Танит Ли - Anackire

Rem schooled himself. His heart disproportionately clamored, but he showed nothing. Kesarh had turned away, taken up his cloak.

“On the ship,” he said, “you’re just another minor noble, voyaging with your guard and your mistress and your favorite bastard baby. The vessel sails with the morning tide.”

When he was gone, the two escort clanking behind him down the stairs, Rem stayed where he was. He stayed there until the hoofs of zeebas rang through the alley.

He looked at Berinda again, wondering how she would react to the departure of her god. But in fact the baby was now her god. She believed in her muddled way it was hers, the life expelled in agony from her womb, cold clay, carried out as she screamed, but brought back warm and breathing. Something of her very own, at last.

Rem sat her in a chair and brought her the mulled wine Kesarh Am Xai had not bothered with. Berinda laughed down at the baby as she sipped the drink. Rem beheld only a crescent of tiny skull above the blanket. It was a white-skinned child, the pale hair like gossamer on its head, all Shansarian, it seemed, unless the eyes were dark.

It was when he told Berinda they were leaving now, as she got up obediently, lifting her bundle of slight possessions from the floor, that the blanket slipped from the child’s face.

Rem’s heart rushed again, again for no proper reason, save that the eyes of the child were not dark at all. They were like smoky golden suns.

The crossing was a matter of nine or ten days, something less, maybe, with seasonal winds rising. Once the Lannic coast came in sight on the left hand, it would be a passage of sixteen to eighteen days to reach the port of Amlan.

The Lily was a merchant-trader, a heavy ship winged by great sails. Her ship lord, Dhol, had served the Prince’s agents on business ventures in the past, and thought no more of this, housing Rem in his own unluxurious cabin. Rem’s three soldiers slept under awning on deck, used as he was himself to rainy makeshifts. In the cabin. Rem allocated the bed to the girl and baby. He himself stretched out on the floor, something Dhol might have been interested by, had he come in to see.

The time of year was not the best for traveling. Dhol, a money-grabber, always got out before the other trading vessels of Istris. On the whole, the weather was kind to them, raining and blowing consistently, but without serious threat. The push of the wind was actually fortuitous. By noon of the ninth day, the shadow of Lan hardened behind the rain.

“The food to your liking?” inquired Dhol, eating in the cabin with them tonight, to celebrate the sight of Lan.

Rem complimented Dhol on the food.

Seated on the bed, the girl played with the baby, talking to it. As Dhol launched into their first dialogue, some inventory of sea weather, Rem’s mind drifted from him and settled by the child.

She was certainly not quite normal. He had begun to wonder if the incestuous union had brought about some flaw. Nothing so simple as, say, deafness, for sure. She heard things. Or blindness—she saw them, too, in a baby’s way of seeing. And she could make noises though he had never heard her cry. Somehow he sensed she had not cried at birth. But what was it then, this strange haunting otherness? Perhaps imagination. He had been around fewer babies than most men, having never got a woman with child.

“And by the gods, and Ashara, the king-mast cracked like a—”

Dhol was interrupted by something outside. Sudden shouting, that had nothing to do with the activities of the ship. Dhol looked at the door.

“What is it?” Rem asked. The girl paid no attention.

“I’ll see. Sighted a big fish, perhaps. They try to spear them, spear and line—can pull a craft to bits—” Dhol got to his feet. “Continue with your food, sir.”

A wave of dizziness, hollowness, went through Rem’s head. There was no warning pain, it was not really like the other times. But suddenly there was another man standing where Dhol stood, and one of the iron candle-wheels, obviously deprived of its marine balance by some malign hand, flung sideways with enormous force and struck him on the temple—Rem came to his feet and the scene cleared. Dhol was thrusting out of the door, and had not noticed.

Almost involuntarily, Rem followed him.

The deck was loud with noise, and its cause was almost instantly apparent. From the northeast a great dark shape was shouldering out of the rainy dusk, a red smear at her prow. Already she was close enough that their own port-side lights picked out two flaming eyes glaring from the murk, and, high above, the Double Moon and Dragon device of Old Zakoris.

“Pirates !”

Dhol was panting with fear.

“Can you outrun her?”

“Never. Never had to. Never seen one come this far to the south—”

Rem stared, as men hurtled everywhere about him, yelling. The black ship was like a phantom, an undead come back from Tjis to take vengeance.

His three soldiers forced a way to him.

“What orders, sir?”

“The ship lord says he can’t outrun her, and that seems likely. The Free Zakorian biremes are cut for racers. This thing wallows at the best. But no doubt he’ll try.”

“You can already feel it.”

This was so. The rowers’ stations had been alerted below. The wooden husk swarmed to a new internal rhythm. They were rowing for their lives, now.

“If that fails, as it probably will—” Rem looked through the rain at the phantom. Over the din the Lily was making, he could distinguish a thin murmur, a glad shouting from the Free Zakorian as she gained. “Since we haven’t,” he said, “sufficient wine to poison them on this occasion,” the three men grinned, “there’s a ship’s boat forward. Cut it loose and jump for it. Your priorities are the child and the girl.”

“Yes, sir.”

One minute later the Zakorian rammed them.

The shudder that took the merchantman and the howling of pleasure and fear, obscured the crash the boat made, hitting the water. One of Rem’s men swung over after it on the piece of a rope, dropping neatly, despite the turbulent rollers, amidships. Rem already had the girl at the side but, clutching the baby, she recoiled. “No!”

The Free Zakorians were boarding them like a tidal sea, pouring down the deck. Already the shrieks of dying men slit the tumult.

“Take the child from her and throw it in the boat,” Rem said to the other two soldiers. The third man in the boat was poised, ready to catch. “Don’t make a mistake. You know whose child it’s supposed to be.”

The second soldier nodded, reached out and gripped the baby. Berinda started to scream.

The other man spun, brought up his sword and sliced with it, and pirate blood rained through the rain. Rem turned in time to stop a knife going through his back. He hit the Zakorian between the eyes and as he reeled drove his own knife into the man’s armpit, where his tattered mail left him bare. Even as he went down, four others sprang over him, trampling on him as he died, to come at Rem. The second soldier twisted his blade from a mass of hair and sinews. Rem half noted the girl had stopped screaming. “The Kidling’s safe in the boat,” the second soldier murmured, almost confidentially, ripping a man’s palm open. “And the girl, too.” He finished speaking as one of the Free Zakorian knives slammed through his throat. As he fell, the other Karmian fell on top of him, a pirate crouching on them both to retrieve his dagger.

Two Zakorians hammered at Rem; the other would rejoin them in a moment. Hideous and boring, the fight had only one predictable outcome.

Rem drew his sword and slashed off a man’s ear. Throwing away his knife into someone’s wrist, he seized the knife-hand of the nearest Zakorian and keeping that pinned, pulled the man against him. Grappled, his Zakorian shield cursed him, rather entertained by the move, flexing to free his armed hand, the other punching again and again across Rem’s spine. Rem threw himself back against the ship’s side, the Free Zakorian going with him, loosening a little all over at the impact. Rem managed to crack the man’s knife from his hand and broke their grip. Now Rem struggled upward, but found after all the Zakorian was tenacious, had him again. He would have to take the man with him. Rem felt the rail, kicked desperately, and then the air gulped beneath him. The Free Zakorian, still scrabbling, lay on him in the air, then rolled away.