No one appeared to have an answer. Pazel turned his gaze left and right. The Conservatory was a larger complex than he’d realized: eight or nine whitewashed buildings, connected by arches and covered breezeways. There were three other spacious courtyards like the one they had just escaped, and a grand approach with white marble stairs and flowers blazing red and yellow. The whole place might have been mistaken for the mansion of some eccentric lord, except for the walled-in enclosures on the eastern side, where the tol-chenni huddled in frightened packs.
“We know what we have to do,” said Neeps. He pointed north to the cliff. “Sneak over there, climb that fence, tie off the rope and slip down into the Lower City. Right?”
“Impossible,” said Dastu. He gestured at a squat stone building half a mile away, constructed right up against the cliff. “That’s a barracks. It’s full of men keeping watch on the Lower City. See, there’s another beyond it. They’re all along the cliff.”
“The Middle City’s on guard against the Lower?” said Neeps.
“Don’t you understand?” said Dastu. “The Middle City is for richer sorts. The ones down there are nearly starving. These people don’t want them swarming up here, making life difficult, begging for work or food. Anyway, we don’t stand a chance of slipping down the cliff by daylight. Besides, the rope is too short. Even dangling from the end of it we’d have a forty-foot drop.”
“How did you and Thasha get down?” asked Pazel.
“We ran a mile nearer the mountain, where the cliff’s not so high,” Thasha answered. “But Dastu’s right, we’d never get away with it by daylight.”
Mr. Druffle, who had moved nearer to the street, crawled back to them on his belly, scowling. “It’s even worse than you think,” he said. “Those ruffians are all over the streets, looking for us. And there’s more of them than before. A few hundred, I’d say.”
“Well, that decides it,” said Pazel. “We’re not going anywhere soon. Maybe they’ll give up by nightfall.”
“Nightfall,” scoffed Uskins. “We will never make it to nightfall! All those towers. Someone is going to notice us, and then we’ll die. You were a fool to bring us up here, Muketch.”
“Call him a fool,” said Marila. “We’d be dead already if we’d stayed down there, like you wanted to. And the only tower near us is that giant thing straight ahead, and it looks abandoned to me.”
The first mate sniffed. “Twenty minutes, at the very outside. That’s how long I give us. Assuming that quack can keep from howling again.”
They lay down, as far from the edges of the roof as they could, as the Middle City went about its bustling, grumbling, early-morning routine. Now and then they heard dlomic men in the street, asking about them, sometimes with open suspicion. Once a nearby voice erupted in rage: “Harmless? Harmless? Sister, they’re devils! Haven’t you heard what went on at the port? They’ve brought the nuhzat back among us! They’re reviving old curses, inventing new ones. We went to them humbly, we asked how we could make amends. They wouldn’t answer.”
“Maybe they couldn’t,” replied a dlomic woman, “because they didn’t know what you were asking.”
“They knew!” shouted the man. “It’s not justice they want, sister, it’s revenge! This day was foreseen!”
After the two dlomu moved on, the angry voices sounded less frequently, and with more discouragement. But when the humans peeked down from the roof they saw that the streets were still crowded. There was no means of escape.
Twenty minutes passed, then twenty more. Pazel, Thasha, Neeps and Marila lay on their backs, a bit apart from the others, with their heads close together and their legs sticking out like the spokes of a wheel. Pazel realized, almost with shock, that he was comfortable. The sun was bright, the roof warm against his back. He looked at Thasha and thought he had never seen a more beautiful face, but what he said was, “You could use a good scrub.”
Thasha gave him a pained sort of grin. She needed to laugh, he thought, but how could she, after those terrible hints and guesses about where she came from? Hercol might believe what Admiral Isiq had claimed: that his wife Clorisuela had finally succeeded in bearing a child, after four miscarriages. But Thasha didn’t. And Pazel could find little reason why she should.
It was not that he believed a word Arunis had spoken. But Neeps’ ideas were another matter. Thasha had done some extraordinary things, in the Red Storm, and in the battle with the rats. She controlled the invisible wall. She’d been watched over her whole life by Ramachni. And who else could Thasha have meant when she said, I’ll never let her come back?
But old Isiq, making secret love to a mage? That was unthinkable. Pazel had witnessed the admiral’s shock at everything that had happened to Thasha. No, Isiq was no insider, with a hand in these intrigues. He was just another tool.
Pazel smiled back at her, to hide the blackness of his thoughts. Even a tool could father a girl on his concubine, and then feel shame, and invent a lie about his wife’s miraculous pregnancy. She really might be the child of Syrarys. Aya Rin, don’t let that be true.
Thasha returned her gaze to the sky. “What do you three want to do when this is over?” she whispered. “I mean, when it’s all over, and we’re back in the North, safe and sound?”
She wasn’t fooling herself; Pazel could tell she knew just how unlikely it was that they’d ever face such a choice. No one answered at first. Then Marila said, “I want to go to school. And then, when I know something, I want to start one. A school for deaf people. Half the sponge-divers in Tholjassa lose their hearing sooner or later.”
Neeps turned over and planted an awkward kiss on her cheek.
“You can’t come,” Marila told him.
“What do you want to do, Neeps?” Pazel asked quickly, before they could start to argue.
Neeps shook his head. “Get away from the blary ocean, that’s what. I know we islanders are supposed to love it, and sometimes I do. But credek, enough is enough. I’ve been at sea since I was nine. I’m tired of imagining all the ways I could drown.”
After a brief pause, he added, “I’ve never been atop a mountain in my life. Not one. And I’ve never touched snow. I want to pick up a handful, and learn what that feels like. Maybe it’s foolish, but I dream about these things.”
Thasha touched Pazel’s leg. “Your turn.”
Pazel hesitated. Why was it such an unsettling question? Thasha was not even looking at him, and yet he felt as though she had backed him into a corner. He tried to picture the two of them, married, settled in the Orch’dury or her mansion in Etherhorde. Thirty years from now. Fifty. He recalled the vision he’d had at Bramian, he and Thasha joining some forest tribe, retreating from the world into the heart of that giant island. What was he thinking? What did fantasies, or love for that matter, have to do with saving this world from a beast like Arunis? He touched the shell that Klyst had placed beneath his skin at the collarbone. It used to burn him when Klyst was jealous; now it was just an ordinary shell. The thought left him briefly desolate.
“Well?” said Neeps.
Pazel groped for a truthful answer. He thought, I don’t want to want anything. I couldn’t stand it, if Ormael was dead, or dying, or two hundred years older. To go there, dreaming of something that will never come back…
“I can’t seem to decide,” he said, pathetically.
Suddenly there was a great commotion from the others. Pazel thought for a moment that they’d been eavesdropping, and were leaping up to vent their disgust at his indecision. But then he saw something that made him forget all that: Ibjen and Prince Olik, walking across the roof toward them, both smiling broadly. And emerging last from the trapdoor that none of them had seen beneath the leaf-litter, Hercol. He was smiling broadly.
“Eight lizards, basking in the sun,” he said. “Come down before you burn.”
“So that is how things stand,” said the prince, stalking almost at a run down the corridor. “He has the Stone, and we must get it back before that ship arrives-an
d more important, before he manages to do something hideous, irreparable.”
The humans were bunched around him, keeping pace. “How do we know he hasn’t mastered the Stone already, Sire?” asked Neeps.
“By the fact that we yet breathe, Mr. Undrabust,” said the prince.
He reached the end of the corridor. Without stopping, he leaned into a pair of big double-doors, spreading them wide, and charged into the main entrance hall of the Conservatory. His personal servants and guards were waiting there, along with most of the birdwatchers, who seemed caught between relief and disappointment at the sight of the departing humans. One tried to hand a sheet of parchment to Mr. Druffle.
“A simple questionnaire, it will take just a minute-”
“It’ll take less than that,” snarled Druffle, crushing the sheet in his fist.
They passed through the outer doors and found themselves in dazzling sunshine. They were on the portico, facing the marble stairs and wide gardens that fronted the Conservatory. Thasha gave a cry of joy: Jorl and Suzyt were waiting there, untethered. They leaped on her, ecstatic and squealing. “They are clever dogs,” said the prince. “You have trained them almost to dlomic standards, and that is high praise.”
“How did you get them to obey you?” said Thasha, hugging both mastiffs at once.
“They did nothing of the kind,” laughed the prince. “But they listened to Felthrup, right enough. And he convinced them I was a friend. Hurry, now, let’s be gone from here.”
“Yes!” shouted Dr. Rain, shuffling quickly down the stairs. “Out, out, out!”
“The doctor disapproves of our facility,” said Olik, “but in fact you were lucky to have been locked up here. There are not many flat-roofed buildings in the Middle City, although there are plenty of flat heads. One or the other kept your would-be executioners from seeking you in the most obvious of hiding places.”
“How did you get rid of them?” asked Uskins, who was having a lucid moment.
“I left that to Vadu,” said the prince. “He was rather startled to find me alive, and rather terrified to imagine how many people might already have learned what he put me through last night. Suffice it to say that our relations are off to a fresh start.”
Beyond the gardens that fronted the Conservatory waited three fine, gilded coaches. Their teams were not made up of horses but dogs: twelve massive, square-shouldered dogs apiece, waiting silently but with eager eyes. There were no drivers that Pazel could see. But a crowd of onlookers had appeared, held at a distance by well-armed Masalym soldiers.
“Prince Olik! Prince Olik!” cried the onlookers. “What happened at the shipyard? Was it really the nuhzat?”
“It was,” said the prince. “I saw the man’s darkened eyes. But you must trust your grandfathers when they tell you that the nuhzat is not madness. At its worst it is a trance, at its best transcendence. If it comes back to us as a people we must call ourselves blessed.”
“Your cousin the Emperor-will he think us blessed?” shouted an old woman.
The prince smiled ruefully. “No, he will not.”
The mob grumbled as Olik ushered the humans into the coaches. “I can give you honesty, my people, as I always have-or I can give you words to make you smile. Sometimes one cannot do both. Step lively, Dr. Chadfallow, in you go. Jorl and Suzyt can run alongside the pack.”
“They have names,” said someone.
“Of course they do,” said Pazel. “Don’t you name your dogs?”
His reply caused an uneasy stir-and Pazel realized suddenly that the speaker had not been referring to the dogs. A tall dlomic man pointed at them between the soldiers. “What are they really, prince?” he cried. “Demons sent to punish us? Tol-chenni cured by magecraft?”
“Don’t you know?” said Olik, swinging into the coach. “They’re our albino brothers, of course. From the Magnificent Court of the Lilac.” He closed the door with a bang.
Each coach had seating for six. Pazel was squeezed in between Thasha and the prince, facing Ibjen, Hercol and Chadfallow. “Home!” shouted one of the prince’s aides. The dogs yipped and whined; the carriage jerked once, then started to roll. Thasha called to Jorl and Suzyt, who fell in beside them, barking. The open space around the Conservatory gave way to narrow streets. Brightly painted homes, shops, taverns closed them in.
“You’re surprised by the dog teams,” said Olik. “They have always been preferred in the Middle City. The distances are not great here, and the beasts are versatile. A full pack like this one can be broken up into smaller teams, for smaller coaches, or even sent on errands alone, following routes they learn by heart. The city would be lost without its dogs, I assure you.”
“Are we going back to the Chathrand, Sire?” Thasha asked him.
“I certainly hope that some of you are,” said the prince. “But ride with me to the Upper City first. At the moment there is no safer place.”
They rattled across a bridge over the foaming Mai, then up a winding hill. Dlomic faces turned their way, staring. Flower vendors, holding out bouquets and calling prices, dropped their arms and gaped at the sight of human faces.
Life was clearly better in the Middle City. The roads were less potholed, the gardens less choked with weeds. No abandoned homes met Pazel’s eye, though here and there a broken window gazed forlorn upon the street, or a crumbling wall looked more patched than repaired. But such blemishes were slight after the wreckage of the Lower City.
“It truly is another world,” said Chadfallow, stooping to peer through the window. “I see almost no malnutrition-but would I recognize it in a dlomu’s face, I wonder?”
The prince gazed wistfully at Chadfallow. “A hungry child looks quite the same, whether human or dlomu,” he said. “As for the Middle City: yes, it is another world. This is the core that Masalym has shrunk to-but I fear it will shrink further still. There is food here, just enough. And there is safety from outside attack, so long as the river flows, and the guards keep up appearances on the wall. But there is no contentment anywhere in Masalym, no peace. Most dwellers in the Middle City have but one ambition: to gain a foothold in the Upper, to join its small, rich ranks. Events like a sudden outbreak of nuhzat only make them want it more desperately. And the ambition of those who already dwell in the Upper City is to forget the lower levels.”
“Forget them, Sire?” said Hercol.
“They would forget the Middle City except as a place the cook is sent for cabbages, or the butler for a wet nurse,” said Olik. “The Lower City they would forget altogether. It is not considered quite proper even to mention it, especially in front of children, or during a meal.”
“I don’t understand,” said Thasha. “They can’t not think about it. It’s sitting on their laps.”
“Their laps are hidden under a table of plenty,” said Olik.
Ibjen looked away, embarrassed.
Dr. Chadfallow frowned. “How can such an arrangement possibly continue?” he asked.
“How indeed,” said the prince. He drew the curtains over the carriage window. “Felthrup has done a great deed in warning us about that ship,” he said. “If we live through the next few days we have him to thank.” He smiled at Pazel. “Along with all the others in that nocturnal chain.”
“Your Highness,” said Pazel, “how is it that everyone is obeying you now? It can’t be just Vadu’s fear of the law that protects your family.”
“Quite right,” said Olik. “The Family Law should keep Vadu to heel-I have a witness to his attempt on my life, after all-but there is a deeper reason, too. It is very simple: when the Ravens arrive in Masalym, they will have either the Nilstone, or the heads of everyone who was guarding it. For Vadu there is no choice: he must catch Arunis, or spend the rest of his days in flight from Macadra.
“There is also the danger of panic. The city is afraid of you, and of the nuhzat, and behind both of these lurks madness, our people’s ultimate fear. I confronted the Issar this morning, and he needed all my help to
overcome his own terror enough to look facts in the face. When at last he did, he named me Defender of the Walls, which is to say that I am now Vadu’s superior officer. I promptly removed him and his senior officers from the shipyard. I also demanded a look at those orders from the capital. They came last night, by courier osprey, and they confirm Felthrup’s warning: the Kirisang is en route to Masalym.”
“The Kirisang,” said Thasha, eyes lighting with recognition. “I read about her. She’s a Segral-class ship like the Chathrand. She’s one of the Great Ships that crossed the Nelluroq and never returned.”
“She is twice the age of the Chathrand,” said Olik, “but make no mistake: she is both sound and formidable. And she has been part of the Platazcra, Bali Adro’s great orgy of conquest, and will be outfitted for war in a most terrible fashion. But there is worse: Macadra herself is aboard that ship. Macadra, who has not left Bali Adro City in thirty years, except on astral journeys-Macadra who detests the sea. There can be but one reason for the journey: she intends to claim the Nilstone for herself. That would also explain why Arunis moved when he did. Better to abandon the Chathrand and the Shaggat Ness than to lose the Nilstone forever.
“Only one part of the message did I welcome: the fact that the bird was released, apparently, from Fanduerel Edge, which would mean that the Kirisang is still six days from here.”
“Thank the Watchers above,” said Ibjen.
But Olik raised a warning hand. “The sorceress may well have lied-especially if she hopes to catch Arunis off his guard. Moreover, the enchanted current may still be flowing, and speed them faster than any wind. And what if both are true? To be sure of escape, I fear you must leave by dusk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” cried the others.
“But that is amazing!” said Chadfallow. “How did you convince the Issar to agree to our departure at all? Why would he compound his loss of the Nilstone with the loss of the Great Ship?”
“Because he is cornered,” said Olik. “To displease Macadra even in a small matter is quite enough to seal his fate. I have offered him one hope of survival, and he is jumping at the chance. As for the ship, her repairs are essentially complete. The larger problem is supplies. Vadu’s men had not begun to lay in food or water, cordage or cloth. Except for the casks from Narybir, her hold is largely empty. Nor will we have time to load her properly, or to assemble enough preserved food for months at sea. It will be hard enough to get your crew marched back from the Tournament Grounds to the ship, and set them to work on the rigging. You will have to balance the cargo while under way, I fear.”
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