a prize beyond jewels

Waves flung themselves at the blue evening. Low light burned on the wet hulks of ships that slipped by mossy pilings into the docks as water sloshed at the rotten stone embankment of the city.

Gangplanks, chained from wooden pullies, scraped into place on concrete blocks, and the crew, after the slow captain and the tall mate, descended raffishly along the wooden boards which sagged with the pounding of bare feet. In bawling groups, pairs, or singly they howled into the narrow waterfront streets, into the yellow light from open inn doors, the purple shadowed portals leading to dim rooms full of blue smoke and stench of burnt poppies.

The captain, with eyes the color of sea under fog, touched his sword hilt with his fist and said quietly to the mate, "Well, they're gone. We better start collecting new sailors for the ten we lost at Aptor. Ten good men, Jordde. I'm sick when I think of the bone and broken meat they became."

"Ten for the dead," sneered the mate, "and twenty for the living we'll never see again. Any sailor that would want to continue this trip with us is insane. We'll do well if we only lose that many." He was a tall, wire bound man, which made the green tunic he wore look baggy.

"I'll never forgive her for ordering us to that monstrous island," said the captain.

"I wouldn't speak too loudly," mumbled the mate. "Yours isn't to forgive her. Besides, she went with them, and was in as much danger as they were. It's only luck she came back."

Suddenly the captain asked, "Do you believe the sailor's stories of magic they tell of her?"

"Why, sir?" asked the mate. "Do you?"

"No, I don't," said the captain with a certainty that came too quickly. "Still, with three survivors out of thirteen, that she should be among them, with hardly a robe torn."

"Perhaps they wouldn't touch a woman," suggested the mate, Jordde.

"Perhaps," said the captain.

"And she's been strange," continued Jordde, "ever since then. She walks at night. I've seen her going by the rails, looking from the sea-fire to the stars, and then back."

"Ten good men," mused the captain. "Hacked up, torn in bits. I wouldn't have believed that much barbarity in the world, if I hadn't seen that arm, floating on the water. It gives me chills now, the way the men ran to the rail to see, pointed at it. And it just raised itself up, like a beckoning, a signal, and then sank in a wash of foam and green water."

"Well," said the mate, "we have men to get."

"I wonder if she'll come ashore?"

"She'll come if she wants, Captain. Her doing is no concern of yours. Your job is the ship and to do what she says."

"I have more of a job than that," and he looked back at his still craft.

The mate touched the captain's shoulder. "If you're going to speak things like that, speak them softly, and only to me."

"I have more of a job than that," the captain repeated. Then, suddenly, he started away, and the mate was following him down the darkening dockside street.

* * *

The dock was still for a moment. Then a barrel toppled from a pile of barrels, and a figure moved like a bird's shadow across the opening between mounds of cargo set about the pier.

At the same time two men approached down a narrow street filled with the day's last light. The bigger one threw a great shadow that aped his gesticulating arms behind him on the greenish faces of the buildings. Bare feet like halved hams, shins bound with thongs and pelts, he waved one hand in explanation, while he rubbed the back of the other on his short, mahogany beard.

"You're going to ship out, eh friend? You think they'll take your rhymes and jingles instead of muscles and rope pulling?"

The smaller, in a white tunic looped with a thick leather belt, laughed beneath his friend's rantings. "Fifteen minutes ago you thought it was a fine idea; said it would make me a man."

"Oh, it's a life to make," his hand went up, "and it's a life to break men," and it fell.

The slighter one pushed back black hair from his forehead, stopped, and looked at the ships. "You still haven't told me why no ship has taken you on in the past three months," he said absently, following the rope rigging against the sky like black knife slashes on blue silk. "A year ago I'd never see you in for more than three days at once."

The gesticulating arm suddenly encircled the smaller man's waist and lifted a leather pouch from the wide belt. "Are you sure, friend Geo," began the giant, "that we couldn't use up some of this silver on wine before we go. If you want to do this right, then right is how it should be done. When you sign up on a ship you're supposed to be broke and a little tight. It shows that you're capable of getting along without the inconvenience of money and can hold your liquor, too."

"Urson, get your paw off that." Geo snatched the purse away.

"Now here," countered Urson, reaching for it once more, "you don't have to grab."

"Look, I've kept you drunk five nights now, and it's time to sober up. And suppose they don't take us, who's going-" But Urson, the idea having taken the glow of a game, made another swipe with his big hand.

Geo leapt back with the purse. "Now cut that out," he began; but in leaping, his feet struck the fallen barrel, and he fell backwards to the wet cobbles. The pouch splattered away, jingling.

Both of them scrambled.

Then the bird's shadow moved in the opening between the cargo piles, a slight figure bounded forward, swept the purse up with one hand, pushed himself away from the pile of cargo with another, and there were two more fists pumping at his side as he ran.

"What the devil," began Urson, and then, "What the devil!"

"Hey you," called Geo, lurching to his feet. "Come back!" And Urson had already loped a couple of steps after the fleeting mutant, now halfway down the block.

Suddenly, from behind them, like a wine-glass stem snapping, only twenty times as loud, a voice called, "Stop, little thief. Stop."

The running form stopped as though it had hit a wall.

"Come back, now! Come back!"

The figure turned, and docilely started back, the movements so lithe and swift a moment ago, now mechanical.

"It's just a kid," Urson said.

He was a dark-haired boy, naked except for a ragged breech. He approached staring fixedly beyond them toward the boats. And he had four arms.

Now they turned and looked also.

She stood at the base of the ship's gangplank, against what sun still washed the horizon. One hand held something close at her throat, and wind, caught in a veil, held the purple gauze against the red swath at the world's edge, and then dropped it.

The boy, like an automaton, approached her.

"Give that to me, little thief," she said.

He handed her the purse. She took it, and then suddenly dropped her other hand from her neck. The moment she did so, the boy staggered backwards, turned, and ran straight into Urson, who said, "Ooof," and then, "God damn little spider."

The boy struggled to get away like a hydra in furious silence. But Urson held. "You stick around ... Owww!... to get yourself thrashed.... There." The boy got turned, his back to the giant; one arm locked across his neck, and the other hand, holding all four wrists, lifted up hard enough so that the body shook like wires jerked taut, but he was still silent.

Now the woman came across the dock. "This belongs to you, gentlemen?" she asked, extending the purse.

"Thank you, ma'am," grunted Urson, reaching forward.

"I'll take it, ma'am," said Geo, intercepting. Then he recited:

"Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter.

Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.

"Many thanks," he added.

Beneath the veil, on her shadowed face, her eyebrows raised. "You have been schooled in courtly rites?" She observed him. "Are you perhaps a student at the university?"

Geo smiled. "I was, until a short time ago. But funds are low and I have to get through the summer somehow. I'm going to sea."

"Honorable, but perhaps foolish."

"I am a poet, ma'am; they say poets are fools. Besides, my friend here says the sea will make a man of me. To be a good poet, one must be a good man."

"More honorable, less foolish. What sort of a man is your friend?"

"My name is Urson," said the giant, stepping up. "I've been the best hand on any ship I've sailed on."

"Urson?" said the woman, musing. "The Bear? I thought bears did not like water. Except polar bears. It makes them mad. I believe there was an old spell, in antiquity, for taming angry bears...."

"Calmly brother bear," Geo began to recite.

"calm the winter sleep.

Fire shall not harm,

water not alarm.

While the current grows,

amber honey flaws,

golden salmon leap."

"Hey," said Urson. "I'm not a bear."

"Your name means bear," Geo said. Then to the lady, "You see, I have been well trained."

"I'm afraid I have not," she replied. "Poetry and rituals were a hobby of a year's passing interest when I was younger. But that was all." Now she looked down at the boy whom Urson still held. "You two look alike. Dark eyes, dark hair." She laughed. "Are there other things in common between poets and thieves?"