Nigel Findley - Into the Void

"Bad," Sylvie commiserated, echoing the feelings of everyone else in the saloon. "What was wrong with the helm?"

Rianna shook her head, and her blond tresses swung. "I'm not an arcane," she chuckled. "I can run a helm. I can't troubleshoot one. It was just dead."

"And then?" Aelfred prompted again.

"Then I drifted. What else could I do? I was too far from Garden for its gravity to affect me, but I did still have some speed-though not much-and I was heading toward the sun. I figured the best thing-the only thing-was to conserve the air I had. No work, no movement that I could avoid. Just hope that some ship would find me before I suffocated." She bathed everyone at the table with a warm smile. "I slept a lot, but I didn't enjoy the dreams."

"The air was foul aboard your ship," Julia noted. "How long were you adrift?"

"Twenty-three days."

The female officer looked at her uncertainly. "You had food and water for twenty-three days? On a mosquito?"

"Water, yes," Rianna replied. "I don't do cargo runs, so I load the Ghost's cargo space with as much water as I can. You never know, do you? But food, no. I've been on very thin rations, and for the last couple of days nothing at all. So maybe when we're finished here… ?" She patted her stomach.

"We're almost finished," Aelfred said briskly, "then you can get something to eat. Your destination is Toril?"

"Dragon Rock," Rianna corrected him, "if you're going near there…"

"Our destination is Toril," the first mate told her.

She shrugged. "Close enough."

"About your ship," Aelfred pressed on. "We can't take her aboard."

"Tow her?" Rianna suggested.

The first mate shook his head. "Not practical. If the keel is cracked, she'll break up. Plus, we can't land with a ship in tow."

Rianna digested this in silence, eyes lowered. "Ah, well," she sighed eventually, "I suppose I knew the Ghost and I had taken our last voyage together. Cut her loose if you have to."

Sylvie reacted to the woman's sadness. "We'll post a salvage claim on the hull," she said reassuringly. "That way maybe you'll recover something from her."

The newcomer nodded her thanks, then she turned back co Aelfred. "What port on Toril?" she asked.

"Rauthaven. Naturally, we'll give you passage to there."

"Nimbral?" She looked somber for a moment, then brightened. "Well, it could be worse. I should be able to get passage to Dragon Rock from Rauthaven, then maybe another ship, and I'm back in business." She smiled at Aelfred. "If we're through here, maybe we could do something about that meal… ?"

*****

As the Probe drew closer to Toril, Teldin came to realize that Rianna Wyvernsbane's status aboard ship was almost as ambiguous as his, though for quite different reasons. Almost immediately after she'd eaten, Rianna had sought out Aelfred and insisted that he assign her duties in return for passage to Toril. She'd offered to take shifts on the hammership's helm- after all, she was mage enough to run the Ghost- but the Probe already had enough helmsmen. Instead he assigned her to assist Sylvie with plotting the approach to Rauthaven.

The crew knew that Rianna was at least nominally an officer- by virtue of her assignment alone, though she couldn't officially give orders-but they couldn't help but respond to her on a nonprofessional level as well. She was, after all, strikingly beautiful, and it was apparent that she had no close friendship-or any other relationship-with anyone on board. That was just another factor that set her apart from most of the other women on board. There were no rules aboard the Probe that prohibited relationships or even casual liaisons between crew members-as long as they didn't interfere with the smooth running of the ship-and the hammer-ship's female crew members were generally as glad to enjoy the benefits of this freedom as the males.

It was easy to learn just where Rianna was aboard the Probe, Teldin noted with amusement, just look for the largest group of off-duty male crew members. The size of her entourage seemed pretty constant, though its membership varied according to time of day.

Even when Rianna wasn't present, she was often the topic of conversation among the "temporarily unattached" men aboard. Discussions over who did or didn't "have a chance" with her were common, and some of these exchanges sometimes grew a little heated. One, in fact, almost came to blows, forcing Aelfred Silverhorn to exercise his considerable disciplinary powers. The two men involved found themselves standing back-to-back watches for three days.

Rianna did nothing to foster these controversies, but her naturally friendly nature did nothing to discourage them either. She was always ready to talk to anyone nearby, and male members of the crew frequently competed to see who could best elicit her warm and throaty laugh.

Teldin's own situation was different, too. Once it was established that Rianna would stay aboard until the Probe made landfall, he suggested to Aelfred that it might be best if he dropped the charade that he was becoming less and less comfortable maintaining. To his surprise, Aelfred disagreed vehemently. "It's not that I have any reason to distrust her," the first mate explained, "quite the opposite, in fact, but why take the risk? It's safer if you don't show your own face. I'm not ordering you, Teldin," he added, "just asking, as a friend, all right?" Teldin had accepted the big warrior's argument, but wasn't happy with it.

As the days passed, there was no way he could keep his new face hidden. At first, crew members had shown surprise over the "new man" aboard the Probe, but his own voice-which he was still incapable of disguising-quickly gave away his true identity. The crew's reaction to this had surprised him deeply. He'd expected that people would question him, but that simply never happened. Instead, the crew just shrugged and seemed to write it off as another magical eccentricity of the "fighter-mage" in their midst. He learned that Estriss, as captain, had quietly passed the word that no crew member was to tell Rianna about Teldin's true identity, on pain of losing one half of the culprit's pay for the voyage. Considering, cynically, that any crewman would give up that one-half share and more for a better chance at Rianna's favors, Teldin doubted that this edict would have any effect at all.

Teldin made no effort to speak to Rianna and, in fact, went out of his way to avoid meeting her. Even though he found her as attractive as did every other male member of the crew, he knew that talking to her would force him into a position of lying about his identity, and that was something he simply didn't want to be compelled to do.

So, for the first five days after her arrival on board, Teldin saw Rianna Wyvernsbane only at a distance.

There was no way that could continue, of course. On the sixth day after the Probe had encountered the Mosquito, Teldin found himself unable to sleep. As he usually did on occasions such as this, he went to the officers' saloon.

When he opened the door, he saw that Rianna was already there. Unaccountably, she was alone, somehow having managed to shake off her retinue of admirers. She was sprawled, boneless and relaxed, in one chair, with her long legs propped up on another, gazing out the port into the depths of space. He started to withdraw.

Rianna must have sensed his presence somehow, for she turned her green-eyed gaze on him and greeted him with a slow smile. "Well met," she said lazily. "Join me?" She patted another chair.

Teldin hesitated. There was no way he could leave now without being unforgivably rude…. Plus he had to admit that he found the tall blonde very attractive, and the chance to talk to her alone wasn't something to pass up lightly.