Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [190]
“I can't.” The words seemed to burst out of their own accord. “I can't do it, I just can't. The children—it's too dangerous. What if there was a shipwreck? What if they all drowned?”
“I'd not thought of that.”
“No, I don't suppose you did.” The venom in her voice surprised her.
“My love, forgive me! I'll come back. I promise you that. No matter how far I go or how long I spend there, I will come back for you.”
For a long moment Marka merely looked at him.
“I'll go get Zandro's clothes and his little horses,” she said at last. “He'll want them.”
As she ducked into the tent she could hear the Long Ears, murmuring in their soft language. She found Zandro's tunics and the wooden horses his father had carved him, then stuffed them all into a tent bag with his blanket on top. For a moment she stood in the darkness listening to her other children's slow breathing. Could she really let Zandro go? They all need me, she thought. He'll drain me dry, and then there'll be nothing left for the others. She took a hard deep breath and strode back outside.
Ebañy had picked Zandro up, and he was half-asleep, snuggling into his father's shoulder. When Marka held out the tent bag, Meranaldar took it from her. He pushed out a watery smile and murmured a few words that she recognized, eventually, as “please forgive me” in bad Bardekian.
“It's all right,” she said, even though she knew he'd not understand her. “You're only doing what you must.”
Yet still he hovered, bowing a little, saying a few words that would then miserably trail away. He cares more than Ebañy does, Marka thought. She turned to her husband and found his face wiped clean of all feeling.
“Just go,” she snapped. “Please. Just go and get it over with!”
Ebañy nodded. He settled Zandro more securely, turned, and walked off fast, with the sailors trailing behind. Meranaldar hesitated, then grabbed her hand and kissed it, bowed once more, and ran after the others. Marka waited until they were out of sight, then dropped her face to her hands and wept.
“Mama?” It was Kwinto's voice.
She turned around fast and tried to wipe her eyes.
“You don't have to hide it,” he said, his voice shaking.
“I just—well, I just wanted to thank you. I mean, for all of us.”
“It's going to be hard at first, without your papa.”
“I know. We'll manage. The show's strong enough to hold an audience even without him.”
Oh by the Star Goddesses, Marka thought. He really is almost a man, isn't he? Somehow I hadn't noticed.
“You know something,” Kwinto went on. “He didn't even come into the tent to say farewell to us. He didn't even kiss the little girls good-bye.”
“Ah!” She heard her own voice turn heavy with grief. “No, he didn't, did he? I don't know what to say—”
“Don't even try, Mama. You need to get some sleep.”
Marka went to bed then, for a few hours, and cried herself to sleep, but when she woke in the morning, she felt only an emotion so strange that at first she couldn't identify it. She got up and dressed, then slipped out of the tent without waking the children. The dawn had just broken, and the eastern sky spread out in pale pinks and blues, touched here and there by an ivory wisp of cloud. In a cool wind, she walked through the drowsy camp to the edge of the caravanserai, where far below her she could see the ocean and the wooden pier. The only ship in sight was a fisherman's boat, bobbing on the small waves in the harbor.
Standing in sunlight, watching the blue-green waves run up onto the shore, it came to her. She felt free. She would miss Ebañy, but not as much as she was relieved to be free of his madness. She would have a peaceful middle age now, surrounded by her children and her children's children, the undoubted matriarch of the troupe, safe in the travelling life she had always known. With a long sigh, she stretched her arms out to the sunlight. When she walked back to camp, she was smiling.
In his dreams Salamander had sailed on so many wondrous voyages that for most of the journey he had no idea