The Red Wolf Conspiracy (20 page)

To the creature this was apparently the last straw. Dancing on one foot, it tossed Frix into the bay and scooped up Pazel in one hand, bellowing like a hundred bulls. Before Pazel knew what was happening he found himself being squeezed in the crook of the monster's elbow.

“Wait!” gasped Pazel. He tried to add,
Please
, but the breath had been knocked from his lungs, and his Gift informed him in an instant that the word did not exist in Augronga. But for an instant one word was enough: the creature hesitated, its raging red eyes fixed on the tarboy.

“You're
both
coming aboard,” Pazel managed to croak. “We need you
both
to lift anchor!”

As soon as the words left his mouth the creature loosened its grip. The augrong gaped at Pazel. Two hundred sailors gaped at the augrong. And in the moment of silence that followed, Mr. Uskins laughed aloud.

“Eat him, then, you daft dirty lizard! We need Frix, but tarboys are a penny a pound! And you'll do this ship a favor if you can choke down that Ormali runt.”

But Uskins had given up on his pseudo-Augronga, and the creature paid no heed to his Arquali. Instead it listened to the rest of Pazel's explanation. Then in deep-chested grunts (and using the foulest metaphor to refer to Mr. Uskins) it relayed the message to its companion. The short-eared creature sighed like the wind.

“Anger for nothing,” it said. “Battle with smoke.”

Its arms fell to its sides. All about the harbor, and aboard the
Chathrand
, men echoed the sigh. The fight was over.

Pazel, however, still hung from the creature's arm. Twisting, he found himself looking sidelong at the crowded quay. It was disturbing to be watched by so many silent people. Faces leaped out at him: a one-armed veteran, a woman with a basket of melons on her head, a lean man with a fighter's muscles holding the chains of two enormous blue dogs.

From this last figure Pazel's eyes slid to a striking older man in Imperial navy uniform, leaning from a carriage window. He had a neat beard and white sideburns, and his bright blue eyes studied Pazel keenly. It was a moment before Pazel noticed that the carriage was the most elegant he had ever seen.

The old man frowned, stuck his head farther out through the window and looked up. Following his gaze, Pazel found himself looking at a girl his own age. She had climbed to the roof of the carriage for a better view. She wore a man's clothing—jaquina shirt, breeches, a broad leather belt. She was extremely pretty, with a preposterous amount of straight golden hair falling to her waist, but her arms looked strong as a tarboy's. She also looked him straight in the eye, which was something noble-born girls never did. In fact, she smiled, a bright smile full of laughter—or mockery? Startled and suddenly shy, Pazel dropped his gaze.

“No bones smashed,” boomed the augrong suddenly, and set Pazel on the deck with a mighty thump. Pazel stumbled, dizzy and aching from head to toe. Neeps and Dastu caught him by the arms. But the rest of the crew backed away from him slightly, as if wondering what would next come out of his mouth.

Then Pazel saw Uskins glaring down at him from the quarterdeck.

“A meddler,” said the first mate. “A clown. Do you know the captain's policy for dealing with clowns?”

There was an awful silence. Uskins crooked a finger, beckoning Pazel near.

It was at that instant that Mr. Frix, Firecracker Frix, bounded up the gangway. He had just been hauled out of the bay by sailors ashore, and seawater ran from his ears and shirt and breeches. Leaping onto the deck, he pointed at Pazel and let out a great soggy whoop.

“Saved!” he cried. “That boy saved me life! Bless him, oh bless his wee little lion's heart! Hooray!” He capered in his private puddle, wet beard flapping, and waved both hands over his head. Then he scrambled onto a rum barrel and sang out again: “Saved by the tarry, the tar-tar-tarry-boy! How's that for a wonder? Come on, boys! Three cheers for little Lionheart! Hip, hip—”

“Stand down, Mr. Frix!”

No mistaking that voice, which crashed through the hubbub like a cannonball. Even the augrongs turned their heads. Captain Rose was storming across the Plaza as quickly as his game leg allowed, face shining with wrath, a carriage stopped behind him with its door flapping still. He waved as he neared the gangway: “To your stations, you gawking gulls! Clear out! Give a man room to board his vessel! And bring that other beast up after me! What fool separated them?”

All eyes snapped to the first mate. Uskins glowered and chewed his lips, but he put on a look of humble martyrdom when Rose's own eyes found him.

“Take the augrongs below, Mr. Uskins,” said Rose grimly. “I will hear your report ere we leave the capital.” Then the captain raised his voice to an ear-shattering bellow: “All hands! Welcome stations! Trumpets! Pennants! Hats! First watch to the yards! Move, you port-shoddy sheep! His Excellency's waiting to board!”

Everywhere, men flew to their tasks. Then Pazel understood: the man in the elegant coach was none other than Admiral Isiq, His Supremacy's new ambassador to Simja. And that blond girl, whose smile had left him feeling such a fool? Could that be his daughter?

Turnstile

Art thou my bloodkin, lost to storm these sundering years?

Shall I name thee brother?

My soul has shed the habit of love; trust is a thing forgotten
.

Come not upon me silent, brother, lest you frighten me:

Who knows what I'll do then?

Fear this blade in my hand, brother, as I have learned to fear it
.

THE MAN WHO ATE GOLD, CANTO LXII

Translated from the Nileskchet by Talag Tammaruk ap Ixhxchr

9 Vaqrin 941

The old admiral had sent word: he wanted little fuss about his boarding. This was quite unlike the Eberzam Isiq of old, who returned from battles on half-ruined warships to a thunder of guns and a throng of well-wishers filling the Plaza of the Palmeries. To the reporter from the
Etherhorde Mariner
, a dumpy little man in a top hat with a bedraggled bow, it was all very suspicious. Why were there no public announcements? he demanded, beetling toward the ship at Isiq's elbow. Why was
Chathrand
outfitted in Sorrophran? Where were the banners, the podiums, the Imperial orchestra?

“There are trumpets on the quarterdeck,” growled Isiq. “And more than enough sightseers.”

“Not half the usual number,” countered the reporter. “Why, you might as well be stealing away in the dead of night!”

“With this morning's
Mariner
announcing it to the whole city?”

“We barely learned of it in time! Your Excellency, a moment, I beg you. We have it reliably that a man was killed last night in your garden. Ah! Your face admits the truth! Who was he—a cutthroat? An assassin?”

Isiq plowed forward, scowling. “A common tramp. He should not have been killed, but he made blundering advances toward Lady Thasha. Our dogs brought him down, and the house guard put an arrow in his chest. That is all.”

“Your house guard refused to speak to us, Excellency. Was it the Emperor himself who demanded such secrecy? There are rumors to the effect.”

“Of course there are. Your readers survive on a diet of little else. Good day, sir.”

Sightseers were indeed packing the waterfront, and more hurried into the Plaza by the minute. High above on the
Chathrand
, the crew stood at rigid attention. The trumpeters played an old naval song, chosen specially by Uskins because it had been popular thirty years ago in the Sugar War, when he guessed Admiral Isiq's sailing days had begun (he was quite right, but the memories the tune evoked were of scurvy and insects and boot-rotted feet).

A lizard's tongue of red carpet shot down the gangway. The admiral looked as if he would rather kick it aside. But up he tottered; and holding his arm was Syrarys, chin high, smiling ambiguously, in a sheer white dress that magnified the luster of her dark skin. From the deck Mr. Fiffengurt took one look at her and thought,
This will be a hazardous trip
.

Behind them came Thasha, with two books (a Mzithrini grammar and
The Merchant's Polylex)
in her arms and a venomous scowl on her face. Around the quay people pointed, murmuring:
“There she is, the Treaty Bride, the Emperor's gift to the savages. Getting married! Poor pretty thing! She has to marry so there'll be no more war.”

“Lady Thasha!”

It was the
Mariner
reporter. Thasha turned him an irritated glance.
I won't go through with it!
she was tempted to shout.
I'll run off with pirates before I'll marry a coffin worshipper! Print that!

The reporter kept his voice low, one nervous eye on Eberzam Isiq. “The man in your garden, the man they killed. Who was he? What did he say to you?”

Her father would be annoyed at her for speaking, she thought. It was an incentive.

“He didn't have a chance to say much before they killed him.”

So true: Jorl had closed on the wild, starved-looking man, who had risen from the ash pit in the corner of the garden and rushed at her like a sooty phantom, before he was halfway to her. It was dawn. Thasha, rising from a third sleepless night since Isiq announced her betrothal, had just stumbled into the yard, rubbing her eyes. She saw the sprinting man, his eyes fixed on her with the fire of murder or ecstatic prayer, for only an instant: the next he fell under the snarling boulder of the dog. Instead of fear, pity: Jorl had the man's whole black-bearded throat in his mouth. Thasha knew he would not kill unless the man pulled a knife—her dogs were very well trained. But so was she, in
thojmélé
fighting, bought with a thousand bruises from Hercól. She would not lose this moment, any moment, to the paralysis of surprise. She dashed forward and caught the man's hair in her hand.

“Was he a foreigner, m'lady?” asked the man from the
Mariner
.

No doubt about that. He had looked at her and squealed something in a tongue unlike any she had ever heard. He was out of his head—but with fear, not drink. There was no hint of alcohol on his breath.

“Yes, a foreigner,” she said. “Now you'd better go.”

“What did he tell you—before they shot him?”

She looked at the reporter, but it was that ash-covered face she saw. The same words, over and over. Her name, and—

“Mighra cror, mighra cror,”
she muttered aloud.

“What does that mean?” asked the reporter.

She had wondered the same thing. “Speak Arquali!” she'd begged. Over the growls of the mastiffs (Suzyt had arrived and joined the fray), the horrified man had still managed to comply.

“Death, is death, death!” he wheezed in broken Arquali. “Yours, ours, all people together!”

“Death? Whose death? How?”

“Mighra cror
—
”

“What on earth is that?”

But another voice had ended it all: Syrarys, on the garden balcony, was shrieking,
“Kill him! Shoot him now!”

And someone obeyed. The arrow lanced down from the garden wall and struck with the neatness of a tailor's button-stitch, one inch from Jorl's paw, in the man's heart. Thasha's eyes raced back along the flight path: a shadow among oak-leaves, a man leaping into the neighbor's yard. Ten minutes later the constables were rushing the body away.

Was that shadowy marksman one of these big, sweaty warriors behind her—the honor guard the Emperor had insisted on bestowing? She might never find out. Worse, she would never learn who the stranger was, a man who had thrown his life away for the chance to speak to her. She only knew that her father was wrong: the man was much more than a common tramp.

She was on the gangway, leaving the frustrated reporter hopping below. On an impulse she turned to him and said: “If it all goes wrong—if something terrible happens to us—ask the Mother Prohibitor of the Lorg School about this
'mighra cror.℉”

On deck, a grim Captain Rose bowed to the ambassador and Lady Syrarys, his red beard and blue Merchant Service ribbons fluttering in the breeze. The
Chathrand's
senior officers stood in a file behind him, ramrod-straight. Thasha supposed they would fall like ninepins at a nudge.

After the guest of honor, the first-class passengers came aboard. They were some two dozen in all: families making west to the Crownless Lands, for pleasure or profit, men with sea-caps and tailored coats, women in summer gowns, children prancing about them like tethered imps. Lady Lapadolma's niece Pacu was there, almond-eyed and lovely, in neat, buttoned-up riding clothes (“Where's your pony, love?” called someone gaily). On her heels came a thin man with white gloves, slicked-down bangs, and a pet sloth clinging to his neck like a hairy baby. This was Latzlo, the animal-seller, who meant to continue his pursuit of Pacu alongside a few months' trade in wild creatures. Listening to his excited chatter about snowlarks and walrus hides was Mr. Ket, the soap merchant recently disembarked from a little ship called the
Eniel
. He never interrupted Latzlo, only chuckled quietly, a hand on his ragged scarf.