The Singer of All Songs by Kate Constable

Author:Kate Constable [Kate Constable]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781742696478
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2005-02-28T13:00:00+00:00

six

The Troubled Sea

‘I WANT TO go home,’ said Trout.

He wouldn’t meet Darrow’s eyes, or Calwyn’s, but stared obstinately down at the table top, where the remains of their last meal lay scattered. Since the morning that Xanni’s white-wrapped body had slipped quietly beneath the green waves, no one had cared about tidying anything away. Tonno was not down in the cabin, but up on deck, steering through the night. He preferred it; he would not speak to anyone, but stood at the tiller, alone with his ship and the wild sea and the stars.

‘It is no use bleating on the same refrain like a nanny goat,’ said Darrow impatiently. ‘How many times have I told you, we cannot take you back. Your life is forfeit to Samis as much as ours.’

Trout turned a cup one way, then another. ‘You say he’s your enemy. All right. I’m from Mithates, I understand hatred, I understand enemies. But his quarrel is with you. Why should he care about me?’

‘Because you helped us!’ Calwyn leaned across the table. ‘Surely you can see that we can’t turn back. We can’t risk meeting him. You can’t risk meeting him.’

‘You have defied him,’ said Darrow wearily. This was not the first time he and Trout had had this argument. ‘Samis will not let defiance go unpunished. That is one way to protect his power. Do you understand me?’

‘No,’ said Trout. His mouth was a stubborn line. ‘I haven’t seen anything of this power of his, I don’t believe he has any power. I must get back to my studies. If I’m away too long, I’ll fail the whole term. I’m going to be in trouble enough as it is, consorting with foreigners without the Masters’ authority.’

‘How can you say that you haven’t seen Samis’s powers?’ exclaimed Calwyn. ‘You were in the workshop when he changed his face. He stopped your mouth with your own shirt! And you were on the river when he made the ground seem to shake like an earthquake.’

‘I didn’t see anything like that,’ saidTrout, blinking his blue eyes behind his lenses. ‘All I saw in the workshop was an old man forcing himself on you. Not nice, but not magic. I got a mouthful of my collar in the dark. So what? And on the river I was busy managing the boat, so you and your friends could run away, which you haven’t thanked me for, by the way. I don’t believe in these crafts you’re always talking about, these chantments of yours.’

‘You need not believe in chantment to know yourself in danger,’ said Darrow. ‘It was cold steel, not magic, that killed Xanni.’

There was a small silence. The timbers of Fledgewing creaked softly, and there came a faint, irregular murmuring from the waves creaming along the prow. Calwyn swallowed hard. Even now it was hard to believe that Xanni wasn’t leaping about on the deck, that he wouldn’t come whistling down the ladder at any moment. She swept some crumbs into a little pile with her hand, and stirred them with her finger.

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