In contrast to my first voyage aboard this ship I found myself provided with a cabin, once occupied by the first mate who had perished at the Battle of the Teeth. Our captain stated loudly to his threadbare crew that he had yet to find a worthy replacement and I might as well have it since none of these dogs deserved the honour. The welcoming prospect of ship-borne comfort, however, was diminished by his insistence that I share the space with my former owner.
“She’s your prisoner, scribe,” he stated. “You guard her.”
“To what end?” I enquired, gesturing at the surrounding ocean. “To where is she likely to escape, pray tell?”
“Might damage the ship,” he replied with a shrug. “Might throw herself to a passing shark. Either way, she’s your responsibility and I’ve no hands spare to watch her.”
“It’s a small bed,” she observed as the cabin door slammed shut behind us. “Still, I don’t mind sharing.”
I pointed to a corner of the cabin. “Your place is there, mistress. If you’re quiet, I might spare you a blanket.”
“Or what?” she asked, pointedly sitting on the narrow bunk. “Will you flog me? Bend me to your will with cruel torment?”
She smiled and I turned away, going to a small map table set into the woodwork below the porthole. “There are a dozen men on this ship who will happily mete out all the correction you require,” I said, reaching into my bag and extracting the first scroll to hand.
“I’ve no doubt,” she agreed. “Will you watch? My dear husband liked to watch when the slave girls were whipped. He’d often pleasure himself at the sight. Will you do the same, my lord?”
I sighed, biting down a response and unfurling the scroll. An Illustrated Catalogue of Volarian Ceramics, Brother Harlick’s precise but overly florid letters provoking me to an amused grunt. Even the man’s script is pompous. Although I couldn’t pretend any liking for the brother, I had to concede Harlick’s draughtsmanship was excellent, the illustrations possessed of a flawless exactitude, the first depicting a hunting scene from a vase dating back some fifteen hundred years, naked spearmen pursuing a stag through pine forest.
“Ceramics,” Fornella said, peering over my shoulder. “You think the Ally’s origins lurk in pots, my lord?”
I didn’t look up from the scroll. “When studying an age often bereft of writing, decorative illustration can be highly informative. If you can enlighten me as to another course, I would be grateful.”
“How grateful?” she asked, leaning close, breath soft on my ear.
I merely shook my head and returned to the scroll as she laughed and moved away. “You really have no interest in women at all, do you?”
“My interest in women varies according to the woman in question.” I unfurled the scroll further, finding more hunting scenes, some images of ritual worship, various gods, and creatures of bizarre design.
“I can help,” she said. “I . . . would like to.”
I turned, finding her expression cautious but earnest. “Why?”
“We have a long voyage ahead. And whatever you may suspect of my motives, I am keen to see this mission succeed.”
I looked again at the image on the scroll, naked revellers frolicking before a great ape-like creature, mouth agape and vomiting fire. Kethian jug fragment, read the inscription below the image. Pre-Imperial.
“When exactly,” I asked her, “did the Volarians give up their gods?”
? ? ?
“It was all long before my birth,” she said, “long before my mother’s birth in fact. But she was ever a studious woman and keen for me to learn the history of our most glorious empire.”
We had repaired to the deck, sitting near the prow as she spoke and I scribbled my notes. The captain had growled something at our appearance but made no protest and the crew seemed happy to ignore us, bar a few hostile glances at Fornella.
“The empire may speak with one tongue now,” she went on, “and follow the Council’s edicts be they denizens of the greatest city or the foulest swamp. But it was not always so.”