The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Give that bottle here!” said the Shaggat’s son.

  “It ain’t wine, it’s water. And it’s ours. You threw yours up in the hay like a naughty baby, didn’t you?”

  Dri smiled: the remains of a shattered bottle lay a few feet to her left.

  The son was actually starting to cry. “You despise me.”

  “Now you’re catchin’ on.”

  “Very soon you’ll be sorry. When he is flesh again, and the Swarm explodes from the gray kingdom, you shall answer to my father. I will tell him and you will be crushed. You worms, you tiny insects, you—bullies.”

  “What’s this ‘Swarm’ you’re always on about?”

  But the Shaggat’s son had lost the thread of his rant. “Is it so much to ask, Warden? A good bottle and a bit of cheese? Even local cheese would do.”

  Dri rose, stretched—and a flash of movement overhead sent her leaping, spinning, drawing her sword in midair, and the quickness of thirty years’ training saved her life.

  A hideous insect crouched before her. It was as large as Dri herself, double-winged like a dragonfly, with barbed limbs, green composite eyes and a long stinger like a wasp’s curled under its body. That stinger had just stabbed the spot where Dri had lain a moment before.

  She drew her knife as well. The creature made a sudden deep buzz, like a crosscut saw biting into a tree. It swiveled its black hairy head, fixed an eye on her, and launched itself into the air. Skies, it’s fast. She couldn’t see it: then it attacked again. This time she felt the brush of a leg. She struck, but her sword cut only air.

  “Wine and cheese! Wine and cheese!”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  The thing was faster than Sniraga the cat. It dived a third time, vanished, dived again and missed her neck by a finger’s width. Dri spun into battle-dance, into the desperate pinwheeling that could hold off four humans at once. If I stop, I die. If I leap from the hay it will sting me before I land.

  The room was a blur. In ecstatic dance she moved backward through the shards of glass. There was a higher bale there; she could back against it like a wall, burrow into it if need be. If I have time. How many are there? Then the insect was on her and the stinger pierced her cloak beside her rib cage, and knowing she had won before she struck Dri snapped the stinger in two with a twist of her body and plunged her knife-hand to the wrist in the insect’s eye.

  It was minutes in dying. Its gore and spittle burned her head to foot, and a barb on its leg pierced her thigh. But at last its convulsions ceased. She threw the carcass down, bleeding, dumbfounded. What in the black Pits of woe had just attacked her?

  “Will you fetch my bottle, please?” sniffed the Shaggat’s son.

  A Turach groaned. “Fetch it yourself—the chain’s long enough. Only I think you broke it, your daftness.”

  Dri took a few staggering steps. The insect’s bile stank beyond description. No one in Night Village was going to believe her. She should take back its head, or what was left of it. Then the hay bales moved.

  She whirled. Pithor Ness was gaping at her, chin on the edge of the straw bale, not two feet away. One hand hung frozen above the broken glass. He was terrified.

  “Guards,” he croaked.

  “Careful! Careful, you blary—”

  His hand withdrew. She saw his lips curl, forming another word, and then she flew at him, sunk her knife through his cheek, and using it for leverage stabbed down through his jugular with her sword. Blood struck her in a torrent: she was practically inside the wound. He made a sound that was not the word she feared, groped at the crimson straw, and watched her in disbelief as he died.

  She leaped once more. He took four bales down with him, glass and all.

  It was four in the morning when Diadrelu reached the ixchel stronghold. Men and women who had known her all their lives fell back in astonishment. Blood soaked her from head to foot; even her hair was stiff with it; yet her only wound was a minor cut on the thigh.

  Taliktrum appeared, surrounded by his Dawn Soldiers, the shaven-headed fanatics he had inherited from his father. He questioned her in a sharp, peremptory voice. Was it the rat-king again? Or Sniraga? Was there danger to the clan?

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Of what kind, Aunt?”

  She looked at him, the nervous young leader of Ixphir House. She did not know where to start.

  “You must answer my questions the same as anyone,” said Taliktrum, almost shouting. “We survive through clan cohesion. We are not threads but a woven fabric, and discipline makes the weaving strong. Let it fray in one corner and the whole cloth unravels.”

  “You don’t need to recite children’s lessons to me,” said Dri softly. “I taught them to you, by Rin.”

  The soldiers tensed. Taliktrum looked from one to another. “My aunt is very fond of invoking Rin,” he said with a nervous sneer. “As often as she does Mother Sky, or the Wanderer, or any other ixchel figure.”

  Dri shrugged. A part of her was screaming at his weakness, this ugly groping for standing and respect. “The tradition’s old,” she mumbled.

  “And taken from the giants, like certain drugs and diseases. Tell me, Aunt: is Rin a god or a devil for you?”

  She sensed the aggression in his words and was appalled. He was displaying her to his fanatics: Here is one unlike myself, one I have risen above, despite our kinship. It chilled her to the core to imagine what such tactics implied for the future of the clan.

  Suddenly her other sophister, Ensyl, rushed into the chamber. A thin reed of a girl with a prominent forehead, widowed before she could marry, Ensyl was quiet to the point of invisibility much of the time; but Diadrelu knew the iron at the heart of the reed. The girl elbowed her way through the Dawn Soldiers, shot one furious glance at Taliktrum, and led her mistress out.

  In her own chamber, Dri let the girl tear off her ruined clothes, then sat as ordered in the herring tin that served as her bathtub. She did not speak as her sophister poured bucket after bucket of cold water over her, scrubbing fiercely at the blood and insect substances. The girl had to hack some of it from her hair with a knife.

  After several minutes Dri wet her lips. “Ludunte,” she murmered. “Didn’t he make a report?”

  “He tried, Mistress. Lord Taliktrum was in the High Loft and would not see him. Skies above, lady, there’s glass in your hair!”

  That broken bottle had been a godsend. As she crept away the guards were already debating whether the death was an accident or suicide.

  “But it was neither,” Dri said aloud.

  “What was neither, Mistress?”

  She looked up at her sophister. “I killed a human,” she said.

  The girl was quiet a moment, then nodded. “I thought so.”

  “He was afraid. I don’t think he’d ever seen one of us.”

  “If you did it, Mistress, I know it was the right thing.”

  Ensyl’s faith stung worse than scorn. Dri hugged herself. Surely the word on his lips had been crawlies. What else did humans say at the sight of ixchel? Surely his death was unavoidable.

  Given that she had let herself be seen.

  She thought of Talag. His brilliance, the mad strength of his quest. Reveal our presence and you condemn us all. If you can’t kill to silence a giant’s tongue you’re not fit to leave the shelter of a House. Stay in Etherhorde and be hunted. Do not follow us to Sanctuary.

  The man she killed had spent nearly his whole life in chains.

  “Mistress,” said Ensyl, wondering. “You’re … branded. There’s a wolf burned into your skin.”

  Dri nodded, covering her breast. Why was this happening, what was she doing here? How could she possibly keep faith with them all?

  8

  Faith and Fire

  8 Teala 941

  The incubus hurled itself landward through the storm. Every minute spent in this world was a torture, a pricking and burning as of a thousand acid-tipped needles in its flesh. Nothing existed here but hate: fo
r the pale and wriggling humans, the rain that scalded, the black wind, the reeking sea.

  The city loomed closer, its gas lamps hazy in the downpour. The celebrations had moved indoors now: every tavern, temple, flophouse and cut-rate bordello had been swamped by revelers, still drunk on bad wine and universal brotherhood. The incubus lifted a ragged wing and veered north, over a corner of the wall. A figure appeared at the parapet: a sentry in helmet and ring mail, looking down on the sodden fields. The incubus did not stop to think: it let itself plummet onto the wall a few yards from the man, gasping, burning, freezing all at once, and when the man turned with a shout its bloodlust rose and it flew at him.

  The sentry raised his spear, but the demon struck like a frenzied cat. It dodged the weapon, gripped the mail in its claws, shredded the hand that groped for it, then rose to do the same to the detested face. The man was still alive when he fell from the wall, but he died before his body struck the ground.

  The incubus lifted away from the falling corpse. Blood soothed it. Like many creatures whose souls extended beyond a single world it suffered immense change when dragged from one to another. In its homeworld it was a passive domesticated animal rather like a sheep, though its keepers sometimes fancied they saw mischief in its eyes.

  The rain stripped the blood from its body. Long before the creature reached the shrine the needles of acid were back.

  A scepter. A scepter. A gold thing with a black crystal surmounting. The incubus could sense it ahead of him.

  The Mzithrinis were feasting that night, for their visiting princes would depart in the morning, along with most of the official retinue. They had erected a great tent in the fields beside the shrine, along with brick ovens for the roasting of poultry, venison and shark. The crowd had overflowed the tent, filling the nearby pastures. At the height of the revelry the Mzithrinis were vastly outnumbered by other guests: the meat was excellent, and they were all friends now.

  The tent was open-sided and the rain gusted in. Some of the guests were giving up, running for carriages back to the city. The incubus landed on the shrine’s gabled roof and scuttled crab like toward the edge, mewing and snarling with pain.

  The artifact it had been summoned to steal lay beneath its feet. But to enter the holy shrine, the creature knew, would be to increase its torments beyond measure. Of course the scepter was guarded too. A mage, thought the incubus, feeling the throb of magic through the roof, the thing is in the hand of a mage. And for all its pain and bloodlust the little demon was afraid. I will not enter. I will not fight him in his lair. It stood shivering, moaning, gnawing its wrists until they bled.

  Sandor Ott found the rain pleasant against his scars. He was rarely cold. He sat on a low bluff overlooking the shrine, beyond the glow of the sputtering fengas lamps in the tent, feeding scraps of venison to the falcon beside him, watching the cream-colored bird swallow each piece before giving him another. Now and then he paused to stroke the animal’s neck.

  “The Sizzy sailors have all gone, then? The officers, I mean?”

  “Every one,” said the falcon, his voice like a high cello chord.

  “And Kuminzat—the admiral—he left his daughter with that elder priest?”

  “She walked awhile at her birth-father’s side, Master. But she is a sfvantskor. There are three young sfvantskor women, four young men. The Father keeps all of them close.”

  “And he never left the shrine, this old Father?”

  “Not since the procession yesterday. And then only to the top of the stairs.”

  “Where he knelt to King Oshiram,” said Ott, and a grin passed briefly across his face. He looked approvingly at the falcon. “Your report is precise, as always. I shall reward you one day, Niriviel.”

  “Arqual’s glory and gain,” said the bird at once, as if the phrase were something it had learned to say at such moments. “That is my reward. That is the only true reward for those who love the Empire.”

  Childlike pleasure in the raptor’s voice. Ott fed him the last bloody morsel. “Are you ready for the journey, finest falcon?”

  “I am, Master,” said Niriviel.

  Then the spymaster took a ring from his finger. It was a simple thing of brass, much like a tarboy’s Citizenship Ring, though the numbers engraved upon it were subtly different. He took out a leather cord and tied the ring to the bird’s outstretched leg. “Be careful with this; it is the one thing I have kept from childhood,” he said. “You know whom I wish to receive it, I think.”

  A moment later the bird was winging north toward Ormael, and Sandor Ott was circling the tent, silent as an old panther, well hidden in the dark. He could pick out his agents among the guests in the tent, one arm-wrestling a Sizzy, feigning drunkenness; another seducing a young Locostrin priestess with his eyes. Ott was especially careful to stay hidden from these men. Spying on his own agents was a part of the game.

  His inspection complete, Ott walked north around the shrine and started down the narrow goat-path to the sea. Niriviel had reported a single figure there, wading in the surf, with the distracted air of a sleepwalker. A fool in love, probably. But tonight it merited a look. The Mzithrinis’ own spy network, the Zithmoloch, had thus far been conspicuous by its silence. Ott almost hoped for some encounter with his rivals before their departure. It was a matter of professional courtesy.

  The storm was ending, and the moon thrashed about in the thunderheads, seeking open sky. Ott crouched where the pasture crumbled into sand. He could see no one on the beach in either direction. Not a structure or a stone. He waited for the moonlight, his thoughts on the days ahead, the war he was brewing among these Sizzy savages, the dire importance of timing and tact. He had placed the fate of the Empire on a single ship, and the twitching madman who captained her. Rose! If there were anyone else but that delusional Quezan swindler and his witch!

  Ott loathed magic, a province from which he knew he was barred. There was altogether too much of it on the Great Ship. Lady Oggosk, Ramachni, Arunis. The Nilstone, a weapon he had never believed in, and could not use—yet. And Pazel thrice-damned Pathkendle, who had saved the Shaggat’s life, but only by turning him to stone.

  “Why don’t we just knock the blary thing out of his hand?” Drellarek the Throatcutter had demanded yesterday. “You could put a spear through the belly of that Ormali runt tomorrow. You could kill the lot of ’em. They’re no more use, are they, with the wedding behind us?”

  So very tempting. But a close inspection of the Shaggat proved the notion impossible. The Shaggat’s hand was tight about the Nilstone: that hand at least would shatter if they sought to loosen it by force. And hairline cracks radiated down his arm as far as the shoulder—many cracks, and branching. The whole arm might go, and the madman bleed to death in seconds, when he became a man of flesh once more.

  Ott shut his eyes. He was feeling his age tonight. Arqual’s triumph would come, sure as that yellow orb would clear the clouds. And Rose would play his part. Whatever else he was, the old bull was always ambitious.

  He stood and walked down to the beach. Someone had come this way; he could see the footprints even by the fitful moonlight. One person, barefoot, about his height. A night swim? Ott peered at the dark water; there was nothing to see but the waves.

  Then the moon broke free and drenched the beach in silver. Ott looked right, left—and there, as if the moon itself had spawned her, he saw a young woman stepping naked from the sea.

  She was about twenty yards from him, climbing quickly out of the surf, eyes straight ahead. Ott held his breath. The girl’s hair was cut short as a naval cadet’s; her limbs were pale and well muscled. She could not have been much more than twenty but she moved with the gliding step of a warrior.

  She reached the top of the beach where the grass began. Crouching beside one of the denser clumps, she pulled out a bundle of clothes. Ott watched her dress: black blouse and leggings, loose fitting but tight at wrists and ankles. Then she bent down again and lifted a knife.

 
Gods of Death, she was a sfvantskor! For the knife was unmistakable: the glint of quartz, the hawksbill curve at the tip. It was the ritual blade from the wedding ceremony—the only weapon King Oshiram had permitted the Mzithrinis to bring ashore. Only the vadhi, the Blessed Defenders, could carry such knives. And the only vadhi as young as that girl were the newly trained sfvantskors. Niriviel’s report. Girls among them. Yes, three of the seven were girls.

  What in Rin’s name was she up to? The way she held the knife—as though it were burning her, but impossible to drop—told him she had blood to draw. But whose? The girl was walking back to the waves, with resolve and something like fury in her movements. Someone else in the sea? There was light aplenty now, and Ott saw no one at all.

  Then the wind gusted from her direction and it carried a sob and he knew at once what was happening.

  We will never belong among those who belong.

  Neda set the knife to her throat. The waves striking her knees made it hard to stand still. One swift cut, long but shallow, not over the vein. She had to be strong enough to swim beyond the breakers, where the sharks would find her before she sank.

  Bad blood in her. Sooner or later it had to come out.

  They were out there, hungry, circling. They would come like flies to a feast. She had moved among them in another form, with her brothers—

  No, no, they were not brothers or sisters. They hated her, the Ormali intruder, the walking shame. They had always known she would fail, and yesterday she had. What had the Father forbidden her? To speak to Pazel, and that she had done. Someone at the wedding had noticed, and word had come to Cayer Vispek, the great sfvantskor hero who served on the Jistrolloq. Cayer Vispek had whispered to the Father. The old priest had jerked his head upright, looked at her quizzically across the shrine, and some pride or hope for her had fled his eyes. It had not returned at sunset, when the sfvantskors performed feats of strength and acrobatics for the awestruck crowd. Nor at predawn prayers, when he touched her forehead with the scepter and pointed at the sea. Go and swim, and forget this pain. Above all forget the one named Pazel Pathkendle. She swam, she changed, she became herself again, but she did not forget. She would never forget, and the Father’s look of love would never return.