“You could give it to me,” suggested the Dog, without moving her gaze from the hand that held the cake.
“I don’t think so,” said Sam, taking a bite and making an effort to chew. Then he held out the uneaten half and said, with his mouth full, “But I’ll trade you this half for a close look at your collar.”
Before he finished speaking, the Dog lunged forward, gulped the cake, and put her chin on Sam’s thigh, her neck in easy reach.
“Why do you want to look at the Dog’s collar?” asked Lirael.
“It has Charter marks I’ve never seen,” replied Sam, reaching down to touch it. It looked like leather with Charter marks set upon it. But as his fingers met the surface, Sam realized it wasn’t leather at all. It was nothing but Charter marks, a great sea of marks, stretching into forever. He felt as if he could push his whole hand into the collar, or dive in himself. And within that great pool of magic, there were very few Charter marks that he actually knew.
Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away, and then, on a whim, scratched the Dog’s head between the ears. She felt exactly as a normal dog should, just as Mogget felt like a cat. But both were intensely magical beings. Only Mogget’s collar was a binding-spell of great force, and the Dog’s collar was something very different, almost like a part of the Charter itself. It had something of the same feel as a Charter Stone.
“Excellent,” sighed the Dog, responding to the scratching. “But do my back as well, please.”
Sam complied, and the Dog stretched out under his fingers, luxuriating in the treatment. Lirael watched, suddenly struck by the realization that she’d never before seen the Dog with another person. The hound had always disappeared when any other people were around.
“Some of the Charter marks in your collar are familiar,” said Sam idly, as he scratched and watched the morning sun play across the water. It was going to be another very hot day, and he’d lost his hat. It must have come off when he fell down the steps of the mill’s landing stage.
The Dog didn’t answer, merely wriggling to direct Sam’s scratching hand farther down her back.
“Only I can’t think where I’ve seen them,” continued Sam, pausing to concentrate. He didn’t know what the Charter marks were for, but he had seen them somewhere else. Not in a grimoire or a Charter Stone, but on some object or something solid. “Not in Mogget’s collar—those are quite different.”
“You think too much,” growled the Dog, though not angrily. “Just keep scratching. You can do under my chin as well.”
“You’re a very demanding Dog for a supposed servant of the Clayr,” said Sam. He looked at Lirael and added, “Is she always like this?”
“Pardon?” asked Lirael, who had started thinking about The Book of the Dead again. It took an effort for her to pay attention to Sam, and for a moment she wished she were back in the Great Library, where no one spoke to her unless they had to.
Sam repeated his question, and Lirael looked at the Dog. “She’s usually worse,” she replied. “If it’s not food she’s after, it’s scratching. She’s incorrigible.”
“That’s why I’m the Disreputable Dog,” said the Dog smugly, wagging her tail. “Not just the Dog. But you’d better stop scratching now, Prince Sameth.”
“Why?”
“Because I can smell people,” replied the Dog, forcing herself up. “Beyond the next bend.”
Sam and Lirael looked, but couldn’t see any sign of habitation or another vessel on the river. The Ratterlin had turned into a wide bend, and the riverbanks were rising into high bluffs of pinkish stone, obscuring the view ahead.
“I can hear roaring, too,” added the Dog, who was now perched on the bow, her ears erect and quivering.
“Like rapids?” asked Lirael nervously. She trusted Finder, but didn’t fancy shooting any waterfalls in her—or in any boat, for that matter.
Sam stood up next to her, keeping one hand on the boom for balance, and tried to see ahead. But whatever was there lay beyond the bend. He took another look at the riverbanks, noting that they’d risen up to become real cliffs, and that the river was getting narrower, and was perhaps only a few hundred yards wide ahead.
“It’s okay,” he said, and then, seeing her puzzlement at the Ancelstierran expression, he added, “I mean it’s all right. We’re coming to the High Bridge Gorge. The river gets a lot narrower, and faster, but not so bad that boats can’t get through. And the river is lower than it should be at this time of year, so I bet it won’t be too fast.”
“Oh, High Bridge,” said Lirael, with considerable relief. She’d read about High Bridge, and had even seen a hand-colored etching of it. “We actually sail under the town, don’t we?”
Sam nodded, thinking. He’d been to the town of High Bridge only once, over a decade ago, with his parents. They’d reached it overland, not on the Ratterlin, but he did remember Touchstone pointing out the guardboats that patrolled upstream of the town, and in the pool beyond High Bridge, where the river widened again. They not only kept at least that part of the Ratterlin free of river pirates but also exacted tolls from traders. Ellimere had probably already given the river-guards orders to “escort” him ashore and return him to Belisaere.
Which would be one way of reaching safety, he thought, and it would make Ellimere responsible for whatever happened next. But he would have to face up to his fight with the constables, and it would mean a delay in any attempt to rescue Nick. And he had no doubt Lirael would choose to go on without him.
“We do, don’t we?” repeated Lirael. “Sail under it?”
“What?” asked Sam, who was still wondering what would be the best thing for him to do. “Yes . . . yes, we do. Um, I’d better lie down under a blanket or something before we’re in sight of the town.”
“Why?” asked Lirael and the Dog at the same time.
“Because he’s a truant Prince,” yawned Mogget, walking up and stretching on his back paws to look ahead. “He ran away, and his sister wants him back for the Belisaere Festival, to play the Summer Fool or some such.”
“The Bird of Dawning,” corrected Sam with embarrassment as he got down into the scuppers, ready to hide.
“When you said you’d left Belisaere to look for Nicholas, I thought you meant you’d been sent by your parents!” exclaimed Lirael, unconsciously taking on the tone she used to scold the Dog. “The way I’ve been sent by the Clayr. You mean they don’t even know what you’re doing?”
“Er . . . no,” replied Sam sheepishly. “Though Dad might have guessed that I’ve gone to meet Nick. If they know I’ve gone, that is. It depends where they are in Ancelstierre. But I’ll explain when we send messages. The only problem is that Ellimere has probably ordered all the Guard and the Constabulary to send me back to Belisaere if they can.”
“Great,” said Lirael. “I was counting on your being useful if we did need to get help along the way. A royal Prince, I thought—”
“Well, I could still be useful—” Sam began to say, but at that moment they rounded the bend, and the Dog let out a warning bark. Sure enough, a guardboat was moored to a large buoy mid river—a long, slim galley of thirty-two oars in addition to its square-rigged sail. As Finder appeared round the bend, a sailor cast off from the buoy, and others raised the red sail, the golden tower of the royal service gleaming upon it.
Sam hunkered down still lower, pulling the blanket across his face. Something touched his cheek as he settled down, and he started, thinking it was a rat. Then he realized Mogget was slinking under the blanket, too.
“No sense in their wondering why an aristocratic cat would share deck space with a mangy dog,” whispered Mogget, close to Sam’s ear under the stifling blanket. “I wonder if they’ll do that old trick city guards do with hay wagons, when they suspect smuggling.”
“What’s that?” Sam whispered back, though he had the feeling he didn’t want to know.
“They stick everything with spears to make sure there’s nothing—or no one—hidden there,”
said Mogget absently. “Mind if I move under your arm?”
“They won’t do that,” said Sam, firmly. “They’ll see this is one of the Clayr’s boats.”
“Will they? They might—but Lirael doesn’t look like a Clayr, does she? You yourself suspected her of stealing this boat.”
“Quiet down there,” woofed the Dog, close by Sam’s other ear. Then he felt her bulk settle in at his side—on top of the blanket. It moved again after that, as Lirael tugged on it so it looked like covered baggage rather than a body.
Nothing happened for at least ten minutes. Mogget seemed to go back to sleep, and the Dog rested more of her weight against Sam’s side. Sam found that while all he could see was the underside of the blanket, he could hear all sorts of sounds he hadn’t noticed before: the creak of the clinker-built hull, the splash of the bow wave, the faint hum of the rigging, and the clatter of the boom as they turned into the wind and stopped.