Wild Magic

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“Here, drink this. Anything happen while I was gone?”

“Old woman, two cats, and a drunk who spat at me. By luck he missed.” Penhari took a mouthful of the mulimuli, sputtered with shock. Some of it went doWn her front, the rest down her gullet, burning as it dropped. “Gah, what foul koj. People actually drink this slop?”

“You s’posed to toss it down so it hits you belly before y’ taste it. C’m on, Zazi, drink some more, it’ll put stiffening in y’ bones. We gotta get to boat, or he’ll take off without us.”

Penhari tugged the veil tighter against her face so she could see through the eyeholes. A boat swinging lazily at the end of the stubby pier had a single mast with a frayed sail hanging in messy folds over the boom. Sitting on a bitt, kicking bare heels against it, a short skinny Naostam was watching them.

Desantro left her hobbling along the planks and charged down the pier to confront the man. “Where your jeggin’ water skins, hanh?” She jabbed an accusing finger at the anonymous clutter in the bottom of the boat. “You been paid f’r it. We jannin an’t gonna drink mud.”

His eyes shifted under a Naostam’s heavy brow ridge, the yellowed whites gleaming intermittently as they moved. With a silent insolence embedded in an exaggerated physical competence, he got to his feet, bent, caught hold of a rope tied to a cleat on the bitt and lifted, the muscles in his bare arm shifting like skinny snakes beneath his copper hide. Three dripping water skins rose from the lake. He held them up with one hand, yanked the knot loose, then lowered the skins into the boat. He swung over the edge, went down a few steps of the slimy ladder and jumped lightly into the boat, landing so evenly balanced that it hardly rocked.

He leaned over, hooked a hand over the lowest rung, and pulled the boat tight against the the ladder. And stood there waiting for them to climb down or go away, whichever pleased them.

Desantro snorted, but she didn’t comment. “Zazi, I’m going first so I c’n give you a hand. Hang onto the ladder till him and I steady you. We’ll get y’ in, don’t worry.

Penhari leaned on the bitt and watched her go down the ladder neatly and easily despite the gear she was carrying, the food and more clothing and her fee in coin and no doubt other things she liberated from the Falmatarr. She swung into the boat with an ease that almost matched the man’s, slapped his shoulder and pointed up at Penhari.

Time to move. Honey Mother defend me. She lowered herself to hands and knees, reached backward with one foot until she could feel the rung; grunting and fumbling about, she finally got both feet on the ladder and started clumsily down it. The rungs were slimy with moss and smashed crawlers; she loathed having to touch them, but she told herself: I can do whatever has to be done. She said it under her breath several times as she lowered herself, but never fully believed it, even when she felt hands on her, steadying her, taking part of her weight and in the end lifting her bodily into the boat, getting her seated on a folded square of canvas placed a few inches before the mast.

Desantro knelt beside Penhari, wiping her hands with a damp cloth, fussing over her like a mother with a sickly child; she looked across the older woman’s shoulder, popped out her breath in an impatient tssht!

The Naostam sat by the steering oar, watching stolidly; he might have been carved from red sidawood except for the occasional glimmer from his eyes.

“What y’ waiting for, Hahlaz? Get the sail up, le’s get going, huh?”

“Women,” he said and spat over the side; his voice was reedy, with as much modulation as there was expression in his face. “Gi’ penter a jerk, she come loose. An’ siddown. Y’ fall in, it y’r problem. Been paid f’r Pili, not f’r swanin’ about.”

The night was calm and hot. The boat zagged across the northern end of the Lake-That-Never-Fails, catching the vagrant breezes and using the fugitive currents to work toward the twin black towers that marked the beginning of the River.

Penhari leaned against the mast, feeling every shimmy and twist of the boat through her spine; she was deeply relaxed now, a heap of cous-cous without a bone in view, but she wasn’t sleepy-her mind cycled around and around all the thoughts that had passed through her head from the moment she surfaced after the beating, leapt from that to what lay ahead, compulsive speculation insecurely based on stories from her scrolls and the few books she’d managed to get her hands on, leapt back to the pain and fear she was escaping from. Past and future, equally futile, over and over until she rebelled against treading the same ruts again and began noticing what was happening around her.

Her body was shifting with the boat, ballasted by the gold, tilting one way, then another, as the boom slammed side to side behind her, the sail bellying out, sinking, popping out again. At first she didn’t understand this to-ing and fro-ing, but she had the habit of study, so she watched carefully what the man was doing and considered the results of those actions.

What wind there was came into her face, not from behind, wind out of the east-yet they were moving into the east. There had to be a reason. She listened to the sounds the sail made, looked over her shoulder at it, considered the way Hahlaz shifted the angle of the boom, how he turned the ship and sent the boom crashing to the other side, how they kept gliding for-

ward, the black ward-towers getting closer and closer.

After an hour of this she had some dnderstanding of’ the principles involved, along with an itch in her palms to take hold of the rudder and that rope and do it herself. It was frustrating sitting there, letting herself be carried along by someone else’s skill. But what else have I done all my life? Let my maids coddle me, the Kassians guide my thinking, Desantro carry me. Now that man. Who despises both of us. Abey’s Sting, fifty-two years and I’m still in the egg.

Desantro was sitting on the other side of the mast, watching Hahlaz, turning occasionally to see what was happening in front of them. “What about those?” She swung her arm, her finger sweeping from tower to tower. “Trouble?”

“Naah. Nobody home. Jeggin’ guards like soft livin, an’t gonna fry nu h’ms off way out here.”

“Good.” She settled back. “Zazi, how you doing?”

“Not bad. I’m starting, to enjoy this.”

Desantro laughed. “Choo-ee, swanning Ma.”