Absent assassin 22

 

Chapter 22

 

“Poltronis does the Psion thing to be noticed and taken heed of, doesn’t he?” said Kiliana.

“Yes,” said Quester, a little shortly. He did not really want to have a discussion of psionic power at that moment.

“Well, can’t you, like, somehow do that in reverse so people don’t want to bother to look at us?” said Kiliana.

Quester blinked.

“You are on good form,” he said.

“I like doing practical things, it makes me think better than sitting writing essays for you and reading books,” said Kiliana. “I know you sigh over my lessons and that I am an indifferent student, but when I’m doing things, it’s like my brain wakes up.”

“Well, I must set you more practical tests to accomplish, then,” said Quester.  “I can, indeed, discourage people from wanting to see us; the hardest part will be when we veer away from the... I hesitate to call it a town, trading centre, and head for the hinterlands.”

“Well, why are we veering away?” asked Kiliana.

“My dear, we have to get our passenger to the landing area where we can signal the Buckyhare.”

“So, why don’t we go down to the dock and steal or hire a boat, and row round? You have flowers for a lady who lives along the coast. Easier to go by boat... if we can steal one, we could even sail to the rendezvous.”

“Bold, and I like it,” said Quester.

 

oOoOo

 

The harbour was made up of a number of rocks penetrating the surface of the sea; these underwater peaks had been joined to make a wall on two sides of the dock over the years with sunken ships piled with rocks, plascrete wave breakers, and possibly several hundred years worth of waste from middens at one point, with rocks on the outside to protect it from erosion.  The water in the harbour was like a mill pond, a few catspaws ruffled by the breeze the only disturbance to the water. Towers tethered the pirate zeppelins, cables running to the fleet of small boats they dragged with them. On the shore, a steam-powered train ran on rails flush to the concrete surface of the dock, hauling heavy goods back and forth. It would be fuelled with the olive stone fuel blocks, no doubt, and would be a triple-expansion engine, the third, low-pressure cylinder extending each side to run it as efficiently as possible. There were large, pirate vessels docked in their own part of the quay, and smaller boats for local trade and fishing smacks of varying size near the road which straggled down from the town. Women on the quayside gutted fish in the same way they had done since the bulls were danced over as on his ring, when Knossos was above the waves. And doubtless they would continue in the same way for time out of mind, for fish was important.

Quester looked around, and his eye lighted upon a small, one-man skiff, with the fore-and-aft rigging that could be handled by one man, if he knew what he was doing.

 

It was a nice little skiff, and Quester knew he could sail it by himself.  A man was finishing off renewing the rigging.

“You need to get a new block for the mainmast; you noticed yours is splitting,” said Quester, using  voice control.

“I don’t recall...” the skipper fought the control.

“You’ve been worrying about it all night,” said Kiliana.

Quester frowned. She hadn’t been trained and might break the thread of thrall he was building.

“I didn’t sleep too good,” said the skipper.

“The bad dreams about the block kept you awake, but you wanted to do the rigging first. Now you have time,” said Quester.

“Well....”

“Go now, quickly!” said Quester.

The man wandered off, towards a chandlery.

“Tip the load over the gangplank into the boat, undo the painter and be ready to jump as I move off,” said Quester.

Poltronis had a rather bumpy trip into the bottom of the boat; Kiliana was not concerned if he broke anything, even his neck. He was marked for death, anyway. She hoped the painter was the rope tying it to some bollard, and undid that, throwing it inboard and leaping after it. Quester was on the sweeps, swiftly manoeuvring out into the harbour, where, in open water, he might release the sail and catch the catspaws of breeze to dance out onto the open sea, running close hauled; but the little boat responded to his lightest touch, and he thrilled to feel the sea under his feet all at his own command.

Quester laughed in delight.

“Oh, Leo! You come alive on a boat,” said Kiliana.

“I should take the leave owed to me at times and just go sailing,” said Quester. “Duck!”

Kiliana ducked as he went about, to catch another breath of wind on the other tack.

“Are we going to sail straight for the rendezvous?” she asked.

“No,” said Quester. “We’re going to check that Elena and Nicos got away all right, and that Martellus did not send someone to wait for us. We aren’t expected to make for the rendezvous, so we shall have to rely on the chandler being both busy and garrulous, so it takes a while before we are missed.”

“I wouldn’t rely on that,” said Kiliana, grimly. “I think I heard someone shouting. And if they send out the zeppelins....”

“They won’t,” said Quester.

“Why not? You’re a dangerous foe and we have Poltronis....”

“And how do they know that we have Poltronis, or that I am the Lord Justiciar?” said Quester. “A subservient, a fisherman, had his fishing boat stolen. He was speaking amicably to the thief; the pirates, who seem to throw their weight around like Patricians, will perhaps assume that it’s the prank of a friend of his.  They won’t help. We have a lithe little boat which goes closely to the wind, and we can take advantage of that.”

“Well, why not sail straight out now you don’t have to mess about looking nonchalant and zig-zagging like a drunken sailor?” asked Kiliana.

Quester opened his mouth, shut it, and his eyes, and counted mentally to ten.

“Have I said something stupid?” said Kiliana. “You look pained.”

“Not stupid, but ill-informed,” sighed Quester. “You lived with sheep, not ships,” he punned feebly. “I can’t sail straight out because the wind is coming from sort of in front of us. I have to sail in such a way as to have it push us sideways, and by zig-zagging, I can go against the wind. I’ll draw you diagrams when we have time.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kiliana. “I should have realised that you wouldn’t do something without good reason. I feel a real idiot now.”

“I don’t expect you to know everything,” said Quester. “I’m sorry I looked pained. I grew up with the knowledge.

“At least if it’s not academic, I’m a quick study,” said Kiliana.

“You are,” said Quester.  “I think we might want to re-think the strategy of outrunning them, though, as we shall have to stop in that little cove and they’ll catch up with us.”

“It wasn’t deep under that tree,” said Kiliana. “Will that mast come down?”

“I can unstep the mast, yes,” said Quester. “We’ll have about a quarter of an hour in hand, and as it’s slack water now with the tide about to go out, we can more easily retrieve the boat. You were thinking of sinking it, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Kiliana. “I think we’d better get Poltronis out first.”

“Yes, I’m afraid we must,” said Quester. “But we can stow him in vegetation.”

“Shall I sing a prayer?” asked Kiliana.

“It can’t hurt,” said Quester.

Kiliana fell back on the first prayer he had taught her.

“Bless us, and keep us, God-Hero,

Blessed Abe, be our father, we pray;

Waking  or Sleeping

Hold us in your keeping,

Be our father, we pray,

By night or by day.”

She kept it up-tempo for Quester to row, as they approached the cove, and he rapidly took in the sails and unstepped the mast, which folded down. Then he sculled skilfully towards the fallen tree, which was lapped by the water as it had been some twelve hours before when they had arrived.

“The other boat has gone, so I guess they got off all right,” said Kiliana, her sharp eyes searching the flotsam and jetsam.  She lifted branches to get the boat right under, and Quester rowed until the keel touched.  He was out in a trice, tying up the painter, and then leaped back in to help manhandle Poltronis.

“What about the wheelbarrow?” asked Kiliana.

“Put it over the side in the deeper water,” said Quester. Kiliana complied, whilst Quester manhandled the feebly wriggling bundle up above the high water mark. He lodged Poltronis between two roots, where the earth had washed away, throwing bundles of marram and thyme over him from what had straggled down the cliff in the wake of the fallen tree, and kicked sand over Poltronis’s feet. His torso was protected by the roots, he should take no harm being partly buried. Kiliana joined him.

“I pushed the flowers under the sail to stop them floating away,” she said.

“Good girl. Finish up here, and I’ll go and pull out the bung. You get that gown off and stuff it in a hole, go back to being a boy,” said Quester. He jumped into the boat, and, seeing fishing tackle, got it out of the boat before pulling out the bung. The boat disappeared under the water as he sprang out again.

Quickly he set up two lines.

“Don’t say anything to anyone,” he said. “I’m going to be a truculent peasant if anyone asks us questions.”

He wiped the last of the makeup off his face and shook his hair in the hopes of getting rid of most of the powder.

“We’re brothers?” asked Kiliana.

“Yes,” said Quester.

The sun was pleasant, not yet too hot, there being some light haze off the sea. Quester sat back and relaxed. Kiliana did her best to copy him in that.

Some small vessels presently rounded the point, and there was pointing inshore. Someone shouted something, and Quester waved and held up 3 fingers.

He had actually caught 3 fish whilst waiting, which was an excellent addition to their cover.

The shouting now sounded irritable.

Quester made a universal symbol of distain, putting his thumb between the next two fingers and holding it out.

One of the little boats took in its sail and rowed up onto the beach.

“Don’t scayer thee fisssh,”[1] said Quester, in a creditable imitation of the local accent, which he recalled from his childhood, and had been wont to ape, as small boys will make fun of the regional accents of others.  His quick ear had been enough for it to come flooding back.

“I don’t knoaw thee,” said the man who came ashore.

“That’s noat myy faulut,” said Quester. “Everywaan knoows myy uncul Yannees.”

“Yannees the fissh?”

“Naow, tha fooul, Yannees the Highbreed, waas tha theenk?”

There had to be at least half a dozen men called Yannis, known as ‘the fish.’

“Hast thee seen annee small boaut?” asked the newcomer.

“Aye,” said Quester.

“When? Wheyer they gooun?”

“Weyul, you do be ashoar, and there be twaa others with ye,” said Quester. “Wass youw disterbing of my fissh to ask silley questionus eh?”

“Was theyer another boaut bout twenney minutes ago?”

“Miyut of beeyun,” said Quester. “Miyut not. Couldn’t saey fer shoower.”

“Youw musta noticed eef theyer was a boaut.”

“Aye, theyer miyut well of beeyun, but I doan’t saey as hoaw I noticed the tiyum,” said Quester. “That were’nt cummeen inshoare to scayer the fissh.”

“Wheyer did thaat gow?” his interrogator asked.

Quester scratched his head, Burdock fashion.

“Coouden’ riyutlee say,” he said. “Wereyn’t lookiyin, was I? That proberlee sailed paast. It weren’t scoopeyd up by a Krakeyn nor no mermaiyuds neetheyer. Ef there haad been, we’d be feasutiying on mermaiyud taiyul fer dinner.”

The fisherman who had come ashore grunted, and shambled back to his boat, knowing fine well that he’d give no more information if someone was scaring his fish.

“Leo, you are priceless,” sniggered Kiliana when their pursuers were back out at sea.

“The accent is different, but I was a country fisherboy once,” said Quester, grinning boyishly. “Being unhelpful is a country craft. I’ve bought us some time, anyway.”

“So, is it going to be better to be here looking innocent when they come back, or to have packed up and disappeared?” asked Kiliana.

Quester considered.

“We have to wait a few hours for the boat to be revealed; we can either try the bold bluff of staying here, or we can head up the cliff and lay low for a few hours.”

“And if we have disappeared, don’t you suppose they might come looking for us, because we are persons of suspicion?” queried Kiliana.

“I’m glad you agree with me,” said Quester. “I wondered if you preferred to just disappear.”

“I believe in the bold play,” said Kiliana. “We should give Poltronis some water.”

“We’ll do that when our pursuit has sailed back in despondency,” said Quester.

“Oh, wouldn’t they be better to sail back in boats?” asked Kiliana, straight faced.

“Killie!”

She giggled.

“We are having so much fun, it’s hard not to be flippant,” she said. “And don’t deny it, you loved pulling Yannis’s nevvy out of the bag to let loose on unsuspecting thief-chasers.”

“You really are a pernicious brat,” said Quester, amicably. “Well, let us enjoy our holiday, fishing. We have enough for lunch, though I’m not about to feed Poltronis. He has enough flesh on him.”

It was an hour or so before the dispirited little flotilla returned. They glanced at Quester and Kiliana, and proceeded to ignore them. Quester gave them plenty of time to pass, and went to undo Poltronis enough to give him some water.

“You effing bastard! You wait till my men catch up with you, then we’ll peel the skin off your feet and legs and chain you out on Shark Rock waiting for the tide to come in!” howled Poltronis.

Kiliana slipped the gag back on.

“He doesn’t seem to want any water,” she said.

Quester hesitated.

“No, he doesn’t,” he said.

Hopefully the self-styled pirate king would have the sense to drink first before sounding off his mouth next time. He wouldn’t start dying of thirst for at least another 48 hours.

And then Quester built a fire from driftwood, showed Kiliana how to clean and gut fish and cook them in the embers.

It was, he thought, a meal fit for kings.

But not for the pirate king.

 

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[1] Yes, I know, trying to make a Arhangelos accent in English will probably make a native of Rhodes laugh.