Chapter 15

There was the faintest hint of daylight when I woke again. Mashaar was squatting in the middle of the cockpit with a lantern beside him, trying to get the brazier going. Aila was sitting in the stern by the tiller, slicing potatoes. Piiram was sitting twisted round on the seat opposite me, gutting a large fish over the side.

Someone had tucked the blanket round me again after Aila had got up, and it was quite difficult to free my arms. Aila saw me struggling and leant over and helped me.

Mashaar looked up. “Ah, you’re awake. I wish I knew your language, whatever it was you called it. You were telling a fine story last night, but I couldn’t pick out a single word.”

Aila laughed. “You woke us all up, but it doesn’t matter. It was lovely to hear your voice rambling on like that. Do you often talk in your sleep?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never listened. At home in Laanoha the first night I knew you’d gone missing, I was shouting and woke everybody up, but apart from that no-one’s ever mentioned it. So I think probably not, although in England I always slept in a room on my own for the last few years, so there’d have been no-one to say anything.”

“Shouting? You sounded quite contented last night.”

“That was probably after I woke in the middle of the night then. I felt much more relaxed when I realized we were becalmed.”

“Yup. If there’s anyone following, they’re becalmed too. It’s better that we arrive an hour or two ahead of them in daylight when you can get a gig, than at night when you’d just be stuck in Mormi waiting for them to catch up. Ideal – as long as it clears reasonably soon. Ah, that’s better.”

He’d managed to get enough charcoal going to start warming the pan. “You couldn’t fry over that yet, but it’ll get to frying heat quicker from warm than from cold. It won’t be long now.”

They could do with a pair of bellows or something. Even just a blowpipe would be an improvement on pursed lips.

“How much further did we get after I went to sleep? We seemed to be going so well, then I woke up in the middle of the night and we’d stopped, and I couldn’t see a thing.”

“Until the last minute, I though we were going to make it. We could see the lights in Mormi, but still much too far to pick out the leading lights when the wind dropped to nothing. I didn’t see the fog until I woke up this morning at first light. There’s a surface current of fresh water from the river here, so we’ll have drifted south a bit during the night. But I dropped a sea anchor below the current, so we shouldn’t have gone far. It’s very variable anyway, sometimes wide and slow, sometimes only a narrow stream but going a fair bit faster. We won’t know until this fog lifts.”

The fog began to thin as we were eating breakfast, and soon we could discern the direction towards the coast, although we couldn’t see any detail on it at all for a while.

Before we’d finished, Mashaar announced that he could see Mormi point, and that he thought we were about two and a half miles out of Mormi. “Not a breath of wind yet. Who knows when the wind will come? I think we should start rowing her in, Piiram. We’ll be there in under two hours, I reckon, even if the wind doesn’t pick up.”

They started to get up, but Aila told them they should finish their breakfasts first, and they sat down again.

“You’re right, Griima. I don’t know how far away anyone following us is, if there is anyone, but they can’t row in from there, wherever it is. If the wind doesn’t pick up, they’re going nowhere. And if it does, we’ll be in Mormi in no time.”

“Can you row, Owen? You and I could take a turn and give them a rest if you can.”

“No, don’t do that, Griima. Piiram and I are bigger and heavier than either of you, it’ll be quicker with us at the oars. You could get up on the cabin roof with the telescope as soon as the fog’s lifted enough for it to be worth it. I’d like to know if there is anyone out there, and you can both take a look at Mormi as we approach, too. Mormi’s not like Troum or Zhaam though, coming in here is pretty routine.”

Mashaar hauled his sea anchor aboard. It was the same piece of canvas Piiram had used for a foresail the day before, stretched between a rope from the stern and another from the bow, and weighed down with the anchor stone on one rope and another, smaller stone on the other. “Too deep here to put the anchor on the bottom.”

While Mashaar was doing that, Piiram lashed the tiller straight ahead, then undid the dinghy’s painter and took it round to the bow.

“Owen – you come and sit on the foredeck, and you can keep us on course.” He pointed out the landmarks I was to try to keep in line, and explained the calls to use to direct them. “When we get close to the village, there are streets at right angles to the sea. One of them is wider than the others, with the only big building in the village at the top end of it. As soon as we’re in line with that street, we turn and head straight for the coast along that line. Okay?”

“I think so!”

“Griima, you get on the cabin roof with the telescope, and see what you can see.”

Mashaar and Piiram clambered down into the dinghy, and were soon pulling hard. Once we’d got on course, they pulled beautifully evenly, and I didn’t have to call out corrections very often at all. I wondered why we didn’t use hand signals, though – it was definitely hard on the voice.

From the cabin roof, Aila couldn’t see much in the direction of Zhaam. “Can’t tell where the sea finishes and the sky begins, just fog at that distance.”

She turned and took a look at the coast we were approaching. “Aha. I can see the village now. I think I see six masts sticking up behind a breakwater. It’s not a natural harbour like Troum, then.”

Piiram shouted back, “Sorry, Grima, couldn’t hear what you said.”

Aila repeated herself, a bit louder.

“No, Troum’s the only place I know with a harbour like that. Well, Zhaam used to have, but it’s dry now except at high tide. They’ve built a breakwater, but what they’ll do when that’s dry I don’t know, the bottom shelves away really steeply only a few metres beyond the breakwater. Here at Mormi, they’ll have a brilliant natural harbour in fifteen or twenty years’ time, but just now you’ve got to be really careful to keep in the deep channel, it’s rocks and reefs everywhere else.”

Aila turned back to look back towards Zhaam again. “I think I can make out the horizon now. No sails, unless they’re edge on to us. With no wind, they could be lying any which way.”

“Well, keep looking every now and then. If they are edge-on just now, they’ll swing into sight eventually, unless they’re holding them that way on purpose. I can’t see why they’d bother. They can’t have guessed that we’ve got a telescope.”

There was still no sign of a sail to the west by the time we reached the point where we had to turn to go into Mormi.

“Well, as long as there’s at least one gig in Mormi at the moment, you’re home and dry, Griima. Oh, good, it’s high tide, near enough. I never know what the tide times are here, only been here a few times before. At least nobody else will be coming in or out with no wind like this.”

“You two will head home as soon as there’s a breath of wind?”

“Yes, for sure. We’ll come into the village with you now, though, nothing to do down here until there’s some wind. Griima, can you tie Piiram’s wet clothes on the forestay? They might dry while we’re ashore. There wasn’t much point earlier on with all that fog.”

There was only room along the inside of the breakwater for the six boats that were already tied there. Mashaar and Piiram towed their boat into the middle of the harbour, then Mashaar climbed aboard and lowered the anchor stone over the bows. He felt for the bottom, and gave it an extra metre and a half before making fast. “The first time I was here, you could tie up at the village side of the harbour, but the water’s too shallow that side now. We could get in there now, but in a couple of hours we’d be sitting on the bottom, waiting for the tide to float us again.”

He rowed Aila and me ashore in the dinghy, and then went back for Piiram, who’d been tidying things up a bit on the boat.

“Well, I’ve no idea who has a gig, or where they live, but I know where the inn is, and they’ll know.”

The innkeeper was very friendly, and laughed good naturedly at Aila in my clothes. “I can see why, though. It’s lucky one of your men had a spare set!”

Aila had tied her wet clothes together in a gently dripping bundle. She pretended to be indignant. “Only one of these chaps is my man! The other two are friends of ours.”

The innkeeper produced four mugs of skiir without even being asked, and Mashaar asked him where we could hire a gig. “Just for these two, they need to get into Barioha as quickly as possible.”

“I’m not sure whose gigs are here at the moment. I’ll send my lad round to find one for you. You wait here, he won’t be long.”

He turned and shouted up the stairs, “Baasham! Run up the hill and see if Naajal’s at home. If he is, get him down here with his gig as quick as you can. If not, go round to the others and see who’s got one at home.”

Then he turned back to us. “Naajal’s got the best gig – and the best horse. You don’t mind an extra two coins for the trip into Barioha, I hope – you said you were in a hurry.”

“No, that’s fine. We are in a hurry.”

I paid the innkeeper for the skiir, and gave him a half coin for his lad.

The lad was back in a matter of minutes. “Naajal will be down here in about ten minutes. He said everything’s ready to go, he was going to go to Barioha himself today, and he’s happy to take them.”

The innkeeper and the lad went back inside the inn, and the four of us sat on a bench outside the front, sipping our skiir.

“I don’t know how to thank you two. I couldn’t ask for better friends.” Aila was nodding vigorously.

“It just seemed like the right thing to do. Quite an adventure, really. You’ll come and see us as soon as everything’s sorted out, anyway, I know.” He laughed. “Oh, and you owe us thirty coins!”

“I reckon I owe you a fair bit more than that. I was going to pay you that just to take me from Oushi to Troum.”

“Yes, but you were a fare paying passenger then, you’re an old friend now. We were overcharging you. We realized you didn’t know how much it ought to be. Imbaal owes us a good amount for your clothes, too – not that he can pay us anything but a share of his next few catches.”

“If that chap is following us, you’re not going to get into trouble at Zhaam or Troum, if he’s managed to persuade them we’re the baddies?”

“Probably not, but we won’t take a chance on that. We’ll head south, out to sea, from here, and give them a wide berth. We’ll get some good fishing done on the way home.”

We saw the gig coming down the hill. Aila jumped up, and gave first Mashaar and then Piiram a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I shall miss you both. And thank you so very, very much.”

“We’ll miss you two, too. It’ll feel lonely on the boat with just the two of us now. But you’ll come and see us in a few weeks’ time, I know.”

I pressed another four fives into Mashaar’s hand. “I can spare that much now. We’ll be in Barioha soon, and I can get some more.”

I think all of us had tears in our eyes as Aila and I climbed onto the gig.

“Good winds and favourable tides!” they shouted as we set off, and Aila shouted the same back to them. We waved until they were out of sight round a bend in the road.

The fog had burned off completely, and the sky was blue from horizon to horizon. There wasn’t a lot of wind, but there was beginning to be a little, and we imagined that Mashaar and Piiram would probably have set sail already. Aila kept looking back, to see whether she could see them, but the village itself, and the harbour, had disappeared behind a shoulder of land almost immediately after we left the village. She never saw a sail out on the water.

For the first mile or so, the road climbed gently away from the sea, winding in and out of ravines and round spurs. Eventually we reached the top, and came out onto flat country. It was a patchwork of copses and small fields. The fields were mostly bare wet soil, but a few showed the first green shoots of some crop.

The horse knew exactly where she was going. Naajal, sitting at the right hand end of the seat, had the reins in his hands, but they were permanently slack. He was quite a young man, and rather taciturn. Eventually he turned to me, and asked, “Whereabouts in Barioha are you going? There’s a junction in about a mile, and the two ends of the town are best approached on different roads.”

“We want to go the railway station.”

I didn’t want him to take us to Baam’s house. I had instructions in my notebook for how to get there from the railway station. On the off-chance that we were still being followed, the fewer people knew exactly where we’d gone, the better.

“You don’t look as though you could afford a ticket!”

Hmm. What to say to that? I don’t want to give away the fact that I work for the railway.

But Aila was quicker than me. “My Dad’s an engine driver.”

Very good. True, and totally misleading.

Hmm – on second thoughts, I hope it’s very good. He’s rather posh. I hope he’s not connected to the...Circuit? Is that what Maamatta called it in her letter?

Well, he’s not reacting, so if he’s heard the story, either he’s not made the connection, or he doesn’t care...eek...or he’s going to take us somewhere we really, really don’t want to go. Oh help!

I hope I’m just being paranoid. But is there anything we can do about it anyway?

I realized that Naajal was being as thoughtful as I was, which worried me. Maybe he was reacting.

After a full minute, he turned to us again. “I think I know who you are. You’re Riish Aila, aren’t you, who used to work for Baragab Gamaara? Don’t worry, I shan’t tell anyone that I’ve seen you. I think I understand the situation, I can read between the lines. If there’s any way I can help you, don’t hesitate to ask. In particular, my friend’s daughter probably has some spare clothes that would fit you. Would you like to stop by there before I take you to the station?”

Aila looked at Naajal, then looked at me. She weighed the situation up more quickly than I did.

She turned to him, “You’re right, of course, and that would be very kind, thank you.”

Then she burst into tears, put her arms round me, and buried her face in my chest.

Well, if we’re trusting him, we might as well trust him.

“Actually, if you could take us to our friend Baam’s house rather than the station, that would be better for us. I’ve got the directions in my notebook.”

Aila looked up at me, as if to question whether that was wise – and then I could see in her face her sudden realization that she’d already committed us to trusting Naajal completely.

I’ve scarcely had time to tell Aila anything yet. She’s heard we’ve got friends in Barioha who will help, but I don’t think I mentioned their names. She doesn’t know about Biiniha’s room in Briggi, and in no time at all we’re going to meet Biiniha herself.

“Sweetheart, I’ve so much to tell you...”

“I know, and I’ve still got lots to tell you.”

“Graamon told me his friend Baam would help me if I ever I needed help in Barioha. And he’s married to Graamon’s landlady’s daughter, Biiniha. And Graamon’s landlady is my landlady too now, and yours as soon as we’re married, at least until we get a place of our own. And the room we’ve got used to be Biiniha’s room until she and Baam got married, and it’s the most lovely room you’ve ever seen. I do hope you’ll like it. Oh, and Viina – that’s our landlady – says that if you want to start a kindergarten in Briggi, she’d be delighted to help, and she knows there’s plenty of demand.”

I was out of breath. Aila was looking at me with big eyes. Naajal was looking at his shoes. The horse had just made up her mind that since Naajal hadn’t indicated anything different to her, she was to take the left-hand fork, where she usually went. She was right.

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