Kushiel's Avatar

there is none so vast as the ocean. We dined together in the mess-hall, attended by sailors glad to have drawn such light duty for full pay, laughing as our plates and cups slid the length of the built-in trestle with the ship’s swaying, laughing all the harder when Joscelin, with a peculiar look on his face, excused himself to go above-deck.
    “He does not like the sea?” Kaneka asked with a grin.
    “’Tis a long-standing quarrel between them,” I replied.
    At night, the stars stood bright and close overhead, clustered in diamond swarms against the velvety darkness. Despite the chill, I liked to walk the decks, gazing at them, wondering if such beauty had been created to a purpose. Beauty inspires love; so it is said, in Terre d’Ange. Was it done that we might find this world worthy of loving? Mayhap it was so. I was no priestess, no philosopher, to find the answers to the world’s riddles in the stars. I only know that they were beautiful and stirred my soul. I was glad I could still be moved by beauty.
    By the third day, the heat of noon had grown oppressive as the sun beat down on the wooden decks. Like many of the southerners, I took to my cabin during the worst heat of the day; enclosed or no, ’twas better to be in shade than sun, and our cabin had a portal that admitted a breeze.
    I was drowsing on my narrow cot, clad only in a thin linen shift, when the knock came at the door, and I thought it must be Joscelin, unwontedly formal. As always, he had spent a good portion of our first days aft, in the stern of the ship where the clutch and roil of seasickness that gripped his belly would be less troublesome.
    “Yes?” I said, opening the door a crack.
    It was Kaneka. I had guessed wrongly. “You will want to see this,” she said, her expression undecipherable.
    I opened the door wide and stared.
    There, squirming in her grip, was Imriel de la Courcel.

Sixty-Four
    “How?”
    I folded my arms and glared at him, looking as imposing as I could. Imriel’s gaze darted, seeking allies and not finding them. Joscelin, leaning against the door of the cabin, was as grim and stoic as only a seasick Cassiline can be, and Kaneka ... Kaneka was trying not to laugh, but I do not think Imri knew it. He’d not learned that much, not yet.
    “There was a boy,” he said defiantly. “At the inn. An Akkadian boy, one of the servants. He wanted to see Terre d’Ange, where the men look like sons of the gods, and the women, the women look like ... like you. I got him to take my place.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “ How ?”
    “He took my cloak,” Imriel muttered. “In the service alley, before the stairs. And I gave him my dagger for it, the one the Lugal gave me. We traded places, when everyone was watching the trunks being brought down. I made as if to sulk, and told Lord Amaury not to bother me, so he would not notice when we changed.”
    “And how long,” I asked, “do you suppose that endured aboard the ship?”
    “Long enough.” He set his chin. “I told him to pretend he was sick, and wanted only to sleep, and to keep his face turned away from the light.”
    “You arranged this under Lord Amaury’s nose?” I said in patent disbelief.
    “Lord Amaury,” Imriel said stubbornly, “does not speak Akkadian.”
    I looked at Joscelin. “Would you be so good as to fetch the captain?”
    The Menekhetan captain came at once and informed us apologetically in heavily accented Hellene that there was no question of turning back to Tyre. The Lugal of Khebbel-im-Akkad had commissioned this ship to sail directly to Iskandria, and sail it would. Yes, he understood the development was unforeseen, but the ship’s passage was paid, so the boy’s presence was no imposition. Ah, yes, he understood the boy was a personage of some import in his own country, but this was a Menekhetan ship, and relations with Khebbel-im-Akkad were ever delicate. Without direct orders from the Lugal himself, he dared not second-guess his wishes. Surely, we could book passage upon arrival if we wished to return to Tyre, for the journey was not overlong.
    “Well,” I said, defeated, when he had left. “That’s what we’ll have to do, then.”
    Kaneka cleared her throat. “Little one ...”
    “What is it?” I didn’t like her tone.
    “It is not long, no, but... if you delay a month, no more, by the time you reach the south, the rains will come. And then no one may travel.”
    I clutched my hair, feeling kinship with Amaury