OoOoO
The trip from Utunma to Moaan was three days by sea, if one followed the main shipping routes. In order to avoid attracting attention, Vinie, Bakko, and Gideo sailed their little dhow closer to the shoreline. Here there were many reefs and unseen sand bars that slowed their progress. More than once only quick maneuvering by Bakko had kept the dhow from running aground. The coast was steep, rocky, and thick with jungle along the southern edge of Goran, and that was a blessing to the three fugitives. Even hampered as they were so close to land, they could at least rest easy knowing that the odds of someone spotting them from shore were slim at the most.
After more than a decade in the cool, damp, dark of prison, Vinie had almost forgotten what it felt like to be out on the water. The white-hot sunlight danced on the waves where it was caught and shone back like a hundred thousand tiny mirrors. The brightness was often too much for Vinie's sensitive eyes, and she took to wearing a thin scarf over her face as a protective veil. It was stifling under even that little amount of material, and her arms ached from sudden activity after so much unuse. They hadn't had much time to pack provisions, and so the food and clean water had to be carefully portioned out. They spent hours either hard at work at the oars or with nothing to do at all when the winds were favorable. Vinie loved every minute of it.
Sitting at the tiller at high noon on the second day, Vinie drank in the blueness of the sky and sea. A few cottony clouds floated far away over the horizon, teasing at shade. Water lapped at the sides of the dhow as it cut through the water. A few droplets splashed up here and there, wetting Vinie's lean, dark arms and sparkling there before drying moments later. The scent of salt was everywhere. That was the one thing about the sea that Vinie had not become a stranger to over the years; every corner of Utunma smelled of the brine.
In the center of the narrow deck, Gideo and Bakko lay in their lone pocket of shade. Gideo had rigged a blanket between the mast and the deck, resulting in a tiny lean-to. They took it in turns to nap in the heat of the day. By nightfall everyone would be awake, but for now, Vinie's only companions were the occasional hippocamps basking on the rocks and the gulls. The graceful seahorses stretched their long necks to the sun, water glistening on their scaly flanks. Vinie had only once seen a hippocampus before. The shy creatures usually kept well clear of Utunma. She strained to watch the pod long after the dhow had left them in its wake.
Sweat trickled down the side of Vinie's brow. The humidity from her breath was making the cloth veil intolerable. Holding onto the tiller with one hand, she reached back and undid the damp knot. Some of her tangled black hair caught in the knot as it came undone, making her wince. The glare of sun off the water was painful, but less so than yesterday. It also felt unspeakably good to breathe the free ocean air. With a deep, contented sigh, Vinie leaned to one side for a look at the waters ahead.
A spray of water off the prow flashed up suddenly, and Vinie smiled in anticipation of a cooling douse. She closed her eyes and prepared to be refreshed. When the expected misting never touched her face, Vinie was puzzled. Cracking open her eyes, she froze on the bench.
The white spray hung in midair, sunlight glinting off each of the thousands of tiny droplets like jewels. Rather than fall back into the sea they stayed level with Vinie beside the boat. The ocean mist formed a face, a face that Vinie had never again thought to see so long as she lived.
"Zaneo..." Vinie breathed.
It couldn't be. It was impossible. As sure as she saw the blue of the sky and the green of the coast, Vinie saw Zaneo's likeness floating in the sea spray off the dhow's hull. That endearingly broad nose, those ever-smiling lips, they were just as Vinie remembered in her dreams every night. Even the eyes were the same, or was that the blue-green of the sea reflecting through the water droplets?
Then, just like a dream, Zaneo was gone. There was nothing but the splash of the sea and Vinie's own reflection gaping back up at her. A gull cried out overhead, circling before turning and crossing the short distance to the coast. Then Vinie saw it.
Acting immediately, she threw her entire body against the tiller. The dhow reacted in an instant, banking hard right away from the shoreline. The turn was so sharp that Gideo and Bakko were sent sprawling out from under their cover and across the deck. They both hit the port side rail with a pair of heavy thuds.
"What was that about?!" Gideo shouted, untangling himself and Bakko from the piles of rope that had slid with them.
"Are you alright Vinie?" Concern was plain on Bakko's weathered face, even as he himself struggled to regain his feet.
Adrenaline still pumping through her veins, Vinie had to take a moment to correct their course before breathing again. Sweat trickled under the leather cord which bound her pearl to her brow. With the back of one hand, Vinie rubbed her forehead.
"Yas, yas I'm fine. We almost weren't though...look!"
Still half on their feet, Gideo and Bakko turned to look back over the stern of the dhow. The enormous, wickedly sharp coral reef they had barely missed was only just visible beneath the clear surface of the water. It would have been practically impossible to spot from even a matter of yards away.
Part of the reef scraped the underside of the hull even despite Vinie's maneuver. It rasped terribly in their ears, but there was no tell-tale splintering sound to indicate the hull had been breached.
Once they were clear, everyone released a breath they didn't know they had been holding.
"Well, that was close," Gideo commented casually. He still went to the side and leaned over for a look at the hull.
"Your eyes are getting better." Bakko approached Vinie and lifted her chin with a bony hand. He smiled proudly. "Even the best mariners I know could have easily run up on that there coral."
The sun was still painful in her eyes, and Vinie had to pull her face back down quickly. Tracks of moisture gathered on her cheeks that had nothing to do with the light though. Mistaking her sudden reticence for exhaustion, Bakko pointed to the tarp.
"Why don't you go and take your turn resting? Let this old man handle the tiller for a while."
"Maybe that's a good idea."
Vinie hesitated only a moment before surrendering her spot to her father at the stern. While she made for the shade, Gideo went to work, coiling up all the rope that her maneuver had sent flying across the deck. The wooden boards were hard beneath her back, and it took some fidgeting before she finally settled on lying on her side, one arm bent to provide a makeshift pillow.
Lying in a troubled half sleep, Vinie tried and failed to convince herself that she had just been seeing things earlier. Every time she closed her eyes though, she could still see Zaneo's face in the sea spray. And thank the stars she had too, or else she might never have spotted that coral reef in time, or even at all. Still, what she had seen was impossible! For the first time since her escape, Vinie seriously began to doubt her sanity.
After trying and failing to sleep for a few hours, Vinie at last got up and went to join the men on the deck. The three of them piloted the dhow along the coastline all through the night, and beyond, in the golden-pink dawn.
OoOoO
Mid-afternoon on the third day was when they caught their first glimpse of the Bay of Torbos. The steep shoreline and wall of jungle abruptly fell away on their left, revealing a natural harbor so wide across it was impossible to make out the far side.
That was also their first glimpse of The Teeth; the mighty mountain range that split Goran down the center from north to south. The Teeth were at their lowest point east of the Bay of Torbos as they grudgingly sank down into the sea. Further to the north though, their peaks stretched like jagged stalagmites toward the sky. Vinie stood sunburnt and heat-tired on the deck of the dhow between Bakko and Gideo, eyes wide and mouth open in wonder. Then she saw Moaan and her awe grew greater still.
The greatest port city in all of southern Goran shone like a beacon atop the Bay of Torbos, beckoning the many ships in the harbor inward. Golden domes soared high in the sky, flocks of birds casting reflections rather than shadows upon their gleaming faces. Enormous causeways crisscrossed this way and that high above the bustle of the overflowing streets below, providing a second level of thoroughfares for the people of Moaan. Even at a distance, they could all hear the low roar of thousands of voices, animals, and city ambiance.
On the waters of the Bay of Torbos what looked to be at least a hundred ships floated, either coming or going from the port city. Some were no bigger than their little dhow, but most would have easily dwarfed even the larger merchant vessels at anchor in Utunma. Great galleys riding low in the water with sails the size of clouds passed them by, their prows casting wakes large enough to slosh water over the side of the dhow. Vinie twice had to steer them out of the path of these enormous ships. They were but minnows skirting among whales compared to these crafts. Some Vinie recognized the design of, but others were of a foreign make and form.
"That one there must be all the way from Derbesh." Bakko pointed to a ship that was shaped similar to their dhow, but at least ten times larger, and with three angled sails. "They call that a ghanjah. See the trefoil on the prow?"
"I see it, and I think I prefer figureheads." Gideo shaded his eyes as they drifted past the enormous ghanjah. "They add more character, if you know what I mean."
Vinie chuckled. "Plus, a trefoil doesn't have cleavage to paint."
"Oh, so you did notice that after all, did you?"
"You have to admit, your figurehead Vinie was a little shapelier than I am." Vinie gestured at her own rail thin body. Even before prison she had never been curvaceous like Sahar.
Gideo shrugged helplessly as the shadow of the eastern ship fell across them. "Give me credit; I tried to whittle her down a little first. Beggars can't be choosers when it comes to cast-off figureheads."
"Or when it comes to hungover SkinPainters," Bakko snorted at Gideo's remarks.
Gideo just laughed, trimming the sail of their little dhow as they approached the port of Moaan. Here the ships were thicker than ever, and Vinie was hard pressed at the tiller to dodge them all. There were many, many rows of docks for ships, boats, and rafts alike to choose from. Some were spread far apart for proper ships to dock at, while others were a mass of wood so tight that one might easily walk from boat to boat without getting wet.
Bakko was shaking his head as he scanned the open docks. "Otch, we'll never find a spot in there, not without practically crawling over someone else. Let's tie up in the Serpent's Tunnel."
"The what?" Vinie asked from her spot at the tiller.
"That long passageway, the one built out of stone at the far end of the docks." Bakko pointed a gnarled finger. "We can move straight from the boat into the streets from there, rather than passing through all the people on the docks. Less chance of being spotted, yas?"
"I don't think anybody would be looking for us in Moaan already, Bakko. Still, I do agree about the Serpent's Tunnel. Take us in, Vinie." Gideo started lowering the dhow's single sail.
The Serpent's Tunnel was Moaan's indoor harbor, shielded from the hot southern sun by a high vaulted stone roof. As soon as they glided into the mouth of the tunnel the water became smooth and glassy beneath them. Stray rays of sun filtered in through the occasional slit in the stonework high above, casting curtains of light across the passage. Ships of all sizes lay at anchor on either side of the Serpent's Tunnel, their hulls nudging against the stone walls. From there it was a simple matter to disembark onto the steps, and from there walk into Moaan along the long hallways on either side of the water.
The atmosphere of the Serpent's Tunnel seemed almost unnaturally quiet after the organized chaos of the harbor. A narrow cutter skimmed past them on its way out, barely making a sound and hardly a ripple across the water. Murmurs reached them from the crew of the cutter. The sound echoed off the walls on either side of the Serpent's Tunnel, as if they were in a cave. In many ways, it felt like they were. Drops of water even fell occasionally from the ceiling where they had condensed in the heat and humidity.
They finally found a spot to tie up the dhow at about midway down the tunnel. It was a tight squeeze between two merchant ships, but it was also inconspicuous. The moment Vinie's sandals hit the stone she was overcome with a sense of vertigo. It had been a long time since she'd spent so much time on the water. She wobbled somewhat unsteadily along between Bakko and Gideo as they followed the hallway toward the city. Behind them the glare of the sun on the sea grew smaller and smaller at the mouth of the passage.
When they emerged from the Serpent's Tunnel, they found themselves surrounded by more people than Vinie had ever seen in one place before in her entire life. The docks of Moaan led straight into the markets. Fishermen needed only to drag their fish-heavy net a short way from their boats to the fishmongers who would sell them. Merchants in colorful vests bickered with their captains over the price of the latest voyage between Moaan, Derbesh, and Blue Stone. The clinking of coins came from every direction. Dogs and children ran underfoot looking for mischief, food, or both. The reek of fish, sweat, and salt hung positively thick in the air. Behind all this, the golden domes of the city shone as brightly as the coins the shopkeepers received from their customers.
"Where do we go first?" Vinie asked, her head swiveling back and forth in an effort to take in everything at once. She felt like a child in awe of the wider world.
Bakko took Vinie's hand in his, tugging her along gently.
"First, to an inn. You need to rest before you fall down." He looked Gideo up and down. "We all do."
Taking a moment to think of other things besides the sheer enormity of Moaan, Vinie realized they really were a motley bunch. Sweat encrusted with salt had dried around their faces and necks, staining the clothes they had worn for the past three days straight. They were overheated, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and stiff from sleeping on a wooden deck. Even so the three of them really didn't look all that out of place, surrounded as they were by sea people and sailors.
Limping quite heavily, Bakko led Vinie and Gideo through the crowd. Vinie recalled that it had to have been at least fifteen years since last her dad had visited Moaan. Still, Bakko never faltered in his course. Once or twice they almost lost sight of him amidst the bustle of the Moaanese marketplace. At least with so many hundreds, more likely thousands, of people in one place, there was no chance of them standing out.
Bakko brought them to a small, seedy looking inn tucked nearly out of sight on the far side of the harbor. The only way anyone could even notice it was there was by the rotten wooden sign hanging over the door. 'The Gull's Nest' was carved out in heavy block letters across the bottom of the round sign beneath a terrible likeness of a seabird.
The inside of the place didn't look much better maintained than the sign. It was dark, and their sandals stuck to the wooden floors, smooth and tacky with years of spilled drinks. Despite all appearances however, the place was crowded.
"Dad, what is this place?" Vinie murmured in Bakko's ear.
"An old haunt of mine, from before you were born. I used to come to Moaan quite a bit, working as a deckhand on ships between here and Utunma. Then I met your mum and settled down into the family business."
"You don't think anyone will recognize you, do you?" Vinie couldn't help but glance around the room quickly. The inn's common room was so dark and muggy that even those sitting at the tables closest to them seemed cast in shadow.
Bakko raised an eyebrow at Vinie, his weathered, wrinkled face cast in a sad smile. "Having aged as well as I have? I doubt it."
"Still, I'll get our rooms."
Gideo edged around Bakko and Vinie to approach the bar. The innkeeper was an enormously fat old woman wearing an apron that looked about as clean as the floors. When she saw Gideo she grinned so brightly at him that her entire sweaty face lit up.
"What can I be getting for ya, handsome?"
"A room for the night, if you have any. Oh, and some cheese, fish, and water."
"Yas to the first, third and fourth, but I ran right out of the clean cheese last night. Doesn't keep well in the heat, ya know?" The innkeeper laughed as if moldy cheese was a particularly funny thing.
"No worries, just the room, fish, and water then. How much?"
The innkeeper leaned to one side, eyeing Vinie and Bakko around Gideo's shoulder. "They with you too?" She sounded disappointed.
"Yas, we're together."
"I'll be taking ten Luns then, for one night."
A shot of blind panic suddenly went through Vinie. She hadn't a single coin to her name, and had nothing worth trading either. One look sideways at her dad confirmed that Bakko likely was no wealthier than her.
"Fair enough." Gideo stuck a hand deep under his thick cloth belt and came up with a small sack that jingled. "Ten Luns, and five Ignums if you let us use your rain barrels for washing up."
The innkeeper made a show of looking Gideo over from head to toe. Her smile only got wider and wider, revealing one missing front tooth behind her black lips.
"Ya can keep your copper if you wash up in the yard out back. Just past that window there." The giggle that escaped her seemed completely mismatched with a woman of her age. "So ya don't mess up my rooms, yas?"
"..."
"We'll leave your place as clean as we found it." Vinie interrupted, stepping up to the counter and blocking the innkeeper's attempt to offer Gideo his coins back. "We don't mind carrying the water upstairs."
The woman's grin instantly faded, but she withdrew her pudgy hand and nodded all the same.
"Room three, just up there." She pointed, tucking the money into her apron. Noticing a patron waving his empty tankard from across the room, her demeanor changed yet again. "Stop yar flapping about like a gull, I'll be coming 'round in a bit!"
After washing in cold rainwater brought up to their room in buckets, and eating a plateful of warm bread and fish, the full exhaustion of their sea voyage hit them like a tidal wave. It was all Vinie could do to give her sweat soaked clothes a quick rinse and wring before she started to yawn. Wrapped in a scratchy blanket and sitting perched on a corner of the room's lone bed, Vinie was unsurprised when Bakko and Gideo's movements likewise began to slow and grow languid. The sun had yet to set, its lengthening rays casting long orange fingers across the floor. After three days of sailing and sleeping on a hard deck, they were all exhausted.
"Is that bed going to be big enough for the three of us?" Bakko asked, attempting to yawn himself awake for a few more minutes.
"Doesn't matter, we'll make it work for the night."
Gideo brushed a hand back through his curly hair, then stretched long and hard. With no further warning, he flung himself facedown across the bottom of the goose feather mattress. His dark arms and legs dangled off either side of the bed, but Gideo made no further efforts at movement.
With Vinie and Bakko lying back-to-back lengthwise and Gideo sprawled across the foot of the bed, they somehow managed to settle it. Tired as they were, it didn't take much to get comfortable enough for sleep. The last thing Vinie knew before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep was her dad's foot twitching against her leg and the hum of the Moaanese docks outside.
OoOoO
Hours later—Vinie had no idea how many—she awoke. The little room was darker now, but still lit by the otherworldly silver glow of moonlight. The noise beyond the inn had lessened somewhat; it must be even past the hour when taverns put out their final crew of rowdy customers to wander the streets.
Then Vinie noticed that she no longer felt Bakko against her back. Lifting her head and looking over her shoulder, she was relieved to find he had only rolled during the night. Now he faced toward her, his bony shoulder rising and falling slowly with sleep. Cast in moonlight and at rest, Bakko's aged face seemed to smooth slightly and lose some of its years of care and sorrow. He almost looked like the dad that Vinie had last seen the day she and Zaneo had...
Rolling back over, Vinie bit her lip. She could still see Zaneo's face so clearly as it had appeared to her in the sea spray. From the sea, of the sea, to the sea. That was what the shamans always said. Was it really true? Did Zaneo's spirit somehow live on? Or was she just seeing things brought forth from the shadows and silence of prison that still clung to her mind in moments of stillness? Vinie closed her eyes and saw the shattered spiderweb of her map on the stone wall. It looked crazed now in her mind's eye, a frantic scrawl from a deranged mind.
Something creaked across the room, and Vinie sat bolt upright. Then she realized what was making the windowsill squeak. The foot of the bed was empty. Gideo half stood, half sat, watching Moaan through the slats of the window shade.
Holding tight to her makeshift blanket wrap, Vinie got up and went to stand at the other side of the window. Gideo continued to look out over the harbor, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. It was a full moon, and the ocean shone a deep, polished black as the white light hung overhead.
Gideo shifted again, resettling himself on the sill. The tattoo of sea otters on his bicep seemed to take on a sort of depth and even move in the weir-light of the moon, as dark shadows swimming across the canvas of his skin. Vinie subconsciously rubbed at the little marriage knot on her palm. It was almost faded. She and Zaneo would have had their marks freshened up at least twice over by now, in another life.
"I'll fish for your thoughts," Gideo offered, a common phrase in the south. He was looking at her now. The early beard he had yet to trim made him look more like the man he was now, rather than the boy Vinie and Zaneo had once known.
"You're up late...or early?" Vinie tried to deflect from the worries that romped around in her mind.
Gideo jerked his chin slightly toward the window. "There were some drunks out there earlier, fighting. I got up to check on things, and was about to go back to sleep when I saw the moon. It looks different from here, in Moaan."
"Does it?" A light breeze off the sea snuck in through the window, raising bumps along Vinie's bare arms and shoulders. "Hmm, the air smells different too."
"Can you believe it? More than thirty years we've been alive, and this is the first time we've seen past Utunma?"
"Thirty years," Vinie repeated softly. "You make us sound so old, like we ought to have done something with our lives by now."
"We're still young." Gideo flashed his white teeth at Vinie in a smile. "And it sounds to me like you've got enough plans for all of our lifetimes, yas?"
Vinie didn't answer. She stood silently, chewing her tongue and watching the moonlit ocean. Her frown pillowed the black pearl between her eyebrows.
"Vinie? You alright?"
"Gideo, if I ask you something will you promise to tell me the truth?"
"Since when do I ever lie!?"
"All of the time. Now really, do you promise?"
Gideo frowned, concern evident in his sudden solemnity. "Yas, I promise. What is it?"
With a deep breath, Vinie finally broke the bubble around her deepest fear. "Have I changed much since I was in prison? I mean, as a person? Do you think I've turned a bit...odd?"
It was the perfect opening for a quip along the lines of 'You've always been odd', the likes of which Gideo would have tossed around all day every day in their youth. Gideo said nothing of the sort now. Instead, he pulled Vinie up onto the windowsill with him so they were perched face-to-face.
"You've changed, of course you have." Vinie was about to hang her head when Gideo continued. "You don't laugh like you used to, and you seem more uncertain, like you don't trust yourself anymore. Do you remember when we were kids, how you used to lead Zaneo and I all over Utunma? You and Sahar were our ringleaders. That hasn't changed, not for me."
"But this time it's bigger than just deciding whether we go swimming or playing hoops. This whole idea I told you about, the one about the south and the capital...Gideo, people could get hurt. Like Dad said, it's treason of the biggest kind. You both helped me, saved me, and now I'm leading you straight into the fire. I don't even know what to do next, or where to go."
Leaning forward, Gideo placed his broad, warm hands on her knees and gave them a friendly squeeze.
"You never led us into anything that the rest of us didn't want to get into right along with you. If we were going to get in trouble with our mums and dads, then we planned to have just as much fun as you did." Gideo's smile faltered. "Zaneo was my best friend, better than a brother to me. He and his parents, they treated me like their own. For an orphan, there isn't much more in the world you could ever want than that. There hasn't been a day pass these last ten years that I haven't wondered at least once what I could have done to save them, or to save you."
"You did save me, Gideo." Vinie nodded at the bed where Bakko slept. "You and Dad both."
"Took us long enough though." Gideo sighed. He leaned back against the sill. The moon hung like pale lanterns in his brown eyes. "I know there was really nothing I could have done that day, but still it took years for me to know it. I can do something now."
"Even if it means following a crazy woman on an even crazier scheme that might get us all killed?" With a fond smile, Vinie shook her head in Bakko's direction. "Dad will go with me anywhere. He's my dad, and I'm his girl. You could've had a life though, Gideo."
"See, that's the funny thing about being me; my family is whoever I say they are. You and Bakko, and Sahar, you're my family now. I'm with you all the way to everywhere and anywhere, be that a new world or the chopping block."
"How did I ever get so lucky as to have people like you, Zaneo, and Sahar in my life?" Vinie asked, tearing up but also chuckling.
"Some people just attract barnacles I guess."
Now Vinie was really and truly laughing. Leaning forward on the sill she tried to keep from waking Bakko as her whole frame shivered. Her cheeks burned and her eyes danced as they hadn't in what felt like a lifetime.
Across from her, Gideo just grinned. "Seems you haven't changed that much after all."
OoOoO