The Red wolf conspiracy tcv-1

by Robert V. S. Redick

  "Ignus said she was a great beauty," said Hercуl.

  Pazel dropped his eyes. "He proposed to her," he said at last.

  "Who?" asked Thasha. "The doctor or the Sizzy fellow?"

  "Both," said Pazel after a moment.

  "Ah!"

  "She was-she is beautiful," Pazel went on. "And she did like Ignus. But I can't understand why she took so long to say no to the Mzithrini."

  "Just imagine!" laughed Thasha. "If she'd married him, you might have gone to live in Babqri City and learned the Casket Prayers, and had your neck tattooed with the name of his tribe, and learned how to ride a war elephant!"

  "And found Captain Gregory," said Hercуl.

  Pazel looked up at him sharply.

  "Or if she'd married Chadfallow," said Thasha, "he might have taken you to Etherhorde, and we'd have met years ago, and Hercуl could have taught you thojmйlй fighting, too. And you'd never have become a tarboy at all. You'd be Pazel Chadfallow, and you'd have been safe and sound in the doctor's house right through the Rescue of Ormael."

  "Rescue?" said Pazel, turning on her in amazement. "The Rescue of Ormael? Do you people really call it that?"

  "Well, yes," she said, taken aback. "It was a rescue, wasn't it? Otherwise you'd have been killed by the Mzithrin Kings, all of you, and had your blood mixed with milk."

  "Come, Thasha, you know better," said Hercуl.

  Thasha was by now quite red. "Do I? Prahba says it was only a matter of time before someone invaded Ormael. At least we didn't kill everyone."

  "You tried," said Pazel.

  "Mr. Pathkendle!" said Hercуl.

  "You killed half the men in the invasion-that's what it was, Thasha, an invasion-and enslaved the rest. You sold us boys to the mining companies, and our sisters to old fat men."

  "Nobody sold you to any mining company," said Thasha, but she could no longer meet his eye.

  "You burned the city to the ground!"

  "She didn't," said a voice behind them. "I did."

  Admiral Eberzam Isiq stood in the doorway, heavy and grim, a pale turquoise vein standing out on his bald head. No one had heard him approach.

  "Who is this boy, who calls my daughter by her given name? Why is he in her cabin?"

  "Sir," said Hercуl, bowing his head, "I do humbly beg your pardon. This is the tarboy you wished to congratulate, the tamer of the augrongs. I understood you were napping, and as we waited on your pleasure the boy revealed that he speaks the Mzithrini tongue." He raised a book from Thasha's table. "I thought it worth putting to the test."

  "So this is Pathkendle!" boomed the ambassador. "Captain Gregory's boy! I didn't know him in that coat-but of course, it's the very coat I gave him, isn't it? Hmm! Now tell me, Pathkendle: what has happened to my doctor?"

  "I… I've no idea, sir."

  "Chadfallow has vanished," declared Isiq. "Normally he writes every week or two, but it has been almost six. His last letter said that he had booked passage on the Eniel to Sorrophran, where he was to board this ship. You served on the Eniel, I believe."

  He's sharp, thought Pazel. Who told him that?

  "Did you see him, boy? Speak to him?"

  Pazel nodded.

  "Well, what did he say? Out with it!"

  "We spoke about the Chathrand, sir," said Pazel carefully. "And about the last war with the Mzithrin. Were you in that war, sir?"

  "Of course. Continue."

  Pazel hesitated. Chadfallow had spoken to him in great secrecy. He and Isiq were old friends, and perhaps the doctor had hoped Pazel would pass on a message-but how could he be sure?

  "He… hinted at things, Your Excellency. That the Chathrand is heading for the Mzithrin lands, for instance."

  "Well, so we are-to Simja, right on the border of their empire."

  "Excuse me, sir: not close to but into Mzithrini waters. That's what he meant, I think."

  Isiq looked sharply at Hercуl, then back to Pazel. "You must have misheard."

  "Not him," snarled Thasha. "Mr. Pathkendle has very sharp hearing."

  Isiq laughed aloud. "She's fond of you. Can't you tell?" Then, abruptly, he winced and raised his hands to his temples.

  Thasha rushed to his side. "Prahba," she said, clutching his arm. "Are they getting worse?"

  "I'm quite all right," he grumbled. "And when we land at Tressek Tarn I shall be better still."

  Pazel supposed Isiq meant to visit the famous mineral baths of Tressek Tarn; they were said to cure all manner of diseases. What was wrong with him, though? One could tell at a glance that he suffered from more than headaches.

  Isiq smiled at his daughter. "Your hand is strong," he said. "You'll represent our Empire well in this new age of peace. Now come here, Pathkendle. I have something to say."

  Pazel came forward uneasily, and the admiral rested a hand on his shoulder.

  "We burned your city," he said. "It was a terrible deed, and fate repays me in the same coin-I too am burning, with a brain fever that never quite subsides. But know this: my orders were far worse, not just to burn Ormael City but to flatten her, roll her founding-stone into the sea, fill her wells with corpses, plow her fields with salt. Our Emperor did not think we could hold Ormael, so far from the heart of Arqual, so close to the Mzithrin Kings. He wanted a wasteland, therefore: something no enemy could ever reclaim.

  "I meant to give him his ruin. I sailed there with such purpose, believing the safety of Arqual depended on it. But when I arrived and saw proud young Ormael, beautiful as a Dlуmic city out of legend, I could not."

  He paused, worrying his knuckles. Thasha looked at Pazel expectantly, and Pazel felt like bolting from the room. What did they want? To be thanked?

  "Imagine if I had done nothing," said Isiq at last. "Do you know what would have happened then? I should have been imprisoned, my consort given to another man, my daughter to Gods know whom. And your city would have bled all the same. Indeed, to see the job done His Supremacy would have sent one of his butchering Turach generals next. The best I could do was limit the damage and take Ormael for the Empire, alive but wounded."

  "The bodies piled in Darli Square didn't look wounded," muttered Pazel.

  "Silence!" barked Hercуl, as Isiq's jaw dropped in amazement. Thasha's tutor leaped forward to catch Pazel by the arm. "Curb your tongue, rascal! Whom do you think you're speaking to? Your Excellency, a thousand pardons! I shall remove him immediately-or after his humblest apologies, if that is your wish."

  As Hercуl fell silent, Pazel saw that the ambassador was furious: red-faced, mouth a-quiver. How long had it been since anyone dared contradict him? Backed against the wall, Thasha was staring at him, wide-eyed: for better or worse Pazel had impressed her again.

  Isiq rubbed his temples with both hands. "I am more interested to know if the boy himself wishes to apologize," he said.

  Pazel looked at him in silence, remembering flies and the smell of blood. Hercуl gave his arm a ferocious squeeze.

  Still Pazel hesitated-and then it was too late. A door crashed open in the outer stateroom, a woman gasped and Syrarys was there, lovely and furious, eyes ablaze.

  "What is this? Eberzam, you're shaking! You've exhausted yourself!"

  "I'm fine," said Isiq, but his voice rang suddenly weaker. "Syrarys, where have you been?"

  "Making arrangements for your baths at Tressek. Sit down! Oh, Hercуl, what have you done? Get that wretched boy out of here!"

  "I invited him," said Thasha. "And he's no more wretched than you."

  The consort turned her a scalding look. "Haven't you done enough? Will you only be satisfied when your father collapses? Hercуl, take him away!"

  Hercуl bowed and tugged Pazel roughly from the cabin. Pazel had only a fleeting impression of the outer stateroom: an immense, glittering chamber, someone's greatcoat tossed casually over a blue divan, a pair of crossed swords mounted on the wall, red ribbons wound about their sheaths. As the door closed he turned and glanced back at Thasha. Her eyes were on him still. />
  "Splendid work," said Hercуl furiously. "In ten minutes you managed to make Thasha cry, her father hate you and her tutor seem a colossal fool."

  "I'm sorry," Pazel said, "but you don't know what it was like."

  "Nor do you know my life's tragedies, nor hers, nor those of hundreds on this ship! Does that make your outburst any wiser? It is not a question of feelings but of self-control!"

  "So I should have lied to him? Or acted grateful?"

  "You should have held your tongue. Think, boy! Your father has become a Mzithrini! If anyone can help you rejoin him it will be Eberzam Isiq."

  Pazel started. Rejoin his father! It had never seemed remotely possible. But if peace took hold between the empires, almost anything could happen. And even though his father had not wanted it, Pazel did know a bit about sailing now. Wild hopes began to swirl in his head.

  They crossed the gun deck, heading forward. Sailors muttered as they passed: "That's him, that crazy Muketch. Talks like a ghost's in his guts."

  "Will the baths help Thasha's father?" Pazel asked Hercуl.

  Hercуl looked grave. "Who can tell? His illness is most peculiar; it is a bad time to be without Ignus Chadfallow. Now then: if anyone asks, you were helping Thasha practice her Mzithrini vows. And if you can keep out of trouble for a few days, I might be able to make truth of that little lie-that is, to arrange for you to be Thasha's language tutor. Of course, that would mean spending an hour or two with her every day."

  Pazel stopped in his tracks.

  "What is the matter?" said Hercуl. "You do not wish it?"

  Pazel's first thought was Of course not! But something made him hold his tongue. He thought again of how she'd looked at him from atop the carriage in Etherhorde, felt again her hand on his arm. She stood up for me in front of Syrarys. Why?

  "Rose won't give me time off to be a teacher," he said.

  "He might if your bond debt were paid," said Hercуl.

  Pazel gaped at him. "Would you do that for me? Really?"

  Hercol laughed. "I would do so for every bonded servant in Arqual, if I could. Unfortunately the gold to my name would scarcely buy the two of us a good meal in Tressek Tarn. No, if you're to teach his daughter it will be the ambassador who buys your freedom. We've spoken of it already. Use your head, Pazel, and don't insult those who stand ready to help you. Hallo there, Mr. Fiffengurt! I dare say you're looking for this lad."

  Night Village

  26 Vaqrin 941

  14th day from Etherhorde

  My terror is the terror of the rat, but my soul is my own. My soul is my own. My soul is my own.

  Say that when the panic comes. If it's true then you're safe, saved, sane. You shall prosper and escape this murdering cold water of loneliness, this whirlpool, this swill of violence and want. Find love, dry land, eyes that don't hate you when they discern you from shadow.

  If it is not true-then there is no you to be saved, darling Felthrup.

  So thinking, the black rat worried a path among the ghostly stores and cargo of the mercy deck. He was moving in circles: not lost, but searching in frantic haste, staring into the near-perfect blackness, straining his nocturnal eyes. What he sought was a light, the smallest, palest red light. Three times he had glimpsed it already and dashed forward with hope leaping in his heart, only to see it vanish without a trace.

  Each dash was a flirtation with death. Normally he did not move two yards without a jerk of the head, a glance back over one greasy shoulder or the other. There were flickers of motion; there were drafts and tremors, and sudden anonymous sounds. Worst of all, there were smells-cloying, crowding, smothering, flooding him with fear. The smell of man was everywhere: in the greasy fingerprints left by the longshoremen, in the sweat from their backs where they had leaned against posts, in the sailors' spit and sweet-pine residues, in the human breath oozing downward from the sleeping quarters.

  (My terror is the terror of the sleeper, buried alive.)

  He did not fear men, though-not at this hour. Past midnight the mercy deck belonged to others: rats, ixchel, that dark thing that lurked and snuffled, a few mice and snakes and spiders, a few million fleas. Men nicknamed it pest-deck, piss-deck, stowaway lane. To its residents it was simply Night Village.

  Even at noon men worked there with lamps, for the mercy deck rode twenty feet beneath the waves. The dead of night saw no more than one man an hour trudge through its depths, blinded by his own lamp, scanning the hull for leaks.

  The great danger was Sniraga. Three nights already she had come hunting, crate to crevice, an angel of death. No flood of light announced her visits, and no sound but the sudden, blood-freezing wail of a life cut short. Then the Red River cat would climb to a high place, a transverse beam, maybe, and devour her victim by meticulous stages. With the pitch of the ship, gallbladders and stomachs would fall to the deck: these she did not eat.

  But for the black rat there was something worse than Sniraga.

  (Mine is the terror of the drowned. When the surface is gone you can't swim for it, you can't aim for a sun without light, without warmth, the vanished laughing sun over the kelp, sun of man and glad day and woken beasts and the miracle of tears, but not your kind, darling, never your kind except from corners, cracks, burrows in filth, and just so long as your snout clears the waves. Oh, mad repellent rodent! Sweet rat of my soul! Poor scuttling susurrating slop-eating Felthrup, how long till the kelp rakes you under?)

  He was a freak: he knew it. He was a woken rat, and rats never woke. Nor did they sleep, not the warm, stupid sleep of normal creatures. Unlike any other beings he knew of, they were caught between intelligence and instinct, night and day. They lived short, snapping, bickering, miserable lives in the twilight. The ixchel term for them was best: palluskudge-creatures cursed by the Gods.

  "Fatten up, brother!"

  Felthrup shot two feet straight up in the air. Beside him a trio of rats laughed in their whispered, nasal way.

  "Talking to himself!" they said. "Strange Felthrup! Wise and special Felthrup! What's he doing out here on the edge of town?"

  "Water," lied Felthrup, recovering himself. "That's all. Just looking for water."

  "'Just looking for water,'" said one, in perfect mimicry. Like half of what came from rats' mouths it was said for no clear reason, but it made the others laugh. They were only slinkers: weak rats driven out of the warren by night, and allowed back in only if they could pay a tribute of food. Slinkers were the only rats most humans ever saw: the small, desperate ones, forced into mortal danger in kitchens, stables, dumps. Women saw them and shrieked amazingly, as if about to be mauled by tigers. Men traded fibs about their size.

  Felthrup tried to laugh as they did, with much slurping and sniffling. "The ixchel," he said. "They're coming out of their crates now. Have you seen them?"

  "Seen them," said one, and they all stared and waited. It was possible they did not understand the question.

  "Yes," Felthrup tried again. "The ixchel. Crawlies. There's more of them aboard than usual-hundreds more. They're not just passengers this time. They're up to something."

  "Hundreds of crawlies," muttered one of the slinkers, bored.

  "Yes! They've been watching the giants, listening to them, taking risks. I tell you, it's not normal. I thought I would take a look at them for Master Mugstur."

  At the mention of the Head Rat their eyes lit briefly with fear.

  "Perhaps you've noticed them, brothers?" Felthrup pressed, trying not to sound too eager. "I should certainly mention your help to Master Mugstur. Back there in the manger I thought-"

  "Felthrup and his stories," one broke in.

  "I could tell you another story, brothers, about a monster of a man who soon will walk this ship. Niriviel the falcon spoke of him, proud as a prince. But you'd never believe me. They say this voyage is all about a wedding, a wedding to bring peace between the man-warrens. But the true purpose-"

  "What's he got to eat?" shrilled the rat on his left, and the other
two bristled with sudden alertness. Eating was the only subject of real interest to rats-besides the whereabouts of things that might eat them.

  Felthrup shook his head. "Nothing, I fear."

  "Always something."

  "Not this time," said Felthrup. "I haven't eaten since nightfall. I'm starved."

  "Why didn't you ask us for food, then, brother?" asked the same rat, and all three slinkers grinned.

  Because you would have lied, Felthrup thought, but he knew they had caught him. All slinkers lied when they met in Night Village, and yet the practice never kept a rat-any normal rat-from asking. If he had pestered them for food, they would have suspected nothing, and let him go. Now they were closing in, sniffing at his paws and cheeks. A few more seconds and they would smell his last meal. Talk would cease instantly. They would attack.

  He was more than a match for any one of them-any two, probably. But three were too many. And when he fought, he drowned, became a mean, blind brute-became truly their brother.

  There was just one other choice. Felthrup shook himself, with that violent whole-body spasm peculiar to rats and weasels. The slinkers jumped back, and Felthrup spat the contents of his cheek pouches at their feet.

  "Knew it!" they cried happily. "Lying, gobbling, greedy Felthrup!"

  It was only a spoon's worth of soggy biscuit (dropped by a tarboy so exhausted he had fallen asleep as he chewed), but the slinkers fell on it like starved dogs, their short tongues licking at the grimy deck. Felthrup tensed and sprang-pop! — right over their heads. No point in looking back. In seconds his food would be gone. In minutes they would not remember him.

  (Mine the terror of not remembering. Who is Felthrup? Rat, freak, monster, man?)

  Now he was angry as well as tormented. That food would have bribed the door guard. To gain the daytime shelter of the warren he must seek out more, under the boys' hammocks or among the ragged, fitfully sleeping passengers in steerage. Other rats were combing the same spots; he might need hours to locate a scrap. And he had other business first.

  There! A red glow, thimble-small, shedding only enough light for Felthrup to see two busy hands, and the dull glint of bronze. Felthrup dashed for it, reckless with longing. It had to be an ixchel cookstove. Humans could not smell the special coal burned in such stoves, but because ixchel could-and because a ship's cat or dog would trace the smell to its source-the little people cooked their meals on the open deck, away from the secret places where they made their homes.