On Blue's waters

- 14-
PAJAROCU!

I have been away from this untidy stack of manuscript a long while, and tonight I would like to make up for all of my neglect before I pack it away. In another week the rains should end, and they may end even sooner; I have been questioning the farmers in court, and all say they recall years in which the rainy season ended a week early. It is not completely inconceivable that it will end tonight, although the rain beats against my shutters at this moment with such violence that tiny droplets find their way through, a coarse mist that dribbles from the windowsill and wets the carpet. I have had to move my writing table to escape it.

I must be brief. There really is very little time left for all this.

When the rains end, Hari Mau will fall upon the enemy, a general advance by all our troops after a flanking action by the mercenaries. If he wins, we will win the war-and in fact the war will be effectively over. Hari Mau will be a hero, and I have seen enough of the whorl to know that everyone in Gaon will demand he rule. To give him his due, I do not think that he would kill me. I know him well; and there is nothing sneaking or ungrateful, and certainly nothing murderous, in his character. But I will be murdered by his friends, and everyone will be his friend.

(I remember how it was in Viron when we won.)

His friends will expect him to pardon them, and I would guess that they will not be disappointed. If we win, I will die.

If we lose, I will die equally; and in all probability by torture. In Han people die like that often. Why should the Man show me more mercy than he shows his own citizens? Thus I am doomed whether Hari Mau succeeds or fails. Nor is that all.

Our inhumi do as I ask because I have continued to free others, eighteen so far. When the war ends, I will have no use for them, and they will have no reason to wish me alive. With me dead, their precious secret will be safe. (Krait, who loved me and wanted so desperately for me to love him, can never have imagined that he was dooming me.) I have promised over and over to give them the locations of the remaining interments, which are concealed now by booths and the like. When I have done so, I will be as good as dead.

I have sent Evensong to buy a boat for me, telling her that it will be used by a spy whose identity I cannot reveal. When she has come back and the palace is asleep, I will go. I am still too ill to ride far, I fear; but I will be able to manage a small boat, or hope I will.

I will have to. How strange it will seem to be alone on a boat again. As though Green and the whole Whorl had never happened. Back on board a boat, and sailing down Nadi to the sea!

There is not time enough for me to re-read the earlier pages properly, but I believe I promised myself (and you, Nettle darling, if the Outsider someday grants my prayer) that I would not end this account before Sinew, Krait, and I went aboard the lander. That I would not end it, in fact, until we flew away from Pajarocu. I may not have time, however, if I continue to trace our way up the rivers.

No, I most certainly will not. Evensong may return from her errand at any minute. She can tell me where it is docked, and I will give her an hour to get to sleep. An hour at most, then I will leave Gaon forever.

So the lander first, and I will work my way backward from that as well as I can.

Krait, Sinew, and I had places on it. So did Seawrack, but Sinew and I had seen to it that she was not on board. We knew by then and had hidden weapons, he his hunting knife and I the two big, broad-bladed knives I had traded two silver pins for there in Pajarocu.

I should say, perhaps, that I had not bought them because I expected a fight on the lander at that time. (I assumed then that we would not board it.) I had gotten them, one for myself and one for Sinew, I thought, because I had resolved to get a knife of that type when I had found the floating tree and had been forced to chop it up with Sinew’s hunting knife. At that time I had not seen the lander, and had only just recovered from the shock of my first sight of Pajarocu, which I had, in my pitiful ignorance, imagined would be a town like New Viron or Three Rivers. They had no guards, and plain, somewhat roughly fitted handles of dark brown wood; their blades were broad, but thin enough to be flexible. I had tied them together, one hanging down my chest and the other down my back, and the rough leather overtunic that He-pens-sheep had made for me hid them very well.

They were taken from me, and I got instead the ancient black-bladed sword with which I cleared the sewer of corpses-but all that is outside the scope of this account, unless I am permitted to continue it on my own paper, in my own mill, on Lizard.

May the Outsider grant it!

Tonight that seems too much to ask even of a god.

How the rain thunders against the roof and walls! Who would have believed that there could be so much water in the whorl?

Sinew had tied his hunting knife to his thigh under his trousers. To tell the truth, I believed that he had my old needier as well. I may as well admit that, which is the truth. I believed he had lied to me about it, as he had lied to me so often about so many other things; but the traveler who had taken our old boat and abandoned him far up the rivers had taken my needier as well. Neither Sinew nor I ever set eyes on him again, but we soon united in wishing that he had boarded the lander with us, and that he had retained his weapon-my needier-as we had urged all the men boarding the lander to do. He was a bad man without a doubt, an opportunistic adventurer more than ready to exploit those he called friends, and to leave them in the lurch the moment it appeared to his advantage; but most of the men on the lander were as bad or worse, and more than a few were much worse.

I must make that clear. Were the inhumi who controlled it monsters? Yes. But so were we.

The rain has stopped. After so many days of rain it seems uncanny, although it does not actually rain without cease during the rainy season. If the season has not ended, it will rain again in an hour or two; if it has, this may be the last rain we will see for months. I have thrown open all the windows, determined to enjoy the respite.

Oreb is back! I got up just now to have another look at the sky, and he landed on my shoulder, scaring me silly. “Bird back!” he said, as if he had been gone for an hour. “Bird back! Good Silk!” and “Home good!”

And, oh, but it is good. It is so very good to see him again, and to know that when I go I will not go alone.

After writing that last I got out my old black robe, the robe that Olivine stole for me and that His Cognizance Patera Incus persuaded me to wear when I sacrificed in the Grand Manteion. Will I be wearing it still when I arrive at New Viron to report my failure? It seems likely I will. I have my jeweled vest under it, and am going to keep my rings. They owe me those, at least.

Good luck, Hari Mau!

Good luck, all you good folk of Gaon! You are better than most peoples I have met, hardworking, cheerful, and brave. May Quadrifons of the Crossroads, and all other gods both new and old, smile on you. No doubt they do.

Having written that, I cannot help adding that the very same things might be said with equal justice about the people of Han. They are argumentative and love to shout their displeasure at others (I have seen something of it in Evensong) but that does not mean they are vindictive, and in fact they are the exact reverse, quick to laugh and forgive everything and be friends again. They deserve a far better government than the Man’s.

Will Hari Mau’s be better? Beyond all question. But if Hari Mau is wise, he will appoint one of them the new Man, some leader whom everyone there respects, a kind and steady man, or even a woman, who has seen life and learned moderation and compassion. I should put that in the letter I am leaving for him, and I will.

Listen to Rajya Mantri, Hari Mau, but make your own decisions. Let him think that you confide in him.

Still no Evensong. I have been talking with Oreb, who has flown over this entire whorl-or says he has. When we fall silent I can hear Seawrack, faint and far, her voice keeping time with the beating of the waves.

Pajarocu is a portable town, as Wijzer said. I should say, rather, that it is a portable city, the shadow of the real City of Pajarocu, which must be somewhere in the Whorl. There are a few huts and a few tents; but they are not Pajarocu, and are in fact frowned upon. Let me explain what I mean, Nettle.

When you and I, with Marrow, Scleroderma and her husband, and all the rest came here, we looted the lander that had brought us and named the new town we hoped to build after the old city in which we had been born, and thereafter, for the most part, forgot it. (I remember very well how you and I had to rack our brains to recall the names of certain streets while we were writing our book; no doubt you do too.) We spoke of “Our Holy City of Viron,” or at least our augurs did when they blessed us; but save for the fact that it was the center of the Vironese Faith, there was nothing particularly holy about it.

Things are very different with Pajarocu and its people. In the Long Sun Whorl, their city seems to have been not so much a city like Viron as a ceremonial center, the place where they assembled on holy days and feast days. Each of the Nine had his or her lofty manteion of stone, there was a processional road like our own Alameda, a vast public square or plaza for open-air ceremonies, and so on.

So attached to it were and are they that they have refused to duplicate it here on any lesser scale, although duplicating it on its original scale is still far beyond their reach. What they have done instead is to duplicate its plan to perfection-without duplicating, or attempting to duplicate, its substance at all.

There are “streets” paved with grass and fern between “buildings” and “manteions” that are no more than clearings in the forest marked in ways that are, to our eyes, almost undetectable. When the adult citizens we sought to question were willing to talk to us, they talked of gateways, walls and statues that did not in fact exist-or at least, that did not exist here on Blue-and described them in as much detail as if they loomed before us, together with colossal images of Hierax, Tartaros, and the rest, called by outlandish sobriquets and the objects of strange, cruel veneration.

But when the streets are too badly fouled or the river rises, this phantom Pajarocu goes elsewhere, which I think an excellent idea. Our own Viron was built on the southern shore of Lake Limna; when the lake retreated, our people clung to the shiprock buildings that Pas had provided when they ought to have clung to the idea that he had provided instead, the idea of a city by the lake. Many (although certainly not all) of Viron’s troubles may ultimately have been due to this single mistaken choice.

Listen to me, Horn and Hide. Listen all you phantom readers. Buildings are temporary, ideas permanent. Rude as they are in so many ways, the people of Pajarocu understand it thoroughly, and in that respect they are wiser than we.

Since I have taken the time to characterize the people of Gaon and Han, let me do the same for the people of Pajarocu. You have seen them already in my words, since you have met He-pen-sheep and She-pick-berry. They are short for the most part and frequently bowlegged, dark and hard-featured, with piercing eyes and long coarse hair that is always black unless the years have done their work or they have shaved their heads, as many young men and boys do.

Seawrack complained that people in Pajarocu were forever talking, but compared with us they are actually rather silent. The adults never laugh unless they are talking to children, which made me think them humorless for a time-the exact reverse of the truth. They are muscular and agile, both the men and the women; and many are extremely thin, so that one sees their muscles as though the skin had been peeled away. There is a disease among them that causes the throat to swell. At first I believed it a disease of women only, because the first few sufferers I saw were all women; but He-hold-fire had it, as did various other men.

No doubt that is enough, and it may be too much; but I am going to add a few more items as they occur to me. In Viron, Nettle, we men wear trousers and you women gowns. In Pajarocu, women often wear trousers like men, and I was told that in the winter they never wear gowns. In good weather-and even in weather that you and I would think quite cool-a man may wear no more than a strip of soft greenbuck skin suspended from a thong, or nothing. Men and women bathe together in the river. I saw this on a day when the weather was warmer than it had been and the Short Sun shone brightly. Seawrack and I joined them, which only one little boy and the many strangers who thronged the town thought odd at all.

Oreb wanted something to eat, which gave me a fine chance to roam through this palace and make certain everyone is asleep. The only person I saw who was not was the sentry before my door. He was surprised at my black robe, I believe, but he showed it only by a slight widening of his eyes. If it were not for my wound, I would climb out the window when I take my departure, although it is hard to imagine that my own sentry will try to stop me.

If Evensong can climb up, I can climb down, surely, weak though I feel. I will leave my door locked, and they will think I am sleeping late. Very likely no one will venture to knock before noon, and by then I will be far away. When this account halts in the middle of a word, you are to understand that Evensong has returned with news of the boat that I sent her to buy.

No, I will have to wait a bit to give her time to get into bed and get to sleep.

“Bad thing!” says Oreb. “Thing fly!” So there are inhumi about, just as in Pajarocu. I do not believe they will attack Evensong, whom they all know. But what a thought! If only we protected one another, they would all be idiots or worse. As it is, they always get enough to keep them going.

I put my head out the window and tried to see them, although I would have been horrified if I had. The azoth is in my sash, next to Princess Choora. (I wonder how she likes her company?) No needier, but that should be more than enough. I am inclined to take my sword as well. I cannot cut firewood on a boat with the azoth-it would sink her at the first attempt. When I’m not using my sword, I can stow it on the boat, provided Evensong finds one for me. How I wish that I had the black-bladed sword the Neighbor gave me now!

I wish that I had been able to choose the boat for myself, too. Evensong’s choice will be too large, almost certainly. Sinew crossed the western sea in a boat that would scarcely carry Nettle and me, with a few bales of paper.

If Evensong does not buy one at all, I will send somebody else tomorrow night. Jahlee? Old Mehman would surely be better. The inhumi do not understand such things, even when they make use of them.

My inhumi have done some good things for us. Cutting loose the barges to break that bridge on the upper river was masterly. The Man saw no risk in moving gravel for his new road by water; but his troopers, who were very hungry already, went hungrier still.

Starting rumors and sending false messages, too. We dug up two of them for that. It was only just.

They are cunning, but like all cunning people they put too much faith in cunning. That was how it was in Pajarocu, when they allowed me to inspect their lander, never dreaming that I was the one man in thousands who would recognize it as Auk’s.

That is just how it has been here, at times. Three dead so far, Jahlee says, but she cannot know of all those whose lives have been lost.

In Pajarocu, I got my first warning from Seawrack. I woke and found her clinging to me and trembling. Whispering, I asked her what was wrong. “They’re hunting the night.” Her teeth were chattering so that she could scarcely speak. A bad dream, I thought, and many times the inhumi had seemed no more than a bad dream to me, so that I half expected Krait to vanish at sunrise. I tried to tell Seawrack that she had spent too many years under the sea, and that the creatures she had feared there could not reach her here.

Then I sat up, crawled out from under the foredeck, and looked around, hoping that she would join me and look too. I saw a man on one of the other boats some distance away; I thought I recognized him as one of those who had shown Seawrack, Sinew, Krait, and me through the lander the day before, and would have hailed him if I had not been afraid of waking others who were sleeping in their boats just as Seawrack and I had been sleeping in ours. He stooped and I heard a scuffle that quickly subsided; I supposed that it had been no more than the noise he had made taking off his boots, and told Seawrack there was nothing to fear.

The next day was the warm and sunny one I mentioned, and was a market day besides. She and I went out to have another look at the invisible town, and bargained for food and a few other things. Returning to the sloop we saw twenty or thirty men, and what appeared to be every woman and child in the town, swimming in the river. After stowing our purchases we joined them. Seawrack’s missing arm and yellow hair attracted a great deal of attention, and the children (who were all good swimmers) were amazed to find that she, with only one arm, could swim much faster than the fastest of them.

One bright-eyed little boy of eight or nine asked whether I were her father. I declared that I was, and he informed me very firmly that foreign women were not permitted to take off their clothes. “Here lady yes.” By pantomime he became a young woman, mincing along with hands on swaying hips, then pulled a nonexistent gown over his head. “You lady, no, no!” Arms folded, scowling.

It reminded me first of Maytera Marble, who had pulled off her habit to put it on Mucor, and afterward of Chenille, who had scandalized Patera Incus by going naked in the tunnels after she had been sunburned during Scylla’s possession. I told the boy that some of our women did, and a little about both of them. He wanted to know where Maytera Marble and Mucor lived, and I did my best to explain that their rock was on the other side of the sea, which he had never seen.

“Big lady too?”

“Chenille? No, she and Auk went to Green. Or at least that’s what we think must have happened, since no one in New Viron-that is my own town here-has gotten word of them. Do you understand what I mean by Green? It’s that big light in the sky at night, and it’s another-”

He had run away.

That was when I knew, the moment at which it came to me. I had recognized the lander earlier, as I have said. It had been one of the Crew’s, and had differed in certain respects from those provided for Cargo, landers like the one in which we had come, being somewhat smaller and much better adapted to carrying large, non-living loads. When we had been in Mainframe I had visited it twice with Silk and Auk, and there was no mistaking it. I had recognized it without understanding what its presence here signified.

But when the boy ran, I knew. I understood everything after that.

We went back to the market, which was smaller and less well organized than the one in Wichote, as well as substantially cheaper. A leather worker there was making a sheath for one of the knives I have described; I offered him a silver pin for the knife and its sheath when he had finished sewing it, and he suggested that I take another quite similar knife, whose sheath he had completed already. In the end I bought them both, as you have read, intending to give one to our son.

A fellow foreigner approached us. “Meeting tonight at the Bush.” I asked what and where the Bush was, and learned that it was an oversized hut near the river in which the local beer was sold and drunk. A man from one of the Northern towns had brought his wife so that she could sail his boat home, and compelled her to keep him company while he waited, as we were all waiting, for Auk’s lander to fly. She had been asleep on her husband’s boat last night while he sat drinking in the Bush, and had been bitten by an inhumu. Tonight we would decide his punishment.

I went that night, bringing Sinew; we stayed only long enough to have a look at the woman, who was indeed pale and weak (as well as bruised), and displayed the marks of an inhumu’s fangs on her arm, and to ask her where her boat had been moored. As we returned to our own, Sinew said, “I thought that didn’t happen here.”

It puzzled me; I knew that as we had come nearer Pajarocu, Krait had flown there nearly every night, and I had certainly assumed that he was feeding there. I asked Sinew who had told him so.

“One of these people, when I was hanging around here before. I told him how I got bitten when I was just a baby, and he said they never did it here. His name is He-bring-skin.”

I had already told Sinew how He-pen-sheep and his son had cut off the breakbull’s head for me. Now I said, “It can’t be true. When Seawrack and I visited He-pen-sheep’s camp, his daughter had been bitten the preceding night. I don’t recall her name, but she was extremely weak. Weaker than that woman back there.”

“Only here in Pajarocu,” Sinew explained impatiently. “They never get bitten here. That’s what he said.”

“But foreigners do.”

“I guess. She did.”

We had reached the sloop by then, and were greeted with a snort of pleasure by Babbie. Seawrack came out with her knife in her hand. I had told her to remain aboard and get some sleep if she could, although I do not believe she had actually slept. She asked whether I had seen the woman.

“Yes, and spoken to her, though not for long. She’ll recover, or at least I believe she will.”

“But you are not happy. Neither is Sinew, I think.”

“You’re right, I’m discouraged.” Like old Patera Remora, I groped for a better word. “Humbled. Silk old me once that we should be particularly grateful for experiences that humble us, that humiliation is absolutely necessary if we’re not to be consumed by pride. He was subjected to a shower of rancid meat scraps shortly after he came to Sun Street. Maybe I’ve told you.”

She shook her head; Sinew said, “Sure, Scleroderma did it. You and Mother talked about it a lot.”

“No doubt. Well, I can report that I’m in the gods’ good books, since they’ve provided an unmistakable sign of their favor. I ought to be ecstatic, but I don’t feel particularly ecstatic at the moment.”

Seawrack kissed me. When we parted, I gasped for breath and said, “Thank you. That’s much better.” (I can feel her lips on mine as I write. Seawrack kissed me many times, but in retrospect all her kisses have merged into that one. It may have been the last-I cannot be sure.)

“I don’t see why you’re so down,” Sinew muttered. “We’re here, aren’t we? Pajarocu? This is it. They kept stalling around when I was here before, but now they say they’ll take off any day now.”

“Providential,” I told him bitterly. “It’s almost as if they’d been waiting for us, isn’t it?”

“You think so?” He grunted skeptically, or perhaps I should say thoughtfully. “Why should they?”

“Because there are three of us.”

“Four, with Krait.”

“Exactly. Four, if you count Krait, and three if you don’t. Three of us risking our lives to bring back Silk, when only one of us was sent to do it. That’s bad enough, and I haven’t even begun to deal with that. What depresses me tonight is the quality of the rest, the nature of our companions-to-be. You saw them in there, and you must have seen a good deal of them when you spent a week here earlier. Tell me honestly-what do you think of them?”

Seawrack murmured, “They are not kind. Not like you.”

“You’re wrong about that,” I told her. “I’m one of them, and that’s the most depressing fact of all.” (At that moment, I nearly confessed what I had once done to her in Sinew’s hearing. Whoever has read this knows.)

He said, “What’s the matter with them?” He was challenging me, as he had so often on Lizard.

“They’re drinkers, brawlers, and troublemakers. That man you were with-he said he’d rescued you-the one who took our old boat. What was his name?”

“Yksin. When he was mad at me, he told me it meant alone. He was fixing to go off and leave me then, only I didn’t know it.”

“It’s a good name for him, and it would be a good name for all of them. They’re outcasts who believe that it’s some failing in their fellow townsmen that has made them cast them out.”

A moment later I smiled, and Seawrack said, “You’ve thought of something, what is it?”

It was that forty such men would be quick to seize control of the lander as soon as they suspected that it was not bound for the Whorl. But I did not tell her, then or ever.

Oreb has been pulling my hair. “Go now? Go Silk?” (Or perhaps it is “Go, Silk!” I cannot be sure.) I feel exactly as he does, but Evensong still has not returned. I am going to try to snatch an hour’s sleep.

The clock just struck. The hour is two, to the minute.

It has always been like this for me. Once I have decided to leave a place (as I decided, for example, to leave the hopeless little farm that had fallen our lot) I cannot wait to be away. No doubt I felt just the same way that night, as I sat before our fire in the sloop with Seawrack and Sinew, trying to put my thoughts in order.

Seawrack asked Sinew whether he was a drinker, a brawler, and a troublemaker, too; I doubt that she had any very clear idea of what those words represented. He grinned and said no to the first and yes to the others, adding, “Ask my father. He knows me.” I did indeed, and that was when I decided not to give him the second knife, although I had gotten it for him, until he had need of it.

Seawrack wanted to know more about the woman who had been bitten; and I, needing desperately to speak to Sinew in private, suggested that he and I might be able to bring her back to our sloop so that Seawrack could talk with her in person, adding that she and Sinew might be able to help her in some way after the lander flew.

“No! We will be on it with you.” She turned to Sinew. “Or will you stay?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t come all this way to get left behind. When I was waiting here, I thought that if they were going to go and Father didn’t come I’d go by myself and bring back Silk if I could. Only they didn’t fly and didn’t fly, and so I went looking for you.”

I stood up. “We’ll argue about this later. Meanwhile, Sinew and I are going back to the Bush and get her. We’ll come back as soon as we can.”

Sinew said, “She’ll be looking after her husband. They’re going to whip him or something.”

I said, “It will be difficult, I know. That’s why I’ll need your help.”

When we were some distance from the sloop, I halted in the shadow of a towering tree. “I can’t make you obey me. I know that.”

He nodded and glanced around suspiciously. “What are you whispering for?”

“Because it’s just possible that Seawrack may have followed us. I doubt it, but I can’t be sure, and it’s very important that she not overhear us-that no one does, especially the inhumi; I have reason to think there may be inhumi about. Do you remember how He-hold-fire told us in the lander than nobody would be permitted to bring slug guns, needlers, or even knives? That no one was to bring so much as a stick?”

“Sure, but I’m hanging on to my knife just the same.”

I hoped that he would not be going at all, but that was not the time to say it. “When he said that, I thought it a prudent precaution. I reminded myself that we would be a week or more on the lander. Clearly it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suppose we might fight among ourselves. Now I know that what they have in mind is something much worse. Listen to me, Sinew. If you’re ever going to listen to anyone in your life, listen now. That lander’s not going back to the Whorl. It’s going to Green.”

I had expected him to ask what led me to think so, but he did not.

“It is controlled by inhumi, and it will go to Green unless I can redirect it with the help of the other men who’ll be on it with me.”

I waited for him to speak; when he remained silent I added, “You know that the inhumi fly here from Green. Maybe you also know that the passage is a very difficult one, and that many of those who try it are killed.”

“Good.”

“No doubt it is, but not for us. Not now. They like human blood; and because they do, they do their best to steer human beings to Green to supply it. Your mother and I have told you many times how Patera Quetzal deceived us. He was an inhumu, and he would have directed our lander to Green if he could, even though he himself was dying.”

“It’s in your book.”

“As I said, the inhumi-other inhumi-control this lander. It must bring them from Green, and it must carry hundreds at a time. Then-”

“They trick us into getting on it and bring back a bunch of us.” Slowly Sinew nodded. “Pretty clever.”

Knowing his skepticism and stubbornness, I had thought that it would be practically impossible to convince him. I was weak with relief.

“There’s a whole lot of inhumi around here, that’s what I think. Maybe I should have said something sooner. I saw a bunch together one time when I was here before.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, three. They didn’t know I was there, so they weren’t bothering to look like people. I watched for a while until one flew away. Then I got away myself and went looking for somebody, and I found He-bring-skin and said there’s two inhumi over there, and if you’ll give me a knife I’ll help kill them. That’s when he told me they didn’t bite anybody-that was what he said-in Pajarocu.”

“I see.”

“He said they had a deal. They don’t bother them here, and they don’t bite. Father…?”

“What is it?”

“You’re going on their lander just the same?”

“Yes, I am. Krait and I will board it, as we have planned from the beginning.”

I had promised that I would not betray Krait’s secret and I did not, although I knew by then that Krait was betraying all of us. The memory of the pit, or perhaps only my twisted sense of honor, remained too strong.

“To me this is a high and holy mission,” I told Sinew. “That hasn’t changed. New Viron needs the things I’ve been sent to bring back very badly. Most of all, it needs someone like Silk.”

“You’ll get killed.”

“Not if I can seize control of the lander-and I think I can.” I paused, collecting my thoughts. “If I can, I’ll have it in which to bring Silk back. When we return, I can order it to land at New Viron. What is even more important, the inhumi will no longer be able to use it to come here in relative safety, or to transport human beings to Green.”

He shook his head and repeated that I would be killed.

“Perhaps, but I hope not. I said I couldn’t make you obey me, and I can’t. I know that. All that I can do is beg you to help me keep Seawrack off the lander. Will you do it?”

He swore that he would, and we shook hands; and after that I hugged him as I had when he was a child.

Evensong has returned!

Just a moment ago I heard the sentries at the main entrance challenge her, and her reply. Time presses.

Next day, Sinew and I circulated among the other travelers, telling them that we suspected that the lander might actually be bound for Green, and urging them to bring weapons they could conceal when they boarded. That night, he and I decided that the best plan would be for him to sail some distance down the river with her after telling us about a good place to gather wild berries. I would excuse myself at the last moment, saying (quite truthfully) that I had to bargain in the market for the food we would need on the lander.

Evensong has bought me a boat that sounds like it is exactly the sort I need. She smiled proudly as she described it, and even borrowed this quill and a sheet of paper so that she could sketch it for me, small enough for me to handle alone and even row if need be, with a little shelter like a hut at the waist, and a mast that can be taken down, or put up by one man to spread a small sail. It is newly painted, she says; crimson and black, which in Han are thought to be the luckiest colors.

Best of all, she said that she was very tired and asked if I would mind terribly if she slept in the women’s quarters, offering to send Chandi or Moti to me if I wished. I said that I was half asleep already after having waited up for her. When Oreb croaked loudly, “Silk go!” I explained that he wanted me to go to bed.

A line or two more, but only a few.

They collected our weapons, promising to return them to us as soon as we reached the Whorl. I gave up the slug gun Marrow had given me, ignorant of the fact that the inhumi were arming their slaves to subdue the human settlers on Green and supposing that I had seen the last of it. Ironically, everything we had surrendered was loaded into one of the freight bays-exactly as promised.

I should have anticipated that some of us would believe the inhumi, and side with them. They were proud and stupid men, too proud and too stupid to believe that they could have been so badly deceived. Many, I would guess, had believed that the lander could not fly, and had hoped to loot its cards when it failed. When it took off, crushing us into our rough wooden cradles with a speed that seemed liable to persist long after we were dead, they were ripe to believe anything that He-hold-fire told them. The monitor, too, said we were bound for the Whorl.

The inhumi would not let us into the cockpit, as it was called on the Trivigaunti airship. I do not know what it should be called on a lander.

Yes, I do. Silk said Mamelta had called it the nose, and that is what you and I called it when we wrote, Nettle. We on the lander simply said “the front” or “up front.”

There were three inhumi among us, besides Krait. They called themselves the first three travelers to reach Pajarocu, and said that He-hold-fire had put them in charge of us. One was the one I had seen on the other boat, I believe. I demanded to know why they would not let us into the nose one at a time. I should have killed him (it was he I was arguing with) but I hesitated until it was too late. He looked like a man, and I was still not certain I was correct. Krait pretended to side with me, which made me doubt my conclusions. I reproach myself now, as I should.

All this took longer than I have indicated-a day, at least.

Except for Sinew, the others thought I was insane, or most did. They offered to tie my hands, but those who had believed Sinew and me would not allow it.

But I am far past our leaving Blue already, and that was as much as I intended to write. Before I leave Gaon as well, I should explain that Sinew had cut the halyards while Seawrack was ashore picking berries, and returned to Pajarocu in his hollow-log boat, arriving in the nick of time to be taken on the lander, the final passenger to board it. My heart leaped for joy when I saw him and heard the airlock slam shut behind him. I am ashamed of that even now-I thought that he was going to his death and that we all were-but how glad, how very glad, I was to see him!

I feel sure that Seawrack made what repairs she could and that she and Babbie tried to sail the sloop back up the river. They must have arrived much too late, if indeed they arrived at all. She has returned to the sea now, for which I would be the last to blame her.

That is enough. The inhumi struck me, tearing my cheek with claws. Everyone knew after that, and Sinew stabbed him for it. I had forgotten how it was when Patera Quetzal died, although I would have sworn that I remembered everything. He appeared to be a human man still, for some time after his death agony.

The illusion is the last to die. I must bundle up this paper and put it into my bag at once. Good-bye, Nettle. Good-bye to all of you.