Chase the Morning

‘A paladin?’ She unfroze at once, and swept me a bow so deep her curls went foaming over her face. ‘High praise, fair sir! Too high for my poor self. But I thank you nonetheless.’ She smiled wryly. ‘An all men took me so courteously I’d think better of them.’

‘You probably just make them feel inadequate. I don’t dare. You saved my neck, and you’re helping me save Clare’s. Like I said, I’m grateful, I can’t resent you.’ And I knew I’d better change the subject fast, before I began to. ‘Least of all when I think about taking on those bloody Wolves again. You said … something about greater evils behind them. Old Stryge was hinting along the same lines, but he couldn’t say more – or wouldn’t. You don’t happen to –’

She shook her head, crossed her arms over the top of the wheel and leaned her chin on them thoughtfully. ‘No, Stephen; naught more sure. But it’s an easy guess. There’s always evil behind such creatures, even if it’s only what their first ancestors left in their blood. Deep in there at the centre, at the hub of the Great Wheel –’

‘The Core, you mean?’

‘Aye, aye, so many call it. There, anyhow, good and evil, they’re well balanced, well blended, you might say. A smack of each in most things, and never more so than in men and their doings. Out here, though, east of the sunrise, the measure of all things changes. There’s great good to be found, aye, and great evil as well; and less mixed. Nay, no more brandy for now, I thank you; too much is a lee shore to a steersman.’

I lowered the bottle from my own lips. ‘You talk about good and evil as if they were things in themselves.’

She considered. ‘And so they may be, far out there at the margins of the worlds. Things absolute and pure. For certainly the farther from the Hub one fares, the purer they become.’

‘Purer how? In people’s minds – evil people? Or near-people like the Wolves?’

‘Hard to say. Minds – oh, there’s minds there all right. People … maybe.’ Her face took on that haunted look again. ‘Some of them might have been, once. Black-hearted souls drawn outward to the greater evils like moths to a flame, and shedding more and more of their humanity as they went. But others, they may be those same greater evils reaching inward, and shaping themselves more human in the process; hence, maybe, the Wolves’ strange blood. But out here between Hub and Rim one’s as bad as t’other, and has as little in it of what we’d call men. You saw – you should remember. In the warehouse.’ She must have seen me stiffen. ‘And that creature, dreadful as it seemed, ’tis but a common servant to such outernesses, a sentry or scout. They’re ever seeking to spread their black influence inward, like worms riddling sound timbers. Even deep within the Hub it lies behind more pain and suffering than most men ever guess.’

Somehow the night didn’t seem quite so beautiful. ‘And you think that something like this is behind the Wolves?’

‘After that thing they smuggled in … aye, I do. Trade is ever the subtlest means of passage, for it’s the lifeblood of the wider worlds – the more so, for their endless variety, and the many ways about them that one man may pass with ease, and another, not in sympathy, find barred to him forever. Even the Wolves and other strange races trade at times. It must be shielded, that trade, and sentinels stand guard over its arteries lest infection creep along them, and darkness in its wake. It’s not only for your Clare I’m doing this, Stephen. And I’d lay odds old Stryge is of the same mind. He’s an unchancy bastard, but he’ll brook no meddling of this measure. He and I, we’ve seen too much to let it pass unchallenged. That’s my oath, my deepest purpose in life.’

‘Sounds pretty good,’ I acknowledged gloomily. ‘Wish I’d one worth the name.’

The bell hung high on the stern rail chimed quietly into the darkness, marking the passage of the watch. On the deck below some of the dozing hands began throwing off their blankets and prodding others awake. The moon was falling from the zenith now, and long shadows oozed across the planks as more seamen came scrambling down from the rigging, took up the discarded blankets and stretched out in their place. Mall turned to lean against the wheel, studying me thoughtfully. ‘No wife, no true love, no purpose … Yet you have a mind, and some heart at least; neither of the worst, if I read aright. You must have dreams, sure; or have had them once. When I was a child I was used to waste my scanty pennies in the playhouses, standing and dreaming at plays where women dressed as boys for some brave purpose; but that only because boys took the women’s part anyway. A fine irony; even on stage we could not be ourselves.’

There was something in what she said that made my hair prickle, but the drink was getting in the way of it. ‘I had dreams once, maybe. Pretty stupid ones; they didn’t add up to much of a purpose.’