WARP world (12 page)

He had even inquired as to where she would sleep. His reaction, when she explained she had a hammock she would string up above deck, was a long, silent stare–a response she was growing accustomed to.

Above all, what bothered her most about Seg, the so-called Damiar, was the way he looked at her. Ama was used to men staring at her, as the only female captain around it was to be expected, but this man was different. There was no lust, no malice, no disgust, not even plain, old curiosity in his gaze. His eyes didn’t look
at
her, they penetrated her. For any Damiar that would be unusual, for one who couldn’t be much older than her it was both unusual and vaguely threatening.

His age was also a question. Physically, he was in the prime of youth, beardless, lean and strong. And, as Tather had said, he wasn’t terrible looking. He lacked the ruggedness and brawn of a Kenda man but there was indeed a regal quality to his features. However, his mannerisms, tone, carriage and attitude belonged to someone much older and wiser, someone who was comfortable with great power and responsibility. The contrast was mysterious.

He had insisted on following on her heels as she made preparations to push off. It was as if he was studying her, and each time she felt those eyes on her she grew more unnerved by them.

And each time she thought of speaking up about it, she remembered that purse full of coin. He was her ticket to freedom; he could stare if he wanted to.

“How is Manatu?” she called out against the wind.

Seg looked back at her and shook his head. He took a long stride toward the helm, tugging down at the edges of his coat, but he was far from acquiring his sea legs and stumbled sideways. On his next attempt, he grasped any available handhold and after a slow

progression he stood next to Ama. “Not well,” he said, nodding in the direction of his guard’s body, which was slumped into one of the seats.

“If I’d known he got wave sick, I would have given him some dried genga root before leaving port. Unfortunately, it’s too late now. Just keep him above deck, unless you want to clean up his mess,” she said.

“Is it usually so…chaotic out here?” he asked.

“This?” Ama looked out to the seas around them. “This is calm. We couldn’t ask for better conditions.” Seg’s brow furrowed slightly. “You’ve never sailed before, have you?” she dared to ask.

Again, the silent stare.

“I’ve been on the water since, well, since I was born. My father was a chartsman, he taught my brothers and me how to sail when we were small. You see how the skins are billowed out full like that? That’s perfect, it means we’re getting just enough wind and it’s a westerly, which means it’s coming at us like this,” she lifted one hand from the wheel and placed it at a ninety-degree angle to the boat. “Garzine skin is tough but flexible; this sail,” she pointed forward and above them, “is kind of like a giant binta wing. I can extend it if the wind is light or retract it if the wind is strong, just as the binta’s do. Think of it as flying on water. Here, why don’t you take the wheel for a moment while I trim the skins?”

For a moment it seemed as if Seg would refuse but then his features brightened faintly, as if someone had lit tiny fires behind his eyes, and he let Ama guide his hands into position.

“Just hold her steady, like that. Perfect.” She offered him an encouraging smile to counteract the stony look of determination etched on his face. “Since I have no crew, I had to set the
Naida
up to be sailed solo.” She reached for the winch on the port side and told Seg to keep his eyes on the main sail. “I’ve got two skins, but I only use the secondary for traveling upriver, and they’re both set up on a winch system, so I can extend or retract them right from the helm.” She gave the winch a quarter turn and the far ends of the skin lowered, “See that? The way the folds at the tips are flapping? That’s too much; we’ve lost surface area and power, which means we lose speed.” She flicked a lever and winched in the opposite direction until the skin tips stretched back into place.

He was watching her, as his hands held the wheel, and though he didn’t speak Ama could tell Seg was beginning to relax. Helming the boat returned to him the element of control she guessed he was accustomed to.

Seg was surprised at the sensation of steering the vessel. It was almost as if he were directing and controlling a living creature. There was more to this sailing business than simply raising the sails and steering the craft. It was science–primitive science but science nonetheless.

She was talkative, this Outer, though he had to admit that learning about the operation of the boat was vastly preferable to the choice of either staring out at the churning water or watching Manatu turn a deeper shade of green. The simpleton had forgotten to take his anti-nausea meds or they had failed him. In either case, there was nothing to be done now.

It would be appropriate for him to now offer something in the way of conversation. She had spoken of her family more than once, had even made a point of calling to one of her cohorts to pass on a message to her kin before they had left the port, so obviously that was a desirable topic.

Family. He barely knew his. After qualifying for the Guild basic at the age of ten, he had moved into the dorms with the other students. As to his siblings, he had no idea what became of them. His parents, he had barely known. His father had been an overseer at a recycling facility his entire life, driving caj on endless shifts to keep their output of material flowing in usable form. His mother had died when he was very young, lost in an autotrans accident.

He didn’t really understand the concept of family unity. The competition between all of his siblings had been ferocious and he had learned to play them off against each other. Even as the middle brother, he competed with his older sister for dominance of the clan, and got his way more often than not.

The brutal inter-family wars had sharpened him and prepared him well for his eventual immersion with the other brilliant students of the Guild. He had learned early on that even those who seemed most intelligent, most promising, were all still creatures of human desire. Jealousy, pettiness, lust, anger and greed could drive them to stupidity.

He liked to think he had transcended that. His goals were clear and any emotions that did not serve them were ignored or discarded. A philosophy that had served him well enough to bring him here.

He watched the girl as she fiddled with the winch again. The data from the Shasir, he was discovering, lacked much detail about the Kenda. For example, she had very deliberately and discreetly knocked twice on the outside of the craft before they had departed. There was no reference to the knocking in the data from the Shasir they had captured and drained. Local superstition? Personal belief? He resolved to study it further. If she had a favorite spot to knock, it would leave a small, faint but discernible vita trace. If it was something more widespread among the mariners, it could well represent a seagoer tradition. Probably nothing that would amount to anything worth harvesting but he liked having all the data he could lay his hands on. He was notorious for chasing every lead, back in training, to the point of exhaustion. He had been called over-thorough.

Well, he had graduated. Now it was time to see if there was such a thing as over-thorough. He didn’t believe it.

“Your father taught you to sail?” he asked, after some time had passed.

“He taught me everything,” Ama answered.

“You are close to your family, then?”

She looked off to the undulating horizon. Her
yes
came out only after a significant pause and her seemingly perpetual smile wavered. The subject, one he assumed she would be happy to discuss, had driven her to silence. His impulse was to push the matter, but he refrained.

“We’re making excellent time; you’ll be in Alisir by tomorrow, right on schedule,” she said, changing the topic as she took the wheel again.

Alisir, his first target.

I
nside the shelter of a cove along the coast, Ama dropped anchor. They were ahead of schedule and could enjoy some rest, particularly Manatu who was too sick to move from the upper deck. She had left him up there, with Seg, while she ducked down to the galley.

The stove had ample fuel. Good. It would be a simple supper—smoked fish, fried vegetables and some leftover bread—all she could do with so little warning. Not that she could have prepared a feast even if she had had the warning.

Grabbing a knife, she peeled and chopped potato and blemflower into large, uneven chunks.

What was it about the Damiar, Seg, that suggested a sense of superiority beyond title or physicality? He had driven away Dagga, but he had also started asking questions about her family, which no Damiar ever did. Unless they had plans for such information.

She brought the knife down on the block with a heavy thud, sending the two halves of the potato tumbling to the deck.
Damn!
Ama gathered them up and wiped them off on her trousers.

It’s like swimming with a drexla
. At the thought, the scar on her calf throbbed and her mind drifted to a summer day off the island of Lind.

She and her brothers had gone for a long swim, riding the waves to shore with their bodies. As usual, she had needed to outdo them all, kicking her way out further and further until she was past the break. And alone. That’s when she spotted the drexla.

With her dathe covered by her nove, there was no way to sound the surrounding water, she could only keep swimming and keep her eyes open. Every now and then she would catch a glimpse of a dark shape—a long, thick body ending in a winding tail with spines running the length of it—but then it would disappear. Shore was far in the distance, as were her brothers. Showing off had left her at the mercy of a predator. At least she had been wise enough to strap her blade to her calf but, as she clutched it in her hand, she realized how useless her tiny weapon was going to be against all those teeth and the poisonous spines. No matter how vigilant, how prepared or brave she might be it was only a matter of time until the drexla attacked.

More frightening, though, was how her heart raced, how a dormant part of her came burning to life in the moments before she felt those teeth, and how much she enjoyed the thrill, the danger.

The drexla had taken her blade in its eye and Ama had escaped with only a gouge on her calf, from its teeth, and a good scare. She had been lucky, the teeth had caught her but she had avoided the poisonous spines along the tail. Even a scratch from those meant death.

Now, that same sensation was rising in her again, that feeling of being circled, hunted.

A gull cried as it flew by the open porthole to the galley, startling Ama back to her chore. The knife, she noticed, was clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles were white.

Closing her eyes, she whispered, “You don’t scare me, drexla.”

Seg descended the stairs to the lower deck. He could see the girl was hard at work butchering some sort of vegetable and hadn’t heard him approach. He paused to watch her. This was a new and pleasant situation for him, observing an Outer in its natural environment.

The only Outers he had dealt with were caj that had already been captured, processed and fitted with control grafts. Caj that functioned as servants and pleasure-caj for the Guild were trained at the finest academy, at Hebreck.

They were also broken. Boring, vacant and beyond shame because they knew that in their station literally nothing was beneath them. They were simply soulless husks who obeyed because they knew their owners could end their existence at the touch of a button.

He continued watching the girl in silence as she chopped the vegetables.

From the moment he had seen her dive into the water, he had been seized with some undefinable emotion. She swam. Swam. Not under threats or orders, not out of necessity, but for pleasure. Even now, watching her, he could scarcely believe he had witnessed such a thing. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had left him speechless, as this Outer had.

She was different. A challenge.

And, with every exchange, he was gathering clues about her. Her spirit was sumptuous.

The food, on the other hand, smelled abysmal.

He saw her start at a bird’s passage, and heard her whisper. Something about a
drexel
? He couldn’t think of any food rituals or deity invocations involving that name, and wondered what it meant.

“That smells adequate,” he announced. She jumped, startled once more.

“I’d be more careful sneaking up on someone when they have a knife,” she said, with a slight laugh he was learning to read as discomfort.

His cue to move closer. But not too close. She chopped faster and with less accuracy. A piece of vegetable dropped to the deck and this time, knowing he was watching, she didn’t just wipe it off, she tossed it aside.

“I heard you talking to someone,” he said.

The knife slipped, slicing open a small cut on her finger. She stuck the finger in her mouth and fumbled around for a cloth.