The Ruling Sea (47 page)

Pazel looked from one to the other. “What do you mean? Right about what?”

“There was a fight on the berth deck,” said Thasha. “Half the crew ran to see it. The crowd was so thick you could hardly move.”

“What sort of a fight?”

Neeps shrugged. “Plapps versus Burnscovers, that’s all we ever heard. It started in the mess hall. Dastu took a few nasty hits—seems he tried to keep the peace, and nobody thanked him. Marila’s with him right now in sickbay.”

“By the time we arrived the fight was getting ugly,” said Thasha. “Hercól was tossing men left and right, shouting at both gangs to come to their senses. I could have helped, but Marila grabbed me around the waist and wouldn’t let go. Then Neeps got knocked over and she had to let go of me and grab
him
before he jumped in and got himself killed.”

“Stubborn little devil, that one,” muttered Neeps.

“The next thing we knew Chadfallow was shouting at us from the edge of the mob: ‘On your guard! This is not a coincidence!’ That’s when we asked ourselves what had happened to you.”

“A diversion,” said Neeps, “the whole blary fight. Arunis didn’t want anyone watching the forecastle.” He looked at Pazel sharply. “And you’re a daft one, aren’t you?”

“Daft?” said Pazel.

“As a dicky-bird!” said Thasha. “How could you just
sit
out there with your back to the ship? Do you have
any
idea how foolish that was?”

“And it’s not even the worst part,” said Neeps. “He grabbed Arunis by the hand! Rin’s chin, mate! Why didn’t you just hand over your old man’s knife and say,
Stab me
?”

They began a lively quarrel over the signature moment of Pazel’s stupidity. Pazel, who thought of both friends as outrageously devoid of fear, was alarmed to realize how badly he’d shocked them. What he’d done
was
idiotic, to be sure. For some reason he recalled a question Chadfallow had thrown at him as a challenge, years ago, at their dinner table in Ormael:
What’s the real tragedy, lad? To fall from a cliff and perish
—
or to be the sort of man who cares so little for his life that he risks it?

He watched his friends argue: exasperating, irreplaceably dear. He wanted to live for any number of reasons. But first among them was to stop Arunis from carrying out the threats he’d made on the forecastle.

He sighed; there was worse to confess. “He saw through me when I touched him,” he said, as Neeps and Thasha turned to stare. “At least that’s what he claimed. He said that Ramachni didn’t make me the spell-keeper, when I used the Master-Word. So the Shaggat won’t be made flesh again if I’m killed.”

A moment’s silence. Then Thasha grabbed him by the collar, her hands literally vibrating with rage. “You
imbecile.”

“Just go straight back to the stateroom,” said Neeps, “and get comfortable. You can make the tea from now on.”

Pazel was livid, but he knew his friends were right. Arunis had nothing to lose by killing him now. And why wouldn’t he? Pazel had come closer to stopping him than anyone aboard.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry. But if you want me to spend the rest of this float in the blary stateroom you’ll have to tie me up.”

“That’s an idea,” said Thasha.

Pazel glared at her. “In any case, you’re the one who’s in danger.” And he told them about Arunis’ claim that Rose intended to sell her to the Bramian natives.

“What rubbish!” said Thasha when he had finished.

But Neeps looked worried. “Maybe it’s not,” he said. “Rose is just crooked enough. And the tribals on Bramian wouldn’t get much out of killing you, would they? Not as if you’re a threat, once they’ve whisked you off into those jungles. More likely they’d make you a slave or a servant. That way if you turned out to be the spell-keeper, the Shaggat would still be in the clear.”

“Think about it,” said Pazel. “How else could Rose get you off the ship, keep you from dying, and prevent you from warning the outside world?”

“Thasha,” said Neeps, “just keep to the stateroom for a while. Until we’re away from Bramian.”

She looked from one to the other, exasperated. “What’s got into you two?
Hide?
Is that all we’re going to do, until Rose decides to starve us out, or Ott starts cutting off our fingers? We need to fight back. We need to get back to the list.”

“The list?” said Neeps.

“The list of allies, you donkey—potential allies, I mean. And we need to do it soon. We can’t beat them without more people on our side.”

“You’re right about that,” said Neeps. “But we’ll have to be so damned careful.” He leaned closer, whispering, “I have no idea why Rose has been so easy on us, but one thing’s for sure: he
won’t
go easy on mutineers.”

Pazel sighed. “All right, genius. You come up with a plan.”

“We start with one person each,” said Thasha instantly, as though she’d only been waiting for someone to ask. “Just one. Surely we can each find one person to trust on this ship? If Hercól and Marila do the same thing, we’ll have ten people on our side.”

Neeps looked at her eagerly. “And once we’ve all met, and decided the best way to fight these cretins—”

“We go out and find ten more,” Thasha finished. “And if we can just keep doing that, we’ll have half the crew on our side before we know it. Of course the trick will be to find them before anyone
else
knows it.”

Neeps was shaking his head in wonder. “Thasha, you’re as clever as my old Granny Undrabust! You really do have a head for—what’s the word?”

“Tactics,” said Pazel.

“Tactics, that’s it. All right then: we’ve got our plan, don’t we?”

Pazel didn’t answer. The others looked at him in surprise. At last he said, “How can you possibly think this will work? If we guess wrong about just one person, we’re dead as slag. Everything hinges on trust.”

Neeps and Thasha exchanged a glance. “Trust, yeah,” said Neeps. “Well, that’s something we have, and they don’t.”

Pazel shrugged. Once again Thasha was seeing it, that sudden darkening of his spirits, that drawing away. It was agony for her to watch, and she fought back an impulse to reach for him, right in front of Neeps.
You’re afraid of feeling something. Why?

Then, to her amazement, Pazel clutched her arm—tightly, a warning. He pointed up at the main yard, the giant horizontal timber that secured the
Chathrand’s
largest sail. The yard was still bathed in orange sunlight, although the deck beneath it lay dark. And at the end of the yard sat a bird of prey.

It was a falcon, small and exquisite, black above, cream-yellow below. It was examining them with one bright eye.

Almost as soon as Thasha saw it the bird was in flight, dropping casually from the main yard to vanish below the rail. The three youths raced across the deck. But here at its midsection the ship was over two hundred feet wide, and by the time they reached the rail and leaned out over the sea the bird was gone.

“Damnation!”

“It had to be—”

“Of course it was!”

They dropped back onto the deck, once again earning stares from the crew. Pazel groaned aloud. “That’s
all
we need! Pitfire, why did Ramachni have to let him go?”

But Thasha felt oddly tense, as if tremors had suddenly shaken the boards at her feet. “He’s circling,” she said.

“What?” said Neeps. “How can you know that? What’s
wrong
with you?”

Thasha turned in place, her gaze flung wide, as if trying to catch up with something in a hurtling orbit around the ship. “I don’t know how I know,” she said, “but he’s above the deck again, teasing us—he’s slowing—
there!”

A blur of wings, a shrill cry, and there it was, landing neatly on a brace-line seven feet above their heads. Men shouted, pointing: a few of them remembered the falcon. None better than Thasha, however, who had watched the bird for years—loved it, she imagined, though it never paused in its flight—from the gardens of the Lorg Academy.

“Welcome back, Niriviel,” she said.

“You should not welcome me,” said the falcon, in that fierce, high voice she recalled so well: the voice that somehow belonged to both a predator and a homeless child. “I bring you no good tidings, Thasha Death-Cheater. No comfort to the betrayers of Arqual.”

Thasha shook her head. “We haven’t betrayed anyone, Niriviel. We tried to explain that to you in Simja.”

“After you stabbed my master in the leg. Do you deny this?”

Thasha winced. “I—No, Niriviel, I don’t.”

“Oh come off it, Thasha,” said Pazel. “It was only a dinner fork.”

Niriviel’s wings were aflutter. “You raised your hand against Sandor Ott, first defender of His Supremacy! If you are not a traitor then the word means nothing at all!”

“Fine,” said Thasha, in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “You can call me what you like. But even if we’re on different sides, I want you to know something. I’m happy to see you again.”

The bird gave an agitated hop.

“It’s strange,” said Thasha, “but I feel you’re part of my life, and always will be. I can’t watch you fly and not feel, I don’t know—joy, I suppose.”

“Twaddle,” said the falcon.

Neeps had had enough. “What do you want, bird?” he demanded.

Thasha motioned desperately for silence. “I’m not lying to you,” she told the falcon. “But why have you come back to us, anyway?”

The bird paused. His head cocked, dipped, darted. Then Thasha had a terrible thought. “Oh, Niriviel. You didn’t … lose him, did you? Sandor Ott, I mean?”

Niriviel peered at her with great intensity. Thasha arched her neck back.

“You can tell me,” she said. “I know he was like your father. Is that why you’re back? Because you have nowhere left to go?”

“What nonsense!” cried the falcon suddenly. “And what a fool you take me for! It is not
I
who has lost someone. Where is your own father, girl?”

“He stayed behind. In Simja.”

“And beyond that you cannot say. Beyond that you dare not imagine.”

“What do you mean?” cried Thasha. “Do you know something about my father? Tell me!”

“Nothing for traitors.”

Pazel tried to take her arm, but Thasha shook him off. “I’m no traitor, you stupid bigoted bird! I’m an Arquali, do you hear? What else could I be?”

“An orphan?” said Niriviel.

Thasha was almost sobbing. “Tell me! Tell me what you know!”

But Niriviel only cried aloud—a mocking cry, perhaps—and leaped once more into flight. Seconds later he had vanished westward, toward the black wall of Bramian.

20
A Sleepless Night

19 Freala 941

Mr. Coote had guessed correctly: within the hour the
Chathrand
was among the Black Shoulder Isles. They were dark and stone-shored and choked with greenery, miniature copies of their great mother to the west. Plenty of sea-room, thought Mr. Elkstem: two or three leagues between one Black Shoulder and the next, and Bramian itself no closer than five. Still he took no chances.

“Topgallants and courses down, Mr. Frix, if you please. We’ll stand in on fore and spanker topsails, double-reefed.”

In the moonlight the watch furled sail after sail, and the bow wave sank to nothing. When the log was cast they were all but stationary, rocking forward at a quarter knot. Shorebirds, night jars and kestrels, spun hopefully above the deck, their shrill cries blending with the distant, mortal booming of the Bramian surf.

The three youths were still on the topdeck. Thasha had led the boys on a meandering march, port to starboard, bow to quarterdeck and back. She had barely spoken since Niriviel’s departure, but she was glad of their company, and they seemed to understand her silence. The falcon’s insinuations about Eberzam Isiq might have been pure spite, but Thasha could scarcely breathe for fear that something real lay behind them.

Eventually their random tour of the topdeck ceased to distract her, and began to make her think of animals in cages. She chose a quiet spot near the No. 3 hatch, folded her legs and sat.