On Blue's waters Read online

  I picked up the newly made slug gun, and told Marrow that I would need a sling of some kind for it.

  “Aren’t you going to argue it with me? Your Caldé Silk would have, if you ask me.”

  “No,” I told him. “If the parents are poor enough, the children starve. That would be enough for Silk, and it’s enough for me.”

  “Well, you’ve the right of it. If they’re poor enough, the parents do, too. That boy of yours would tell me people can hunt, but you think about filling every belly here, year in and year out, by hunting. They’d have to scatter out, and when they were, every family’d have to hunt for itself. No more paper and no more books, no carpentry because they’d be moving camp every few days and tables and so on’s too heavy to carry. Pretty soon they wouldn’t even have pack saddles.”

  I said it would not matter, since those who owned horses or mules would eat them after a year or two, and he nodded gloomily and dropped into a chair. “You like that gun?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “It’s yours. Take it out to your boat when you go back. Take that green box on the bottom shelf, too. It’s cartridges from a lander and never been opened. Our new ones work, but they’re not as good.”

  I said that I would prefer new cartridges nevertheless, and he indicated a wooden box that held fifty. I told him about the paper I had on the sloop, and offered it to him to offset-in part, at least-the cost of the slug gun and the food he had promised me.

  He shook his head. “I’m giving you the gun and the rest of it. The cartridges and harpoon, and the apples and wine and the other stuff. It’s the least I can do. But if you’ll let me have that paper, I’ll give whatever I get for it to your wife. Would you like me to do that? Or I can hold the money for you, until you get back.”

  “Give it to Nettle, please. I left her with little enough, and she and Sinew are going to have to buy rags and more wood soon.”

  He regarded me from under his brows. “You took your own boat, too, when I was going to let you have one of mine.”

  “Sinew will build a new one, I’m sure. He’ll have to, and I believe it will be good that he has something to do besides run our mill, something he can watch grow under his hands. That will be important, at first particularly.”

  “You’re deeper than you look. Your book shows it.”

  I said that I hoped I was deep enough, and asked whether he had found anyone who had actually been to Pajarocu.

  “Not yet, but there’s a new trader in the harbor every few days. You want to wait?”

  “For a day or two, at least. I think it would be worth that to have firsthand information.”

  “Want to see their letter again? There’s nothing there to tell where it is, not to me, anyhow. But you might see something there I missed, and you hardly looked at it back on your island.”

  “I own only the southern part, the southern third or so. No, I don’t want to read it again, or at least not now. Can you have somebody copy the entire thing for me, in a clearer hand? I’d like to have a copy to take with me.”

  “No trouble. My clerk can do it.” Again, he looked at me narrowly. “Why does my clerk bother you?”

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “I know that. What I want to know is why it does.”

  “When we were in the tunnels and on the lander, and for years after we landed, I thought…” Words failed me, and I turned away.

  “You figured we’d all be free and independent here? Like you?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded.

  “You got a farm, you and your girl. Your wife. You couldn’t make a go of it. Couldn’t raise enough to feed yourselves, even.”

  This is too painful. There is pain enough in the whorl already, should I inflict more on myself?

  * * *

  On Green, I met a man who could not see the inhumi. They were there, but his mind would not accept them. You might say that his sight recoiled in horror from them. In just the same way, my own interior sight refuses to focus upon matters I find agonizing. In Ermine’s I dreamed that I had killed Silk. Is it possible that I actually tried once, firing Nettle’s needier at him when he disappeared into the mist? Or that I did not really give him mine?

  (I should have told Sinew that the needier I was leaving with him had been his mother’s. It was the one she had taken from General Saba and given to me outside the entrance to the tunnels, and I have never seen a better one. Later, of course, I did.)

  More pain, but this I must put down. For my own sake, I intend to make it as brief as possible-just a paragraph or two, if I can.

  When I returned to the sloop, I found that I had been robbed, my cargo chests broken into and my paper gone, with much cordage and a few other things that I had brought from Lizard.

  Before I had left to go to Marrow’s, I had asked the owner of the boat tied up beside mine, a man I had attended palaestra with, to watch the sloop for me. He had promised he would. Now I went to speak to him. He could not meet my eyes, and I knew that it was he himself who had robbed me. I fought him and beat him, but I did not get my paper back.

  After that, bruised and bleeding, I sought help from Gyrfalcon, Blazingstar, and Eschar, but received none. Eschar was away on one of his boats. Gyrfalcon and Blazingstar were both too busy to see me.

  Or so I was told by their clerks.

  I received a little help from Calf, who swore that it was all he could give, and none at all from my other brothers; in the end I had to go back to Marrow, explain the situation, and beg to borrow three cards. He agreed, took my bond for the amount plus eight percent, then tore it up as I watched. I owe him a great deal more than the three cards and this too-brief acknowledgment.

  When I had refitted I put out, sailing south along the coast, looking for something that had been described to me as a rock with a haystack on it.

  While I had talked with Marrow before I was robbed, I had considered how I could learn something that His Cognizance had been unwilling to tell me when we had conferred the day I made port. Eventually I realized that Marrow was more than acute enough to see through any sleight of mine; the only course open to me was to ask him outright, which I did.

  “The girl’s still alive,” he said, stroking his chin, “but I haven’t seen or heard tell of the old sibyl in quite a time.”

  “Neither have I,” I told him, “but I should have. She was here in town, and I was out on Lizard, mostly, and it always seemed possible I would run across her someday when I brought paper to the market.” Full of self-recriminations I added, “I suppose I imagined that she would live forever, that she would always be here if I wanted her.”

  Marrow nodded. “Boys think like that.”

  “You’re right. Mine do, at least. When you’re so young that things have changed very little during your lifetime, you suppose that they never will. It’s entirely natural, but it is a bad mistake and wrong even in the moral sense more often than not.”

  I waited for his comment, but he made none.

  “So now… Well, I’m going to look for Silk, and he’s far away if he’s alive at all. And it seems even more wrong for me to leave without having seen Maggie. She’s no longer a sibyl, by the way.”

  “Yes, she is.” Marrow was almost apologetic. “Our Prolocutor’s made her one again.”

  “He didn’t tell me that.” (In point of fact, he had flatly refused to tell me anything about her.) “Did you know I talked to him?”

  Marrow nodded.

  “That was what I wanted to learn, or the principal thing. I wanted to find out what happened to her and Mucor, but he wouldn’t tell me or even say why he wouldn’t. You must know where they are, and he concedes that they’re still alive.”

  “I’ve heard talk from the people I do business with, that’s all. I don’t keep track of everybody, no matter what people may think.” Marrow folded both hands on his stick, and regarded me for a long moment before he spoke again. “I doubt I know as much as he does, but she wanted to help out here, teac
hing the children like she used to. That was why he made her a sibyl again, and she used to mop and dust and cook for him. Only he wouldn’t let the crazy girl in the house.”

  I smiled to myself. It would not have been easy to keep Mucor out.

  “There was some trouble about her anyhow. About the crazy granddaughter.”

  He waited for me to speak, so I nodded. Mucor had often thrown food and dishes at Netde and me when we had cared for her.

  “They said she made other people crazy, too. I don’t believe it and never did, but that’s what they said. One day they were gone. If you ask me, the old Prolocutor gave them a shove. He’s never admitted it that I’ve heard of, but I think probably he did. Maybe he gave them a little help moving, too. This is,” Marrow rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, “five years ago. About that. Could be six.”

  He rocked back and forth in his big, solidly built chair, one hand on his stick and the other on the finale of the chair arm, where its grip had given the waxed wood a smoother finish as well as a darker tone. “I didn’t put my nose in it, but somebody told me he’d found them a farm way out. To tell you the truth I thought some wild animal’d get the mad girl, the granddaughter, and Maytera’d come back.”

  I said, “I take it that didn’t happen. I’m glad.”

  “That’s right, you knew them both. I’d forgot. I went to the palaestra in my time, just like you, so I knew Maytera, too, way back then. I never did understand how she could have a granddaughter at all. Adopted, is what everybody says.”

  Clearly, Marrow had not read as much of our book as he pretended; I tried to make my nod noncommittal. “Are they still on the farm His Cognizance found for them? I’d like to see them while I’m here.”

  Once more, Marrow regarded me narrowly. “Island, just like you. I’m surprised you don’t know.”

  When I did not comment, he added. “Just a rock, really. House looks like a haystack. That’s what they say. Up in the air to keep the hay dry, you know how the farmers do, and made of sticks.”

  It seemed too bizarre to credit. I asked whether he had seen it himself, and he shook his head. “Driftwood I guess it is, really. Way down south. It’ll take you all day, even with a good wind.”

  * * *

  I slept aboard the sloop, as you may imagine, and so was able to get under way at shadeup. There is no better breakfast than one eaten on a boat with a breeze strong enough to make her heel a trifle. Most of Marrow’s promised provisions had arrived before I finished refitting, and I had purchased a few things in addition; I dined on ham, fresh bread and butter, and apples, drank water mixed with wine, and told myself with perfect truth that I had never eaten a better meal.

  He had been surprised that I knew nothing of Maytera Marble (as she was again, apparently) and Mucor, although they lived on an island two days’ sail from mine. The truth, I thought, might well be that I did know something. Boats that put into Tail Bay to trade for paper had spoken sometimes of a witch to the south, a lean hag who camped upon a naked rock and would tell fortunes or compounded charms for food or cloth. When I had heard those tales, lt: had not occurred to me that this witch might be Mucor. I reviewed them as I sailed that day, and found various reasons to think she was-but several more to think that she was not. In the end, I decided to leave the matter open.

  Evening came, and I still had not caught sight of the house of sticks that Marrow had described. I was afraid I might pass it in the dark, so I furled my sails and made a sea anchor, and spent the night upon the open water, very grateful for the calm, warm weather.

  It was about midmorning of the second day out when I caught sight of the hut, not (as I had supposed it would be) near shore to port, but a half league and more to starboard upon a sheer black rock so lonely that it did not appear to be a separated part of the mainland at all, but the last standing fragment of some earlier continent, a land devoured by the sea not long after the Outsider built this whorl.

  Rubbish, surely. Still, I have never been in any other place that felt quite so lonely, unless Seawrack sang.

  * * *

  Three days since I wrote that last. Not because I have been too busy (although I have been busy) and not because I did not wish to write, but because there was no more ink. Ink, it seems, is not made here, or I should say was not. It was an article of trade that you bought in the market when it appeared there if you wanted it, and hoarded against the coming shortage. It had not appeared in the market for a long time, my clerks had very little and most other people-people who wrote, that is to say, or kept accounts-none. Nettle and I had made our own, being unable to find any in New Viron, and I saw no reason why ink should not be made here.

  Several trials were needed; but guided as I was by past experience, we soon had this very satisfactory ink. Glue is made here by boiling bones, hoofs, and horns, as I suppose it must be everywhere. We mixed it with the oil pressed from flax seed and soot, and then (it was this that we had to learn) boiled everything again with a little water. It dries a trifle faster, I believe, than the ink you and I made with sap, and so may be a step nearer the inks my father cornpounded in the back of our shop. At any rate it is a good dark black and satisfactory in every other way, as you see.

  My father, Smoothbone, made colored inks as well. There is no reason we should not have them, too. It is clearly just a matter of finding the right colored powders to put in instead of soot. I have a bright young man looking into that. My clerks say that they have never seen colored inks in our market here, or in this big pink and blue house we call my palace for that matter. I imagine they would trade very well-which means, I suppose, that I am starting to think like Marrow. Since our positions are somewhat similar, that is not surprising.

  Here I am tempted to write about the market in New Viron, and compare it, perhaps, to the one here; but I will save that for some other opening of the pen case.

  Now back to the sloop.

  There was a tiny inlet on the southeast side of Mucor’s Rock that gave excellent shelter. I tied up there and climbed the steep path to the top carrying a side of bacon and a sack of cornmeal. She did not recognize me, as far as I could judge. To set down the truth, I did not know her either until I looked into her eyes, the same dead, dull eyes that I recalled. The witch had been described to me as being very thin. She was, but not as thin as she had been in the Caldé’s Palace and on the lander afterward-not as thin as the truly skeletal young woman I recalled.

  She was said to be tall, too. The truth is that she is not, although her thinness and erect carriage, and her short, ragged skirt, combine to make her appear so.

  The Mucor I had known would never have spoken to me first. This one whom I had heard called the witch and the sorceress did, but seemed at first to be recalling an almost forgotten language as she licked her cracked lips. “What… Do… You… Want…?”

  I said, “I must speak with you, Mucor.” I showed her the bacon, then patted the sack of cornmeal I was carrying on my shoulder “I brought you these, thinking you might need them. I hope you like them.”

  Without another word, she turned and went into the hut, which was larger than I had expected. When I saw that its rough door remained open, I followed her.

  The only light came through the open doorway and a god-gate in the middle of the conical roof. For half a minute, perhaps, I stood just inside the door, blinking. A motionless figure in black sat with its back to me, facing the ashes of a small fire that had burned itself out in a circle of blackened stones some time before. Its aged hands clasped a long peeled stick of some light-colored wood. Mucor stood beside it, one hand upon its shoulder, regarding me silently. Beyond them, on the other side of the circle of stones, something stirred; in that near darkness, I heard rather than saw it.

  Pointing at the figure in black, I asked, “Is that Maytera Marble?” and her head pivoted until it seemed to regard a place somewhat to my left. The metal face thus revealed was the smooth oval that I recalled so well, yet it appeared somehow missh
apen, as if it were diseased.

  After a pause that I considered much too long, Mucor said, “This is my grandmother. She knows the future.”

  I put down my sack and laid the bacon on it. “Then she should be able to tell me a great many things I want to know. First I have a question for you, however. Do you know who I am?”

  “Horn.”

  “Yes, I am. Do you remember Nettle?”

  Mucor only stared.

  “Nettle and I used to bring you your food sometimes when you lived in the Caldé’s Palace.” She did not reply, so I added, “Silk’s palace.”

  Maytera Marble whispered, “Horn? Horn?”

  “Yes,” I said, and went to her and knelt before her. “It’s me, Maytera.”

  “You’re a good, good boy to come to see us, Horn.”

  “Thank you.” I found it hard to speak, impossible when I looked at her. “Thank you, Maytera. Maytera, I said I used to take your granddaughter’s food up for you. I want you to know that I’ve brought her some now. It’s only bacon and a sack of cornmeal, but there’s more food on my boat. She can have anything there she wants. Or that you want for her. What about apples? I have a barrel of them, good ones.”

  Slowly her metal head bobbed up and down. “The apples. Bring us three apples.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I told her.

  Mucor’s hand scarcely moved, but it brought me to a halt as I went through the doorway. “You will eat with us?”

  “Certainly,” I said, “if you can spare the food.”

  “There is a flat rock. Down there. You stepped on it.”

  At first I supposed that she intended one of the flat stones that made up the floor of their hut; then I recalled the stone she meant and nodded. “When I tied up the sloop. Is that the one?”