The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (15 page)

He had, more accurately, found three
islands—all in the vicinity of Mance—that bore a remarkable
resemblance to the one on the wall of the teahouse. With reference
to Gerard’s drawing, they were able to eliminate two of the islands
with fair certainty, leaving a single candidate. It was Mance-94, a
small numerary on the outer side of Wefrivain’s crescent.

“It’s basically just a volcano and a cove,”
said Silveo. “The cove might have become a grishnard harbor, in
spite of the island’s small size, except that it’s an outer island,
and the cove faces directly into the open sea. It’s too isolated to
make a convenient port and too exposed. It would make a good harbor
for hiding ships at the right times of year, though.”

Gerard frowned. “It could be a trap.”

Silveo gave him a
look,
making it
clear he’d said something very stupid. “Of course it’s a trap! The
Resistance aren’t such fools as to leave maps lying around, not
even obscure ones. But it’s still a bold move for them, a risky
move. Any trap they construct must be in a place where they have
resources. They are exposing themselves, and their trap can
backfire. I intend to see that it does.”

“I don’t want to bring Thess into a fight,”
said Gerard. “Can we stop somewhere and put her off?”

Silveo sat back. “I’m stopping on Mance to
send a message for Arundel to join us with the
Sea Feather.
The
Dark Wind
is too slow, but the
Sea Feather
can
catch us up. Thessalyn should have friends on Mance. She went to
school there, didn’t she?”

Gerard nodded. “She’ll probably be excited
about it.”

Silveo looked pleased. “We’ll pick her up on
the way back. I’m also putting all your Police ashore. No one knows
yet where we’re going, and I don’t want the spy in your
organization to spread it far and wide.”

Gerard frowned. “My Police—”

“Are infected,” cut in Silveo. “If I were
you, Holovar, I’d have everyone of them executed. Make up a charge.
Incompetence—you wouldn’t even have to make that up! At the very
least, I’d execute all those who’ve been in the Police for more
than two years. Then you’d have the weed out by the root.”

He flicked his tail at Gerard’s grimace. “Of
course, this is you we’re talking about, so you won’t do the smart
thing because it’s too sticky. I suppose you could retire them all
with full pension. Then your traitor will be running loose to do
more mischief, but at least he’s not hiding in your closet.”

Gerard thought about that. While he was
thinking, Silveo went back to sorting maps and replacing them on
shelves or in chests. He had an enormous collection, even for an
admiral of the Sea Watch, and he seemed to have looked through
every single one. He had his back to Gerard when he said, “I hope
you killed that little foxling.”

Gerard’s head snapped up. “I certainly did
not!”

Silveo clicked his tongue. “What did I tell
you about acts of mercy, Gerard?”

Gerard was momentarily stunned.
He has
never
called me that.
“Well, they seem to have earned me a
first name.”

Silveo glanced around at him with an
expression of irritation. “There
are
two Holovars on this
ship. Speaking of which—” He clambered up one of the bookshelves,
pulled out a volume and tossed it to Gerard. “Does she have that
one?”

Gerard stared at the book. It was a
beautifully copied and illustrated collection of old legends and
ballads. Such a book might have easily cost a quarter of his year’s
wages for a watch master. The stories were exactly the sort of
thing Thessalyn loved to use as raw material for songs.

Silveo seemed to misunderstand Gerard’s
expression. “I do realize that someone has to read it to her, and
maybe she already has one like it.”

Gerard found his voice. “No, no, my father
made her leave her little collection on Holovarus. He said that
because he paid for her schooling—” Gerard could feel the old anger
welling up in his chest and didn’t finish the sentence.

Silveo hopped down from the bookcase.
“There’s a tin of chocolate on the desk in my outer office.”

Gerard crouched down to look at Silveo
squarely. “Thank you.”
Thank you for not holding Alsair against
me. Thank you for being kind to my wife.

Silveo’s lip curled. “It’s for her, not
you.”

But it’s the same thing,
thought
Gerard.
When she’s happy, I’m happy.
“Nevertheless, thank
you.”

Silveo turned away again. “If you can think
of anything else she’d rather have…”

Well, she’s fairly fond of me in one
piece.
“She will be
delighted
with this,” said Gerard.
“She will probably come over here herself and thank you.” He stood.
“Where did you get all these books?”

He half expected Silveo to reply with an
insult, but instead Silveo said, “About half of them from
Resistance hideouts. Gwain or Flag or whatever his name is likes to
read. Every trail I’ve ever followed of his has led to books. Of
the rest, I inherited about a quarter. The other quarter—” he
shrugged. “You’ve got to do something with your wages.”

Gerard was walking around looking at titles.
No wonder you knew about the name Flag. You probably read it in
the same book Gwain did.
The titles covered every conceivable
topic. Quite a few were in the phonetic, several even in hunti. “Do
you read hunti?” asked Gerard.

“No, but apparently Gwain does. I’ve taught
myself a little.”

“You’ve taught yourself a lot. When you
learned to read, you made up for lost time.”

“No more than you when you learned to think,”
snapped Silveo.

Gerard turned to look at him. “I didn’t mean
that as an insu—”

“You never do. Go on; take that to
Thessalyn.”

Chapter 19. What Happened in a
Closet

Most sailors in Wefrivain do not use advanced
instruments of navigation. They are aware of such tools, but they
believe them to be cumbersome and unnecessary. Sailors in the
crescent are rarely out of sight of land, and their navigational
skills consist of an intimate knowledge of the coastlines of
thousands of islands and their accompanying sandbars, tides, and
reefs. In addition, grishnard sailors rely heavily on griffins to
fly up and look around.

—Gwain,
A Guide to Wefrivain

Thessalyn did want to thank Silveo in person.
She had been given many fine objects over the years, but she’d left
most of them on Holovarus. Since that time, she’d made a point of
asking for payment either in room and board, traveling expenses, or
cowries to buy those things. She ran her hands over the pages of
the book, sniffed its leather, and listened with shining eyes as
Gerard read her the titles of the stories.
She loves
stories,
thought Gerard.
She always tells them to everyone
else, and no one tells them to her.

Nothing would do, but that they should go to
the admiral’s cabin at once. When he answered the door, Gerard
thought she might have hugged him if he hadn’t taken a swift step
back and offered a hand instead of a shoulder to her questing
fingers.

“You are very welcome, Lady,” he said in
response to her thanks. “You more than deserve it. Last night I
was…”

Half mad?
thought Gerard.

“Tired,” continued Silveo. “I don’t always
sleep so well.”

“Neither does Gerard,” said Thessalyn, busily
feeling her way around the outer office and into the library.
Gerard frowned, not appreciating the comparison. Silveo noticed and
was instantly amused. Gerard could tell he was about to say
something embarrassing when Thessalyn spoke again, her fingers
flickering over the books. “Gerard said a lot of these are
Gwain’s.”

“Were, yes,” said Silveo. “I’d like to bring
him to join them as…I don’t know—a lampshade, perhaps. I think he’d
make a fine lampshade.”

“That’s not very nice, Admiral,” chided
Thessalyn, sniffing delicately at one of the parchments. For a
grishnard, she had an extremely good nose.

“As Gerard may have mentioned,” said Silveo,
“I’m not a very nice person.”

“You’re nice to me,” said Thessalyn.

“I make a very great exception for you. Don’t
be surprised if I occasionally slip. Nice is not a part of my
skill-set.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.” Thessalyn was
examining a shelf of navigational instruments. Silveo had an
unusually large collection, as he liked to navigate without the aid
of griffins or pegasus—something almost unheard of in Wefrivain.
“By the way, there’s a storm coming,” said Thessalyn, “a big one.
I’d like to sit on deck a bit before it gets here. I haven’t been
in the sun much these last few days.”

“A storm?” repeated Silveo. “How do you
know?”

“She always knows,” said Gerard. “It’s part
of being a prophetess.”

“I am not a prophetess,” said Thessalyn with
a flick of her tail. “It’s not a feeling. I’m not guessing; I
know
there’s a storm coming—the same way you two know what’s
on the far side of the room without walking over and touching
it.”

Silveo looked at Gerard quizzically.

Gerard shrugged. “If she says there’s a big
storm coming, then there’s a big storm coming.”

Silveo considered this. “In that case, I have
things to do. Out of my office, little lambs.”

So they went and sat on the quarterdeck in
the sun. The day was clear and bright without a trace of clouds.
Thessalyn had put on a sailcloth shirt and breeches to go about
deck. She went bare-pawed, her heavy gold hair whipping in the
breeze, her cheeks turning pink in the sun. Gerard thought she
looked adorable. She stretched out on the warm boards and laid her
head in his lap, her hair pooling around them, and he read to
her.

Meanwhile, the bewildered sailors began the
process of preparing the ship for a storm—securing or removing
everything on deck, furling sails, and preparing a sea anchor.
Below deck, Gerard knew they were just as busy. He wondered how
long it would take the ship’s boys to go around Silveo’s library,
putting every book in place so that the doors of the cabinets could
all be shut. The oars would be stowed and all portholes shut tight.
Preparing for a major storm involved quite a bit of work, and
Gerard was surprised Silveo had decided to act on Thessalyn’s
statement.
He won’t be sorry, though
.

About noon, Gerard went below decks to get
them something to eat. As he navigated the dim labyrinth of
corridors, a shape stepped out of the gloom and tugged him gently
into a closet. “Hello, Gerard.”

For a moment, he couldn’t process what he was
seeing—the Priestess, dressed in what looked like dark silk, her
deep blue eyes glinting in the half-light. “M-mistress,” he
stammered. “How did you—? I mean—” He became aware that he was
staring rudely and dropped his gaze.
Of course, she flew here on
a griffin or pegasus or even a wyvern. She probably just
arrived.

She tilted his chin up, a smile playing
around the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry to have startled you,
Captain.”

No, you’re not. You’re enjoying it.
Gerard became aware of how very close they were standing in the
small space. He started to back out of the closet, but she put her
hands on his elbows and stopped him. She was only a little shorter
than he and much stronger than he would have expected.

“I won’t keep you long,” purred Morchella. “I
only wanted to warn you that a severe storm is coming.”

“We know,” said Gerard. “Thess told us.”

Morchella raised an eyebrow. “Did she?”

“Yes, she always knows when a storm is
coming—ever since she was a little girl.”

“Interesting. I suppose being blind makes
other senses keener. Still, it makes me wonder whether she’s
distant kin of mine.”

Gerard didn’t know what that meant or whether
he should ask. “How are you getting along with Silveo?” continued
Morchella.

“Better.” Gerard thought for a moment. “He’s
still threatening to kill me, but I’m not sure he really would. He
likes Thess, but Alsair did something nasty on Sern that upset
him.” He told her about the foxling.

Morchella laughed. “That would do
it—especially on Sern. Probably gave him nightmares. He can be
annoyingly sensitive about a few things.”

Gerard frowned. “Sensitive” was the last word
he would have applied to Silveo. “He thinks I want his job,” said
Gerard.

Morchella ran a finger down the front of
Gerard’s jacket. Her voice was playful. “Do you?”

“No.” Gerard tried again to step out of the
closet. This time she leaned up, put one hand around the back of
his head and the other around his waist, and kissed him full on the
mouth. Gerard was surprised, almost frightened, and he didn’t know
what to do. Morchella pushed up the back of his shirt and ran a
hand along his bare spine. The shock made him gasp, and her tongue
flicked inside his mouth.

She stepped away from him suddenly, and
Gerard stumbled back against the doorframe. He could feel his face
burning. He wanted to run. Morchella pushed past him out of the
closet and stopped to whisper in his ear, “You’re doing fine,
Gerard. I heard that you talked to Gwain. That’s very good. But
next time try killing him. I’ll be watching.”

Gerard raised his head a moment later and
looked around. The corridor was empty. He drew a shuddering breath.
He felt sick and guilty and profoundly confused. He couldn’t
remember where he’d been going or what he’d meant to do. He visited
the head. He thought he might vomit, but he didn’t. When he came on
deck again, clouds were rolling in from the South, but the sun was
still shining. Silveo was talking to Thessalyn. He was wearing
brilliant blue wool, hoop earrings, and a fur cape made of what
looked like wolf fur—an extinct species in Wefrivain, though their
pelts could still be bought on occasion. Silveo had had food
brought up, but no table or chairs, due to the increased motion of
the ship. “Well, Gerard, it appears that your wife has many
talents. In addition to making you almost tolerable, she can also
predict the weather. Perhaps I shall make her my pilot. The one
I’ve got isn’t entirely satisfactory.”