summer’s end. In the chill of deepest winter was the time when they dragged their heavy bodies ashore to lay their eggs.
He studied the sand, too soft for any clear tracks, but there were vague pits that might have been footprints. Even at Festival he carried a dagger strapped to his forearm. He pulled it from its sheath and set the hilt between his teeth before he began to crawl under the boat.
No movement, no sound or stir of any life. His first belief, as he felt his way forward and his hand touched cold limpness, was that he had found a corpse. Then he felt the faint pulse, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he saw other things—the young girl’s face, the gemmed and golden rings, the hands that had never worked—and he knew what he had found. He sheathed his dagger, and crawled out leisurely, gestured for the courser to follow him, and climbed up the steep path to his home, not looking right or left to see who might be watching him.
He bent his head low to go through the doorway. The house was smoky and sweet with the smell of meat broth stewing in a pot swung on a tripod over the fire—a rare extravagance and a special pleasure with the memory of four-score days of uncooked food still fresh in his mind.
He crossed the room to kneel before his father, Hammel, once tall and powerful and merry, who sat in the chair that had been his whole world since the day that his boat foundered and the sea cast him up against the rocks, eight years before.
“Sire,” he said. His father blessed him, laying hands on his head, but Ilbran did not find as much joy in the blessing as he would have, a half-day earlier. He thought of the past, those eight hard and starving years, when he had been sent to reap the sea just one autumn after his first naming.
He had worked on other men’s boats for a share of what they brought in—they had let him work from sheer pity, he thought sometimes—till he was strong and old enough to go out to sea by himself.
And he had not done much better working alone. He looked around the one room they lived in and grimly appraised its flaws. The roof would not hold through one more rain—it had begun to leak in the summer-ending storms. That meant a trip inland to gather blaggorn straw, and more time spent thatching, and that would be the time when the fish were running their best, the height of the autumn year.
The mud-brick crumbled constantly, not that it mattered if one thought of cleanliness. How clean could a dirt floor be kept? But if the roof gave way, the walls might melt and crumble to nothing in one hard rain.
The net that Hammel was knotting spread halfway across the floor. It would bring a fair fistful of coins when it was done—unless it had to replace Ilbran’s own, too old and weakened to be used much longer.
And Kare Maya … he looked at his mother with sudden grief as he saw the gold of her hair darkening itself to gray. She was too young—and the lace that she knotted was held too close to her eyes—especially since it was yet early evening. That lace would be ten days work and bring them the worth of two meals, he knew bitterly.
He sprang to his feet and paced across the room, four strides, turn at the wall, four strides, turn, four strides, turn. Out there was a fugitive with a price on her head that would let them live without work for two years, or lighten their life for twenty.
What had Ranes Reji and his kind ever done for him but lay high taxes and speak of war? The new king was doubtless no better, but what of it? Let the sea-coursers tear one another, he thought. All we can do is stand apart from their quarrels.
His father and mother were people of honor. They would not agree to the betrayal of a defenseless fugitive. What lie could he tell them to explain where he had found wealth? He would be willing to take the burden of betrayal on himself, if they would not know.
He had only to stretch out his hand and he would have no more dread of the illness that would keep him idle long enough to starve. There had