Pyav chuckled. "Is that why you've come? To have my permission to look at the journal of a woman who's been dead almost half a century?" "Well, yes. I-"
"It's all right, my friend." He placed a hand on Besh's shoulder. "You're a good man. To be perfectly honest with you, you've been far more scrupulous about all of this than I would have been. And I admire you for it," he added quickly. "Thanks to you, I believe the council is giving Lici the consideration that is her due. But given all that, I can't imagine you doing anything that would need my approval. In this matter, I trust you more than I do myself."
"Thank you, Eldest."
"Let me say this as your friend, and not as your eldest," he went on, his broad hand still resting on Besh's shoulder. "Learn what you can of the woman, but take care that you don't place too much faith in Lici's willingness to return your consideration. Whatever you do, do for yourself and not for her. I know that we have no right to take her gold or allow others to ransack her home, but the woman is a demon. She has been all her life."
Besh offered no response except to thank the eldest for his concern. But as he walked back home, intending to sleep for a short while, he couldn't help thinking that the eldest had to be wrong. No child was born a demon. And that begged the question: What had happened to turn Lici into one?
Chapter 6
DREAMING MOON WANING
Rois Dungar had been captaining merchant ships for thirty years ow, almost since the day of his Fating, when the white-hairs in the tent at Bohdan's Revel, with their strange pale eyes and their magical stone, had shown him at the wheel of a vessel. He'd been barely more than a boy then, just a few days past sixteen, and still enchanted by the festival, by the Qirsi fire conjurers and the tumblers and musicians. It hadn't occurred to him then to care that his fate was shown to him by a Qirsi, that somehow through their gleanings at the Revel, the white- hairs had made themselves the arbiters of everyone's future. And by the time it did, he no longer cared.
Thirty years. Long ago he'd made enough gold to quit, had that been his desire. He could have bought a piece of pastureland near Rennach up in the Forelands and raised sheep as his father had done, and his father's father before that. But even before white-hair magic touched his life, Rois had heard the call of the sea. He started his life as a captain by running the short trade routes along the northern coast of the Forelands, learning his craft by navigating the waters around the Wethy Crown and along the Sanbiri coastline. Later, he'd begun to sail the Sea of Stars farther south, past the cities of Sanbira and the lofty peaks of the Border Range to the crimson cliffs of the Aelean shoreline and the prosperous port cities in Tordjanne and Qosantia. There weren't many of his kind-captains who carried trade between the Forelands and the Southlands-but those who were willing to brave the long voyages and the stormy waters of the south were rewarded with riches beyond the imaginings of most common merchants.
Some of those who traded between the two lands stuck strictly to the western waters, just as Rois stuck to the east. They traded with the Braedony empire in the north and with the Qirsi clans of the Southlands. None of that for Rois. No white-hair trade if he could help it. The eastern realms of the Southlands were held by the Eandi, and they would remain in Eandi hands. That suited him fine.
There'd been a good deal of trouble with the Qirsi in the Forelands in recent turns. There'd been talk of rebellion and war, of a Weaver, one of those white-hairs with all different sorts of Qirsi magic, who was intent on destroying the Eandi courts. Word now was that the war had been fought and won, that this renegade Weaver was dead. But that didn't change much as far as Rois was concerned. There'd be more where this one came from, and there'd be more trouble. They went together, white-hairs and trouble did, just like east winds and rain.
All of which made somewhat curious the fact that he had agreed to give transport to three Qirsi on this run to Aelea. The short answer he gave to any among his crew with nerve enough to ask was that gold was gold, and these white-hairs were paying plenty for the privilege of sailing on the Fortune Seeker. The truth might have been harder to explain.
Had it been just any three Qirsi, he would have refused their gold and left them at the dock in Rennach, where they first sought passage on his ship. Three grown Qirsi were more trouble than any gold could cover. But these three weren't grown, leastaways not all of them. This was a family. A man, broader and taller than any Qirsi he'd met before, a woman as pretty as her man was formidable, and a babe who couldn't have been more than six or seven turns old.
Even so, he still might have refused. But there was talk trailing these three, rumor that gave Rois pause and that eventually convinced him to take their gold and allow them aboard his ship. Usually he didn't credit whispers of this sort. The rumors of ignorant men were worth about as much as weather predictions from a land-bound fool. But these rumors came from guards at the Rennach port, and they echoed things he'd heard in Eardley and Thorald as well. A tall Qirsi, his shoulder slightly malformed, traveling with a beautiful woman who bore his child; that's how they described him.
As to what this man had done, well, that was a bit more difficult to figure. Some said he'd killed the renegade Weaver with his bare hands. Others said he'd bested him with magic, proving that he was a Weaver as well. Still others claimed that he'd been in league with the renegades himself, but had turned on them at the last, just like Carthach, the Qirsi traitor whose betrayal thwarted the first Qirsi invaders, who had come to the Forelands from the Southlands nine hundred years before. Rois wasn't sure what he believed, but he felt reasonably certain that the man was no traitor. He'd seen his share of liars, cheats, and scoundrels in his time, and all of them had a shifty look to them, something in their face or bearing or manner that made him uneasy. However imposing this Qirsi man might have been, he had an open face, and pale yellow eyes that didn't shy from a direct gaze.
For a time, when he first saw this couple and their child, Rois did think the man a brute, and the worst kind. The woman's face, pretty as it was, bore subtle scars, pale thin traces of a razor's blade or a finely honed dagger. In his day, the merchant had seen men brutalize in the most evil ways the women they professed to love, and he assumed that this white- hair was no different. It didn't take long, however, before he realized his mistake. These two never strayed far from one another, and the man doted on her constantly, attending to her as if intent on never letting a moment of pain or fear intrude upon her happiness. And it was no act. Some loves could be feigned; Rois had seen it done. This was the genuine article.
A story followed the woman as well, one that reached the captain's ears after he had first started forming an opinion of this odd pair. She had once been a servant of the evil Weaver and in betraying him had incurred his wrath. It was he, and not the man she so clearly loved, who had given her those scars, despite the fact that she was sheltered at the time by the king of Eibithar himself. That much Rois could believe, and it began to make some sense, not only of what he saw between these two, but also of why they would seek to leave the Forelands for the South- lands. For while he conducted a good deal of trade in both lands, he rarely carried passengers between them.
In every way then, it was unusual for there to be Qirsi of any kind on the Fortune Seeker. It seemed that Rois carried the gods as familiars on his shoulder, the way some captains carried birds or other creatures they found in their travels. Because had it not been for the Qirsi man standing now in the middle of his ship, Rois, his vessel, and his crew would have been lost hours ago.