The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  It was a perfect fib: even if the captain later denied asking for the pills, Chadfallow would attribute the contradiction to Rose’s lunacy. Chadfallow took a small vial out of a cabinet and tossed it to Fulbreech. Then he looked the youth squarely in the eye.

  “You may wish to consult Lognom again,” he said.

  “Before I sleep, sir,” promised Fulbreech, and slipped out.

  All this time Ensyl had waited in the ceiling of the darkened passage. Her people had once had a spy-hole beneath a cot in sickbay, but it had been deemed too risky: Chadfallow liked to rearrange the furniture, and to inspect the walls for fungus with a magnifying glass. She kept watch now above a spring-loaded trapdoor. Fortunately there was no other entrance to sickbay.

  What were they doing stalking Greysan Fulbreech? A fool’s watch, a fool’s errand-or the most vital task on Alifros? Ensyl had no way of knowing which of these she had undertaken. But Dri had died believing in Hercol as well as loving him. And who was she, Ensyl, if not the guardian of her mistress’ beliefs?

  It had grown harder, though. Hercol explained so little. Worse, he had become morbidly obsessed with Thasha: her moods, fancies, above all her romance with the surgeon’s mate. Was he another Dastu, another spy for Sandor Ott? Ensyl had demanded. Hercol had begged her not to ask, and more strangely, not even to think overmuch about what they were doing.

  It weighed on her, that last request. Don’t think? Blind obedience? That was part of what Dri called “the madness of Ixphir House,” the disorder she feared would ruin the clan. And what if Hercol was wrong about Fulbreech? What if he was no more than he seemed? A fuse was burning, Dri had whispered once: a fuse that will end in a blast to set the world on fire. The Nilstone, she’d believed, was the explosive at the fuse’s end, only waiting for its spark. How much time did they have? How many more mistakes could they survive?

  Then Fulbreech stepped back into the passage, and Ensyl forgot her doubts. The youth’s eyes were desperate, his mouth tight and strained. Those were not the eyes of one whose work was done. He slid to the left of the door and stood there, back to the wall, like a hunted thing. Seeing no one in the corridor, he suddenly darted across it and threw open the door opposite sickbay.

  Ensyl swore. Hercol was right all along. For the place Fulbreech had entered was a tiny pump room, a service cabin for the machinery that lifted water from the bilge or the open sea, for dousing shipboard fires. It was probably the least-visited cabin on the deck. No other door led into the chamber. Nothing stored there was used in sickbay.

  She pulled the trapdoor open wide. The passage was deserted all the way to the bend at the foremast. But just around that bend, she knew, waited her accomplice. Dangling upside down, she spread her lips, tightened the muscles in her throat and produced a high, soft cheeet: very much like a cricket’s song. An answering shadow flickered at the bend in the passage. Ensyl nodded to herself, jerked her head back inside and sealed the door.

  On soundless feet she ran to the space above the pump room. Four large bilge-pipes rose through the ceiling and continued to the upper gun deck. Like all handiwork on the Chathrand they were tight-fitted, built to allow no seepage of wind or moisture from one deck to another. But what luck-there had been damage here as well: a seam between board and pipe had opened, by warping or trauma to the ship. It was no more than the width of two fingers-two ixchel fingers-but it allowed Ensyl a view of half the chamber.

  Fulbreech had struck a match and now was lighting a candle stub. Ensyl watched as he glued it with its own wax to the top of a cabinet. Then he pulled something else from his pocket: a brass jar, very small, no larger than a cherry. Lifting the lid, Fulbreech inserted a finger and scooped out a tiny amount of white cream. This he proceeded to rub into his palm. He rubbed thoroughly, entirely focused on his task. Then he put the jar back in his pocket and turned to face the door.

  That’s it? thought Ensyl, for already Fulbreech was reaching out (with the cream-coated hand) for the knob. But no, he wasn’t exactly. The hand was aiming for a space above the doorknob. He moved slowly, and with trepidation, as though reaching into a darkened burrow. Then suddenly the hand stopped. The fingers probed, gripped, tightened. Fulbreech inhaled sharply. He stood as though holding a second doorknob, mounted above the first, but Ensyl could see plainly that he was holding only air.

  Until, suddenly, he wasn’t. She gasped, and thanked Mother Sky that her voice was an ixchel’s and could not be overheard. Fulbreech was holding a second doorknob. She had seen no flash or puff of smoke. The knob was simply, suddenly there.

  Fulbreech was shaking with fright. His free hand seized a pipe and held it rigidly, like a backstay in a gale. Slowly, with his eyes tightly closed, he turned the knob.

  Something terrible happened. The door flew wide, Fulbreech stumbled, Ensyl drew back her head. The candle was extinguished-and strangely, no light at all came from the passage beyond. But in the last instant of light, Ensyl thought she had seen through the open door-but not into the passageway. Instead she had glimpsed a strange, dark space, not framed with wood but carved from solid rock. Ensyl had sensed some great bulky shape lunging forward, but then the light had died.

  Mother Sky, what’s happening?

  A low sound, half slither, half shuffle, rose from darkness. Ensyl felt like running; she felt like a child in a darkened bedroom in the clan house, frightened by the echo of human footfalls. But there was nothing human about the sound coming from the darkness beyond the door.

  Fulbreech’s voice came out hoarse and aghast. “M-master?” he said.

  He was answered, if answer it was, by an assortment of foul vocalizations. They were mouth-sounds, maybe, but they formed no words. The sounds were sucking, gurgling, the licking of foul slobbery lips. Suddenly Fulbreech moaned, as though he had touched something unspeakably loathsome, or been touched by it. He stumbled backward; she heard his body collide with the pipes. The door creaked shut again, and clicked.

  For almost a full minute there was silence. Then a voice said, “Have you brought another match?”

  The voice belonged to Arunis.

  “Y-y-”

  “Relight the candle, Fulbreech, and tell me why you have disturbed my rest.”

  Pazel knew the Turachs were on his heels. Their pounding boots sounded right above him; they could probably hear his own progress through the sleepy ship almost as well as he heard theirs. But they would never catch him. The ship’s four great ladderways all ended on the orlop deck: there were of course other staircases, but you had to know where to find them. It kept pirates from racing straight to the hold-and a few weeks ago, mutant rats from swarming straight to the topdeck. The Turachs would have to run all the way to the tonnage hatch, where they could swing down, if catching Pazel was worth such acrobatics. Otherwise they would press on to the midship scuttle. Pazel was running for that narrow stair himself: it was the fastest way up from the mercy deck as well.

  But already his heart was sinking. He had escaped the bread room, but the Turachs knew the layout of the ship as well as he did, and they were larger and faster. They’d be waiting for him at the scuttle. They’d be waiting on every Gods-damned stair.

  He stopped. It was hopeless. A weird alliance of his friends and enemies was determined to keep him from getting anywhere near Thasha. And maybe that was sign enough that he ought to sit still, just as Marila had told Neeps to do. Something that could make Fiffengurt and Haddismal work together was surely a matter of life and death.

  Unless…

  He laughed at a sudden, ridiculous idea. Could Rose be marrying them? Could that be how Thasha meant to “end it”? Were they keeping him away out of pity, for fear he’d attack Fulbreech on the spot?

  Impossible. A ship’s captain could marry anyone, it was true… but Thasha couldn’t be that far gone. Could she?

  He thought suddenly of Neda and Cayer Vispek, and his unsettling dream about the burial at sea. The Isiq girl wants to be rid of him. He felt ill. Maybe his min
d-fit was coming early. Or maybe Thasha wanted to be married before the dlomu came to take them off for their visit to the Issar.

  But hold on: the dlomu. Perhaps there was another way off this deck. He turned on his heel and ran straight back the way he had come. When he passed by the wreckage of the ixchel’s fortress he saw lamplight shining down through the hole in the bread room floor. Fiffengurt’s voice sounded hoarsely, calling his name. He didn’t answer. Straight on he ran, and minutes later reached the forward scuttle: a tiny, neglected laundry-chute of a staircase dropping sharply down to the hold.

  He descended. Rin’s eyes, the smell. The flooding had washed out some of the cinders, blood and rat-filth, but what remained was exposed to the air now, and rotting… he shut his mind to such thoughts and groped into the darkness ahead. He had one chance, and if it came he would have to seize it instantly.

  The scuttleway let onto a flying catwalk: a kind of bridge some twenty inches wide and eighty feet long, spanning the cavernous hold. No rail, and no way of telling if the boards were intact. Pazel set out across it, utterly blind, restraining a suicidal urge to run. The catwalk felt sound. He walked with arms stretched before him, but in fact he had no idea of his distance from the hull. And what then? How on earth would he get down to The catwalk ended. His foot met with empty space. He fell like a stone, and almost before he had time to be afraid struck the curving wall of the hull, and rolled and spun and crashed to the bottom of the hold.

  First, a moment of stunned stillness; then the pain rushed in, and he cursed in a cascade of languages. But he was not dead, so he’d keep moving. He could still make everything all right. He crawled through a blackness of soaked and stinking wreckage. Bags of spoiled grain, ends of cables, shards of broken amphorae and scraps of wood. At times he was almost swimming in it. He doubted that he was moving in a straight line, but when he could touch the solid hull he corrected his path.

  And suddenly there it was: moonlight. Not from any window above him, of course, but from below, reflected in a puddle on the stone quay beneath the Chathrand, through the hole in her flank. The shipwrights had not yet closed the wound: two enormous planks, or wales, remained to be fitted in place. Pazel dragged himself through the sawdust (fresh sweet smells) and looked out through the belly of the Chathrand. He was at the very bottom of her, just yards from the keel, and about fifteen feet off the ground.

  Thasha. Love and fury blended hopelessly inside him. He had been too timid in protecting her, too selfish and slow. Aya Rin, let me get there in time.

  He dangled from the bottommost wale, and let go. Pain shot up his legs where they struck the stone, but he managed a clumsy take on the straight-drop-and-roll maneuver Thasha herself had tried so hard to teach him. Landfall at last, he thought absurdly, struggling to his feet. Then he ducked under the keel, dashed to the opposite scaffold and began to climb.

  The cool air brought flashes of hope. Sometimes bad luck was a whale that devoured you. Sometimes you crawled out of its belly and fought on.

  The dlomu ashore did not notice Pazel at first, and by the time they did, they could think of nothing to do about him. Humans were not to leave the ship, but this youth’s only wish seemed to be to get back inside. They might have scolded him, but they were under orders not to speak to the crew except in emergencies, and so held their tongues. The decision, as it happened, cost lives.

  Pazel had climbed about eighty feet when, on the lower gun deck, Fulbreech stepped out of the pump room and quickly closed the door behind him. For the last time in his life he put on his old, false face. He was ready with a laugh and a self-effacing story about ducking into the chamber to collect himself, after some ugly work in sickbay-but no one had seen him, the passage was still deserted. Once again he opened the pump room door.

  Arunis swept into the passage, his great mace raised before him. Fulbreech thought again how ghastly he had become. Once the mage had been stout; today he was a skeletal, staring creature, large of build but wasted within his dark, enveloping coat, the old white scarf twined about a dry and scrawny neck. And yet there was power in those hands that gripped the cruel weapon like a plaything, and his eyes still gleamed with appetite.

  He was marching aft at a swift pace. “The Stone is in the manger yet,” he said, more to himself than to Fulbreech, who was half running to keep up. “I will not have to touch it. I will take it, of course. No one will dare to cross me. The Turachs will flee their posts, and those who do not flee I will burn. I will claim the Stone tonight, and it will know me for its master, the shaper of worlds, the next ascendant to the Vault of the Skies. The Stone brings death only to weaker souls. All the same I will not touch it. Why should I touch it, before I know that I can?”

  “You should cross the ship by the orlop deck, Master,” said Fulbreech, touching his sleeve.

  “We cross here,” said Arunis.

  “On the lower gun deck? As you will, Master. You may be lucky here as well.”

  Sorcerer and servant hurried on, past the gunners’ cabins and the armory. Finally the passage ended and they stepped out into the central compartment. Moonlight filtered dimly through the gunports, and the glass planks overhead. The long rows of cannon gleamed blue-black in the shadows. Arunis hesitated, glaring.

  “Empty,” he said.

  “As I say, Master, you’re fortunate tonight. Stanapeth and Bolutu may be huddled with Lady Oggosk, but in general the ship is asleep.”

  “It is not asleep,” snapped Arunis, shooting him a furious look. “Scores of men are awake, whether they dare to stir from their chambers or not. I can feel them, crouched and frightened. Why should they be frightened? What has been happening this last hour, Fulbreech?”

  “This last hour? Nothing, Master. I told you, I was with the girl. Pathkendle and his friends retired early. Bolutu spoke with someone dispatched by Prince Olik, who delivered the awful news.”

  Arunis began to walk quickly down the row of cannon. “Delivered it to him, not the entire crew. I begin to wonder if you’ve kept up appearances, Fulbreech. Does Sandor Ott still consider you his agent, or has he seen through your mask?”

  “He relies on me utterly, sir,” said Fulbreech, with a hint of pride. “It was he who sent me in pursuit of Thasha to begin with, as you know.”

  “Then what is the great Arquali spy telling you?”

  “Master, he knows nothing of Olik’s plan to take the Nilstone.”

  “Sandor Ott is awake, fool! Rose is awake! I smelled their nervous brains the moment I stepped from my chambers! Why are they nervous, Fulbreech? What are they waiting for?”

  “Your death, sorcerer. These many years-but no longer.”

  It was Hercol. The swordsman rose from a crouch between two gun carriages. With a gliding step he moved to block their way, Ildraquin loose in his hand, murder in his eyes.

  The sorcerer’s face convulsed with rage. “My death,” he managed to scoff, but there was fear in the spiteful voice.

  “I think,” said Hercol, “that you have taken an interest in this blade, since last we met. Certainly your creature here saw fit to question Thasha about it-in the most unassuming way, of course.”

  “You must satisfy his curiosity, Stanapeth,” said a second voice.

  Arunis and Fulbreech whirled. Sandor Ott had appeared behind them, a Turach sword in hand, wearing his savage smile.

  Arunis turned and seized Fulbreech by the throat. “Maggot! Your death shall be the first of many!”

  “Snap his neck and you’re doing him a mercy,” laughed Ott. “My own punishment for traitors would take several minutes just to describe. But you’ve got it wrong, Arunis. I was the one he betrayed, not you.”

  Arunis turned Ott a look of hateful suspicion. All the same he let go of Fulbreech. The youth fell to the floor, wheezing in agony. Arunis kicked him flat, then held him still beneath his boot.

  From the corner of a bruised eye, Fulbreech saw Ott draw something from his belt: a short, cylindrical device of wood and iron. T
he old spy raised an eyebrow at him. “Remember this, do you, lad?”

  Fulbreech did remember. The thing was a pistol: a sort of handheld cannon, the first of its kind in all the world. It was clumsy, inaccurate, fragile and useless without a match. But on Simja, Ott had shown him how the device could fire a lead sphere through an armored chest. Fulbreech had thought: The Empire that could build such a thing cannot be opposed. That’s the winning side, my side. And until he’d met Arunis, he’d been right.

  Ott began to circle the pair, slowly, casually. “Well, Stanapeth,” he said, gesturing at Fulbreech, “you promised this would be worth my time, and I’m happy to admit you spoke the truth. A traitor in the Secret Fist! If we were in Etherhorde I’d be submitting my resignation at Magad’s knee. But why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “For the same reason I told almost no one,” said Hercol, starting to circle as well. “Because this mage has been listening to our thoughts. He cannot probe below the surface, maybe, but when our minds turn to killing and betrayal, the surface is enough. It was all I could do to keep myself from brooding on Fulbreech, and thus giving everything away. And of course there were appearances to maintain in front of the Simjan himself.”

  Arunis turned where he stood. He looked suddenly like a cornered animal, his gaunt lips drawn back from his teeth.

  “Deceiving the deceivers,” said Ott. “You always were the best in your class.”

  “We had a strong incentive to succeed,” said Hercol.

  “We?” said Ott.

  “Yes,” said another voice in the shadows, “we.”

  It was Bolutu. He walked up quickly in the moonlight on Hercol’s left. He looked at Arunis, and his face, usually so placid, was transformed by rage. “Twenty years have I given to your downfall. Twenty years-and two hundred. I lost my family, my whole world. The only friends left to me were my shipmates, those who had sailed North with me, and them too I watched you hunt down and kill. You are depravity incarnate, mage. But you have not managed to kill us all.”