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Chapter 10: Lullabye

I have never quite understood the unusual compassion that Cully has always had for children—although I was the beneficiary of it—any more than Bear's wistful nostalgia for his childhood.

I envy the latter, of course, given my own, but that's another matter.

—Gray

 

 

The wizard was drunk.

There was really no question about that, Bear decided, as he stood at the foot of the dock, watching Sigerson sitting on the far end of the dock under the stars, his legs over the side, a bottle his only company.

Bear crossed his arms over his chest and stood silently for a moment. At least arguably, he should just leave Sigerson alone, and he tried not to be impulsive. Gray was more than impulsive enough for the two of them, and Cully . . . well, it was hard to tell about Cully.

Still, although it was hard to be sure by what little light there was, Sigerson's seat appeared to be less than steady, and as he tilted the bottle back it appeared, for at least a moment, as though he might lose what balance he had and tumble into the water. Since it was closer to low tide than farther from it, he would more likely smash himself to death on the rocks rather than drown. The usually omnipresent Bigglesworth was nowhere to be seen, which was surprising, and more than a little irritating. Perhaps Bear should go find Bigglesworth, and have him see to his master.

No. There was no point in Bear trying to fool himself—he was not going to walk away, so he might as well get to it.

Bear walked down the pier quietly, so as not to startle the wizard. It would be a cruel irony indeed if Bear's attempt to see to Sigerson's welfare, spiritual and temporal, managed to kill the man, after all.

Halfway across the harbor, three ships of their ragged convoy lay anchored at neighboring berths, a short distance from any of the others. For whatever reason, the Cooperman and the Winfrew had been berthed to either side of the Marienios, and he couldn't decide if it looked more like they were standing guard or preventing escape, although perhaps it was a little of both—Gray, like Cully, was perfectly capable of doing one thing for two reasons, or more.

From here, Bear couldn't see where the marines had been stationed on watch, but he had been impressed even more by Sergeant Fotheringay than he had by Captain Madsen, the titular commander of the marine detachment, and he was confident that everybody was where he was supposed to be.

One of the interesting things about Cully, Bear decided, was his luck in the people who found themselves bound to him by choice or fate—or, usually, both.

He wasn't sure what the cause of it was, and assuredly it wasn't a completely reliable talent. But he had plucked Gray and Alfred from Londinium back streets, and Sister Mary from her convent, and they were hardly the only examples. Bear flattered himself that Cully had seen something special in David Shanley, as well, and he had certainly tried to live up to it. Fotheringay seemed to fit the mold, as well.

And, of course, there was Niko. Facing off against Gray, at the plaza—that had taken courage, more than one would expect from an untrained boy, even of a noble family, much less some Pironesian fisherboy.

Sigerson, though . . . well, Gray and Bear had acquired him, not Cully. Perhaps that was it.

He sat down on the wood beside the wizard, letting his legs dangle over the side, just as Sigerson did.

Sigerson started, and Bear thrust out an arm to block a possible fall, then let it drop when Sigerson seemed to steady himself.

"Sorry, Sir David; I didn't see you walk up."

"So I could see. I don't see your man." Where was he? Letting his master out and about while this drunk—Bear had thought better of Bigglesworth, who seemed to be both competent, and devoted.

"Nor will you—Biggles and I have an understanding: when I'm in my cups, he makes himself scarce. In return, I don't dismiss him for bothering me when I've been drinking. Seems to me to be a reasonable arrangement, and Biggles doesn't seem to complain. There's a . . . certain efficiency in doing it here—when it makes me sick, I can simply relieve myself over the side. As it shall, and as I shall. I doubt you'll find that entertaining, Sir David."

Drunkenness wasn't precisely a sin in and of itself, not really, but . . .

"Is there some problem I can be of help with?"

Sigerson didn't answer at first. Bear decided to wait him out.

He had been intending to take the launch over to the Marienios. Gray and Cully, both of whom seemed to sleep better on land, were ensconced in a dockside inn—with a squad of marines in attendance, just in case. Bear, for some reason he couldn't have explained, slept better aboard—and, besides, Niko had gone over to the ship shortly after they had returned to the city, and he had had a hard night, and been mostly silent during the long ride back from Lindos to the port city.

Understandable, really. There was no sin in killing, not in battle, and the battle had not been over when Niko and his sword had slain the last of their attackers, and been more of a coup de grâce than anything else.

But it hadn't always felt that way to Bear, and it probably wouldn't feel that way to the boy. Bear had seen it before—in himself, both longer ago and more recently than he cared to think about.

And it's easier to see to others' consciences than your own, perhaps? the Nameless said.

That was true enough, certainly.

"For somebody trying to pry a confession out of me, you're awfully quiet, Sir David," Sigerson said. He took another long pull from his bottle. "I do have a problem, though."

"Yes? Something I might be able to help with?" Bear brightened. This might be easier than he had feared.

"It's a fairly delicate matter."

"Go ahead, please." It wasn't the words of the ritual of confession that were important, but the substance. Bear had, of course, learned the words almost before he could walk, and had both heard and given more confessions than he could count, but there was no magic in the particular words, any more than in the location.

A valid confession could be made in English or Hellenic or French or Arabic or Tien-Shien; Bear had heard confessions in a church, during a walk in the woods, or even when kneeling in the muck over a dying man in a Southampton backstreet alleyway, hoping that the man would be able to gasp out his last sins before he died.

Sigerson knew that Bear was a priest, after all. A full and knowing confession to a properly ordained priest, followed by an act of contrition—and if Sigerson didn't think it was a confession, well, that could easily be changed.

The one thing that bothered him was his own status—there was a bishop in the city of Rodhos, although Gray said they didn't have time for a courtesy call. Back home, a seaside diocese extended to the high-tide marks, but were the rules different here?

It was something to ask Cully about; he would know. And, in any case, it would still count, and if Bear exceeded his authority, that was a matter for Bear to make his amends to the bishop for; it would not affect Sigerson's soul.

Sigerson nodded. "Well, I was gently raised, believe it or not, and taught manners, but here I am with no proper glasses, and I'm trying to decide whether it's a worse crime against courtesy to offer you a drink from a bottle that's spent most of the last hour between my lips, or not offer one at all."

Bear tried not to sigh. "And that's all that bothers you, Mr. Sigerson?"

"It's a serious enough problem, at the moment," Sigerson said.

Bear held out his hand for the bottle. "A drink would go down well, at that, since you appear to be offering."

"Ah." Sigerson handed over the bottle. "Would that all problems were so easily solved, eh?"

Bear took a cautious sip, and forced himself not to make a face. While he certainly enjoyed an occasional glass of wine—wine had always been available when sitting table at home—the raw bite of rum never particularly agreed with him.

He handed the bottle back to Sigerson, and they sat silently for a moment.

"See that little island there?" Sigerson asked. "The one just next to the lighthouse?"

It was hard to see anything clearly out in the dark, but Bear could make it out, if only barely. Just a dark mass, huddled against the sea, dwarfed by the way that the lighthouse jutted up. If there was a building of any sort on it, it was unlighted.

"Is there something in particular there?"

Sigerson shook his head. "No, not now. But there was before . . ."

"And before?"

"Hmph. Does the name Chares of Lindos mean anything to you?"

Bear shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. Might I ask what the—"

"I didn't think it would. He's been dead for more than a thousand years, and he wasn't terribly important, in the larger sense, when he was alive. That little, unremarkable island is where the Colossus of Rhodes stood, a hundred feet tall—Chares of Lindos built it." Sigerson took another drink, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "It would have been something to see, eh?"

"I don't see the—"

"—the point, Sir David? Think on it—the Hellenes built a statue to honor their god Apollo. More than a dozen years in the building, it stood watching over the harbor, a bronze statue, a hundred feet tall, gleaming in the sunlight atop a marble pedestal of perhaps another fifty feet. Passing ships could have seen it for perhaps twenty, fifty, a hundred miles."

He took another drink. "And now the many-times-great-grandchildren of those same men who built that are reduced to strapping a goat to a slab of marble and cutting its guts out to, to, wave them around and bellow under the noon sun, all the while fearing foreigners—us—hanging them if they're caught." He shook his head and took yet another drink—did the man want to drink himself to death? "There's something more than a little sad about that, isn't there?"

This wasn't the sort of confession that Bear had had in mind, and it bothered him for more reason than that. Blasphemy, idolatry, apostasy, heresy—all of those were wrong, but there was also something wrong with the picture that Sigerson had painted.

"Oh, please," Sigerson went on, "I'm not pointing fingers at others that I won't point at myself. Look at me—a full Fellow of the Royal College, the very institution founded by Merlin himself, in the days of the Tyrant—a time when Avalon could be hidden and unhidden, before Excalibur and the Sword of Constantine shattered on each other, before the end of the Age chased almost all of the Old Ones away and crippled the rest.

"There was a time—not in living memory, granted, but a time nonetheless—when a Pendragonshire nobleman had to think carefully about taking a walk out his back door of an evening, for if he walked too fast, too long, too far, he might find himself face to face with the Queen of Air and Darkness, herself—and, yes, I know that you've met her, and I know that all who do say she's but a ghost of what she once was.

"As we all are, I think. The poor, sodding, goat-killing Hellenes; the pretentious, supposedly all-conquering Musselmen—all of them, and all of us.

"I say 'us,' as I've no pretensions of being anything better. I spend my days crawling through the foul-smelling bellies of ships trying to come up with better ways of killing shipworm, that's what I do, when I'm not trying to figure out ways to ensorcle a scroll so that only the intended recipient can read it, or place an even more effective curse on an officer's sword, or—" He shook his head. "Me, I kill worms, and perform a few parlor tricks, and keep myself focused on that—because if I don't, I'll start thinking about the black arts, and while there's power aplenty there, I'd much rather be a useless little man than a great and evil one, Sir David." He shook his head. "Yes, I know that it's said that if you so much as dip your toe in the blackness, it'll swallow you up before you think that you're as much as up to your ankle, and I know of enough cases to think that's true, but I flatter myself that I could, that I could . . ." He sighed. "And it's best not to think too long on that, eh?" He turned to look Bear in the eye. "Will you hear my confession, Father?"

"I thought I was already doing that." Bear took the bottle from him and took another drink.

The rum wasn't really all that bad, and, besides, the Nameless always preached moderation in everything—even in temperance, as Saint Timothy had. New England rum wasn't exactly 'a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities,' but it would serve.

"Oh, really?" Sigerson sounded skeptical.

"Why, yes. At least, I had hoped to. Both for the sake of your soul and because I've found that confession is, well, good for the heart, as well."

Sigerson nodded. "Well, then, let me confess a mortal sin: envy. And another: lust." Sigerson took the bottle back and had another, longer drink. "I envy you and your brothers, Sir David. What you do matters, doesn't it?"

"I would hope so." He nodded. "Some things more than others, perhaps, but . . . I would hope so, for all of it."

"And this, this . . . quest we're on matters." He shook his head. "There's something out there, something hungry, something awful, and I should be utterly excited, delighted to be part of it, and part of me is. No, it's more than part. But part of me is more than a little scared, and it's not just scared of what we'll find when we find it, if we ever do—although I do swear that has me frightened, Father; I don't claim to be a brave man—but of what I'll do after that." He shook his head. "I saw what was left of that man, when the boy was through with him. My senses are perhaps too well attuned—there was something more horrible about it than about the other bodies that the four of you scattered around, like a bunch of tenpins."

"And you envy that?"

"Not that, no. Not even the ability of doing that—but the sense that you'll be at the heart of what matters, all four of you, and I'll just be on the periphery, that when we're all done with this, you'll go on to something else important, while I know I'll just go back to my studies, and my spells and potions, learning more and more about less and less until I have the complete knowledge about and utter control over absolutely nothing at all." He shook his head. "And I do confess that I lust over the doing of important work." He tilted his head to one side. "And now that I've confessed, what shall be my penance?"

"Not so quickly, please," Bear said. "There's other sins than the awful seven, and they manifest themselves in many ways. Perhaps, it would be best to be more formal?"

"Formal? Sitting on a dock, drinking out of a bottle? That doesn't seem to argue for much formality."

"I don't see any harm—do you?"

"Well, no."

"Then please, proceed."

"Father, forgive me, for I have sinned . . ." Sigerson started, and went on, haltingly. It had apparently been some time since the wizard's last formal confession, or perhaps it was just the drink—he stumbled over the words several times, and Bear had to gently remind him.

But, finally, Bear nodded.

"And my penance, Father?" Sigerson asked. He seemed indecently anxious to do a penance. That wasn't uncommon, though, in Bear's experience, although he often thought that it missed the point. One could never balance wrong with penance, after all.

"I almost never give heavy penances. That's always seemed to me to be . . . presumptuous." Bear shrugged. "A single rosary should do, I think—but in the morning, when you're sober. And perhaps, you should abstain from strong drink for a day—no, make it two days, two full days, and let's have no perhaps about it, and you're to have no wine, even watered, as a substitute. And—"

"And?" Sigerson sounded almost eager.

"Accompany me to see to Niko, now. Maybe you can do something for him that I can't. Do you accept your penance?"

"Well, of course I do, and—"

"And do you truly repent of your envy, and your lust, and your other sins?"

"More than you can know."

"Well, there we have it." He rose stood over Sigerson.

The words needed to be said, and while simply the saying of them, under these conditions, were what were needed for Sigerson's soul, for the sake of his own soul Bear, as always, concentrated on the words, and on their meaning. It was important to understand what he was saying, as he said it:

"May God who loves humankind, in His mercy, grant you forgiveness for all your sins, both those which you have confessed as well as those that you have forgotten.

"I absolve you of all the sins that you have committed in thought, in word and in deed; it is my privilege to absolve you, and I do so in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

He offered Sigerson his hand, and the wizard gripped it with surprising strength. Bear drew him to his feet, and let him totter ahead down the pier, toward shore.

Well, he had heard the confession, and, as was true all too often when he did, he had learned more than he had really wanted to, and probably less than he should have.

As so often is the case, Bear.

Hmph. He hadn't intended to rest his hand on the Nameless's hilt again, but—

There are fewer accidents in this world than you might think.  

"Perhaps."

Bear took a final drink from the bottle of rum, then threw it over the side.

* * *

Niko sat by himself in the not-quite-darkness of their cabin.

Well, not quite by himself. The oil lamp hanging from the wall was some company, and every now and then he could hear footsteps moving on the deck overhead, and occasionally quiet voices talking about something, although he couldn't make out what.

Nadide was by his side, of course, lying on the box next to the one he was sitting on, the one he was using as a work table, rather than a seat.

The hammocks were fine for sleeping, once he had figured out how to get in one without spilling himself on the deck, although he still hadn't quite mastered getting out without regularly doing just that.

Their rocking was comforting, for some reason he couldn't quite figure out. But they were, really, only useful for sleeping—he couldn't curl up in a hammock the way he used to at home, on his spot on the floor, and work.

And he couldn't sleep. He had tried, but the rocking wasn't comforting tonight, and he had given up on it, despite how dry his eyeballs felt, how his backside still ached from the saddle, how he found himself uncontrollably yawning.

So he had gotten down from the hammock—spilling himself on the deck in the process, again; he was glad nobody had been there to see it—and taken out his swords.

Best to keep his hands busy. He should have checked Nadide—he hadn't been the one who had sheathed her, after all.

But he couldn't quite bring himself to touch her hilt, even gloved, and he had temporized by taking out the leather pouch that the Wellesley's Navy armorer had given him—along with the strange lecture, punctuated with it's-not-my-place-to-tell-you-what-to-do-sir, and if-you-don't-mind-me-pointing-out-sir, the gist of which was that the Navy sword should be regularly cleaned and oiled, but only sharpened when needed, and preferably not by Niko.

It still felt strange to have so much time on his hands, even at night, even when he should be asleep.

He should be sitting on the floor of the hut, with the damp netting splashed out across the floor, working with bone needle and string to mend rips and reinforce loosening knots, while Mara and Lina stitched and sewed, and Grandfather worked with his still-strong fingers, building new crab traps to replace ones that had washed out to sea, perhaps even while reading out loud. Grandfather could do both.

It was late, and a fisherman's day was long. Perhaps Niko would just be sleeping, woken only occasionally by the low, slow breathing of his sisters as they lay curled up in their blankets, or by Grandfather's horrible, rattling snoring that always seemed to threaten to shake their house apart.

But they—

No. Best not to think about that. They were gone, and he was—

No.

He was better off just concentrating on polishing this sword. There wasn't anything else he could do, nothing useful. Maybe that was the trouble here—he just didn't have enough to do. Too much time to think, and if he concentrated on working, perhaps he wouldn't think so much.

The sword—the Navy sword—lay across his lap. Gray in particular spoke disparagingly of Navy issue, but Niko couldn't see anything wrong with it. It was certainly sharp enough—he tested it against the hair of his arm, again; and once again, when he leaned his head close as he carefully slid the blade along his skin, he could hear the quiet pop-pop-pop as the hairs snapped off.

The sword seemed like a terrible waste of steel, though—you could easily make a dozen fisherman's knives from just one of these, and the Wellesley's armory had, literally, dozens of spares, beyond the swords that the marines and the Navy officers themselves had been given—no, issued. The English were terribly rich.

He held the lamp closer. Yes, there was a small rust spot along the edge, despite Niko having thought he'd been careful with it. He certainly had always been careful with Father's knife, after the one time that Father had found a spot not much larger than this on it, and beaten him.

Understandably.

Well, he could probably just polish it out. He pulled the strange leathery cloth out of the pouch—no, Bosun's Mate Thatchery had called it a 'kit,' and called the cloth a "shammy," and Niko should try to do so, too. He wrapped his index finger in the shammy and rubbed at the rust spot until the metal beneath gleamed brightly.

That wasn't bad, not bad at all; he gave the rest of the sword a quick polishing, then oiled it, and rubbed the oil mostly off with the oil rag from the kit.

Truth to tell, the sword did fit his hand comfortably. He got to his feet, ducking under an overhead timber, and took a position near the bulkhead. He moved into the stance that he had been practicing, under Cully's tutelage: the sword gripped in his right hand, the scabbard in his left, with his feet about a shoulder's width apart, slightly diagonal to the bulkhead, the sword held firmly in his hand, elbow bent, point low-but-not-down-dammit-Niko, the scabbard held in his left hand. At least that was coming naturally to him—understandable, given all the hours he had stood that way.

You didn't step forward to lunge, Cully explained—you just straightened your arm, raised your foot, and leaned forward, and let gravity do the work. It seemed awfully simple—and the knights and marines made it look easy—until you tried to actually do it, but Cully said that after he'd done it only a few tens of thousands of times, it would start to feel natural, and Niko wasn't even a good part of the way there, any more than he was with any of the strange rituals that the knights practiced.

It really didn't make any sense for him to bother with doing this, but it was something to do, something more useful than sitting in a box and feeling sorry for himself, as silly as that was.

There were others to feel sorry for, like the man he and Nadide had killed. The peasants were just protecting their own, after all. That was something that anybody could understand, anybody should be able to understand, and—

No.

Sword fighting, so Cully had explained, was the simplest of things. There were only eight moves, after all, and if a dung-footed Sherwood peasant could learn them, and he could, then so could a fish-scented Pironesian boy. It was just a matter of practice, practice, practice and then varying and combining the moves, something that would only take a few years of constant study to learn the rudiments of.

Cully had grinned. Not that that was all, he had said, or even the most of a novice's education. Theology, history, poetry; fluency in at least three languages beyond the trading-language—beyond English—and then there was smithing, armorcraft, horsemanship, court manners, and the strangely varying customs from Londinium east and west to everywhere that the Crown pennant flew; woodsmanship—Cully thought those arts had been shamefully neglected in recent years—as well as at least the rudiments of sailing and navigation. And then there were mathematics and clerkship, and a dozen other subjects. A Knight of the Order was of necessity a journeyman of many trades and the master of several.

The rest of it was far beyond his abilities, but if he was going to impersonate a knight for the time being, Niko thought he could learn to hold a sword and lunge, and he was certain he could do that much more easily than he could try to reconcile the subtle—the utterly incomprehensible—differences between Bear's view of the way that the One True Church should be obeyed and Gray's, or Cully's.

He lunged and recovered again, and again, and kept at it.

The muscles of his right thigh began to ache, but anybody who had been a fisherman had to learn to ignore pain—and probably everybody else did, as well. Life was hard, and work was hard, and if you concentrated on it, if you didn't let your mind wander, if you paid attention, it could all be managed, whether you were hauling buckets of fish up a narrow path to the ridge, or—

"Very nice, Sir Niko."

He almost dropped the sword.

Bear, with Mr. Sigerson with him, had somehow come into the compartment while Niko had been busy practicing; he hadn't heard the door open.

Feeling more than a little foolish, Niko set the Navy sword down on the box, next to Nadide's scabbard, while Bear hung his lantern on a peg on the wall on the other side of the door from where Niko's hung.

"I'd suggest a little less of the leg extension, though," Bear said, "you've got to be able to retreat as quickly as you lunge forward." Bear set both of his swords down on the box beside Niko's. "May I?" he asked, gesturing.

It took Niko a moment to realize that Bear was asking if he could pick up Niko's Navy sword. Why he would be asking—oh. Cully had explained to him that a sword was considered a special sort of personal possession, like a kirtle, and that others—even others of much greater status—weren't supposed to touch it without asking permission.

"Yes, yes, of course, Sir David."

Bear picked it up, and gave it a practice shake. "A solid enough weapon, certainly. Grips are a little small for my hand, but they seem to suit you well enough." He turned to Sigerson. "What do you think? Did he have too much extension in the lunge?"

"I think," Sigerson said slowly, his voice blurry around the edges, "that I'd not want to argue with a Knight of the Order on such matters, even if I thought he was wrong, even if he didn't have a sword in his hands."

Bear seemed to lose some of his usual friendliness as he pointedly lowered the point of the sword.

"I think, perhaps, there's a reason for you to speak your mind, just as I know you're not truly afraid that I'd so much as think of running you through for disagreeing with me, Mr. Sigerson."

"True enough; my apologies, Sir David." Sigerson shook his head. "I don't disagree—I thought it was far too much leg extension, myself, although I'm much more of a singlestick player than a swordsman, I'll freely con—admit."

"Then see if you can procure some sticks, if you please, and join me and Sir Niko on deck."

Sigerson looked like he was going to say something, but he just nodded.

"Of course, Sir David." He closed the door slowly behind him.

Bear looked Niko up and down. "Well, then, young sir knight—one thing you've got to learn is that when you have a question, there's a proper time and place to ask it, and seeing as there's nobody but the two of us in the room at the moment, there could hardly be a more proper time and place."

Niko didn't know what to say. Which was strange, given that it was Bear. But Bear was waiting for him to say something, so he had to.

"I don't know. I . . ." He swallowed heavily. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't sleep, and—"

"No, there's no need to apologize for that, Niko. You have good instincts." Bear nodded. "A wise man once spent some time sitting beneath a tree, thinking. He didn't do it because he thought that sitting beneath a tree was the best thing in the world to do, but because he knew how to do that, and he didn't know how to do anything more useful at the moment.

"And if the moment grew longer, as moments have a way of doing, that was entirely suitable, and proper."

He looked over at the boxes where Niko had spread out his sword-cleaning pouch—kit, kit, it was a kit—then held Niko's sword close to the lantern on the wall, carefully examining the blade.

"Good enough, certainly. And while I'd not think that cleaning and polishing a sword would look to an outsider as the same thing as more usual contemplation, it might serve you well enough." His eyes grew vague and distant. "We have to find our own ways about many things in this world. You're bothered by the man you killed, and there's nothing wrong with that—such things shouldn't be taken lightly, even when they're necessary."

"You—you and Sir Cully and Sir Joshua didn't hesitate."

Bear shook his head, matter-of-factly. "No," he said, simply, no trace of sadness or apology in his voice or manner. "You can put it down to years of training, if you'd like, or to the various stains on all of our souls, if you insist, but when things . . . snap into place like that, you do what you have to, and sort out how you feel about it later on, if at all."

"Like Gray did in the plaza in Pironesia?"

He regretted the words the moment that they were out of his mouth, but Bear just nodded.

"Yes," he said, sadly, "precisely like that. Although I think the difference between doing so when it's necessary and not is rather important—and so does Gray." He looked at Niko's sword, still in his hands, as though it were something foreign and perhaps foul. "I think, perhaps, I'm not in the mood for practice at the moment," he said, setting the sword down next to its sheath. "But some exercise would be good for you, as well as me—get your swords, and let's take the boat to shore, and walk for a while; we can sleep when the ship leaves in the morning, perhaps?"

It was really more of a command than a question, so the only thing that Niko could say was, "Of course, Sir David."

* * *

Something had changed in Niko, perhaps.

Either that, or the world seemed to have both grown and shrunk at the same time, although the idea of that seemed even more strange.

The easiest thing to do was walk, so he walked, and tried not to think any more than he had to.

The city of Rodhos jutted out into the sea, and the rough path along the coast to the west traced the shoreline, sometimes climbing up to the low plateau, often dipping to within but a few feet of the high-tide marks. It reminded Niko of such paths that circled his home island—it looked so much more a natural path than a road, although years of plodding feet had beaten it into some semblance of stability.

They walked quietly above the rocky shore to the east, quickly leaving the city far behind them.

Niko had thought of Pironesia—the city—as almost impossibly huge and sprawling. Rodhos was, perhaps, only half the size, or even smaller, but it felt tiny. He wondered if that was because of the flatness of the land. It wasn't nearly as hilly as seemed natural, as though some thing or some one had worn it down.

He said something to that effect to Bear and Sigerson, but they both just chuckled, and exchanged funny looks, and Sigerson muttered something about what flat land was really like, and Bear urged him to take the lead as they reached a steep grade, and walked up the rocky path above and along the shoreline.

For some reason, the two others seemed to have some trouble with the steepness of it, and Sigerson in particular was breathing heavily. Niko didn't see what the problem was; it was nothing like the daily climbing up and down at home had been, and the path, whatever its origin, was wide enough in most places that two could have walked abreast without fear of falling.

The night was alive with sounds, although the east wind tended to carry those from around the port away, and out to sea. The noise of the port behind them—did sailors ever stop drinking and singing?—soon had faded, and the squawking of the ever-present gulls, which seemed to sleep quietly even less often than sailors—quickly predominated, sometimes almost in rhythm with the regular beat of the waves against the shore below.

The wind from the east picked up. Below, it seemed to flatten rather than magnify the waves, turning the star-spattered sea all glossy and shiny, rippled like the scales of a beached tunnyfish.

The path branched off in several places, presumably leading to houses and olive groves, Bear said. The land was too rocky to grow much up here—Niko knew that from his family's experience—but olives apparently didn't require much.

They approached a small group of houses close enough to the edge to see—too few to call it a village, Bear said.

Niko didn't want to ask what the minimum number of houses was that constituted a village, as the two of them would probably just have laughed at him again, and he was finding that he didn't much like being laughed at.

No, that wasn't really true—he had never much liked being laughed at, but it wouldn't have occurred to him, at least until recently, to have resented such a thing, even silently, when his betters did it. That probably had something to do with the strongbox now aboard the Wellesley, and the leather pouch still on its thong tied to his waist beneath his robes. A rich man could afford to take offense, after all; rich men could afford all sorts of such luxuries.

The path forked as it had before, one steep incline leading up to the ridge, the main branch continuing along. Niko stopped when Bear touched him on the shoulder.

"Let's wait for a moment," Bear said, quietly.

"Of course, Sir David," he said.

For some reason, Sigerson was falling far behind again, and his steps didn't seem terribly steady—perhaps he wasn't used to walking?

Still, there wasn't far to go, and the way would get easier soon. If Niko's sense of direction was as good on land as it was on the sea, all they had to do was continue on for a while, and they should soon reach the Lindos-Rodhos road, and be able to return to the city on flatter land that would, presumably, not have Sigerson audibly wheezing.

"We'll give him a moment to catch his breath, and then walk on—visitors probably don't come calling in the middle of the night hereabouts." Bear's voice was low, barely above a whisper, although a normal speaking voice wouldn't have carried very far above the steady wind that had their robes flapping.

Niko nodded. He had never, of course, on his family's island, heard somebody outside at night—but it would have terrified him, too. Maybe, though, people on the larger islands thought differently about such things?

Still, while drawing attention from the houses was probably unwise—and most certainly unkind—it couldn't hurt to look, not from here, could it?

What kind of people lived here? Not rich ones, certainly—the houses were much more the sort of thing Bear would have called a shack than anything finer, and there was no sign of the smoke-houses or drying nets that would have indicated that the people were fisherfolk. Niko couldn't hear any chickens, although he wouldn't have been surprised if the smaller of the shacks was a coop. Chickens slept, too.

There was no sign of olive groves, although Niko couldn't see very far in the dark, although he could make out a few small plots where something had been planted, although he couldn't have said what.

The only windows on this side had been shuttered against the wind, but two of them on the nearest of the shacks, even at this late hour, leaked light, striping the surrounding rocks in flickering crimson and yellow.

A distant sound came: a low, woman's voice, quietly singing.

"Shhh . . ." Bear whispered—although Niko certainly thought he was standing quietly enough. What did Bear want him to do? Stop the wind from flapping his sleeves? Sigerson's wheezing from down the path was louder than that. "It sounds like somebody is up late with a baby."

It had been years since Niko had heard Mother singing to Mara late at night. Maybe that was what sounded so familiar. Did all mothers, everywhere, sing to their children?

Still, there was something about the voice that sounded more than familiar, and strangely so. He took a few tentative steps up the narrow path, walking silently. If Bear objected to it, he could say something.

It was very familiar.

"Wait," Sigerson whispered, loudly, from behind him. Niko turned; he and Bear were just dark outlines against the star-spattered sea.

"Just a moment, please." It wasn't just that the tune was familiar—the skin on the back of Niko's neck tightened, painfully so. It was the words. He couldn't quite make them out, but . . .

He found himself climbing quickly, one hand gripping the brush to the side of the path, his other clapped to Nadide's hilt, ignoring the increasingly loud whispers that turned to cries from behind him.

Niko, it's the One Who—no. But it sounds like her; it does. Niko—

"Dandini dandini dastana," the woman's voice was singing.

"Danalar girmis bostana
Kov bostanci danayl . . .
Yemisin lahanyl . . ."

 

"Niko, stop." Bear made a tentative grab at the hem of his robes, but Niko shook it off, and ran toward the sound.

 

"Dandini dandini dastana
Danalar girmis bostana
Kov bostanci danayl
Yemisin lahanyl . . ."

 

He scrambling clumsily over the broken ground, but struggled to keep his feet beneath him.

"Niko, come back. Niko . . ."

He ran.

 

"Eh-e nini, eh-e nini,
Eh-e nini, nini,
Nini nini nini
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, ninni,
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, eh!
Eh-e, ninni . . ."

 

He pounded on the door. "Please," he said. "Please."

Please.  

* * *

Turkish. Bear nodded.

It had been Turkish, not Hellenic—the boy had, of course, sung the words in his own language, and with his own broad accent. He hadn't even thought of them in Turkish, any more than Bear thought in Hindi when talking to the Nameless, or Gray in Xingcha when conversing with the Khan. Nadide had understood enough of the words, and communicated that understanding to Niko. Of course Niko had sung the lullabye in Hellenic by preference, English by second choice, and always with the same Pironesian accent.

Bear nodded, and raised his hands, fingers spread, trying to reassure the seven wide-eyed people who watched his every move, as though expecting him to do something horrible to them at any moment.

He had deliberately seated himself on the hard dirt floor, so as not to tower above them, but that didn't seem to be making much of a difference. Not that he blamed them.

"Please, Ercam," he said. "I know this is all very frightening, but . . ."

"Yes, Excellency," Ercam said. "We're just . . . surprised to have visitors in the middle of the night, but . . . honored, of course." His Hellenic accent was thick with Turkish overtones, which was approximately as unsurprising as that he was lying about how honored he felt.

The father of the family was Ercam; the boys, in descending order of age, were Melik, Nedim, and Orcan. The mother, baby Zahara held too-tightly in her arms, was Safeena, and the elder daughter, who appeared to be Niko's age, was Yasmine.

Despite—or perhaps because of—their understandable fear, Ercam was trying to act as though he were a host with guests, rather than a man whose rented shack had just been invaded. The girl, Yasmine, huddled in her blankets in the far corner of the shack, and made it a point to avoid any of their eyes, something that angered Bear, although he didn't express that.

What did they fear two knights and an English wizard were going to do? Rape the girl and her mother in front of their family, or drag them out into the night?

That was probably it, and it was understandable; they had gone through horror enough, he decided. Having their village raided by men from Izbir, the men slaughtered, the women and babies carried off up into the hills. Ercam had spoken of how he had fought off the attackers, but the scornful looks from his sons made it clear that that was a lie—they had run and hidden, Bear suspected.

Not that Bear blamed them for that. They had been fortunate to get away.

They had been more than lucky to make their way to Rodhos—and were silent on the subject as to how they had managed to work their passage even across the few miles that separated Guhlice from Rodhos, although Bear had his suspicions on that score, and made a point not to look closely from the baby to her supposed father.

And while working the groves for a Rodhos farmer was the sort of living that barely brought them enough to eat, that was better than what had happened to the rest of their village.

Sigerson stood leaning against the doorjamb. The walk had, as Bear had hoped, driven at least much of the rum from his head, but the pallor of his skin and his unsteadiness suggested that he would have an extra penance to pay, particularly in the morning. But if Bear hadn't known about his drinking, he would probably have taken the scowl on Sigerson's face as threatening, and didn't blame the family for doing so.

Niko, who had also seated himself on the floor, edged closer to where Safeena sat up against the rough-hewn wall. She pushed herself back against it, holding the baby so tightly that it—she—woke and began to cry. Safeena reached into her shift, as though to give the baby to suck, but stopped, and contented herself with gently shaking the baby clutched in her arms.

"Shhh . . ." Niko said. "You're in no danger from the three of us."

"I've heard that before," Melik said, starting to rise, then stopping himself. "That's what the men said, when they took my mother and my sister—"

His father grabbed him by his shoulder, and hissed something at him in Turkish, probably telling him to shut up.

"I'm sorry, Excellency," Ercam said to Niko. "I'll punish my son as you see fit; there's no need to dirty your own hands with him. If you wish to watch me beat him, I—"

"No." Niko uttered the word harshly.

Ercam blanched at that, and more so when Niko rose.

"There will be no hurting of anybody here, not tonight, not in the presence of two Knights of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon."

His hand fell to his sword, but he made no effort to draw it. "It's . . . avenging the hurting of innocents that brings us here, and not to hurt more, I swear—on my grandfather's and sisters' souls." His chin trembled. "We need to talk to you, and that's all." He turned to Bear. "Cully will need to see them, as soon as possible. Gray, too."

Bear nodded, and tried to keep the surprise off of his face. This . . . aggressiveness was very much not what he had come to expect from Niko, and he wasn't sure what the source of it was. He found himself thinking of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon—a particularly fierce butterfly, at least at the moment, granted.

"As you wish, Sir Niko," he said, trying as hard as he could to keep any trace of irony from his voice.

He must have succeeded; Niko simply nodded. "We should all be off, I think, darkness or not. All of us."

"But, Excellency, we have work here, and—"

"Shh." Niko held up one hand and dipped another into his robes. It took him a moment to bring out a coin—a gold crown. He held it on the flat of his palm for a long moment, as though he was studying the buttery metal for some insight, then smiled and shrugged and squatted down—in front of Safeena, not her husband.

"I believe this will more than compensate your family for whatever work you'll lose," he said, quietly. He smiled. "I'm sure that you will want to put it somewhere safe."

She eyed the coin greedily, but with the baby cradled in her arms, she didn't have a free hand. Ercam took half a step toward her, but stopped at Bear's quick headshake. The boy was handling this as well as anybody could—let him handle it without interference.

"May I?" Niko said, gently, holding out both of his hands for the baby.

Whether it was the gold or his manner that had worked the magic—or, most likely, both—she didn't resist as he gently removed the baby from her arms, and she instead quickly crawled across the floor to give the coin to Ercam, then turned back, obviously to reclaim the baby.

She was too late. Niko—no, by God, Sir Niko Christofolous was already sitting tailor-fashion on the bare dirt floor, the baby cradled gently in his arms, rocking back and forth and singing so softly that Bear would have had trouble making out the lullabye if he hadn't heard it before.

 

"Eh-e nini, eh-e nini,
Eh-e nini, nini,
Nini nini nini
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, ninni,
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, eh!
Eh-e, ninni . . ."

 

The baby quickly was back asleep, and while the family kept giving frightened looks in the direction of Bear and Sigerson—when they didn't simply try to look away—even the girl Yasmine watched Niko with quiet, trusting eyes.

"Eh-e nini, eh-e nini," he sang.

 

"Eh-e nini, nini,
Nini nini nini
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, eh-e nini eh!
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, ninni,
Eh-e, ninni, ninni, eh!
Eh-e, ninni . . ."

 

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