‘How?’ Ezroc asked.
‘Up to you.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘No idea. Wherever the others aren’t. Those big wings of yours must be good for something. Use ’em.’
The albatross made a sound which Nathan knew for laughter – bird’s laughter, harsh as a cry. ‘Thanks, Burgoss,’ he said. ‘I owe you. You are the wisest – and the fattest – creature in the sea, except for the whales—’
‘Hrrmph! Be off with you, or you’ll find I’m not the slowest, whatever you may have heard.’
The albatross veered away, taking off in a few strong wing-beats, launching himself into a long glide out over the water. As he circled higher Nathan felt his doubts, the growing weight of fears still only half formed and founded on uncertainty. If he had learnt one thing in all his travels it was that the hatred of the Goddess was unrelenting and her hunger insatiable. Once, she had hated the islands and all those who lived there, man, beast or bird, drowning them in her tempests, driving out rival gods. Now, she had turned her enmity on the last vestiges of the People of the Air – the lungbreathers whom she saw as aliens, dwelling in her kingdom but not of it, corrupting the purity of the great ocean. And when we are gone, Ezroc thought, who will she have left to hate? The rocks that hold up her reefs? The whales and dolphins who are not true fish – the crabs and sea-scorpions because they have legs – any creature who ever tried to crawl or wriggle into the sun, when there was still something to crawl on?
But as long as the Great Ice endured, the northfolk could withstand her. If they were careful – if they were watchful – if the merfolk stayed in the warm seas of the south …
He flew over a blue-green inlet, walled with ice, where a group of selkies were leaping and diving; Nathan could see them changing shape as they plunged beneath the surface, shedding their half-human form for the seal-fell native to the element. He knew from his bond with Ezroc that selkies could transform themselves at will, though they rarely used their legs. A couple of them waved to the albatross, but although he dipped his head in acknowledgement he did not stop. A little further on he came to a place where a great berg had broken away from the Cliffs and was rocking gently on the swell. There was a figure on the lowest part of the berg, lying on its stomach, gazing into the depths below. Fishing, maybe. As Ezroc drew nearer Nathan saw it was a selkie, but unlike the others, his tail-fur dappled with curious markings, black spots within grey, his thick hair, also somehow dappled, bristling like the mane on a bull-seal. The bird lost height, and Nathan made out the ridged vertebrae along the selkie’s back, and the bunched muscles in arm and shoulder. There was even a faint mottling under his skin, the ghost-markings of his dual self.
Ezroc circled the berg, calling out: ‘Nokosha!’, but the selkie never raised his head.
The albatross landed on the water a little way off, sculling with his webbed feet to hold himself against the currents.
‘Nokosha!’ he repeated. ‘Can I talk to you?’
Still no response. What Nathan could see of the face, with its downswept brows and brooding mouth, seemed to be shaped for scowl. The shadow-spots spread across cheekbone and temple, making him look alien even among his own kind.
‘I hear you saw merfolk,’ Ezroc persisted. ‘A raiding party, or – or scouts checking out the terrain. If that’s true, we have to do something.’
‘What will you do?’ For a swift moment, Nokosha lifted his gaze. His eyes, too, were different, not velvet-dark like other selkies but pale and cold as ice. ‘Fly off round the world to gather tales from the smallfish of the reefs? Ask the sharks to tell us what their masters are doing? That will be a big help.’
‘Were these sharkriders?’ Ezroc said, ignoring Nokosha’s scorn.
‘What if they were? No one listens to what they don’t want to hear. It’s easier to call me a liar than to face the truth. Soon or late, the fish-folk will come in numbers, and for war. The ice won’t protect us. We’re lazy and unprepared: we’ll die like mackerel in a dolphin-hunt.’
‘Did they really take a snowbear?’ Ezroc said, keeping to the point. After all, he was getting information – of a kind.
‘They dived under the ice and came up through the borehole to seize him. They had spears tipped with blood coral, and stone knives.’ The selkie also carried a knife, a short stabbing blade which he fingered as they spoke, jabbing it into the ice. ‘No doubt their leader now wears its skin. Impractical under water, but he was that type. More ego than sense.’
‘Could you describe him? There are twelve merkings. If we knew which one he served—’
‘You could do what? Fly off on a mission of complaint?’
‘I have friends,’ Ezroc said, ‘even among the merfolk. They are not all her creatures. I might be able to find out more.’
‘Friends!’ Nokosha mocked, and there was real hatred under the scorn: his voice shook with it. ‘Friends among the coldkin – the fish-eyed, the fish-hearted! Friends among the killers of the south! You’re a traitor to your race, to all the People of the Ice. You abandoned Keerye – you led him to the killing seas, and left him there to die. Come a little closer, birdling, and I will have you by the throat, and this will be your last flight.’
There was no doubt he meant it. The albatross was bigger, far bigger, but the selkie was all knotted muscle and knotted rage. If he got his hands around Ezroc’s neck, there would be no more to be said.
The bird kept his distance, paddling his feet in the water.
‘I didn’t abandon Keerye,’ he said. ‘He fell asleep on a Floater – I slept too, but on the sea. We didn’t know what it was. He thought … we’d found an island. When I awoke, he was gone.’ And suddenly there was a memory in his head, a memory that didn’t belong. A pale figure struggling against a web of tentacles, and a dozen mouths opening to feast … His thought reeled from the horror of it.
‘I would never have abandoned him,’ he went on, struggling to suppress the unwanted vision. ‘He was my best friend.’
‘Keerye was everyone’s best friend.’ This time, Nokosha seemed to be mocking himself. ‘He was handsome and careless and beloved – the handsome and careless always are. You lost him. It’s easy to plead innocence, when there are no witnesses to give you the lie.’
I’m a witness, Nathan thought. A witness to the truth …
‘I have a witness,’ Ezroc said, and then flinched from his own assertion, the sudden certainty in his mind.
‘Who?’ Nokosha caught his bewilderment, staring at him with those ice-bright eyes.
‘I … don’t know. It doesn’t matter.’ Ezroc shook his feathers, trying to pull his thoughts together. ‘Your hate … doesn’t matter. The important thing is to find out what the merfolk are doing. If you could remember more about the ones you saw …’
‘I remember everything.’ Nokosha was studying him, distracted by his lapse into strangeness.
‘They were sharkriders?’ Ezroc resumed.
‘Yes. A dozen or so on blue sharks, but their leader rode a Great White.’
‘Great Whites cannot be ridden,’ Ezroc said.
‘Do you doubt me? It was a Great White. I saw the fragments of its last meal still caught between its teeth. He rode it with a bit that was metal, not bone, and it bucked beneath him once or twice like a spring wave.’
‘How come they didn’t see you? You must have followed them for a while, and close.’
‘You should know better than to ask. I watched them from a berg – like this – and when I entered the water I used the drifting ice to screen my movements. They were wary of open attack but they weren’t expecting