The Ruling Sea (19 page)

“Don’t you?” said Pazel.

It was midmorning, the day after the wedding fiasco: another glorious, gusty day at summer’s end, but in Thasha’s cabin there was barely light enough to read. A dark cloth hung over the porthole: she was still in hiding, still dead as far as anyone knew beyond her circle of friends. She parted the cloth an inch and looked out. Pilot boats were skimming across the Bay of Simja, directing larger vessels out into the straits. In a few hours
Chathrand
herself would be setting sail.

“Of course I don’t believe it,” said Neeps, picking up the sheet of wrinkled paper again. “The letter’s obviously a fake. Thasha, if your father had really decided to stay here, don’t you think he’d sail three miles to tell you goodbye?”

“He would if he knew I was alive.”

“Even if he
didn’t,”
said Neeps, “he’d want to, you know, take his leave of your body. And to see the rest of us off.”

“He’d want to,” said Pazel. “But if he’s watching us through a telescope he’ll have noticed the archers along the rail. Not to mention the fact that no one’s been allowed on or off the ship besides the wedding party, and that Fulbreech fellow. We’re prisoners here. He’s too smart to get caught as well.”

“He could take a boat out to hailing range, and shout us a farewell,” said Neeps.

Thasha laughed bitterly. “And tell everyone on the
Chathrand
the sort of things he’s just written down? Not likely.”

“You’ve both lost your minds,” said Neeps. “This is Admiral Isiq we’re talking about. The man who never lost a naval battle. The man who tells kings to get stuffed.”

They were interrupted by a whimper. Beneath Thasha’s writing desk sat a low basket, and in it upon a folded blanket lay Felthrup the rat. He had returned to the basket shortly after his outburst the day before, and had not woken since. Now he twitched, mumbling and moaning in his high-pitched, nasal voice.

Suddenly, without waking, he cried out: “Don’t ask me! Don’t ask!”

Thasha went to his side and stroked the little creature. “He has awful dreams,” she said. “I wake him up sometimes, poor thing, but then he’s afraid to go back to sleep. And he needs some sleep, Rin knows.”

“That kick from Jervik would have killed him, without Ramachni’s help,” said Neeps.

“Nerves may kill him yet,” said Pazel.

Thasha pointed at the letter in his hand. “Look at it again, will you? Do you see anything odd—
see
anything, I mean, outside the meaning of the words?”

The boys studied the letter again. Both shook their heads.

“Exactly.” Thasha took the sheet and pointed to a tiny, vaguely star-shaped fleck on the third line. “You took it for an ink blot, and you were
looking
for something strange. But it’s his mark, his code. And the only thing it means is, ‘Nobody’s holding a knife to my throat.’ He never told anyone about it except for me and Hercól.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” said Neeps stubbornly. “Thasha, I have a nose for lies, and that letter stinks like a fisherman’s boot. Tell her, Pazel.”

“He’s usually right,” Pazel admitted.

“Usually?”

“Well, it’s not as if you’re perfect, mate.”

“I see,” said Neeps crisply. “Not as if I’ve got a magic gift, is that it?”

“Come off it,” said Pazel.

“That’s what you’re thinking.
Why trust him? It’s just his natural brain at work.”

“You
are
making me worry about your brain, that’s a fact,” said Pazel.

“At least mine doesn’t turn me into a dry-heaving rooster every month or—”

“Stop it!” said Thasha. “You’re driving me mad!”

The boys clammed up at once. Thasha turned back furiously to the window. The last of the supply boats had drawn alongside; stevedores were piling goods onto cargo lifts. They had taken on more food and water—and scandalously, more passengers, five or six poor souls bound for Etherhorde—the better to sustain the illusion that they were making for the Arquali capital. Who were those people? How much had they paid? When would they find out that they were never going to arrive?

She heard again her father’s words in the Cactus Gardens.
You’re all I have left, Thasha. I can’t watch you die before me as she did
.

“Find Hercól,” she said. “Bring him quickly. Please.”

“Do you think the letter’s real?” Pazel asked.

“Daddy wrote it, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “And those tactics, and the way he blames himself, and that bit about completing the mission no matter the cost—it’s exactly what I’d expect from him. And there’s the star.”

She touched it with a finger, drew a deep breath. “There’s only one thing I’m sure of: Daddy
has
to be told that I’m alive. Maybe he’s right—maybe he shouldn’t come with us. But it would be heartless to sail off and leave him in the dark.”

When the tarboys were gone, Thasha pulled a trunk from beneath her bed and removed her training gloves. They were ugly things, iron gauntlets with wool padding over the knuckles and rusted chain looped tight about the wrists. Hercól had wanted them tight, and heavy. A hundred shadow-punches in those gloves usually left her gasping. But she wanted more than that today.

She stepped into the outer stateroom, locked the door, ordered her dogs to lie still. The ship was in some sort of commotion; men’s voices, and their pounding feet, echoed through the floor and ceiling. Perfect, she thought, and launched into a battle drill.

Thasha was a fine fighter, exceptional in a few respects. But she also had a willful streak. It expressed itself not as anger—Hercól had taught her never to rely on rage—but as impulsiveness. Hercól had detected the flaw at once.
Inspiration is a fine ally, but a fatal master
, he would say.
Be warned, Thasha: I shall make you feel the folly of your impulses, until you learn to know the good ones from the bad. It will sting and you will hate me, but at least you’ll be alive
.

Even bare-handed the drill was exhausting, full of leaps and blocks and whirling jabs. With the heavy gloves it became so taxing that Thasha could think of nothing else. The world emptied of everything but sweat, poise, balance, the duel with her unseen foes. She fought in circles.
Thump thump!
went her fists against her father’s reading chair. Each glove like a stone mallet in her hand.

When she completed the routine, she began it again.
Faster, girl!
scolded Hercól’s voice in her head.
It’s your blood they want to spill!
Her heartbeat as sharp and urgent as the blows. At last, almost delirious, she ran to the wall and pulled down one of the crossed swords issued to her father decades ago when he became an admiral. It was a thin blade, but in her gauntleted hands it felt like a six-foot Becturian saber. In a perfect fury of concentration she fought her way once more about the chamber, slashing, thrusting, Hercól’s voice goading her, pitiless when she missed the mark.
Someone’s trying to cut off your head!
he’d shout.
Do you see him or don’t you? It’s not a game, you spoiled bitch, you’re striking to kill, you’re striking to kill
.

She came out of the trance with the sword half buried in an imaginary chest. Sickened by what she saw in her mind, as her tutor insisted she must always be. Elated by her own strength. And so tired she could barely stand.

Her father had thought she might take up painting. A gentle suggestion, he’d said. The day he and Syrarys delivered her to the fanged gate of the Lorg Academy.

She staggered to the washroom, opened the tap on the cast-iron tub.
Painting
. Had he ever known her at all? She stripped off her clothes, stepped into the cold salt water and scrubbed herself clean, then rinsed off the salt with a few precious cups of fresh water. She looked at her body in the mirror on the door. Sun-darkened arms, breasts no longer quite a girl’s, muscles quivering with cold. Men had started to notice that body. Falmurqat certainly had. The prince would have lain with her by now, in his own stateroom aboard his long white ship. Instead Pacu Lapadolma was there across the bay, faithful daughter of Arqual, naked in the arms of her Mzithrini husband. For a time.

Hercól was not in his cabin, nor any of the common rooms. The boys made next for the upper decks. Before they reached the midship guns, however, they found that a great commotion was brewing somewhere above. Men were dashing forward, flowing around both sides of the tonnage hatch and up the ladderways. From above came the sound of voices raised in anger.

“What is it?” Pazel cried. “A fight?”

“Fight?” someone echoed, not looking back. “That’s just what I said!”

“Fight! Fight!”

Too late, Pazel realized that none of the men knew what they were running toward. But his offhand word seemed to be what everyone wanted, and as they ran it spread around them like an oil fire. Men seized knives and bottles and boarding-pikes, off-duty marines snatched up their spears.

“A damn riot, that’s what!”

“Plapps versus Burnscovers!”

“Can’t be! Rose would skin ’em alive!”

There was a stampede on the ladderway. Pazel and Neeps were carried upward past the main deck, where still more sailors jammed the stair, and were spat with the rest into the dazzling sunlight near the foremast. The jeers and shouts grew louder. Pazel leaped up on the fife-rail and shielded his eyes.

“Oh Pitfire,” he said.

The
Jistrolloq
was lying alongside
Chathrand
, barely a yardarm between them, and an even larger crowd of Mzithrinis—all bearing weapons—had thronged to her rail, bellowing and chanting.

“Waspodin! Waspodin!”

“What are they saying, Pazel?” Neeps shouted.

Pazel jumped down again, foreboding like a sickness in his belly. “Don’t repeat it, whatever you do,” he whispered. “They’re chanting ‘murderers.’”

Neeps’ mouth fell open. At the bow, the taunts were growing louder.

“All hail the Great Peace,” said a voice from behind them, acidly.

It was Lady Oggosk. The boys drew instinctively away. They had long counted the old witch among their enemies. True, she had turned on Syrarys and Sandor Ott just a few days ago, and Thasha had some murky idea about her being in a secret order connected to the Lorg. But Pazel didn’t much care. Oggosk was the lifetime servant of Captain Rose, and he wanted nothing to do with her.

“Do you know what’s happening, Duchess?” he asked cautiously.

“Treachery, that’s what,” said Oggosk. “Base scheming, and not our own sort. Last night the Father was assaulted.”

“Whose father?” cried Pazel.

She looked at him, and seemed to comprehend a great deal. “Not Isiq. Forget Isiq. He was doomed from the start.”

The shouts were growing dangerous. Pazel stared at the old woman, trying to grasp what her words could possibly mean. At last, sensing that she would tell him no more, he turned to go. But before he had taken a step her claw-like hand seized his arm.

“Where is her body?” she demanded.

Pazel pulled his arm out of her grasp. “With friends,” he said, “where it’s going to stay.”

The boys pushed forward. At the spot where the two ships were nearest the shouts became deafening. The White Reaper was nearly motionless, lying to on a single topsail beside the anchored
Chathrand
. She was over half their length, which made her the biggest vessel Pazel had ever seen after the Great Ship herself. And while the
Chathrand’s
cannon were formidable enough, the
Jistrolloq’s
were awe inspiring: row upon row of massive forty-eight-pounders; longer weapons for distant targets, thick-bodied “smasher” carronades, gleaming bronze culverins at the stern. Platforms across her topdeck sported giant crossbow-like ballistas, and grappling-guns that could hook another vessel and tear out its rigging. There was no mistaking the
Jistrolloq
for anything but a weapon of war.

Fortunately no one was manning those guns: at present the Mzithrinis were content to threaten their old enemies with swords, spears and curses. The
Jistrolloq’s
deck stood twenty feet lower than the
Chathrand’s
, so the furious mob had crowded onto the forecastle, and up the masts and shrouds. From all points her men launched the accusation:
Waspodin!

At the
Chathrand’s
starboard rail some twenty tarboys were squeezing and shoving for a view. Dastu stood among them, calmer than the rest. “Pazel, over here!” he called, making room. “What are they blary saying, mate? What’s that word?”

Pazel scanned the Mzithrini faces, trying to think how he might get out of answering. At the back of the
Jistrolloq’s
forecastle stood three black-cloaked
sfvantskors
. They did not shout, but their eyes had depths of rage beyond any of their countrymen. One was older, a man of thirty or thirty-five. The others were in their twenties, their faces hard and menacing.

“You’re lookin’ at them sfanksters, ain’t ye?” said another tarboy, whose nickname was Fishhook. “There was more of ’em a minute ago—and one was a girl.”

“A girl?” said Pazel sharply.

“Fishhook’s right,” said Dastu. “But the girl didn’t stay on deck very long. Just took one good look at us and ran for the ladderway. I thought she was going to cry.”

Pazel thought of the masked girl at the wedding, whose voice still echoed in his mind. Could that have been her? Had she been looking for him again?

The Mzithrinis grew louder. Nor were the Arqualis content to be out-screamed: some accused the Mzithrinis of killing Thasha—hadn’t they pricked her with a knife, just before she collapsed? Others demanded that they hand over Pacu Lapadolma.

“Blood-drinkers!” they howled, red-faced. “Black rags! Want to get whipped like forty years ago?”

Pazel could scarcely recognize his shipmates. Were these the same people who had witnessed Arunis’ black magic two days ago? The men who had run in terror from the fleshancs? Where had they found this courage, and this crazy pride? They didn’t know what they were being accused of, but they were damn well going to deny it. And though they hated and feared Arunis, the sight of their old enemies brought out a deeper loathing, almost a mania.
Arqual, Arqual, just and true
.