The White Road - Lynn Flewelling [112]
"There's no need for that. Take the third cabin, next to mine."
"I will sleep on the deck," Rieser told him.
"You don't know ships," said Micum. "You'd be lucky not to get washed overboard if a storm comes up. You take the cabin. I'll stay with the crew."
Alec couldn't tell if Rieser was more surprised by Micum or himself as he nodded slightly and muttered, "Thank you."
Morthage had a been a crew member on the Lady for over a year now, and liked his captain and the work. So he felt a bit guilty as he slipped below to his billet and took out one of the bespelled message sticks his other employer supplied him with. Breaking it, he whispered, "Lord Seregil and Alec have returned to the ship--"
When he was done, a little ball of magic light sped away through the thick planking of the hull.
CHAPTER 24
Return to a Dead Man's house
THE SHIP'S lantern swung on its hook as Ilar clung to the heavy bench fixed to the floor beside the little table in Ulan's cabin. The White Seal was a large merchant ship, broad in the beam and built to cross stormy seas, but the rolling of the floor under his feet was still alarming. The rains had come their second day out from Viresse--and the swells that had kept Ilar bent over the rail for most of that day, until he grew accustomed to the rocking of the ship. But even that did not match the torture of being trapped on this vessel with so many strangers--men who seemed to look right through him to the shame and weakness he carried in his heart. Without the khirnari to protect him, he wouldn't have dared venture out of the cabin they shared. Ulan was coughing more, too.
They were already under way when word had come from Ulan's spy that Lord Seregil's privateering vessel, the Green Lady, had docked at Beggar's Bridge, and that Seregil was aboard, together with Alec--who'd shorn his hair and dyed it brown--a Tir named Cavish, and a 'faie with the odd name of Rieser. There was no mention of the rhekaro, or the Tir wizard who'd been with them in Gedre.
"That is troubling, yet fortune has smiled on us all the same, Ilar," Ulan had told him. "If they have gone all the way to Beggar's Bridge, then they may well be going back to Riga on the same errand as ours. Do you think Alec knows about the books?"
"He could have seen them, as I did."
"Assuming that he does, then we've still stolen a march on them. We'll have the books, and perhaps Alec, as well. And if so, we shall learn what has become of the rhekaro."
"What if they aren't going there?" asked Ilar.
"One step at a time, dear fellow," Ulan had said with a smile.
Ilar gripped the bench until his fingers ached, trying to rein in the hope and excitement that overwhelmed him again. Please, Aura, let them come to us in Plenimar!
"Come now, dear boy, and pay attention," Ulan chided gently, tapping the drawing spread between them on the table.
"What? Oh, yes."
At the khirnari's request, Ilar had drawn the outline of each floor of his former master's workshop, and marked out the contents of each room as well as he could remember.
"You are certain this is where the book your master showed me is kept?" Ulan asked, tapping a finger on the X Ilar had labeled for him.
"Yes, in the little painted tent."
"And if it is not there?"
Panic tightened Ilar's chest. "There are other books. Shelves of them, Khirnari. He might have hidden the books I saw among them. I'm sure I can find them!"
Ilar didn't dare ask what would happen if he failed, knowing how close they would be to the slave markets of Riga. Why would this great man keep him if Ilar proved himself worthless? He had nightmares every night: the horrors of the slave markets, the cruel masters he'd survived before Ilban Yhakobin had taken pity on him, and always the terrible night that Ilban had him whipped and said he was going back to the markets ...
Those dreams had not gone away, but now he also dreamed of those days abandoned in the wilderness after the slave takers had caught up with them. He didn't know how long he'd spent lost in the cold rain with no shelter, no