On Blue's waters

Choora. That is the word they use here for this kind of a dagger. I have been trying to think of it. Choora. It sounds like one of my wives, and no doubt it could be a woman’s name as well, a woman slim and straight, with brown cheeks and golden bangles in her ears and nose. Loyally, Choora remained at my side when we charged and when we broke; and if she never drew a single drop of blood, it was my fault and not hers. All hail Princess Choora!

I traded for the big chopping knives in Pajarocu. Maybe I should have given each a name, but I never did. If Choora is a princess, they were a washerwoman and a maid of all work; but there are times when a sturdy girl who will turn her hand to whatever may be needed is better than a princess with a coral pommel.

A strange expression-“turn her hand.” Did somebody travel once with a woman who had only one arm? Yes, and it was I. And did he sleep with her, and make gentle love to her as I did in our cozy corner under the little foredeck? Were neither of them ever quite able to forget that he had raped her once?

I have tried hard to punish myself for that, and certain other things. No more. Let the Outsider punish me; we deceive ourselves when we think that we can measure out justice to ourselves. I wanted to end my guilt. What was just about that? I should feel guilty. I deserve it.

I should feel a lot more guilty about having had other women while I was (as I still am) wed to poor Nettle. When I read that business about my thoughts flying around her bed, I was sickened.

Sickened!

For all our lives I have been a false lover and a false friend. I would beg her to forgive me if I could. If only I could. I do not dream about her anymore.

Is that bile enough? No, but there will be more later as the occasion demands. As the mood strikes. Let us move on to the river.

That is what I would have called this half-baked book of mine, if only I had thought of it in time: The River. The title would stand equally for the great river on Shadelow-the river on whose bank we found Pajarocu-and for our own much smaller Nadi. (Another wife, a temptress in a swirling skirt, with flashing eyes and hurrying feet, sensuous and tempestuous, suddenly languid and lazily thrilling; a woman like gold at evening, full of blood and crocodiles.)

Anyway, it was my fault. No doubt it always is.

I had set some men to work to tame Nadi’s Lesser Cataracts. First, because I knew we would become richer if we could trade more with the towns nearer the sea, and second because we had men who needed work and could find none except at harvest. To raise the money, I made every foreign merchant who came to our market pay a tax, so much for each man and so much for each beast.

I also lopped the heads of two men who had collected the tax for me and kept part of the money for themselves. I was proud then, and talked to myself about “iron justice.” Yes, iron justice, and I killed two men who had been boys in the Whorl when I myself was a boy there. I do not mean I killed them with my own hands; I did not, but they died at my order, and would have lived without it. What else can you call it? Steely justice from the big, curved blade of my executioner’s sword. How does he feel, that hulking, hard-faced man, slaying men who have done him no harm? Chopping off hands? No worse than I, I hope. Better. I would not want an innocent man to feel the way I do.

I have been away a long time. Will my wives expect me to sleep with them tonight? What will I say to them?

The work went far faster than I had imagined. Our men dug, they blew rock to rubble with powder from the armory, and soon there was a second Nadi, slower, longer, and narrower, looping around the rapids, a Nadi only just deep enough for small boats; but Nadi herself is taking care of that, and quickly, cutting into the red clay and bearing it off. She is still swift in both her divided selves, but not so swift in her new one that boats cannot be hauled around the rapids with bullocks. The Man of Han asked us to cut another such channel around the Cataracts upriver so that boats that reached Gaon could reach Han also. Our merchants were against it, as was only to be expected.

So was I. Hari Mau and I made a trip with the surveyors to look at possible routes, and everything was much worse-steeper slopes, and a lot more rock. All of us agreed it would take a long time and might never be suitable for boats of any size, which would have to be hauled along a lengthy ladder of sharp bends. I told the Man of Han that he would have to pay our workers, and that the work would take years. He offered to send men of his own, which we refused.

As you see, I have made the old design. Does it mean that I am going to continue this folly? No doubt. Nettle will never read it, I know. Neither will my sons. Or I should say, neither will the sons I left behind on Lizard Island. [Nettle has read it. So have Hoof and I.-Hide]