'So why not still build ocean ships for those outer reaches?' Naldeth demanded.
'Because no one sees the need.' Kheda leaned against the ship's rail.
Naldeth sighed with exasperation. 'Has it never occurred to any Archipelagan that the barbarians might know something useful?'
'Archipelagahs rarely consider barbarians at all,' Risala pointed out, 'unless we're looking to trade for metals we lack or things like pine resins.'
'Most of our seers say our peoples are like oil and water.' Kheda yielded to a mischievous impulse. 'That we're fated never to mix.'
'You can mix oil and water - or vinegar, come to that,' argued Naldeth. 'If you add spice ground to a really fine powder. You people make sharp sauces that way.'
'Which goes to prove philosophers rarely tell the whole story,' Kheda replied without rancour.
Naldeth waved a slimy hand towards Velindre. 'Everyone thinks she's part-barbarian and no one cares.'
'They think I'm an Archipelagan who happens to have barbarian blood in her - or rather, his - recent ancestry.' Velindre's gaze out beyond the prow didn't waver. 'That's quite a different matter. There are some who will assume that's why I was made zamorin, to cut out that barbarian bloodline. If they bother to think about it all,' she mused. 'Anyone dealing with me is only concerned with who I am in the here and now. My past is my own affair, like my future.'
'I thought the Aldabreshi see time like that star circle of Kheda's,' retorted Naldeth. 'Always chasing its own tail.'
'It's true that the more self-referential aspects of Archipelagan thinking are influenced by Aldabreshin concepts of time,' Velindre said thoughtfully as she fitted the lid back onto the water cask. 'The cyclical nature of the heavenly compass can mean an omen seen a hundred or more years ago can be significant today or a hundred years hence. But in essence Archipelagan time is a constant entirety, a perpetual present.'
'Do barbarians even have records going back a hundred years?' Kheda challenged.
'We do.' Naldeth took up this new discussion with relish. 'But we see those days as left in the dust of the trail behind us. We look to our next step on the path, on the way to something new and better. You've been building triremes in the same way for generations. Every mainland shipwright is searching for some way to improve his craft. Your seers and sages tread the same circles as those who've gone before them, reinterpreting the same stars and omens. Kvery mainland philosopher is looking for new ways of thinking, towards a more rational understanding of the world.'
'A man who looks inward might come to a better understanding of himself, and his place within the world.' Kheda looked over at Velindre. 'Are you mages all climbing this endless ladder towards some greater understanding?'
'Climbing it and treading on each other's fingers in our haste to be first to reach some new nuance of elemental knowledge,' she said caustically.
' I thought you enjoyed sailing the Archipelago because of the lack of questions, Naldeth,' Risala remarked slyly. 'You've said how restful it must be knowing your place in life and having everyone else know it just as clearly.'
It's certainly a welcome relief from the exacting expec-tations of some of our more competitive colleagues,' Velindre agreed.
'You've not stayed in the place you were born to.' The young wizard turned to Risala. 'Shek Kul was your warlord, wasn't he, in a northerly domain?'
'He's a just and powerful warlord who keeps his people in peace and prosperity, as his father did before him.' Risala scraped blood from a gutted fish's backbone. 'They don't have to ask where their next meal is coming from or if some rival warlord's triremes are about to seize their island. They're happy for their lives to follow the same course year after year.'
'But you weren't?' Naldeth persisted.
'The stars marked out a different path for me,' Risala said sunnily. 'We're not all going round in circles.'
'So you became a poet?' Naldeth looked for Risala's nod of confirmation. 'And a spy.'
'Confidential envoy,' Risala corrected him with a grin.
'A new role where you nevertheless trade on the fact that people in the domains you visit will just see the poet and satisfy themselves with all the assumptions that go with such an occupation,' Velindre mused.
'Whose side are you on in this argument?' Kheda wondered.
'I wasn't aware we were taking sides,' the magewoman replied serenely.
Risala looked at Kheda with a smile that melted his heart.
You're the one person mho sees me for who I truly am in all this confusion that has overwhelmed my life. You 're the one person who doesn't burden me with expectation or assumption. But will you ever accept that I cannot believe in omens any more?
'I'll wager Aldabreshin seers and barbarian philosophers share the ability to tire the sun with their talking.' Kheda walked across the deck to pick up the bucket of fish guts beside Risala, bending to kiss the top of her head before dumping the rank contents over the rail. 'Do you really
have no idea how far it is to our destination, Velindre?' Keeping tight hold of the rope tied to the bucket, he let it fall into the sea to rinse itself before he hauled it up again full of clean water.
Risala came to stand beside him and began scrubbing fish blood and slime off her hands. She stopped, mouth open. 'Kheda, look—'
'A bird.' Kheda narrowed his eyes to make out this newcomer more clearly. 'And not another zaise.'
It was considerably smaller than the great white wanderers and more solidly built, akin to the coral gulls of the long-distant Archipelago. Not so closely akin, though. It had dark-brown undersides to its wings and a mottled belly as well as rusty-red legs. As it came closer, squawking on a rising note, Kheda saw a vicious downward hook to the point of its beak. It dived into the residue of fish guts floating on the water.
Velindre came to join them. 'It seems to think it's at least half-fish.'
In the clear seas, they could all see the strange gull folding its wings close to its body to undulate through the waters more like a fish than a bird.
'I don't want to hook that.' Kheda hastily dumped the bucket on the deck and began pulling in his fishing line hand over hand.
'A bad omen?' Naldeth bent to rinse his own hands in the bucket of seawater.
'Did you see that beak?' Kheda retorted. 'Would you like to try getting close enough to beat out its brains and pull the hook out of its gullet?'
He dumped the tangle of line on the deck and looked Up from his task to see Velindre hurrying up the ladder to the stern platform. 'That's no ocean bird,' she called over her shoulder. 'We must be closer to land than I thought.'
Risala grinned at Kheda. 'You can take the foremast.'
'Thank you,' he said with a grimace. 'Stow those fish, Naldeth. We don't want to lose our supper if that bird's a scavenger.'
The boat's calm passage made climbing the ladder-like ratlines to the top of the mast easy enough, though Kheda still did his best not to glance down. The deck seemed all too narrow and all too far below him, surrounded by far too much sea for him to fall into.
Though presumably Velindre would catch me.
He braced himself in the rigging and looked out to the west and to the north. On the far horizon he could see a billowing drift of white cloud.
'What can you see?' Naldeth was pacing the deck in frustration, his rocking, stiff-legged gait setting the bucket of fish swinging alarmingly.
'Clouds caught by high ground,' Risala called out from the aft mast. 'There's land ahead.'
The curious gull or one very like it swooped past Kheda, startling him with its rising cry. Choking back a curse, he pressed himself against the knotted ropes.
'Loose the sails.' Some breath of magic brought Velindre's calm words clearly to his ear amid a rush of newly summoned wind.