BOOK THREE:

HOW ANOTHER BORE THE SWORD

†

Nnanji was reviewing the sutra “On Staunching Blood” as he jumped forward, but a sailor was there before him, with his thumbs already pressed in Shonsu’s groin. Thana arrived with a bucket of water—obviously the riverfolk knew what to do when there were no healers around. And one did not package fish food.

So he let them tend the wounded swordsman and contented himself with pulling Jja out of the way. She was accomplishing nothing except getting herself covered with blood. Brota’s shadow fell over Shonsu as she knelt down to take charge, and she seemed to be capable.

“He’ll need a warm bed,” he told Jja as he led her back toward the deckhouse. “There are blankets in those chests.”

They reached the doorway and were met by a strange wailing noise. It was coming from Cowie, who must have emerged to watch the fight. She had done this howling before, he remembered angrily—what an error she had turned out to be! He slapped her face. She reverted at once to her normal silent blankness. Jja pushed past her.

The priest was still sitting on the steps, looking a thousand years old, totally shocked.

“You all right, old man?” Nnanji demanded. Honakura nodded and then took hold of himself and smiled.

Katanji . . . 

“Catching flies, novice?”

“Er, no!”

“No, what?”

“No, mentor.”

“Then close your mouth and stand up straight.”

Responsibility, Shonsu had said.

Brota’s voice came from inside the huddle: “He’s coming round. Put that hilt between his teeth . . . needlecase . . . ” Yes, she knew what she was doing.

Nnanji took a deep breath and glanced around. The mood had changed. Even river riffraff must appreciate the show of swordsmanship they had just seen—incredible! They couldn’t feed a champion like that to the fish, and now it seemed like they didn’t want to. So he could relax a little, wait for Shonsu to come round. But he needed his sword; he headed forward again in search of the captain.

Tomiyano was leaning against the rail, barely able to stand from the look of him. An elderly woman was fussing beside him, trying to dab at him with a towel. He was resisting her attentions, holding a rag to his bleeding nose with one hand and clutching Nnanji’s sword in the other. His eyes were bleary with pain and he was still choking for breath, one big mess of bruises and welts and scrapes, from sweat-matted hair to feet soaked in Shonsu’s blood.

For a civilian, he’d put up quite a fight, perhaps the best fight Nnanji had ever seen. Even if Shonsu had pulped him, the sailor had managed to parry many of the strokes, and even one would have been a feat against Shonsu. He’d stayed upright, which spoke in trumpets for his toughness. Considering the punishment he had taken, it was amazing he was still on his feet now. He forced his eyes back into focus when he saw Nnanji, and the woman retreated apprehensively.

Nnanji held out a hand. “May I have my sword back please, captain?”

Tomiyano took the rag away from his face and raised the sword so that the point was almost touching Nnanji’s navel. The sailor’s arm was shaking, which was hardly surprising, and the needle point wavered before its target. “What will you do with it, sonny?”

“Sheath it, sailor.”

They continued to glare at each other for several minutes. Blood trickled from the captain’s battered nose and oozed from his scrapes. If the sailors were pirates and planning to feed Shonsu to the piranha, then now was the moment, and Nnanji would be getting his sword back point first. But it was not the first time he had been threatened with a sword, and there was nothing else to do but wait and see, so he waited. His hand was steady—it was the captain who was shaking. Other sailors were watching. This was important.

The two of them seemed to stand there for a long time, while the sailor’s breathing gradually slowed, but eventually Nnanji felt the challenge reverse itself—instead of the sailor inquiring whether he was afraid of the sword at his belly, he himself was inquiring whether the sailor was afraid to return it. Finally Tomiyano lowered it, wiped the blade with the cloth, and held it out hilt first.

Nnanji took it, sheathed it, and said, “Thank you.”

He walked away.

That had gone rather well.

The huddle around the wounded man was still there, so he headed for the deckhouse to see if the slave had got the bed ready . . . and by the door he came face to face with Honakura again. The old relic had apparently recovered from his shock—he was smiling in an irritating manner.

“Well, old man? Have you an explanation for this also?”

“Explanation is like wine, adept,” the priest said. “Too much of it in one day can be harmful.”

Damned slippery priest-talk! “It can also be like my mother’s homemade bread: very good when new, but harder to swallow as it gets older.”

The old man just shook his head, and Nnanji blurted, “Why didn’t She save him?”

“She did.”

He glanced at the watchers grouped around Brota and the stricken swordsman. “That’s saving? I saw no miracle.”

Honakura chuckled drily. “I saw two! Could you take that sort of a beating and then not finish the job?”

Nnanji thought about that. “Perhaps not. And he’d been totally humiliated in front of his crew.”

“That made it easier, though.”

“Why? Never mind. What was the second miracle, then?”

The old man cackled in his infuriating way. “I’ll let you work that out for yourself, adept.”

“I haven’t got time to play games,” Nnanji snapped. “I’ve got responsibilities.”

He marched into the deckhouse, feeling strangely annoyed by the old man’s stupid grin.

Shonsu had been bandaged and now was carried into the deckhouse and laid on a blue cotton pallet. Brota looked him over, glanced at Nnanji without speaking, then waddled out. The rest of the crew followed her.

Jja began washing blood off her master. He was unconscious and pale as . . . very pale. Nnanji took his hairclip, his harness and sword. He went over to sit on one of the chests and checked the pockets. Shonsu had told him of the sapphires, but he whistled at the sight of them and hurriedly put them in his own pouch before anyone else saw. Then he counted all his mentor’s money. My goods are your goods, but he was going to keep them separate. He laid his own coins on the chest for now. There was a cool breeze blowing in from the window beside him, waving his pony tail.

He removed his scabbard and replaced it with Shonsu’s and then he sat and studied the seventh sword for a while before sheathing it on his back. He wished he had a mirror—certainly no Fourth had ever worn a sword like that. Reluctantly he put the hairclip in his pouch, also.

Katanji peered in, still pale. Nnanji beckoned him over.

“How much money have you got, protégé?”

Katanji looked surprised. “Five gold, two silver, three tin, and fourteen copper, mentor.”

Where had the little scoundrel gotten that much?

“Okay. Count mine for me, will you?”

Katanji blinked, but he knelt down by the chest and counted without having to use his fingers. “Forty-three gold, nineteen silver, one tin, and six copper.”

Right. “Then take it and look after it for me,” Nnanji said.

His brother obeyed, stuffing the coins into his pouch. “They’re not going to put us ashore,” he said. “The others wanted to and Brota refused—for now. The captain’s been taken below. Is . . . is he going to live?”

“Shonsu? Of course.”

Katanji looked over doubtfully at the wounded man, then he put on what their mother called his soft-boiled look. “Nanj? They won’t speak to me when I’m wearing this sword.”

Nnanji opened his mouth to impart some truths about proper swordsman behavior . . . and remembered. “Take it off, then.”

The expression on the nipper’s face was almost laughable. So was the speed with which he wrapped himself in that stupid breechclout—as if Nnanji would change his mind. Then he tied on his money pouch and ran. But there would be time enough to turn him into a swordsman when they all got off this rotten floating barnyard.

There were two or three hours of daylight left; Nnanji decided to stay where he was. It was the best defensive position he could have found, and he could keep an eye on Shonsu. The wounded man was neither conscious nor unconscious. When spoken to he would open his eyes and seem to understand, but mostly he just lay and thrashed around restlessly, often asking for drinks, which Jja gave him through a reed. Then he would lay his head back again and close his eyes. He shivered sometimes and sweated. She did not leave him. She had laid a rolled pallet across the door to keep Vixini from straying, but the baby was behaving himself for once.

Nnanji played with Vixini a little and talked to the slave woman a little, but mostly he thought swordsmanship. This shipboard technique was very interesting: very little footwork, and then only short steps. Tremendous armwork; point, not edge. He wouldn’t give Tomiyano a fair match, even on land, but he would certainly beat Thana there—she’d never get near him. Yet obviously on the ship he was a scratcher again. A good swordsman ought to know both ways, and clearly Shonsu did.

How good was Tomiyano? Two or three ranks below Shonsu. But he had been fighting with a longer sword than he was used to. Give him a half rank for that and take one off for being on his own deck, and at least two for wielding sword against foil. The trouble was knowing how to grade Shonsu. There was no measuring Sevenths. “To be a Seventh,” Briu had liked to say, “is simply to be unbeatable.” Shonsu was the best in the World, maybe a ten?

He finally judged that Tomiyano was a high Fifth or low Sixth. And a sailor! Where had he got his practice? Perhaps from that dead brother that Thana had mentioned. If not him, then there must be others around almost as good, for it was very hard to be greatly better than one’s fencing partners.

Yes, he would learn this new way of fighting. As a start, he reviewed his match with Thana, and then Shonsu’s, carefully going over every step and every stroke.

The morning sun climbed very slowly; it seemed uncannily slow to a woman who had lived all her life in the tropics. Fair wind, and the River wide and bright. It was a fine day, she could admit; this was a better climate for one of her size. The word in Aus had been that there were no dangers in this direction, no shallows or unexpected bars. Traffic was light. Wisely, the crew were staying away from her while she ground away at her decision, so she sat alone at the tiller with no distractions.

She had slept badly and awakened no closer to a solution, although she usually found that sleeping on problems was the best way to straighten them out. The only progress her dreaming mind had made was that it had seen what was missing. It would come, she was sure, so she was just going to wait for it—for him. A good trader knew when to be patient, so she would let him make the first move.

The swordsman was still alive, and somehow she had known he would be. He seemed to understand when he was spoken to, but he would answer in grunts and nods. She had never seen so much blood come out of one body before. Even at Yok, her deck had not looked so like a slaughterhouse.

Tom’o was still sedated, and she was going to keep him that way for a while. If he had offended the gods, then he had most surely paid for it. No bones broken, thanks to the Most High, but a terrible beating. It might make him a little easier to handle for a while. He had been getting fractious, even before this torment began, and so had Thana. In fact, Thana had been growing into quite a problem. After Yok they had seemed to settle back into much the same steady, routine life as before, except that they stayed down from Hoof and never gone near Yok or Joof; those had been once-a-year destinations, anyway, for the spring crops. But no, it had not been the same. Change had been in the wind, although she had been refusing to admit it. Now they all had much more change than they could ever have wanted.

Something was going on . . . people beginning to crowd out on the main deck. She watched warily, out of the corner of her eye, not showing that she was paying attention. Then she saw the tiny figure come into view, painfully climbing the starboard steps. Here he was. This was what had been missing.

He advanced slowly, puffing a little, and smiled at her. He made no greeting and he sat himself beside her on the bench without waiting for an invitation. Only his toes touched the deck.

She glared down at the shiny skin on the top of his head. “You’ll have to move off there when I tack,” she growled—he had trapped her into speaking first.

“I shan’t be long. Have you made a decision, mistress?”

“I’ve decided I like beggars on my ship as little as swordsmen.”

His eyes were surprisingly bright for his obvious great age. “I outrank you.”

Lina had been right—he was a priest. She could tell by the way be spoke. A Sixth? For a moment she thought of telling him to prove it, then changed her mind quickly. The mood the crew was in, they’d all fall flat on their faces before him if he really was a priest of the Sixth. He would be giving the orders, instead of her.

She grunted, trying to make him say more, but he stayed silent, hands clasped in his lap, looking straight ahead, scuffing his feet like a child. Waiting for her, of course. Impudence! Then her attention was drawn back to the main deck again.

“What’s going on down there?” She hoped her guess was wrong.

“Another fencing lesson.”

Oh, no! She reached for her whistle.

“His idea.”

“I don’t believe it! A male Fourth asking lessons from a female Second?”

The old man nodded, grinning. He was not looking at Brota. Probably it hurt to turn his neck up at that angle. “Adept Nnanji is an ambitious young man. He says your fencing is different. Is it?”

“Yes. But I never met a landlubber who would admit it was better.”

“I’m not sure he went quite that far. But he is always eager to learn.”

The fencers were in position, most of the ship’s company standing around to watch the sport again. The old man was silent once more, still letting her lead the conversation.

“I could put you all ashore,” she said. She had seen many local jetties, most of which would likely handle Sapphire’s modest draft. No settlements of any size, though—none that would have a healer able to tell a sword cut from a snakebite.

“You’re not going to.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I’m sure you won’t, mistress. I didn’t say you might not try.”

“So you came to warn me?”

This time he twisted his head around far enough to flash his gums at her in a smile. Then he went back to watching the fencing. The sound of clashing foils drifted up in the wind, but the crowd was oddly silent.

“You’re a priest!”

“Yes.”

“What’s a priest doing running after swordsmen?”

“Collecting miracles.”

“Such as?”

“Such as your son not finishing off Shonsu when he had him on the floor. On the deck.”

“You think he’s still the Goddess’ champion after that fool trick he pulled in Aus?”

The little man adjusted himself on the bench. “Don’t try to outguess the gods, Mistress Brota. If She wanted a swordsman to do that, Shonsu was the only one she could have chosen. Right?”

“But why—”

“I don’t know. But I shall find out if I live long enough . . . or not, as the case may be. I learned patience a couple of lifetimes ago.”

She studied the pennant and adjusted course. The sails filled more fully, and the ship leaned over happily, like a sleepy dog relaxing. ‘Tell me another miracle, then.”

“Have you ever seen a slave so loved? Or a Fourth so young? Anyone who has helped Shonsu has been rewarded.”

“And my son was punished for being difficult?”

He nodded.

“Even if I agree to let you all stay, the rest of the family may not go along.”

He chuckled without looking up.

“One!” That was the swordsman’s voice. The crowd muttered.

“He’s beating her!” Brota exclaimed.

“He is a very fast learner. Don’t underestimate Adept Nnanji. He is not nearly as stupid as he would like to be. Youth! He will grow out of it.”

“Shonsu lost a lot of blood,” she said. “If that’s all, then he’ll be up and about in a few days—before we even reach Ki San, likely. Then what? He’ll need revenge on Tom’o for wounding him.”

The old man chuckled again. “Not Shonsu. He’ll shake his hand and offer him some lessons.”

“Then he’s like no swordsman in the whole World!”

“That’s very true.” He did not explain.

“Besides, I never heard of a landlubber giving a sailor fencing lessons. Some of them won’t even admit it’s legal.”

“Is it?”

“There’s some sutra or other,” she muttered. Water rats did not bother much with sutras. “And what if he dies? I’ve seen wounds become cursed, old man. My brother-in-law had a nick on his hand, and it killed him. My nephew—”

“A sword cut?”

Was that a threat? How had this nasty little busybody learned about that? But he was still apparently intent on the fencing, as though he had not spoken.

“Two!” Nnanji shouted.

“Shonsu is not going to die. He may be very sick . . . ” The old man paused as if considering a sudden idea. “Yes, he may be quite sick. But he won’t die. And you’ll have no trouble with the rest of us. Your daughter can handle Adept Nnanji for you. His brother is—”

“His brother is a little imp! He was getting a lesson on knots from Oligarro this morning. Why would a landlubber need to know knots?”

He laughed aloud, spraying spit. “That’s what Nnanji asked him. But you can guess. And the slave won’t leave her master’s side, so she’s no problem.”

“It’s that other one. I don’t like ship’s whores. That Katanji was dropping hints to the boys. Does he?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” He looked up at her in surprise. “I don’t think Cowie’s important any more. You can get rid of Cowie if you want to, mistress.”

“How?”

His eye twinkled, and they suddenly laughed together.

“And young Thana has her heart firmly on Lord Shonsu’s tray,” the priest said. “Isn’t youth wonderful? Do you remember what that was like, mistress? The burning? The agony of being apart? How one person became the sun and all the rest of the World only stars?” He sighed.

How could she forget? Tomiy, young and slender, handsome as a string of diamonds. What could landlubbers ever know of the whirlwind courtships of the riverfolk, the few scattered hours together when the two ships met in port? The awesome commitment, a leap of faith, knowing that one might never see one’s family again? And what was left now of Tomiy but a son who’d been manic enough to sauce a swordsman of the Seventh and a wayward, shrewd little minx of a daughter . . . 

Another yell of triumph from Nnanji. Thana had not scored at all yet. She would not now; not if the red-haired youth had mastered water rat footwork already.

“Thana has always insisted she would marry a Seventh,” Brota admitted. “Tom’o says a nightsoil carrier of the Seventh . . . ” She had allowed the confrontation to be turned into a conversation, almost a conspiracy, as if the two of them were arranging everything between them. This shriveled antiquity was as sharp as any trader she could think of.

“Not this Seventh, though,” he said. “No matter how long she has to try.”

“Expect to be on board for some time, do you?”

He nodded and rose stiffly. “It will be quite a long voyage, I think.”

“Where to? There are swordsmen in Ki San.”

“But Shonsu is not able to recruit them, because of the wound your son gave him. So the contract will still be in force.” He beamed at her. Even standing, his eyes were no more than level with hers.

She glared angrily. “I could give back his jewel.”

He shook his head. “You shook hands. I have given you your warning, Mistress Brota. Don’t antagonize the Goddess any further. Serve Her well and you will be rewarded.”

“And what if he dies?”

“He won’t.”

“You can’t know that.” Yet his eerie confidence impressed her, and she could usually smell lies at a hundred paces.

“I do know that,” the old man said simply. “I am certain.”

“Certain is a strong word!”

“There is a prophecy, mistress. I know that Shonsu is not going to die this time, because I know who is going to kill him. And it is not your son.”

He walked away, unsteady on the sloping deck.

Nnanji shouted, “Four!” He had won the lesson.

††

“It’s too late to drop them overboard,” Tomiyano said angrily. Sapphire had just overtaken a wallowing ore barge and was about to pass on the leeward side of a cattle boat. It would not steal their wind, but the neighborhood would be low-class for a few minutes.

Yes, it was much too late—there were witnesses. The River was busy as a marketplace. Morning sunlight danced on the bustling waters. River gulls screamed and swooped overhead. Brota said nothing.

“We could buy a ship apiece with that damned sword. Not to mention his hairclip. And however many more gems he may have in his pouch.” In four days he had made a remarkable recovery. The swellings were going down, although his shoulders were striped in more shades than a seamstress’ silk box, and he moved his arms as if they were old as the sutras. He was leaning on the rail at her side, grumbling. She did not think he was serious, but if she showed interest he might be. Trying her out, tempting. His ordeal had not made him easier to handle. Whatever the cost, he had felled a swordsman of the Seventh, and very few sailors had ever been able to claim that.

“Company astern,” he added.

She turned to eye the galley overtaking, its gilded oars moving like wings, its prow embellished with shiny enameled arabesques. It was heading to cut her off before she passed the cattle boat. The stench caught Sapphire briefly. Ugh!

“He’s going to die,” Tomiyano said. He turned around and cautiously leaned elbows on the rail. His chest was almost as gaudy as his back, and his burned face was flaking. “His leg looks like a melon. Have you listened to him? Not a word makes any sense. Gibberish!”

“I told you to stay out of the deckhouse.”

“I did. I looked in the window. And you can smell his wound from the hold. Damned landlubbers all over the ship! That Nnanji is dangerous. Every time I look at him, I expect him to start denouncing someone. Self-righteous young whelp!”

Brota did not speak. Nnanji had promised no denunciation in Ki San. Nnanji was under control. Thana had needed very little coaching. He revolved around her like a trained moth.

“And that Katanji!” Tomiyano spat over the rail.

Obviously his liver had been tainted by the bruised blood. A rhubarb purgative was what he needed. She wondered if beer would disguise the taste, for he would never take it voluntarily. “You’re the only one to complain about him. He seems to get along with everyone else.”

“That’s what I mean! Have you seen how Diwa looks at him? And Mei? But we are going to throw them off in Ki San, aren’t we?”

Brota nudged the tiller judiciously. Perhaps it had been a mistake never to accept passengers before—Tomiyano was reacting as if he’d been raped, and some of the others were almost as bad. He had been born on Sapphire and had never slept anywhere else in his life. He worshiped the old hulk.

Roars of fury came floating across from the galley. It veered, and then feathered oars and lost way, in danger of stripping its sweeps against the cattle boat. Brota began planning her next tack. A couple of huge cargo ships, three times Sapphire’s size, were lumbering along ahead, while tiny luxury yachts flitted in and out like dragonflies—the owners coming to escort their cargoes, perhaps. She had never seen so much traffic so far from a dock. The great manor houses stood ranked along the shore; suburbs coming into sight. Ki San must be huge, and she felt excitement mounting, even in herself. The crew were expectantly lining the rail on the main deck.

“You are going to kick them out in Ki San?”

“Wait and see what the boy says.”

“Him? He told Thana he’d never seen a city before Aus. This Ki San is . . . ” Tomiyano considered the shore and the river traffic. “It’s going to be worth seeing. It’ll snuff ’em all up and not even sneeze. He’ll stay aboard!”

Of course Nnanji would decide to stay, but likely he had not worked that out yet. He was down on the main deck with the rest, his ponytail shining copper in the morning sun, the silver griffon and its sapphire shining more brightly beside it. Everyone was down there, except Shonsu and his slave. Real devotion, there. She never seemed to sleep.

Evidently Tomiyano had also been looking at the sword and suddenly he realized its significance. “But he can’t go ashore, can he? Swordsmen would be a bigger threat than sorcerers!” He laughed, then muttered something scornful about swordsmen, but under his breath so Brota could pretend not to have heard.

A challenger needed no reason. That sword would be Nnanji’s death warrant if any highrank caught him wearing it. Of course in theory be could carry it in a sheath and wear his own, but Adept Nnanji would surely regard that as beneath his honor. And it would not save him from civilians, or swordsmen low on scruples.

A lumber boat and two fishing smacks ahead . . . “My head’s aching,” she said. “Eyestrain. Pity you’re not fit enough to handle this for me.”

“Move over!”

“But your shoulders . . . ”

“Move over, I said!”

She left him to it and headed for the steps. She was tired of his griping, and the rest of the family was as bad, although they were more subtle about it. She was going to let the swordsmen stay—until she had sold her sandalwood. She would pitch them off just before Sapphire sailed. Safer that way. Unless, of course, the gods were feeling generous, as the old man had predicted. She was a trader and words were cheap. Let them show it.

Brota was down with the rest of the family, sitting on a hatch cover, when Ki San itself came into view, glorious in the sunlight. She had seen more of the World than any of them, but even she was impressed. A million green copper roofs spread out over many hills in a forest of spires, cupolas, and domes. On the highest summit a palace shone in white and gold. The bustling dock front stretched out of sight, outlining a bend of the River, a giant hedge of masts, and rigging dwindling away in an arc into the far distance. Lighters and barges flitted about like gnats. Windlasses and wagon wheels sent a continuous rumble of noise floating out over the water.

Watching the hubbub of the docks drift by, Brota began to wonder if they would ever find a berth. Then a little ferryboat pulled out ahead, and Tomiyano shot Sapphire into the gap as easily as he could have hit a spittoon. He grinned in lopsided triumph. The crew cheered and jumped to furl the sails and throw lines.

Brota heaved herself up and walked over to Adept Nnanji.

“Well, adept? You wish to remain on board?”

He gulped and nodded, still staring in horror at the city. “I do. You will send for a healer, mistress?”

“Very well.”

“Ah, mistress?” He turned his attention from the view and squirmed slightly. “I want to sell Cowie. A slave who has hysterics at the sight of blood is not a suitable companion for a swordsman.”

“That’s true.” Brota nodded solemnly. Well done, Thana!

Nnanji stammered. “Er, I wondered if you would sell her for me? You would get a higher price than I would.”

“Probably. A man selling a slave like that means she’s no good. A woman selling her can claim she’s too good. Of course I’ll want a commission. A sixth?”

His face fell. “Thana said you’d only want a fifth.”

“All right. For you, a fifth.”

He beamed. “That’s very kind of you, mistress.”

“My pleasure, adept.”

The port officer departed, Matarro was sent for a healer.

The chance of a Seventh as patient brought a Sixth with no less than three juniors to carry his bags. He was a butterball of a man with a low, oily voice and a smooth manner; green linen gown freshly pressed, black hair slick on his scalp. He frowned when he saw the invalid. The healers clustered around, muttering and prodding, while the laymen retreated into an anxious group in the far corner of the deckhouse. Brota carefully placed herself on Nnanji’s right.

Finally the Sixth rose and regarded the group in some doubt. ‘To whom do I have the honor to report?” he asked.

“To me,” said Nnanji, stepping forward. Brota moved with him.

“The wound is cursed,” the healer said cautiously.

Obviously.

“In the case of a civilian, I would recommend that a chirurgeon be summoned to remove the limb.”

Brota braced herself, but Nnanji’s sword arm barely twitched.

“No.”

The healer nodded. “I thought not. Then I regret to announce that I cannot take this case.”

Brota was ready to intervene, but the lad knew the correct response. “We respect your learning, your honor. While you are here, however, perhaps you would advise us on . . . on these foil bruises on my ribs. What would you recommend?” He had a tear glistening in one eye, but he did not seem to have noticed.

The healer nodded gravely and recommended that Nnanji be kept cool, given plenty to drink but take care not to choke on it, put hot compresses on the bruises every two hours and in between apply a balm, which one of the juniors produced from a bag. Nnanji solemnly thanked him and paid gold for the balm and the advice.

“And you will return tomorrow, your honor?” Brota asked. Nnanji looked surprised, but the Sixth beamed and said of course he would come back to check on the adept’s bruises. She had no intention of remaining overnight, but she did not want the man tattling to the garrison about a Seventh in port. Not yet.

She accompanied the healers as they went out on deck.

“How long, your honor?” she asked.

“Five days?” said the oily Sixth. “At the outside. But he was a strong man. You could, of course, call in the priests.”

Five days, Brota thought.

The healer was almost a sword victim himself as he left, for Matarro and Katanji had appointed themselves a ceremonial guard at the top of the gangplank, like those the big ships had, and their salutes were erratic. Brota concealed a smile and shouted for Nnanji to come and give them a lesson. He came boiling out of the deckhouse and did so in flames.

“Gods’ armbones!” Matarro said when the monster had gone. “Does he really expect us to stand like this all day?”

“No.” Katanji melted back into a comfortable position. “He’s just upset about Shonsu. Nanj is okay mostly.”

Then Brota was going ashore, and they flashed their swords again, but less dangerously.

They watched as samples of wares were set out on the dock, sandalwood and a few brass pots. Brota settled herself in a chair, and the busy dock life of Ki San thronged by in the hot sunshine. Wagons, rumbling along with loads of barrels and bales, raised clouds of acrid, horsey-smelling dust while highrank traders strolled by with their followers to sneer at the displays. Hawkers pushed loaded barrows, calling their wares to the ships; porters trundled carts. Sedan chairs and pedestrians and mules and pedlars wound their way in and out through the traffic. Robes and loincloths and wraps, in white and black, yellow, brown, and orange flashed by in the bustle and noise. There were many swordsmen patrolling the area.

“What happens now?” Katanji asked, fascinated.

“Puke all,” Matarro said. “If some trader fancies what we’ve got out, he’ll come and inspect it and say it’s all crap, and Brota’ll tell him he’s an armpit and it’s great stuff. Then they’ll both try to make the other name a price so they can say that it’s unthinkable. After that they get down to business. If he’s serious, he’ll come on board and look over the stock itself. Finally they shake hands.”

Not much happened for a while. A few traders sniffed like dogs and wandered away. Then Thana led out Cowie, cleaned, coiffed, and appropriately clad, and took her down to the dock. The Firsts saluted and ogled as they went by.

“You never did,” Matarro said.

“Did, too!” Katanji rolled his eyes. “Last night again! Nanj was snoring like a grindstone. I crawled over and helped myself. Three times.”

“She looks like a lump!” the ship boy said doubtfully.

“Never!” Katanji assured him. “As soon as I start, she just goes wild. Loves it! Heaving and panting! Great stuff!” He went into slavering detail.

Matarro was impressed, but not quite convinced. “Swear on your sword?”

Certainly he swore on his sword, Katanji said, with the confidence of one who could not be discredited. Then their attention was called to the dock.

Cowie’s appearance had proved more interesting than a whole mountain of sandalwood. A trader of the Sixth broke off negotiations at the next ship and hurried over, which was enough to get Brota off her chair right away. A Fifth crossed the roadway at the same time, then another Sixth. Their followers streamed in behind them, forming a crowd, which began to grow and jostle. Matarro swore a few oaths of disbelief, and Nnanji emerged from the deckhouse to watch. It looked as if Brota might be holding an auction, for hands were waving and voices bellowing.

“Haven’t they ever seen boobs before?” Katanji demanded.

“Not like those!” Matarro said longingly.

Then mere was a disturbance at the back of the crowd and it hastily opened for the latest newcomers, swordsmen.

“Holy ships!” said Matarro. “A Sixth?”

Nnanji bolted back into the deckhouse. He peered out through the windows, muttering under his breath, trembling with rage and frustration.

Jja was applying balm. She looked up, white-faced and red-eyed, brushing her hair aside with the back of one hand. She smiled slightly. “Adept? If you put the sword under the edge of the bedding and stayed close to the door, then it would come to no harm.”

But Nnanji could not dispose of a trust so easily. He remained in the deckhouse, fretting angrily by the shutters.

The crowd rapidly dispersed, leaving only the troop of swordsmen and a few curious onlookers. Then Nnanji suddenly exclaimed, “Jja! Look at this!”

Together they watched Cowie being assisted into a sedan chair. Incredulous, they saw her borne away with an armed escort. “I have seen many miracles around Shonsu,” Nnanji whispered, “but never one like that. A slave in a sedan chair?”

Brota stopped a moment to talk to one of the traders, then came stumping up the gangplank. When she reached the safety of her own deck she threw her head back and roared a carillon of river oaths, waving her fists in the air. Her crew melted away, knowing better than to speak to her in that mood. She wheeled round and stormed the deckhouse. Katanji trotted after her. Matarro followed more circumspectly.

She almost took the door off its hinges. “There’s your money!” she snarled, smiting a small leather bag into Nnanji’s hand with considerable force. ‘Twenty golds!”

“The Sixth bought her?”

“Yes! The Honorable Farandako, swordsman of the Sixth, reeve of Ki San!” She spat the words. “I had them up to fifty and they would have gone higher—eighty or ninety. Then your noble swordsman comes up and says that twenty is more than enough for a slave and takes her. Swordsmen!”

Armed robbery! Nnanji looked at the little bag that still lay in his oversize hand, looked at Brota . . . looked down at the restless, flushed face of Shonsu. “Brother,” he said sadly, “we have need of an honorable swordsman.”

There was no reply.

“He was generous, his honor!” Brota was still quivering with rage. “He needn’t have paid more than one. Or none at all!”

“Why, mistress?” Nnanji asked. “What is so special about Cowie? Why a sedan chair?”

“The king,” Brota said, lowering her voice almost to conversation level. “He collects slaves like her. He need only deliver her to the palace steward and he can be sure of at least a hundred.” And if she had thought to research her market properly, she could have done that.

“I’m happy for poor Cowie,” said Jja. “She goes to live in a palace. The Goddess rewards those who help my master.”

Nnanji and Brota looked at each other, startled and rather shamefaced at not having thought of that.

“Well, you got them up to fifty golds,” Nnanji said, spilling the coins into his other palm. “A fifth of that is . . . ten, right? So ten for you and ten for me, which is what I paid for her.”

Brota snorted, but took the money before he came to his senses.

“Here, Katanji, keep those for me,” Nnanji said. Then he remembered that the two Firsts had been left on guard duty. He exploded at them, driving them from the deckhouse with prophecies of cataclysms and doom.

“Five score gold pieces!” Katanji growled when they were back at their posts, safely out of range. “For a mattress?” He pulled a face in disgust. “Boy, someone’s going to get a king-size disappointment!”

Matarro grinned, knowing that now he was getting closer to the truth. Then they started to laugh. They laughed so hard that they almost dropped their swords.

†††

“Three hundred!” Tomiyano glanced hurriedly over his shoulder to see if the traders had overheard his astonishment. But they were watching their slaves carry the sandalwood down from the ship and load it onto the wagon.

Brota merely nodded and continued weighing coins from the table into a leather sack. Never had Sapphire carried a more profitable cargo, and at those rates they had left thirty golds’ worth sitting on the jetty where Shonsu had boarded.

It was not yet quite noon, and good sailing weather was going to waste.

“Next port?” she asked.

“Three days to Wal. After that three, maybe four, to Dri.”

Five days! “Cargo?”

“Brass,” her son said, and she nodded. Ki San was proud of its brass and copperwork. Her own collection of pots had been greeted with derision, but fortunately there were only a few score in the hold, leftovers. Load up with this good stuff, and they would all sell together. Moreover there was a brass warehouse directly opposite their berth—that might be a clue from the Goddess or it might not, but it could save the rent of a wagon. Indeed, the trader was already standing at the front, hoping. She handed the bag to Tomiyano and led the way across the road. Had they had to go far, she would have donned her sword. Had it then been needed, he would have wielded it.

The trader was a Third—young, nervous, probably just started on his own. His establishment was small by local standards, yet he had an open-fronted shed large enough to have taken Sapphire. New businesses had debts. She made the conventional opening remarks and he replied. There were the customary objections about traders only trading with traders, but she had already found the local way around that, and few traders ever put a sutra ahead of a profit. The quality impressed her, and Tomiyano signaled that it was as good as any he had found. Cauldrons, tankards, pans, knives, and plates—above all, plates. Plates were heavy. She wandered around between the piles, eyes busy. Metal gleamed everywhere, even hanging from the ceiling. She found the dark corner with the junk and allowed for that. Volume, weight, packing, damage . . . 

Then she gratefully accepted a chair and put on her helpless widow act. Tomiyano played skillfully along, reading her signals as she seemed to fidget. How much brass could they carry? Depends how many plates, how many pots. She appealed to the trader for help, knowing that Sapphire was much roomier than she looked—the cabins were small. They discussed hold size. She said big and Tomiyano patiently said small. The trader believed the sailor.

“Here,” she said suddenly, dumping the bag down. “Three hundred that we just got for our lumber. You take that and we take as much as we can carry. That’s easiest, isn’t it?” She smiled innocently.

Tomiyano roared at her: three hundred golds—they could never carry that much. Yet the trader was suspicious. “You are serious, mistress?”

“Certainly.” Keep him off balance. “Three hundred for all we can carry, our choice. Delivered on deck.”

He laughed. “Mistress! A thousand, perhaps.”

Hooked!

“Three hundred in that bag, that we just got for our lumber. If you have it brought at once, we can get in half a day’s sailing. If I go elsewhere I haggle and we stay the night.”

He nodded, staring across at the ship, calculating. “For a shipload . . . eight hundred.”

She waddled out of the shed and looked at Tomiyano. “Two more this way, three that,” he said, pointing. The trader called to her, and she kept walking. Seven hundred. She kept on, Tomiyano blustering at one elbow and the trader at the other.

“All the best craftsmen in the city—”

“There just isn’t room for three hundred golds’ worth! It’ll get scratched and dented. And weight! It’ll sink us.”

She snorted. “With Shonsu on board? Ha!”

The cobbles were hard on her ankles and slowed her pace.

“Five hundred, my last offer.” The trader was still with them, and the next brass dealer coming up ahead.

“What if he dies?” Tomiyano snarled. No talk of throwing overboard now.

“The healer said we had five days. We’ve used half of one.”

“Four hundred,” the trader said.

They had reached the next warehouse, a much larger place. The proprietor had been warned by his spies and was waiting. He made the sign of greeting. “Done!” said the young man behind her in a sob, and she turned round and held out both hands.

There were pots everywhere: in the cabins, along the passages, in the dinghies, on the decks. The plates had gone in the hold, and Tomiyano fretted about draft and shifting cargo and incomplete repairs and ballast and trim. The trader had wept hysterically, screaming that he was ruined. The crew were astounded and wondered if she had taken leave of her senses. With pots all over the deck, what do you do if it rains? How do you get to the ratlines in an emergency? Brota ignored all of the comments. She knew an opportunity when it barked loud enough and she did not think Shonsu was going to be drowned. She could get three fifty for this lot, perhaps more. Five days. A slow death, that, and his leg had not started to turn black yet.

The only place without metal was the deckhouse. One load had been placed in there. Nnanji had moved it all outside and stood glaring in the doorway, his arms folded and the seventh sword on his back. He might be a simple swordsman, but he seemed to have made a good guess as to what was happening and why. The deckhouse stayed clear.

Sapphire moved drunkenly away from the dock, responding to her tiller with a reluctance that felt like resentment.

The deckhouse was the only place left to eat, so when the anchor fell, it was there that the food came—roast dodo and rich-smelling manatee pie; fresh brown loaves and steaming dishes of fresh vegetables from Ki San. Brota sat on one of the chests, and everyone else crowded in on the floor.

She sensed strange moods in the company. The crew were worried about the trim and the cargo, anxious about tomorrow’s weather; but they were also jubilant over the windfall from the sandalwood, believing now that the Goddess was smiling on them. Hool was a discarded memory. Their only sadness was a certainty that the wounded man in the corner was going to die of his wound as Matyrri and Brokaro had died. The passengers were morose, but were equally certain that he would live. As dishes passed around, little conversations would start up and then fade away again uneasily.

Then Tomiyano came in, carrying a large copper pot with a strange coil on the top of it. Brota held her breath. He glanced around until he located Nnanji, then picked his way cautiously over legs and around people to reach him, and laid the pot gently on the deck.

“Adept Nnanji,” he said in a gruff voice. “Do you know what this is for?”

Nnanji frowned at it, looked up, and shook his head.

“Your mentor saw some like these in Aus,” Tomiyano said, “but larger than this. He was very interested in them for some reason. I had hoped you would know. We got it with the others.”

Nnanji closed his eyes. “All he told us was: ‘I saw some copper coils that I thought might have something to do with sorcerers and I went over to look at them.’ ” His voice had taken on some of Shonsu’s low rumble. He opened his eyes again. “I can’t help you, captain. But perhaps you would let me buy that, so he can look at it when he recovers.”

“I’ll give it to you,” Tomiyano said gruffly.

Brota thought a prayer to the Holiest: a peace offering! Incredible! But would the swordsman take it?

“I cannot accept a gift from you, Captain,” Nnanji said. “How much to buy the pot?”

Tom’o flushed furiously. “Five golds!”

Nnanji calmly reached into his money pouch and counted out four golds and twenty-one silvers, laying them on the deck at the sailor’s feet. Madness!

As soon as he had finished, the sailor kicked the coins away across the floor. He stamped over to the other side of the deckhouse, his face dark with rage, leaving the pot where it was.

Brota sighed and decided not to interfere. When men behave like children, women should stay out

“What’s the next port, my lady, and how long?” Honakura asked from a corner.

“Wal, in about three days,” she said with her mouth full.

“There are sorcerers in Wal!” Nnanji said sharply.

Brota looked quickly at Tomiyano. “Is that right?”

“I didn’t think to ask,” he confessed, frowning, angry with himself. “Times and current and landmarks and shallows and trading, but I didn’t ask about sorcerers! I didn’t ask about Dri, either; the one after.”

“Dri’s all right,” Katanji said.

He had a great gift for throwing rocks into still pools, that lad, thought Brota.

“I didn’t give you permission to go ashore,” Nnanji growled in the silence.

Katanji didn’t say anything, kept eating.

Nnanji admitted defeat. “All right. What did you discover?”

“The left bank is sorcerer country,” said his brother, waving a crust in the general direction of the mountains.

“Don’t you know your right hand from your left?”

“He’s right, adept,” Brota said. “We’re going upstream, so that side is the left bank.”

Nnanji glared, seeing that he had been trapped. Katanji’s eyes were twinkling, but he was careful not to smile. “There are Black Lands to the south, mentor,” he said. “The sorcerers have taken over at least three cities on the left bank: Aus, Wal, and Sen, maybe more. And Ov, of course, on the other side of RegiVul, the mountains. Even the sailors don’t seem to know much farther than two or three cities. But there are no sorcerers on the right bank, at least near here. Ki San and Dri and then Casr—they’re all right.”

His brother nodded and growled, “Well done, novice.” Again he sounded like Shonsu—Katanji noticed and hid a grin in a mouthful of pie.

“Well done,” Nnanji muttered again, scrunching up his forehead in thought. He looked at Brota. “We’ll bypass Wal, then?”

“No more sorcerers for me,” she said. “We can go on to Dri.” But they couldn’t reach it in five days.

The food was eaten and the dishes removed. Oligarro brought out his mandolin and played awhile. Then Holiyi shrilled a few tunes on his pan pipes. Then a sleepy silence . . . It was almost dark. The Dream God was starting to shine, this strangely low Dream God, wider and brighter.

“Nanj?” said his brother. “Sing us a song.”

“No,” Nnanji said.

“Yes!” said everyone else. The passengers were in favor now. Jonahs brought profit.

So Nnanji let himself be persuaded. His voice was reedy and not strong enough for a minstrel’s, but his unconscious gift of mimicry led him through the tune, and the words were apparently no problem. He chose one of the great sagas, about the tryst of Illi and the ten-year siege, about the great hero Akiliso of the Seventh and how he had sulked in his tent because his liege had taken away one of his slave girls. It was a familiar tale, but he sounded like a minstrel and he had the cadences and the pauses and the triumphs and griefs in all the right places.

But when he got to the place where Akiliso’s oath brother went to fight in his stead, he suddenly stopped. “I think that’s enough for one night,” Nnanji said. “Finish it another day.”

The deckhouse applauded and praised and wiped a few eyes. Brota flexed her shoulders stiffly. She had been as much caught up in the song as any of them. The old man might be right. Shonsu might recover before they reached Dri, where there were swordsmen. Then the Goddess would release Sapphire. Three hundred golds for a load of sandalwood!

But she thought that Shonsu was going to die.

Matarro’s young voice came out of the shadows, for it was quite dark now. Only the windows glowed. Reflected ripples of light played over the ceiling. “Adept Nnanji? What will you do if Lord Shonsu dies?”

‘That’s none of your business, my lad,” his mother snapped.

“It’s all right,” said Nnanji’s soft voice out of the blackness on the other side. “It’s a swordsman problem, so he’s right to be interested. I die also, novice.”

A terrible coldness ran through Brota. “Bedtime!” she called loudly, surging to her feet. One or two of the children copied her, but everyone else stayed still, waiting.

“Nanj!” squealed his brother. “What do you mean?”

“There was no abomination!” Brota shouted. “Tom’o had been empowered as a posse!”

“That’s correct,” Nnanji said. “No denunciation. You see, novice, if I were only bound to Lord Shonsu by the first oath, as a follower, or me second oath, as his protégé, then there would be no difficulty. But we two swore a greater oath, so I would have to try to avenge him.”

Tomiyano snarled wordlessly from somewhere to Brota’s right.

“It isn’t going to happen, though.” Nnanji might have been discussing the price of fish, so quiet and level was his voice. “But it would be an interesting problem. The captain isn’t a swordsman, so I couldn’t challenge him, and there was no abomination, so I couldn’t just pronounce sentence and kill him. Probably I would have to give him a sword and empower him as a posse again, to kill me. But it doesn’t matter, because Shonsu isn’t going to die.”

“Filthy landlubber sword-jockey!” Tomiyano snarled. “You think you can get away with that?”

“Not a chance. You would knife me or run me through with the sword. And even if I did do you, the others would get me.”

The men growled in angry agreement.

“So don’t worry about it,” Nnanji said. “I wouldn’t do it without warning you. Shonsu isn’t going to die, and even if he does, you’ll easily get me first.”

“That means all of you!” Brota screamed. “Witnesses, your brother for certain. Yes, all of you!”

“I expect so,” Nnanji said coldly. “But an oath is an oath.”

She swore loudly, silencing the rising noise. “That settles it!” she snapped. “You go ashore tomorrow at the first jetty we see. All of you. I’ve never broken a deal in my life, but this one is finished!”

The crew shouted agreement.

In the darkness to her left the little old priest coughed. “You did well on your lumber, mistress?”

The coldness increased, filling her with ice. She had not only accepted Shonsu’s gem—now she had also taken gold from the Goddess. And she had so overloaded the ship that any sudden squall would lay her on her beam ends.

“Well . . . we’ll see tomorrow,” she said faintly.

The deckhouse filled with shouts of disbelief. They thought she was crazy. So did she.

††††

Four days out of Ki San, in late afternoon, Brota sent Tomiyano to fetch Nnanji. The lanky young swordsman, pale-skinned and bony, was leaning morosely on the rail, staring out over the River. Flashes of sunlight streaked on the silver handle of his great sword; the sapphire gleamed against his red ponytail. Very few people on the ship would even answer him now, let alone venture to address him.

She watched from the tiller as Tomiyano approached and saw him deliberately jostle a few of the copper vessels so that Nnanji would hear him coming. Oligarro and Holiyi were on deck, also, keeping a wary eye on things.

The captain spoke; Nnanji glanced up toward her and then shrugged and led the way aft. If he was uneasy at turning his back on the knife-bearing sailor, he did not show it. The poop was even more closely packed with pots than the deck and the two men edged their way through.

“Mistress?” Nnanji was curious but cautious.

Brota pointed to starboard. Far off over the bright waters, the eastern shore was a thin line, on which sharp eyes could just discern the tops of buildings and a good imagination could see a tower. Beyond lay the remote mountains of RegiVul, crumpled blue like crystallized sky.

“Wal?” said Nnanji.

“Wal,” she agreed, then pointed over the port bow.

He turned and studied the swampy, desolate bush flowing past only a few cable-lengths away. There had been no hamlets or even shacks on that bank for hours. Then he looked up at the rigging and back to her, puzzled. “What am I supposed to see?”

Landlubber! “The sky,” she said.

“Oh!”

It could not have been more obvious—a gigantic, boiling thunderhead, dazzling white on its foaming top, lightning flickering in the dark below its flat base.

“You overloaded the ship, didn’t you?” he said, turning to her with amusement.

“Even if I hadn’t, I’d want a port for that thing,” she said. “I’ve never seen one grow so fast.”

Suddenly he grinned, broadly. “She wants us to visit Wal.”

Brota could see nothing to grin about. She leaned on the tiller, and grudgingly Sapphire began to respond. “We have no choice,” she said grimly.

“Fine,” Nnanji said. “I’ll stay in the deckhouse.”

Tomiyano’s face held hatred and resentment. He fingered the sorcerer brand on his cheek. “So will I,” he said.

An hour later she sent for Nnanji again, and this time he came alone. The ship was carrying every stitch that Brota and Tomiyano dared hoist, rolling uneasily in a fitful breeze, and Wal was dismally far away. He was wearing his own sword again, instead of Shonsu’s—evidently ready for trouble.

“We may not be going to make this,” she told him. Perhaps she had been wrong; perhaps Shonsu was destined to drown, and she was to be punished for greed.

The swordsman looked puzzled. The fingers of the storm were reaching out above them and about to seize the sun, but Nnanji ignored that. He pointed at Wal. “I thought you were going there, mistress?”

“We’re tacking,” she snapped. “Can’t sail straight upwind, Nnanji!”

“Oh!” he said, not interested in technicalities.

“We have to clear the decks,” she told him, clenching her teeth at his smile.

“The pots will fill with rain?” he asked.

“They’ll roll. We’re going to put as many as we can in the deckhouse.”

His smile vanished and for a moment she thought he would argue, but then he nodded. “If we put Shonsu behind those two chests he will be safe?”

“We had thought of that. He will be safe from rolling pots, at least.”

Nnanji nodded. “Anything I can do to help?” he asked.

She gestured at the cluttered poop. “You can throw these overboard, if you like.”

He blinked. “You are serious, mistress?”

“Yes!”

He did a fair job of not laughing at her, but it was an effort. “Fine!” he said, and started tossing the pots and urns and ewers over the rail. Lae and Mata were already doing the same on the main deck, while others were starting to pack the deckhouse. Tomiyano was emptying the dinghies. Then an army of shadow came racing over the water after them, and the sunshine died.

Sapphire staggered along, leaving a trail of bobbing brass and copper behind her. Brota avoided Nnanji’s eye.

Suddenly there was no wind. The sails flapped listlessly, the ship lost way and then wallowed in waves outrunning the storm. Pots dropped alongside now stayed there, no longer falling astern.

“What’s happened?” Nnanji demanded suspiciously.

“It is the calm before the storm. We expected it. When the wind comes, it will be from behind us—and strong. That’s why I said that we may not be going to make it. All we can do now is wait.”

They could also shorten sail. Tomiyano’s whistle shrilled, and the hands started for the ratlines. Nnanji shrugged and went back to heaving cargo overboard.

“ . . . nothing of which I may be ashamed . . . avoid no honor . . . ” declaimed a voice below them, a deep voice, but faint; audible now only because the wind had dropped.

“What’s that?” Brota exclaimed, taken by surprise.

Nnanji looked uncomfortable. “It is Lord Shonsu. He is repeating the code of the swordsmen. Usually what he says makes no sense, but today he keeps quoting bits of the code.”

Brota and Nnanji looked at each other uneasily. “Like a prayer?” she muttered.

A prayer for forgiveness?

Above them the sky grew steadily blacker, and to the west was the father of all blacknesses.

Brota yielded the tiller to Tomiyano and Oligarro. It might take both of them to hold it when the time came. The air was calm, humid, and menacing. Sapphire drifted aimlessly on the great River.

Little deck cargo remained, all securely tethered. The dim deckhouse was packed tightly, and when Brota and Nnanji went to inspect it they could not see the patient. Jja was sitting in a far corner on a chest. Shonsu lay at her feet, safely barricaded behind it. She smiled bravely across the forest of pots at them. “The sorcerers will find it difficult to reach my master here,” she said.

Brota made a cheerful reply, but if they had to abandon ship there would be no quick way to get Shonsu and his slave out of that corner. Nnanji did not seem to have thought of that. She wondered if Jja had.

“ . . . sutras of the swordsmen . . . the will of the Goddess . . . ” the sick man said.

Then the wind came.

Tossing and rolling, creaking angrily in every timber and rope, Sapphire ran before the storm. Brota huddled in a leather cape in the shelter of the deckhouse wall and wept for the old ship. It had been an unkindness to load her so, a breach of trust. At every roll or pitch, there was a muffled clashing of metal from the cabins below, but Tom’o was magnificent. His grandfather could have done no better, reading the air by the look of the water, angling the old vessel along the edge of the wind, arrowing toward Wal, staying out of the calm before them and out of the fury behind.

Still there was no rain, only cold blasts of wind and darkness, pitchings and creakings. Wal gleamed in sunshine ahead of them for a while, growing closer now, but oh! so slowly. The tower became obvious, an ironic beacon of hope. Then the shadow fell on Wal, also, and only the distant mountains knew sunlight. The children were already stowed in a dinghy. The adults stood by the rails and tried to seem unconcerned as the storm pursued them, marching on pillars of lightning across the waters, grumbling thunder like a cursing of giants.

Wal looked much like Aus, wooden walls and red tile roofs. There were no ships at anchor here; all lay safely moored at the dock, stirring nervously as the waves grew. Tomiyano took Sapphire in and found a berth.

Then he marched angrily down to the deckhouse to hide his face from the sorcerers. Brota, watching him go, suddenly realized that he was going to be shut up in there with Nnanji. There was room for two people inside the door, but not much room. She shouted, and the captain paused, nodded, and passed his belt and dagger to Oligarro. Then he stamped inside and shut the door. She went over and stood close by, just in case there would be trouble; but the sailor was unarmed, the swordsman could not easily draw his sword under that roof—and if he tried, Tom’o would snap him like a twig before he succeeded.

Through the shutters she heard only silence and a distant, hoarse rumble: “ . . . sutras of the swordsmen . . . ”

Brota stayed by the deckhouse door to watch over Oligarro, a heavyset, white-haired man, quiet spoken; usually reliable, but cursed with an unpredictable temper. The docks were deserted before the coming storm, strangely empty, dust blowing over the stones, the litter, and the horse droppings. The only visible life was a slave gang carrying timber from the next ship and loading it on a wagon. The horses had been removed to safety, but slaves were waterproof and did not shy at thunder. Thunder! It rolled almost unceasingly from the coal-dark sky that hung tike a black tent overhead.

Brota and Oligarro . . . everyone else, adults and children, had fled below to tidy up down there and rejoice at reaching safe haven. She supposed it was safe, glanced up unhappily at that all-seeing tower, so like the tower at Aus, but here doubly ominous in the gloom, black on black. She hoped that the sorcerers’ rules would be the same here, that a swordswoman was safe on board. Then she saw that one other person had stayed—Katanji was sitting cross-legged in the sheltered spot below a dinghy, watching and grinning like an imp, disappearing as the lightning threw shadow over him, reappearing in the subsequent gloom. He was not wearing his sword, so he should be all right. Sharp kid; he liked to see, liked to know.

Then a port officer arrived, and the plank was run out for him. He came hobbling up slowly, an emaciated old sailor of the Third, and she disliked him on sight. He paused to make the salute to a superior to Oligarro, his brown robe writhing around his thin shape, his eyes watering in the wind. His name was Hiolanso. Shonsu had said that the port officer in Aus was a sorcerer. If this was also one, he had chosen a much less attractive shape—meager white hair, scraggy neck, many wrinkles, and liver spots.

Oligarro responded as captain of Sapphire.

Hiolanso bid him welcome to Wal on behalf of the elders and the wizard, then headed for the deckhouse, seeking shelter. She stepped in front of it to block him. Frowning, he eyed her face-marks and saw who made the decisions. He saluted wryly and she responded.

“You are aware that swordsmen are not allowed ashore, mistress?”

“I guessed as much.”

Hiolanso looked suspiciously at the deckhouse, turned to study the deck cargo and then to face Oligarro. “You seemed heavy laden when you came in, Captain. Low in the water?”

“We made it,” Oligarro said without expression.

The old man made a twisted smile and shouted over the wind, “Then let us do our business quickly. I have no wish to hang around in this weather. The fee is twenty golds.”

“Twenty!” shouted Brota and Oligarro together. Thunder bellowed above them in celestial outrage.

“I have never heard of such a fee for a ship this size!” Brota roared.

The officer smiled again, suddenly illuminated by lightning. He winced at the ensuing noise and then said, “Nevertheless, that is the fee—today.”

Oligarro was turning red. “It is absurd! We cannot pay!”

“Then you must leave.” he must be listening behind the door. Was this old man a sorcerer?

“I have five golds here,” Oligarro said, blustering and uncertain. “Take it and be gone.”

“Twenty.”

They had no choice and he knew it. Brota glanced down at the dock, and there were four or five youths standing there, accomplices undoubtedly. The old crook would order their lines cast off if they did not pay him. She had met corruption before in port officers, but never this blatant, never with a monster hanging over the River and waiting to smash her ship.

“I must go and get the money, then,” she said, flashing a warning glance at Oligarro. Veins bulged in his ruddy, stolid face.

“Be quick! Or I shall make it thirty.” Hiolanso was shivering in the cold.

Angrily Brota gave Oligarro another meaningful look, then stamped away, heading for the companionway door. She hoped he was using his head—don’t lose your temper, keep that man out of the deckhouse. If that scoundrel discovered a highrank swordsman on board, his fee would become fifty at once. But the money was in her cabin, aft, and the passages were cluttered with copperware. Katanji scampered ahead of her and held the door open against the gale.

She muttered thanks. She had gone only two steps when he said, “I have fifteen golds here, mistress.”

She swung round, unable to see him properly in the dark.

“That would be a kindness,” she replied.

“Two silvers?”

“You’re as bad as he is! All right, two silvers.”

He chuckled and counted fifteen coins into her hand. She wondered how a mere First could have so much. These swordsmen tossed money around in a way she found disgusting. Sharp kid—not many people would have seen the opportunity for fast usury.

Lightning and thunder greeted her again as she staggered back across the deck, noting Oligarro’s surprise at her speedy return. She handed over the money.

“I hope your stay at Wal is profitable, mistress,” Hiolanso said mockingly. “I bid you good day, Captain.”

He bowed and turned.

He walked three steps and stopped.

A man was coming up the plank.

When he reached the deck, he paused, standing tall and sinister in the darkness, motionless except for the whipping of his gown, arms folded inside his sleeves, face invisible inside his sorcerer’s cowl. Then a flare of lightning showed his red robe and a momentary glimpse within the hood: heavy black eyebrows, a square, strong face, confident and severe.

The darkness returned, and he glided forward through the thunder as if he moved on wheels.

“Return the twenty golds to Mistress Brota, Hiolanso,” he said.

Brota shivered and not from the wind. He knew her name? The port officer’s teeth were chattering, and his hands trembled visibly as he reached in his leather pouch and counted out the money.

“My apologies, mistress, Captain,” the sorcerer said in a deep, hard voice. “The elders and the wizard have been much concerned at the corruption among their officials. Now we have caught one and he will be punished. We offer the shelter of our port for your ship, and there will be no fee.”

“Punished how?” Brota asked, thinking of the many times she had cursed officers.

“That’s up to the court.” The sorcerer turned his hood slightly to study the criminal. “At least one hand in the fire, and for so large a theft, probably both.”

Hiolanso’s squeal of terror was drowned out by a mind-shattering peal of thunder. He dodged around the sorcerer and bolted for the gangplank.

The sorcerer swung round to face after him and raised an arm. Thunder roared again, deafening. A cloud of smoke swirled for an instant and was wiped away by the wind.

The plank was empty. The fugitive had totally vanished.

Brota heard a whimper of terror and realized that it was coming from herself. Now it was Oligarro’s teeth that were chattering.

Tap . . . tap . . . Rain was starting.

The sorcerer turned to the sailor and made the salute to a superior. “I am Zarakano, sorcerer of the Fifth rank . . . ”

Oligarro’s voice quavered as he responded. The sorcerer looked to Brota and made the salute to an equal, and her voice was no steadier. The port officer had disappeared before her eyes. It was true, then. She had not believed in sorcerers before she met Shonsu. Now there was one on her deck and he had destroyed a man on her gangplank. One instant there had been a man running down the plank; next instant, only smoke. Never in her life had she worried that she might faint, but the thought now crossed her mind.

Tap . . . tap . . . tap tap tap . . . 

“Let us take cover for a moment,” Zarakano said. He reached for the deckhouse door handle, and Brota was too paralyzed to do anything. The wind grabbed the door and hurled it open with a crash.

Nnanji stood in the entrance, his arms folded, his face a pale blur in the gloom—for an instant. Then lightning flared again, highlighting him in a brilliance of red hair and orange kilt against a million flames of copper. A murderous explosion of thunder rattled the whole ship. The sorcerer recoiled in surprise, started to raise an arm, and then lowered it. This was no water rat swordsman he was seeing—harness, kilt, even the proper boots. Sword. For a moment nobody moved or spoke, and die wind suddenly dropped—the calm before the storm again; silence, no thunder.

“ . . . no less than justice . . . ” That was Shonsu, still raving in the far corner.

Nnanji could not draw under that roof.

Swordsman and sorcerer faced each other for a long, blood-freezing minute, then the sorcerer made the acknowledgment of an inferior. Nnanji’s face was unreadable in the gloom. He paused, then made the salute: “I am Nnanji, swordsman of the fourth rank . . . ”

There had been much talk about sorcerers on Sapphire lately—Katanji had passed on the stories. Had swordsman and sorcerer ever saluted each other like this? Water rats did not count. This was a meeting of snake and mongoose, and the mongoose had saluted.

“I am Zarakano, sorcerer of the fifth rank . . . ” The snake responded.

“I will be evermore true to . . . ” growled Shonsu in the background. Lightning sizzled and thunder bellowed simultaneously, drowning him out.

Tomiyano was keeping to one side, still invisible, but what if the sorcerer went into the deckhouse and saw his branded face? What if he heard Shonsu and recognized the code of the swordsmen?

Plop! Plop! Huge drops began to hit the deck.

Without taking his eyes from Nnanji, Zarakano asked, “How many free swords are you carrying, mistress?”

“Only Adept Nnanji and a First,” she muttered, wondering if Katanji was back on deck, wondering if the sorcerer’s powers could detect her lie. The rain noise was beating louder, and the wind rising again, muffling Shonsu’s mumblings.

“Adept Nnanji is a man of discretion,” the sorcerer said, in what seemed meant to be a jovial tone. “But so am I. I think I shall bid you good day, mistress.” Lightning flared blue white again, blazing off the swordsman in his orange kilt, flaming red and yellow from copper and bronze behind him. “I see you carry much cargo. I will cast a spell of good fortune on it for you.”

Brota stepped in front of him and reached for the door. With Oligarro’s help she pushed it shut, hiding Nnanji, whose feet had never moved. Then she leaned on it, feeling weak and horribly shaken. “I thank you, Master Zarakano,” she said. “And wish you good day, also.” Meaning that she would keep his back safe from the swordsman.

Rain exploded from the sky, torrents of rain, a universe of rain, furring the deck with white fog.

The sorcerer nodded at her, pulling his cowl farther over his face, then hurried for the plank. She saw him reach the dock and the two yellow-robed sorcerers of the Second waiting for him. Then all three sped across the street and were hidden by the rain.

Even the greatest of storms must pass eventually. Brota had retired to pamper a headache, but she must have dozed, for a tap on the door awoke her.

“Who is it?”

“Novice Katanji, mistress.”

“Just a minute.”

The storm had almost gone. The ship was rocking less, creaking less, and sunlight was streaming in the window.

Her cabin was a wooden box, but a larger box than the others, with space for a dresser as well as a chest, and a raised bed that was her sole concession to age. The lantern on the dresser was the only one aboard, a greater badge of authority than her son’s dagger. She had a rug, drapes, and three small wool tapestries to brighten the box.

She eased herself up and took a moment to gather her wits. The wind was dying. Two hours until sunset, perhaps, with the light coming in low under the fringe of the storm. They would be able to salt soon. She grunted to her feet and padded across to admit Katanji. He was grinning, his face grimy and his hair smelling wet.

“Come for your money, have you?” She chuckled. She counted out his fifteen golds onto the dresser. “These two silvers? What happens if I tell your brother?”

He studied her a moment and shrugged. “Then I don’t help you the next time,” he said.

What next time? “Where does a First get fifteen golds?”

“Oh, most of it’s Nanj’s,” he said. “I’m holding the ten he got for Cowie, remember?”

She passed over two silvers. “Thank you, swordsman.”

“You’re welcome, swordsman,” he replied impudently, but the charm of his grin let Katanji get away with such insolence. All the coins went in the same pocket, she noted. “Are you going to sail or stay the night, mistress?”

“Sail. The cowls know your brother’s on board.”

“You don’t believe in the spell of good fortune, then?” His eyes glinted.

She was not in the habit of debating her decisions—not with Tomiyano, certainly not with landlubber Firsts, yet . . . 

“No. Do you?”

He chuckled. “Of course! Besides, Holiyi was complaining only today how long it was since he had a night in port.”

“You let Sailor Holiyi worry about his own sex life, novice, or I’ll start Nnanji worrying about yours.”

He blushed scarlet and looked uneasy. He was, after all, only a kid, and yet she was matching wits with him as if he were a trader of the Fifth. “Anything else?” she asked, thinking that the had time for a shower before they cast off.

He nodded. “I have some information for you. I think it’s worth a gold. Maybe two.”

She sat down on the bed, making the ropes creak loudly, and she stared at him suspiciously. “Two golds! What is it, the elixir of life?”

He shook his head.

“Where did you get information?”

He shook his head again. “Can’t say. Do you want to hear?”

“Who decides if it’s worth one gold, or two, or nothing?”

He hesitated and shrugged. “I suppose you do.”

“If I don’t want it, then I don’t pay?”

He nodded doubtfully. Then he grinned again. “You’ll want it. There are two brass merchants in town, Jasiulko and Fennerolomini.”

He had her attention. “How did you find that out? You been ashore in a sorcerer town? You’re crazy!”

He shook his damp curls. “Swordsmen don’t go ashore here, mistress.”

She glanced at his feet. “I’d better tell Tom’o to clean up the deck, then.”

He looked down and then bit his lip, vexed at having missed that. “Don’t ask questions, mistress, please.”

How had the kid got his face so dirty? It looked greasy, smeared. This lad had promise. In fact he was one of those Shonsu miracles, she decided. “It’s worth knowing about the merchants, Katanji, but it’s not worth two golds.”

“There’s more,” he said, grinning wildly.

“Let’s have it then.”

The words spilled out excitedly. “Two nights ago there was a fire. Jasiulko’s warehouse burned down. He lost his whole stock.”

Brota stared at him for a long minute without a word. She had no doubt at all that he was speaking the truth. She reached in her money bag and silently handed him two more golds.

†††††

It might have been the sorcerer’s spell, but she preferred to think it was the handiwork of the Goddess. Whichever it was. Brota kept her ship in port overnight and next morning sent word to both the brass merchants. She made them bid against each other, for Fennerolomini dearly wanted to keep Jasiulko out of business. In the end Jasiulko took the whole cargo for five hundred and twenty-three golds. Brota shook hands on it, then went down to her cabin and danced a jig.

Lae had been scouting and came back exulting about furniture, carved from a type of oak that grew nowhere else but near Wal. When the dealers brought samples, Brota agreed with her judgment and loaded shiny tables, ornate chairs, and intricately inlaid chests. Sapphire spent a second night in port, and the sorcerers did not trouble her. Nnanji skulked in the deckhouse. Shonsu’s ravings grew quieter, and his wound more obviously cursed. His death seemed closer man ever.

No one asked where Novice Katanji was, but next morning he was aboard when Sapphire set sail in the sunshine for Dri, three days upriver, still carrying the dying swordsman.

The days passed, but Dri came no closer. With all her canvas spread, Sapphire wallowed on a river of glass, barely holding her way against the current in a sickly, fitful wind.

Honakura was becoming concerned. Even he, with a professional faith in miracles and Shonsu’s mission, was finding increasing difficulty in believing that the swordsman was going to survive his wound. Each morning the great frame was more wasted and its continuing survival seemed more like a direct intervention by the gods. Jja was eroded to a wraith by effort and worry, Nnanji morose and sullen.

The sailors had prepared their plans. They had consulted Honakura about them, for at first they had been unable to believe that Nnanji was serious. The old man had assured them that he was, that no danger to himself or his friends would ever distract the young swordsman for a moment from whatever he saw as his duty and the call of honor. If Shonsu died, then Nnanji would head for Tomiyano with a sword.

If that happened—or so the plan went—he would be caught in a net, trussed like a pig for market, and put ashore, together with the rest of the passengers.

Tomiyano himself had other ideas. His vitriolic hatred of swordsmen allowed no room for nets in his view of the future. Any nonsense from Nnanji’s direction was going to be countered with a fast knife, the consequences be damned. Some of the men agreed with him.

Sapphire was not a tranquil ship.

Yet now she was becalmed and so was the quest. The old priest knew that the matter was urgent—a process that should have taken years was being squashed into a few short days. The gods were in a hurry, but things had come to a halt. Obviously someone ought to be doing something and had failed to pick up his cue. Honakura was quite willing to help, but he was a minor character in the drama and would not be permitted to meddle greatly. And he did not know what was supposed to happen next, or who was supposed to make it happen.

The Ikondorina prophecies were some guide for him, of course, and the demigod’s riddle was beginning to make sense. He knew more than anyone else about Shonsu’s mission—certainly more than Shonsu did—but at the moment he was baffled.

It was a hot and still afternoon. The banks were far off on either side, the mountains faint in the eastern haze, the water an azure mirror. High above him—and looking straight up was a tricky procedure for Honakura—the youngsters hung in the rigging like sloths, Katanji among them. A group of women sat on the poop deck, chattering quietly and knitting, preparing warmer clothes for winter in this nontropical climate. Holiyi, Maloli, and Oligarro were splicing ropes, which was a peaceful and sedentary task. Linihyo and Sinboro dangled lines in silence from the fo’c’sle. Young Matarro held the tiller with obvious pride, although the ship was virtually stationary, her wake a faint ripple on the silken sheen.

The only person being energetic was Tomiyano. Down on his knees beside the aft hatch cover, he was scraping one side of it with a sandstone block. It seemed an unpleasant task. He was probably demonstrating that he had recovered his health, and the spare sanders he had laid out in clear view were a strong hint that he would appreciate some help. The hint was being ignored. After some thought, Honakura decided that the purpose was to remove the old paint before applying new—he had not had to worry about such practical matters since he was a child, but that seemed logical. At any rate, Tomiyano was the only really active person in sight, and the screech of his block was the only loud noise.

And there was Nnanji, leaning on the rail, staring out at distant fishing boats. No one in the crew spoke to him now. He was being treated like a dangerous animal.

Honakura sauntered over and laid black sleeves beside sinewy young arms. Nnanji turned to regard him for a moment in silence.

“Any change?” he asked.

Honakura shook his head.

The swordsman nodded and looked out at the water again for a while. The strain was telling on him, inevitably. The smooth juvenile planes of his face had become more angular. Even this silent contemplation was new.

“I was not always popular in the barracks, either, you know,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you don’t need to follow me around with that worried expression. You look like my mother, wondering if I’m constipated.”

Honakura was taken aback—an unfamiliar sensation, he admitted to himself.

Then Nnanji asked, “Did I make an error?”

That also was unexpected. “When?”

“When I sold Cowie. She was one of the seven.”

“There was no miracle to stop you, so I don’t suppose so.”

Nnanji groaned. “It feels like an error. I’ve never been so horny in my life.”

He had, of course, sported quite a reputation in the barracks. “Why did you sell her, then?”

Nnanji’s pale eyes stayed fixed on the far-off fishing boats, but a slight smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “I interpreted a hint as a promise.”

Interesting! The lad was poking fun at himself, and that was another new development. Of course he had not been able to go ashore with the other bachelors in Ki San and Wal. He could not romp in the rigging with his sword, either, and the crew did not invite him to join in their chores.

“What you need is some exercise, adept.”

Nnanji nodded, still facing the water. “That’s what I meant. But even other exercise would help, I suppose. Would you care for a fencing lesson, old man?”

“A fencing lesson is just what I need,” Honakura said wryly, “but it would not be legal, would it? Try Thana—she might agree to that sort of exercise.”

Nnanji shook his head. “I think I must have lost weight. She doesn’t see me now, even when I speak. I work the nipper to distraction; he hates it, and I don’t want to sicken him of it too much.” He sighed.

Honakura had heard Brota’s opinion of Katanji as a swordsman and seen him head off to hide in the chain locker when his mentor appeared with foils.

Then Nnanji half turned, leaned on one elbow, and grinned at the priest. “I shall have to ask the captain.”

Yet again Honakura was startled. “You’re joking!”

“No.” The grin grew wider. “The sutras say I can’t give a civilian a foil—but they don’t say I can’t accept one from a civilian. I left mine back in Hann. And I can’t give a civilian a lesson . . . ”

“But he’s better than you are? You are thinking like a priest, adept.”

“Where could I have picked up such a bad habit, I wonder? Still, he can’t do more than throw me overboard for asking, can he? And in return for a fencing lesson, I can get a sailoring lesson, also—I’ll offer to help him with whatever that noisy job is.”

This was all very much out of character! A swordsman doing manual labor? Asking fencing lessons from a sailor? Honakura prided himself on being able to predict people. He did not welcome such anomalous behavior. A twinge of intuition whispered that this might be what the gods were waiting for, but . . . 

But there was also something new in Nnanji’s eyes, hidden behind the grin. Most people, in Honakura’s experience, used their eyes only to look, few used them to see. Nnanji had just changed categories, for he had noticed Honakura’s reaction, and the old man very seldom gave himself away like that.

The grin grew wider. “Well?”

“He might do much worse. He may flog you as Shonsu flogged him.”

Nnanji shook his head. “No. He’s not that much better than I am. It would slow him. I’d butcher him, too, if he started that.”

“But why should he agree to give a fencing lesson to a man who may try to kill him? That’s crazy!”

“Panache?” Nnanji said. “He likes to impress the others. He gave me my sword back, remember?”

Where had this swordsman found such an insight? From Katanji? Yet Honakura did not think Katanji had been consulted. That would be even more out of character . . . 

“Want to make a bet, old man?”

“No, I don’t! I think you should stay away from Tomiyano. He’s dangerous.” But that, Honakura realized as soon as he said it, was not likely to be an effective argument in this case. “He’ll try to cripple you!”

Nnanji registered astonishment. “No! Yes, he will, won’t he? Well, then! There’s a real incentive for him!” He flashed a truly wicked smirk and went striding off toward the deckhouse door, emerging a few moments later without his sword and harness.

Tomiyano looked up warily as he heard boots approach. He sat back on his heels, scowling, reached for his knife, and then showed surprise at seeing a swordsman unarmed.

Honakura had spent a long lifetime analyzing people and knew be could read expressions better than most. He saw the dark flush of fury on the sailor’s face when Nnanji made his request. He saw it change to disbelief. He saw the attraction of the idea dawn. Nnanji pointed to the sanding job, looking hopeful and earnest and totally lacking in guile. Then he grinned broadly across at Honakura as the captain rose, heading for the fo’c’sle, obviously going to fetch the foils.

Still apprehensive, the old man perched himself on a nearby sand bucket and prepared to watch. The tension among the crew was far too high to risk such nonsense; the memories of the fight between Shonsu and the captain much too vivid. There would be too many opportunities for things to go wrong. It was a blatant challenge to the gods. He should have more faith, but he wished he knew what to expect, or how this could possibly help.

Tomiyano was gone some time. Quite likely his mother had hidden the equipment. Few people noticed the foils and masks in his hand when he returned, but the first clash of steel rang through the silent ship like an alarm bell, and the reaction was frenzied. Youngsters came swarming down the ropes, the knitting party on the poop disintegrated, people erupted from the companionway to stare in disbelief and then gaze at one another. Brota came out screaming, her nerves ragged from the days of uncertainty.

“What in hell are you doing!” she yelled, even as she burst through the crowd around die doorway like a surfacing whale.

The fencing stopped, and the captain pulled off his mask and looked around at the watchers, then at his mother.

“I’m teaching a swordsman to fence,” he said. “If all of you would get out of the way and give us some room.” Then he put the made on again and went to guard.

Brota ground out an incredulous oath. For a moment she seemed about to argue, then she fell back with the others and watched as the lesson proceeded, quietly wringing her fat hands.

Honakura knew nothing about fencing and cared less, but he could study the spectators. At the beginning, the women looked worried and the men mostly pleased, eager to see the captain return some of the medicine he had taken from Shonsu.

It seemed to be a very static match. The two men were standing their ground, left foot planted, left arm high. Nnanji’s right boot would stamp forward, Clump, and then retreat, Tap. The captain’s bare foot moved in silent counterpoint. Foils rang. Clump . . . Tap . . . Clump . . . Tap . . . Back and forth they disputed for that one spot on the deck. Evidently this was not orthodox—eyebrows began to rise. Glances were being exchanged. The smiles became frowns. But Thana, watching intently, was beginning to smirk. Clump . . . Tap . . . 

Neither man was claiming any hits. The noise increased, the pace grew more ferocious. Then the captain stepped back instead of forward, and Nnanji followed. Clump . . . Clump . . . Spectators muttered in astonishment. Again the captain had to retreat, and this time he kept going, being driven by Nnanji as he had been driven by Shonsu. The watchers scrambled clear . . . faster yet . . . along one side of the aft hatch . . . past the fo’c’sle door. Clump . . . Clump . . . Clump . . . Forward again toward the main mast.

“One!” Nnanji yelled.

The match stopped. Tomiyano whipped off his mask and hurled it to the deck. He was red-faced, gasping for breath, and obviously furious; glaring murder at the swordsman.

Nnanji unmasked, also. He was equally breathless, but his grin said more than all the other faces put together. “Sorry!” He panted. “That was a little harder than I meant.”

Tomiyano was holding one hand to his incompletely healed, still-variegated ribs. He brought it away, and there was blood on his fingers. Thana stifled a noise like a giggle. The captain transferred his glare from the swordsman to his sister, then pushed past Nnanji and marched toward the fo’c’sle door, the crowd parting for him in silence. Nnanji looked around at the circle of scowling faces. “I didn’t mean to,” he said.

The sailors turned away.

He shrugged, laid the mask and foil tidily on the hatch cover, and walked toward the deckhouse. The spectators began to disperse in angry silence.

Honakura slid off the bucket and followed the swordsman.

Even with all the shutters open, the deckhouse was airless and hot. Shonsu lay in his usual corner, wasted and soaked in sweat, his breathing labored. Pus oozed from his tumescent thigh. Jja was asleep on the bare floor at his side, exhausted from her vigil.

Nnanji stood at the far end, by a window, wiping himself with a towel. He had removed his hairclip, and his hair was a red mop. He was panting still, and grinning still. Without pony-tail and harness he looked astonishingly young and innocent.

Honakura eyed him with concern. “You can beat him, then?”

He nodded and wiped his face. “He fooled me.”

“He fooled you?”

“Yes.” Puff. “He’s very fast . . . has some good routines . . . but now I know them . . . ” He wiped some more and panted some more. “He’s not a swordsman. A swordsman would have others . . . he doesn’t. I didn’t realize!”

“And he tried to hurt you?”

Nnanji laughed, unable to suppress his joy. “At first. But I truly didn’t mean . . . to hit like that. We were going very fast. It does happen.”

Shonsu had said that Nnanji’s memory worked in fencing, also. He never forgot anything. So now he had the captain’s measure. He knew his tricks.

“You have hardly calmed the crew’s worries, adept.”

Nnanji had draped the towel over one shoulder and was combing back his hair with his fingers, about to replace his hairclip. His juvenile grin faded. “No.” He frowned, lowering his arms. “And this does change things, doesn’t it? I could hardly give him a sword if he might lose, could I?”

He gazed at the speechless Honakura with that strange new stare of his. It was Shonsu’s stare. Then he waved at the oak chests.

“Pray sit, my lord.” That was Shonsu, too.

Honakura sat, waiting, hiding a rising excitement.

Nnanji threw away the towel and quietly closed the aft shutters for privacy. Then he stooped to retrieve his harness and the seventh sword from the floor. “Have you. Lord Honakura, in all your years on the temple court, ever heard of a valid excuse for civilians killing swordsmen?”

Aha! So that was it?

“No, adept. I have been wondering the same. But, no. I have never heard of one.”

Nnanji rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “One isn’t enough—we need two, don’t we? I think I’ve found them, but I’m not sure of the words. I need your help, my lord.”

††††††

Long before sunset the wind failed utterly, and Sapphire dropped anchor, still in mid-River. The evening meal was brought out early, and the fare was sparser than usual. There were jokes about starving to death if the calm continued—black humor. Black was the prevailing mood on board these days.

Brota had found one very, very tiny ray in the darkness—for the first time, she thought Shonsu seemed a little better. Reluctant to raise false hopes, she said nothing.

Tomiyano’s stupidity in taking on a swordsman at fencing had cast a deeper pall than ever over Sapphire. He had tried to administer a beating and had thereby almost lost the first few passes. That had shaken his nerve, and then Nnanji had countered his every move and gone on to swamp him with innumerable complicated routines. She had recognized Shonsu’s techniques, of course, and probably Tomiyano had, also, but never in time to block them. In a real fight her son would probably be still the better man, for in a real fight repetition did not matter. But Nnanji had coached Thana and Matarro, Tomiyano’s pupils, and had also watched him fight against Shonsu. That experience had given him advantages Tomiyano had not foreseen. No matter how gifted, an amateur should not meddle with a professional.

But now the crew were more worried than ever, and there were dark whispers of caging Nnanji in a cabin. She had refused to listen, for she knew that the swordsman would fight if they tried it. For the first time since Tomminoliy had died, her leadership was being questioned, and the air smelled of mutiny.

Since the fencing, Nnanji had stayed out of sight in the deckhouse. Either he was being surprisingly tactful, or else the old priest had taken him in hand. He had appeared only once, when Tomiyano returned to collect his sanding blocks, coming out and offering to help with the work. That had been a peace offering, but the sailor had rejected it with obscenities. And the ship was too small to keep them apart for long.

So Brota abandoned her usual eating place. She sat herself on the aft end of the forward hatch cover, next to her still-resentful son. It was not a position she favored, for the flanking dinghies cut off her view of the River, but she had Tomiyano under control and could keep an eye on the deckhouse door. The rest of the family collected food and spread around the deck as usual, but there was little conversation and much angry brooding.

Jja appeared. She laid a few scraps on a plate, smiled faintly when spoken to, then hurried back to her master’s sickbed. Katanji, ever sensitive to mood, had put himself in a far corner and was being invisible. The old priest arrived. He took a slice of bread and a lump of soft cheese over to the forward end of the other hatch cover, facing Brota and Tomiyano. That was an odd choice, and Holiyi had to move to make a space for him. Was the old man keeping an eye on Tomiyano, also?

So everyone was eating except Nnanji, and normally he was first pig at the trough. Then the sound of boots . . . 

Brota lost interest in the plate beside her. The red-haired young swordsman was not going toward the food. There was a strained, tense look about him.

He stopped by the mast, facing her. But it was not she that he wanted.

“Captain Tomiyano?”

The sailor’s hand slunk near to his dagger, and she prepared to grab his arm if he tried to draw it. “Well?”

Nnanji pulled in his chin and said gruffly, “I owe you an apology.”

Surprise! No, astonishment! Formal apologies from swordsmen were rarer than feathers on fish.

Tomiyano’s fingers moved up to touch the new scrape on his ribs. A half-healed scab had been knocked off; it was trivial. “I accept that this was an accident,” he said gruffly.

“Not that, sailor.” Whatever was coming, Nnanji was finding it difficult. He was taut. “I apologize for causing you worry. I made a mistake last week, when Novice Matarro asked me what would happen if Lord Shonsu were to die.”

Goddess be praised!

“I said that I should have to avenge him. I was wrong.”

Relief! The onlookers began to smile.

Nnanji took a very deep breath, all his ribs showing as they moved below his harness straps. “The oath we swore is very unusual, Captain. Of course he is not going to die, but even if he did, I misinterpreted that oath.” Another pause, an even deeper breath, as if he had to force the words out. “Because, if Lord Shonsu were to die, you would not be at fault.”

Tomiyano was suspicious, hunting for traps. ‘That’s very nice. Why?”

“He empowered you as a posse. He told you to drop the sword, but he did not use the correct words. You were entitled . . . you were required . . . to continue obeying his previous order. When a civilian has been deputized, then the swordsman who warranted him is responsible for whatever happens.”

“You’re saying that Shonsu ki—wounded himself?”

Nnanji tensed even more, clenching his fists. “Legally, yes.”

Tomiyano emitted a loud bellow of scornful laughter. “Well, that is very nice indeed! So I have nothing to fear? I can sleep sound, now? I don’t need to worry about you creeping up on me with a sword?”

“Tom’o!” Brota wanted to strangle him.

“It means that I bear no onus of vengeance for what happened to Shonsu.” Nnanji was glowering. “It does not mean that I may not take offense on my own account.”

Before the sailor could reply, Brota said, “That is good news, adept. We are very relieved. Now, perhaps, you will join us in our evening meal? Tom’o, how about some wine to celebrate?”

Thana ran forward, took Nnanji’s hand, and placed a quick kiss on his cheek. Color flooded into his paleness, but he did not look at her, or smile as he should have done. The old man was still watching carefully. There was more to come, then, although almost everyone else was grinning with relief and starting to chatter.

“It would be a strange case, Captain,” Nnanji said loudly. The listeners fell silent. “It would mean that a civilian had slain a swordsman and escaped punishment. That never happens.”

Thana backed away. Tomiyano went very still.

Nnanji looked at Brota and bit his lip. Then he said quickly, “Where is Yok, mistress?”

She took tight hold of Tomiyano’s wrist. “Ten days up from Hool. Why?”

“You have never been back to Yok?”

“Since when?”

“Since your son was killed.”

She looked at the old man. He had known this was coming. There must be more to it than an impetuous, arrogant young swordsman’s suicidal blundering. “No. We never went back.”

Again Nnanji seemed at a loss for words. Then he shouted, “Tell me!”

Tomiyano jerked his dagger hand free and threw his plate down. Sausage and carrots and pastry scattered at Nnanji’s feet. “You don’t want to know, sonny!”

“I must know! I can’t denounce you, there is no one on board to judge.”

“But there will be at Dri.”

“Then you won’t let me reach Dri. You know you won’t.”

Now the silence was unbearable, as sailor and swordsman stared at each other, Tomiyano dark with anger, Nnanji grim and pale. Again Brota looked to the old man, but he was being inscrutable.

“As you wish,” Tomiyano said, baring his teeth. “Thana? Tell your nosy friend what you did at Yok.”

Thana was pressing herself back against the starboard dinghy, shocked. “Mother!”

Brota shrugged. This was some sort of showdown, and she did not understand. It was too late to stop it, though. “Tell him.”

“But, Mother—”

“Tell him!”

“I was still only a First,” Thana whispered. “I went ashore with my sword on. Landlubbers don’t like girls wearing swords.”

Nnanji had turned to face her, grim and intent. Tomiyano’s hand sneaked back to his dagger, and again Brota took hold of his wrist . . . wait!

“There were four of them,” Thana said, speaking faster. “A Fourth, two Thirds, and a First. The adept challenged me . . . ”

“And you made obeisance,” said Nnanji, “of course.”

She nodded. “Then he told me to strip. We were behind some bales on the dock.”

Nnanji’s lip curled. “And the others?”

“They were laughing . . . and making jokes. I dodged by them and ran back to the ship. They followed.”

His face murderous, Nnanji swung back to the captain. “Did you drain them all?”

A long pause . . . long enough to die in.

“Eventually. But that didn’t bring my brother back. Or Linkaro. And Brokaro died a week later.”

Nnanji raised a hand, and Tomiyano tensed, but he was merely wiping his forehead with his wrist.

“Well, adept?” Brota spoke into silence. “Now you have it. We are swordsman killers. Assassins. There was no posse that time “

He frowned. “You could not have used a posse, mistress. A swordsman must not interfere in an affair of honor, and if the Fourth had properly challenged and Thana had made obeisance, then it was an affair of honor.”

Tomiyano sneered. “Some honor!”

“Legally. Having made obeisance, Thana had lost a duel. She had to do whatever he demanded, until he sheathed his sword.”

Oligarro and Maloli clambered to their feet at the side of the deck and moved closer to fire buckets. Holiyi copied them, reluctantly. Nnanji stood alone in the center, like a stag in a wolf pack, facing the captain’s scorn.

“Even that, swordsman?”

Nnanji nodded. “A winner can demand anything, because the loser can still refuse, to preserve his honor.”

“But then he may be killed?”

“Then he must be killed. Of course it was shameful! A Fourth should not challenge a First. Nor make villainous demands. Had I been there I would have warned him that I would challenge, afterward. But he was within his rights. No, legally you are assassins.”

“And so you will denounce us when we get to Dri?”

Nnanji swallowed hard and shook his head.

The captain snorted in disbelief. “Why not?”

“Because you never went back to Yok. The Goddess could have moved you there. She could have prevented you from leaving.”

There was a puzzled silence, a dawn of hope. Then the old man broke in, with his slurred, toothless voice. “Normally, of course, that is not a defense, mistress. As I explained to Adept Nnanji earlier, when we were discussing a parallel, but hypothetical, case, the gods can strike any sinner dead, so absence of divine intervention may not be construed as innocence.”

If anyone still had doubts that he was a priest, then that speech would have drowned them.

“But in this case,” Nnanji said, “She did move you. She brought you to Aus, to that quarry. You dragged your anchor; you were taken a very long way—an unusual display of Her Hand. The Goddess has judged the case Herself. Your penance is to help Lord Shonsu. No swordsman, or priest, may interfere when Her will has been made known. A similar thing happened to us at Hann. She has pronounced sentence Herself, and no human judge can overrule Her.”

“You believe that, old man?” Brota demanded. He must have been behind all this. No swordsman could think that way, certainly not Nnanji.

He had guessed what she was thinking. “I agree with the adept’s arguments, yes.” He grinned toothlessly.

“I don’t believe them!” Tomiyano jerked his hand free from Brota’s grip again and jumped to his feet. “And I surely don’t trust them!”

Nnanji flushed. “I will swear an oath for you, sailor. But I shall need to draw my sword.”

Tomiyano hesitated. He was well within range. “Let’s hear it.”

Deliberately, making no sudden move, Nnanji drew the glittering Chioxin sword and raised it to the oath position. It flamed blood in the rays of the setting sun. “I, Nnanji, swordsman of the fourth rank, oath brother to Shonsu of the seventh rank, do solemnly swear that all members of the crew of Sapphire have been cleared of wrongdoing in the deaths of four swordsmen in Yok; and this I swear upon my honor and in the name of the Goddess.”

The seventh sword hissed back into its scabbard.

Astonished pause.

“And your boss?” the captain said. “If he recovers . . . ”

Nnanji smiled wanly, looking more nervous than he had up until now. “He and I swore the swordsmen’s fourth oath, Captain. My oaths are his, so I have committed Lord Shonsu, also. And no Seventh will ever overrule another. A priest might, but there would be no one to carry out his sentence. You are out of danger.”

“You’re a Fourth! You think you can bind all the Sevenths in the World?”

Nnanji’s nervous smile grew wider, rather like his brother’s juvenile, impudent smirk. “It is a grave responsibility! I warned Shonsu when he told me about that oath . . . Yes! All Sevenths. So all the swordsmen in the World, I suppose. Forever. Absolutely. Even if I am mistaken, we can only leave you to the Goddess.”

“Old man?” Brota snapped.

He nodded his hairless head. “That is correct, mistress.”

She was taking the word of a beggar?

Then Thana rushed forward and threw her arms around Nnanji. This time he laughed and embraced her, also, returning the kiss.

Tomiyano said, “Well, I’ll be . . . ” He looked at Brota as she rose. Everyone looked to Brota.

Too choked to speak, she nodded, smiling.

The long terror was over. Cheering rang over the deck. People were scrambling to their feet, wives embracing husbands, children screaming with excitement. Katanji was flat on his back with his arms around Diwa and Mei, as they both tried to kiss him at the same time. Thana was still clutched in Nnanji’s arms, getting back much more kiss than she had planned to give . . . 

“Nnanji! Nnanji!” Jja pushed her way through the throng.

A flushed Nnanji broke free of Thana so roughly that she almost fell.

“Nnanji!” Jja grabbed his arm. There were tears in her eyes. “He’s awake . . . he says he feels hungry.”

†††††††

Shonsu was going to live, the trading was good, every day brought new lands to see. Sapphire sailed on in a glow of summery contentment. Swordsmen were not so bad, after all. Jonahs brought profits.

Sapphire came to Dri.

Dri was a city of haze and sunlight flickering over water, a city of misty glitter and iridescence, where gondolas and galleys plied busy canals. High-arched bridges linked wide piazzas; eggshell domes and alabaster towers faded back into the sky. The air was pungent with the scent of exotic spices and blossoms, vibrant with color and old sad songs being sung by undernourished gondoliers. Ornate ships made stately progress between edifices encrusted in marble trelliswork, beneath the steady gaze of severe ancestral statuary.

The officials were the worst Brota had ever met. They reached out in boats to meet Sapphire, as if impatient for their prey. They took her gold and directed her to a berth at one of the lesser trading islands.

Shonsu was still very weak. Even Tomiyano made no more than halfhearted suggestions that he be put ashore, and Nnanji had no intention of leaving the seventh sword unguarded, or of risking it on his own back near other swordsman. So the swordsmen stayed on board, and the sailors prepared to trade.

Brota sold the furniture easily, and the price was fair, even after a predatory customs had sucked its due.

“Rugs,” Tomiyano said, and pointed to the nearest warehouse once again. Brota marched across at his side, and together they inspected and peered and fingered rugs, and haggled and pondered. The trader was difficult and insisted that he could only sell to a trader . . . meaning a fee for one of his relatives to act as agent. There would be another tax. Brota was more cautious than she had been with the brass. Trading should be based on experience and knowledge; at Ki or Hool she had known what to buy, what would sell, what things were worth. This strange Goddess-driven commerce was a gamble, a leap of faith that made her nervous, but at last she decided, and hands were shaken. Slaves began to carry the carpets and pile them by the ship, for yet another officer must inspect them before they were loaded.

She came out into the noisy, busy street with her son, and they stood in the sunlit throng and grumbled to each other, wondering if they had done right. A group of street musicians twanged and chirped on one side of them, a hawker was shouting the merits of his flowers on the other. Carts and pedestrians shoved and jostled and bustled.

Somehow, Brota thought, she was missing something. The rugs just did not feel right, although now she had shaken hands and could not renege.

“We shall still have space to spare,” Tomiyano suggested, equally unsatisfied.

“Mistress?” said a voice at her elbow. She turned around to frown at the interruption, raising the frown to a glare when she discovered a slave, who should know better. He was very young, browner than most, skinny enough to show every rib. He wore only a scrap of black rag. He had dark curly hair and large, bright eyes.

She recoiled. “Katanji!” She gasped. “By all the gods, boy! You’re out of your mind!”

He had drawn a black slave line down the center of his face. It concealed his single swordmark, and the tiny crossbar could be seen only by a close inspection—and who ever inspected slaves closely?

Tomiyano grabbed his arm. “That’s an abomination, my lad,” he whispered. “If anyone notices, you’ll be a slave forever and they’ll put that mark on with a hot iron. Back to the ship, quickly!”

Katanji squirmed loose. “But wait! It was all right—I was round in the back, and it was dark in there.”

Brota looked at Tomiyano, and Tomiyano at Brota; and men they both looked at Katanji.

“Doing what?” she demanded.

“Inspecting rugs.” He pointed to his fathermark. “I know rugs! I saw you go in, so I did a little scouting for you. The slaves know all about the business and they don’t care about their owners’ profits, so they tell the truth—to another slave.”

There could be truth in that. “And what did you learn?” Brota’s curiosity was aroused.

“The silk ones are the best, aren’t they? They’re great!”

“Some of them. But you must buy ten wool for each silk. It’s a city law. The other traders said the same.”

The boy grinned. “That’s only for traders! The locals buy them. A swordswoman could buy them!” He was becoming so excited that he seemed to be bouncing on the cobbles. “Did you see the one with the golden mermaids? Magnificent! And the only one they have from that shop, because city folk usually buy them all. I know where to go, and how much the locals pay.”

Brota looked at Tomiyano, and Tomiyano looked at Brota. Smuggling?

“The wools are bulky,” Brota said. “But even a gondola could bold quite a few silks.”

Tomiyano nodded thoughtfully. “You’d have to buy the gondolier. He could lose his boat. Or his head.”

“The regulars wouldn’t dare—their ships could be impounded.”

But no one will impound a ship with Shonsu on it.

“Let’s do it!” Brota said. “Tom’o, you see to the loading. And you, novice? How do we get you back on the ship?”

He grinned again. “I’ll see you on board, mistress.” He stepped back and vanished like a soap bubble.

Tomiyano scowled and went running, dodging wagons and people. When Brota reached the gangplank, he was already in conversation with an official, but he paused to shake his head at her. “I thought he might have left a port open. But he didn’t.”

When the ship was docked, unlocked portholes were almost a capital offense—they could admit rats, four-legged or two-legged. She glanced around, but there was no sign of Katanji—which was hardly surprising on a dock so littered with piles of trade goods, with wagons and people. The official was being officious, clicking his abacus expensively . . . another bribe needed.

Her cabin, when she got there, was hot and airless. The seven-times-damned port official had cleaned out her supply of cash. She bolted the door, eased down to her knees, and slid open a panel. Of the many hidden compartments on the ship, this was the one she used most often. She eyed the hoard inside. How many rugs, even silk, could fit in a gondola? Not many, but perhaps almost as many as she had bought already, with Sapphire’s hold filling up with the wools. The boy had been quite right, it was the silks that would bring the profit. If you weren’t sure of your market, stay with quality. The wools were not in that class. That lad was a born trader.

She selected a small leather bag. It held one hundred golds, and she was sure that a gondola would not take that much, maybe not half that much. Then she put on her sword and combed her hair and went back on deck.

As she approached the deckhouse, she heard a steady thudding. The ship was motionless, of course, and someone was taking the opportunity to practice knife throwing. She was stunned to discover that it was Nnanji, sitting on one of the chests because of the low head room, working his way through a collection of a dozen or so blades. From the look of the target board, he was doing very well.

He grinned at her surprise. “Quicker than swords!” he said. He looked rather embarrassed, but obviously pleased with his native skill.

“I thought those were about the worst abomination in the canon, adept? Have I missed a new sutra?”

“My suggestion, mistress.” That was Shonsu. He was sitting up now, leaning back against a heap of cushions, still very thin and wan, but certainly on the mend. Every day he was visibly stronger. “You know what the sutras say about sorcerers?”

If she confessed how many sutras she knew, Adept Nnanji’s ginger hair would turn white instantly. “Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

“Nothing! They’re not swordsmen, so the ways of honor do not apply. They’re armed civilians, an abomination in itself—so anything goes.”

“But knives?” Even a water rat could feel uneasy at the thought of swordsmen hurling knives. Worse, Jja was sitting quietly in a corner, stitching at one of Shonsu’s boots, and there was one of Nnanji’s beside her. Concealed knives were worse yet.

Shonsu shrugged. He looked tired. Thana was kneeling attentively at his side. She had been playing nurse ever since Shonsu recovered consciousness and could appreciate her efforts. Brota did not think her daughter would succeed any more with Shonsu than Nnanji was succeeding with her, but a Seventh was worth the effort.

“When I met the sorcerers in Aus,” Shonsu said, “they made me stand back from them. I wondered if they might need time to chant their spells, or whatever it is they do. And everything we’ve heard about them suggests that speed is the only effective attack. So—knives!” He sounded defensive about it, though.

“I’m not arguing, my lord! Thana, I need you to come ashore with me.”

Thana turned solicitous eyes on Shonsu. “You can spare me for a little while, my lord?”

“I think I’ll manage,” he said politely.

Thana patted his hand, rose in a leisurely display of long, brown limbs, and sauntered catlike to the door. Her sashes were becoming quite indecent these days, hardly more than ribbons, and Brota caught a whiff of musk and violets that would have choked a goat. She would have to explain subtlety to Thana.

Nnanji threw. Thud! Bull’s-eye. He smirked and reached for another knife.

Jja rose and went across to her owner, receiving a smile of welcome that spoke more than a dozen sutras. Then he looked to Brota again. “Mistress? I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened in Wal. You, Sailor Oligarro, Nnanji, and the captain, none of your stories are quite the same. The thunderbolt—you said the man vanished in the smoke, but you saw no flash. Oligarro says he fell off the gangplank, and there was a flash. Nnanji could not see . . . ”

She had told him three times. Of course eyewitnesses would never agree. “What does Novice Katanji say, my lord?”

Shonsu and Nnanji exchanged surprised glances. “I was not aware that he was present.”

Demons! She had just thrown away her guide to the source of illicit rugs. “Oh, yes! He was there, my lord.”

Nnanji sprang off the chest and headed purposefully for the door. Brota followed him out on deck. Katanji was standing by the forward gangplank, wearing kilt and sword and boots. How had he managed . . . 

She hurried after Nnanji, dodging rolls of carpet being carried aboard.

“I need a word with you, protégé!” he said ominously.

Katanji opened his eyes wide. “Of course, mentor.” The only trace of his slave disguise was a faint oily smear on his nose. His face had been smeared that night in Wal, too. “Did you ask Mistress Brota about that sutra?”

Nnanji hesitated, then turned to Brota with a grin. “Can you explain one thousand and forty-four to me, mistress?”

Fortunately, a Fifth need only know up to nine eighty-one. “I’m not familiar with it, adept.”

“Lord Shonsu threw it at me. He says he doesn’t understand it, either, but I’m sure he’s fooling.” His eyes went blank and he quoted in a voice very like Shonsu’s: “ ‘On Lack of Footprints: It is better to give a blunt sword than a sutra to those beyond help.’ ”

Brota shrugged. Landlubber piffle! How was she going to extract Katanji, or even get a quick word with him? “It doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? How can you give anything to someone who’s beyond help?”

Nnanji nodded glumly. “I thought it might mean that it’s better to give any help you can, even if it’s not much, rather than just advice?”

“Where do the footprints come in, then?”

“Well . . . even if there’s no fame or honor to be gained?”

“Could it have two meanings,” Katanji said, “so you could take whichever one you wanted?”

“What’s the other one?” his brother demanded cautiously.

Thana drifted out of the fo’c’sle door, wearing her best satin wrap and yellow sandals. She had her sword on her back. Nnanji’s eyes wandered in that direction.

“Pirates leave no footprints,” Katanji muttered, as though deep in thought. “Not like brigands on land. And ‘blunt sword’ could mean . . . a foil? And the frees can’t help sailors . . . ”

“That’s it!” Nnanji shouted. “You’ve got it! It means you can teach fencing to sailors! Thanks, nipper!” Sorcerers forgotten, he spun around and ran for the deckhouse.

Katanji watched him go, shaking his head pityingly. Then he smirked at Brota. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” he said.

Brota chose the largest gondola she could see, but it heaved mightily when she clambered in. She seated herself facing the gondolier to keep an eye on him. He was a skinny, sun-dried man with wide shoulders, about the right age to have many mouths to feed. Thana and the boy sat in front of him, facing her.

The gondolier pushed off, and the boat slid out toward the harbor. He sang a short welcome, tourist stuff, and then said, “Where to, mistress?”

“Into the city to make a few purchases and bring them back to the ship.”

He guessed at once. “Rugs,” he said, and his face went wooden. Thana helped in the negotiations, leaning back to smile up at him and let him peer down the top of her wrap while she wheedled. It was an article of faith in the family that Thana always got her own way. Wide-eyed and damp on the forehead, the gondolier settled for a lot less than the port officer had.

The boat glided forward again through sheets of light coming off the water. Misty towers glimmered in the distance. “Where to?” asked the gondolier again.

“Where to, novice?” Brota asked. The rugmaker would think he was furnishing a barracks when he saw three swordsmen arrive.

Katanji tore his eyes away from stately tall ships, the graceful galleys, the scurrying small craft. He smiled angelically. “What’s my share?” he asked.

The boat flowed onward for a few minutes, and the only sounds were the music and port noises drifting over the harbor.

“What did you have in mind?” she demanded, deciding that five silver was tops.

He grinned. “I get first choice, and you transport mine free of charge to Sapphire and on Sapphire to wherever I want and unload for me.” Then he paused, and his face grew serious. “And you promise not to tell Nanj. He says trade isn’t honorable for swordsmen!”

Thana began to snicker. Brota didn’t know whether to be furious at herself or amused at the lad.

“We don’t allow private trading on Sapphire,” she said grimly. “The crew all know that they have a share, and if anyone wants to leave he can take it then.”

“With respect, mistress,” Katanji said, not looking very respectful, “I’m not crew.”

She surrendered with a wry smile, conscious that Thana was enjoying this and would love to tell the story to the rest of the family. “No, you’re one of the Goddess’ men, aren’t you? All right, it’s a deal. But don’t you tell anyone, either. Or you, Thana!”

He leaned forward and held out both hands for the traders’ shake, which amused her even more. Then he told the gondolier the Canal of Seven Temples and went back to eyeing the busy port.

Suddenly Brota remembered that this First had at least fifteen golds in his pouch. She’d been thinking that “first choice” meant one rug. He wouldn’t dare . . . would he?

Before she could ask, Thana beat her to it. “How much are you planning to spend, trader?” she asked.

Katanji gave her a big, toothy smile. “Sixty-four golds,” he said.