As the deck pitched beneath her, the girl caught his arm. “What was that?” he shouted through the noise, and barely heard her reply:
“Swerve around one obstacle, I’m sure. Nothing here is ever twice the same.”
“Have you had any wrecks?”
“Some few per century. Most lives are saved.”
“God! You’ll take such risk, year after year, for … ritual?”
“The danger is part of the ritual, Rolf. We are never so one with the world as when—Ai-ah!”
His gaze followed hers aloft, and his heart lurched. Downward came slanting the torpedo shape of a large flyer. Upon its armored flank shone the sunburst of Empire.
“Who is that?” she cried innocently.
“A marine troop. After me. Who else?” He didn’t rasp it loud enough for her to hear. When he wrenched free and ran, she stared in hurt amazement.
He pounded up the ladder to the bridge, where he knew Mea stood by the pilot. She came out to meet him. Grimness bestrode her countenance. She had bitten her cigar across. “Let’s get you below,” she snapped, and shoved at him.
He stumbled before her, among crewfolk who boiled with excitement. The aircraft whined toward the lead end of the line. “Chao yu li!” Mea exclaimed. “We’ve that much luck, at least. They don’t know which vessel is ours.”
“They might know its name,” he replied. “Whoever gave me away—”
“Aye. Here, this way … Hold.” Erannath had emerged from his cabin. “You!” She pointed at the next deckhouse. “Into that door!”
The Ythrian halted, lifted his talons. “Move!” the captain bawled. “Or I’ll have you shot!”
For an instant his crest stood stiff. Then he obeyed. The three of them entered a narrow, throbbing corridor. Mea bowed to Erannath. “I am sorry, honored passenger,” she said. Partly muffled by bulkheads, the air was less thunderous here. “Time lacked for requesting your help courteously. You are most good that you obliged regardless. Please to come.”
She trotted on. Ivar and Erannath followed, the Ythrian rocking clumsily along on his whig-feet while he asked, “What has happened?”
“Impies,” the young man groaned. “We had to get out of sight from above. If either of us got glimpsed, that’d’ve ended this game. Not that I see how it can go on much longer.”
Erannath’s eyes smoldered golden upon him. “What game do you speak of?”
“I’m fugitive from Terrans.”
“And worth the captain’s protection? A-a-a-ah … ”
Mea stopped at an intercom unit, punched a number, spoke rapid-fire for a minute. When she turned back to her companions, she was the barest bit relaxed.
“I raised our radioman in time,” she said. “Likely the enemy will call, asking which of us is Jade Gate. My man is alerting the others in our own language, which surely the Terrans don’t understand. We Riverfolk stick together. Everybody will act stupid, claim they don’t know, garble things as if they had one poor command of Anglic.” Her grin flashed. “To act stupid is one skill of our people.”
“Were I the Terran commander,” Erannath said, “I would thereupon beam to each ship individually, requiring its name. And were I the captain of any, I would not court punishment by lying, in a cause which has not been explained to me.”
Mea barked laughter. “Right. But I suggested Portal of Virtue and Way to Fortune both answer they are Jade Gate, as well as this one. The real names could reasonably translate to the same as ours. They can safely give the Terrans that stab.”
She turned bleak again: “At best, though, we buy short time to smuggle you off, Ivar Frederiksen, and you, Erannath, spy from Ythri. I dare not give you any firearms. That would prove our role, should you get caught.” The man felt the knife he had kept on his belt since he left Windhome. The nonhuman wasn’t wearing his apron, thus had no weapons. The woman continued: “When the marines flit down to us, we’ll admit you were here, but claim we had no idea you were wanted. True enough, for everybody except three of us; and we can behave plenty innocent. We’ll say you must have seen the airboat and fled, we know not where.”
Ivar thought of the starkness that walled them in and pleaded, “Where, for real?”
Mea led them to a companionway and downward. As she hastened, she said across her shoulder: “Some Orcans always climb the Shelf to trade with us after our ceremonies are done. You may meet them at the site, otherwise on their way to it. Or if not, you can probably reach the Tien Hu by yourselves, and get help. I feel sure they will help. Theirs is the seer they’ve told us of.”
“Won’t Impies think of that?” Ivar protested.
“No doubt. Still, I bet it’s one impossible country to ransack.” Mea stopped at a point in another corridor, glanced about, and rapped, “Aye, you may be caught. But you will be caught if you stay aboard. You may drown crossing to shore, or break your neck off one cliff, or thousand other griefs. Well, are you our Firstling or not?”
She flung open a door and ushered them through. The room beyond was a storage space for kayaks, and also held a small crane for their launching. “Get in,” she ordered Ivar. “You should be able to reach the bank. Just work at not capsizing and not hitting anything, and make what shoreward way you can whenever you find one stretch not too rough. Once afoot, send the boat off again. No sense leaving any clue to where you landed. Afterward, rocks and mist should hide you from overhead, if you go carefully … Erannath, you fly across, right above the surface.”
Half terrified and half carried beyond himself, Ivar settled into the frail craft, secured the cover around his waist, gripped the paddle. Riho Mea leaned toward him. He had never before seen tears in her eyes. “All luck sail with you, Firstling,” she said unsteadily, “for all our hopes do.” Her lips touched his.
She opened a hatch in the hull and stood to the controls of the crane. Its motor whirred, its arm descended to lay hold with clamps to rings fore and aft, it lifted Ivar outward and lowered him alongside.
The river boomed and brawled. The world was a cold wet grayness of spray blown backward from the falls. Phantom cliffs showed through. Ivar and Erannath rested among house-sized boulders.
Despite his shoes, the stones along the bank had been cruel to the human. He ached from bruises where he had tripped and slashes where sharp edges had caught him. Weariness filled every bone like a lead casting. The Ythrian, who could flutter above obstacles, was in better shape, though prolonged land travel was always hard on his race.
By some trick of echo in their shelter, talk was possible at less than the top of a voice. “No doubt a trail goes down the Shelf to the seabed,” Erannath said. “We must presume the Terrans are not fools. When they don’t find us aboard any ship, they will suppose us bound for Orcus, and call Nova Roma for a stat of the most detailed geodetic survey map available. They will then cruise above that trail. We must take a roundabout way.”
“That’ll likely be dangerous to me,” Ivar said dully.
“I will help you as best I can,” Erannath promised. Perhaps the set of his feathers added: If God the Hunter hurls you to your death, cry defiance as you fall.