and because the level is so arranged with winds heading in different directions at different elevations, they can navigate near well as a bird just by taking care how high off the ground – well, sea – they are.”
Ferbin felt the edge of the simple sheet covering his nakedness. “Do we still have the documents Seltis gave us?”
“Here, sir,” Holse said, pulling them from his loose-fitting tunic.
Ferbin collapsed back on the bed, exhausted. “Is there water here? I’m thirsty.”
“I think you’ll find that tube there will provide the necessary, sir.”
Ferbin took a dangling transparent tube and sucked at it, taking his fill of pleasantly sweet-tasting water, then lay back. He looked over at Holse.
“So, Choubris Holse, you are still with me.”
“Plain as, sir.”
“You did not go back, even though we have now most certainly left my father’s kingdom.”
“I thought the better of it, sir. The gentlemen on the lyge who tried to detain us at the tower did not seem overenthusiastic regarding the niceties of establishing the innocence of one acting merely as a faithful servant. It occurred to me that you might be of most use to the current regime dead, if you see what I mean, sir, and – on account of you having been already so pronounced – some effort might be made to turn this incorrect statement into a true one, only backdated, if you get my drift. Your being alive does rather contradict the official version of events and it strikes me that knowledge of that fact is somewhat like an infective disease, and a fatal one at that.” While Ferbin was still thinking his way through this, Holse frowned, cleared his throat and gathered his tunic about him. “And it did occur to me, sir, that you did somewhat save my life on that tower thing, when that little lyge flier chappie was quite set, it seemed to me, on taking it.”
“Did I?” Ferbin asked. He supposed he had. He had never saved anybody’s life before. Realising that he had was a rather agreeable sensation.
“Not that it wasn’t my sticking with you that had got me into said parlous situation in the first place, mind, sir,” Holse went on, seeing a look of dreamy self-satisfaction appear on Ferbin’s pale, lightly bearded face.
“Indeed, indeed,” Ferbin said. He was thinking again. “You will be some time away from those you love, I fear, dear Holse.”
“It has barely been three weeks, sir. Quite possibly they have yet to miss me. In any event, I’m best to stay away until matters are sorted, sir. Also, if the palace officials work at their customary pace in such affairs, my stipend will continue to be paid for a good long-year or more.”
“Your wife will be able to collect it?”
“She always has, sir. To protect it and me from funding an overfamiliarity with such pleasures as a fellow might meet with in drinking and smoking establishments, betting parlours and the like.”
Ferbin smiled. “Still, you must miss her, and your children. Three, isn’t it?”
“Four at the last count, sir.”
“You will see them again, good Holse,” Ferbin said, feeling oddly tearful. He smiled again at Holse and put his hand out. Holse stared at it, confused. “Good servant, take my hand. We are as much friends now as master and servant, and when I return to reclaim what is rightfully mine, you shall be most richly rewarded.”
Holse took Ferbin’s hand awkwardly. “Why, that’s most kind, sir. Right now, I’d settle for a glass of something other than water and a pipe of leaf, frankly, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to.”
Ferbin felt his eyes closing, seemingly of their own volition. “I think I need to sleep some more,” he said, and was unconscious almost before the last word was uttered.
The Cumuloform called Expanded Version Five; Zourd drifted into the lee of the two-kilometre-wide Vaw-yei Tower and started elongating itself, eventually extending one single trailing tip of cloud down to the surface of a much smaller though still substantial tower protruding fifty metres or so from the ocean. A great swell, near long as the world was round, washed about it, waves rising and falling back like the beat of some vast heart. A Fixstar sat low on the horizon, staining the clouds and waves with an everlasting sunrise/sunset of red and gold.
The air smelled sharp. The circular surface of the tower was strewn with seaweed and sun-bleached fish bones.
Ferbin and Holse stepped out of a hole which had appeared in