The Crystal Seas

Chapter THREE

Blade's disappointment pretty well vanished aboard the ship. He sat in the captain's cabin, drinking seaweed cordial and having the captain's daughter Svera smear ointment on his battered hide. Gradually the merpeople drifted into the back of his mind.

Fart of this was because of the conversation; the rest of it was Svera herself, a tall and exceedingly full-bosomed young woman with a tanned and freckled face and blue-black hair done up in two braids. The face and hairdo looked girlish, but the figure definitely did not. Nor did the looks she was giving Blade from her wide blue eyes, as she smeared on the ointment. It seemed to Blade that she was smearing it on much more slowly and thoroughly than was really necessary. He found it hard to keep his mind on his conversation with the captain.

The captain's name was Foyn, that of his ship was Green Mistress. Both hailed from the Sea Cities of Talgar. The Sea Cities were a group of six artificial floating islands anchored in a shallow part of the ocean about a thousand miles to the west. The ship was now off the coast of the Empire of Nurn, the principal trading partner of the Sea Cities. Captain Foyn said that last phrase with a curse and a sour-faced grimace.

Blade grinned. «Why do the Sea Cities trade with the Empire, then, if their merchants make so much trouble and pay so ill?»

«How do you know what they do?» said Captain Foyn sharply.

Blade shrugged. «I have traveled far in my time. When I see honest sailors or merchants mention someone with a curse or a grimace, I know that someone is usually cheating them. Am I right?»

Foyn managed to blush slightly under his weather-beaten skin and close-cropped gray beard. «You flatter me, calling me honest on such short acquaintance. But you are right. We bring coral and fish and metal nuggets to Nurn, enough to fill our ships. But we take back to the Cities no such wealth. If we had any choice-«He sighed. «But we do not, and have not had for many generations.»

«Why not?»

«The war with those filthy, slime-reeking Fishmen!» the captain exploded. «They've been our enemies for three hundred years. If the armorers of Nurn didn't make the best weapons, by the Silver Goddess, we'd go elsewhere! But no one else makes what we need to fight the Fishmen. Without Nurn, we'd be lost. The Sea Cities would sink down among the coral and the weeds and vanish from sight or memory.»

So the Sea Cities of Talgar warred with the merpeople. Blade suspected there was more to the story. But he decided it would not be wise to bluntly ask why, and even less wise to ask about the merpeople or mention his own brief encounter with them. Apparently Foyn accepted the merpeople and the war with them as something changeless and inevitable, like the tides or the storms of the sea.

Just as apparently Svera did not. She swung her eyes from Blade to her father, and Blade saw them harden. «If we did not sail into the seas the Fishmen call their own, to take the fish and coral and-«

«Daughter, be serious!» said Foyn sharply. «Who cares now about the rights and wrongs over three centuries? I don't. What I do care about is that the Sea Cities of Talgar still float upon the waves and the Fishmen still skulk beneath them. Would you have things differently?»

«Yes, I would,» Svera snapped. «What about my brother? And my mother-your wife, by the Silver Goddess! They couldn't be any more dead than they are, whatever had happened to the Sea Cities! And the war isn't over yet, anyway! Are you sure it will all be worthwhile in the end?»

Captain Foyn glared at Svera with a fury that embarrassed and disturbed Blade. For a too-long moment it looked as if Foyn were going to slap his daughter in the face. Then his broad shoulders slumped, and he let out a long sigh. It was the weary sigh of a man who has been over the same hopeless argument with someone he loves a dozen times before.

«Daughter, go to your cabin,» he said quietly. «Whatever we may say to each other, I will not have it said before a stranger and a guest aboard Mistress. Would you disgrace the name that your brother and mother bore?» Svera bit her lip and was silent. Then she rose and went out. At the door of the cabin, she stopped and turned to stare hard into Blade's eyes. He had the impression that she was weighing him in some sort of mental balance. He rather wished he knew what she was looking for. Then he turned back to Captain Foyn, who was pouring out some more seaweed cordial.

The captain put his cup down on the table and shook his head wearily as he looked at Blade. «I am sorry that my daughter has no discretion,» he said. «What she said is a family argument that sometimes seems to have been going on nearly as long as the war with the Fishmen.»

Blade shook his head. «No need to apologize. I'm very good at forgetting things I should not have heard. And if I'm going to be spending much time among the people of Talgar, I'm going to be learning a lot about the war sooner or later.» He filled his own cup again and looked at Foyn. «Do others think the way Svera does, about the war?»

Foyn nodded. «Quite a few. But mostly they are young people, like her. Also there are some of the poorer Brothers-the ship captains and officers-who resent the taxes we must levy to pay for the war. They make a tremendous amount of noise every time there is a council election or a vote for new taxes, but they can never command many votes.»

Foyn sighed again. «The terrible thing about them is that I wish I could be more certain they were wrong. If — if our coral mines on the Black Reef, for example, are to the Fishmen what their raids on the fishing fleets or the moorings are to us-something too terrible-«He was obviously fumbling for words to express doubts he could neither openly admit nor completely deny.

Blade wished he knew enough about the situation to be able to supply those words, but for the moment there wasn't anything he could do except sit still and keep his mouth shut. For the moment. He had the feeling that he was about to land in a horribly complicated situation. Finding out what was going on between the Sea Cities and the merpeople might turn out to be more than just satisfying his curiosity. It might turn out to save his neck as well.

Eventually Foyn fumbled his own way out of his uncertainty. «The Silver Goddess alone knows who has the right of this whole stinking mess. But I will not do anything or let others do anything that would put the Cities in danger.» On that fine and determined sentiment, he poured out two more cups of the cordial. Since the green drink was stronger than it looked, Blade really didn't want to take any more on an empty stomach.

Fortunately the captain's servant came in with dinner a few minutes later. There were three kinds of fried or baked fish, a soup made of seaweed, and a flagon of beer made of still more seaweed. Blade had the feeling that he was going to have to get used to a lot of fish and seaweed in this dimension.

Blade ate more than he really wanted, to help absorb the alcohol. It worked. By the time the steward cleared away the tableware, his head no longer felt vaguely fuzzy. Instead he felt packed solid from throat to groin and more than suspected he was in for a bout of indigestion. That would be a ludicrous way of ending his career as a Dimension X traveler-developing a digestion too delicate to handle strange and exotic foods. The thought made him smile, then laugh, and generally put him in a better mood. He was still smiling when he went out on deck to take a walk around Mistress's decks and clear his head with the sea breezes.

Mistress was a fair-sized ship, over a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide at her widest point. She was obviously designed for rough seas and heavy cargoes, with massive timbers a foot square, planking like armor plate, and high castles both fore and aft. Her two masts were massive tree trunks, the forward one carrying a single sail and the mainmast carrying two. All three were set now, to catch the offshore wind. Looking aft, Blade could see the black shapes of the headlands on the coast of Nurn silhouetted against the sunset. Mistress was running before the offshore wind, so it seemed, heading out to sea toward the Cities.

Blade stood by the railing, watching the waves develop whitecaps as the breeze freshened, watching the light fade from the sky-for at least an hour. He could hear ropes creaking and blocks banging overhead in the rigging, the occasional calls of the lookout in the crow's nest, and the more frequent calls of the men at the tiller aft.

Eventually the breeze became chill enough and strong enough to get through Blade's borrowed sailor's jacket and trousers. He decided to go below, to his cabin in the aftercastle. Mistress had accommodations for a good two dozen passengers, but there were never very many going from Nurn to Talgar. These days, with the war apparently becoming hotter than usual, there were hardly any.

The passenger quarters were pitch-dark, lit only by strong-smelling fish-oil lamps flickering in horn lanterns.

The passageway between the cabins was filled with moving shadows and the creaking of the ship's timbers as the boat moved to the sea. Blade stalked catfooted along the passageway to the door of his cabin, then stopped suddenly and bent his ear to the latch hole. He listened for a moment, then slowly straightened up and drew the long sailor's dagger Captain Foyn had given him. Unmistakably, there was someone inside his room.

As carefully as a watchmaker working on a fine watch, Blade lifted the latch. Then he stepped back to the far side of the passageway, pivoted on one leg, and drove the other foot crashing against the thin wooden door. It flew open with a crash and split halfway from top to bottom. Before it had stopped swinging, Blade leaped through the opening, dagger held low for the upward stab of a trained knife-fighter. Then he stopped suddenly as the intruder sat up in the bed..

His visitor was Svera.

Blade did not sheath his dagger, but he did relax slightly. «What are you doing here?» Another look gave him a good idea. She had wrapped the blankets around her, but her bare freckled white shoulders gleamed faintly in the dim light that crept in through the cracks in the door.

Svera replied with a question of her own. «Why do I need any reason to be here at all?»

Blade was not put off. «Because I do not like unexpected visitors at night.»

«Not even women?» She let the blankets slip down her shoulders a few more inches. More skin came into view, the upper swell of her breasts, and the cleft between them.

«That depends.»

«Depends on what?» She held the blankets steady.

«On why they are in my cabin.»

«Oh.» Svera seemed surprised. «Don't you know?» She raised both arms, and the blankets dropped away. As Blade had suspected, she was wearing nothing under the blankets. As he had also suspected, her breasts were magnificent. They jutted out in massive, freckled white roundness, their tips rosy pink with no visible nipples. Svera raised her arms higher, and her breasts lifted also. They didn't really need any help.

Blade felt a sudden heat and hardening in his groin. He was within seconds of stripping off his own clothes and leaping into the bed, to get his hands on those breasts and everything else about Svera. But as he watched her face, he saw something he didn't like in her eyes. Once more she was trying to size him up, to judge his reactions. There was something more than simple desire that had brought Svera to his bed.

From long practice, Blade easily kept all hint of his suspicions off his face. Instead he carefully laid the dagger down on the small table that folded out of the wall, well out of Svera's reach-or his own. Then he began to take off his own clothes. Svera watched him intently, the watchful-cat look never leaving her face. But she could not keep her eyes and mouth from opening in amazement and perhaps in fear or delight as well-when Blade stood revealed, fully naked and fully erect.

She reached out tentatively and patted Blade in the obvious place. He looked down at her, still keeping his own face impassive. He hoped she wouldn't grab hold too soon or too hard. His endurance was formidable, but now he not only wanted to last but to keep or at least seem calm and cold while doing it. That wasn't his favorite way of making love. But he knew it was the best way of finding out what lay behind the expression in those widening blue eyes.

He took the two steps to the bed and bent down, his arms going around her. This nearly led to disaster. As he reached down, she reached up. Her weight suddenly on him pulled him off his feet. He sprawled on top of her, feeling her warm breasts against his chest, but also hearing the bed creak and groan as though it were about to collapse. Blade had to bite his lip to keep from breaking out laughing. Svera didn't even try. Her mouth opened wide, revealing even white teeth, and she shook and quivered all over with merriment.

Before she had stopped laughing, Blade had hold of her again, pulling her whole long, solid-fleshed body against himself. Any doubt about maintaining his own arousal vanished in that moment. The sight and feel of Svera's body would have aroused the stone statue of a celibate saint.

And Blade was doing the same for Svera. Her blue eyes were still wide open and aimed at Blade. But he couldn't see anything behind them now, except a fast-growing glaze of desire. She whimpered, deep in her richly fleshed throat, as Blade stroked along the side of her throat and the lines of her jaw. Her lips parted under his, and her tongue crept out, thrusting first tentatively, then fiercely into his mouth. Her hands began to move, roaming up and down his back from shoulder blades to buttocks, stroking the small of his back, tugging at his close-cropped hair. Thank God she was too aroused to notice the expression on his face! Any detachment he might have tried to keep was fast going, if not already long gone.

His own hands drifted down over the massive breasts, so large he could hardly cup one in both hands. Their tips had sprouted nipples now, small but solid as jewels. He dipped his lips to each one and took it in like taking the cherry off the top of a sundae. Svera's arms tightened around Blade until he wondered if something was going to break and his face was pushed into the solid breast flesh until he could barely breathe. Just as his vision was starting to fade from lack of air, his hands found the thick bunch of damp hair between Svera's legs. He burrowed with one finger and squeezed with others. Inside she was not just damp, but already slick and ready. Very ready. She gasped and stiffened as she felt the touch, and Blade was able to pull his head from those magnificent, suffocating breasts.

Why wait any longer? Blade raised himself above Svera's quivering body and thrust his smoldering member deep into her in a single motion. It nearly took fire in that moment, as Svera seemed to suck it in. After a moment the madness faded. Blade began setting a steady, mounting rhythm. There was much more he needed and wanted to do to Svera.

Using everything he had ever done or thought of doing to keep going, he thrust deep and fast. Then twisting as he felt Svera reaching her first climax, he slowed while she heaved and trembled, then began again. Two, three, four, five successive times he managed to go through the cycle, biting his lip, doing everything possible to delay or distract himself. Svera began to whimper, and the glaze of passion in her eyes gave way to a glaze of satiation.

Eventually Blade's endurance cracked. It had to. In the last moment before control vanished, he raised himself high, then thrust more deeply in than he could have imagined Svera would take. She was all around him as he shook and heaved and gasped and quivered from head to foot under the shock of his sudden fierce release. His own climax triggered her last, so she had one more turn to heave and shake. By a great effort, Blade kept himself balanced on his sweat-dripping arms until Svera lay still under him. By an almost equally terrific effort, he raised himself on those arms until he could withdraw, roll to one side, and collapse beside the girl. But then he did collapse, and neither his mind nor his body could have done anything more for quite a while, for any reason or in any cause.

Fortunately, neither could Svera's. As he began to drift off to sleep, a smile spread across Blade's face. Svera had come to his bed expecting to find out a good deal about him. Had she planned to recruit him into her little political underground? Possibly. Certainly she must have been planning to sound him out, as he lay exhausted and receptive and (she hoped) weak-minded beside her.

And he in his turn had gone into this tumble with the notion of reducing Svera to a mindless, whimpering erotic jelly. In that frame of mind she might-she would-have answered any questions he wanted to ask her, about her views and plans.

But for all their fine plans, neither of them had accomplished anything beyond a magnificent bout of pure sex. So magnificent, in fact, that it had aroused and then exhausted both of them beyond the point of asking or answering any reasonable questions. So much for bedroom politics.

It was all a fine, satisfactory, amusing irony-except for one thing. Blade wanted to find out about Svera's group and politics in Talgar in general as badly as he wanted to find out more about the merpeople. But with both, all he had so far was tantalizing hints. He had no idea of what he was getting into, as Mistress sailed on toward the Sea Cities.