Read Online From Whence You Came by Laura Anne Gilman - Free Book Online Page B

wished to bargain, but in truth they had nothing to offer. The windspell was merely enough to annoy the serpents: had they wanted to attack the ships, he could not stop them. Yet.
    o0o
    Protocol and curiosity satisfied, the Iajan contingent returned to their own ship in contemplative silence, the sailors more concerned with the possible return of the sea-beasts that what transpired on-board. The argument did not begin until the narrow longboat had brought them safely to their own ship, in relative privacy
    â€œWe should not have told her the beasts were following us. Now she will lurk.”
    â€œYou find the presence of another ship troublesome?”
    â€œI find her desire to follow – to study  – the beasts, troublesome, yes.” The Shipsmaster was clearly disturbed. He sat in his ornate chair in the captain’s study, and glanced out the single window, his gaze drawn again to where the Varsam ship rested,
    â€œShe’s the indulged child of a Varsam trader,” the Captain said. “The sons go into trade; the daughters are given more leeway. Her curiosity is…quite admirable, in its way. If she had been born to Iaja, her father might have given her to the Crafter’s Guild.”
    â€œA woman?” Bradhai was startled by that. 
    â€œCrafters claim that they are born, not made. If the silent gods felt need to put one in the body of a woman, who are we to question? The Guild takes all that qualify.”
    It was an odd thought, but not one they had leisure to discuss. Indeed, Bradhai could not bring himself to care about the woman, or her curiosity, or the oddness of life in another land where no vines grew. He had been away from his vines for two weeks, and the urgency to return was growing; the need to perfect the incantation so that he could go home, free of the sword-threat Hernán hung over his neck, all he could focus on.
    â€œI do not like a Varsam ship in these waters,” the Shipsmaster said again, picking up a stylus and playing with it, absently. “They have no reason to be here.”
    â€œTo have brought a ship this far….you think she masks some other purpose?”
    â€œI do not know. And that worries me.”
    Bradhai stood. “Gentlemen, the politics of who sails where, I leave to your capable hands. Mine are needed elsewhere. If you will excuse me?”
    He suspected, in fact, that they were glad to see him go; he had been invited to the discussion out of courtesy for his position, and the fact that anything concerning the serpents of necessity concerned him, but politics and power were beyond his boundaries, and he left them to it, happily.
    Po was waiting on the deck, seated with his legs crossed, and a pile of netting on his lap, his clever fingers untangling the weave. A neatly arranged pile to his side told Bradhai that he had been at the chore some while.
    When Bradhai climbed the three steps to the deck, the boy looked up, his eyes bright and eager. “They say there’s a woman captain on that ship, all the way from Varsham!”
    â€œAs usual, ‘they’ are wrong. The captain is a man. The woman is a…passenger. An important passenger, but no more. Are you here to watch me explode spells again?”
    â€œNo.” Although the look on his face suggested otherwise. “I had a think.”
    At this point, Bradhai decided, even a shiprat’s thinks were welcome. “And what were you thinking?”
    â€œSpell’s liquid, right?”
    Bradhai frowned at the boy. “Yes.” In practical terms, the magic was carried within the vina , it was not the vina itself, but some things outsiders – especially uneducated shiprats – need not know.
    â€œAnd it’s not working, here.”
    â€œNo.” He was being as delicate as he could, and yet still the incantation would not stabilize enough to hold the magic intact.
    â€œMaybe it’s ‘cause the sea’s so salty?