The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(5)

After supper she came down and sat by the fire with Mal. The servants brought mulled wine laced with honey and lavender to aid sleep, and then left them alone. Coby knelt before the hearth and stared into the flames, her hands wrapped around the steaming mug. Mal coughed to get her attention, and she looked up, half her face red-gold in the firelight, the other in darkness. It took all his selfcontrol not to fall to his knees beside her and drink from those wine-hot lips until…

"How are things?" he asked instead, glancing up at the ceiling. One could never be quite certain the servants were not eavesdropping.

"As well as can be expected," she replied, taking the hint. "But the sooner we leave, the better."

Mal nodded. "Pack tonight, and we'll be away at dawn. The days are short enough as it is."

He drained his own cup, bade her goodnight and retired to his own chambers, before he could do something they might both regret.

"It would have been safer to go by sea," Coby grumbled one day as they rode through yet another small village where people stared at the three of them as they passed.

"The boy has been through one shipwreck already. I didn't want to alarm him with another long sea voyage, especially at this time of year. The weather out in the Atlantic is far worse than our crossing to Corsica."

Coby nodded. She still had nightmares about the storm in which she had lost her parents, on the crossing from Neuzen to Ipswich. All she remembered was cold salt water coming at her from every direction, and then a chill worse than midwinter snows eating into her bones as everything went black. She shivered at the memory.

"Where do you think the skrayling ship was headed?" she said. "Marseille?"

"Perhaps. Though if they were dealing with the French, why not go straight to Paris from Sark?"

"Mayhap they prefer to trade in Marseille. The markets there are full of goods from Africa and the East."

"As are those of London. No, they had a reason to come further south."

"Italy, then?"

"Possibly. Though if they hoped for a warm welcome in Genoa, they were disappointed."

"The boy might know." She looked over her shoulder. Ruviq's pony had stopped and was tearing mouthfuls of grass from the roadside. Ruviq seemed not to have noticed; he slumped in the saddle, his face hidden by his hood. Coby reined her own mount to a halt and clucked to the pony.

"I asked him, back in Provence," Mal said, "but he just mumbled something in Vinlandic and would not say any more."

"Perhaps he needs more time," she said. "After everything that's happened to him… to find himself amongst strangers who do not even speak his tongue… I remember how horrible that was."
"You ask him, then. He may confide in you."

She turned her mount and trotted back down the road. Ruviq looked up in alarm, as if he'd quite forgotten where he was. Coby gave him a reassuring smile and reined in beside him, then they rode knee to knee for a while, out of earshot of Mal. At first Coby made small talk, asking Ruviq how he liked the horse and apologising for their campfire cooking. When he seemed at ease, she brought up the subject of the voyage.
His expression instantly became guarded.

"I do not know."

"You must have overheard someone say something, surely? I remember when I was a child, I used to crouch on the stairs, listening to my parents talking to visitors–"

"No. There were qoheetanisheth on the island, but I was too young."

"Co-what?"

"Elder talk. In here." He tapped his temple.

Coby raised a hand to the cross at her throat. It sounded like more witchcraft to her. She kicked her pony's sides gently until it caught up with Mal's gelding.

"So," she said, after relating the conversation, "we are no wiser than before."

"For now, at least. But we have the advantage of a true friend amongst the Vinlanders. If anyone knows what the skraylings are up to, it's Kiiren."

The island of Sark had been given to the skraylings of Vinland by Queen Elizabeth in return for their services in keeping the Narrow Sea free of pirates. The fact that the island had itself been a haven of pirates played no small part in its selection. That and it annoyed the French, who also liked to lay claim to Sark and its larger neighbours.

Still it was now to all intents and purposes an independent realm, a little piece of the New World tacked to the edge of the map of Christendom, and English ships were only slightly more welcome than those of any other Christian nation. It took Mal a whole morning of negotiation to persuade a Cherbourg fisherman to sail them the forty miles to the island. Whether he would return in two days to take them back to France remained to be seen.
As they got nearer, Coby realised she could still see no sign of buildings apart from the crumbling harbour wall, which must have been constructed long before the skraylings' arrival. Within it a copse of masts sprouted, yardarms bearing the square reddish sails typical of skrayling vessels, most of them tightly furled against the spring gales. The only other sign of the Vinlanders' presence was a cairn at the seaward end of the harbour wall, out of which thrust a great branch of driftwood hung with yellow and blue ribbons and strings of shells that rattled in the sea breeze. Some of the ribbons were faded to colourlessness by the salt air, whilst others were as bright as spring flowers. The fisherman muttered and crossed himself as they passed this heathen-looking monument, and his passengers were barely given time to scramble ashore before he turned the boat around and headed back out to sea.