The Red Wolf Conspiracy

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Chadfallow lowered his eyes. “You have been asleep for twenty hours, Pazel.”

  For a moment Pazel refused to believe it: the voice had been so real, so close. But of course it had been a dream; his father could not have been there. And yet—

  “Where are we?”

  “Two leagues from Ormael City, I should say. We'll be docking within the hour.”

  “Ormael! How did we get here? What ship is this?”

  “The brig Hemeddrin. A Volpek warship, but we have found her a better flag. Rise carefully, if you can rise at all, and put these on.” He handed Pazel a shirt and pair of breeches. “They are the smallest I could find. Volpeks do not keep tarboys.”

  Pazel got to his feet, wincing. Every muscle in his body hurt. As he dressed, Chadfallow bent over a sack at his feet and withdrew a glass bottle. Pulling the stopper, he decanted a few ounces into a mug and held it out to Pazel.

  “Drink.”

  Pazel just looked at him. No other word could have done more to remind him of his distrust of Ignus Chadfallow. The doctor took in his expression and smiled sadly.

  “It's medicine, my boy. A powerful but entirely unmagical sort, and the very thing for one in your condition. Go on, drink it down.”

  Pazel shut his eyes. He drank. And retched. “It tastes like something dead.”

  “Oil of grubroot,” said Chadfallow. “The caviar of emetics. Here you are.” He handed Pazel a brass dish.

  “What's this for?”

  Chadfallow said nothing; he appeared to be counting seconds. All at once Pazel doubled over, vomiting copiously into the dish. Chad-fallow studied his expulsions with interest.

  “No ulcranous pills!” he said. “You're lucky; but then Arunis didn't have you in his keeping long. The other divers coughed up a number of tiny pills, which were perhaps embedded in their biscuits. Awful weapons: they are coated with a lacquer that dissolves over the course of ten days. After that the beads shatter, filling the stomach with powdered glass. Death follows—slowly.”

  “He was going to kill us!”

  “After you brought him the Wolf. He wanted no one left alive to tell tales.”

  “Have you given the others that grubroot stuff?”

  “Of course. Now, can you walk? People are waiting to see you.”

  Chadfallow opened the door, and they stepped out into a small wardroom.

  “Pazel!”

  Thasha jumped up so fast she nearly overturned the table where she was sitting with Neeps, Marila and Mintu. She had cut her hair as short as a tarboy's—hacked it off with a knife, by the look of it. She and Neeps ran to embrace him.

  “You choose the worst times to have those fits,” Thasha laughed.

  “There's no good time,” said Pazel, grinning too.

  “You old dog!” said Neeps. “You really fixed Arunis! Last I saw he was floundering in the water, screaming about a scarlet ray. Did your murth-girl send that ray?”

  Pazel's smile faded. His murth-girl. Why had she vanished? Was that how her people died? Or could murths only be seen when you were under their spell—or when they were under yours?

  He gave his chest a quick pinch. The shell was still there.

  “It must have been Klyst,” he said. “But what happened? Thasha, was that really you in the boat? You and—”

  He whirled around. There by the masthead stood Hercól. The Tholjassan smiled warmly.

  “Yes, Pazel, I too am alive—thanks to you. Had you not alerted my brethren I should have died in Uturphe, just as my old master intended.”

  “Your old master?”

  “Sandor Ott,” said Hercól.

  “What?” cried Pazel.

  “I couldn't believe it either,” said Thasha, smiling slyly. “I knew someone had made a monster out of him, but—”

  “Ott did not make me a warrior,” said Hercól quickly, and with no hint of an answering smile. “He snatched me, rather, from a Tholjassan fighting school. Half-trained, and wholly trusting. But this is not the time to discuss my dark years with the Secret Fist.”

  “But you were dying in Uturphe!” said Pazel. “How in Pitfire did you get Aere?”

  It had all begun with those two riders, Hercól explained. They had alerted the Tholjassan Consul, who had sprung into action when he learned of Hercól's plight, and located him the next morning in a poorhouse, his knife wound already inflamed. The Consul saw that the wound was properly cleaned and dressed. Soon Hercól woke, and begged his fellow Tholjassan to search the city for Pazel.

  “He put nine men on the task,” said Hercól, “and soon enough the trail led to the false inn on Blackwell Street, and to the Flikker-men. They fled my brethren down their holes and sewers, but a Tholjassan does not turn easily from his prize. Of course, you and Neeps had already been taken inland, to the flesh market. But my brethren recovered these.”

  Hercól held out his palm, and to Pazel's astonishment, there lay his parents' gifts, the knife and the ivory whale.

  “Thank you, Hercól,” he said, humbled, and pressed them to his chest.

  Of course Pazel wished to know what had happened to them all. They tried to explain, but with so many tellers the tale became a patchwork of details and anecdotes, and he had to stop them time and again with simple questions. At last the picture emerged: how Hercól had subjected his wound to the lightning-fast cures of a Slugdra ghost-doctor (and survived them). How he had hunted Ott's men through the low places of Uturphe, killing three and frightening all, for these lesser spies had never crossed wits or swords with one trained to serve the Secret Fist. How he learned that Chadfallow too was marked for death, and so met his ship and persuaded him not to pass a single night in Uturphe. How together the men had boarded a Simja-bound ship full of cooks, seamstresses, masons, balladeers, dog-catchers and specialists in the elimination of wasps, all claiming some connection to Thasha's wedding. How they disembarked at Ormael to find Chathrand already docked and the city in an uproar, for Thasha had run away in the night.

  Ott's spies were scouring Ormael City. But Hercól had turned again, as Tholjassans will in a crisis, to his kindred. As it happened, several Tholjassans were preparing to ride north toward the Crab Fens, responding to an emergency letter. Apparently a Volpek brig—this very Hemeddrin—had been raiding the coast for a fortnight, landing men in defenseless villages and kidnapping boys and girls in their teens. The ship had last been spotted running straight for the Haunted Coast.

  “Ott wasn't interested in Tholjassan youths,” said Hercól, “but I was. And when I learned that Mr. Ket, the soap merchant with a knack for turning up at odd times, had left the Chathrand and was also headed north, I knew the coincidence was too great. The doctor and I set off with my countrymen on horseback. We caught up with Arunis and his wagon-team at the edge of the Fens. But we were five men against fifty Volpeks and a mage—and we saw no sign of Thasha, hidden as she was. The best we could do was slow Arunis down.”

  “So it was you who blocked the road with trees,” Pazel asked.

  Hercól nodded. “With a little help from the freebooters.”

  “Freebooters? You mean smugglers, men like Mr. Druffle?”

  “I do,” said Hercól. “But Mr. Druffle had best not show his face among the freebooters of Chereste again, after helping Arunis raid their territory. They are wise enough never to seek treasure among the shipwrecks of the Haunted Coast. And they appear to have made peace with the murths and spirits there. No living men know that country better.”

  He seemed about to say more, but then changed his mind. Pazel saw Neeps and Thasha look quickly away. Confused, Pazel glanced from face to face. No one met his eye.

  Hercól cleared his throat. “Others of my kinfolk met us in the dunes. All told we were but fifteen strong. The freebooters were not many, either: another dozen at the most. They were brave, though, and they had boats hidden in a secret lodge in the North Fens. They were quite eager to help us drive the Volpeks out.”

  “As the Mzithrinis
might have been,” put in Chadfallow, “if only—”

  “Mzithrinis}” Pazel nearly jumped from the bench. “What Mzithrinis? Where did they come from?”

  “We have all been asking that question,” said Chadfallow. “Perhaps they were outlaws, enemies of the Five Kings driven into exile. But it is just as likely they were spies. The Mzithrinis surely knew that something odd was brewing in the Gulf of Thól. One does not bring three ships and a hundred Volpeks that close to the Pentarchy and escape unnoticed. My guess is that they were dispatched to find out what Arunis was up to, and stumbled on Thasha quite by accident. Unfortunately—or perhaps very fortunately—they are all dead. If they were agents of the Five Kings, it would hardly do for them to turn up at Thasha's wedding and identify her.”

  “I wish they would,” said Thasha. “If Prince Falmurqat knew what I looked like then, blood leaking down my chin and all, he'd be the one running away from this marriage.”

  “Hear our mistress of peace,” sighed Chadfallow. “In any case, those six will make no report. But they did not walk to the Haunted Coast. Somewhere they had a boat, and few are the boats that would cross the Gulf of Thól with a crew of six. Others may have watched your fight from a dune-top, Hercól.”

  “What is done cannot be undone,” said Hercól. “And Thasha had no better choice—indeed, she did what I would have done myself under the circumstances.”

  “At last a kind word,” said Thasha. “Hercól cut off my hair with a knife, Pazel, and dipped me in swamp-muck, and made me go and surrender to that Druffle of yours. And Druffle actually believed I was a Tholjassan sponge-diver who'd given up trying to escape.”

  “You don't look a bit Tholjassan,” said Marila. “Druffle must be a fool.”

  “He was enchanted,” said Chadfallow. “Magically enslaved by Arunis, Rin knows for how long. We have never seen the real man.”

  “I can live without that pleasure,” said Neeps. “But if only you'd caught us still ashore! If Pazel hadn't been sent underwater, and talked with the sea-murths, Arunis never would have found the Wolf at all.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “I only wanted him to leave,” said Pazel. “Klyst told me that when men disturb the Haunted Coast, it destroys the ripestiy, the magic that keeps them alive. It's not right for men to do that. Her people have lived there for thousands of years.”

  “You have learned things no human ever knew,” said Chadfallow quietly.

  “Well, I don't want to learn another language like hers,” Pazel said, so fiercely that they all looked up. “Klyst called me land-boy—do you want to know why? Because the word for ‘human’ is striglyffn-chik, that's why. I'll have to know that forever. But I'm not making sense. I'll be quiet. Striglyffn-chik. Sorry.”

  This time the silence was longer. The others had winced at the screeching noise: sea-murth syllables torn from a human throat. Marila and Mintu gaped like fish. “He's got the hiccups,” whispered the small boy.

  “Pazel,” said Thasha slowly, “what will you have to know forever?”

  “That word,” he said. “It's the only word they have for ‘human.’ But it means ‘the beasts who will kill us all.’ That's how they see us. I wish I didn't know.”

  When no one resumed the tale, Pazel took a deep breath. “What I do want to know is how you beat so many Volpeks. You were outnumbered, what? Three to one?”

  “Closer to four,” said Dr. Chadfallow. “We owe our success to Tholjassan tactics.”

  “And unnaturally good luck,” Hercól added. “The mist that rolled off the Fens allowed us to move unseen, and within it sounds were deadened, too. First it blanketed Arunis' shore compound, and we fell on the Volpeks there and slew them almost in silence. Then the mist moved out to sea like a great wall, and we followed. Was it the work of Coast spirits, or the murths you befriended, Pazel? I do not know. But within that uncanny fog we stole aboard the cargo ship, and though some of our people fell we took her, too, and still Arunis suspected nothing.”

  “I saw your handiwork,” said Pazel grimly, recalling the dead Volpek he had feared was Neeps.

  “Afterward we launched her boats and sailed west into the main current, where we could fall upon the Hemeddrin from behind. It was vital to take her next. Her guns could have blown the sea barge to matchsticks.”

  “We noticed,” said Neeps.

  “That was the freebooters' doing,” said Hercól. “A bit too eager to kill Volpeks, as it happened. We Tholjassans never planned to fire a shot. Yet there was a danger that the Volpeks would harm their captives if they learned that we had taken their fighting ship. What if they sank the sphere with captives still inside her? That is why I sent Thasha out with the last cage full of divers. And that is why four of us slipped from our boats as we passed the sea barge, and trod water in the mists and kelp, awaiting her signal that you were all safely out of the sphere.”

  “Only I couldn't signal,” said Thasha, “because you were still missing.”

  “And then the freebooters fired the cannons?”

  “At the sea barge,” said Hercól, with a nod.

  “On top of us, in other words,” said Marila.

  “You were very lucky, Pazel,” said Neeps. “Mintu here saw you just as you were starting to sink. You were out cold.”

  “I owe you one, mate,” said Pazel. Mintu smiled and looked at his toes.

  Hercól smiled at the brother and sister. “Our countrymen will see you all safely home to your villages, once you have rested a bit in Ormael. Fasundri, fearless ones: that is how you shall be known.”

  He touched his closed fist to his forehead, the very gesture Thasha had seen him make on the bridge in Gallows Park in Ether-horde, and the Tholjassan boy and girl did the same. Pazel looked at Marila, and saw that Neeps was doing the same. They would miss her, strange cold fish that she was.

  “And that is nearly the end of the story,” said Chadfallow. “The Tholjassans took the ship, and paid the freebooters a tidy sum for their trouble. All the artifacts stolen from the Lythra they wisely returned to the sea. Many Volpeks died, along with some who fought them. But no divers perished, except the two boys killed by the sea-murths. I cannot say whether Arunis died, but at least his plans have been thwarted.”

  “And the Red Wolf?” said Pazel. “What became of it?”

  Chadfallow and Hercól exchanged a look. The doctor closed the wardroom door.

  “It is here,” he said, “in the hold. Do not speak of it to anyone. When Chathrand sails back to Etherhorde I shall gather the best minds in the Empire: we shall try to learn why Arunis wanted it so badly.”

  “You should start with Ramachni,” said Thasha, sullen, as if this were a point made before. Chadfallow did not even look at her.

  “My great fear, Pazel, was that Arunis sought the Nilstone, a cursed thing of horrible power. It was in the keeping of the Mzithrin Kings, and vanished during the last war. The Shaggat Ness craved it to the point of madness, and one rumor placed it in his hands at the moment the Lythra sank. No doubt Arunis also dreams of possessing the Nilstone—and if it were here, I cannot imagine him spending his time on anything else. Still, I sense a powerful spell on this Wolf: perhaps it too is a weapon of some kind.”

  “Do you think he wanted it for the Shaggat Ness?” asked Pazel.

  The doctor turned him a sharp look. “What do you mean, for him?”

  Before Pazel could answer, a cry went up on the topdeck: “Port stations! Ormael City! Clew up, boys! Furl those Volpek rags!”

  Everyone jumped to their feet.

  “We can discuss this later,” said Hercól. “Now we must act. Thasha, you know your part?”

  A gleam appeared in Thasha's eye. “Know it? I can't wait for it.”

  “Very good,” said Hercól. “Then listen well, Pazel Pathkendle, for we shall need your help as well. We have dealt with one conspirator, but two more await us.”

  The Imperial Governor of His Supremacy's Territories of Ormael and the Trothe
of Chereste was having a bad evening. The sword-fish was off. His cook had the measles. He hated this wing of Ormael Palace (the evening sun through the famous round, red window behind him slowly cooked the back of his neck), but where else could he entertain? The formal dining hall was still roofless and derelict, five years after the Rescue. The repair funds—like most of those promised for the city—had mysteriously evaporated. In truth such a theft of Imperial gold did not bother him half as much as not being invited to participate.

  His subjects loathed him, an Etherhorder sent to rule Ormael in the name of a violent conqueror. And for the first time since his reign began five years ago: cannon fire along the Coast! Were they pirates, freebooters, Mzithrini? He hardly dared imagine.

  It was the third straight dinner with his Chathrand guests, and they had long since run out of pleasantries. Uskins and Fiffengurt, two officers brought along tonight to make conversation, did nothing but glower at each other across the table. Each time Ambassador Isiq looked at him, the governor heard a silent accusation. Why are you eating dinner? Why did you sneeze? Why aren't you out there looking for her?

  For of course nothing mattered beside the grand catastrophe hanging over him. The Isiq daughter, gone. Six hundred vessels descending on Simja for a wedding that could not occur. Day by day they were drifting toward an embarrassment that would sting for centuries. And he would be at its epicenter: the fool in Ormael who lost the Treaty Bride.

  “This wine is splendid, Governor,” said Syrarys.

  Bless her, thought the governor. She does try to help.

  “Jasbrea Vineyards,” mumbled Captain Rose, frowning at his fish. “On Fulne.”

  “Right you are, Captain!” said the governor. “You're a connoisseur.”

  “I'm a drinker.”

  First Mate Uskins laughed: a sound like a sheep poked with a dagger. The governor's wife tut-tutted and made the sign of the Tree.

  “‘Drink is bottled woe, I shall abandon it,’” she said. “The twenty-first Rule of Rin. Don't you find, Captain, that …”

  Across the table, Lady Oggosk raised her milky eyes and studied the governor's wife coldly. The woman let her voice trail away.