Ship of Destiny. Робин Хобб

you defend them. Why? Ah, let me guess. It is because you know that no whole man would ever want you now. Your only hope is to marry into a family in which your kin are as misshapen as yourself, where you can hide behind a veil and no one will stare at your frightfulness. Pathetic! But for the actions of these rebels, I might have chosen you as a Companion. Davad Restart had spoken out on your behalf, and I found your clumsy attempts at dancing and conversation endearingly provincial. But now? Faugh!’ The boat rocked minutely with the disdainful flip of his hand. ‘There is nothing more freakish than a beautiful woman whose face has been spoiled. The finer families of Jamaillia would not even take you as a household slave. Such disharmony has no place in an aristocratic household.’

      Malta refused to look back at him, but she could imagine how his lips curled with contempt. She tried to be angry at his arrogance; she told herself he was an ignorant prig of a boy. But she had not seen her own face since the night she had nearly been killed in the overturning coach. When she had been convalescing in Trehaug, they had not permitted her a mirror. Her mother and even Reyn had seemed to dismiss the injuries to her face. But they would, her traitor heart told her. They would have to, her mother because she was her mother, and Reyn because he felt responsible for the coach accident. How bad was the scar? The cut down her forehead had felt long and jagged to her questing fingers. Now she wondered: did it pucker, did it pull her face to one side? She gripped the plank tightly in both her hands as she dug into the water with it. She would not set it down; she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her fingers grope over her scar. She set her teeth grimly and paddled on.

      A dozen more strokes and suddenly the little vessel picked up speed. It gave a small sideways lurch in the water, and then spun once as Malta dug her plank into the water in a desperate effort to steer back into the shallows. She shipped her makeshift oar, and seized the extra plank from the bottom of the rowing boat. ‘You’ll have to steer while I paddle,’ she told the Satrap breathlessly. ‘Otherwise we’ll be swept out into the middle of the river.’

      He looked at the plank she thrust towards him. ‘Steer?’ he asked her, taking the board reluctantly.

      Malta tried to keep her voice calm. ‘Stick that plank into the water behind us. Hold onto one end of it and use it as a drag to turn us back towards the shallows while I paddle in that direction.’

      The Satrap held the board in his fine-boned hands as if he had never seen a piece of wood before. Malta seized her own plank, thrust it back into the water, and was amazed at the sudden strength of the current. She clutched the end awkwardly as she tried to oppose the flow of water that was sweeping them away from the shore. Morning light touched them as they emerged from the shelter of the overhanging trees. Suddenly the sunlight illuminated the water, making it unbearably bright after the dimness. Behind her, an annoyed exclamation coincided with a splash. She swivelled her head to see what had happened. The Satrap was empty-handed.

      ‘The river snatched it right out of my hands!’ he complained.

      ‘You fool!’ Malta cried out. ‘How can we steer now?’

      The Satrap’s face darkened with fury. ‘How dare you speak to me so! You are the fool, to think it could have done us any good in the first place. It wasn’t even shaped like an oar. Besides, even if it would have worked, we do not need it. Use your eyes, wench. We’ve nothing to fear. There’s the city now! The river will carry us right to it.’

      ‘Or past it!’ Malta spat at him. She turned from him in disgust, to focus all her strength and thoughts on her single-handed battle with the river. She lifted her eyes briefly to the impressive site of Trehaug. Seen from below, the city floated in the great trees like a many-turreted castle. On the water level, a long dock was tethered to a succession of trees. The Kendry was tied up there, but the liveship’s bow was turned away from them. She could not even see the sentient figurehead. She paddled frantically.

      ‘When we get closer,’ she panted between strokes, ‘call out for help. The ship may hear us, or people on the docks. Even if we are swept past, they can send rescue after us.’

      ‘I see no one on the docks,’ the Satrap informed her snidely. ‘In fact, I see no one anywhere. A lazy folk, to be still abed.’

      ‘No one?’ Malta gasped the question. She simply had no strength left for this final effort. The board she wielded skipped and jumped across the top of the water. With every passing moment, they were carried farther out into the river. She lifted her eyes to the city. It was close, much closer than it had been a moment ago. And the Satrap was right. Smoke rose from a few chimneys, but other than that, Trehaug looked deserted. A profound sense of wrongness welled up in her. Where was everyone? What had become of the normal lively bustle along the catwalks and on the stairways?

      ‘Kendry!’ she cried out, but her breathless call was thin. The rushing water carried her voice away with it.

      Companion Kekki seemed suddenly to understand what was happening. ‘Help! Help!’ she cried in a childish shriek. She stood up recklessly in the small boat, waving her hands. ‘Help us! Save me!’ The Satrap swore as the boat rocked wildly. Malta lunged at the woman and pulled her down into the boat again, nearly losing her plank in the process. A glance around her showed her that the plank was of no real use now. The little boat was well and truly into the river’s current and rapidly being swept past Trehaug.

      ‘Kendry! Help! Help us! Out here, in the river! Send rescue! Kendry! Kendry!’ Her shouts trailed away as hopelessness dragged at her.

      The liveship gave no sign of hearing. Another moment, and Malta was looking back at him. Apparently lost in deep thought, the figurehead was turned towards the city. Malta saw a lone figure on one of the catwalks, but he was hurrying somewhere and never turned his head. ‘Help! Help!’ She continued to shout and wave her plank while she could see the city, but it was not for long. The trees that leaned out over the river soon curtained it from her eyes. The current rushed them on. She sat still and defeated.

      Malta took in her surroundings. Here, the Rain River was wide and deep, the opposite shore near lost in permanent mist. The water was grey and chalky when she looked over the side. Overhead the sky was blue, bordered on both sides by the towering rainforest. There was nothing else to be seen, no other vessels on the water, no signs of human habitation along the banks. As the clutching current bore them inexorably away from the marshy shores, hopes of rescue receded. Even if she succeeded in steering their little boat to the shore, they would be hopelessly lost downriver of the city. The shores of the Rain Wild River were swamp and morass. Travelling overland back to Trehaug was impossible. Her nerveless fingers dropped the plank into the bottom of the boat. ‘I think we’re going to die,’ she told the others quietly.

      Keffria’s hand ached abominably. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to seize again the handles of the barrow the diggers had just finished loading. When she lifted the handles and began to trundle her load up the corridor, the pain in her healing fingers doubled. She welcomed it. She deserved it. The bright edges of it could almost distract her from the burning in her heart. She had lost them, both her younger children gone in one night. She was as completely alone in the world as she had ever been.

      She had clung to doubt for as long as she could. Malta and Selden were not in Trehaug. No one had seen them since yesterday. A tearful playmate of Selden had sobbingly admitted that he had shown the boy a way into the ancient city, a way the grown-ups had thought securely locked. Jani Khuprus had not minced words with Keffria. White-faced, lips pinched, she had told Keffria that the particular passage had been abandoned because Reyn himself had judged it dangerously unstable. If Selden had gone into the buried corridors, if he had taken Malta with him, then they had gone into the area most likely to collapse in an earthquake. There had been at least two large tremors since dawn. Keffria had lost track of how many lesser tremblings she had felt. When she had begged that diggers be sent that way, they had found the entire corridor collapsed just a few steps inside the entry. She could only pray to Sa that her children had reached some stronger section of the buried city before the quake, that somewhere they huddled together awaiting rescue.

      Reyn Khuprus had not returned. Before noon, he had left the diggers, refusing to wait until the corridors could be cleared and shored up.