Annah gazed admiringly at Impervia. "You have such a gift for teaching."
Impervia almost broke into a smile… but her face went blank again quickly. Impervia hated to seem too human.
We never got to see how Zunctweed responded to ice-water. Impervia trussed him up with a rope Pelinor found-I hoped the rope hadn't been attached to something important-and Myoko lifted the alien over the side by sheer force of will. We could have done the lifting by hand, but we thought Zunctweed would loosen up more if we went beyond the mundane: so Myoko put on an impressive show, furrowing her brow with fierce concentration, spreading her hair into a great intimidating sphere (hip-long tresses stretching to arm's length in all directions), then shakily levitating Zunctweed off the deck, banging him against the rail as he went over the edge, bumping him repeatedly against the hull on the way down… at which point he moaned, "I know it won't help if I beg for mercy; but consider how bad you might feel about this if someday you acquire a conscience."
Myoko stopped his descent. Impervia called down to the hovering alien, "I have a conscience; what I don't have is information. Where did you get the orange helmet."
"Is that all you want to know? And you couldn't ask before this? No, I don't suppose you could. It's more fun tormenting a slave than asking direct questions. What if I answered them willingly? Then you'd have no excuse for entertainment."
Oberon, standing by the rail, gestured impatiently with his pincers. "Shut up and start talking."
"You self-righteous claw-thing," Zunctweed muttered. "Go back to licking your mistress's boots."
"Stop whining," Gretchen said. "Are you going to tell us what we want?"
"Didn't I say I would?"
"No."
"Lift me up and I shall disclose the whole story."
"We'll get better answers," Impervia said, "if you stay where you are. Provided"-she turned to Myoko-"you can hold him?"
"For a little while," Myoko answered in a strained voice. "I'll manage if he speaks quickly." She winked at us all; we'd seen Myoko hold a human in the air for more than five minutes. But she let Zunctweed wobble a bit, just to center his thoughts on cooperation.
"I said I'd tell!" he protested.
And he did.
Dainty Dinghy had spent the winter offshore: far out in the lake where the water didn't freeze. Zunctweed wasn't the only captain to anchor in that neighborhood-he was part of a small contingent, nine boats this year, that spent the cold months afloat rather than going into dry dock or risking the ice in the harbor. With the first snowfall, Dinghy and the other ships offloaded all but a skeleton crew, filled their larders with provisions to last till spring, and sailed out to meet each other at a spot reputed to be the best winter fishing ground on the lake. The boats were lashed together in a cozy floating village, then the crews passed the season amicably: fishing with hook and line, playing endless games of Deuces High, and getting sozzled on whatever rotgut they'd stowed in their holds.
Thus the flotilla passed winter's short days and long nights: taking a holiday from smuggling rum and netting small-mouth bass. Gossip was shared over the card table, including critiques of the Ring of Knives-everyone loved to expound on Warwick Xavier's stupidity-but it was understood such opinions would never be repeated back home. The winter anchorage was a time apart… a season outside the real world, when you could tell your greatest secrets and know they would never come back to haunt you.
There was one secret that never came out amidst all the drunken confessions. Most of the company believed Zunctweed and a bevy of NikNiks were the only aliens among them; but Zunctweed knew differently. To Zunctweed's inhuman eyes, a captain named Josh Jode was clearly not native to Earth. Humans saw Jode as the perfect skipper: a grizzled veteran, sunburned so thoroughly from years on the lake that his skin was parched clay and his hair bleached to dirty white. But Zunctweed's alien retinas perceived far outside the spectrum visible to humans; he saw down into infrared and up to ultraviolet, at which frequencies Josh Jode bore no resemblance to Homo sapiens.
Zunctweed had no words for the IR and UV colors that gleamed from Jode's flesh. He could only say Jode's skin must have evolved on a very different world than Earth: a world where a different atmosphere filtered different wavelengths from the light of a different sun. Zunctweed instantly recognized a fellow extraterrestrial… but he never revealed what he knew, to Jode or to anyone else.
Zunctweed was an infuriating curmudgeon, but he wasn't stupid.
So Jode never realized Zunctweed knew his secret-which is why Zunctweed was still among the living and why the winter anchorage passed uneventfully until five nights earlier.
In the darkest hour before dawn-when the candles had guttered to blackness and the only lamp still burning was close to running dry… when even those who'd lost at cards were too tired to say, "One more hand, just one more"… when the men and women of the winter anchorage had returned to their own ships, and were standing on deck for one last sniff of the wind, telling themselves the thaw had finally come-the only warning was a flurry of turbulence at the center of the flotilla, a roiling and bubbling as if some trapped gas pocket on the lake-bottom had suddenly broken open. It lasted just long enough for heads to turn in its direction; then a figure in orange plastic burst from the surface, riding a plume of rocket smoke pouring from the soles of its boots.
The armored figure shot upward, high over the gathered boats. In night's last blackness, the armor glowed: surrounded by a dim violet radiance, like the aura of a saint in a Renaissance fresco. That aura allowed watchers to follow the figure as it flew above each ship in turn-not that there were many watchers, for those with a sense of self-preservation fled below-decks as fast as they could. On the Dinghy every NikNik vanished, leaving Zunctweed alone on the forecastle; on other vessels, only those too drunk to be afraid remained gawking at the sky.
Josh Jode was one of those who fled out of sight-not that it helped him. The armored figure flew over Jode's ship just as it had with the others… then it dropped down to land, thumping onto Jode's deck and dashing below to where Jode was hiding.
Zunctweed couldn't say what happened in the following minute. Sounds from Jode's ship were muffled: voices speaking an unknown language… some scuffling, but not a major fight… a silence, then thuds, then more silence. All around the anchorage, those watching from their decks exchanged glances-asking each other what was going on. No one spoke; no one made any move to get involved. One drunken fisherman drew a flintlock pistol, then couldn't decide where to point it. The man kept swiveling his head, staring first at Jode's vessel, then abruptly looking back over his shoulder as if something might be sneaking up from behind. Drunk as he was, he might soon have shot himself by accident; but before that could happen, the Mind-Lord burst through the deck of Jode's ship.
Deck planks are solid: thick lumber, nailed down securely and braced with cross-beams. Yet the Spark broke through like a cannonball, smashing up from the captain's cabin into the open, scattering hunks of wood and splinters into the rigging.
He came out headfirst, and the impact should have killed him; armor or not, the jolt of having your cranium slammed through a wooden floor should snap your neck. But the armor was surrounded by that violet glow of unnatural fire. It had flared to blinding intensity as the Mind-Lord crashed into view-so fierce, Zunctweed thought it might have incinerated the wood in its path a millisecond before the Spark Lord hurtled upward. Like a battering ram of flame, it hit so hard and hot that it vaporized a section of decking before the armor actually made contact with the timbers.