Her hands slipped around him, no longer thinking of anything coherent. He cried out a little, jerking against her, and with her free hand she pushed her underclothes to one side.
‘Enough of your shadows and suns.’ In another time and place she might have been amused by the sound of her voice – it was barely hers, so low and rough was it. Tor murmured something unintelligible to her neck, and then they were fully together.
A revelation. The crashing that had been inside her was now in both of them, tumbling them along in a riptide. Tor’s hair hung over her face, she could taste his breath. He locked eyes with her and she remembered the touch of his tongue against her broken skin and that was when it took her. In the midst of the violence of it, she felt him shuddering over her and understood that he too had reached this final place.
For a time, the cave was full of the sound of their breathing, harsh at first and then gradually evening out. She became aware again of the howling blizzard outside, and it sounded different somehow. Everything did.
‘Well,’ said Tor, when he had his breath back. ‘No wolves, at least.’
Noon laughed, and after a moment he joined her.
39
Vintage sat on the deck in a folding wooden chair, her wide-brimmed hat pulled low over her eyes to keep the hot sun off. Beyond the handrail the river tumbled past, and beyond it, the lush green fields. The winds were in their favour, the captain had told her, and indeed, from the maps she consulted in her room each night, they were making good progress. Still not swift enough for her liking, however.
She knew it was ludicrous, of course. If what she suspected was true, then in a very real sense it did not matter how fast she travelled. Even so, her own anxiety and guilt and yes, even terror, hung over her like a snow cloud ready to release its blizzard, and only the knowledge that she was travelling as fast as she could eased it in any way.
‘Lady de Grazon?’
She looked up to see the ship’s girl staring anxiously down at her, a creature of knees and freckles and unruly red hair desperately tamed in a series of over-worked ribbons.
‘Yes, Marika, my dear, what can I do for you?’
‘It’s the captain, m’lady.’ She stumbled over the honorific. They did not get much gentry travelling on the Lucky Lizard, and with her scruffy clothes and partly scorched face, Vintage did not much look like it either, but a bag full of coins and her own smooth confidence had bought her a berth easily enough. Not for the first time she thanked her past-self for having the foresight to have caches set up in so many towns and cities – even a backwater ditch like Hmar. ‘We’re coming up on something he thinks you might be interested to see. We can pause for a moment for you to have a look.’
Vintage pursed her lips, conflicted. She had to keep moving, had to, but the captain was a kind man who had taken a shine to her, and besides which, he was an intelligent fellow. If there was something he thought she would be interested in, it was probably worth taking a look at it.
Nanthema, she thought, I am making my way to you, my darling. I promise.
Gasping slightly as all her new aches and pains made themselves known, Vintage levered herself out the chair. Marika offered her arm but Vintage patted her away.
‘My dear child, I am sore, not decrepit. Where is your handsome captain?’
The girl blushed furiously and led her to the prow of the neat little ship. All around them the crew were making themselves busy with all the mysterious activities that kept the vessel moving – to Vintage, who had lived much of her life in the middle of a dense forest, ships always seemed half made of magic.
‘Lady de Grazon! I am sorry for interrupting your peaceful afternoon, but I thought you’d like to take a look at this. Seems like your sort of thing.’
Captain Arus was a stocky, weathered man, his skin deeply tanned from years spent sailing up and down the sun-locked Apitow River. He wore tough blue trousers sewn all over with pockets, and a pair of belts across his scarred chest. His shaven head was tattooed with a sprawling octopus, one of its tentacles curling around his ear.
‘Always a pleasure, captain.’ Vintage accepted his hand to step up onto the platform – she didn’t need it, but some men were charmed by such things – and she peered downriver, trying to see what all the fuss was about. ‘Of course, I do not wish to cause you any inconvenience at all, but I am most dreadfully curious as to what dear Marika was talking about. You have something to show me?’
‘It’s no bother,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘We have to sail around it every time we come south, and sometimes I like to stop and take a look at it myself. It right gives me the chills.’
Vintage looked ahead of them again. All she could see was the wide and largely peaceful Apitow; nothing stirred on its teeming green expanse save for the occasional dragonfly. There weren’t even any other ships that she could see, although . . . she narrowed her eyes. There was something – a flag of some sort, at the top of a tall thin pole. The scrap of material was red, its tapering tip the yellow of the sun.
‘You’ve seen it,’ said Captain Arus, obviously pleased. He turned away from her and shouted a series of commands to his crew. Almost immediately the Lucky Lizard began to slow, and she heard the splash as an anchor was thrown overboard.
‘Indeed. It is a very fine flag, Captain Arus.’
He chuckled and beckoned her to join him at the rail. Peering over, at first she could only see the light dancing on the top of the water. It was unseasonably hot for the time of year, and the sun was a warm hand on the back of her head. She blinked at the light as it seared bright trails across her vision.
‘My dear Arus, I’m not sure that I can—’
And then she saw it. At first she thought it was simply the natural green of the river itself, but then the light shifted and she saw the slick shimmer of it just below the surface of the water. There was varnish under the Apitow, a thick streak of it. She glanced around, but there was no evidence of such on the distant banks.
‘It fair gives you a shudder, doesn’t it?’ said Arus, cheerily enough. ‘It’s ’cause it’s hidden, I think. A little secret gift from the worm people. Everyone who sails down the Apitow knows about it, of course. If you’re riding too low in the water, you’re liable to rip your bottom out, or just get stuck, so we all have to go around it. That’s what the flag is for.’
‘What is that? I can make out shapes.’ Vintage leaned right over the guardrail, leaning out as far as her balance would let her.
‘Careful now, m’lady, unless you want an early bath.’
The water of the Apitow was famously clear, and there were shadows caught in the varnish: bodies, three or four of them – men and women or even children who had not moved fast enough to escape the Jure’lia – and something else as well. Vintage felt her heart turn over, and she began to climb up over the guardrail.
‘Whoa, hold on!’ Captain Arus sounded genuinely alarmed. ‘What are you doing?’