Still

ideas who they were from?”
“No. I didn’t recognize the voices at all,” said Shael looking down at her feet, just as she had when she’d been asked where she had been, and why.
“Still, as the whole port thinks we’re going north again, and thinks us mad into the bargain, I suppose no harm is done. And no one else knows this trail of yours, do they, boy?”
Keilin shook his head.
Cap waved a hand dismissively at them. “I’ll have some coffee, Cook. Hell’s teeth, why don’t you let my sergeant-major show you a thing or two.”
From the distant clifftops three men watched the disappearing Starchaser in puzzlement. “She’s on it, that’s for sure. But that’s a bloody strange course for the north,” commented the one, to whom the others referred as ’Enery. Shael would have recog­nized him at once.
By the time the ship had weathered the storm around Cape Ebrek, and had left the cold mid­night-blue depths of the great ocean, to sail up the clear aquamarine waters of the Narrow Sea, Keilin was very glad of his refuge on the bridge. He’d even gone to the length of hiding out in the swaying crows’ nest. Didn’t she understand what she was doing to him? He’d told her just what their roles in life were. She had a couple of armies looking for her. Wasn’t that enough? Why the hell did she want him too? Still, he dwelled at some length, and with remarkable tribute to his powers of observation, on the memory of her lying naked in the moonlight on his bunk.


CHAPTER 13
The sun burned relentlessly. The sea moved in azure and aquamarine curves around the foam-laced reefs. The sky tinted to copper with the dust and heat. And Port Tinarana stank.
Keilin stared out at it from the bridge, and tried not to wrinkle his nose at it. How many years of his life were tied up in this stench? And he didn’t even remember it. There was the Patrician’s palace, hanging above the water. There