Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain

by Rebecca Bradley

  "I was going to say, I wish you'd stop talking in puzzles. I used to think I could help you, now you won't even let me try. It was bad enough in the archives in Gil, with the painted fishes and the singing statue at the harbour and all your other little absurdities, but ever since we came back aboard the Fifth—wait a minute, by Raksh, that reminds me. Why didn't you tell me Kat was in the hidden hold? You must have known all along."

  "Of course I knew, I could hear her breathing." Another snatch of the damned tune.

  "Stop that! Why didn't you tell me? Why did you leave the poor child to live all that time in the dark, and me in agonies of worry—"

  "Enough, Vero, please. I had good reason, and let's leave it at that."

  I was moving from irritation to real anger. "Not this time, Tigrallef. I think you should tell me the reason, and I hope it's a good one. And I also want to know why you've been avoiding her ever since. Don't imagine I didn't notice. Your own daughter! Anyone would think you didn't care about her. What would Mother say?"

  He whistled the same tune; it was at least a welcome change from his humming. Then he said, "You seem determined to make me feel guilty, Vero—if not about Sher, then about Kat. Is this your idea of being helpful?"

  "I have no idea how to help you now, except by getting you to Mother. Tell me why you had to keep Kat's presence a secret."

  After giving me a long appraising look, he pulled himself smoothly out of the chair. "Better you should talk to Katlefiya about that. I'll take the wheel—you go aloft and ask her to tell you in detail what she sees when she looks at me. Perhaps it's better that you know. Go on, Vero, I promise to behave."

  I hesitated, not being very eager to give him the wheel. It was no insult to his seamanship, which was at least as good as my own, but in all the years of our wanderings he had never been able to take a watch at the wheel without somebody else nearby, to take over if he was suddenly distracted by the Pain.

  "Go on," he said, motioning with his head towards the foremast, "you can trust me for a few minutes, can't you?"

  Laden with misgivings, I slid out of the wheelman's chair and galloped to the foremast. Seconds later I was up on the crosstrees with Kat, with the broad vista of the Sherkin Sea all around us. So hurried was I that I no more than scanned the sweeping stripes of the ridges below the surface, the crags highlighted by the sun striking down through the water, divided by the fathomless shadows of the valleys. All I wanted was to carry out the farcical mission Tig had sent me on, and then get back to the wheel.

  Kat, comfortably braced where the crosstrees met the mast, was surprised to see me. "What is it, Vero? We're doing fine, nearly through. It looks like the next ridge is the last one we have to worry about."

  "Good." I scanned ahead, saw she was right; beyond the last ridge lay waters that always had been waters, the old Kild Sea that used to embrace the cliffbound north coast of Sher. The shipping lanes were perhaps a day to the north; there was ample time to indulge my father's fancy. "Do something for me, Kat. Take a look at Tig and tell me what you see."

  She gazed at me very strangely. "Why?"

  "How should I know? He's the one who said I should ask you—I gather there's a revelation in there somewhere. Quickly, Kat, please."

  "Oh, all right." With apparent reluctance, she twisted around to glance very briefly at the afterdeck. "About the same." She looked to the bow again, shading her eyes with one hand.

  "About the same as what? No, Katla, give me details."

  "All right, maybe he's a little changed." She twisted for another look, and her face hardened. "The old sow. To be truthful, Vero, he looks much worse. If we don't get Mother back soon—"

  "Details, Kat, I need details. When you say worse, I get the feeling you're not talking about the shave, the haircut and the new tunic."

  "Shave? Haircut? I didn't notice. It's the glow that's become worse, and that face-shifting trick is new, and the awful thing that happens under his skin; not to mention his eyes . . ." She shuddered. "When I first saw him like that, that terrible night in Beriss, I couldn't believe the rest of you were taking it so lightly. I'm willing to go along with it, Vero, but I really can't bear to look at him for very long, especially when I'm eating. I suppose he's upset that I'm avoiding him, and I'm sorry about that, but I just can't help it."

  I was starting to lose my breath. "If you're avoiding him, you may not have realized that he's also avoiding you. Kat, please, by the Eight Rages, describe in detail what you see when you look at our father."

  "If I must." First she scanned ahead—we were on a course that would take us neatly between two crags of the final ridge. Then she glanced back towards the afterdeck. "Let's see—the glow is dimmer at the moment, probably because he's in direct sunlight. He's being the wolf, see? That's not so bad. Last time I looked he was being either the snake or the dragon, it was hard to tell from this distance—it's easier to distinguish up close because you can smell the fire on his breath when he's being the dragon. Do you find the snake and the dragon hard to tell apart, Vero?"

  I gulped. "Not really."

  "No? Though I suppose that's not surprising, since you've had longer to get used to it."

  "Well . . ."

  She looked back again, shuddered, fixed her eyes on the unthreatening alternative of the landscape beneath the sea. I glanced back too; Tigrallef, lounging in the wheelman's chair with one hand on the wheel, saw me looking and smiled up at us.

  "What would you say he's—being—at the moment? Are you still seeing him as the wolf?" I asked.

  "No." A single tear escaped from each of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "He's being nothing right now. Just himself."

  "And that's the worst of all," I guessed.

  "Don't you find it so?" Another brace of tears began to work their way towards her chin. "The skin—the face is his, yes, but I can't bear seeing all the layers at once, and the blood, and the voids behind his eyes—just look at him, Vero! I don't know how you can stand it."

  I squinted obligingly through the bright air and took a long hard look at Tig. This time he gave us a cheerful wave, which Katla did not see. She was wiping the tears away as fast as they came, but the tears were winning. With a sigh, I stretched around the foremast to pat her shoulder, which was all I could reach.

  "Don't worry, Katla," I said, "he'll be all right. All of us will be, you'll see."

  I climbed heavily down the foremast and dragged my feet back to the afterdeck, where Tigrallef was humming that detestable little tune again as he kept the wheel steady with one hand and combed his hair with the fingers of the other. He rose out of the wheelman's chair as I approached, and he looked normal, even good: skin a little tanned, eyes bright, and he'd done quite a competent job on the haircut.

  "So, Vero, did you ask her?"

  "I did."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "I think you already know."

  "And what did you tell her?"

  "You mean, did I tell her you look reasonably normal and human to everyone but her? Certainly not."

  He nodded. "Yes, good, it's better that she isn't told just yet, if ever."

  I slid into the chair, took the wheel, felt the steadiness of the rudders. "I get the feeling there are several things she hasn't been told, along with all the rest of us."

  "Not even Calla knows. I've always hoped I'd never need to tell her." He lowered himself into his own chair, not lounging now, but as stiff and straight as if all the ropes on the Fifth were bound around him. He had lost the over-cheerful smile.

  "Tell me, Tig. Who is seeing you more accurately, Kat or the rest of us?"

  "Katlefiya, of course." The tone was bleak. For a broken second, I could see what Kat meant about the voids behind his eyes; I blinked and the illusion vanished.

  "Raksh. If her description does you justice, it's no wonder she's been avoiding you. But why is it just poor Kat? Why not me too? Last week, as we were approaching Beriss, I could see the Pain as an aura around yo
ur body, and now I see nothing. Why am I blind to what Kat can see?"

  "Partly because every day the old sow moves on a pace or two," Tig said tonelessly, "and every day I push her back again, but not always far enough. Every day the old sow changes her tactics, and I'm forced to change my defence. Channelling her into absurdities worked for a while—now it doesn't. I'm losing ground, Vero."

  "That doesn't explain why Kat sees you differently and I don't."

  He shook his head with impatience. "Think, Verolef, think. There's a crucial difference between you and Katlefiya. Primarily, she should never have been born."

  "How can you say that?"

  "Oh, I don't wish her unborn—but if I had realized what would happen to her, I might not have—" He stopped.

  The first stirrings of comprehension; a lump of ice began to take on solid substance inside me. "You fathered me before you broke the Harashil," I said flatly.

  "That's so."

  "And you fathered Katlefiya after you broke the Harashil. Is that the crucial difference?"

  "Right again," he began, but Katla's voice rang out from the foremast.

  "Hoy Vero! We're clear of the last ridge!"

  I started, and waved in acknowledgement. Tig also started, and momentarily his skin flamed with the kind of fire that burns in a thin layer of lamp oil floating on water. He smiled with what looked like bitterness when I instinctively pulled away.

  "I've had to do double duty for years; I've had to keep hold, and I've had to keep a barrier up between the old sow and Katla. Protecting her from the Pain, and the knowledge of the Pain, has not been easy. It seems, though, that the farther away from me she keeps, the better I can keep hold, and the safer she is."

  "Which is why you were not overjoyed to find her on board," I said slowly.

  Tig nodded, watching Kat swing herself down from the foremast, look towards us, hesitate so briefly it was almost an insult, and drift away from us towards the happy sightseers in the bow.

  "Does Kat have any idea about this? That for all the years of her life—"

  "She knows nothing. But it's only been twelve years, not fifteen; I had no inkling of it myself when she was born, not until the first time she got truly frightened and upset. She was not quite three years old."

  I counted back. "Year Eight. But that was the year when—oh, Raksh . . . that was the year we left Itsant . . ."

  "If you jerk at the wheel like that, Vero, you'll damage the rudderstocks."

  "Oh, Great Raksh . . ."

  "I see you've made the connection. Yes, it was a terrible thing, a brutal and bloody tragedy, three hundred or more killed, much worse by far than Amballa or Nkalvi; but the poor child didn't know what she was doing."

  Feeling giddy, I leant my forehead on the wheel. "We all thought it was you."

  "I encouraged you to think that. Katla was not much more than a baby at the time. How could I burden her mother, or any of you, with such sorrowful knowledge? Anyway, I was sure I could bar the old sow from feeding on Katla—I was sure I could prevent it from happening again."

  "And could you? Did she—was she the one—?"

  "Who did the others? No. The massacres at Amballa and Nkalvi were both done through me. Itsant was another matter. Itsant was done through Katla."

  I did not sleep very well that night, nor for many nights thereafter; but whenever I did manage to exhaust myself into a state of unconsciousness, I was haunted by dreams, all of them concerning dread manifestations of my little sister.

  There was the full-grown Kat with light shining under her skin, herding the Bloody Spirits of the Sea along the sunken roadways of Sher; there was Kat as a small child weeping with fear at the Mamelons of Itsant, those summits of drowned towers thrusting above the surface from the coral-grown ruins of a great city; there was Kat standing on the grim iron ramparts of a city I had never seen, with lightning flickering around her short brown hair. I always wakened from these dreams drowning in sweat.

  I never dreamt about Tig; perhaps I didn't dare to.

  * * *

  PART THREE

  Second Comings

  . . . and all but [the?] Naar shall perish . . .

  Naarhil text fragment, wall text, Nkalvi; copy in

  the Archives of the College of the Second Coming

  Vase 12. Recovered from the interior of Mamelon Four.

  Upper register: Seven figures (three human, one snake, one snake/dragon, one feline, one dog/wolf) enthroned in separate panels. Tentatively interpreted as assembly of gods.

  Lower register: Same seven gods(?) facing human male with square chestplate, as seen on Vases 4 and 11. Tentatively interpreted as king (or high priest?). Beside king is unique ninth figure, heavily robed. A broad red stripe, originally gilded, links robed figure's face with king's chest-plate. Tentative interpretation: ritual transfer of kingship from incumbent to successor, in the presence of the gods.

  Excerpted from the Joint Field Report on the

  Narrative Vases of Itsant, in the Archives of

  the College of the Second Coming

  * * *

  13

  JONNO WAS THE ONE sitting in the wheelman's chair when the Image of Oballef raced towards us out of the east just outside the Deppowe Strait, with the Flamens' banner and a whole laundry line of signal flags streaming from her masthead. The wind had freshened and the sea had roughened in the three days since we left the Sherkin Sea behind us, and the great black wind-galley was not only showing more yardage of sail than I thought was wise, but also had the oars fully manned. Her speed was impressive but dangerous. I hovered by the wheel while I made sure there was no risk of a collision or an attack, and that Jonno knew what he was doing.

  "Remember what I told you yesterday, guardsman? Now, can you point out to me anything that her captain may be doing wrong?" I was speaking in my role as instructor of seamanship.

  Jonno's eyes narrowed as he studied the big wind-galley, approaching rapidly about ten lengths off our port side. Just half an hour before, she had been a black smudge on the horizon. "Yes, Lord Verolef," Jonno said, "he's going the wrong way."

  I shook my head chidingly. "That's not the sort of answer I had in mind. Anyway, how would you know?"

  "Well, sir, that's the Image of Oballef. The Image is supposed to patrol between Deppowe and Zaine, but she's headed west towards Sathelforn and Gil."

  "Maybe her orders have changed. Look, Jonno, I'll give you a hint. It's something about the rigging."

  "The fighting deck would never pass inspection either, I can tell you that," Jonno answered. "Her captain would be busted down to an oarsman in his own galley-well if he sailed into Gil City in that condition, unless—"

  He stopped and squinted, shading his eyes with one hand. The big ship was level with us now, as close to the Fifth as she was ever going to be.

  "Yes, but what about the sails?" I demanded wearily. "Remember what I told you about the Myrene wind/wave/canvas ratios and—"

  Jonno, against all my patient instructions, let go of the wheel, jumped out of the chair and bounded to the portside railing. Sighing, I slid into his place and grimly rehearsed what I would say to him when he returned. Kat and Mallinna, I could see, were just drifting towards the afterdeck from the bow.

  Jonno got back to me first. "Something's happened," he said breathlessly.

  "You're damned right, something's happened. You've deserted your post without securing the wheel. If you did a stupid thing like that in a rough sea, my lad, or with the wind in an awkward direction, you'd risk the ship turning broadside—"

  "Something's happened in the Mosslines," he broke in, eyes wide. "The signal flags: they're a fourth-level warning to avoid Deppowe—that means all ships—and a second-level instruction to certain ships of the fleet to divert to Mashakel and wait for orders."

  Mallinna and Kat were in time to catch his words. "Fourth-level," Mallinna said gravely. "That one isn't often used. I think the last time was about seven years ago, during a resu
rgence of the Last Dance in southern Kuttumm. The blockade lasted for six months, and ended with three port cities being cauterized by flame bolts fired from the sea."

  I abandoned for the moment all thoughts of teaching. "Did the signal flags mention anything about a plague, Jonno?"

  "No, sir."

  "Did they say anything useful about the trouble at Deppowe?"

  "No, Lord Verolef, not much information at all, just orders."

  "Like so many of the Most Revered Primate's arrangements," Mallinna put in wryly.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the receding stern of the Image of Oballef, at the pale blots of a few faces staring at us from the big ship's fighting deck; which did, now that I focused on it rather than the rigging, appear to be damaged and in disarray.

  "Jonno—was Deppowe the only port mentioned in the warning signal?"

  "Yes, Lord Verolef; though Mashakel was in the order to divert."

  "Was there any mention of Faddelin?"

  "No, sir."

  "Thank the Old Ones for that. Is there nothing else you can tell me?"

  Jonno shook his head, but he was looking thoughtful. "I doubt that it's a plague, Lord Verolef. If it were, they wouldn't be ordering some of the fleet to gather at Mashakel, they'd be blockading the coast all the way to Cansh Miishel. My great-uncle the Primate is very particular about plagues."

  "So I've noticed. It doesn't matter; plague or not, blockade or not, we still have to go to Faddelin. We'll just hope we can get there before the trouble spreads, whatever it is. Which means that now we're going to make exactly the same mistake as the captain of the—what name did you give it?—the Image of Oballef made. I don't imagine, Jonno, you can tell me what mistake we're going to make?"

  "I think I can, Lord Verolef. I would guess we're going to raise more canvas than we should, and sail too close to the wind." Suddenly and rather cheekily, Jonno grinned.

  I was pleased, but not really surprised. Jonno had been making great progress in the theory of seamanship since I took over his training. Kat was his instructress while we were crossing the Sherkin Sea, but the two of them spent far too much of their wheel time locked in earnest conversation—largely on the meanings of life, so far as I could tell, though inevitably Jonno's poetry came into it.