Claustrophobic panic rose in Makare’s throat. She didn’t say anything but something in the way that she clawed at the handholds in the ceiling must have tipped Djet off.

“Stay calm. It won’t take us long. If we get blocked then we just have to let go, and the flow of the water will carry us out.”

“Aye, aye, Capt’n” said Cleo at the front of the boat, sounding like she did this kind of thing every day of the week and three times on feast days.

#

Makare looked up at the circle of concerned faces and blinked. “What happened?” she said, feeling like that was a stupid question and she should know.

Torborg was crouched over her. “You had me worried for a bit there. Tight squeeze like that when you’re not expecting it can mess some people up.”

“Did I faint or something?” said Makare.

“Looked like you were having trouble catching your breath,” said Djet.

Djet and Torborg helped her to her feet. She’d been taken out of the bokkura and laid down on the rough stone bank of the nameless tributary of the nameless river. The circle of concern dissipated and the rest of the class got on with the work of pulling the boats out of the water.

Cleo took her hand and led her away from the edge of the river and up a slight slope to a flat area where the teacher was lighting a campfire. She must have brought the wood with her as there was no sign of any plant life or driftwood.

The teacher guided Makare to sit close to the flickering fire. Makare looked up at the wall of paintings. There were so many of them. Far more than Makare had expected. There were so many different styles that they had to be the work of many hands. Not just Bassin Barrode and his crew but generations of followers.

“How many artists worked on this?” she said out loud.

“That’s a very astute question,” said the Teacher. “There are people working on that. At the moment they’re still trying to work out which images are by each of the artists who painted here. They’re also working on a timeline so they know which painters were most likely to be working from either life or from personal memories. When everyone has finished eating we’ll go up to the grove. That’s where the oldest paintings are. The ones we think came first and may have been painted by Bassin Barrode’s crew, or at least by people who knew them.”

#

Makare was still feeling rough as she pulled the fruit and the waterskin from her bag. Torborg sat down next to her, “Are you going to be able to eat? I’ve seen people get the fear like that before, and eating something can help afterward but often they feel too queasy.” He unfolded a packet of oiled paper from his pack. Inside was a traditional Dwerg soda bread. “Want a corner of my roll?” he said

Makare felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the craggy bread and the smell of the filling. “Is that liver sausage?”

“My grandfather makes it. There’s so much garlic.”

“I’ll swap you for some of my goat’s cheese,” she said.

“Ooh, yes please,” said Torborg.

Cleo and Djet joined them and soon they were swapping morsels of food around the fire

#

Once fed and watered, the teacher led them up a steep slope to a long cave. One side of the cave was a single curving wall beneath a natural vaulted ceiling. The other side of the cave was a much thinner wall, as fragile as lace and full of holes. The sunlight bounced in and hit the floor of the cave where someone had laid down a lot of whitewash that both diffused and reflected the light up onto the paintings.

Makare tried to match the colourful paintings before her to the monochrome statues from Liberator square. There was one all in white. Could that be Valin Khouri, the cook? She moved closer, holding her rune lantern up. It was a running man dressed in white and holding a chef’s cleaver but he didn’t look angry. He looked scared. He was shown running from men in armour who were holding spears.

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The next figure wasn’t running from the men with spears. He was surrounded by them but it was clear that this was a problem for them and not for him. His huge stature and his axe marked him out as Gart Touran. He was wearing long loose clothing that swirled around him in several side by side drawings that showed him defeating the men with spears.

The Gart Touran of the paintings did not have the handsome face of the statue. His skin was a greyish-purple. He had the distinctive under-bite and upward curving, tusk-like teeth of the Sandwalkers. He also had thick white hair, tied in a topknot. Probably not a full-blood Sandwalker since they usually had scaly bumps on their scalp rather than hair.

“Gart was a Sandwalker?” said Cleo from behind Makare.

“Looks like,” said Makare.

“Still hot though,” said Cleo.

“Possibly hotter,” said Makare. “I love a guy with a neat topknot.”

“His colouring is very striking,” said Torborg.

“But we can’t be sure it’s accurate,” said Djet, “dyes fade over time.”

“If his skin colour was darker than that it just makes him even more distinctive”, said Makare.

“I was thinking about his eyes,” said Djet. “Surely they can’t have been violet. You’d think one of his shipmates would have said something if they had been.”

“They didn’t say anything about him being a Sandwalker,” said Makare. “Someone didn’t want his details getting passed on.”

Torborg made a dissatisfied noise with the back of his throat. “Could have been suppressed by later generations. Modern Sandwalkers have that modesty thing going on. Same as Sarouin.

“There’s always racism,” said Djedhor, who had overtaken them and was looking at the next cluster of paintings.

“Maybe later generations didn’t want to admit that one of the founders of Sweetwater was a filthy Sandpig, as they’d probably say.”

Makare shivered, suddenly uncomfortable. “I’ve noticed there are very few Sandwalkers in Sweetwater. Even fewer than in Hathorth and that city is not welcoming to basically anyone.”

Cleo moved on to the paintings that Djedhor was inspecting. “I think we’re going to learn a lot of things that someone didn’t want us to know.” She was inspecting a painting of Avine Gower slitting a man’s throat from behind. It was part of a sequence showing him killing the men who were surrounding a woman. She was dark and beautiful and dressed in flowing robes that both revealed and concealed her figure. A split skirt that revealed practical leather boots with armoured greaves over them. A neckline open to her belt, the same wide blue sash belt as the others wore, the nearest thing the crew had to a uniform. She carried a white staff and a whip and she was calling down lightning from the skies and sending it to arc from soldier to soldier down the line of men chasing Valin Khouri.

Was Valin running away from trouble or was he a distraction? Was Calyn Okoro a damsel in distress, defended by the ruthless Avine, or was he simply watching her back while she dealt with the greater threat?

Avine was so wrapped up, in a hooded cloak and a scarf across his face, that it was impossible to tell what his ethnicity might be.

Marake moved to the next group of figures. Su Yin was the first of the crew that she spotted. “Looks like you were right,” she said to Djet. Su Yin’s hair was long and braided but they were simple braids, twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck.

She wore the same kind of short mage coat that many modern fire mages wore. Like them she had the sleeves bound tightly at the cuff.

She was strapped into a harness at the back of a skyship and blasting a jet of fire over the aft rail. Was she defending the ship, or pushing it forward? Both?

The ship was being boarded by men in armour. Bassin Barrode was at the helm, one hand on the ship’s wheel and the other fending off a spear thrust with his blade. Barrode was much less dramatic than in every other painting Makare had seen. His long hair was tied up, his shirt sleeves barely billowed at all and he had a bandage covering his left eye and most of his left cheek.

The final member of the crew, Jenn Tahan, was between Barrode and Su Yin. The painter had tried to capture her movement and so she was a blur of dark skin and white shirt, recognisable mainly from her twin scimitars.

“So that’s The Magpie,” said Djet, sounding unimpressed. He was clearly seeing something that Makare had missed.

She took a step back to stand beside him and realised that the random dark marks around the various crew members were, indeed showing a skyship. Once she knew what she was looking for it became clear that the whole sequence was a single scene of the crew repelling boarders. The shape of the ship was distorted by the uneven surface of the rock and by the artist’s choice to try and show both rear and side views in the same image but with a little imagination Makare could imagine it as a single scene.

Valin kited the boarders away from the people keeping the ship moving. Gart kept the rest of the force occupied. Calyn protected Valin, confident that Avine would protect her and that Gart could take care of himself. Su Yin kept the ship moving and deterred pursuit while Barrode kept the ship on course and Jenn kept both of them alive.

“It’s kind of ugly,” said Djet.

“What?” said Makare, shaken out of her own thoughts.

“The Magpie,” said Djet, “It’s kind of ugly. The poop deck is too big, and it’s carrying too much sail, it’s out of balance.”

The more Makare looked at the painting of the ship the more she agreed with Djet.

Cleo joined them. “Could it just be that ship design has moved on in 500 years?” she said.

“Good ship design usually looks good,” said Torborn. “That’s what my Dad says, anyway.”

“He’d know,” said Makare. Torborn’s father was one of the most highly regarded shipwrights in Sweetwater. “Maybe the problem is artistic licence? Whoever painted this only had so much space to fit the ship into.”

They might have spent more time discussing the merits of the painting but their teacher’s voice cut through, calling them all to make camp.