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the big vessel move and heard the shouts of the foremen of the towing gangs and
the chants of the slaves as they bent their backs hauling at the huge ropes
attached to the 'roller.
Slowly, oh, so slowly it seemed to Green, the craft creaked forward. He
dared open a curtain to look out the square porthole. Before him was the rearing
side of another 'roller, and just for a second it seemed to him that it, not his
vessel, was the one that was moving. Then he saw that the 'roller was advancing
at a pace of about fifteen or sixteen feet a minute. It would take them an hour
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to get past the towering brick walls of the windbreak.
He sweated out that hour and unconsciously fell into his childhood habit of
biting his nails, expecting at any time to see the docks suddenly boil with
soldiers running after the Bird of Fortune, shouting for it to stop because it
had a runaway slave aboard.
But no such thing occurred, and at last the tug gangs stopped and began
coiling up their ropes, and Green quit chewing his nails. Miran shouted orders,
the first mate repeated them, there was the slap of many feet on the decks
above, the sound of many voices chanting. A sound as of a knife cutting cloth
told that the sails had been released. Suddenly, the vessel rocked as the wind
caught it and a vibration through the floors announced that the big axles were
turning, the huge wheels with their tires of chacorotr, a kind of rubber, were
revolving. The Bird was on the wing!
Green opened the door slightly and took one last look at the city of Quotz.
It was receding rapidly at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and at this
distance it looked like a toy city nestled in the lap of a hillock. Now that the
danger from it was gone and the odors too far away to offend his nose it looked
quite romantic and enticing.
"And so we say farewell to exotic Quotz," murmured Green in the approved
travelog fashion. "So long, you son of an izzot!"
Then, though he was supposed to stay inside until Miran summoned him, he
opened the door and stepped out.
And almost fainted dead away.
"Hello, honey," said Amra.
Green scarcely heard the children grouped around her also extend their
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greetings. He was just coming out of the dizziness and blackness that had
threatened to overcome him. Perhaps it was the wine coupled with the shock.
Perhaps, he was to think later, it was just that he was plain scared, scared as
he'd not been in the castle. Ashamed, too, that Amra had found out his plans to
desert her, and deeply ashamed because she loved him anyway and would not allow
him to go without her. She had a tremendous pride that must have cost her great
effort to choke down.
Probably, he was to say to himself later on, it was sheer fear of her
tongue that made him quail so. There was nothing that a man dreaded so much as a
woman's tongue-lashing, especially if he deserved it. Oh, especially!
That was to come later. At the moment Amra was strangely quiet and meek.
All she would say was that she had many business connections and that she knew
well Zingaro, the Thieves' Guild Business Agent. They had been childhood
playmates, and they'd helped each other in various shady transactions since. It
was only natural that she should hear about the exurotr a slave hiding on the
Bird of Fortune had given Zingaro to take back to the Duke. Cornering Zingaro,
she had worked out of him enough information to be sure that Green had escaped
to the 'roller. After all, Zingaro was under oath only to be reticent about
certain details of the whole matter. From there she had taken the business into
her own hands, had told Miran that she would inform the duchess of Green's
whereabouts unless he permitted her and her family to go along on the voyage.
"Here I am, your faithful and loyal wife," she said, opening her arms in an
expansive gesture.
"I am overwhelmed with emotion," replied Green, for once not exaggerating.
"Then come and embrace me," she cried, "and don't stand there as if you'd
seen the dead return from the grave!"
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"Before all these people?" he said, half-stunned, looking around at the
grinning captain and first mate on the foredeck beside him and at the sailors
and their families on the middeck below. The only ones not watching him were the
goggled helmsmen, whose backs were turned because they were intent on wrestling
with the great spoked wheel.
"Why not?" she retorted. "You'll he sleeping on the open deck with them,
eating with them, breathing their breath, feeling their elbows at every turn,
cursing, laughing, fighting, getting drunk, making love, all, all on the open
deck. So why not embrace me? Or don't you want me to be here?"
"The thought never entered my head," he said, stepping up to her and taking
her in his arms. Or, if it had, he rejected, you can bet that I'd not dare say
it.
After all, it was good to feel her soft, warm, firmly curved body again and
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