The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

But everyone else did, and there were shouts and gasps, for they were little more than two ship’s lengths from the western cliff. Fiffengurt, Uskins and Alyash flew to the rail, commands exploding from their lips. Elkstem rushed back to his mates at the wheel, and together they wrenched it to starboard, while five hundred backs strained on the deck below. The yards pivoted, the Chathrand heeled over, a frothy wake boiled along the starboard bow, and they cleared the point with ten yards to spare.

  From the maintop a voice shouted, “We’re free, we’re free!” And like a slap of reprimand the full west wind struck the foremast and carried both topgallants away.

  “Clew up! Save the rest!” screamed Alyash. They were out of the cove, and the wind was four times the strength of a moment ago: too strong for the highest canvas, though the topsails could take it with ease, and the mains looked flaccid yet. Alyash cringed like a man tied and waiting for the whip: Rose had warned him about those topgallants. But the captain merely spun around and gave Elkstem the new heading, and told Chadfallow he might return to his surgery.

  The next turn was effortless, for the wind shouldered them about. In seconds they were running east, skimming across the mouth of the cove that had nearly become their graveyard. Thasha looked down at the throng of sailors, snatching a moment’s rest, and was not surprised to see Neeps joining the lineup on a starboard brace. Nobody’s turning down help today, she thought.

  Then the lookout began to howl: “Sail! Dead astern three miles! It’s the enemy, Captain, I can see the red stars!”

  A general groan, shouted down at once by the officers. Rose leaped from the stool and barreled aft around the wheelhouse, extending his telescope as he went. Thasha chased after him. There was the Jistrolloq, tilted over like a white gravestone, slicing a neat white wake as she ran.

  “Her topgallants are holding, blast her,” said Elkstem. “By the Tree, she’s a formidable ship. And closer to two miles than three.”

  Rose lifted a hand for silence. A moment later he lowered the scope.

  “She will have four knots on us,” he said, in a voice not meant to carry.

  Thasha did not want to believe it. “Four? That would let them catch us in—what? Less than an hour?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes,” said Rose. “Mr. Elkstem, at my command we shall be making a very sharp tack to the south. A very visible tack. But give no orders before my mark, do you hear? Don’t even look at the men.”

  Elkstem was clearly mystified, but Rose’s face ruled out any questioning. “Oppo, sir, she’ll corner handsomely,” he said.

  “You wanted to see me, Captain?” said a voice from behind them.

  It was Pazel. He was looking at Rose, and quite determinedly not at Thasha.

  Rose’s eye did not leave the telescope. “Aye, Pathkendle, but only to keep these grackle-mouths quiet. They have you mixed up with your father, and seem to think I need Captain Gregory’s advice.”

  “They, sir?”

  Rose only frowned, and Thasha, ignoring Pazel’s awkwardness, took his arm and tugged him aside. “He’s seeing ghosts,” she whispered. “But he’s not crazy, they’re real. I can see them too. They’re the old captains of the Chathrand.”

  Pazel was certainly looking at her now. “You’re seeing these things?”

  “Well, not this minute. Rose can scatter them, I think—but they keep coming back. Like flies. Right now I can hear them, and feel them. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

  “Are you talking about what happened the day you found Marila?”

  Thasha shook her head. “That was different. Those were real people, flesh and blood. But for weeks now I’ve been feeling … strange. As if people were surrounding me, when there was no one there at all. I think it was them, Pazel. I think they’ve been watching me.”

  Pazel stared at her, aghast, but was he concerned for her safety or her sanity? She was on the point of asking him directly when Rose gave a startled grunt.

  “The priest did not die,” he said, “but the fire has driven him from the hilltop. He’s watching us right now. He’ll be blind to his own ship’s whereabouts, though, unless that thing in his hand lets him see through solid rock. Ehiji, what’s this? He’s got friends! Sfvantskors, by the gods, sfvantskors coming out of the bush!”

  Thasha could just make them out: three tall figures in black, rushing across the smoldering slope to join a fourth, bald-headed, with a long golden object in his hand. Even as she looked another sfvantskor emerged running from the trees.

  “That new one has a longbow,” said Rose. “And damned if he isn’t—firing! Aloft! Take cover aloft!”

  Scarcely had the words left his lips when they heard a wail, sharp and ethereal, and then a man’s scream from the rigging. Thasha looked up and saw Kiprin Pondrakeri, the muscular Simjan recruit, facedown in the battle netting with an arrow in his chest. The strange wail continued for a moment, then lowered and died.

  The next thing she knew Pazel had leaped on her and borne her down onto the deck. The air was suddenly full of the wailing noises, and from the spankermast came another cry of agony. Thasha struggled out of Pazel’s grasp and got to her hands and knees. But even as she did so a boot kicked her flat again.

  Sandor Ott had delivered the kick as he dashed to the rail with a great bow of his own. He fired in a blur, once twice thrice, and then he lowered the bow and took a breath.

  “Done,” he said. “That one will shoot no more, and the rest are running for cover. You can stand up now, lass.”

  As Thasha and Pazel rose, Ott reached up and seized the dripping end of the arrow embedded in Pondrakeri’s chest. He pulled, and the netting sagged, but the shaft would not let go of the corpse.

  “Singing arrows,” he said admiringly. “We still don’t know how they work—must be expensive, however; they fire ’em all in the first few volleys. Marvelous way to demoralize an enemy.”

  He released the arrow, having not glanced once at the dead man, and set off smiling for the topdeck.

  “He’s enjoying this,” said Thasha. “I think he lives for fighting and killing, the beast.”

  “He doesn’t enjoy it,” said Pazel. “He’s … addicted. It’s not the same thing.”

  Thasha gave him a skeptical look. “How do you know so much? Did you and Sandor have a heart-to-heart chat on Bramian?”

  Pazel watched the spymaster swing down the ladder. “Sort of,” he said.

  A pool of blood was forming under the dead man. Thasha looked up and saw the other victim, a mizzen-topman, dangling upside down from the rigging some seventy feet overhead.

  “We’re making twelve knots by the log, sir,” cried a lieutenant.

  “Send for a bucket, Mr. Truel,” said Rose. “And you, Pathkendle: find a mate and get these cadavers below.”

  Pazel gazed wordlessly up at the bodies. The topman was swinging perilously. Blood streamed from the arrow in his throat to his fingertips, where the wind licked it away.

  Thasha took a deep breath. “I’ll help you,” she said.

  Pazel looked intensely relieved. He could not, after all, order anyone to help him. “Let me fetch a rope. I’ll be right back—thank you, Thasha.”

  When he returned he brought Neeps as well as a rope. The small boy was fidgeting with irritation; he and Pazel scarcely looked at each other. But he had come nonetheless. The three scaled the shrouds, and Neeps continued up to the main spankermast yard while Thasha and Pazel stepped gingerly onto the netting. It was a long crawl to where Pondrakeri dangled. They had almost reached him when Thasha saw Rose’s hand sweep down like a signal-flag.

  “Now, Mr. Elkstem!”

  “Haul away starboard!” boomed Elkstem, putting his weight on the wheel. “Look sharp, lads, we’re turning on a mussel tin!”

  The order raced forward, the deckhands threw their shoulders against the ropes, and with startling speed the Great Ship heeled around to the south.

  Thasha and Pazel clung to the netting as the huge timbers groa
ned and squeaked, and blood from the topman spattered around them like rain. Thasha looked west at the Jistrolloq. “What are you hoping they’ll do, Captain Rose?” she called.

  Rose lowered the telescope, watching the enemy with his naked eye. “They’ve just done it,” he said, “and I didn’t need to hope.”

  Before Thasha could ask what he meant, the lookout cried: “Black Rags altering course, sir, due south, matching us point-for-point.”

  Rose favored Thasha with a glance. “Admiral Kuminzat knows what he’s up against,” he said. “Unless he has the gods’ own luck with weather, he has to take us soon. Every mile we can run out on the Nelluroq plays to our advantage. He’s turned south to cut us off.”

  “Around the far side of the island,” said Pazel. “And you waited until he was almost on top of Sandplume, so that he’d have to make a hasty choice, didn’t you?”

  “A hasty choice and a bad one, Pathkendle. Maybe you do know something.”

  Thasha could hear the ghosts whispering approval. In minutes Sandplume would hide the Chathrand from the Jistrolloq, and then Rose could turn as he liked without giving their course away. For the Mzithrinis, reversing direction was impossible: they would lose a good hour tacking against the wind just to get safely clear of Sandplume and back on the course she had abandoned. She could only run south now, and take up the pursuit after rounding the isle—but Thasha doubted that the Chathrand would be anywhere near Sandplume by then.

  High above, Neeps fed the line through a wheelblock, then tugged it through yard by yard. When it reached them, Pazel leaned out and snatched the rope, and clinging to the spar with his legs alone tied a slipknot. Together he and Thasha eased the loop over Pondrakeri’s head and arms, struggling to keep him from toppling to the deck.

  As she heaved at the dead man, Thasha kept one eye on Rose. Now and then the air about him seemed to flicker, as if unseen hands were gesturing and pointing, but Rose paid no attention to the apparitions. Instead he turned from the rail and shouted: “Hard to port, Sailmaster! East by southeast!”

  “Hard to port! Haul away port!”

  The frantic struggle on the deck began again, and in a matter of seconds they were back on their old eastward course.

  “Brilliant,” said Pazel with grudging admiration. “We’ll gain miles on ’em this way. But there’s nowhere else to hide, now that we’re leaving the islands. And hours of daylight yet. Sooner or later we’ll have to run south again, if Rose plans to escape into the Ruling Sea.”

  “We may not escape even there,” said Thasha. “The Jistrolloq’s braved the Nelluroq before. She’s too small to cross it, but she can handle the margins. The huge waves are mostly farther out.”

  Pazel was gaping at her. “How do you know all that, Thasha?”

  She blinked at him, startled. “The Polylex?” she said, uncertain.

  Pazel shook his head in wonder. He tied off the extra rope around Pondrakeri’s legs.

  On a impulse, Thasha asked him, “How did Drellarek die? Was it the creature who breathed on you?”

  Pazel’s face paled. He looked suddenly as though he was going to be sick. He nodded, breathing hard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Pazel made no reply. His eyes had slid to the quarterdeck. Thasha followed his gaze and saw Lady Oggosk directly below, watching them keenly.

  Pazel turned his back on Thasha. “We’ve got a job to finish,” he said coldly, “that is, if you really came to help.”

  They hoisted Pondrakeri from the netting like a drowned man, and guided him, swaying and spinning, over the rail and down to the main deck. The topman was far more difficult. At seventy feet the mast pitched enormously, and at the end of each pendular swing they looked down from the ropes not on the quarterdeck but on the churning ocean. Thasha found herself mouthing prayers from the Lorg School, and was glad when the practiced hands of the ex-tarboys shot out to steady her. The hands of the topman were scarlet, slippery as eels. By the time they had him down on the deck the three youths were painted with blood from face to calves. As she and Pazel wrestled the bodies down to the surgical annex (Neeps had stayed behind to scrub the quarterdeck) Thasha had to fight the urge to vomit. The smell of blood—a rank stench of rust and wet clay—was overpowering. Flies bit her sticky arms and sweaty face.

  They laid the bodies side by side. Pazel forced out a laugh—a bitter laugh, almost cruel, like nothing she’d ever heard from his lips. “Wonder how much company they’ll have before the day’s done,” he said, smiling, clenching his fists.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” said Thasha.

  They sat on the lower gun deck near Tanner’s gunnery team, a tub of seawater between them, and scrubbed off the worst of the blood with rags. Thasha watched Pazel peel off his gory shirt and dunk it in the tub, where the water was already pink. What’s wrong with you? she wanted to scream. Why’ve you gone so blary hateful? Then she saw that Pazel’s eyes were moist.

  “What was his name?” he said. “The topman, I mean. Nobody on the quarterdeck even knew his name.”

  They parted at the compartment door, and Thasha went to the stateroom to change. The guard outside the stateroom, curiously enough, had been withdrawn; and as she ran to the door Thasha let herself hope that Hercól had been set free as well. But her tutor was not in the stateroom—no one was, in fact, except Jorl and Suzyt, padding the bare boards in a room where everything that could not be bolted down had been stowed.

  “Get off, idiots,” she said as they jumped on her. She locked the door and called out softly for Diadrelu. “I’m alone,” she said. “Where have you gone?”

  “Here,” came a faint voice from the washroom.

  Thasha opened the door. On the footstool sat Dri, washed and clothed in a new shirt of black silk. She held up her hand, stopping Thasha in the doorway, and turned to face the cast-iron bathtub.

  “Ensyl,” she said, “you have nothing to fear from Lady Thasha.”

  Thasha tensed. From behind the bathtub stepped another ixchel, a thin young woman with a large forehead and wide, watchful eyes. She was heavily armed—sword, dagger, bow—and barefoot, as Dri always was. The woman’s lips moved as if in speech, but Thasha could hear no sound.

  “Bend your voice,” Diadrelu told her. To Thasha, she said, “Ensyl is my sophister—my apprentice, if you like. She is here to be sure I behave like an invalid.”

  “My lady must not make sport of me,” said the girl, who had not taken her eyes from Thasha. Her whole face clenched as she spoke; she did not appear to have much practice in pitching her voice to the human register.

  “Nor shall I ever,” said Diadrelu. “What is more, I applaud your choice. For you have made a very serious choice, you know. You are only the third ixchel on the Chathrand to show herself to a human. I am another; and the third is Taliktrum himself, who has since forbidden contact with humans under any circumstances, on pain of death.”

  “I wanted to see you,” said Ensyl to Thasha. “Some of my people have notions about you. They believe you will be the doom of this ship. Even today Lord Taliktrum’s attendant Myett spoke of you as one bewitched. But Lady Dri is my only mistress, and if she tells me I have nothing to fear, then I fear not.”

  “I said you need not fear Thasha,” corrected Dri. “We may all have something to fear from lies and superstitions—to say nothing of cannon fire. How goes the chase, Lady Thasha?”

  “We gained a little time,” said Thasha, with a nervous glance at the window, “but not enough to escape the Jistrolloq. Arunis said we should surrender before they kill us all.”

  “Arunis still dreams of Sathek’s Scepter,” said Diadrelu. “Our watch saw him looking from the gunports at the red flame on Sandplume, with a hunger so great one could all but smell it. Surrender, I think, would just be a means of bringing the scepter within his reach. Its power is surely slight compared with that of the Nilstone—but he has no means of using the Nilstone, yet. He failed wit
h the Shaggat, and again on Dhola’s Rib. Now I begin to wonder if there might be a connection between the scepter and the Stone.”

  “What sort of connection?” asked Thasha warily.

  Dri closed her eyes. “When Arunis called up Sathek’s ghost, he said, ‘I must have it for my king.’ And something else: ‘Imagine him when the Swarm returns. The Nilstone in one fist, your scepter in the other. Armies shall wilt before him, like petals in the frost.’” She opened her eyes. “Arunis literally dares not touch the Nilstone. But when a poker in the fire is too hot to touch, what do we do?”

  “We use a glove,” said Ensyl.

  “Yes,” said Dri, “and what if the scepter is that glove? The Nilstone, as we learned, slays any with fear in their hearts. What if fearlessness is just what the scepter can provide?”

  Thasha drew a shaky breath. “His precious king is still just a rock,” she said.

  “That too the scepter might reverse,” said Dri, “once it is in the hands of a sorcerer. But enough of speculation for the moment. Thasha, where is Felthrup?”

  Thasha was suddenly alarmed. “Hasn’t he come back?”

  Dri shook her head. “Felthrup completed his mission splendidly. Thanks to him, Ensyl came for the swallow-suit, and our people escaped Sandplume before the fire could overtake them. But what became of Felthrup after he delivered the message I cannot say. I hoped he had found his way to you, somehow. Marila has gone in search of him, although the odds are against one girl finding one lost rat on the largest ship in Alifros.”

  “We’ve got to!” said Thasha. “He isn’t safe anywhere but the stateroom. Oh Pitfire, why did they let him go? Neeps or Marila could have gone instead!”

  “And shouted at an empty corner of the mercy deck? No, Thasha, Neeps and Marila would have been stopped and questioned, and their faces would have given us all away. But you are right about the danger to Felthrup. Master Mugstur has excommunicated him, and in the rat-king’s twisted ethos those who stray from Rin’s path must all be killed.”

  “I’m going to look for him too,” said Thasha. “I’ll take Suzyt and Jorl; they know his scent. Rose will throw a fit, though, if I don’t hurry back to the quarterdeck.”