over in the water. I know nothing of this. I came to myself a second time sprawled face down across the deck of Lal’s toy boat, coughing and puking, while she went on hauling on the lines, at the same time drumming briskly on my back with both feet to make me vomit some more. That much I remember. Lal’s feet are small but memorable, especially the heels.
When I could speak, I said, “This is his boat.” It didn’t deserve an answer, and it didn’t get one. I sat up very slowly, dizzy and shivering, wiping my mouth. Even by moonlight, with only one eye working properly, I saw the way she was sitting, the way she held her body, the cold pallor under the black skin. I asked, “How badly are you hurt?”
“Rib,” she said softly, indicating her left side. “Maybe two.” I could hardly hear her above the noise of the river. The coolly invulnerable Sailor Lal had vanished completely—now that I was safely aboard, she was at last permitting herself her own pain. Her wide eyes had stopped seeing me; in another moment she would surely collapse where she sat, leaving this unlikely craft to the equally dubious charge of Captain Soukyan, who had just recently gone down with his own ship. I took gentle hold of her shoulders and leaned close, asking, “How do you stop this thing? Make it go to land, I mean.”
I had to repeat the question several times before she shook her head violently, as though to clear it, and put my left hand hard on the tiller. “Push,” she whispered; then pressed the lines controlling the little sail into my right hand, managed to mouth the word “Pull,” and sagged into me, so completely unconscious that her dead weight almost took us both into the water. I caught hold of the mast to hold us back.
Even in the river darkness, her lips were blue. Her heartbeat was too quick, her breathing too slow and torn; though I rejoiced, as much as I had time for it, to hear no sound suggesting a punctured lung. I braced her against the base of the mast as well as I could, while the damnable boat chased its tail and the thing whose name I always forget—the boom it is, and well-named—kept swinging across, trying to kill me, because I could not attend to Lal and do all that pushing and pulling as well. I hate boats. I know somewhat more about them today than I did that night, and I hate them exactly that much more.
Once I was able to sit down to sailing, however, it became plain that Lal had given me the shortest possible course of lessons in making one of the things go where you want it to go. You shove the tiller over one way— hard left, in my case, so that the boat veered toward the right bank of the river—and then you pull the lines in the other direction, which should make the sail fill and the boat move properly forward. Of course, if you do not have a strong wind behind you, and don’t know how to make the best of what wind you have—both being true for me—then the sail flaps and sulks, while the boom thing comes around and breaks your head. Nevertheless, I pushed and jiggled and coaxed and cursed and ducked, and the boat wandered diffidently toward the bank, eventually stopping when it wedged its pointed prow into a tangle of overhanging tree roots. I tied it there and carried Lal ashore.
She never stirred as I undressed her to learn the extent of her injuries. I could feel the broken rib immediately— only one, thank the gods—but she appeared to be hurt nowhere else. I knew better, of course, but the strange and terrifying thing was that there were almost no marks on her body; nor on mine, for that matter. All her right side was hot to my hand, and when I touched her she twitched away and moaned, but did not wake.
Our provisions were not on the boat. I am fairly adept with herbs and simples, but not at night in a strange country. There was a spare sail tucked away in a compartment under the prow. I cut part of it into strips and set and bandaged her rib as well as I could. Then I forced some water between her lips, took off my own soaked clothes, and lay down beside her, drawing the remainder of the sail over us both. I held her all night to keep her warm, and myself as well. I had not expected to sleep, but I did, and deeply, nor did I dream at all.
Lal had hardly moved when I woke. Her breathing seemed more regular, but her skin was still too cold, and the blue tinge had spread to her face and throat as well. The vision in my left eye was only a little hazed now: one of the blows I never saw must have numbed a nerve. I still ached in many other places, but that would pass. I stood up in the thin, red mountain dawn and took in our situation. In front of me, the Susathi—not white-toothed yet, but not the placid creature of yesterday, either—in all other directions, nothing but stones and pale stubble and a scattering of the joker-trees. Unpromising, certainly, but nothing with a river in it is ever hopeless. I covered Lal with the sail again and limped naked down to the water to see about breakfast.
Fish in these mountain rivers generally stay well away from the shores, because of prowling sheknath. The way to call them in is to snap your fingers underwater—if you do it right, using the second joint, not the first, for some reason the vibration is irresistible—and then to tickle their bellies very slowly, until they practically fall asleep in your hand. My sister taught me that trick.
Coaxing up two fish of a proper size took time—time well-spent, as it turned out—but Lal was still asleep when I returned to her. Having lost my own knife, I used her swordcane to clean the fish and cooked them on sticks over a scanty driftwood fire as fragile and transparent as a baby bird. The good smell did not waken Lal for some while, but as I was beginning to grow truly alarmed, she opened her eyes and muttered, “Lost the yellow pepper. Sorry.” She was in too much pain even to sit up, let alone move to the fire. I fed her the little she would take, waking her when she dozed off, and gave her more water afterward. When she was asleep again, I banked the fire, borrowed her swordcane once more and went back to the riverbank. There, a few feet from where the boat was tied up, I had noticed several rocks blotched with smeary patches of a gray lichen that made them look as though they were rotting from the inside. This is called fasska in the north—crin, I think, in the eastern hills—and it grows only in high countries, and never plentifully. When I had scraped off what there was, I could have closed it all easily in one fist, except that you must not ever crush fasska so, else you destroy its virtue. If it smells at all bearable, you’ve already ruined it.
I carried it back to my fire very carefully, wrapped it in my shirt—which was beginning to dry, the sun having finally escaped the mountain peaks—and set about finding something in which to heat water. Our cooking gear was with our packs, wherever they were; in the end I was lucky to find a broken tharakki egg, almost a good half, the size of my cupped hands. I rigged an absurd arrangement of sticks to hold it properly over the fire, then filled it partway with water, which I prayed would boil at this height. Lal woke a couple of times and stared silently at me out of eyes that were too large and shone too dryly.