Chapter 12 #3
Whatever greeting it was, was foreign and deeply unfamiliar, despite the many languages a life at sea had taught me. I shook my head in confusion. “Forgive me, I do not understand.”
The youngest man—the only one without a colorful cloak—lit up in recognition. “Arabiyyah?” he asked, in a tortured if comprehensible accent, smiling when I replied an affirmative. “Ah, then you can speak to me! Peace be upon you, yes?”
Touching my heart, I inclined my head. “That is correct. And upon you peace . . .”
“Arno.” He stepped closer, giving a slightly nervous look at my weapons.
Little more than a beardless youth, he wore his reddish-black hair in a single braid along the top of his skull, the sides shaved.
“We mean you no harm,” he promised. A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth as he nodded at my sword.
“If you are any indication, your people can easily protect themselves.”
“What is in your bags?” Majed asked, still guarded.
“Food,” Arno replied, lowering his bag to the ground and motioning for his companions to do the same.
He opened the sack and began spreading its contents on the sand: melons, parcels of flatbread, and dried fish.
“Along with bandages. A hunter reported seeing your ship and we thought you might need help. But I fear we may not have brought enough . . .” He glanced again at the Marawati with awe.
“I’ve never seen so many survivors come off a shipwreck. ”
That was ominous. “Do you have so many shipwrecks?” I asked.
Arno hesitated, glancing at the older man. “That is a discussion perhaps best for when you’re recovered.” He stepped away from the food. “Please.”
The pirate in me was not so trusting, but we were trying not to provoke suspicion so I motioned for my crew to emerge. “Forgive me. We are not entirely certain where we are and feared bandits.”
He beamed. “Well, you need not fear bandits in Khatti Ugal, nor criminals of any kind.”
Was this boy an aspiring politician? “Khatti . . . Ugal?” I carefully repeated the name, the pronunciation strange and foreign to my ear. I’d never heard of such a land. “Is that what you call this place?”
“It is the name of our kingdom, yes, though the city is a bit farther inland. My people largely avoid the coast.”
“Why?”
“The sea . . .” Arno’s smile faltered. “It brings, how you say, like bad memories?”
“Bad memories of what?” Majed prodded.
“No, not like that. It is . . .” Arno glanced back at his comrades, exchanging a flurry of words. “The sea is sadness. I do not know how to explain better.”
“No, ‘the sea is sadness’ says enough,” Majed muttered under his breath. “God forbid.”
“You mentioned a city,” I pressed. “Might I visit with my first mate? We are looking to purchase supplies to repair our ship.”
“All are welcome to visit. Khatti Ugal offers respite to any who wash upon our shores. But in regard to repairing your ship . . .” The youth bit his lip, casting another admiring gaze at the Marawati. The older man seemed to notice and said something that sounded chiding.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“Forgive me, but we have little experience with a vessel like yours. We build only small fishing canoes and never go farther than the second sandbar.”
“Why not?”
Arno’s face dimmed. “Because boats never make it. The currents drive any ship that dares go farther back onto the shore or—and far more often—drown them.”
An island no one can leave from . . . due to different circumstances than either Khayzur or Jamal had related, but still. Another coincidence.
Arno must have noticed my apprehension, though he interpreted it another way. “This is nothing that needs to be discussed now. You must be exhausted. Please, let us tend to you.”
The group seemed friendly enough, so I relented, bringing them closer to my camp and inviting my men to join us.
We partook of the sweet, unfamiliar fruit and soft, honey-smeared bread.
The older woman seemed to be a healer; she moved about silently, Arno translating as she helped splint a sailor’s arm and bandage two others. Then she came upon me.
I held her off. “My people have already treated my injuries.”
Arno spoke up. “She understands, but says she is curious about you. Women are rarely among the lost.”
The lost. I attempted a friendly smile, but I didn’t like that word. The ease of this practiced rescue and ready supplies. The lack of surprise from any in this band of locals at our arrival.
“We are not the first lost you have come upon,” I said, repeating his word.
Arno hesitated and then replied, a note of apology in his voice. “No. It is very rarely more than a handful of souls but yours is the fifth group I have escorted to Khatti Ugal in my life.”
“And have any ever left?”
“No,” he replied somberly. “As I said . . . it is impossible.”
The words fell like sudden rain, like news he hated to deliver.
And for the first time on this quest, I felt a touch of apprehension of a different sort.
I had anticipated magical obstacles, a cunning immortal, the damnable supernatural.
But what Arno spoke of was more commonplace to my life, a different sort of tale.
For among those of us who make a living at sea, there are stories of such lost. Of Sindbad and Odysseus, the sailors who give up expecting to make it home, building lives elsewhere.
Or spend decades in the pursuit, returning home to find their children grown, their spouses remarried.
No. I set any such trepidation firmly aside. I was returning to Marjana if I had to rewrite my destiny with a stolen spindle.
Attempting a cocky grin, I forced a bit more confidence into my expression. “Ah, but you haven’t met me. I’ll get my ship off this beach. Perhaps I can even take a few of you along.”
Arno blinked, exchanging a glance and a few foreign words with the old woman. “She says our queen would like you.”
Their what? But I kept my voice light. “Oh. Do you have a queen?”
Arno beamed with pride. “We have always had queens. The most blessed line of Lab. First of those who were lost here and mother to all of us who would follow.”
And there it was.
Lab. A surge of excitement seemed to dance in my blood. But it wasn’t satisfaction, the thrill of having found my mark.
It was apprehension. Because if this was Lab’s island, there was no escaping the sense that we had been delivered here like a bound goat, destined for the spit.
I might have dared hope that if we did find the White City, we would do so under cover of darkness, with a few days to discreetly scope out its supposed queen.
But in truth, that wasn’t the picture Khayzur had painted when he told me of Lab, a nigh-immortal ruler who prowled over every inch of her prison, searching for a crack.
We were always going to be noticed.
And shipwrecked circumstances aside, I had a spindle to steal. Quelling the trembling in my hands, I smiled. “You know, Arno, I think I would like to see your city.”