The Compass Rose

“Of course you’re mad,” the voice attached to the hand muttered. “What was I thinking?” It was male, belonging to the officer in charge of the soldiers escorting Stone up the river to the Adaran capital.

“Sergeant!” He shouted back down the length of the boat, and the fat guard from the prison came clattering up the stairs to the high foredeck.

“Sir!” The sergeant came to attention, obviously missing the presence of his pike. He had nothing to pound on the deck.

“Who, Sergeant, is supposed to be guarding the prisoner this watch?” The icy fury in the lieutenant’s voice made even Stone shiver with fear.

“I am, sir. Me and Dyrney. The Tibran’s asleep.” The guard’s voice faltered as he realized just who his superior held by the elbow. “Or he was. How’d he get out?”

“Precisely what I would like to know.”

So would he. Stone had lost time. Hours, if not days. He did not remember boarding this boat.

Stone tried his voice, swallowed and tried again. “How long—” His voice crackled, as if he’d either not been using it, or been using it too much.

“I dunno, sir,” the sergeant answered the lieutenant. “I swear we was watchin’ him. He couldn’t’ve got out the door.”

“Then perhaps he left by the window, hmm?” The officer turned to Stone, impaling him on the glare from his uncanny blue eyes. Save for those eyes, this man looked like a proper officer. His brown hair was pulled smoothly back from a high forehead into that tight Adaran queue, his face set and hard with an attitude of command. His rank was marked by a single white ribbon on either shoulder of his dun-colored tunic.

“How long?” He repeated Stone’s question. “Are you with us, warrior?”

Stone cleared his throat. “How long have we been traveling?”

The man leaned closer, peering into Stone’s face. “Yes, I believe you are here. Welcome back. Do you recall who I am?”

It took some effort, but Stone finally dredged up the information. “Lieutenant Joh…I don’t remember your other name. Twenty-first Infantry.”

“Joh Suteny, but that doesn’t matter.” He continued staring.

“How long?” Stone asked again.

“Oh. Yes. We have been on the river almost one full day.” He gestured at the lowering sun, then at the stairway. “Shall we go down?”

Surprised by the courtesy—it was seldom offered to prisoners in shackles—Stone shuffled toward the steps. The sergeant moved as if to take Stone’s arm, but the lieutenant got there first.

“I will secure the prisoner,” he said, his voice all ice and iron. “Since it seems your incompetence knows no bounds.”

“Yessir. Nossir.” The fat guard bobbed his head, backed away.

The lieutenant had to hold Stone upright during the descent down the steep gangway. The shackles made it almost impossible to maintain his balance.

“However did you get up there?” Suteny asked in a mild conversational tone as they made their slow way down the walkway to the cabin that was his prison during the river journey.

“Up is easier than down.”

“When you leave us—” Suteny opened the cabin door and ushered him inside, then followed to lean against the closed door “—where do you go?”

Stone shuffled to the bunk and sat down. How had he got out of the cabin? He would have sworn his shoulders could never fit through that porthole.

“Warrior?” The Adaran spoke.

Oh yes. He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Stone fought through the fog clouding his mind. He didn’t have the brains Fox had, but he’d never had trouble thinking. What was wrong with him? Was he mad? “I don’t know,” he said. “I—the time is just…gone. I don’t—”

But he did remember something. An urgency. A pull. A need to—“I have to go…somewhere. I’m—I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is. But I must find it. I must. Or…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t find it. Bad things, I think.”

“I see.” The lieutenant looked down, seeming to think. “I am afraid we are going to have to add to your burden. I have been ordered to treat you with courtesy, as far as I might. But when you do not yourself know what you are doing…

“I will make the chain a long one so that you may move about the cabin, and you may take the air on deck with an escort, as the journey is several more days. But—for your own safety—I must chain you in place. Do you understand?”

Stone nodded, hiding the relief that ebbed through him. A chain would hold him. Even if he injured himself fighting the chain, which he feared was likely, at least he could not plunge to his death over the side of the boat.

“You seem a reasonable man, warrior—Stone, is it?” Suteny waited for an answer. Stone nodded and the other man went on. “When you are here with us, that is. Do you know what triggers these…little spells of time?” The lieutenant put his head outside the door and spoke in a voice of quiet authority before closing it again and turning back to Stone.

Hunching his shoulders, Stone shook his head. He wished he knew. He wanted to be rid of it, his madness or whatever it might be.

“Would you allow me to try calling you back?”

Stone stared at the pale-skinned Adaran. “You wish to do this?”

Suteny seemed surprised by Stone’s surprise. “It would make my job easier, would it not? If you could retain better possession of your senses.”

“True.” Stone shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Try.”

“Very well. We are agreed.”

A knock sounded at the door and the lieutenant opened it to admit one of the other guards, young, with a dogged determination that made up for his lack of experience. He proceeded to attach a long chain to Stone’s ankle bonds and to the bolts holding the cabin’s bunk to the floor.

“Is there anything else I can provide for your comfort?” Lieutenant Suteny asked. “Some reading material perhaps?”

Stone shook his head, testing the chain’s length. “I can speak Adaran, but I can’t read it.” He’d tried to read the words on the general’s map.

“Oh?” A single eyebrow arched high on Suteny’s forehead. “Pity.”

Stone shrugged. He’d never been much for reading anyway. Not like Fox.

Suteny watched him another long moment. It made Stone uneasy. As if the man was studying him. Preparing a report. He probably was. When they reached Arikon, he would likely be called upon to report to his superiors everything observed about their Tibran prisoner and whether he was too mad to be of any use. Stone would like to know the answer to that himself.

Aisse was sitting in complete idleness on the back of the boat a short space apart from her mistress and the man. It was the second afternoon from the time she had been discovered and Aisse still did not understand what sort of service was expected of her. She didn’t understand much of anything in her new country.

Kallista was the captain, but it did not seem to mean the same as it would in Tibre. She did not own the man. Nor did he own her. He protected her. He served her, carrying out duties Aisse had thought would be hers.

When the man came that first night, while she was in her bath, Aisse had feared his purpose. But he had ignored her naked self to empty her bag on the floor and search it, then carried her clothing away. Aisse had been confused, then amused when she realized the man had been searching for weapons, things that could harm the captain. Then she remembered that in this place, women were indeed as dangerous as the men, if not more so.

The man brought her new clothes, a tunic much like the old one and trousers to cover her legs, all the way to her waist. Aisse liked trousers. The man brought her to the cabin, gave her a blanket and a corner for sleeping. He gave her food and the words for food and blanket, for cup, bowl and spoon. But when she tried to begin her duties by putting away the captain’s things, he had growled and sent her away.

He would not allow Aisse to touch anything belonging to either the captain or himself. He did not allow her to collect their food from the boat’s kitchen. He did not trust her. It was a strange feeling for Aisse, to be considered important enough for suspicion, worthy of distrust.

She rested her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around her folded legs as she watched the captain and her man. She did not understand relations between men and women in this new country either. She had thought women ruled here—and they did, but not in a way Aisse could comprehend. She did not have words for the things she saw.