Log available here in Word format
The sailors come through into the Captain's cabin, most looking somewhat wide-eyed around themselves as they drip. The more astute members of the party leave the cabin quickly.
Tallow makes to do so, and the Captain speaks to him. "Mister Tallow, see that your men are dried out and sent to their stations. And send a party to clean this mess up."
Tallow nods and makes to leave. Kyril grins at this, but says nothing.
Lucas arrives last. From here, he can see that the storm hasn't reached the ship, which rides at anchor across from the island.
"I don't think we're the ones who slipped," Solange states as she puts away Lucas's trump. "Slippage requires movement, and we haven't moved, as you can see. You, however, have been moving all over the place."
"We walked to a beach and inspected a wreck," says Lucas, wandering to the railing to look back at the island. "We walked back - well, scampered - to that ridge there when we had word that the ship had gone. Then we took shelter on this side of the islannd in a cave - I wonder if you can make it out through the foliage - around there. All appearances and rumours to the contrary, I'm not incompetent - I shouldn't slip in the course of a simple stroll. Not unless something else is happening; something untoward. A more powerful will than mine operating on the island. And that, whatever cheap jibes you may have heard, limits the field considerably. I have a feeling ... "
He stops and shakes his head. "Once the storm has passed, we should return and retrieve the longboat. Presumably with this sized crew, we have a second - or some smaller vessel. After that irritating business with the Titanic, I do believe one should have plenty of options for escape."
Solange gazes out at the island as well. "I don't think you'd just slip on your own, either, which points to something untoward apparently happening. So what could it be? It's either a natural phenomena or man-made. If man-made, for what purpose? We're out here in the middle of nowhere."
"How loosely are you using the term 'man'?" reponds Lucas. "In this context, it wouldn't apply to any of us. Or to the Chaosians. It strikes me that this could be an excellent jumping off point for Amber, if you preferred the physical plane for your journey. A portal ... but how? And to what?"
The captain speaks up. "Excuse me, my Lords. At this distance from Amber, I'd have been surprised if we didn't depart Amber's seas. The instability out this way is why we don't have good charts. There aren't any paths on the Golden Circle that start this far from the City."
Kyril looks at him. "So you don't come this way because..."
The Captain's bland delivery continues "Because if we don't have royalty with us, we might not be able to come back."
Solange glances at Kyril to gauge his reaction to that proclamation.
"We have an anamoly here," Solange continues. "Burning question: do we stay and investigate, or do we continue on in our search for the Paresh?"
"The fire of your burning question, sweet cos, will shortly be drowned out in the downpour," says Lucas. "I say we wait out the storm at a safe distance from shore. After it has passed, we recover the longboat and then, based on what - if anything - we discover then, we explore further here or we press on."
He inspects his jacket disparagingly. "Actually," he adds, "I think I did not come off wholly unscathed from our expedition. I believe - indeed, I am convinced of it - I have a water stain on my sleeve. I must change at once. Do feel free to join me for a drink and civilised conversation once the charming novelty of watching the rain fall wears off."
And, unless detained, Lucas will head for his cabin.
Solange looks after him as he departs. Her expression, rather than annoyed or angry, is merely...thoughtful.
After half a moment or so, she turns to the captain. "We'll wait out the storm--move the ship to avoid it if you want, whatever you need to do in your best judgment--and then we'll go retrieve your longboat."
The captain nods. "Yes, Ma'am. If we lose the boat, we'll get or make another."
She nods a farewell to the captain, then smiles an invitation for Kyril to join her if he likes as she also leaves the cabin.
Kyril does. "If I knew of a harmless compound that would cause your cousin to sweat profusely and stain all his own clothing, I should keep it to myself, shouldn't I?"
Solange smiles and reaches up to touch his cheek, then lets her hand drop. "I think he wanted to talk to me privately. You know, most people would just excuse themselves politely and ask on the way out. Lucas, for whatever reason, likes to hide behind that haughty peevishness of his. I don't believe he means it.
"That's not an excuse," she continues, holding up a hand. "Merely an observation from someone who has seen him be both amazingly charming and amazingly an asshole and believes both extremes are an act."
Kyril shrugs. "Maybe, but if it's not worth anyone's effort to pierce the veil to see his inner buddha nature, no one will. What's the difference between acting like a jerk all your life and being a jerk?"
"Your motivations for doing it, perhaps?" Solange ventures, then shakes her head. "Enough with psychoanalyzing Lucas. And this waiting is driving me insane." From the emotion she puts into the last statement, Kyril may guess she's referring to more than just the present situation. "Let me go talk to my cousin and find out what the hell he wants."
"I thought we'd expanded our scope to everyone. I'm not convinced that intentions, good or bad, matter as much as outcomes. If I intend to save someone's life and I don't know how to operate properly, they're still dead on the table. At some level the actor is the Actor." It's a philosophy Kyril has espoused to Solange before, although usually he has a drink in hand when it comes up.
"The road to hell and all that?" Solange says, then shrugs. He has a point, but this isn't the time to debate it. No drinks in their hands, for starters.
She reaches out and gives Kyril's hand a quick squeeze. "I'll get a straighter answer if you don't come. He acts up more when we're together around him."
"Is that it? Well he'll have to just suffer, preferably in silence. Go. Come back soon."
"Always," she replies solemnly, then smiles.
Solange leaves Kyril and heads to Lucas's cabin.
Lucas saunters into his cabin, under the baleful eye of the parrot.
"Hello, sexy," says Lucas to the parrot.
"I," says the parrot coldly, "am the very model of a modern major general."
Lucas ignores the bird, and instead walks over to the bureau where stands a framed portrait. Solace - and the children. No trump this, but Lucas stares at it for a long time as though willing it into moving, breathing life.
"Hello, gorgeous," he says absently. He does not seem to be addressing the portrait.
The parrot seems to feel that some sort of response to this is called for, and ruffles its feathers.
"A wandering minstrel I," it observes. "A thing of shreds and patches."
Lucas turns and fixes the parrot with a steady eye.
"As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, I've got a little list--I've got a little list," he says evenly.
The parrot, miffed, puts its head under its wing rather ostentatiously.
Lucas sighs and walks to his berth. He sits down upon it and stares at the opposite wall.
From this angle, and from this angle only, it is possible to see that there is a narrow path between Lucas's multifarious belongings and the opposite wall. A corridor of clear space.
Lucas leans over and reaches under his pillow to retrieve two objects - something that looks rather like a baseball mitt and a firm leather ball. He sits upright and throws it so that it follows a trajectory of floor, wall, Lucas's mitted hand.
Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand.
The parrot raises its head above its wing to watch.
Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand.
By and by, the parrot starts to whistle a catchy little ditty.
By and by a little longer Lucas hears a knock on his cabin door. "Lucas? It's me," says Solange. "Can I come in?"
"Come in!" responds Lucas.
When she enters, the parrots breaks off from the tune he was whistling, gives an appropriate wolf whistle and proclaims, "Hiya, sexy!"
The inflection in its voice seems to be Lucas's.
Solange startles briefly. "That's new. I've not heard him say that before."
Lucas shoots a suprirsed, but approving look at the bird. He is standing in the middle of the room, calm and composed (although the eagle-eyes might spot a bump under his pillow). Unless he has several jackets all of the same cut and colour (not an impossibility, knowing Lucas), he has not changed.
"Cousin," he says warmly. "No escort?"
Solange waves a hand. "Let's pass on the verbal sparring and get right to it. Was there something you wanted to say to me privately?"
"Spoilsport," says Lucas without rancour. "I was hoping to borrow your cards ... for a reading. Perhaps they can tell us more about the island."
She raises an eyebrow--apparently this wasn't what she was expecting Lucas to want--then nods. "All right. You'll probably just get a bunch of ambiguous crap, but sure, why not?"
Solange takes her trump deck out of her pocket, pauses ever so slightly, then hands it over to Lucas. The trumps are in a hinged wooden case painted with a geometric design.
"Have you ever had enough trumps to do one of these before?" she asks curiously.
Lucas grins as he opens the box. "Now," he says, "let's not be petty."
Solange returns his grin. "I didn't think so. I'm not being petty, just...inquisitive."
He shuffles the cards with the ease of someone who has earned several respectable livings in his time on a varierty of craft dedicated to the pleasures of the gambling table, such as steamers plying the Mississippi, small intense junks moored in the harbours off Indo-China, and those attractive if idiosyncratic craft that traffick beatween the gamma bands off Episilon Five. Of course, there the cards have fourteen irregular sides and so are a little harder to shuffle ...
He seats himself at the table and nods to Solange to do likewise.
She straddles the other chair and rests her chin on the back. Solange proceeds to watch Lucas and her trumps intently.
He sets out the cards before him in the pattern known, in some Shadows, as a Celtic Cross. And in others, of course, as a Keltic Kross. And in some Shadows not at all.
[For those not familiar with the tarot, this is the spread Lucas is using:]
1: The Griffin
2: Spring
3: Death (reversed)
4: The Phoenix
5: Striking the Dragon's Tail
6: Florimel
7: The Fool
8: Brand (reversed)
9: The Defender
10: The Priestess
Lucas does not feel that this reading has much bearing on the island.
Lucas starts to turn them, murmuring under his breath. Solance can hear the words, as he does so, almost like a children's rhyme, interspersed with Lucan asides.
"This covers me ... really? This crosses me ... This crowns me .... ah. This is beneath me ... This is behind me .... This is before me - oh, what a joy! And yes, yes, this is me. So surprise me. This is my house - ah. Hmmmm. My hopes and fears .... and what will come."
A long silence.
"Oh," says Lucas. "Oh my paws and whiskers."
He looks up at Solange. "You know, I don't think this is about the island at all."
Solange frowns and cocks her head as she studies the cards. "They look to me as if they're talking about your hopes and fears of being tied down to Solace and your kids." She looks up at Lucas to gauge his reaction.
"That might be one way of reading it," says Lucas. He steeples his fingers, looking down at the cards. "There are others."
"I am the Fool. And reading this, I begin to think that I might have been a fool in truth, with no piety about my licence to amuse.
"Bravery ... what bravery? Crossed. My plans for a new life, for new hope, dragged down by the heavy hand of the past. I attempt a rebirth ... a new life, but I take a false step, a dangerous step, and I confront ... Maman. I become the Fool indeed, a prisoner of my past. I've put Brand behind me, reverse him, taken him out of my life - but his poison affects me still, like the filthy exhaust from a badly tuned engine as it drives away. My hope is to protect my family, my fears are for them ... yes. But the Priestess? What have I to do with the Priestess, or she with me? How can I stand between the magical and the mundane?
"My head ... hurts."
"This is why I don't do trump readings," Solange states.
He raises his hands to either side of his head, and his fingers sink into his dark hair, clenching till the knuckles show white.
"She knows. Dam' it. She knows."
"Who knows? What?" Solange rests her chin in her hand, her elbow on the back of the chair.
"My mother," says Lucas. "The trumps - well. That would not take the longest of stretches. Doubtless Maman has had her suspicions for some time. But I believe that she's worked out my heavy-handed attempts to contact Solace."
Solange looks down at Brand's card thoughtfully.
He stands up suddenly, as though he can no longer hold himself in, and starts to pace, watched by an interested parrot.
"Fool! No, no, idiot! And I hand them all over to her. 'Keep them safe, Maman.' Of course, my sweet.' Idiot!"
"Lucas...calm down..." Solange says, sitting up in some alarm. "Flora is not going to do anything to those kids. They're her grandchildren."
Lucas merely turns and looks at her - a look redolent of a certain cynicism that is as French as pate de fois gras.
She pauses briefly to reconsider things, then continues. "Even if, from a very machiavellian standpoint they're still collateral. She's not going to do anything to them if she thinks she can use them to control you. And as long as you don't do something rash and force her hand, everything will be status quo. So calm down."
"She won't harm the children," says Lucas with certainty. "But she will have no such scruples about Solace, unless she believes their mother's well-being is essential to the children. Oh, she won't kill her. Maman's attitude with be that she need not strive officiously to keep alive ma pauvre Solace."
Solange runs a hand over her face. "Why would she let Solace die? What would it gain her?" she asks reasonably, trying to diffuse the situation. "I can think of more reasons for Flora to keep her alive."
"She let my father die," says Lucas. "Tant pis. He was no longer amusing to her. So. Solace she has never found amusing."
Solange has nothing to say to that. She switches the subject.
"Okay...question for you...why does it matter so much if she knows you can create trumps?"
"It's not the creating," says Lucas. "It's what I might do with them." He shakes his head. "She sees them as something that I had from Brand and that, in itself, is dangerous."
He seems to be calming for the expolsive outburst, but it is just that the temperature of his mood has gone from hot to cold. The anger is still there.
Solange spreads her hands. "Paige learned to draw trumps from Brand too, but no one's organized a posse to hunt her down. What does Flora think you're planning to do with trumps you've created that is so dangerous from what anyone else who has the skill to create trumps has done?"
Lucas hesitates for a moment in the middle of the room, and then lifts a hand, running it through his dark hair and pushing it back from his face.
"Because she knows ... I could have used a trump when the children were in danger, and I chose not to. Doubtless she thinks she can do better." He shrugs. "Perhaps she can. But I would prefer not to have my children raised by her."
From Lucas's tone, that seems to be something of a studied understatement.
Solange exhales. "She's not said anything to you. It could be that she doesn't know. You're basing this sudden paranoia on interpreting an ambiguous card reading.
"But whether she knows or not, it's apparent to me watching you pace back and forth that you need to talk to her about it. Figure out what stance you want to take and be the first to bring it up. You'll be coming in with a stronger position if you bring it up than if she brings it up."
"You're suggesting that I tell my mother anything?" says Lucas, his voice blank with disbelief. "Of my own free will?"
"Yes, I am," Solange replies seriously. "I'm not saying to divulge your every secret to her, but telling her bits and pieces will give you more latitude and control in your relationship with her than if you never tell her anything."
"I'll take it under advisement," says Lucas. "I must consider, after all, that the cards might be telling me what would happen if I abandoned my customary habit of being economical with la verite, and told my mother anything like the truth.
"Now, shall I ply you with alcohol, or shall we go on deck and see what the storm is doing?"
"Phwwwwoar," suggests the parrot, salaciously.
"Storm," Solange says, giving the parrot the hairy eyeball. She gathers up her trumps, counts the cards to make sure they're all there, then replaces them in their case. Lucas's trump goes on top and Gerard's is second.
"Although I'm happy for you for all the deep insights the cards provided into your own life, I have to admit disappointment that there was nothing to apply to the situation at hand," Solange states, looking up from placing the trump case in an inner pocket.
"We can try again later," says Lucas. He massages the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. "Oddly enough, the expenditure of comparatively little physical effort is nonetheless taxing."
"If you wish."
"Shall we?" She waves to the door and precedes Lucas out onto deck. Once there, she looks for Kyril and for the current state of the storm.
Kyril is standing at the rail, talking to Tallow.
The storm is pressing closer. It's now raining on the island, and if it keeps up this pace, it will reach the ship in minutes. The storm seems to have an unusually distinct leading edge. It's raining hard behind it, but not before it. There are sailors moving quickly on deck and above.
"Interesting," says Lucas, after watching it for a moment or two. "Are you sufficiently recovered from the exertions of bringing us aboard to try shifting us away from it? Or, if you prefer, it away from us?"
He gives a sudden smile. "Bet you tuppence that you can't."
"Heh. The storm does look unusual. I hope you're wrong." Solange waves to Kyril, then leaves Lucas to walk over to the captain.
He strolls forward to where Kyril and Tallow are standing.
"So," he says. "What do you make of this, eh?"
A somewhat grandoise gesture indicates the approaching storm.
The two men turn towards Lucas, but keep an eye on the weather.
Kyril shrugs. "I think it's atmospheric condensation, a natural phenomenon brought about by convection patterns in a generalized hydrologic cycle. Tallow thinks it has to do with the storm in a nearby parallel place called a shadow, and speculates that there's a natural path between them that we're near."
"Yes," says Lucas to Kyril, with something of the gentle pleasure of a Victorian anthropologist listening to a remote tribe describing their first encounter with Western artefacts in terms of existing cultural phenomenon and fully meeting his expectations, "I thought you might think something like that."
Kyril smiles, thinly.
"A ship could be very, very lost near here, My Lord," says Tallow. "If naught else, we'll be under what we were sheltering from a bit ago."
Lucas nods, taking this - to him - far more practical view of the situation in his stride.
"My cousin is going to try and move it away from us. But it might be advisable to batten down the hatches in any case."
"I'll inform the Captain, My Lord." Tallow makes to leave, assuming he's been dismissed.
If he can see advantages in being lost, he does not mention them to Tallow. Instead he addresses Kyril once more.
"It might be advisable to take some rudimentary precautions, though. I have a sou'wester in my stateroom you can borrow. It is a rather unfortunate shade - I believe the words 'day-glo pink' were banded about when I purchased it. But any port in a storm, eh? Or indeed, any sou'wester."
He turns his eyes back to the leading edge of the storm. "I wonder," he says softly, "what port this storm might show."
"One with our missing ship, perhaps? What you all found doesn't match up with the ship that went missing, according to Mister Tallow."
"Indeed," says Lucas. "Indeed."
He stares at the storm for a moment longer, and then smiles. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen. I must slip into something more durable."
He heads for his cabin.
Read this log here in Word format
LXII: Storm on the Island | Index | LXIV: Swept Away ... to Aesir Island
