The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(31)

The door to their berth opened.

“Coffee?” asked the kindly attendant.

The elderly couple was sitting by the door and held out their cups to be filled first. When the attendant went to fill up the young man’s cup, something strange happened. The top of the coffee pot had not been put on tightly enough and it came loose all of a sudden, hot coffee gushing out the top. It would surely have burned the young man’s hand and gotten all over his lap. But the young man gasped a few words and the coffee seemed to leap back into the pot, the lid tightening itself firmly. It happened so quickly that only Nell and the young man were sure that it had happened at all. The attendant and the elderly couple tensed when the spill began and when it was averted they relaxed. The attendant poured the coffee and said apologetically, “Thought the lid was going to come off there.” He tightened it a bit, unnecessarily, before refilling Nell’s cup.

When she thought it over, Nell could not remember exactly what she had seen but, unlike the attendant and the elderly couple, she could not simply shake the strangeness away and forget it. She had seen something, after all, of that she was sure. She fixed her eyes on the young man, who drank his coffee quickly, looking out the window. His hands were trembling.

It was evening when they arrived in Elmount. The elderly couple had taken Nell under their wing and bought her dinner at a noodle shop by the port. They wandered around looking in bleak little shop windows until it was time for the boat to leave. They had arranged for cabins but Nell only had a Basic Passenger ticket so she bedded down in a hallway with everybody else who couldn’t afford cabins. She lay awake as the boat rocked pleasantly beneath her. Eventually she slept a little but woke every time the boat stopped at one of the islands and other passengers stepped over her on their way to disembark. Early in the morning, she bought some bread for breakfast in the cafeteria and went up on deck. She walked up and down the deck, breathing in the sea breeze she had known all her life, watching people disembark at various islands to be embraced by their families. Then she saw the young man, bending into the wind with his threadbare coat clutched around him. He looked a very sad figure, with his untidy hair and too-narrow frame.

She approached him and offered him a piece of bread. He gave her a wary look, but he took the bread and devoured it as if he had been starving.

“Where are you going?” Nell asked, trying to sound friendly and nonthreatening.

“Stoot,” he said.

“I’m going to Holburg,” Nell said, although he hadn’t asked. “I grew up there, aye. I’m a student in Kalla. Are you from Stoot?”

“Ye-es,” he said vaguely, as if this might be a trick question.

Nell decided to be direct.

“You’re nay from Stoot,” she said firmly.

He stared at her, terrified.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m nay going to tell anybody. You’re a wizard, are you nay?”

His eyes grew even wider and he didn’t reply.

“Or praps nay a wizard, but you can do Magic. I saw what you did on the train, aye.”

“This is my only pair of trousers,” he said plaintively, by way of explanation. “If I got coffee all over them, what would I wear?”

“What’s in Stoot?” Nell asked. “It’s not one of the popular islands among vacationers.”

His eyes brightened a little. “Coral!” he said, and then looked around anxiously.

“For spells,” said Nell, and didn’t wait for him to contradict her. “So are you a wizard?”

“Just a womi,” he said shyly. “Not a wizard.”

“Lah, it’s good you averted that spill,” said Nell. “It would have been a job to clean up.”

He nodded. “Are you...?” he didn’t finish his sentence and it took Nell a moment to understand what he was asking. She was delighted to be mistaken for a Tian Xia worlder, and was tempted for a moment or two to tell him that she was a witch.

“Human,” she said regretfully. “But I’ve been to Tian Xia.”

He looked as if he didn’t believe her. Nell could see Stoot, a low cone of an island, growing nearer.

“Have you heard any rumours like what that couple was talking about?” she asked him quickly. “About attacks?”

He looked down at his feet. They were absurdly long. Looking at him now, Nell thought she should have known at first glance that he wasn’t a Di Shang worlder.

“I dinnay know anything,” he said.

“It concerns me a little,” Nell explained. “My best friend is the Shang Sorceress....” She had been going to continue but he froze her with such a look of horror that she broke off in the middle of her sentence. Then he turned and fled. Nell stood staring after him for a moment before following.

“Wait!” she called. Passengers enjoying the bright balmy morning stopped to stare at them.

He ran indoors but there was nowhere to hide and she caught up with him in one of the second-class cabin corridors.

“Why are you running away?” she asked breathlessly. “Because of what I said about the Sorceress? She’s very nice, really, she wouldnay be bothered about a harmless womi, whatever that is.”

“Like a wizard,” said the man, rabbity eyes darting here and there. “Only less so.”