The master had explained about a following tide and the land breeze springing up in the evening, and how these would ease their way. Normally the particulars of adventuring intrigued Alix, but as she stood on the quarterdeck, leaning on the taffrail and watching the sun wobble and redden down toward the horizon, practical matters felt far away.
She was sunk in these thoughts when Gally appeared at her side, mimicking her lean on the rail and setting one soft hand atop hers.
“We should socialize,” Gally said.
“You’re all the company I need.”
“We’ve been three weeks on the road together. Aren’t you sick of me yet?”
“Never.”
Gally snorted and pulled her away from the rail, toward their fellow passengers. Four others were making the day-long sail to the Isles of Azure, and they stood chatting amicably in the red wash of sunset—or so it seemed, until Alix’s eye began to pick out the tensions in the scene. She glanced at Gally, whose eyebrows quirked behind the thick frames of her glasses. She’d noticed it too.
The others had split into two pairs. By the weather rail, a tall elf stood monologuing, jeweled rings flashing on his fingers as he emphasized each point with a flap of the hand. His hair spilled like molten gold down the back of trim purple robes. His victim was a lean, tough-looking human woman in fitted black leathers, her hair in a steel-gray bun. But her eyes weren’t on the elf’s as he droned on—they were watching every flash of those rings.
The other two passengers were more openly agitated. Alix pinned them immediately as a pair of human priests, but they were otherwise two men as different as you could hope to find. One was big-boned and ruddy-cheeked, clad in a habit the blue-green of the ocean. The other looked like a sparrow: hunched and fragile in an oversized robe of sand-tan wool that pointed up the spareness of his frame. He held a small brass funnel to his ear, into which the big priest addressed himself.
“If I had known you’d be aboard, I’d have taken the next ship.”
“If I knew you’d be aboard, I’d have stayed on dry land!” rejoined the little priest.
“I shall complain to Captain Axe at once,” said the first priest. “You’d think a man of the sea would know better.”
“I shall complain to the captain first! I shall—shall—”
But his tantrum was cut short by the greening of his face and a sudden rush to the rail, where he heaved his head and chest far out over the sea and noisily let loose the contents of his stomach.
“Should be an entertaining voyage,” Alix said to Gally, who was watching this display with her eyebrows raised. “Let’s introduce ourselves.”
Gally followed with a roll of the eyes and the hint of a smile as Alix presented herself to the priest in blue. “Friend of yours?”
“Hardly!” boomed the priest, his red face reddening further. “I would never consort with a priest of Siffft. Their conversation is as dry as their god.”
“You must worship the Sea King Pantelever, then,” said Gally, adjusting her spectacles.
The priest bowed to her. “Your pronunciation is excellent, madam. Are you a sailor?”
“A bard. Gally Chaparral of Lackmore.”
“Father Ubb of the Most Moist Church of Pantelever, Duke of Damp Corners and King of the Sea.” The priest gave a deep bow, then indicated his puking rival with the jerk of a thumb. “That weak-stomached fellow said his name was Draskis. Claims to be a bishop. He follows Siffft of the Sands, naturally.”
Alix, who found religious hair-splitting tedious, nodded at the bejeweled and droning elf. “Who’s the silk stocking?”
“His name is Cloth-of-Gold,” said little Bishop Draskis, wiping his mouth with a sleeve as he approached. His other hand held the listening trumpet tightly to his ear. “Spelled with hyphens—he insisted. Whether his mother named him that or he adopted it later, I can’t tell you.”
“It’s a fitting name,” Gally said.
“The woman is called Chiss,” said Father Ubb loudly. He seemed miffed that Alix and Gally had turned their attention to his rival. “We don’t know her story.”
At the sound of her name, Chiss turned and joined Alix’s group without excusing herself to Cloth-of-Gold. The tall elf hesitated for a moment, looking affronted, then followed her.
“Pleased to meet you,” Chiss said, extending her hand to Gally. “Did I hear you’re a bard? I’ve never much cared for music. It all sounds like caterwauling to me. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
“Not at all.” Gally shook Chiss’s hand with admirable grace. “Music isn’t for everyone.”
“Only folks with souls,” said Alix, bristling on her girl’s behalf. “But I suppose life’s dull without someone to be wrong. Take the pair of padres here—I expect they’ll have more fun bickering at each other than watching the sunset.”
“I’m a bishop,” said Draskis morosely.
“Sure you are,” said Father Ubb.
“I certainly hope there shall be no bickering after sunset,” Cloth-of-Gold declared. “I sleep lightly, and I didn’t pay good coin for my repose to be disrupted by quibblers in the night. Well, I don’t need to tell you all—I can only imagine what a hardship it was to afford this cruise for anyone not possessed of my wealth.” He brushed back a lock of hair that gleamed red in the sunset.
“Lords Above and Below!” boomed Father Ubb. “Your rings!”
Cloth-of-Gold startled, then stuck out his hands with fingers spread and considered the rings glittering there. There were seven of them, one in each color of the rainbow, fitting three fingers on each hand and the thumb of his left. “These old things? A family heirloom, nothing more. My grandmother came by them by disreputable means, I am told, but that’s no sin of mine.”
“A family heirloom?” said Ubb. His face was the color of brick. “Those, my man, are the Seven Eyes of the Sea King! My church has sought them for five—six—centuries! To see them treated as common trinkets—stuck upon your fingers when they should be blazing in the golden face of Pantelever himself! I demand you surrender them this instant.”
“Ye Lords, the volume of you,” grumbled Bishop Draskis. He opened a leather pouch on his belt and stuffed his ear trumpet inside, looking relieved to be silencing Ubb.
“The Sea King?” said Chiss with a cough of laughter. “I don’t believe in him. A fairy tale dreamed up to frighten sailors’ sons, nothing more.” She glanced at Father Ubb. “I don’t mean to offend you, of course.”
Ubb pulled himself up to his full, and considerable, height. “Your bluntness mars a lovely sunset, lass. I regret to inform the rest of you—not you, Draskis—nor you, Cloth-of-Gold—I regret to inform you two young ladies that I shall dine alone in my cabin. Good night.”
As Father Ubb stormed away, Captain Axe approached the group anxiously. “No trouble, I hope?” he grunted. “Good, good. Well, hope you liked the sunset. Supper’s on.”
Supper was a good one, much better than the usual fare Alix associated with sea travel. Having split a plateful of grouse and more than one bottle of wine, Alix and Gally staggered the few yards from the master’s cabin to their own. It was, mercifully, filled by a large bed that swung gently to the motion of the ship on ropes as thick as Gally’s arm. Alix flopped in gratefully without bothering to undress. Her eyes fluttered shut. The slosh of waves against the hull commingled with the pattering of sailors’ feet on the quarterdeck above their heads and a soft call of “Five bells! Five bells in the first watch!” The soothing blur of noise soon had her deep asleep.
She woke suddenly to shouting, sat up in alarm, and clocked her head on a beam so badly she saw stars.
“Something is happening,” said Gally. She was already out of bed and half into her usual cable-knit sweater and denim trousers.
“I think my skull’s caved in,” Alix said, rubbing her forehead.
“That’s just the wine, cavalier. Come on!”
Alix would rather have forfeited consciousness, but being called cavalier—an old word Gally said meant a swashbuckling knight—always woke her willing spirit. She slipped from the bed, laced up her breeches, and was trying to decide whether to change into the blue blouse with the ruffles when Gally opened the cabin door and slipped through. Alix shrugged and followed, tugging her current white shirt into place as she went. Only Gally could override a debate so crucial as what to wear.
In the narrow hall beneath the quarterdeck, the other passengers had clustered by the door of Cloth-of-Gold’s cabin, which was closest to Captain Axe’s at the stern of the brig. The elf, draped in a nightgown of luxurious purple silk, had Father Ubb by the collar of his robe and was shaking him agitatedly.
“Where are my rings, you lout? Hand them over or I’ll see you pitched into the ocean you love so much!”
Father Ubb’s face, far from its usual red, had gone a sort of green-white under its expression of alarm. “I told you, I don’t have them! Unhand me!”
“Shake him harder,” said Bishop Draskis, who stood barefoot in a single-breasted gown of sand-colored silk that barely reached his knees. He shook his ear trumpet at Ubb. “The stolen jewels might fall out.”
