handsome lapsed wizard you mentioned that night we drank too much kava?”
“That would be Thaddeus.”
“The one who was so smart and so interested in how text can alter a mind?”
“The one and only.”
“Didn’t you tell me how wonderful things were in the bedroom with him?”
“Let’s say the kava was doing the speaking.”
“He was the one who would spellwright after smoking opium?”
“You have the damnedest memory for embarrassing things I mention in passing.”
“Drunkenly mention in passing.”
“Right.”
“And didn’t he break your heart with that other woman?”
“Three other women.”
“Well, I hope you have to kill him.”
“Me too.” Leandra sighed as she ladled more water on herself. With the soap, she began to lather herself starting with her swollen knees. “Dhru, that smuggler who sold us this godspell, did you notice anything … familiar about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t shake the sensation that I’ve seen him somewhere else before, but it doesn’t seem possible. Perhaps I have heard him described to me. Did he seem familiar to you at all?”
“He did not,” Dhrun said before pausing. “But I must say again that I don’t trust him.”
“Of course we can’t trust him; he’s a smuggler.”
“No, no. I mean it just seems too implausible that his contacts find us and offer to sell us prophetic texts just when our cause is in its most dire time.”
“And what of his story of the empire preparing for conflict with the league?”
“It sounds a little much to me,” Dhrun said. “Though I suppose it’s possible there could be another incident like the Ogun Blockade.” Twenty-two years ago, the empire had placed heavy tariffs on Ixonian traders, and the airships off of the Isles of Ogun had failed to protect the merchants from pirates.
When Ixonian spies discovered that a corrupt air marshal was protecting a small clan of pirates in exchange for half their plunder, the league invaded the Ogun Isles on the pretext of ridding the islands of piracy. The empire took this as a violation of their sovereignty and a yearlong, bloody war was fought over the islands. Eventually the Ixonian fleet and Tagrana, a powerful war goddess capable of transforming unarmed men and women into tigerlike warriors, captured all of the Ogun Isles and blockaded the city, forcing concessions from the empire.
Leandra considered the possibility that some new tension was arising between Ixos and Trillinon. “But ever since the blockade, the empire has tried to avoid all conflict with Ixos. The empress would far rather play her politics on the Spirish boarder with Lorn.”
“Every woman can change her mind, even an empress.”
“True,” Leandra said as she ladled more water over herself.
“To back up for a second,” Dhrun asked, “you are absolutely sure your prophecy about having to kill someone is strong?”
“Yes. If I run, everyone I love will die.”
“But perhaps if you were simply to forget about the whole thing?”
“I doubt it would work, wouldn’t be much different from running. Anyway, how could one forget that one is going to become a murderer?”
“Lots of wine?”
Leandra laughed but then asked, “Is there any out there?”
She could hear Dhrun walking about the small rooms. Leandra washed the last of the soap from her body. “No,” Dhrun said at last. “Let me see if there’s any in the provisions room.”
“That is kind of you.”
“It would be kind if I didn’t plan to drink most of it myself.”
Leandra smiled.
She heard the creaking of the goddess descending the rope ladder. Leandra poured another ladleful of water over her head and then toweled off before slipping into the robes draped over the screen.
Leandra walked onto her deck and saw that most of the kukui lamps were snuffed. Only a single torch burned on the docks. In the pool below the torch, several fish swam languid circles.
Leandra was starting to wonder if her belly pain was subsiding when she heard the rope creak behind her. She turned and saw Dhrun climbing with her two upper arms and holding in her lower right hand a small porcelain bottle, in her lower left two porcelain cups. Leandra smiled. “I really should not drink during a disease flare.”
“You really shouldn’t,” Dhrun agreed. “I’ll sacrifice myself and drink it all for you.” The goddess held one cup in each lower hand and poured rice wine into them both with her upper right hand. She offered one.
Leandra accepted. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to sacrifice too much. And besides, I can’t have any bad habits—”
“Only full-blown addictions,” Dhrun finished for her in mock boredom. “Now, I can assure you that I haven’t put any tetrodotoxin in here.” She raised her cup.
“To friends who never need to poison each other,” Leandra said. They clinked cups in the Southern fashion. Leandra sipped the rice wine. It was a touch oversweet, but still enjoyable. “I’m surprised Alo spends the rupees for provision room wine.”
“Oh, he doesn’t,” Dhrun said. “He hides a personal cache in the back of his bookshelf. Sometimes he even has a bottle of mandana. In any case, I saw he was still on the docks and so liberated this from his quarters.”
Leandra laughed. “Remind me to get something nice for that dear man when we return to the city.”
“I would suggest a gift of two thousand five hundred thirty-two rupees, or he may well burst a blood vessel.”
“Right,” Leandra said with a sigh and turned back to her deck. “Tomorrow is going to be busy.” They drank silently and watched the torchlight reflected on the pool water. The fish carved their erratic circuits near the dock torch.
At last Leandra announced that she would sleep. Dhrun shifted back into his Dhrunarman incarnation and took up guard near the ladder.
Almost the instant Leandra put her head to the pillow, she fell into a dream of a dark seascape with a rolling deck beneath her. The ocean was filled with a whirlpool. A hundred feet above her, a billowing plume of smoke formed from nothing. Holokai and Thaddeus were there, both very angry. Then she was in a Dralish forest, everything so cool and green and the high oak boughs arching above her. Wind in the leaves. She was a child and her father’s voice was calling … calling …
Leandra woke and the memory of the dream twisted into nothing. She tried to recall but her gut was filled with a sickening, queasy feeling, as if she were terribly worried. The more she tried to remember the dream, the faster it slipped away.
Leandra sat up. The sky above the pool was filled with dappled clouds just barely illuminated with early dawn.
Then Leandra realized that her gut didn’t hurt; rather, in an hour, most of her future selves would be frantically worried. It was the prophetic godspell.
Something this morning was going to distress her. Scowling, Leandra rubbed her forehead where she supposed her godspell to be. She might not have bought the text if she had known that it would wake her an hour early every morning.
Dhrun was standing guard, all four arms folded. He hadn’t moved since she fell asleep. She wondered what the deity thought about when he became so still.
Leandra