03
Our course, inwards to the brightest part of the sky, was so imprecise that it allowed the tillers to be lashed most of the time, with slight adjustments made every so often to account for air currents or to avoid islands and such. We kept our watches, taking turns sleeping when we grew sleepy, but otherwise, all we needed to do was to feed the firebox and oil the chugging little steam engine every so often. To pass the watch when we were all awake, we'd "exercise" with our bamboo swords and then sit around yarning and/or playing Dragon's Luck, or one of the half a dozen card games KaRaya was trying to teach me.
This education was slowly draining my pouch of my share of the dragon disks, much to Hissi's hissing disgust, which quickly turned to exacerbation, and finally action.
'Alright, if you're so smart, what card should I play?' I snapped, as Hissi, draped over my shoulder, her head at my chin, gave a loud, dismissive snort as I selected my card.
She slipped down a little and touched her nose to the Green Serpent Dragon card.
'Right,' I muttered and replacing my card, played the Green Serpent. 'You play this hand.'
She did. And won. Apparently she had not been just wasting her time all those watches when she was observing the card games in the bunkhouse aboard the Bird of Passage.
So, with little to lose, I let Hissi play for me. She didn't win every hand, but she was winning many of them until KaRaya tossed down the last card in a losing hand, and angrily sneered, 'Whom am I playing here? Hissi or Wilitang?'
'Does it matter?'
'Three hand's a better game. Hissi can play her own hand, she's won her stake...'
Hissi gave a little bark of laughter and shot off my shoulder to take her position between us on the deck. She reached over and, grabbing the thin leather pouch I had my dragon disks in, pulled it over to her side.
'Hey, those aren't all yours!'
'Most of 'em are,' said KaRaya with a grin as she shuffled the cards. 'We need to come up with something to hold her cards. I don't think she can hold them herself, and well, we don't want little claw holes in the cards... Let me think...'
She thought for a moment, and stood and wandered off to root around in the remaining junk below deck. Hissi sat tall on her rear legs, tail behind her, grinning proudly at me. Of course, she was always grinning, since her crocodile jaws always gives the impression of a grin, so her grin was in her little glittering black eyes and angle of her head.
'So you know how to play cards, do you?'
She snorted dismissively.
'Or are you just reading our minds?'
She gave her barking laugh, and then hissed dismissively. Even as a pea-brained newly hatched dragon she never had a great respect for my mind. Her walnut sized brain now, had no more respect for it either.
KaRaya returned with a small wooden chest which she set down on its side before Hissi. 'We can stick the cards between the box and the lid. You,' this to Hissi, 'just point to the card you want to play, as you have been doing, and we'll play it. Teeth and claws would soon make our deck a tattered wreck and we wouldn't like that, would we?'
Hissi agreed with a shake of her head and a long, low hiss.
'And, oh, give Wilitang some of those disks. We'll see who wins more of them, you or I.'
It was a close-run affair, but Hissi, I think, won more of them and a fair amount of KaRaya's as well, since I was often out before the game ended.
At last KaRaya exploded, 'How in Inferno Island can I be losing to a Simla dragon?'
'Blame it on that crew of yours.'
I'd been asking the same question myself. Of course, she'd been watching us play for some time and perhaps following the instructions KaRaya was giving me on how to play, but I had a feeling she knew it all already. 'She spent a lot of time while I slept in the bunk room watching the off-duty crew play cards. She must've picked up the idea of how the game works from them and perhaps your instructions.'
'I think it takes more than just watching card playing to learn how to play cards. DaJon's ginki-bird was watching too, but I doubt it would clean me out of dragon disks.'
'Simla dragons and ginki-birds are beasts of different feathers. I've known only one other Simla dragon, but they're clearly intelligent, and likely telepathic as well. She's probably reading our minds as we play. I don't know if she can see our cards through our eyes, but I'm certain she can sense our thoughts on the hand.'
'I suppose? the Simla dragons I encountered in the stories I read as a kid were pretty wise, but I'm not sure they're really telepathic. Dragons are considered intelligent creatures in the Saraime, while lizards are considered animals, though how the line is drawn, I'm not sure. But Simla dragons are dragons in that sense, but I never heard of them being card sharks.'
'Blame it on the company she keeps. That, and reading your mind...'
'Still...'
'How else do you explain how she's not only playing the game as it should be played, but winning, even against you?'
A shrug. A dark look at the little dragon. 'Luck.'
A dismissive hiss from the little dragon.
'Oh, there's luck in the cards,' I said to keep the peace. 'But luck doesn't explain it all. She knows how the game works and I've no doubt that she may be cheating a little...' A hiss from the little dragon. 'Well, you could be... But why am I telling you all this? I gather Simlas are familiar in the Saraime. Every Temtres ship seemed to have at least one of them aboard. You should know more about them than I. I was told that all the great dragons are intelligent and are the true rulers of the Pela.'
Hissi barked her approval.
KaRaya put the cards away. 'There's no end to the islands. And there's no end to the stories about the islands. You hear all sorts of stories about all sorts of dragons, Simlas included. I'm tired now, the watch is yours, Wilitang.'
'Aye, it's mine,' I acknowledged formally, mostly out of habit.
As KaRaya went forwards to her hammock strung between the two decks, I said to Hissi softly, 'She doesn't like to lose.'
Hissi agreed, with a soft hiss.
'Best remember that, if you like playing cards.'
She gave me a long look with her black eyes, gathered my meaning, and hissed her agreement.
When I awoke from my nap, I found KaRaya and Hissi playing Dragon's Luck on deck before the tiller. Hissi resting on her hind legs, her tail behind her, was hunched over, examining her cards and KaRaya's play with great intensity. She had a new card holder - a nice, thick section of bamboo with a slit on top to slip the cards in, and her own pouch to hold her winnings in.
'I'm teaching her DuDan's Folly. You can make a lot of coins with DuDan's Folly, if you know how to play it properly,' said KaRaya looking up as I approached.
Hissi gave an eager, barking laugh.
'The question is, what are you going to do with all coins you win?' I asked Hissi.
It didn't take long to find out, since between the two girls, I soon ran out of dragon disks to wager. KaRaya suggested that perhaps I might trade some of my share of the trade trinkets for some of Hissi's dragon disk winnings. 'Charge her retail price,' she added.
Hissi hissed dismissively.
However, it proved easy to convince Hissi that she looked dashing with a bright, colorful scarf around her neck. It only took one long look in a shard of a mirror with a bright scarf to convince her that Simla dragons looked even more beautiful with a scarf - and bright broaches to pin on it. This passion for style kept me in dragon disks until almost the end of the voyage. And though, by the end of the voyage she had ended up with both my supply of trinkets, and dragon disks - I did manage to retain my share of the ship and its major assets, by refusing to play every time KaRaya and Hissi played. And I did charge that young, arrogant slip of a dragon, full retail.
Card playing was not enough to keep KaRaya amused. We hadn't stopped on that island to cut bamboo blades for health.
'Are you any good with a blade?' she had asked on the second or third rou
nd of watches, after growing restless.
'I believe so. Though, having to use claw-toed boots to stay attached to land has put a crimp in my style,' I replied.
'We can't have that,' she exclaimed at once, and went off, to return shortly with two bamboo poles she'd found under the deck, which she split and strapped to the edge of our cutlasses. 'I don't want you getting too cut up.'
That done, we cleared a space on the deck and set out to practice our fencing. Or at least that's what I thought we were doing.
Neither of us got maimed, but it was a close-run affair. I was a better fencer, but she was far more agile with her articulated and clawed feet and could fight from every odd angle, even clinging to the grating overhead effortlessly. If she would've been content to practice forms and routines, the sheathed cutlasses would have sufficed. But she wasn't. Practice for her was fighting off pirates on the deck of the ship - which is to say, anything goes. I feared that her anything goes style, with wild attacks from all angles would have me - or her - accidentally poking an eye out or some such thing. One such thing was the low attack she favored - her laughter telling me that she was just doing it just to alarm me. Which it did.
'Enough. I've no intention of losing an eye to practice sword play.' I panted after a while.
'I'm keeping my attacks well away from your eyes, Wilitang.' She grinned.
'I noticed. However, I thought we were going to practice, to work on form, not conduct some freewheeling bout.'
'But this is how we fight. Maybe on your islands you step and stomp, but we broad-feathered folk fight far more freely than that. And it's the broad-feathered folk you're likely to be fighting with a sword.'
'As long as my darter has darts and is charged, I'll not be fighting anyone, broad or fine-feathered with a sword,' I replied.
'As long as your darter has darts. And when it doesn't?'
'I intend to live a safe and sane life, one that I'll not need darts.'
She grinned, waving her cutlass about to encompass the dragon boat and sky-sea. 'Nice start.'
'Live and learn.'
She shook her head. 'I think, Wilitang, you're doomed to run out of darts. Remember, you have a boat to collect in the Outward Islands and a girl to find on a Temtre ship somewhere in the Donta Islands. You'd best learn how to wield a sword and move about broad-feathered - island - style. I'll tell you what. We'll keep an eye out for a bamboo forest, and we'll cut a bundle of young reeds. That's how we learned as kids. They're light and supple enough so that I can poke you...
'The Neb you can...'
'...without hurting you. And we'll make leather masks to protect our eyes. I'll leave you to come up with something to protect your jewels...'
Shortly after that we found the bamboo grove island I mentioned. We tied up alongside and cut a large bundle of young, green blades of a certain size. We then spent several watches crafting handles and guards that could be attached to the bamboo blades since the reeds had only a limited lifespan, especially with KaRaya "island" style sword fighting. I also fashioned a bamboo dagger as well. With KaRaya capable of coming at me at all angles, I figured I'd be needing a second blade. We also crafted leather masks that were tied tightly around our heads and necks with a bowed bamboo piece for a nose guard to keep the mask far enough away from our eyes to provide a cushion in the event of a hit. We punched small holes in the leather to see through. They allowing a rather dim and limited view, but gave me a much more comfortable feeling when facing KaRaya's carefree attacks. And I did fashion a coconut shell to protect my jewels - though my armored clothing protected me from even the sharp point of a splintered blade. And thus, equipped, we fenced for hours each round with only bruises to show for it. I slowly evolved a style of footwork that kept one claw-toed boot lightly attached to the carpeted deck and capable of being easily ripped free, as needed. KaRaya, after whining about me cheating with a second blade, crafted her own, and I began to teach her how to use it.