Masks of Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page B

go, and so will Rondas the Bold.”
    “You pick a hairy fighting bunch, Ros.”
    “The two girls, the varterists, they have not yet accepted me. That is understandable. But they’ll go and I think it worthwhile to try to gain their confidence.”
    I refused to be surprised at her words.
    “The ship’s company will be split, then. For the crew will mostly stay, I think. Linson will insist, and rightly so.”
    “I’ve noticed you do not have many Hobolings—”
    “Oh, Hobolings are extremely fine topmen; but Tuscurs Maiden is from South Pandahem—”
    “True. But Hobolings travel the world like anybody else.”
    “So that leaves Naghan the Pellendur and his guards.”
    “They’re paid by this Pando fellow, aren’t they? Surely they’ll earn their hire?”
    “Some, I fancy, will not.”
    “You make me wonder if I should bother to accompany you—”
    “I noticed you did not include the lady Nalfi when you mentioned Larghos the Flatch among those who would go. Why was that?”
    Dayra put a hand to her hair — that hair so like Delia’s, brown and free and gorgeous — and said airily:
    “Oh, she has no affection for Larghos the Flatch!”
    I was startled.
    “But they are inseparable! Larghos dotes on her!”
    “A man may dote on a woman; that does not mean she is duty bound to have anything to do with him—”
    And then, as our thoughts flew to Barty Vessler, Dayra stopped herself. We stood for a while looking over the bulwark as the green banks drifted past.
    You had to admit that a girl as sharp as Dayra would spot anything amiss in that sort of relationship. Zair knows, it made me wonder. The lady Nalfi was now a part of our band, generally respected. She kept herself aloof, true; but that was perfectly natural on two counts — one, for the love we supposed she bore Larghos, and, two, for the rascally band we were.
     
    The breeze turned fluky and the river’s confined waters meant we had to turn out and put our backs into it. The longboat lowered, and lusty fellows settled at the oars to pull. For a relatively clumsy sailing vessel like an argenter the river, wide though it was, represented confined waters. The fluky winds ruffled the surface and rippled the tops of the trees. Higher up low-flung clouds went racing past, driven by a breeze that scourged inland.
    The small cock boat had just brought me back to the argenter from a stint at the oars, hauling upriver, when Pompino let out a yelp. Other people, all staring up with astonished expressions, joined in the exclamations of wonder.
    I looked up.
    Among the driving masses of cloud a sailing ship of the sky plunged on, driven helplessly. She had once possessed three masts; their wreckage dangled overside in a tangled confusion that merely assisted the wind to propel her onward. She was considerably larger than our vessel Tuscurs Maiden , with four decks and high-lifting fore and after castles, with fighting towers above and fighting galleries below. The snouts of varters showed in serried ranks. A single flagstaff reared at her stern, which was squared off and blunt, like the end of a house rather than the stern of a ship. Being of the air she had no need of the robust construction necessary to withstand the shock of the sea.
    I recognized her.
    She was Vol Defender , registered in Vondium, the capital of the island empire of Vallia.
    On that single flagstaff floated two flags, and each tresh whipped and snapped in the breeze. One was the yellow cross and saltire upon a red field that is the Union flag of Vallia. The other was a solid blue, with a quombora at its center, the flag of Tomboram. The blue flag floated above the red and yellow.
    I stood on the quarterdeck and looked up and I held my face in a stasis of emotion, as though sheathed in ice. A Vallian flying sailing ship, captured by the Tomboramin! Dayra started to say something, and I said, harshly: “Can you see anyone up there?”
    “There are a few heads peering down,” said