“Don’t mind him,” Rodrick said. “We’re happy to help.”

  Saraswati suddenly turned, glaring at the crew, who responded as if she’d cracked a whip, all of them racing back to whatever obscure acts of seamanship they’d abandoned.

  “Why don’t you go speak to the navigator, Tapasi?” the captain said. “She wanted to see if you could do anything about some weather she’s worried about.” Tapasi bowed her head and went on her way.

  Once they were alone, Saraswati said. “I don’t have much in the way of spare gold, but I’ll see if there’s another way to demonstrate my gratitude. Join me in my rooms for dinner tonight?”

  “Of course. Should I bring Hrym? He enjoys intellectually stimulating conversation, but some other activities tend to bore him, and when he’s bored, he often provides a running commentary he intends to be humorous, though I rarely find it so.”

  Her lips quirked into a smile. “Do you mind if we leave you alone for an hour or two, master Hrym?”

  “I insist,” Hrym said. “I’m so glad I don’t have a squishy meat body. Pleasures should be cold and clean, like gold.”

  Saraswati chuckled, sketched a salute, and then strolled back toward the bow. Rodrick watched her walk, giving particular attention to the movement of her rear end in her tight breeches. Lush and round women weren’t the only kind he found appealing, and enthusiasm went a long way, too. “Mmm. If all acts of heroism were rewarded the way I expect this one to be, I might engage in them more often.”

  “What did you even do? You pointed me at a boat! I did everything, and you get all the credit, as usual. The world is horribly biased against swords in favor of swordsmen.”

  “It was my idea to freeze the mainsail. I know you. You would’ve just buried the deck in ice and frozen all the sailors.”

  “Yes, and it would have worked fine.”

  “Ah, but it wouldn’t have been as funny.”

  Hrym grumbled, but ultimately had to concede that Rodrick’s argument was unassailable.

  * * *

  “That was pleasant,” Saraswati said, and Rodrick mmmmed in a contented way, gazing up at the beams on the ceiling of her cabin. “Pleasant” wasn’t quite the ringing endorsement he liked to hear from women he’d just bedded, but perhaps she was merely prone to understatement. That had to be it.

  Saraswati slid out of bed and back into her clothing, Rodrick watching with interest, since he wasn’t sure he’d see her naked again. He’d been with women from all over Avistan, an Osirian, a woman whose parents had hailed from the Mwangi Expanse, a couple of half-elves, and, on one occasion, a gnome, though he couldn’t remember much of that night very well. But he’d never been with a woman from the Impossible Kingdoms. Her dark skin and the blue jewel in her navel aside, he found her much like most of the other women he’d bedded: altogether wonderful.

  In his own opinion, Rodrick had never had a bad relationship with a woman. This was likely because he seldom had relationships with them at all. Having relations with them was an entirely different matter, of course, and some such experiences were better than others, but after the days of his awkward teenage fumblings, they were rarely bad. He’d discovered over the years that two people, with good will and a sense of mutual adventure, could almost always manage to have a nice time together.

  Of course, some of the women became inexplicably annoyed with him in the hours or days afterward, when he didn’t behave the way they’d hoped, but he couldn’t be blamed for that.

  “Are you going to sprawl in my bed all night?” Saraswati looked at him pointedly from her seat on the little chair by the fold-down desk.

  “I don’t have anywhere else to be, Captain, but if you’d like me to make myself scarce, I’ll obey. You’ve been sufficiently welcoming in all other ways that I won’t be offended.”

  She snorted. “No, it’s fine. Stay a bit. Might as well see if you’re equally adept at the conversational arts.”

  “If you don’t mind an ignorant traveler … Would you tell me a bit about Jalmeray?”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “What, do you want a history lesson?”

  He waved his hand. “Nothing so dry. Just … practical matters. Will I need a warm coat? Is there a local delicacy I absolutely must taste? Is there some forbidden act I’m likely to blunder into, causing murderous offense? Will the thakur expect me to bow, or kneel, or kiss his ring, or will I be eviscerated ritually if I touch his shadow or look directly upon his face?”

  She shook her head. “We aren’t savages, Rodrick. The Vudrani civilization is ancient and sophisticated.”

  “Savagery is relative, my captain. They do things routinely in Cheliax that would make an Andoren’s blood boil, but to the Chelaxians, they’re not savage acts at all. In my travels, I’ve learned not to make assumptions.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked at him thoughtfully. “It’s not as if I’ve met the thakur, you know. By all accounts, Kharswan is a polite and thoughtful man, a scholar and lover of poetry and music, with rich and refined tastes, as you might expect. He spends most of his days writing and dallying with his wives—”

  “Wives? Plural?”

  Her lips curled in a smile. “Surely you’ve heard of the harems of the Vudrani nobles? I understand they’re the subject of much fevered speculation, and are frequently if inaccurately described in a particular class of literature favored by the depraved legions of the Inner Sea.”

  Rodrick had perused the occasional lavishly illustrated volume once or twice in his time, and nodded. “Harems. Yes, that rings a faint bell. Is it really forbidden for a man to look upon the thakur’s wives?”

  “To look upon them? No, though they don’t go out much. Touching them, however…” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine there’s any woman so beautiful that you’d pay that price just to touch her. You’re really going to the palace? I feel I’ve just had a premonition about how you’re going to die, Rodrick.”

  “I am a paragon of restraint. At least, when the alternative is death.” Sleeping with noblewomen, and surely the wives of the more-or-less king of Jalmeray counted as nobles, was always fraught. He much preferred serving girls. They were just as fun in bed and didn’t bring nearly as much trouble with them. “I take it the thakur’s not a despotic sort of ruler, then? No beheadings for breakfast or the gentle swaying of public hangings to lull him to sleep?”

  “No, not at all. The thakur hardly runs anything, not directly. Oh, in theory his word is law, but when it comes to actually governing … The Maurya-Rahm—you would think of it as a sort of parliament or legislative body—does that. There are many powerful factions in that group, with influential mystics, leaders of monasteries, and nobles all vying for power. Everything seems to stay in balance well enough. Jalmeray is a prosperous place.”

  “So the thakur is just a figurehead, then?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. If the thakur said someone should have their legs broken, and then be carried high into the air and dropped into the sea—for instance, someone who tried to seduce one of his wives—his will would be done without question. He just doesn’t make such demands, usually. I’ve heard rumors that he’s adept at subtly setting prominent people against one another, to maintain the balance of power, and keep any one faction or individual from growing too strong. He is by all accounts a master diplomat.”

  Drat, Rodrick thought. A man skilled at manipulation. That was supposed to be Rodrick’s territory. Then again, it wasn’t always too hard to trick a trickster; they often made themselves vulnerable by thinking they were immune to being deceived. “Do you have any idea why he’d want to summon a swordsman from Andoran? Even one as widely famed and accomplished as myself?”

  “I hope this doesn’t puncture the balloon of your self-regard, but I’d be very surprised if a whisper of a rumor of your fame has touched the shores of Jalmeray. If I had to guess … it will be something to do with your sword. No offense, but of the two of you, Hrym is rather the more remarkable.”

  “Oh, really?” Rodrick slid out of bed and stood up with his usual grace. He was blessed with a naturally good physique and had marvelous balance and reflexes, and supposed he actually could become a decent swordsman if the need ever arose, though the thought of doing all that training was loathsome. Other physical acts, however, were more interesting.

  Saraswati glanced down, then up at his face, smirking. “Really? Again? Already?”

  “Oh, well. I just wanted to point out that Hrym isn’t more remarkable than I am in every respect.”

  5

  Over the Obari Ocean

  The rest of the voyage was pleasant enough, at least until the disaster at the very end.

  The crew continued to treat Rodrick as a conquering hero, and Hrym appreciated the awe he inspired. Tapasi was still good for a conversation, seemingly interested in every aspect of his life—keeping all the lies he told her straight was an interesting challenge. Unfortunately, any hope he’d had of seeing what she looked like underneath her flowing acreage of wrapped silk faded quickly. She fled every time she noticed Saraswati looking at the two of them, and no one else on the ship was willing to try to steal him away from the captain, either, no matter how much he might like to be stolen, so he reluctantly became a one-woman man. He got a bit bored, as usual when he dallied with the same woman for more than a night or two, but it was better than nothing at all, and he thought he hid his lack of interest well. He was good at faking almost anything.

  They only stopped at a port once, to drop off cargo at Sothis, a bustling city in Osirion. They didn’t stay there long, only half a day, but Rodrick appreciated the chance to stretch his legs on solid land, and let himself goggle about like a tourist, marveling at the distant peaks of pyramids and the strange black dome of some immense building—it looked like a giant beetle’s carapace; foreign architecture was so strange—at the center of the city. The air was noticeably warmer than it had been in Absalom, and they were still far north of Jalmeray, so the island itself must be sweltering. He ate candied dates and almost got pickpocketed in a crowd before returning to the ship. Perhaps he’d go back to Sothis for a longer trip someday. It seemed like a rich place.

  * * *

  There were no more attacks by Arclords or more prosaic pirates on the journey, though they did witness a battle about halfway through the voyage. They passed by Stonespine Island, a sort of miniature mountain range rising from the sea, which Tapasi told him was nominally controlled by the nation of Katapesh, but was mostly infested by hyenafolk, aside from the busy slaver port of Okeno. As they sailed east to move around the island, he saw ships near the island joined in battle, heard the booms of offensive magic, and saw one ship burning. “What’s going on over there?” he asked Tapasi. “Is it something we need to worry about?”

  “You don’t recognize your own countrymen?” She sounded amused. “They don’t fly flags of your nation, but it’s an open secret that the ships of the Eagle Knights harry the shores of any nation they can reach that keeps slaves, and try to set the poor wretches free.”

  “The Gray Corsairs.” Rodrick watched the battle until the ships receded into invisible distance, feeling a little spark of national pride. He didn’t have much use for Eagle Knights—they had far too narrow a view of the law, and the advisability of following it—but he didn’t much like the idea of slavery either. Apart from being a terrible thing to do a person, there was the fact that slaves didn’t have anything worth stealing, and thus reduced Rodrick’s pool of potential targets.

  When he wasn’t lounging on the deck or dallying with Saraswati or gambling with the crew, Rodrick was overcoming his natural inclinations and reading books borrowed from the captain’s library. He’d had high hopes upon first noticing the captain’s small stock of volumes, because the Vudrani were said to have elevated lovemaking to an art form, with the sum of their knowledge contained in a sacred instructional volume—certainly Saraswati had suggested a few approaches that were entirely novel to him, one or two of which had given him muscle strain—but most of the texts on her shelf were nautical or historical in nature, without a diverting erotic woodcut to be found.

  The most interesting thing he’d found was a book of the Vudrani equivalent of fairy tales, and he was learning all sorts of interesting things about garudas and rakshasas and other creatures of legend. Legend, at least, where he was from; Tapasi said they were all too real in her homeland.

  He also hoped to gain some insight, through the stories, into the Vudrani cultural mindset, which seemed to favor placidity, languor, and equanimity punctuated by sudden violence in the face of betrayal, dishonor, or violation of social mores. There was one element of their culture he’d heard about vaguely, that he confronted again and again in the texts, and that offended him deeply as an Andoren: the notion of “castes,” or social classes you were born into. Some were born to be merchants, some to be warriors, some to be princes, and some to shovel dung, and if that was your station, there was no changing it: you’d earned that position, it seemed, in some past life, and if your present life was unpleasant, you just had to suffer through it as best you could in hopes of being reborn a bit higher up the ladder next time.

  Rodrick had been born into a family that was far from rich, though they didn’t go hungry; his parents were hardworking and honorable people, oddly enough. From those fairly humble beginnings he had, through guile and wit and luck, convinced the world he was a warrior of moderate renown. To think he might have been stuck tending pigs or tanning leather or laying roof tiles for his entire life, just because that was his caste, was a terrible thought, and he’d complained about it to the captain.

  She’d just shrugged. “Do you not have princes where you’re from?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Can a tanner become a prince? Do the sons of hostlers generally become ship captains, or the sons of turnip farmers goldsmiths? Or do they instead tend to follow the paths of their fathers? Do the rich not stay rich, and the poor poor?”

  “All right, admittedly, in practice there’s not all that much ebb and flow of social status, but it’s possible. You can break with tradition.”

  “Our people can do that, too, at least on Jalmeray. They can abandon their family and their name and take a ship to Absalom or Andoran or Taldor and become whatever they wish. But most of us take comfort in knowing our position. I never doubted what I would be: a trader on the sea, just as my mother was, and her mother before her. I never had to doubt, or wonder, or suffer silly dreams that would breed only disappointment when they failed to come true.”

  “Fine,” he said, “But you’ve got a ship, don’t you? What if your caste had required you to scrape barnacles off the ship instead? Or to dig latrines?”

  “Then I would have even more incentive to lead a just and noble existence, in hopes that in my next life, I would be reborn in more pleasant circumstances.”

  “You really believe in all that?”

  She chuckled. “Reincarnation? Of course. Life is a wheel. We go around and around.”

  Rodrick was unsure how he felt about the whole subject of reincarnation—would being reborn as, say, a worm be better or worse than being judged for his actions in life by Pharasma, the goddess of death? At least he could try to charm Pharasma, or repent sincerely on his deathbed, when he probably would feel pretty contrite, as he always did right before he had to face a judge at any level. Reincarnation! How odd.

  He decided he just had to accept a certain fundamental disconnect in their worldviews. He couldn’t help but push a little farther, though. “But suppose someone is born into the dung-hauling caste who has a brilliant mind for, say, planning elaborate parties? Or someone is born into the scholarly class but has vast natural talents for soldiering or organized violence?”

  “The former will doubtless throw the best dinner parties ever experienced by his shit-shoveling brethren, and as for the latter—anyone can attempt to enter the Houses of Perfection. Mostly the warrior caste try for those positions, it’s true, but the monks are … flexible about such matters. There are some who oppose the whole caste system, who say we should be ordered by the gods alone, to rise and fall as our abilities dictate, and not by the opinions of other men and women. But they are a small group of malcontents, and a few radical philosophers. Most of us believe the gods do order us, by making sure we are born into the appropriate roles.”

  “Mmm,” he said. “I won’t argue with you, but I do know I would have made a terrible swineherd.”

  “It is fortunate for you that the gods chose to let you be born in Andoran, then, instead of in a more civilized kingdom.”

  “Am I such an unlettered brute? You don’t seem to mind my company.”

  She rolled him onto his back. “Oh, well. Sometimes a woman likes a bit of a savage in her life.”

  * * *

  Rodrick sat up in bed—he’d slept in his own, for once, because Saraswati had needed to make some final preparations for their arrival in Niswan. He yawned, stretched, and scratched himself. They were supposed to make landfall today, and to his surprise, he was almost sorry the voyage was ending. It had been a pleasant respite, and soon he’d have to find out what the thakur wanted him for. Something glorious but not too strenuous, he hoped. “Care to take the air, Hrym?”

  “I keep telling you, I don’t breathe,” Hrym said. “I’ll just stay here on my gold, thanks.” Rodrick never bothered to take the coins with him when he left the room anymore. The crew held him in sufficient reverence after the assault on the Arclord ship that he wasn’t afraid of theft, and if anyone did try, Hrym was right—he could freeze them where they stood, and Saraswati wouldn’t even blame him.

  “If you’re sure. Last chance to stroll about on deck, probably.”

  “Of course I’m sure. Uncertainty is for you fleshy types.” The sword sounded cranky, but not demonically so. He’d had only one fit during the entire journey, not long after they left Sothis, and it had just been a flash of red, a titter, and a surge of disorder making everything on Pia’s shrine fall off the table, which was easily remedied. He’d spurted out a small cloud of freezing fog afterward, but it quickly dissipated. Maybe the sea air was good for Hrym’s condition.