"Aye—aye," again a storm of voices answered his suggestion.
"A vote—a vote!" someone began shouting.
"Let Tamarizia's message be strong."
In the end, once the turmoil excited by the Bithurian and Jadgor had in a measure subsided, a formal vote was taken, and Croft himself was empowered to draft the message entrusting it to one of the regular government couriers—men so employed for years and of trained endurance. Well satisfied, he went back to the palace, worked half the night in formulating it to his liking, interviewed the man who was to bear it, and watched his galley sail out of Zitra and turn north at dawn.
And now Himyra and his work behind its red walls called him. He lost small time in answering its call. Once more his galley slipped forth from the massive sea-doors. Zitra sank into the Central Sea—or seemed to, slipping little by little beneath the sparkling waters with its shimmering milk white walls.
Speed. He had used the word to Jadgor. And now he called upon the captain of the galley for it—speed to Himyra. And he promised himself speed on the task before him once he reached Aphur's ruddy city—such speed as never before, not even in the heat of his preparation against the Zollarian war, had he employed.
For three days he chafed against the surge and plunge of the galley, the slither of each passing wave, until after dawn on the morn of the fourth, the mouth of the Na was reached. Eight days had been consumed on the journey—eight days wherein Naia of Aphur had lain in the room under Helmor's palace—their light, save for a few brief moments with each dawning, shut away from her purple eyes—growing ever darker and larger in the white mask of her face.
Eight days. The thought stabbed Croft almost as keenly as a dagger-thrust might have hurt. Eight days—and how much longer until he finished his work. There were times when his course—the time of her durance, seemed an infinity of days no less to him than to Naia of Aphur herself—times when, save for his unshakable resolution, he would have been tempted to wring his hands, to mouth at the trick fate had played upon him, to curse—perhaps to shriek his protest at the seemingly countless delays by which even in his labors he was faced.
And Naia of Aphur had not even labor to break the ordeal of her waiting. On the morning of that eighth day Jason Croft, Mouthpiece of Zitu, stood looking down to the swirl of the Na's yellow flood past the hull of the galley with a somber face.