She cleared her throat, and went on, “We’re getting very close to the quays along the bank. But I suppose you know that.”
“Thank you, m-mis…” Cashel said. “I mean, thank you, Tilphosa.”
He looked over his shoulder, picking the point where he’d land. There were steps down into the water squarely ahead of them. If there’d ever been bollards, they’d rotted away, but he could haul this little skiff up the stairs easily enough. It wouldn’t hurt the flat bottom to bump a little.
He had known the bank was close, of course. Tilphosa was smart in people ways, not just out of books. Cashel himself was always being surprised by what people did and said, because mostly it didn’t make any sense. The best Cashel could do was learn to deal with surprises.
He braked the skiff by reversing his stroke, then turned them so that they drifted stern first to the stairs on the last of their momentum. Mud, poisonously bright with river algae, was slumping away from the stone. Where the sun had dried it, it turned a sickly gray-green.
“If you’ll just hop—” Cashel said, but Tilphosa had already judged her time. She stepped lightly to the stone tread, then bent to hold the boat’s transom.
Smiling approval, Cashel paddled the skiff broadside and got out himself. Despite his care, water sloshing from beneath the hull soaked Tilphosa’s feet. She didn’t appear to notice.
Cashel pulled the skiff up the few steps and set it on the drying mud of the quay. He’d told the fisherman he’d leave the boat when he was through, but now he didn’t imagine the fellow would ever see it again. That’s what the fisherman had expected, but it still bothered Cashel to reinforce somebody’s bad expectations.
A different thought struck him; he grinned. “Cashel?” Tilphosa said.
“The fellow I got the boat from knew how wide the river was even though I didn’t,” Cashel explained. “I guess when I said I’d leave it for him, he thought I was a fool but not a crook.”
Tilphosa frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. “You see, mistress,” Cashel explained, “I’m used to people thinking I’m dumb. That’s all right.”
“No,” said Tilphosa, “it’s not. But for now let’s see if we can find something to eat.”
“Right,” said Cashel. “Let me…”
He slid his quarterstaff out from under the thwart. Stepping back from the girl, he began to spin it; slowly at first, but building speed as he worked out the kinks rowing had put in his muscles. He whirled the staff in front of him, reversing direction with a skill that only another man familiar with the heavy weapon would appreciate. He brought it over his head, then jumped and let the staff’s inertia carry his body around in a full circle.
“There,” said Cashel breathlessly. “There!”
Tilphosa looked at him with wide eyes, the back of her right hand in her mouth. “Cashel,” she said. “That was amazing!”
“Huh?” he said. He seemed to say that a lot when he was around Tilphosa. “It wasn’t…I mean, I was just loosening up, that’s all. Anyway, let’s get going.”
He really didn’t see what the big deal was…or maybe he did, and it wasn’t flattering.
“Ah, Tilphosa?” he said. “Did you mean that it’s amazing somebody as big as me’s not clumsy?”
“No, Cashel,” the girl said. “I meant you’re as graceful as a God when you move. I thought I was…inventing memories about how you held off the sailors in the temple. But I wasn’t.”
Cashel still didn’t understand, but he had to say it made him feel good. Prince Thalemos was a lucky man; or anyway he would be, when Tilphosa finally reached him.
They walked into the city. The streets were slimy where the mud hadn’t dried yet, but gray-green slabs were cracking off east-facing walls. The stone underneath was pinkish, highly polished, and as hard as granite. The air smelled of slow death, but it wasn’t as pungent as that of salt marshes drying at neap tide.
“The river must have covered all this until just now,” Tilphosa said. She paused to duck through one of the doorways: low, narrow, and wider at the bottom than the top.
“Nothing there,” she said as she returned, still frowning. “Nothing but mud.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything to eat here,” Cashel said, “unless a carp maybe got stranded. We could go down the river a ways, maybe?”
Tilphosa shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked up. “East was a good way before,” she said. She smiled. “At least it was a good enough way, since you were there. I think we ought to keep on as we’ve started.”
Cashel grunted. He was glad to hear her say that, because it was pretty much what he was thinking. He didn’t have a reason to go somewhere in particular, but it seemed to him it was important that they anyway went on.
The streets twisted worse than the ones in the old part of Valles. When they met, it was always in odd numbers: generally three but sometimes as many streets as the fingers on a man’s hand. Cashel tried to keep the sun before him, but he knew he and Tilphosa were doing a lot of backtracking.
They came out into an open courtyard, different from anyplace they’d yet seen. The entrances through the circular wall, instead of being real arches, all had slanting jambs and a big stone across the top. Cashel walked into the clear space and stopped with Tilphosa at his side.
“It doesn’t feel like a ruined city,” Tilphosa said. “The walls are standing, and the edges aren’t even worn.”
“I guess the mud covered it,” Cashel said, feeling uneasy. “It would’ve weathered if it had been above ground, but buried…”
He started forward, picking the archway that seemed to go more east than the others. The streets into the courtyard all kinked, so you couldn’t see down them any distance from inside.
Tilphosa scraped her foot through the soft mud. “The plaza’s got a design carved on it, Cashel,” she said. She waggled her bare toe. “I wonder what they used it for? Whoever built the city, I mean.”
Metra stepped out of the entrance Cashel was walking toward. “The Archai built the city,” the wizard said. “They never occupied it, however. Until now.”
Archai warriors, their forearms raised, entered the courtyard from all the other entrances. Cashel lunged toward Metra, his quarterstaff outstretched like a battering ram.
Tilphosa shouted in fury rather than fear. Archai swarmed over Cashel from both sides and behind, grasping with their middle limbs instead of hacking him apart with their toothed forearms. He strained forward, but too many Archai held him; it was like trying to swim through an avalanche.
Cashel toppled sideways. He felt chitin crunch beneath his weight, but the grip of countless tiny, hard-surfaced fingers held him beyond the ability to do more than wriggle.
The Archai rolled Cashel over. He fought without any plan beyond wanting to resist whatever the creatures did. His struggles didn’t make any difference, except to prove that he wasn’t giving up.
They lashed his wrists and ankles together with fibrous ropes, then tied his wrists to his ankles. When they had him securely bound they stepped away, chirping among themselves. Cashel rolled sideways so that he could see again.
Four Archai held Tilphosa; she hadn’t been tied like Cashel. Metra watched the girl with the grin of a cat over a fish bowl. More Archai than even Garric could have counted stood around the edge of the courtyard and looked down from the surrounding wall.
“You were wondering the purpose of this courtyard, Tilphosa,” the wizard said. “It was a temple; it is a temple, now that you’ve arrived.”
“Lady Tilphosa to you, mistress!” the girl said. Cashel had heard hissing snakes that sounded friendlier.