Even tied bow and stern to the quay, the Lady of Mercy quivered slightly as Garric stepped out of the cabin where he'd stowed the women's luggage. Reise's inn trembled in similar fashion during the worst of winter's easterly storms. Though harmless, the motion was vaguely disquieting.
The Lady was eighty feet long and probably carried about a hundred tons of cargo in her two holds. The roof of the three-cabin deckhouse was the platform on which the helmsman worked the steering oars. Liane and Sharina had one cabin; Tenoctris and the luggage were in another; and the captain himself would probably sleep in the third. Garric and his friends were the only passengers. He'd thought he and Cashel would share the third cabin, but when Cashel said he'd bunk on deck with the sailors Garric decided he would too. He'd liked the thought of the snug cabin; it reminded him of his garret room in the inn, but he was embarrassed at the thought of having the space to himself when the girls had to share.
"Tenoctris?" he said. "Does everybody do things because it'd look bad if they didn't, even though it's silly?"
The wizard ran her index finger along the pine decking. She looked up at Garric. "Well, in my day people wore clothes in public no matter what the weather was like," she said. "They did in my family's social circle, at least."
Garric laughed. "It is pretty common, isn't it? Anyway, I suppose we'll mostly lay up on little islands at night anyway, instead of running in the dark."
Tenoctris touched the beam again. "I didn't expect the ship to be so old," she said. "I'd say it was older than I am, but of course it's only older than I was a thousand years ago."
"Do you mean it isn't safe?" Garric said in surprise. He'd hired passage on the Lady of Mercy simply because she was leaving for Valles on the evening tide. She'd seemed solid enough...
"Goodness, I don't know anything about ships," Tenoctris said in surprise. "I don't know anything about much of anything outside of what's in books. I just meant..."
She gestured around them. "These timbers are over a hundred years old except where they've been patched. The sea prints itself on the things men put in it. I could feel that in your father's inn, because the main beams there were timbers taken from ships wrecked on your coast."
So quietly that Garric understood the words only because he was looking at the wizard as she spoke, Tenoctris added, "I'd much rather think about the ports this ship has seen in its lifetime than about what we're going to find in Valles. And what may find us there."
The Lady of Mercy's mainmast was squarely in the center of the vessel. Sharina sat on the yard with her bare feet resting on the furled sail of coarse linen dyed the color of rust. From here, fifty feet above the deck, she could see all the way across the city.
Because Erdin was built in the river's floodplain, the buildings weren't more than two stories high, or three at the most. For a building of real height to be stable on this site, it would need impossibly deep pilings.
Barca's Hamlet had no harbor, so only fishing dinghies which could be pulled up on the gravel strand normally landed there. The sea was a presence just beyond the inn's east windows, though. When she was this high, Sharina could smell the familiar salt air rather than the river harbor's own mudflats, stinking with the very richness of the nutrients they contained.
Sharina had left Barca's Hamlet because emissaries of King Valence told her that she was the daughter of Countess Tera, murdered during the riots in Carcosa seventeen years before. Tera had been of the old royal line of Haft, the lineage of Carus, the last king of the united Isles. It was Sharina's destiny, the emissaries said, to take her place in the palace in Valles.
She didn't suppose she'd had a day of complete happiness since then, but it wasn't possible to go back to a world in which the emissaries had never arrived. Besides, Tenoctris said that forces were rising to a crescendo that could tear the Isles apart.
It wasn't merely that evil wizards turned toward Malkar to gain his Throne and temporal dominion. The forces of good were waxing as well, and they could be equally destructive of the present world. The world of men had never been of unmixed evil or good.
Barca's Hamlet couldn't escape the forces which shaped the entire cosmos. Sharina knew it was better for her to take a hand in the struggle instead of letting it sweep her away helplessly.
And if no day since she left home had been of unmixed happiness, then there were nonetheless moments of triumph... and the wholly unexpected awareness that her friend Cashel was a force in the greater pattern and a rock to whose strength Sharina could trust herself.
Cashel stood on the dock now, leaning on his staff as he chewed a blade of grass that he'd plucked from the margin of one of the canals that carried much of the city's heavy traffic. He seemed completely relaxed; unafraid and unconcerned. He'd faced enemies of this world and other worlds as well and had always defeated them.
Cashel turned and tilted his broad-brimmed shepherd's hat so that he could look up at her. He smiled as he waved.
Sharina waved back, feeling a tide of comfort. She couldn't return to the stable life of Barca's Hamlet, but she'd brought stability with her into the chaotic world in which she found herself.
She touched the horn hilt of the unladylike weapon she wore. The Pewle knife and Cashel might not be enough to defeat every danger she faced in the future; but between them, they'd been enough for everything she'd met thus far.
Water Street wandered along the River Erd. Its broad pavement served both for traffic and as open storage for the vast quantities of cargo passing through the port, unloaded from recently docked ships or hauled here from warehouses to fill the holds and decks of outward-bound vessels. Cashel watched the traffic around him, finding in it the same fascination that he felt in the sky as summer clouds built and changed over Barca's Hamlet.
Cashel couldn't guess where all the goods came from or where they were going. For seventeen years the borough had bounded his life. In the fall the Sheep Fair brought drovers and wool merchants to Barca's Hamlet to buy; the Tithe Procession in the spring brought bored priests from Carcosa to collect the due of the Great Gods, the Lady and the Shepherd. That was all.
Cashel's mouth spread slowly into a grin. He didn't know much about this wider world in which he found himself, but that had been true for him even in the borough. Garric and Sharina read and ciphered, their parents had served in great palaces, and Ilna with her weaving was only one of many residents who knew something that was completely beyond Cashel's experience.
But Cashel or-Kenset knew to do the task facing him, whatever that task was. That had been enough in Barca's Hamlet, and he guessed it would be enough for all the rest of his life.
The mate was on his way back to the Lady of Mercy, accompanied by one of the missing crewmen and half-supporting, half-dragging the second, who was still too drunk to walk by himself. The falling tide dragged the vessel hard against her mooring. They'd be under way shortly, Cashel knew.
He didn't look up to the masthead again, but his grin grew broader as he chewed the stalk of marshgrass. Now his task was to keep Sharina safe; and he would do that until the day he died.
"Ilna?" said Liane to the girl beside her on the dock. "Are you sure you won't...?"
Ilna grimaced in irritation. She'd never had much use for people who nattered, even when their intentions were of the best. Perhaps the rich girl was used to folk who changed their minds frequently. There were enough of those in the world, the Lady knew.
"I have my own business to attend," Ilna said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "You and ... and the others, you have things to do. Before you leave, though, I want to..."
What Ilna really wanted to do was apologize. She couldn't say that, not because she was afraid of the words but because Liane wouldn't understand them. Liane was too decent a person to understand how bad other folk really were. She'd argue, and the last thing Ilna needed was that sort of argument.
Liane's eyes flicked to the side. The Lady of Mercy's deck had been above the quay when the five passengers and Ilna arrived. Now the river had fallen on the tide so that the vessel's railing was level with the brick surface. Ilna didn't need to see Garric watching them with ill-concealed concern to know that it was time for Liane to board also.
"This won't take long," Ilna said crisply. "It won't take any time at all. I want you to have this. Wear it if you like, but at any rate try to keep it with you."
She handed Liane the sash she'd finished just as they left Master Latias' compound. It was of naturally colored wool, woven in an open pattern of brown on cream, recalling the gently rolling hills in which Barca's Hamlet nestled. Ilna wore its mate, woven as the same length of fabric and separated only when it left the loom.
"It's lovely!" Liane said. "I'll... I appreciate the token, Ilna. I..."
She looked from the sash to meet Ilna's eyes. "I wish we could be friends," she said. "I hope some day we will be."
"Yes, I'm sure you do," Ilna said with a sniff of amusement. "This has a purpose beyond clenching your tunic, though. If you're ever in need, real need, tear it apart. Just tear the cloth. If you do that I'll know, and I'll offer you such help as I can."
"I..." Liane said. Her fancy school had taught her to conceal surprise, but not quite well enough. "I... What sort of help do you mean, Ilna?"
"That'll have to wait on the event, won't it?" Ilna snapped. She couldn't help it. She'd wanted to be gracious, sweet, the way the rich girl herself was. It wasn't in Ilna to do that, even for these last few minutes....
"Anyway," she added, "you probably won't need it. Good-bye, Liane. I wish you well."
Ilna offered her hand to clasp. Liane stepped close and hugged her. Ilna felt her soul shiver as Liane broke away and hopped onto the Lady of Mercy's deck.
Ilna couldn't pretend that she liked Liane or that she wasn't bitter about losing Garric to the well-educated rich girl. But Ilna could make amends for the unjust hatred she'd borne Liane in the past. That was why she'd woven the paired sashes and given the one to her successful rival. Not that Liane had ever felt they were in competition...
"Fare well!" Ilna called to all the people in the world who mattered to her. She turned quickly and walked away before any of them could see her tears.