Clouds End

  “Spare me,” Foam said weakly.

  “He has a toolish, slanted mind. Fathom knows it is not usually an advantage, but you must learn to be slanted, if you want to match wits with Hazel Twist.”

  Seven nodded slowly. “Very well. I shall learn.” His iron voice brought Shale up short. She had lectured him as if he were a stupid younger brother, but now she caught a glimpse of the man who had driven himself for year after weary year, undeterred by pain or ridicule, toward a goal which earned him only scorn. “With luck, Twist will think I drowned. My father’s house is on this island. We will go there when dark falls again.”

  “Why?”

  “Food, for one thing. And a boat.”

  “A boat? I thought you scuttled all the boats.”

  “Around my house, there are always boats.” Seven glanced down at his scorched eelskin vest and pants. “Did you ever wonder what Deltan child had parents so rich he could do anything he wanted? Even hire an exiled woodlander to teach him a skill the sea people despise?”

  Foam shrugged. “We guessed your father was a big trader, or your mother was Delta’s Witness.”

  “Would she had been. Then Pond would have been sure to be chosen for the profession. But it is not so. In Delta my father is far more important than any trader. He is the great craftsman of his time: he builds the best ships in the world.”

  “Wouldn’t Stone love to talk to you,” Shale said.

  Foam looked around the shallow limestone crevice without enthusiasm. Water hissed and bubbled in a crack between his legs. “One question, Shale. Why did you get Keel to throw the oil overboard? What did you see that we didn’t?”

  Shale answered without looking at him, too tired to turn her head. “Not enough rafts. Two, three, four. If Twist was going to come across, he needed far more than that. So either he was not thinking of jumping from Delta, or the rest of the rafts were somewhere else, and these were the stragglers. Practice ones, probably. Either way, burning them wasn’t going to make any difference. Lighting a torch only showed the woodlanders where we were.”

  “Which I did,” Seven said.

  Foam shook his head. “We had to do something. And we all missed things. I should have remembered those scuttled ships would be in the harbor. That was bad luck. If it hadn’t been low tide, Brine might have gone right over the wreckage.”

  Seven hid his face between his burned hands. “It wouldn’t have mattered. You were right. They were watching for us. As soon as the first torch was lit they would have pinned us down with their fire and their logs.”

  “That jam was clever,” Shale said. “I didn’t expect that. Probably all the timber left over from making the rafts. Any log too fat, or too skinny, or too warped.”

  The gritty smell of rock and water pressed against them, but heavier still was the knowledge that Hazel Twist had outsmarted them, and nine comrades had paid for it with their lives.

  “We are going to get very thirsty,” Foam said.

  * * *

  Craft turned restlessly on his soft mattress, wishing the nights would cool down. Between the gong and the raid and the fires burning he had barely slept. Something was squeezing his chest like the giant vise he used to bend ships’ beams into shape.

  He heard one of the guards downstairs cough, or perhaps sneeze. The leaf-eaters wouldn’t keep quiet at night no matter how many times he complained. Not, he thought sourly, that prisoners often got their wishes.

  It had been a long day, and the apprentices Commander Twist had sent along had been as stupid as always, and more inattentive than ever. The “walls” of the city had started coming down before dawn, to be loaded on to dollies and wheeled to the water’s edge. Raft platforms, of course. He had guessed that from the start. Why else would you build a palisade wall in sections, and each section with a tiny little daggerboard slot, neat as neat?

  Today, like most days, he’d had the bitter satisfaction of being right. The rafts were rolled into the water, pushed into formation, and roped together to make a giant floating quilt. They had stepped masts in them, and steered the whole contraption by big commands: all the sails on the left stay up, all the ones on the right stay down. That sort of thing. Clever, in its own way.

  Not, of course, the same as a boat.

  They were off by noon, headed out into the reach somewhere. It took little wit to guess who they were hunting. Not to judge by the extra guards downstairs.

  As if summoned by the thought, his son’s voice slid out of the gloom. “Father?”

  The old man jumped.

  His son stepped forward, a shadow pulling away from the darkness at the room’s edge. “I need your help.”

  The old man belted his nightgown more tightly around his waist. “This is news? What about the guards?”

  “I killed them. Listen, I need a boat.”

  “You killed . . .” The old man stumbled through the dark room, threw his arms (still very strong) around Seven, and then glared at him. “Well, boats, I can tell you, are not something we have in great stock right now. Someone knocked holes in them all.”

  There were two pale faces behind Seven, listening and pretending not to.

  “I had to keep Twist from using them, did I not?”

  “Twist? Use a six-yard sloop? With what crew?”

  “Can we fight about it later? Right now I need a boat.”

  “There is one boat in the shed. I was building it for Commander Twist.”

  “For Twist!”

  “Do you want the boat or don’t you?”

  Seven looked away. Nodded. “And we have to take you with us.”

  “Me! My whole life is in this yard! Don’t talk such madness.”

  “There are four dead guards downstairs. Twist will know I have been here. He will know you helped me. There is no choice.”

  “Don’t you tell me what I can and cannot do!” Craft remembered snapping at Beech Knot after lunch, slapping his clumsy fingers. Now stilled forever by his son. “However, I choose to go.”

  “Good choice.”

  “There is one other problem.” Craft scratched at his greying beard. “I was building this boat for Commander Twist, you see. So I tacked the boards over-under, instead of under-over.”

  Seven sighed.

  Craft glanced at Foam and Shale. “You see, a good boat is built so that when it gets wet, the planks swell up to make a tighter seam. Only, in this case, instead of swelling closer together, they are going to pull farther apart.”

  “Which means,” Seven said, “wherever we are going, we had better get there fast.”

  CHAPTER 13

  FOAM AND SHALE

  THE JOURNEY was horrible. For the first hour Seven and Craft bickered about how best to get to Mona. Then the sloop began taking on water. They bailed until their arms were wooden with exhaustion. “We might as well have swum,” Foam groaned. They had almost given the ship up for dead when they saw Mona at last, a dark bulk against the paling East. Fifty lengths out they let the boat drown, and floundered in to shore a stone’s throw from Mona’s tiny dock.

  They collapsed on the rough shingle and watched grey light spill over the world. Soaking wet and freezing cold, Foam huddled on the stony beach with his arms wrapped around his knees. “Dawn! And the sooner the day heats up, the better. I cannot remember when I was so tired. My chattering teeth are all that keeps me awake.”

  Shale laughed.

  Seven squatted next to Craft. “Are you cold?”

  “Of course I’m cold! What does it matter? Will you pull a blanket from a crab shell for me?”

  Foam quirked his head to one side, smiling faintly at the sky. “The world is a giant eye, staring back at the stars. When it tires, it closes its lids—just as I am doing now—and gives way to dreams, which is why the night is so much more mysterious than the day.”

  Old Craft chuckled dryly, a long, thin sound like the stroke of a plane.

  They turned at the sound of footsteps pattering on rock, then stumping o
n the wooden dock. “Back to work,” Seven said, rising to his feet. “We need fire and shelter, and a boat to sail back to Pond and the others.”

  “If there are others,” Shale said. “Twist may have taken Thumbtip from us, if what Craft says about a great fleet of rafts setting out is true.”

  “Pond and I agreed to meet on Hookfeather if Thumbtip fell. Those rafts are too slow to take Pond by surprise. If Twist headed for Thumbtip, she will have gotten the others away.” Seven started walking for the jetty.

  “You go ahead,” Craft said. “The sun is beginning to warm me up. I will sit here and watch him rise.”

  Foam and Shale exchanged weary glances, heaved themselves up, aching in every muscle, and shambled after their leader.

  A father and his son crouched by their boat; angular, square-jawed men, the son perhaps sixteen. He saw the strangers first, and tapped his father on the back. The older man stood slowly, leaving his painter secured. His braid did not have the full Deltan split, but broke into two plaits midway down his back. Calluses clung like barnacles to his big hands. His eyes lingered on Seven’s scorched and sodden eelskins. “I am Cleat.”

  “My name is Seven. My companions and I—”

  “Seven!” the boy said. “Is it true you led the attack against Delta? The singer said you were the greatest warrior in the history of the sea people. He said you fought ten men at once and won, and that you would defeat the Emperor’s armies.”

  “The singer?”

  Cleat squinted. “Reed of Delta passed through here four nights ago, telling many strange tales.”

  Seven held up his burned hands. “Do you see a hero before you?”

  Father and son stood puzzled and silent.

  Shale could stand it no longer. “Yes, you do! This is the man of whom Reed spoke.”

  “He is exhausted,” Foam added, “for he has not slept. His clothes are cut and scorched and sodden, for he has been through sword and fire and water to bring us back from Delta alive. He is sick at heart, for the woodlanders have enslaved his people. He asks little of others, and much of himself; anything less than the defeat of the Empire is bitter to him. He is a mighty man, of a kind the sea’s people seldom breed. Treat him with respect!”

  Cleat scratched his beard. “And what does he have to say for himself? You have fine heralds, friend, but I would hear a word or two from your own lips.”

  “I would hear less from theirs, certainly. But we have not slept two hours in the last two days. We have barely eaten since the night before last. Show us a place we may rest, and there I will answer any questions.”

  “Oh, aye,” Cleat said, nodding. “I forgot myself, to keep you standing so on the dock. Come. Welcome first, and questions after.” He patted his son on the shoulder. “You must forgive us. It is a strange thing when a legend washes in from the Mist.”

  “Reed said you were the champion of the Gull Warrior himself!”

  Seven could have choked.

  Cleat and Seven walked ahead, talking; Cleat’s boy hung on the warrior’s every word.

  “You played that wind well,” Foam said to Shale, lingering several paces back. “Taking the wheel from Seven, I mean.”

  “He is too embarrassed to sing himself. I was glad for your help, by the way. ‘He has been through sword and fire and water to bring us back from Delta alive.’ Very elegant, Foam. Very elegant.”

  “Am I not always?” Foam peered down at his shredded tunic and winced.

  “I hope we can wrangle a boat from these people.”

  “Boat! I would be happy with a pair of boots. I am not cut out to be an adventurer.”

  “No? Even Rope is having adventures, Foam. Think how you would blush to be stuck more deeply in the mud than him!”

  * * *

  Foam stumbled in to town, wondering if it were possible to sleep and eat at the same time. Shale walked back to fetch Seven’s father.

  Craft was examining a long trunk of bone-grey driftwood, rapping it with his large fist to see if it was still sound. He was a tall man, taller than his son, though not so broad. He had great wide hands with strong fingers and big knuckles.

  Shale picked her way across the beach, a rubble of rocks and sharp-edged shells. “Boots!” she said enviously.

  “Eh?”

  She reached the log and sat on it, pointing at Craft’s feet. “Boots. You have boots. Ours went down with our ship.”

  “You took ’em off before you went in, eh? That was clever. Seven didn’t think of that.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Mm. Nice length of wood, is it not? You could hollow it into a neat little coracle for some youngster. The wood is still sound, for all its wetting. Good sign. Can’t build a boat from wood that’s only sound when it’s dry, eh!” Craft’s face was sharp and his beard was like grey wire. “He is not much given to forethought, my Seven. That’s his mother showing. She counselled him to stay out of the business. A mistake, I always said. Neither one of them could stomach the planning that goes into a boat. They wanted to ride each wave as it came. But it’s the foresight that makes things possible, you see? It takes foresight to make a boat that will weather every wave.”

  “I suppose.” Shale swung her feet in lazy circles as they hung over the edge of the log. Craft was not at all like the other wealthy Deltans. He met her eyes when he spoke, and did not hide his edges. “But I must admit I dive first too, and look for rocks after.”

  “He was always good with his hands. He made one or two neat little sloops before he was hooked on soldiering.”

  The first shafts of sunlight felt good on Shale’s back. “You did not give him your blessing.”

  Craft shrugged, running a hand along the water-smoothed log. “What you learn changes you. Can you take up the craft of killing without peril? I do not think so.”

  “Yet you let him study.”

  “Yes, we let him. It is the weak who are cruel. I saw the boy would be a willing soldier and a sulky shipwright. I would rather he felt strong enough to hold his hand, than feel weak and strike a fearful blow.”

  “A lucky choice, it looks now. More shipbuilder’s foresight?”

  “If I had seen the woodlanders coming, I would have told Switch to make him a general, not a warrior! Seven will learn, though. He will learn.” Craft pulled himself up onto the other end of the log, and sat staring into the western sea, looking back to Spearpoint.

  “He asks much of himself.” Shale looked sideways at Seven’s father. “I wonder where he got that from?”

  Craft shifted on the log. He looked up and down the beach, and back at the lightly wooded ridge behind them. “A nice place, Mona. I often thought I would come here to rest for a fortnight or two, but I could never find the time.”

  “You won’t be coming with us to find Pond and the others?”

  “I am a shipwright, not a soldier.” Craft snorted. “Besides, Seven wallows in this trough all sons sail through. He would rather the White Wolf bit his balls than take his father’s advice. Oh, you say nothing, but you saw.”

  “We could use another shipwright with us.”

  Craft took a deep sniff of the early morning air. “I am not willing, at my age, to suffer his foolishness gladly. Best he learn to be a general by himself. He had better learn fast, though, and learn well. The first success will be the easiest. The woodlanders think us simple. That is an advantage we will have only once.”

  Lines of faint black smoke rose above the treetops as breakfast fires were lit in the village. Some time passed.

  Shale struggled to stay awake. “Why the name Seven?”

  Craft’s eyes were hooded as he looked over the endless sea, and he spoke quietly, almost to himself. “He never said, but I think he wants to be the Seventh Wave.”

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” Shale’s head spun with weariness. “The sea is a lullaby to me this morning.”

  “Ha!” Craft chuckled, lean as cord and tough as leather. “I am old. Old! The old do not need so muc
h sleep. When you sleep you dream, sorting through your life, trying to fit some things together and take other ones apart. Finding places to store what you might need again. But an old man’s brain is already in order. He knows what he thinks and what he needs to remember, and he lets the rest go.”

  “It sounds wonderful!”

  “Well, your joints creak and your teeth fall out, and that keeps you up at night too.”

  Shale laughed. “We should go up to the village. Get a nice breakfast.” Fry some eggs, she thought. Or eel. Smoked eel . . .

  Some time later she found she had been dozing.

  She felt fragile and feverish with lack of sleep. Waves plashing on rock, boats creaking at the dock, the surf hissing across the sand—every little sound pressed into her as if she listened with her whole skin.

  “. . . at this captaining business,” Craft was saying. “Would you do that?”

  “Forgive me. What did you say?”

  “I said I was hoping you would help him with this captaining business. The boy has a liking for danger. A bad quality for a soldier and a worse one in a general. If you could keep an eye on him for me, you would have my thanks. I ask as a father.”

  “I owe your son my life.”

  “With his mother gone, nobody else remembers him six months old, rocking on his tummy and falling on his nose.” Craft’s hands stilled on the driftwood bench. “Pfeh. Sentiment. The vice of the old.”

  “And what is the vice of the young?”

  Craft laughed. “Stupidity,” he said.

  * * *

  “Well, we got a boat,” Seven muttered the next morning, tacking roughly leeward. “And paid dearly for it.”

  “Eel,” Foam said. “I rather like this scarlet trim on her gunwales. A happy chance that a spare boat should have drifted into shore only a couple of days ago.” He squinted out into the gulf around Delta. “I wonder where she came from.”

  Shale nudged Seven in the back of the leg, none too gently. “Wave to the nice people on the shore!”

  “Drown the war, drown the boat, and drown Mona entire,” Seven said, but he rose and stood gracefully in the stern, waving his thanks to the crowd. Their cheers carried faintly across the water. When the villagers were only a blur he sat down. “I hate this posing.”