David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

And the ship stank. The Bird of the Tide had carried generations of men and cargo. They'd left residues which had decayed into her timbers and still remained as faint, foul ghosts. But Ilna didn't have a delicate sense of smell-few peasants do, not with firewood too dear to waste heating bath water four months of the year-and this stench, though unfamiliar, wasn't a matter of concern.

"Oh, Ilna," Merota said. She was clinging to Ilna's hand like a child much younger than she was. "I do wish I could come with you. Really, I wouldn't get in the way."

"Ah, child," said Chalcus, stroking the girl's hair gently with a hand whose calluses were like sharkskin. "When Mistress Ilna and I finish our business in the Strait, I'll sail you clear around Haft in this fine vessel as a treat. But for now, it's us alone and you with our friend Liane till we return."

"I just wish…," Merota said sadly, but she wasn't arguing. The child had a right to wish for things, but she was already enough of a lady that she didn't whine and embarrass herself trying to change Ilna's mind.

Ilna rarely argued. If the decision was hers to make, she made it; and if not, she accepted the choice someone else made-or fate made, often enough.

"Come aboard and I'll introduce you to the crew, milady," Chalcus said. Now at low tide the deck was more than Ilna's height below the level of the quay, but instead of going down the ladder Chalcus hopped aboard.

He turned and raised his hands. Before Ilna could protest, Merota gave a squeal of delight and leaped into Chalcus' arms.

Frowning as much at what she was doing as what Merota had done, Ilna pinched the sides of her tunic at mid thigh and jumped lightly to the deck. She told herself she was proving to the crew that she wasn't a lady whom they had to coddle, but a part of her mind was afraid she was showing off. Nobody else would think less of her if shedid show off, of course, but she wasn't somebody who needed other people to censure her.

"Mistress Ilna," Chalcus said, "let me introduce the crew to you. Our bosun's Hutena, he was a file commander in the Third Regiment until today."

Hutena bowed. He was short and stocky, nearly bald though probably only in his mid-thirties. His limbs were so hairy that the dragon winding up his right arm from wrist to shoulder seemed to be crawling through thickets.

"Nabarbi, Tellura, and Kulit," Chalcus continued. "They're cousins, Blaise fishermen originally but for this past year they've been deck crew on the triremeStaff of the Shepherd."

The cousins bowed. They were tall men whose weather-beaten complexions had originally been pale. Kulit wore a fluffy blond moustache; the others were clean shaven.

"And maybe you remember Shausga and Ninon from theFlying Fish?" Chalcus said. Ilna did remember them, their faces anyway, from the voyage north on the patrol vessel. Ninon had been the lead oarsman, she was pretty sure.

"Boys," Chalcus said to the crew, "all the cargo's aboard, so we'll be sailing before dawn with the tide. Up to three of you at a time can go ashore if you need to wrap up your affairs-"

"We don't," said Hutena. "We can sail now if you need us to."

Chalcus nodded approvingly. "I shouldn't wonder if a time came on this voyage when we did need to get under weigh in a fingersnap," he said, "but not tonight. I'll be back aboard with my gear in an hour, and Mistress Ilna will follow…?"

He cocked his head toward her with an eyebrow raised.

"I'll come aboard with you," Ilna said. "I have nothing more to bring but a heavy cloak, and I could do without that if I needed to."

She was showing the sailors she was one of them, just as quick an adaptable as they were; or perhaps she was bragging again. Like so many things, it was a matter of how you viewed it.

"Then in an hour, lads," Chalcus said. He lifted Merota to his right shoulder and, holding her there with one hand, climbed the vertical ladder to the dock as the child laughed happily.

Ilna followed with what was for her a warm smile. Chalcus was bragging also, but doing it with a verve that she could never imagine in herself. And it was a good thing to tell a crew of strong, skilled men that their new captain was even stronger andmore skilled.

Over Merota's protests, Chalcus set the girl down on the pavement and sent her a few steps ahead in the company of Mistress Kaline. "So, dear heart…," Chalcus said with a sidelong glance at Ilna. "Do you have any questions before we set off on the tide?"

"I'm surprised at the crew," Ilna said frankly. "I'd expected…"

She paused to search for a word. Chalcus laughed merrily beside her and said, "Cut-throats and pirates, bloody-handed killers with one eye and an evil leer?"

Ilna laughed also, but with a touch of embarrassment. "Well, not that, exactly; but something closer to that sort than to the men there."

Sobering, Chalcus said, "Those are hard men, dear one, men who've given strokes and taken them in their time. But they'll take orders when they've agreed to, and they'll do their duty because it's their duty, not when it suits them. I sailed with pirates when I was a pirate, but now that I serve a prince, I want men with me as sure of their duty as that prince himself is."

He laughed again and put his arm around her waist. As a rule Ilna didn't like that sort of display in public, but at the moment it seemed appropriate.

"We're honest folk doing the kingdom's business, dear one," Chalcus said. "That strikes me as a more wonderful thing than perhaps it does you, but if it means I can sleep nights without worrying about my bosun cutting my throat-it may be that I can get used to it!"

The balconied windows of Sharina's large bedroom overlooked a courtyard with a large cedar tree and stone planters which had been allowed to grow up in weeds. In the center of her suite was a reception room, it opened onto the inner hallway and also to stairs from the courtyard. The maid's cubicle was curtained off from the reception room and had its own door to the hall.

When Sharina first awakened, she thought she was home in Barca's Hamlet and a hungry puppy was whimpering. When her head cleared, she realized she was hearing the maid.

"Beara?" Sharina called, feeling for the sandals she kept at the side of the bed. "Are you all right?"

Her bedroom had a real wooden door instead of a curtain. The lamp in the reception room leaked light around the panel, but it took a moment for Sharina's eyes to focus through the veil of sleep. She opened the door.

The cryolite urn sat on a claw-footed bronze stand between the windows of the reception room, replacing the black-figured Old Kingdom vase which had been there previously. Hanging from the room's ceiling was a triangular lamp whose corners were molded into grotesquely sharp-chinned faces. A wick lay on each extended tongue; normally one provided a night-light after Sharina had gone to bed.

Tonight a lamp flickered within the urn instead, suffusing the stone's gray-on-gray pattern. It lit the wall paintings showing scenes from the Shepherd's wooing of the Lady. Under its illumination the murals became journeys through Hell: bleak, cynical, and inexorable.

The Shepherd leaned on his staff, his face twisted in demonic glee as he contemplated the future. The sheep around him were pustulent and as terrified of the certainty of their death as so many pox-ridden harlots.

In the next painted cartouche, the Lady reclined on a divan in Her garden. The fruits hanging above were surely poisonous; the doves on her fingertips whispered envious gossip about the whole world else; and the Lady's face was a mask of lust so fierce that neither man nor beast could hope to slake it.

The final panel should have been the couple's holy marriage. Sharina was neither prudish nor more of an innocent than any other peasant raised in daily contact with nature. Even so she felt her breath suck in when she saw the scene as lighted through the stone.