The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The other aspirants knew she had fallen into disgrace. Malabron, big pious Malabron of Surahk, had started the gloating. Bad blood. It’s not her fault, really. The faith burns right through weaker souls. Like fire through a thin-bottomed pan.

  Little Phoenix-Flame, another had whispered, his voice dripping scorn. And Suridín, Admiral Kuminzat’s daughter, had simply watched her with knowing eyes. She was the best of them, Neda thought, and her silent judgment hurt more than all the insults combined.

  Bad blood. She had known it even as a child. Blood of Captain Gregory the Traitor. Blood of Suthinia Pathkendle, who had tried to poison her children. Look what had become of Pazel. He was no slave. He loved those Arqualis, the people who had burned their city, stabbed children in Darli Square, rutted inside her one after another for a day and a night. There were words for women like her in every tongue. Unclean. Unchaste. Damaged goods.

  She knew now that the Father had only wanted to spare her pain. He had forbidden her to speak to Pazel, or even to remember him, because Pazel like their other enemies had forsaken his soul.

  Tasmut. Stained. That was how you said it in Ormali. She was a stained rag, fouled, reeking, and no power in Alifros could—

  “Lower that blade, lass.”

  She whirled. An old man in a dark shirt and leggings stood behind her with his feet in the surf. Not armed, not moving. A scarred and battered face, bright with savagery and thought. He had spoken Mzithrini, but he was not one.

  “Get away,” she said, in a warning tone.

  The old man shook his head. “You don’t want to fight me. I can see you’d be a blary hell-cat, but odds are I’d kill you. I’ve had more practice in the art, you see. More practice than a man ever should.”

  Neda rushed him. Astonishingly he did not move. As she raised the knife for a killing stab he looked casually aside, and something in his very calm made her freeze, shocked and terrified. He turned and glanced up at the blade.

  “You wouldn’t mind me killing you,” he said, matter-of-fact. “You were about to do it yourself, after all. But you’re a sfvantskor, a true believer. And if I do manage to kill you, I’ll carry your body back to the shrine and tell your priests the simple truth—that I’d interrupted a suicide. And I know you don’t want that.”

  Neda gaped at the ugly old man. Suicide was an unforgivable sin.

  “Or maybe,” he said, “you’re not a believer anymore? Is that what’s brought you to this pass?”

  “I will kill you,” she stammered. “Monster. Who are you?”

  “A spy,” he said. “And you, lass, are a brilliant young novice with much to live for, though obviously you cannot see it. What’s the matter, then? Lost your faith in the Faith?”

  “No!”

  “It’s strange,” he mused. “When the thing we most fear comes to pass—the thing all our will is bent on avoiding—it sometimes proves exactly what we need.”

  She lowered the knife halfway to his throat. The old man watched her arm. “Bastard!” she hissed. “You’re an Arquali!”

  “Like the shedding of a skin,” he continued. “One we’d die inside, if we didn’t cast it off. Ah, but once we let it fall—new worlds, lass. New worlds await us.”

  Suddenly Neda leaped back and away. “You don’t know a gods-damn thing! A spy, an Arquali spy!” She was weeping, outraged and disbelieving that he should be here, poisoning her last thoughts, coming between her and death.

  For the first time he took a step, in her direction. Stiff, old, slow! He was mad, or lying. He would be easy to kill.

  “I don’t know why you want to die,” he said, “but I know the sfvantskor way—better than you, perhaps. I’ve watched your kind for years. Go on, lass, give it up. You don’t want soul-traitor for an epitaph. You don’t want to be buried with the waste from the slaughterhouse.”

  Such was the fate of suicides in the Mzithrin. The man knew. Perhaps he was exactly what he claimed.

  “I’ll kill you,” she said again, without conviction.

  The man grinned—wolfish, hideous. “Don’t make threats,” he said. “Not when I can tell your Masters exactly what I saw tonight. And I saw quite a lot, lass. A privilege: I suppose no other man ever shall, until the day they strip you for the tomb. Unless the old Father’s more corrupt than I know?”

  Neda lunged. No man alive would slander the Father to her face. As she drove forward she tossed the blade expertly from right hand to left. Her eyes did not betray the move, nor did her right hand fall away. It was a feint she’d practiced ten thousand times.

  But her left hand closed empty. The man had moved like a cobra and plucked the knife from the air, and in the split-second that followed Neda learned the astonishing limits of her skills. She was facedown, choking on sand and seawater, helpless with the pain of blows she’d never seen coming.

  He spoke from off to her right. “You’re the foreign-born sfvantskor,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors about you. Tell me, where did the Father dig you up? Where is home?”

  With a gasp Neda rolled on her side. The man was holding the blade by two fingers as he studied her face. “Do you know,” he said in a changed voice, “I’ve just had the strangest—Rin’s blood, the strangest—idea about you.” He squatted close to her. “How’s your Ormali, girl?”

  She spat out a mouthful of sand. The old man laughed and shook his head. Then he rose and walked around her, not too close, and started up the beach.

  “If you are his sister, consider this: he was smitten with the Treaty Bride. The daughter of the man who sent the marines into Ormael. He’d have died in her place, I’ll warrant.”

  Neda managed hands and knees. She crawled after him, feeling her strength return.

  The man called over his shoulder: “They told you no Arquali could outfight you, didn’t they? Well, girl, I’ve stolen your death tonight: a shameful death it would have been. Go back, and wonder what other lies your Masters are peddling.”

  He was gone. Neda put her forehead down on the sand. Wishing her heart would stop, knowing it wouldn’t. Even at death she was a failure.

  Pazel, in love with that butchering admiral’s daughter? That couldn’t be. She’d seen what they did to him. She’d watched the blows, felt them. The old man was a liar and a fiend.

  Then she saw the glint of the knife. He’d left it blade-down in the sand. She rose and went to it and pulled it free, and as she did so she felt exactly what he had described, a rupture of her certainties, a skin tearing away. What was beneath it? Was there anything she would recognize as herself?

  A flash of red light. Brilliant, almost blinding. Neda froze: it had come from the direction of the shrine. Then, faint above the noise of the waves, she heard the screams begin.

  “Father!”

  She ran as she had never run before. The Father was using Sathek’s Scepter: he was facing some terrible threat. She clawed her way up the beach, passed the horrible old man (transfixed, staring), and flew straight at the shrine. There was fire in the courtyard: fire among the pillars, fire spinning overhead like a great ignited bird.

  She could hear war-cries from Cayer Vispek and Suridín, and then came the Father’s roar and another flash of light. Neda ran blind, smashing through the underbrush. When her eyes cleared she saw an impossibly hideous shape—burning, fanged, doglike, childlike—dive from the air over the courtyard.

  The Father waited beneath it, his beard half scorched away, and he caught the incubus with a blow from the scepter that hurled it shrieking into the night.

  Howls from the windswept pasture. The last of the revelers were fleeing for their lives.

  Suridín chased after the thing, wielding an iron skewer from the feast. Cayer Vispek held the Father in his arms: the old man had nearly collapsed. Then Neda’s feet touched marble and she was in the courtyard, shouting to them, raising the blade she had stolen to end her life. The Father whirled to face her, his eyes brightening with what looked like joy. And then the demon screamed back through
the pillars and struck him in the chest.

  Both men were felled by the blow. Cayer Vispek grabbed at the creature, though it was still wreathed in flames. The Father, his chest spouting blood, cried out in a strange language, and the black crystal in the scepter glowed. A sudden change came over the incubus: the deformed creature vanished, and some milder, weaker shape flickered where it had been. Only for an instant; then the incubus resumed its monstrous form and closed its jaws on the Father’s neck.

  Neda closed the distance and pounced. Down she stabbed, burying the knife in the creature’s spine. The incubus twisted, slashing at her arm, spitting fire. The knife shattered. The incubus released the Father and rose on its burning wings. It flew wild about the courtyard, howling with the voices of the damned, spilling gouts of blood that vanished in flames before they touched the ground.

  A hand closed on Neda’s arm: Suridín was hauling her to her feet. The girl shoved Neda to the left of the Father while she took his right, and Cayer Vispek tried to stanch his gushing wounds.

  Again the incubus dived—this time on the scepter, tearing it from the Father’s weakening grasp. The Father cried out. The demon leaped, beating its wings with effort, rising—

  Suridín grabbed its leg. Neda could smell her hands burning—it was like taking hold of a log in the fire. The demon dragged her across the courtyard as Neda tried desperately to strike the creature herself. Then the incubus dropped the scepter, twisted in midair, and tore into the arm that held it earthbound.

  Suridín screamed in agony. With no forethought at all Neda snatched up the scepter and struck. The incubus wailed and its flame sank low. Neda felt the power in the black crystal, shard of the Casket that was the bane of demonkind. Suridín fell; the incubus crashed beside her on the marble, and with a cry Neda brought the scepter down again.

  The fire went out. The demon fought on, a black smoking shape. Neda struck again and its howling ceased, but still its claws tore at Suridín. Once more Neda struck, with a cry of “Rashta helid!”

  And suddenly it was gone. No corpse lay beneath the scepter. Not a whiff of its demon-smoke lingered in the air. The incubus left nothing in its wake but wounds.

  Cayer Vispek brought the other aspirants back from the sea. The Father lived two hours more: long enough for Neda to summon the courage to tell him where and how she wished to begin her life as a sfvantskor, and for the old priest to give his consent. It was long enough too for old Cayerad Hael to be woken and rushed ashore from the Jistrolloq, for the scepter belonged in the hands of the eldest sfvantskor. And it was long enough for the Father to point in the direction of the harbor, and wheeze into Neda’s ear.

  “The demonetta … it came from that ship … from Chathrand. I knew. I knew from the start.”

  Neda did not leave the Father’s side. His life was slipping away, and so was the aspirants’ self-control. They bickered and shouted and stood apart to hide their tears. He could not leave them, the world could not be meant to turn out this way. But the Father looked at Neda and his smile was proud, as if to say, Remember, daughter. They despaired; you did not. You were stronger than any of them.

  Could he see through her, even now? Would he learn how wrong he was?

  When he died at last their grief spilled over. Malabron was the worst. He spoke blasphemies about the death of the Faith, and glared at Cayer Vispek as if he would fight him, and said that the whole tragedy was Neda’s fault.

  At that the others shouted him down. The Father had clung to Neda in his last moments, after all, and it was she who had dealt the creature its death-blow. And Suridín, the admiral’s daughter, who perished just minutes after the incubus, had put three fingers on Neda’s cheek in an old Mzithrini gesture, one reserved for closest kin. “Sister,” she’d said.

  9

  Standoff in Simja Bay

  8 Teala 941

  87th day from Etherhorde

  Esteemed and Cherished Friends,

  If you are reading this, you will know that I have not returned to the Great Ship. With great regret I must declare that I do not intend to.

  My daughter is dead. My heart has sustained a blow from which it will not recover: not in a century, let alone in the few years that remain to me. Like all of you I hoped we might somehow triumph over sorcerer and spy. We did not triumph. The enemy was stronger, better prepared. It is my shame to have misidentified the enemy—and to have been slow to identify my friends.

  But the fight does not end with this parting. I have begun to mend ties with King Oshiram. Already I have persuaded him to ask a few key delegations, including the Mzithrinis, to linger after the other guests depart. To them I shall reveal all I know of our Emperor’s conspiracy, the plottings of Arunis and the threat of the Nilstone. From this base of believers I will set out to convince the world, and to build a seawall against these twin evils. At the very least the Mzithrinis will be warned to guard every approach to Gurishal, even from the western Nelluroq, whence they have assumed no approach could ever come. The Shaggat, stone or flesh, will never reach his worshippers.

  I told Thasha once that I had set aside my admiral’s stripes for good, and I meant it. Now more than ever I believe in my duty as a diplomat—but not Magad’s diplomat. Arqual must be represented by a voice and a face besides the Emperor’s: a voice men will learn to trust; a face associated with honor and goodwill. Our future—and never again shall I believe that there is any future but that which we build together—depends on these things, even more than on tactics and the sword.

  When you have taken a moment to reflect, as I have, you will realize that this task is mine alone.

  You five swore an oath, and to that oath you must hold true. A mighty spirit chose you for the task, no doubt because it sensed in you the strength to see it done. Thasha’s sacrifice will not be the last. But you must never falter. Let an old soldier tell you: comrades fall, but the mission endures.

  Farewell, friends. We shall never see each other more, unless as some believe there is peace hereafter in the shade of the Tree.

  Unvanquished,

  E. ISIQ

  Thasha put down the letter, stunned. “He’s not coming with us,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me you believe that thing,” said Neeps.

  “Don’t you?” said Pazel.

  It was midmorning, the day after the wedding fiasco: another glorious, gusty day at summer’s end, but in Thasha’s cabin there was barely light enough to read. A dark cloth hung over the porthole: she was still in hiding, still dead as far as anyone knew beyond her circle of friends. She parted the cloth an inch and looked out. Pilot boats were skimming across the Bay of Simja, directing larger vessels out into the straits. In a few hours Chathrand herself would be setting sail.

  “Of course I don’t believe it,” said Neeps, picking up the sheet of wrinkled paper again. “The letter’s obviously a fake. Thasha, if your father had really decided to stay here, don’t you think he’d sail three miles to tell you goodbye?”

  “He would if he knew I was alive.”

  “Even if he didn’t,” said Neeps, “he’d want to, you know, take his leave of your body. And to see the rest of us off.”

  “He’d want to,” said Pazel. “But if he’s watching us through a telescope he’ll have noticed the archers along the rail. Not to mention the fact that no one’s been allowed on or off the ship besides the wedding party, and that Fulbreech fellow. We’re prisoners here. He’s too smart to get caught as well.”

  “He could take a boat out to hailing range, and shout us a farewell,” said Neeps.

  Thasha laughed bitterly. “And tell everyone on the Chathrand the sort of things he’s just written down? Not likely.”

  “You’ve both lost your minds,” said Neeps. “This is Admiral Isiq we’re talking about. The man who never lost a naval battle. The man who tells kings to get stuffed.”

  They were interrupted by a whimper. Beneath Thasha’s writing desk sat a low basket, and in it upon a folded blanket l
ay Felthrup the rat. He had returned to the basket shortly after his outburst the day before, and had not woken since. Now he twitched, mumbling and moaning in his high-pitched, nasal voice.

  Suddenly, without waking, he cried out: “Don’t ask me! Don’t ask!”

  Thasha went to his side and stroked the little creature. “He has awful dreams,” she said. “I wake him up sometimes, poor thing, but then he’s afraid to go back to sleep. And he needs some sleep, Rin knows.”

  “That kick from Jervik would have killed him, without Ramachni’s help,” said Neeps.

  “Nerves may kill him yet,” said Pazel.

  Thasha pointed at the letter in his hand. “Look at it again, will you? Do you see anything odd—see anything, I mean, outside the meaning of the words?”

  The boys studied the letter again. Both shook their heads.

  “Exactly.” Thasha took the sheet and pointed to a tiny, vaguely star-shaped fleck on the third line. “You took it for an ink blot, and you were looking for something strange. But it’s his mark, his code. And the only thing it means is, ‘Nobody’s holding a knife to my throat.’ He never told anyone about it except for me and Hercól.”

  “Well, it didn’t work,” said Neeps stubbornly. “Thasha, I have a nose for lies, and that letter stinks like a fisherman’s boot. Tell her, Pazel.”

  “He’s usually right,” Pazel admitted.