Dark Heart Part 43

'No. Actually, the face is familiar to me, and more than familiar. My grandfather expanded the family business, doing so with capital borrowed from this man.' His finger stabbed in the direction of the wall to their left. On the wall hung a small painting. The Red Duke of Roudhos.

'Grandfather would never have funded smuggling!'

'Oh ho! You admit your relations.h.i.+p to him, then! And yes he would have, especially if his part of the profits funded resistance to Andratan and Neherius.' Kidson smiled. 'Now you can work it out. Half the capital of this fleet is owed to the descendants of the Red Duke, so half this s.h.i.+p is rightly yours. Except, of course, no court would recognise your claim. So neither do I. You may be angry about it now, but you'll recognise the justice of it later.'

'Had I wanted to be rich,' Noetos countered, 'I could have been. Nor do I seek wealth now. I want what I said I wanted: for my family to arrive safely at our destination.'

A gentle knock sounded at the door.

'Wait a moment, Sai,' Kidson called. Then he leaned closer to Noetos.

'Very well,' he said. 'Here's my offer. If you desire revenge against Neherius, I will put whatever resources I have at your disposal, even to helping you set up a rebellion. I have little love for Andratan, and less for the Neherian fleet, which has on occasion hounded me even further north than here, if you could credit it.'

'I could credit it well,' Noetos said with a smile. 'But I have good news for you on that score. The Neherian fleet is severely reduced. I witnessed it, and played a small part in it. And the Neherian court is decimated, and in that I played a large part.'

'The news gets better and better,' Kidson said. 'And it is clearly a story I must hear. However, my doxy and my cabin boy are standing out in the rain.' He raised his voice. 'Miss Sai, please enter!'

The girl that followed the cabin boy in looked little like the girl Noetos had talked with only a week or so ago. Her cheeks had been hollowed out by the storm and her hair lay lank on her face. Nevertheless she took her place at the table. The captain pa.s.sed her a mug, which she upended in swift order.

'You wanted me, Captain?' she asked wearily, her voice carrying no traces of beguilement.

'Aye. Our friend the fisherman has helped us keep afloat over the last few days. You spoke to me of him last week, of how he fascinated you. I will place one gold coin, Malayu standard, in your purse if you spend the night with this man.'

Noetos expelled his breath noisily. He could feel his heart racing at the thought. In the brief silence that followed the p.r.o.nouncement, Noetos examined his options. He knew he should refuse, but he couldn't refuse the captain without offending him. And if he refused, Miss Sai would not get her gold coin.

Miss Sai came to his rescue. 'His children are in steerage,' she said to the captain. 'I am sure our fisherman would have trouble with his rod should his son and daughter form the audience.'

'True,' said the captain. He thought a moment. 'Then the first mate must make room for him.' He signalled the cabin boy. 'Go tell Sepa I want to see him, will you?'

He smiled at them both. 'Not often I can give everyone what they want,' he said.

'Thank you, Captain,' Noetos made himself say.

'The room will be yours at dusk, and you must leave by dawn. I trust that will be long enough.' He laughed at the double meaning, then slapped Noetos on the back.

Noetos spent an hour with the captain; long enough to further blur his consciousness, already affected by two nights of little sleep. Then, as the sky darkened towards evening, he made his way down to steerage.

Conditions were dreadful. Two of the tables and one of the benches had overturned, having broken their strapping; a man lay on the floor moaning, a leg badly bent beneath him; and every surface was covered in stale vomit. Noetos barely held his own bile in check.

I'd take a few willing hands to help clean this up rather than the 'reward' Kidson has offered me. He would refuse, of course; it was a grand gesture, a buy-off of someone he thought might have taken this voyage to confront one who owed him a great deal of money.

He called out for a.s.sistance, and a few pale faces pulled aside their curtains. His children were not among them: probably asleep. He secured the reluctant a.s.sistance of three helpers, their work with water and cloth partly undone when one of them threw up over the portion of floor they had cleaned. Noetos helped for what seemed an age, then sighed and left them to it.

The first mate's cabin was tucked in behind the mizzenmast, right at the stern of the s.h.i.+p. Not the ideal place, it was subject to a great deal of roll, but the seaway had settled down and, as Noetos closed the door, it certainly had a charm not offered by steerage in its current state. Including that of the girl waiting for him.

He took a breath of surprise and his resolve wavered for a moment. She had used the time he'd spent cleaning steerage to further tidy herself, and now appeared absolutely lovely. Her red hair, set high on her head, hung in ringlets framing her pale face and red lips. She had dressed in finery, her gown of lace and low neckline made from materials far beyond her purse, no doubt supplied by the captain when she entertained him. My doxy, he'd said.

Noetos sat down on a wooden bench some distance from her. She wrinkled her nose at him, but her eyes were alight and her lips curved in a smile. No one had ever smiled like that for him. Not Opuntia, not even in the early days; her smile had always been part calculation. How did this girl manage to seem so genuine? He hated those who played games. Unwittingly, perhaps, she had found the secret key to him.

'You need a bath,' she said. 'I have had a tub heated for you. Come, disrobe, take your bath while I search for clothes fit for our evening together.'

'Don't your, ah, men dispense with clothes?'

'There are no other men here tonight,' she said. 'I don't want to talk of them.'

He nodded, then stripped off his foul garments. She took them and dropped them outside the door, then stood back and appraised him.

'For an old man, you look good,' she said, her eyes crinkling as she spoke. 'Pole's about what I expected.'

He stepped into the tub and lowered himself into the gloriously warm water. 'You understand you and I will not be coupling tonight, do you not?' He stared at her, eyebrows raised.

'I thought not,' she said. 'Part of why-' She bit her lip.

'Part of why you find me fascinating?' he finished for her. She nodded, her lip still between her teeth, staining them red.

'Miss Sai, I spoke to you with civility, that's all. I treated you as a person when others treat you-well, as the Recruiters treated my own daughter. I'm very sorry you have come to such a poor pa.s.s that merely being treated as human fascinates you.'

He expected her to become angry, or perhaps break down and cry at his words. She did neither, simply taking the sponge and setting to work on his naked back.

'What happened to your daughter?' she asked. 'She has the look of one who has suffered.'

All of a sudden his chest and stomach turned hot. Tears broke from his eyes and coursed down his face. She has the key to me. He tried to hold his emotion in check, but within moments he was shaking with sobs, her arms around his neck.

'It's good to cry,' she whispered. 'I know, I know.'

Oh, Alkuon, he had not realised how locked up his feelings had become. An image surfaced in his mind: of Arathe in the dungeon of the Undying Man, mouth held open, pliers coming for her tongue. He told Miss Sai the story. They shared tears before it had finished.

He rose from the now-cool water and dried himself. She looked at him, wiping her eyes. 'I was going to find you fitting clothes,' she said.

'A sheet will do,' he replied, and took one from the bed.

She raised an eyebrow. 'You look ridiculous.'

'Not as ridiculous as the puffing men must look,' he said, thoughtlessly.

She reached over and placed a finger on his lips. 'No other men, I told you,' she said.

'Sorry, Miss Sai.'

'You've spoken of a daughter,' she said, 'but not of her mother. There is greater sorrow yet, fisherman. How wide must I cast my net to encompa.s.s it all?'

'Why? Why do you care?' he whispered.

'Because I can save you,' she replied in a small voice. 'Because I could not save another.'

So he told her, told it all, the n.o.ble and the sordid, and her young face displayed nothing but understanding. This is a miracle, he told himself. Candles burned down, flickering into darkness as knots decades old began to loosen within him. He spoke for hours, spoke until his throat was raw.

'Ai, I was right,' she said, rubbing her fingers across his forehead. 'I could see it. I have a gift, you know. I can tell things about people.'

'Before this journey I would not have believed it,' he said, his mouth against her soft hair. 'But I have seen so much I cannot explain. I believe in your gift. I am grateful for it.'

'You fascinated me, fisherman, because I have never seen a man so strong, yet so burdened, so close to breaking. Had we slept together tonight, it would have broken you. You would have seen your daughter under you; you would never have lived with it. I know, I know, I've seen it. My own father, I've seen it.'

'What did he do to you?' Noetos asked, staggered at her confidence in him, her openness, and in the new sensitivity unfurling in his breast. Her story would have held no compulsion for him a week ago, so filled with his own hurt he had become.

'Are you sure? My story is not full of bravery like yours.'

'I would not refuse you, Sai,' he said.

'Cylene,' she corrected. 'Cylene is my proper name.'

I knew it, said a voice in the back of his head.

What? What? he shouted at it, staggered and shocked at her invasion. Have you been listening?

Father, I...let me explain, but not now. This is what the voice told me: her name is Cylene, she is from Sayonae, and she helped kill her twin sister in order to save her father, who had become her lover. Listen to her story, Father, and keep acting sympathetic as you have done until now. It is important!

Acting? I'm not acting! But his daughter had gone.

'Fisherman? Are you all right?'

'Yes, sorry, I haven't had much sleep. Tell me your story, Cylene.' No, I don't want this wonderful girl drawn into our troubles!

'I am the thirteenth child and sixth daughter of the Umertas, horse-breeders and too-proud residents of Sayonae,' she said, her eyes swimming with tears, her whole body an open entreaty to him, begging him to understand. 'Six minutes older than the seventh daughter of the family. My tragedy is I killed my sister as a rival to the love of my father.' She took a deep breath and her eyes steadied. 'I am dead inside, fisherman, completely dead; so I chose a profession where life is not required, where acting is everything. Do you pity me yet?'

'I have seen dead men,' he whispered to her. 'I have seen their faces. I have looked into their eyes. You are not dead, Cylene.'

'I have tried to die,' she said. 'I should be dead. My father, he was a great man, but he had needs, strange needs for which he used his daughters.'

'I have heard of such things,' Noetos said carefully, determined not to be shocked, to keep a straight face, for her sake.

'My older sisters hated it, hated him, but were trapped. I didn't hate him. I loved him. I begged him to put the others aside, to love only me, but he delighted in my sister.' Her tears were hot; he collected them in a calloused hand. 'I hated her. So I told him she was set to betray him, to tell the authorities, the men of the town.

'He took her on a walk one afternoon, not long after our eighth birthday. They went to the cliffs to pick wildflowers. He came back alone.' She could hardly speak; his heart felt it was about to rip apart. 'She fell, he said, but he winked at me. That night, after all the searching was over, when he came to me, he told me he'd pushed her. He'd watched her body break on the rocks, then seen the waves bear her away.' She licked her salty lips. 'I tried to scratch his eyes out. He never came to me again.'

She burst into great heaving sobs, a deepest agony of spirit. For many minutes she simply could not speak, so intense her pain.

'I play dead,' she said eventually. 'It's the only way to stop the hurting. Oh, fisherman, I am going to split in two. What can I do? What can I do?'

We have to tell her.

Arathe, please leave me alone. This is important.

Yes, Father. Take another look at this poor creature. Tell me, who does she remind you of?

And he saw it. He held her at arm's length and he saw it, saw it for true. Had been seeing it for a week or more, but his mind had denied it.

'You are certain your sister is dead? That your father killed her?'

'He said so,' Cylene replied. 'He taunted me with it. It must have been so.'

I will not tell her, Noetos said. She would not credit the source of our knowledge. I'm not sure I do.

It's complicated, Father. Lenares has joined the Falthans, and they pa.s.sed through Sayonae a week or so ago. Do you see where this is going?

Cylene's family mistook Lenares for her sister? Was the reconciliation a happy one?

Arathe sighed: the sound was like a cold wind through his mind. No, Father, it was not.

They held each other throughout the night, two needy souls entwined by desperation. And, when morning came, they parted; he to steerage, her to the captain's cabin, his secret knowledge of her unspoken.

CHAPTER 19.

MISS SAI.

'HOW LONG AGO WAS IT?' Anomer asked insistently. 'Less than three months, according to what I can remember. How long, Arathe?'

'Three months or so, as you say.' Her fingers moved desultorily in the exhausting heat.

'He has no business doing this,' he said. 'Less than three months since Mother died. He should still be in mourning. Three years would still be too soon.'

'Anomer, I'm trying to sleep.'

'You always have an excuse to avoid this discussion. Are you on his side? Is this not important enough to you? Are you becoming like him?'

She propped herself up on one elbow, which slowed her speaking but established eye contact. Anomer had always been slightly in awe of his sister, and many times had not been able to look her in the eye. Now they were again eye to eye, she on her bunk, he kneeling beside it, and it would not be he who backed down.

'Anomer, it is you, not me, who is becoming like him. Four months ago I was in the hands of the Recruiters, who used me however they wanted. Everything I had was at their disposal. They helped themselves to my body, to my magic, to my strength. As a result I become easily tired, brother; hadn't you noticed? Even Father doesn't overtax me. So who is the thoughtless one now?'

The first of many rebukes. Anomer steeled himself.

'We're all tired, sister.' He used the same inflexion she had. 'We've been in this steam-room for two weeks now. No one on board is in better condition, I promise you. So, if not now, when can we talk?'

'Very well,' she said. 'You say he feels no remorse for what he did to Mother.'

'Exactly.'

She held up two fingers and waggled the first. 'Point one: what happened to Mother was not his doing. She made her own choices, and you were there. You told us she ran to the Hegeoman's house, which is where the Recruiters captured you. Had she not invested herself so heavily in Bregor and his wife, she and you might have escaped the Recruiters.'

'Circ.u.mstances. And who drove her to make that investment? You know what he's like. I cannot find it in myself to blame her.'

'Yet women are not helpless, Anomer. We can still make choices. What happened to Mother was at least partially the result of her own choices.'