Charming Sharra, page 14
“I would have if I could, but the ship sails with this afternoon’s tide, an hour before sunset.”
“And what if I insist you finish your shift?”
“Unless you put a geas on me, I’ll leave anyway.”
Virina frowned. “Fine.” She waved a dismissal. “Go, then. I hope your voyage is a safe one, but don’t expect a full day’s wages.”
“Thank you,” Sharra replied, startled. She had not expected to be paid again at all, and was only working these last few hours as a favor to Virina – and of course, she wouldn’t object if a few customers slipped her an extra coin or two. She nodded – almost a bow, rally – then hurried to get her apron.
Around mid-afternoon, during a lull in business, she collected her meager belongings from the attic, wrapped them into a manageable bundle, and heaved them up on her shoulder. When she had them arranged comfortably she made her way carefully down the stairs.
At the bottom she found Challin staring at her.
“You’re really going?” Challin asked.
Sharra nodded.
“I’ll miss you,” Challin said.
Sharra barely caught herself in time to not say, “You will?” She and Challin had hardly ever spoken to one another. She didn’t know what to say instead, and just smiled.
“Safe travels,” Challin said.
“Thank you.”
The ship was called the Sharpened Blade, and it belonged to three brothers – Bragen the Strong, Kargan the Armorer, and Gror the Merchant. She recognized the names, of course, and found the coincidence amusing – it seemed she would be getting some help from Morvash’s family after all.
The ship was bound for Tintallion of the Coast with a cargo of weapons, but would put in for supplies at Ethshar of the Sands and Ethshar of the Rocks. Sharra would be sleeping in a curtained-off alcove, not a cabin of her own – she had known that when she agreed to the price. The voyage to Ethshar of the Sands was expected to last five or six days, perhaps a little more; they could not afford a magician who could ensure favorable winds, but there was no reason to think the weather would be particularly uncooperative.
The sailors were standing ready to cast off when Sharra came running up; the instant she was across the gangplank and aboard, the captain took her arm and pulled her out of the way so that the crew could get the ship underway.
“Stay out of the way until we’re out at sea,” he told her. “You can go below, if you like.”
“I want to watch!” Sharra protested.
“Fine. Just stay out of the way.”
She did her best to oblige, standing well clear as the lines were hauled in and the sails hoisted, but crewmen seemed to be everywhere on the deck and more than once she had to hurry out of someone’s path.
At last, though, the sails were in place and the ship was clear of the port, making her way northeast. Sharra watched the city and its walls dwindle behind them, and finally vanish as the ship swung to starboard and headed east, along the sandy shores of the Peninsula. The sun was setting now, its red glow lighting the yellow-painted sails a rich golden orange. The sea air was fresh and sharp, utterly unlike the smoky, sweaty odor of the Crooked Mast’s dining room.
One of the ship’s crew came and stood beside Sharra as she watched the distant land slide by.
“Unless the moons are very bright or the captain has hired some new magic, we’ll probably anchor before full dark,” he said. “Rounding the headland from Azrad’s Bay into the main body of the Gulf isn’t safe by night.”
Sharra glanced at him but said nothing.
“I hear you’re bound for Ethshar of the Sands.”
She nodded, still not speaking.
“Any particular reason? Or are you just looking for adventure?”
“I’m going home,” she said, reluctantly breaking her silence.
“Are you? Why were you in Ethshar of the Spices, then?”
“I was kidnaped. By someone who thought I would make a nice ornament for his mansion.”
The crewman blinked.
“He’s dead now,” she added. “A wizard rescued me.”
“Oh,” the crewman said. His voice had lost much of its enthusiasm. He had clearly thought that a pretty young woman traveling alone might be an easy target for him, but Sharra guessed he was now experiencing doubts. Getting involved with kidnapers and wizards might have unwanted complications, and a woman who had been through such an experience was probably not going to be as gullible as he had hoped.
“Kelder!” someone called. “Stop bothering the passenger and go fetch the lead; the captain’s called for sounding.”
“Coming!” Kelder called back. Then he turned to Sharra again and said, “It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I hope we’ll have a chance to speak again.”
She did not reply beyond a slight nod.
The next time she heard Kelder’s voice was ten minutes later, as he bellowed from somewhere forward, “No bottom with this line!”
A man whose blue cap bore a green and white cockade stopped by her and said, “I’m Horl, second mate. I hope Kelder wasn’t bothering you earlier.”
“Not really. He said we might be anchoring for the night?”
Horl shook his head. “That’s why he’s in the chains right now, testing the depth – so we won’t need to anchor. If it starts to shoal… I mean, if the water gets dangerously shallow, the captain might reconsider, but he’s hoping to sail right through the night.”
“Nine fathoms!” Kelder called.
“Let me know if any of the crew bother you, or if there’s anything I can do for you.” Then without waiting for a reply he touched his cheek and walked away.
No one else spoke to her for the rest of the evening. As the sunlight faded in the west a dozen lanterns were lit, all around the deck, and Kelder kept calling out the depth. The line apparently didn’t reach more than ten fathoms, and by the time Sharra grew weary and retired to her bunk the depth had varied from three to ten fathoms. At three fathoms the captain had ordered a turn to port, presumably to reach deeper water.
Kelder’s reports continued, and she could hear them from her alcove, but they were muffled and distant; they did keep her awake for a few minutes, but in time they became oddly comforting and she dozed off.
They had apparently reached deep water while she slept; when she awoke no one was calling out depths, though there were occasional shouted orders and running feet. She climbed out of her berth and found that the sun was brightening the sky but had not yet cleared the horizon – and assuming the sun still rose in the east, they were heading due south. Land was visible in the distance on both sides, but much closer on the western side.
By that afternoon they had finally turned west, and the only land in sight was to the north. Even that vanished into the mist soon enough.
None of the crewmen spoke to her uninvited; apparently word had gotten around that she was not quite the young innocent she looked, or perhaps someone had warned them to leave her alone. There were a few women in the crew, though, mostly older looking – though she realized, with some amusement, that she was probably decades older than any of them, and most likely the oldest person on the ship. Two of them, Liliz the Sailmaker and Derrin the Witch, took time to chat with her.
Derrin, of course, was the ship’s magician, and while her specialties were weather prediction and sensing approaching threats, she was called on to act as the ship’s healer, mediator, and mender as well. She was initially friendly, approaching Sharra in a motherly fashion, but then she seemed to sense something was off about their passenger, and she retreated in apparent confusion.
Despite her cognomen, Liliz did far more than make sails; she also served as the ship’s quartermaster, making and repairing the sailors’ uniforms. She was delighted when she learned that Sharra had once been apprenticed to a weaver; it gave her a chance to discuss sewing and tailoring, subjects in which no one else aboard was remotely interested. Sharra was not particularly interested herself, but she wanted to be polite, and after so long in the crowded, noisy tavern she was not entirely comfortable being left to herself on the ship’s deck, and welcomed the conversation, even if she had little to contribute.
“I’ll tell you,” Liliz said, as she and Sharra leaned on the starboard rail, “I’m glad that sailors wear kilts! You could offer me eternal youth for them, and I still couldn’t sew a decent pair of breeches.”
Sharra had heard the expression before, but something about it caught her attention. “It costs far more than a pair of breeches for an eternal youth spell,” she replied.
“Oh, I’m sure it does,” Liliz agreed. “It’s just a saying.”
“A youth spell can cost seventy-five rounds of gold, and not even be an eternal one.” She was once again thinking how much money she had wasted.
For a moment Liliz didn’t respond, but then she said, “Seventy-five rounds? That’s oddly specific.”
“It’s not odd.”
“You’ve bought one?”
Sharra nodded. “It was a mistake,” she said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
To her own surprise, Sharra realized that she did. “I was married for twenty years,” she said. “When my husband told me he was leaving, I bought the spell to lure him back. It didn’t work.”
“Twenty years.”
Sharra nodded. “I knew he’d married me for my looks, so I thought if I looked the way I did when we were married he would stay. He didn’t.”
“He grew up, I suppose,” Liliz said.
“And I hadn’t,” Sharra agreed.
“You hadn’t?”
“No. If I had, I’d have known it wouldn’t work. I really, truly hadn’t. But I’m working on it now.”
“Twenty years – so you’re…”
“Older than I look. It’s complicated.” She sighed. “Let’s just say I can remember the Night of Madness.” That had been about thirty-seven years ago, when she had still been married – happily, she had thought – to Dulzan.
“Well, so do I, for that…” Then Liliz took another look at Sharra. “Oh,” she said. “So you bought a youth spell. I take it that it worked?”
Sharra nodded.
“Was that in Ethshar of the Sands?”
“Yes. From a wizard named Poldrian of Morningside. And we had a disagreement about the bill.”
“Is it safe for you to be going back, then?”
That, Sharra realized, was a question she had not dared ask herself. How was Poldrian going to react if she turned up alive? Morvash had said he wouldn’t bother her, but could she be sure of that? Would he still want the money?
“I’m told he considers it over and done with,” she said.
“I hope that’s true.”
“I hope someone still remembers me,” Sharra said. Morvash had said Poldrian was still alive, but who else was? Who wasn’t? She knew her father was gone, but what about her mother? She would be in her nineties – her late nineties.
She was probably gone.
Dallisa and Nerra would be old women. Dulzan…what had become of Dulzan?
“Why wouldn’t they remember you?” Liliz asked. “A youth spell wouldn’t change that.”
“It’s complicated,” Sharra replied. She was not quite sure why she was so reluctant to tell anyone she had spent thirty years as a statue, even someone she would probably never see again after they reached Ethshar of the Sands, but it felt too intimate, somehow.
Liliz turned up an empty palm, and the conversation ended.
That evening Derrin found Sharra on the afterdeck, in the shadow of the sails, looking out at the ship’s wake. “Liliz tells me you had a youth spell put on you,” she said.
Sharra glanced at the witch, then continued looking over the rail at the sea. “I did,” she said.
“I knew something felt strange about you.”
Sharra did not reply.
“Will you always look like this?”
Sharra shook her head. “No, no. I’m aging normally, or at least I’m supposed to be. I just got a reset.”
“How old are you really?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, how complicated…” She sensed, a little belatedly, that Sharra did not want to explain, and did not finish her question. Instead she said, “You’re going home?”
“Yes.”
“Were you away long?”
“It’s complicated,” Sharra repeated.
“How can…” Derrin cut herself off again. “Was there more magic involved?”
“Yes.”
After a pause, Derrin asked, “Do you have family waiting for you? Or friends?”
“I don’t know,” Sharra said. “I wish I knew. But I don’t. I hope I do.” She looked out at the sea. “I really, really hope so.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was perhaps an hour before midday on the second of Snowfall when the Sharpened Blade tied up at Third Pier, midway between the Outer and Inner Towers of Seagate Harbor. Sharra had splurged on a few items beyond the basic ship’s fare, mostly sweets, and had to devote a few minutes to settling the bill for incidentals before the purser would allow her off the ship; after doing so she found her savings reduced to a mere three bits. She hoped she would be able to find someone she knew who could give her a place to stay, or she might be spending the night in the Wall Street Field.
By the time Sharra had satisfied the purser and packed up her belongings the sun was almost as high in the sky as it was going to get, and loading was well underway – nothing was being unloaded in Ethshar of the Sands except herself. She had to wait for a break in the stream of provisions being brought on board for the next leg of the journey before she was able to make her way down the gangplank; the captain wanted to catch the next high tide, which meant rushing to get everything stowed.
At last, though, she was off the ship and once again on solid ground – or at least, on the North Causeway. Eager to get back to familiar territory, or at least territory she hoped would be familiar, she hurried across the southern tip of the West Beaches, past the Inner Towers, into Seagate. As she did, she noticed that Ethshar of the Sands was infested with spriggans, just like Ethshar of the Spices; three of them were being chased around the beach by local children.
Once she was in the city itself it was still about two miles to her mother’s shop on Weaver Street, so she bought a slab of fried onion bread from a tent on Seagate Street to eat as she walked. That cost her a copper bit, one-third of her entire fortune, but it tasted better than any of the fare she had eaten on the ship, or back at the Crooked Mast – in fact, she could not remember ever eating anything better. She was not entirely sure whether it was really that good, or whether she just enjoyed getting a familiar treat she had not eaten in more than thirty years.
Straight West Street took her through Seagate to the Merchants’ Quarter, where she wound her way south through a tangle of nameless byways to Copper Street and turned east again. She had finished the onion bread by then.
This took her into the part of the city she had lived in, but she did not yet recognize anything. Copper Street looked familiar, but in an unspecific way – the shops and buildings were all the sort of thing she would expect to find there, but she did not see a single name she recognized on any of the signboards.
Finally she came to the shrine at the corner of Copper and Glassblower Street, which was something she remembered, though the statue of Piskor was noticeably more weathered than it had been when she last saw it.
Thirty years would explain that. She had not weathered visibly despite being a statue, but she had been indoors, and perhaps chalcedony was harder than whatever this figure was made of. What would have happened if she had been damaged while petrified?
She would probably never know, and she was very glad of that.
A block later she turned right on South Dock Street, where some taverns still bore the names she knew; she was not sure about any of the shops.
Five blocks later she turned east on Spinner Street and followed it across South Street, moving from the Merchants’ Quarter into Crafton. Then she just had to go one more block down the slope to the south, and she was on Weaver Street.
It was still unmistakably Weaver Street, where she had grown up; she could hear the familiar clatter of looms and smell the dyes and fabrics, and the windows displayed bright fabrics of every kind.
Once or twice he thought she saw a passerby start at the sight of her – could it be they actually recognized her after so long?
And then she saw the sign ahead, but it no longer said KIRSHA THE WEAVER, FINE FABRICS – now it read simply LADOR THE WEAVER, and the second line had been painted over with a red-and-gold curlicue. The paint was flaking; apparently Lador had not bothered to touch it up, and had not had any preservative magic put on it.
But it was still the same shop, and this Lador was undoubtedly her nephew. She took a deep breath, strode forward, opened the door and stepped inside.
The bell jingled, and the man behind the counter looked up. His jaw dropped, and he stared at her.
She kept her own face under better control, but her eyes did widen. “Lador?” she said, a little uncertainly.
He had gained twenty or thirty pounds, none of it muscle; his head was bald and shining, but as if to compensate his beard had grown out and reached to his chest. Still, she was fairly certain it really was her nephew.
He looked shabby. So did the shop, for that matter, and it was hardly good advertising for a weaver to wear so faded a tunic. Her mother would never have allowed it.
“Aunt Sharra?” he exclaimed. “Aunt Sharra? You’re back?”
“Not because of anything you did,” she retorted.
“It’s really you? After all this time?” He was staring at her as if she were an especially spectacular illusion in an arena magic show.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said, annoyed by his reaction.
“You haven’t aged a day!”
“I’ve aged a month and a half,” she said. “It took me some time to get back here.”
“You look as young as ever, and even more beautiful than I remember!”
