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Very softly, casting her eyes towards the floor and praying that he would not become angry with her, Sigrid ventured, “Surely you see that if you destroy this last Griffin, there will be no more Ocular for any of your sons? Why not let her live to birth chicks, and ensure the supply of gold for future generations?”
“Ah! She has laid her eggs already, clever Sigrid! This is why we must go now, so that we may catch her before she has hatched them, and harvest the precious yolk! As for the race of Griffin—they robbed us of our horses! No longer are we a clan which can expand our borders, riding swiftly over the steppes with four legs instead of two! We must beg and steal colts from neighbors—and the colts are weak and sickly, they do not thrive! The Griffin deserves extinction. Oh, we will ration the bounty of the White Beast so that the Ocular survives—but I will not let her live!”
“Wait—noble King of the Oluwa, why are you questing for the Griffin’s gold? If the new Ocular is for your son, why does he not charter the Maidenhead and hunt Quri himself?”
At this, the King scowled and blushed at the same moment, his face turning purple with rage or shame—Sigrid could not tell—and within herself she quailed in fear of the giant man. But when he spoke, his voice was small and soft, almost a whisper.
“I have no son, young Sigrid. It is the shame of my house. At first we thought it was a blessing. Since the Griffin took their revenge on our women, we have had few maidens among us. But from the day I swore to let Jin have his wretched aerie, no man of the Oluwa has sired a boy—only girls, acres and acres of daughters, each one more beautiful than the last, and none of them able to take the Ocular. We understand now that it is a curse, and our passion to destroy the Griffin has redoubled. It is against our law, the mandate of the Eye, to allow a female to rule us. We have waited as long as we could, praying and sacrificing oxen, so that the Eye would allow some lesser Oluwa at least to sire on his woman a son. And now there are no Oluwa sons—these men you see are from other families, and though they cower in my presence, if the Oluwa do not bestow the Ocular on an heir, they will seize the Kingship for one of their own. I decreed, to preserve the sacred mandate of heaven which by right belongs only to my blood, that my eldest daughter would receive the golden eye this very winter.”
The King straightened his glossy back and spoke loudly then, his rich voice booming in the cabin. “But it is not seemly for a girl-child to Quest, or to kill—the honor of the last Griffin-Hunt must belong to a man! Thus I have taken the burden of the hunt in the name of the fair Oluwafunmike, who will be Queen. In her name I will slaughter the White Beast, and forge the golden eye—alone of all Kings I will brave the fires of Ob twice!”
The m
en around him, with their many-colored eyes, bowed and scraped their allegiance and praised the name of Oluwafunmike. Sigrid hid her disgust and resolved silently to help the poor Griffin if she could when they arrived, even if Tommy and the rest were obligated to allow their passenger to do what he pleased.
“Sigrid, you listen well. In a woman, this is a kind of beauty, even if you have breasts like a cow’s udder and your skin is pale and unhealthy. You will have the honor of serving me until we reach the Boiling Sea. If you perform well, I will make you a pretty trinket from the gold we harvest. You may rejoice—few who are not of the Oculos are allowed so near my person.”
Sigrid knew not to argue, and though her stomach lurched in rebellion, she bowed low. In her heart, she fashioned a tiny prayer that Oluwafunmike was wiser and kinder than her father, and sent it up to the Stars, for she knew of no other place to aim.
“But you may go and sleep now, girl, so that you will be fresh for tomorrow’s work. I am a good master and I do not expect my attendants to display heroics of endurance. Go and find the Satyr-woman; she will bed you well.”
Gratefully, she left the audience of the King, still bowing as she closed the heavy door of the cabin behind her.
SNOW HAD FINISHED HER DAY’S NETTING. APILE OF damp gray rope had risen up neatly beside her, and the foreman had pressed two coins into her hand—barely enough to fill her belly for the night. The last of Sigrid’s much larger net still trailed from her hands like silver umbilici, the knots skillful and small, catching the last light in their tight twists. But at length, Sigrid, too, finished her tasks and collected her pay—many more and larger coins than the albino child had gotten. Snow screwed up her courage and looked up into Sigrid’s creased face. “I cannot bear not to hear the end of your tale!” she cried. “Let me buy you a husk of bread or a mug of beer and tell me the rest!”
Sigrid laughed, her great body shaking like a walrus caught on a drifting ice floe. “Child, you’ve barely enough in your hand to feed a sparrow! I’m surely parched from all this talking—how I do go on when I’m not interrupted! But I won’t take your meager wages. I shall do the buying, and I shall choose the tavern. Good enough?”
Snow nodded eagerly, and as the two walked along the quay, among glittering torches and warm-windowed inns full of rough laughter, she gently slipped her thin fingers into Sigrid’s warm hand. She hoped the older woman, whom she now thought of as quite beautiful, would not mind. In answer, Sigrid squeezed her freezing fingers tenderly.
At length they reached the end of the Muireann pier. The salt-scoured boards smoothed out to a well-maintained dirt road, the noise and bustle of the other seaside folk faded. There Sigrid stopped below a dilapidated sign, which swung like a weathercock above a windowless tavern. The sign was painted oddly, with a rough image of a muscled arm grasping a fat, squirming fish by the tail. Below this strange insignia, it read:
The Arm & Trout
“Here we are, girl! Best in town, I promise.”
She pushed open the heavy oak door and they slipped inside a tavern much quieter than any Snow had seen. It was terribly dark and smoky—pipes sent up tendrils everywhere. A few tables were scattered about the floor, which seemed to have far more than four corners, peopled with shadowy figures she could not quite make out, but they shrunk away from the open door. The bar itself was a decrepit slab of what might once have been cherry wood, but had petrified over the years. It was slightly uneven, and patrons clutched their mugs and tankards to keep them from sliding to the floor. Wedged behind the bar was a great hulk of a man who looked as though some giant had simply dropped an armful of limbs into a heap. He brandished a thick rag like a sword, and the rusted iron of his eyes dared anyone to order a drink. His hair was the color of sandy shoals that trapped the hulls of ships; his hands were the size of well-wrought drums, and he smelt of lamp oil and brine.
Sigrid marched directly to the ramshackle bar and slapped her thick coins onto the stained wood. “Evening, Eyvind! Beer for me—spiced wine for the little one.”
Eyvind grunted assent and busied himself with the drinks, turning his back to them. Snow saw that Sigrid did not take her eyes from his hulking back while he worked, seeming to linger on his enormous frame as though trying to memorize it. When he turned back, she drew her eyes back like a thief caught with her hands full of pocket watches.
Sigrid collected both drinks and settled herself at a small table that gave a wide view of the rest of the tavern. She pushed the wine towards Snow and smirked with satisfaction as the girl swallowed it down—it warmed her from the roots of her colorless hair to the tips of her shivering toes.
“Specialty of the house. This is the Arm—it’s where those of us who are, well, slightly off the map of Muireann come. Look around, love. Here there be monsters.”
Snow saw then that the figures huddled at their tables were not so shapeless as they had seemed: Under a woolen hood, one had the beak of a pelican; another’s webbed legs were tucked under his chair. Each drink the Arm had served was attached to some fabulous creature—some on all fours against the back wall drinking from a trough. In the dim light of a rusted chandelier Snow thought she could make out the shapes of creatures at least half animal, and some men on all fours, slurping happily beside their bestial brethren. She could not be sure that she did not spy a Djinn sitting on his cushion of smoke near the back door. Some of the faces were human, but their eyes belied their features. Even Eyvind seemed to be different, his movements not quite manlike. Not for the first time, she wondered if her new friend was indeed all she appeared to be.
“It is the only place we feel welcome, the only place we belong. Eyvind keeps the place and he turns no one away—it is a kindness. The Muireanners leave us alone, so long as we hide ourselves away. There are two Shadukiams; there are two Muireanns. Maybe Al-a-Nur is the only city which does not have two of itself. Maybe not even Al-a-Nur. But we were not yet returned to my city, were we? We were on the Maidenhead, with Saint Sigrid in her bunk, sharing blankets with a Satyr…”
THE SAILORS OF THE MAIDENHEAD, DESPITE THE apparently endless amount of room belowdecks, slept two to a bunk. It was drafty in their quarters, and the doubling up kept them warm—besides which, the habit among them was to pair a senior woman to a more inexperienced girl and trust that the one would educate the other in all she needed to know about the running of a ship and the life of piracy.
Eshkol and Sigrid huddled under their blankets in the damp and cold of any bed at sea, though beneath her fur Eshkol seemed not to feel it at all. Sigrid shivered and was restless—a ship rocked and creaked much more than a barge, and she could not find comfort in the constant rocking and lurching.
“You get used to it.” Eshkol laughed quietly. “It took me months to be able to sleep without solid ground under me. Some of the other girls take to it like bees to a hive. It’s different for everyone.”
Sigrid held the gray blanket over her head with tented fingers, studying her companion’s face—it was soft and friendly, and the woman seemed to be made entirely of shades of brown, like the trunk of a tree. Her hair and fur were deep as earth, her skin tan and tawny, her eyes nearly black. “How long until we reach the Boiling Sea? I imagine it will be much worse then. Will the Maidenhead survive the water?”
“Oh, the Maid’s all manner of magic. Comes from being born, not built, you know? That and the Star’s tears. Don’t you worry—a little hot salt water won’t even chip the paint. We should reach the edges of it by morning.”
