Chapter fifteen
Of Avec, Ilter, and ripe fruitAvec Brand, also, was flung down with me. He was a Niltch. At the time I had no idea what that could be.
The bottom of the voller did not smell as pleasantly as I suspected a voller should smell, although for a man like myself who knows what an eighteenth-century seventy-four’s bilges smelled like after eighteen months on blockade, smells are usually merely information clusters. This voller had been carrying gregarians, squishes, and malsidges. I saw no reason, now, to wait before freeing myself.
“Avec!” I said, not loudly, but not whispering, either. “Is your crime so serious?”
I wanted to know if he was just a petty criminal who was always in trouble, or if he had just done one thing wrong.
“Serious?” He chuckled, there, tied up in the m
