“That she was a complex of three makes it harder to say. Could be a city thief goddess fused with an ancient river goddess of the poor.”
Nicodemus raised an eyebrow. “Five thousand thieves praying near a single ark? Only place that could happen would be Chandralu. Lea might be having some trouble bringing down these rural neodemons; she hasn’t had any trouble in the city. If there had been a newly incarnated goddess of theft she would have known.”
Doria chewed her lip. “So, you’d argue that it’s more likely that five thousand souls along this river began to pray to steal a bit of the wealth that flows between Matrupor and Chandralu? It isn’t the worst idea I ever heard.”
“High praise from you, Magistra.”
“So we float back to Chandralu and tell the prince regent he’s got to find a way to let the villages in on the trade wealth? Let them charge tolls maybe? Or maybe have the crown build temples and schools to share the wealth?”
“Fiery heaven, I’m not suggesting a thing. Leandra is Warden of Ixos. Keeping the discontents from reincarnating the River Thief is her problem.”
Doria sniffed. “Typical. That’s just typical of the father.”
“What? I would be respecting the sovereignty of her office.”
“Look, you know she’s doing something wrong. You know things are out of hand in rural Ixos. So she’s going to have to change; would you agree?”
“I have this feeling that if I agree, you’re going to find some way of making me feel like an ass.”
“You don’t have to do anything in particular for me to make you feel like an ass.”
“Such a comfort you are, Magistra. All right, so, yes, I know Lea will have to change.”
“So you can’t just solve the problems and tell her she has to change.”
“I can’t?” Nicodemus asked. He had thought Doria was going to applaud his respect for his daughter’s independence.
“Of course not. You have to help her to change.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Nicodemus muttered, though he had no idea how exactly he was supposed to do such a thing.
“You would have done better with a son.”
“I would?”
“There’s a saying among the Cloud People—”
“You never quoted Cloud People sayings when we were in the South.”
“Being home makes me nostalgic. Now, do you want a gem of invaluable wisdom from my people or not?”
“I do.”
“So the saying is ‘to be a good father to a son, a man merely has to be kind, wise, or clever.’”
“I don’t get it. What does a man need to be a good father to a daughter?”
“But that’s the point! There’s nothing specific that can make you good at it. It’s just a”—She waved one hand in the air—“you know, a certain”—more vigorous hand waving, perhaps indicating the complexity of the sought-after attributes—“a certain combination.”
“Truly, a gem of invaluable wisdom.”
“Stop. You’re ruining the effect.”
“Doria, you’ve never had a daughter. You’ve never even had children.”
“But I’ve been a daughter. And that, don’t you think, better qualifies me to know what a daughter needs than would, oh I don’t know, screwing up the raising of one, hmm?”
“Lea is thirty-three years old now, the Warden of a whole kingdom. It’s hardly like I’m still raising her.”
“A son is a son until he finds a wife; a daughter is a daughter for life.”
“Another saying of the Cloud People?”
“Oh, please, no. You think we’d rhyme so sentimentally like that? The Cloud People are nothing if not practical. I heard that in Dral.”
“It sounds Dralish, but that doesn’t mean it’s not stupid,” Nicodemus replied. “And while I appreciate that raising daughters is a difficult task, I don’t know if your generalities apply to Lea. She is after all half-human and half-textual, the daughter of a dragon, too damn clever by half, fond of getting into trouble, and continuously fighting a disease that will—everyone agrees—kill her far too soon.” An unintended note of hurt had entered Nicodemus’s voice.
Doria waited a moment before saying, “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Leandra’s situation is unique.” She waited another moment. “So, raising a daughter is difficult. But for your daughter, that’s especially so.”
Nicodemus took a long breath. He needed to hurry back to his daughter. Away to the east, one of the big-bellied clouds was dropping a curtain of rain onto the jungle.
Beneath cloud-dappled skies, the catamaran caught the wind with a bulging expanse of white sail and seemed to fly over the bay water. Even Leandra’s limited nautical sensibilities appreciated a rightness to the ship’s angles of wind to sail and water to hull. The resulting speed exhilarated.
The sailors shared her sensation or perhaps generated it as they hurried to their tasks, hollering to one another. Even Dhrun was content enough that he did not balk when Holokai bellowed orders.
Standing on the forward deck, Leandra smiled as she thought about what she and Holokai had done back on Keyway Island. Her reminiscence was disturbed only when a strong wind required that she readjust her headdress and veil. Her disease made her painfully sensitive to sunlight: a few moments of exposure induced a rash, prolonged exposure, the full horror of a flare.
Just then the catamaran passed under a cloud’s shadow and the blue water lost its dazzle. The change turned Leandra’s thoughts to Chandralu and what lay before them. She wondered when Francesca would arrive in the city.
A sailor let out a laughing yawp. Leandra turned and saw a man leaning over the catamaran’s starboard hull. A dribbling between his legs gained force to become an arc of urine into the ocean. His mates, Dhrun among them, called approval or criticism.
Leandra tried to be charitable as she considered the sailor. He was, after all, subject to several of the sea’s intoxicants: impending payment, fine sailing, a port where he could exchange his rupees for kava or women. Leandra had spent her childhood on expeditions to take down neodemons: long caravans snaking across Lornish plains, wild mounted hunts dashing through Dralish forests, sea canoes voyaging across Ixonian waves. In her experience, men who dedicated their lives to going elsewhere—despite their colorful diversities of appearance—were cut from similarly rough but gaudy cloth. She appreciated the joy they took from risks and reward. And yet the sailor’s arc of urine aggravated her present dissatisfaction with humanity and its abortive sorrows.
So she turned to stare dispassionately at the showboating sailor. It wasn’t very impressive, his piss or penis. Another crewman was making for the starboard hull, lifting up his lungi and boasting that he could do better. Then he noticed Leandra’s stare.
The crewman dropped his lungi and turned back to some detail of the rigging. Noticing the silence, the rest of the crew turned to look at him, then at her. In a few moments, all hands were tending to ropes or sails.
Leandra looked to the bow and the lush, rolling hills of the Chandralu peninsula. About four miles ahead stood Mount Jalavata, the extinct volcano on which Chandralu was built.
Mount Jalavata rose to a great height until its tip touched the underbelly of a cloud that, more days than not, hung above the mountain and churned in the sea winds. Presently