David Drake - Out of the waters

She didn't sound concerned-but she never sounded concerned.

Corylus leaped past the Ancient, looking back while holding onto the inward-curving stern piece. There was only swelling water, a translucent green that darkened- "Take us up!" he shouted. "Higher, by Hercules!"

The Ancient laughed like a chattering monkey. The sails slammed the air back and downward, thrusting the ship upward and making it heel onto its port side. Corylus grabbed the starboard railing with both hands and kept his grip though his feet skidded out behind him.

The sails flapped again. The ship wasn't gaining height-the port rail barely skimmed the tops of the swells-but they had turned at almost right angles to their previous course. The golden-furred creature continued to laugh.

It was going to let us die without saying a word!

But then, it was already dead. Presumably nothing would change for the Ancient and Coryla if the glass amulet was in the belly of a- The sea exploded upward where the ship would have been if it had continued dawdling along catching flying fish. The head of the monster was ten or a dozen feet long in itself, and its gape was wider yet. The fangs were a foot long, back-slanting and pointed like spears.

The jaws clopped shut on spray and air. If the ship hadn't twisted to the side, they would have crushed the hull.

The monster curled to follow its prey's new course. Its head and body were a tawny bronze, with darker mottlings as though brown paint had been dripped over metal.

The eyes, prominent and well forward in the snout, glittered with what Corylus read as anger. He knew he was projecting his fear onto a beast whose small brain likely had room only for hunger. Hunger was quite enough of a threat.

The ship was rising at last, describing a slow curve which would bring it back on the course which Corylus had left to go fishing. He looked at the magician in the stern. His right hand trembled toward his sword hilt.

The anger flooded out of Corylus; he laughed also. He leaned over the railing to see the monster which had almost devoured them.

Coryla's friend had done what he told it to do. If Corylus stabbed in the dark and cut down the wrong person, would he be angry with his sword? In the future, he would be more careful, but- He turned to the creature and bowed. "Thank you, Master Magician," he said. "By turning the ship instead of just rising as I ordered, you saved us from the danger I put us in by my ignorance."

The Ancient very deliberately touched the tips of his long fingers together, then put his hands on his thighs as before. Corylus didn't know what the gesture meant, but it was clearly an acknowledgment.

Corylus looked down at the giant fish which now was swimming near the surface. It had a fin the whole length of its back, but nothing else marred the serpentine smoothness of the several hundred feet of its body. The ship was drawing ahead, but it was clearly following.

"Our magic drew it from the bottom," said the sprite. "The eel isn't a natural creature, you know. Well, most of what I've seen in this place you brought me to isn't natural, as we know it in the waking world."

Corylus cleared his throat. They were a hundred feet above the water and leveling out. He thought of going higher, but- He smiled grimly.

– -experience had taught him to trust the magician's judgment over his own.

"Will the eel chase us far, mistress?" he said to the sprite. His hands ached from their grip on the railing; he began to spread and clench the fingers, working circulation back into them.

"Until it dies, I suppose," Coryla said, "or we leave its world."

She shrugged. "Or until it catches us and you die, of course."

"Of course," Corylus said. By squinting when he looked back along their course, he could see the eel as a long shadow rippling in the water.

The sun was past zenith. It would go below the horizon in five or six hours.

For now, the ship flew on.

Water trickled down a back corner of Hedia's cell. It wasn't because the walls sweated like those of the cells under the Circus during the winter: this stream was guided by a channel. When it reached the floor, it ran down a channel cast into a tile with a beveled hole in the middle.

A greater flow echoed hollowly in the sewer beneath the cells. Though the floor was probably nearly transparent like the rest of the building, there wasn't enough light below for Hedia to see through it.

She walked to the grating on the corridor side. Two Servitors stood against the far wall, watching her. Each held an orichalc spear; a dagger of the same gleaming metal was thrust beneath a sash of coarse fabric.

"I need food!" she said, not shouting but in a commanding voice. The glass men didn't move any more than she expected them to.

She rattled the grill. It was steel, or at any rate some gray metal. The hinge pins were discolored, but there was no rust despite the damp conditions. The bars were too thick for her to cut through in less than a month even if she'd had a saw.

Which she certainly did not. There was nothing with her in the cell except the garment which the Council of Minoi had given her after their decision. She had taken it off and used the wetted cloth to rub herself clean as soon as she had taken stock of the situation. She didn't need clothing, and she would feel much better to be rid of the filth and dried blood in which she was covered.

"Your masters don't want me to starve to death!" Hedia said. "If you don't bring me food, that's what will happen. What will they do to you then?"

The Servitors were as still as statues. She wasn't sure that they could understand speech anyway-or even hear.

A steel grating of about the size of the cell's floor covered a section of the corridor roof. It stood out as ridged black against the faint blue glow of the crystal in the walls, floors, and the rest of the ceiling. Air rose through it with a low-pitched whistle, drawing cooler air along the corridor.

A human servant shuffled down the corridor, carrying a nearly empty sack made from rope netting. He was a stooped old man with his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.

"Good sir!" Hedia called, pressing herself against the bars. "Come here! I will make it worth your while."

He ignored her as completely as the Servitors had done. Stopping, he rummaged in his bag and brought out a lump the size of two clenched fists. He offered it to a Servitor, who took it in his glass hand.

The human continued onward without ever having looked toward Hedia. The Servitor crossed the corridor and thrust the doughlike lump through the bars. They were set closely, but Hedia could have reached between them.

She didn't bother, since she knew from experience that she couldn't have overpowered a glass man. Even if she had, it wouldn't get her out of this cell.

She grinned. It would be satisfying, though. Throttling anything would feel good right at the moment.

Hedia bit into the lump as she walked to the back of her cell. It reminded her of overcooked octopus: bland, resilient, and tough. She chewed mechanically, wondering what it had been originally.

The cooks of noble households in Carce prided themselves on disguising the ingredients of their dishes, fashioning "roast boar" from mackerel and "rack of lamb" from peacocks' tongues. She doubted whether even the most experienced of them could create something quite so namelessly nasty as this, however.

Because she didn't have a cup, she held her lips to the groove in the wall and sucked the trickle which followed it. It was good water, at least.

She resumed eating. The situation was unpleasant, but the fact that she didn't like the food wasn't close to the top of the list of things she didn't like. If the guards had been human, she might have complained; though without expecting anything to change. Railing at the Servitors was as pointless as screaming at her bronze mirror.