Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [98]
After a day and a night’s tense wait, a barge came as promised. Its master was a surprise, neither local nor Wasp but a spindly Skater-kinden, hunched up in a Commonweal-styled robe that failed to hide his fantastically long limbs. He had a face that was all sharp angles, down to the forked beard he affected. Varmen clearly recognized him, and seemed moderately glad to see him, naming him ‘Skelling’.
Skelling needed suspiciously little cajoling to take them on as additional guards, though he had half a dozen armed Dragonfly-kinden already on board. While they waited for the barge, Che had spotted two roving parties of what she took for bandits, so she had the impression that the border troubles Varmen had mentioned were now going through an active phase.
The barge itself was a long, graceless thing built of heavy timbers, its hold stuffed with all manner of crates and sacks that Skelling expressly forbade them to meddle with. The vessel moved ponderously, and at first mysteriously. There was a sail but it seemed ludicrously small to shift such a weighty craft, nor did the crew seem to be doing anything to contribute to its motion. The vessel was double-ended, too, and it was clear that, had Skelling wished, they could simply have headed back the way they had come, as the canal had very little current to it.
However, as they moored up after their first day’s travel, Che noticed a great disturbance at the vessel’s fore, as something broke the surface there. She caught only a glimpse, but divined that it must be some manner of insect nymph trained to the task of hauling. One of the Dragonflies appeared to be the creature’s handler, for he had spent the day’s journey at the bow, and he now threw chunks of something into the water where the beast had last surfaced. She wondered whether the man possessed that elusive Art that allowed him to speak to the creature.
‘Skelling reckons we’ll get within the general region of the border tomorrow,’ Varmen explained. ‘Exactly where the border runs is a matter for debate, as they say, but by dusk we’ll be inside the Commonweal proper. Assuming nothing bad happens.’
Che merely nodded, She was holding her dream-catcher in one hand, uncertain what to do with it. Last night she had left the thing inside her pack and, as a result, whatever dreams had come to her had failed to remain in her waking mind. Instead she had suffered all morning with a terrible feeling that something was going wrong: that some threat was approaching that she had thus blinded herself to.
But the dream of Praeda and Amnon had frightened her. They had been in great danger, in that dream, and she had been moved to step in. Or it was just a dream, and none of it happened. She could not believe that, even for a moment. She had already crossed some line, in coming to their aid, and she knew, beyond understanding why, that she had somehow opened herself up now, made herself somehow both vulnerable and powerful.
Achaeos never spoke of influencing the world thus, through a dream. Nor had any of the old tomes she had read in Collegium mentioned such a thing. What is going on? Even if I am a magician now, I must be the most wretched and powerless of them all. What is happening to me?
She put the dream-catcher down, knowing that whatever she did now, it would be the wrong choice.
The next day, Skelling set off before dawn, and everyone knew, without being told, that there would be trouble. The Dragonfly crewmen all had their bows ready strung, with spare quivers of arrows hooked on to the side rail, within easy reach. They also erected boards on either side of the barge, big solid pavises that would give them some protection from inbound arrows. Che had wondered if Varmen would take out his suit of mail, but in the end he obviously decided against it. He would vanish forever into the murky water should