So it turns out that now Beni’s had her baby, the father has persuaded her to go with him when Market ships out, and she’s decided to go, with her newborn baby. This is apparently a rational thing to do, which I can’t argue with, I suppose, having seen the marketeer kids playing earlier. He’s quite wealthy by shore standards, and he’s been pretty much plying her with gifts ever since Market got into port, which she’s been happy to recite to me. Sam indicates with a gesture she’s already heard all this. Gifts which, in the Jeodine fashion it seems, are largely of a practical nature and seem almost calculated to make it easy for her to say no: A house, for the Goddess’s sake! So she could move out of her parents’ place. Money, clothes, furniture, all imported from elsewhere in Jeodin.

“Why would he give you a house if he wants you to go away with him?” I ask. It doesn’t seem logical.

Beni just looks at me as if I’m the crazy one. Jalese has to explain. There’s no ‘seems’ about it. Apparently in Jeodin it’s extremely bad form to ask someone to live with you if the circumstances of the person being asked make it hard for them to refuse. In Jeodine logic, it seems, a ‘yes’ is meaningless unless it’s at least equally easy for the person to say ‘no,’ and it’s evolved into quite a courtly tradition, it seems, of ostentatiously wooing the prospective new family member.

I can go with that, and I say so.

“Well of course,” Beni points out. “It’s a Neri custom, isn’t it?” With that tone, as if wondering why I don’t already know that. “She said you’d forgotten everything,” Beni says sympathetically.

So it turns out this isn’t just for romantic couples, but any time one family offers to take in a member of another, for whatever reason. ‘Family’ itself seems to have a looser definition than I’m used to — either they don’t have marriage at all or they do, but its equivalent is pathologically applied to any kind of committed relationship, whether or not they’re blood-related or want to procreate or whatever. Older children often go to be fostered by another family for a few years, usually locally, in the same community, and for this to happen they are wooed in this fashion, and apparently given every incentive to say no, in the hope that they’ll say yes out of genuine enthusiasm. Naturally, good well-liked kids can expect lots of offers; and the others… It seems very strange to me, and I’m not sure I go with that.

Anyway, the upshot is that Hethan needs to take someone on permanently, and Jalese’s got first-refusal, and she’s considering taking it; and if she can settle long enough maybe a local family will make an offer.

I guess the luck is still playing out.

“You probably should take it,” I admit. “I don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just trying to make enough money to get supplies and pay the harbourmaster fees and move on, but I don’t know where. We haven’t got any big plans.” I still want to try to find Gyrefalcon, despite what Kerilas said. But I don’t say that. I don’t say either how I think I’m hungering to be at sea again, to be a speck tossed on its vastness, to feel the deck moving beneath my feet.

I’m halfway through only the third song of the evening when I realise Hethan is waving at me to stop. Everyone turns to look at him, but he just beckons, ‘come here.’

I feel a flutter in my stomach, that I’m in trouble for something and it must be pretty bad if he’s making me stop in the middle of a song. So I collect myself and give a look to Kerilas and Lotan at their usual table, and step off the stage to go and see what’s up.

Hethan practically pulls me into the back room. He seems excited rather than angry, though, saying I have a visitor. Jalese is there already, attending a tall Neri, standing in the centre of the room. I think he’s a he, but his appearance and dress is quite androgynous and he has that ethereal beauty I’m still trying to work on. Immediately I know this must be about my encounter with Fareis the previous day. I hadn’t told anyone about that, not even Jalese. I’m not sure why.

“Um, hello?” I say. I can hear how nervous my voice sounds.

“Mistress Taniel,” he begins. His voice is light and delicate. In fact, I think it’s unbroken, but I haven’t really spoken to a male Neri before, so for all I know their voices don’t break. “My name is Deidas, child of Satthei Fareis. My mother has asked me to bring you gifts and hopes you may consider favourably an offer to be joined and to sojourn with us.”

I stare at him. He’s at least a head taller than I am. So this is how it comes. She wants to take me into her ship, into her family. “I don’t want to,” I say. “My friends…”

“Indeed. I’m not here to try to persuade you myself,” he says, letting his speech become less formal. “The Satthei asks merely that you accept these gifts and that you would come to the ship tomorrow evening as a guest, that you and she may talk. She has asked me to convey her regret for causing you alarm yesterday.”

“I don’t think–”

“Tani,” Jalese interrupts me. “You mustn’t refuse the gifts. It’s a great honour.”

“Quite so,” Deidas confirms smoothly. “It is understood that through some calamity you have come to forget much about the ways of our people. Therefore, the first of the Satthei’s gifts to you are a selection of books.” He turns to the table in the corner, where I belatedly notice are arranged a number of items, and returns carrying two books. Examples, as I can see more still on the table, in an open box of a design I know will be waterproof when sealed. There are rich fabrics and made-clothes and jewellery and boots and boxes containing I’ve-no-idea-what. I can see a long recurved bow leaning against the wall next to the table, and next to a beautiful dress in deep turquoise. It’s evident that Deidas must have spent a significant time arranging the gifts before I was called in.

He shows the books to me; paper bound in a fine wood veneer cover, hinged, with strangely familiar names inlaid in the wood. “These give accounts of some of the history and stories of the Neri. Stories that still shape the way we live today.”

I take one. It’s surprisingly light, and closes with a clasp. I open it, and thick coarse-grained pages open before me. Pages with exquisitely calligraphed text and almost luminous hand-painted illustrations; lacking realistic perspective, like Medieval art, but rich in colour and detail and symbolism I can only guess at. It’s a book of stories for a child; and it’s a thing of almost transcendant beauty.

“And as well as all this stuff, she’s paid our harbourmaster fees, right to the end of the month,” I say, finding and waving the piece of paper from the harbourmaster’s office that confirms this. “The sloop’s been checked over by her shipwright, and completely reprovisioned, and made over into my name, registered here at Denhall as salvage.”

“We can leave whenever we want,” Kerilas interprets.

“Yeah!”

He and Sam and I are out in the courtyard the following morning, finishing breakfast. I can hear Lotan practicing again behind me, which he’s gone back to after eating his share. Swish-thuk. Swish-swish-swish-thuk.

I’m wearing one of my new outfits. The weather’s cooler today, and I chose a warm, grey overdress going to below my knees with slits in the wide skirt to show the bright Aegean blue silk underskirts. A matching undertunic, visible above the collar of the dress, and leggings, and my new boots. It feels very comfortable.

“And this is all no-obligation?” Kerilas asks, openly skeptical.

“Yeah, that’s how it works, isn’t it Sam? Remember what Beni was saying yesterday?”

“So are you going to go with her?” Sam asks.

“’Course not.”

“Why not?” Kerilas asks.

I stare at him. “What do you mean, why not? I’m… I mean, we’re a group, aren’t we?”

Swish-swish-thuk.

“I still think we should be looking for Gyrefalcon,” I say. “I didn’t think we were just going to be staying here. Sam?”

“I don’t know what I want to do any more,” Sam says.

“You’ve got to think long-term,” Kerilas tells me. “You need to learn how to be Neri, and she’s offering–”

I hear the door behind me being flung open, and Jalese’s voice: “Hey Tani, Hethan wants–”

Silence.

“Oh shit, no!” Lotan cries out.

“Oh fuck,” Sam breathes, and launches herself out of her chair. I turn in time to see Jalese crumple to the ground. Lotan’s sword is covered in blood.

“I didn’t mean–” Lotan is saying. Sam is already running to Jalese’s fallen body. I’m closer, and I scramble across, shoving Lotan aside roughly. Suddenly there’s blood everywhere, frothing from a deep puncture wound under Jalese’s left breast. “I didn’t mean to!”

Her eyes meet mine for a moment, then she passes out.

~I know what to do.~

I pull the little bag of charms off from around my neck and yank it open and grab the first thing my fingers find. Sam is by my side. She’s doing some First Aid stuff, tearing Jalese’s tunic open and jamming her hand practically into the wound. Good. Not enough. I remember how to start. In that other language. Not Elvish, I know now. Even older. “Ocean Mother, hear me–”

“It was an accident!” Lotan cries out, behind me.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sam yells at him.

Distracted I have to begin again. There’s an interestingly-shaped pebble, worn smooth, embedded in my hand, as if it had grown there all my life. My palm-print whorls across the featureless stone. “Ocean Mother, hear me. Jalese your… devout child is innocent of this harm. Let it be your will that this wound is undone. Let it be your will–” “Sam!”

Sam moves her hand aside from the wound long enough for me to put mine to it.

The stone is gone.

I can feel the pressure of her blood against my palm. I can feel her heartbeat becoming erratic. And a taint of something cold and burning.

“It’s not working!” Lotan complains, still behind me.

I withdraw my hand and Sam instantly replaces it. I pull another charm out. My hand is shaking. Covered in blood.

“No wait, her bleeding’s stopping!” Lotan says, his voice full of hope. The spurting from under Sam’s hand is slowing down.

“It’s ’cause she’s lost too much blood, you idiot,” Sam retorts bitterly. Blood is soaking into the wooden decking, into the soil, into my clothes and Sam’s. “Her heart–” She starts CPR. Pump. Pump. Pump. Pump. Pump…

I lose count. “Ocean Mother, hear me,” I say quickly. Sam’s attempts are totally inadequate and she knows it. She’s just trying to keep the brain alive while I get it together with the Goddess. “Jalese is our friend. Jalese is my friend. I beseech you spare her from our own carelessness. She deserves to live. She deserves to live. She deserves to live.” “What I tell you three times is true,” I add in English while Sam is blowing into Jalese’s mouth. The charm is gone. I didn’t even notice what it was.

There’s no more blood coming.

“Wait–” Sam says, sitting up. I look at her, and down. Jalese’s eyes are open. “Just hang on,” Sam is telling her. “We’re fixing you.” She lifts her hand gingerly away from the wound.

There is no wound. I wipe the blood on the surface away and there’s just unbroken skin where the deep slot between her ribs had been. But her skin is horribly pale. Her face is pale and clammy.

“No, wait!” Sam calls out to Jalese again. She’s passed out again. “Wait! Stay with me! Tani, do it again!”

“I don’t know–” Something tells me, it’s not cumulative. It doesn’t work like that.

“DO IT!”

I tip all the remaining charms out onto my hand and clap my other hand over them. I press them together, more the image of a prayer from home.

Sam yells, “You’ve got to replace the lost blood! What sort of fucking stupid deity doesn’t realise that!”

I’m jabbering away, trying to find another form of words.

“Just fucking do it!” Sam yells.

I pull my hands apart and place them both down over Jalese’s chest. “Just fucking do it, you bitch,” I hiss, echoing Sam’s sentiment. My hands hurt more than I can believe. “Just fucking do it, you bitch,” I say again, and push again. I’m feeling dizzy, as if I’m going to be sick, and my breath won’t come. “Just fucking–” I have to force in a breath. “Do it.”

“Tani,” Sam says. Her voice has changed. All I can see is a curl of Jalese’s hair, fallen across her face, stirring slightly in the wind. There’s nothing else. I can still feel all the charms rooted in the flesh of both my hands.

“Just fucking–” The waste of it. The stupid random waste of it.

“Tani, stop,” Sam tries again.

“Do it. Do it. Do it.”

“She’s gone.”

And then, it’s a strange lightheaded feeling. I can feel myself fainting; my body losing the strength to even sit upright, and falling, and nothing.