Carus didn’t answer for a moment. Instead he put his fists on his hipbones and stood arms akimbo as he viewed the scene. A broad grin spread across his face. Though his laughter didn’t boom out the way Sharina half expected, she knew it wasn’t far beneath the surface.
Two vessels moving downstream on the push of the current started to converge; their officers’ attention was turned to the disorder inboard. The crowd pointed and began to shout at increasing volume. The starboard trireme heeled as its helmsman leaned into the tiller of his steering oar; bellowed warnings from that ship woke the crew of the second to the danger also. Men in the bows of both vessels used oars as poles to fend off the other hull.
An oar cracked under the misuse, but the ships steadied on their separate courses with no greater damage than that. The crowd’s concern turned to cheers.
“That’s why I’m doing it, Sharina,” Carus said, pitching his voice to carry to her but not beyond. “I’m letting everybody, pikeman and swordsman, soldier and civilian, see that it’s one army and one kingdom.”
He gestured with a sweep of his left arm, fingers straight. “There’s men from Haft and Shengy and Seres aboard these ships,” he said. “They’re going off to deal with a danger that threatens every citizen of the Isles—whether or not they can afford to pay taxes. The people here can see that, and they’ll tell the story to others. We’re rebuilding the kingdom at this moment.”
Carus put his great hand on Sharina’s shoulder, steadying himself against a sudden surge of emotions. “When I was king in my own name, girl,” he said, his voice and arm trembling, “I talked about my army and my kingdom. As the Shepherd knows, I smashed every foe I faced, smashed them and ground their bones into the mud—until the day I died and the kingdom died with me.”
Sharina put her hand flat on the hand of the dead king. She kept her eyes on the harbor so she wouldn’t embarrass him with her concern.
“Garric knows better than that, and I know better than that now,” Carus said. “It’s the army and the kingdom of everybody in the Isles. Kings who remember that don’t have to rule with their fists and their swords. And when they die, it doesn’t mean chaos for all.”
Carus laughed, shakily but still a gusty release of tension. “Mind, girl,” he went on, “this skin is a borrowed suit. I intend to return it to your brother with no worse than a scar or two that he might’ve gotten tripping into the cutlery when he got up from the table. Eh?”
A trumpet blew; the last trireme from the opposite arm of the Arsenal now floated in the harbor, ready to begin boarding. Only The King of the Isles remained under the shed roof on the near side, the great five-banked flagship that Sharina and Tenoctris would board along with Carus.
“But until Garric comes back,” Carus said, letting his voice rise more than he probably realized, “while I’m watching the kingdom for him—”
His hand gripped his sword and drew it in a shimmer of sunlight. The crowd bellowed in delight.
“Until then,” Carus shouted to his immediate companions over the sound of thousands of throats, “by the Shepherd! the kingdom’s enemies will die in the mud as surely as they did in my day!”
Cashel stretched, enjoying the light which dappled the ground beneath the tall bushes. He’d awakened at sunrise, but he’d been tired and Tilphosa was worn down to a nub of the girl he’d helped ashore during the storm a seeming lifetime ago. This grove of giant blueberries had been a good place for them to catch up on their rest.
Tilphosa had never been plump, but it bothered Cashel to see the way the girl’s cheeks had sunk inward in the time he’d known her. Her alert interest in all around her concealed her condition while she was awake, but she looked like a victim wasted by the flux now when her head was pillowed on springy branches covered by a corner of her cloak.
Cashel rose quietly and began shaking fruit from low-hanging branches. He stretched out the skirt of his tunic as a basket. To avoid the noise he didn’t rap the limbs with his staff, but the rustle of leaves woke Tilphosa anyway. She jumped to her feet, her teeth clenched. She was holding the broken sword close to her body ready to stab whatever threat was approaching.
“Oh!” Tilphosa blurted as she lost her balance. She toppled backward, trying to grab a tree for support.
Cashel let the berries spill and lunged to catch her. He caught her all right—when he needed to move, he was a lot faster than people expected—but the jerk he gave her right arm might have hurt as bad as the scrape she’d have gotten on the tree bark.
Tilphosa straightened, and he released her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d been having a dream.”
She smiled wryly, massaging her right elbow with the other hand. Without meeting Cashel’s eyes she continued, “A nightmare, I suppose. About a snake trying to swallow me.”
She looked up at him finally, still forcing a smile. Her left hand caressed the crystal disk on her necklace. “I don’t think it was sent by the Mistress.”
Cashel squatted, thinking he’d pick up the fruit he’d lost when he grabbed for the girl. He had to give it up as a bad job, because most of them had sailed out of the grove when he jumped. He rose and brushed his staff through the tips of the nearest branches. The twigs were heavy with ripe berries; they dropped like a soft hailstorm about Cashel and the girl.
“I haven’t seen any snakes about here,” he said, popping blueberries into his mouth by the handful. Tilphosa was more ladylike, nibbling each berry individually, but she was hungry too. “There aren’t any birds, either, and that’s funny. I’d think these trees’d be thick with daws and magpies, but I don’t hear a single one.”
Tilphosa had put the broken sword—the dagger, you could call it; the blade had snapped into a point of sorts—under her sash, but at Cashel’s comment her fingers toyed with the brass hilt again. “Cashel?” she said. “Do these bushes just grow, or were they planted?”
Cashel eyed the grove carefully. “I’d guess somebody was keeping them up, whether or not they planted them,” he said. “There’s no fruit on the ground except what I knocked down.”
He cleared his throat. Blueberries, even very big ones, don’t form a solid canopy; the ground should’ve been covered in grass. Instead he saw ivy and wildflowers. The soft leaves weren’t being browsed by animals, neither domestic goats nor voles and rabbits.
“I guess we could get on, now,” Cashel said. The sun was halfway to zenith, time and past to be moving; not that there was any clear place to be moving to. “If you’re up to it, I mean?”
Tilphosa smiled broadly around a mouthful of blueberries; juice trickled from a corner of her mouth, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “I’m fine, Cashel,” she said. “I was just dizzy from jumping up the way I did.”
Cashel wasn’t sure that was the truth or, anyway, the whole truth, but if it was what Tilphosa wanted to say, then he wasn’t about to call her a liar. “Walking toward the east has got us here,” he said, “and it’s a better place than some we’ve seen. I guess we should keep on going.”
Tilphosa nodded with determination, her mouth again full of berries. She held the skirt of her outer tunic up awkwardly to carry a further supply. Cashel wondered if the girl—if Lady Tilphosa—had ever used her tunic that way before he demonstrated the method a few moments earlier.
She set off quickly, apparently to show that she was in good shape. Cashel smiled. All it proved was that Tilphosa had a good heart, which he’d known before now. “If you’ll slow down, mistress,” he said, “I’ll be able to keep up with you. I’m used to following sheep, remember.”
“Oh,” Tilphosa said, looking back in concern. She saw his smile and blushed. “Oh. I’m sorry.”