The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  'Fool, fool, fool!'

  'Stop that!' hissed Thasha. 'Pazel, Chadfallow knows — he looked me right in the face. Go after him! Hurry!'

  'I don't trust him,' said Pazel bitterly.

  Thasha dragged him to the door. 'We have to tell him something — he's supposed to be embalming me! Oh, catch him, Pazel, quickly, before he talks! And get back in here as fast as you can.'

  She opened the door just wide enough to shove him out. Chadfallow had not moved from his spot at the intersection of the passages. His face was bewildered, and he seemed unable to catch his breath.

  'What have you been doing, boy? ' he stammered.

  'It was the only way to save her,' Pazel said. 'We had to make Arunis believe she was dead.'

  'You fooled someone far more difficult than that sorcerer. You fooled me. How did you do it?'

  Pazel shook his head. They had made a promise to Diadrelu: no other humans would learn that ixchel were aboard without permission from the clan.

  Chadfallow stared at him fixedly. 'What would Ramachni make of this showing off?' he demanded.

  'Showing off?' said Pazel. 'Ignus, what are you talking about? Anyway, Ramachni's gone.'

  The doctor looked as though he'd been struck in the face. 'Gone, now? He leaves us now?'

  'He had to,' said Pazel. 'He was so worn out he could barely walk. Look, if you won't come in-'

  'I am no mage,' Chadfallow interrupted, 'but I know more about these arts than you ever shall, boy. I know their dangers, their limits. Above all I know what they do to those who dabble in them untrained.'

  'So naturally,' snapped Pazel before he could stop himself, 'you helped Mother experiment on me and Neda.'

  Chadfallow was furious. 'Helped? You wretch, I opposed it with all my heart!'

  'After providing everything she needed,' said Pazel. 'The books, the strange little jars and potions — the custard apples.'

  Chadfallow appeared to bite back a retort, and Pazel nodded, satisfied. It had been a guess, but a safe one. The night before his mother tried her hand at spellcraft, the doctor had come to their house in Ormael with a bundle wrapped in heavy cloth. Long after the children were in bed he had argued bitterly with Pazel's mother, and finally left in a rage. The next morning she had greeted Pazel and Neda with frothing mugs of custard-apple juice.

  'I had no idea what use she had in mind for those apples,' said Chadfallow. 'I was thrown out that night, if you care to know. Such apparently is the fate of those who would befriend your family — to stand like fools on the threshold.'

  He reached into his vest and withdrew a pale white cylinder. It was a parchment case, made of some fine wood. 'Is Ramachni truly gone?' he asked.

  Pazel nodded again. 'I haven't been lying,' he said pointedly.

  It was the last straw for Chadfallow. Grimacing, he tore open the case and pulled out a sheet of parchment. He held it up to Pazel, displaying an elegant, formal script. Then (much in the same manner as Fiffengurt) he tore the sheet to pieces, flinging the bits in the air as he did so. When the deed was done he turned on his heel and left.

  All this Pazel watched with folded arms. He barely noticed when the door behind him opened and Neeps stepped close.

  'I guess he didn't care to come in, eh mate?'

  'I guess not.'

  Neeps went forward and picked up a few bits of parchment. He turned them this way and that, fitting them together. Then he grew still.

  'Pazel,' he said. 'Come here.'

  Pazel didn't much care what the parchment said. Anything from Chadfallow's hand was a lie. But there was something odd in Neeps' voice. He moved behind Neeps and read over his shoulder.

  — ay, 26 Halar 941

  — der the auspices of His Royal Highness King Oshiram of Simja:

  Negotiant:

  Dr Espl. Ignus CHADFALLOW

  Envoy Extraordinaire to His Supremacy Magad V,

  Emperor of Arqual

  and

  The Honourable Acheleg EHRAL

  Vocal, Court of His Celestial Highness King Somolar of the Holy

  Mzithrin

  LET THESE BE THE NAMES PUT FORWARD BY ARQUAL: LORD FALSTAM II OF ETHERHORDE, COMMODORE GILES JASBREA OF ETHERHORDE [HIS LIVING PERSON OR UNDESECRATED REMAINS], TARTISHEN OF OPALT [SON OF LADY TARTISHEN], SUTHINIA PATHKENDLE OF ORMAEL (NON-NEGOT.), NEDA PATHKENDLE OF ORMAEL (NON-NEGOT.), AREN MORDALE OF SORHN

  Pazel snatched at the bits of parchment. Suddenly nothing else mattered. 'This was written in Halar — last spring.' Pazel's mind was racing. 'That was two months before we sailed. He's been carrying this blary thing all along!'

  Neeps picked up the last of the pieces. 'There's another list here,' he said, 'with Mzithrini names, or I'm a dog! Pazel, do you realise what this is?'

  Pazel looked at him blankly. Then all at once he went sprinting after Chadfallow.

  'Ignus! Ignus!'

  He raced across the upper gun deck, past a group of Turachs betting excitedly on an arm-wrestling match. They'd watched the doctor march through the compartment 'steaming like a fumerole,' they said. But when Pazel left by the forward door he was nowhere to be seen.

  He tried the surgery, the sickbay, and the doctor's own cabin. He climbed back to the topdeck and walked the length of the ship. No one had seen Chadfallow. Defeated, Pazel started back to the stateroom.

  All around him the ship was in a frenzy. The anchors were rising, and yard by yard the green, slippery, thirty-inch thick cables attached to them were spooling in through the hawse holes, where teams of sailors wrestled them into coils that rose like battlements above their heads.

  The agitation in Pazel's own heart was even greater, however. Chadfallow had been at work on a prisoner exchange with the Mzithrinis — and his mother and Neda were on the list. Clearly the doctor still loved Pazel's mother. And for the first time since the invasion of Ormael Pazel felt he undestood the man. In one respect at least they shared the same loss.

  Neeps, to Pazel's great surprise, was still standing at the centre of the crossed passageways, twenty feet from Thasha's door. He turned to face Pazel, wide-eyed.

  'You're not going to believe this, mate.'

  He raised both fists over his head and brought them down, hard. At the precise centre of the passage they stopped dead, and soundlessly. He spread and tensed his fingers, as though trying to push a heavy crate. He looked for all the world like a mime.

  'It's Arunis,' he whispered. 'He's found a way to pay us back already.'

  Pazel felt his breath grow short. He drew up beside Neeps and cautiously put out his hand.

  Nothing. His fingers met no resistance at all. He stepped forwards, then looked back accusingly at Neeps. 'Will you stop mucking around?' he snapped.

  'Mucking around, is it?' Neeps leaned again — but this time at an impossibly steep angle. He pressed his face forwards and squashed a cheek against thin air. It was true: they stood on opposite sides of an invisible wall.

  'It runs the whole length of the passage,' said Neeps. 'Port to starboard, hull to hull. The whole stateroom's closed off behind it. So is Pacu's old cabin, and that cupboard where she stuffed the wedding gifts, and two more cabins at the end of the hall.'

  'No wonder Ignus was so angry,' said Pazel. 'But why can I pass through?'

  Behind Pazel the stateroom door opened a crack, and Thasha peeped out. 'What's wrong with you two clowns?' she hissed. 'Get in here!'

  The instant she spoke Neeps fell to the deck with a crash and a florid Sollochi curse. But when he rose and stretched out a hand there could be no doubt: the wall had disappeared for him as well.

  They locked the stateroom door behind them (though to do so suddenly felt unnecessary). Fiffengurt was gone; Felthrup was reading the bits of his letter on the dining table. When the boys told them about the invisible wall, Thasha paled. After a long silence, she said, 'I made it possible for you to come in, didn't I? Just by telling you to.'

  'It sure looks that way,' grumbled Neeps, rubbing his kneecaps.<
br />
  'I felt it,' said Thasha. 'I mean, I didn't know the wall existed. But just as I said Get in here, I felt something on my palm, right here-,' she pointed at the wolf-scar '-like the scratch of a little nail. I also felt it when you left, both of you.'

  'Why didn't the wall stop me, though?' asked Pazel. 'You hadn't said anything when I stepped back through it.'

  'But she had,' said Felthrup, sitting up on his haunches. 'Don't you remember, Pazel? Before you ran after the doctor, Lady Thasha said, "Get back in here as fast as you can." '

  Pazel looked at the rat, amazed. 'I'll be blowed, you're right.' He stood thinking for a moment, then turned back to Thasha excitedly. 'What if it's not a curse? What if something's protecting you, by letting you decide who can enter the stateroom?'

  Thasha sank slowly into a chair. 'Ramachni,' she said. 'Who else could it be? But he was so tired, so drained. Where did he find the strength for this sort of magic? And why me?'

  'That last bit's an easy one,' said Neeps. 'These are your rooms, Thasha. And only yours, now that the admiral-'

  'Neeps!' said Pazel.

  Thasha looked at them vacantly. 'Now that he's gone. And Syrarys too. At least we'll have plenty of space. We can move the furniture and have your fighting-classes right here.'

  'There's still time for him to get here,' said Pazel.

  Her face made Pazel wish he hadn't spoken. Thasha wanted to believe her father was coming back: she must have thought of little else since waking from the blane-sleep. But Pazel knew she didn't believe it. His letter was on the table, his intentions plain. And even if Fulbreech spoke to him in time, did they really know that Eberzam Isiq would discard all those grand duties and manoeuvres for her?

  'Maybe it's for the best,' he heard himself say. 'He's an important man. People will listen to him, and we have to get the truth out somehow. Maybe he's right to stay.'

  Thasha rose and walked into her cabin. Felthrup watched her go, then looked back at the tarboys and shook his head.

  Pazel felt vile. He thought of his own father, Captain Gregory, sailing away when he was six, with never a word or letter sent back to Ormael. Nothing at all, until the previous week. Then Gregory and his freebooter friends had suddenly joined the battle against Arunis: for the sorcerer had raided their territory on the Haunted Coast. Pazel had nearly drowned in that battle; his mind-fit had struck at its peak. Thasha had met his father, spoken to him. But she had failed to convince him to scribble so much as a note to Pazel, let alone wait for him to recover. Urgent smuggling duties, no doubt.

  Get used to it, girl, he thought with sudden bitterness. Fathers don't give us time to grow up and leave. They leave us. Some of them can hardly wait.

  The main anchors weighed eighteen tons apiece. Legend held that Chathrand 's first launch, six centuries ago, was delayed because no horses could be found strong enough to haul the iron monsters from the foundry to the docks. Tonight, after a four-hour struggle, one was lashed up on the cathead. The second was rising like a black leviathan from the bay.

  Mr Uskins felt he was making it happen. Every two seconds precisely, standing before the mighty capstan, he bellowed, 'Heave! ' Fifty men answered, 'On!' and threw their bodies at the capstan bars, making the device turn a reluctant few inches. One deck below another thirty men heaved in synchrony, and with them laboured the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. They were survivors of an ancient race: hunched-over giants with yellowish hide, enormous chipped fangs, eyes like bloodshot goose eggs, and limbs heaped with muscle almost to deformity. They mumbled words in their own strange tongue, a noise like grinding stones.

  The new recruits had almost wept with fear when Uskins placed them beside the creatures (the first mate himself kept a safe distance). But long before the miserable work ended they were thanking the gods for Refeg and Rer. Tarboys mopped the sweat from their faces and threw sawdust at their feet, but the augrongs did the work of a hundred men. By the time Uskins at last yelled 'Stand down!' they loved the beasts like brothers, dropped beside them on the deck, gasping, moaning, dizzy, united in exhaustion.

  The Chathrand floated free. It was nearing midnight: a cool, cloudless night of many stars: the great Tree looming west, the Wild Dogs chasing Paldreth the Nomad, and in the distant south the Lost Mariner shining blue and forlorn. Beneath the stars another net of light was spread: the farewell lamps on the docks and temples and towers of Simjalla, and the red and green running-lamps of the departing ships.

  A stiff west wind, nearly perfect for getting under way. Mr Elkstem, the Chathrand 's austere sailmaster, pulled hard on the wheel, and beneath his feet great chains and counterweights rattled in their shafts. Lieutenants shouted, watch-captains roared, men swarmed like ants up the rigging. The vast ship turned; the huge triangular staysails filled; the prayer to Bakru the Wind-God flowed through the decks in hundreds of earnest whispers. Rose watched the winking lighthouse on Nautilus Point and moved the carving of the woman's head back and forth in his mouth.

  'Fore and aft topsails, Mr Frix,' he said softly.

  The second mate howled out the order, and the lieutenants flung it forwards like a ball. When the cry reached Hercol it snapped him out of his fixation on the shore. Thasha had told him to remain aboard, and he thought her decision wise. Still the urge to leap was powerful: Eberzam Isiq was dear to him, although the old man served an Emperor Hercol was sworn to depose. For hours he had stared at the wharf, hoping more than believing that Isiq might yet appear. Now at last that hope was gone.

  Behind him a man cleared his throat. He turned. There by the hatch combing stood Arunis, his little white dog beside him. The sorcerer grinned and made a mocking bow, spreading his arms as if to say, Look, we depart, the wheels are turning and you cannot stop them.

  He brushed past the mage and descended. In the stateroom he found no lamps burning: Thasha had asked the boys to blow them out. She was seated by the gallery windows with Felthrup beside her on the bench. Hercol touched her chin; she glanced up, eyes bright, but said not a word. They sat a long time in the dark, listening to the wind grow into the first true squall of autumn and thinking of her father, his imperious moods and strange choices, until the lights of Simja could no longer be seen.

  11

  Perils of a Perambulator

  RATS. One of creation's great failures. The term encompasses a variety of deplorable rodents, unwelcome colonisers of the basements and back-alleys of mankind, ranging in size from the four-ounce abalour 'pocket-rat' to the hulking twenty-pound ghastlies of GRIIB. Science tasks us to suspend our instinctive judgements, but on this point the merchant traveller may take our word: the creatures have nothing to recommend them. Rats are vectors of disease; the WAX-EYE BLINDNESS itself is now known to have spread with the aid of these unclean detritivores (Chadfallow, Annals of Imperial Physic 2: 936). Rats kill infants and newborn animals, destroy food stocks, rampage in the henhouse, foul the common well.

  But it is the rat's mind, not his habits, that reveals nature's condemnation. Alone of beasts, the rat lives trapped in a state of pseudo-intelligence: too smart to be excused of his wrongdoing, too dull to resist the filthy orders of his gut. If (as the best minds in Arqual assure us) the WAKING PHENOMENON is an expression of the gods' great scheme for Alifros, what must we make of the fact that not one of the teeming millions of rats has ever woken? Only one conclusion may rationally be drawn…

  … Dr Belesar Bolutu has championed an odd alternative, namely that rats (and human beings, for good measure!) are in fact transplants from another world, grafted like exotic fruits onto Alifros' tree of life. This alone, he argues, can explain why the minds of both are so unlike those of any other creatures of our world. We hardly need add that the good doctor has this conviction all to himself.

  — The Merchant's Polylex, 18th Edition (959), p. 4186.

  9 Teala 941

  88th day from Etherhorde

  The man with the gold spectacles touched the eyelids of Thasha Isiq. The girl's sleep was restless, busy. He
could feel the eyes dart this way and that under his fingertips, mice beneath muslin. Her bed resembled something tossed about in a cyclone. She slept curled on her side in a jumble of sheets, shawls, blankets, pillows, notebooks, discarded clothes. A nest, as it were. The man with the spectacles couldn't have been more pleased.

  Thasha's brow furrowed; her lips made sudden twists and contractions. She is reading, he mused: reading a dream text, one that requires all her attention.

  In the outer stateroom he found the lamps extinguished. On the bearskin rug, beside the cobalt mastiffs, Pazel slept in a pose quite similar to Thasha's. For that matter, so did the dogs themselves: spines curved, limbs folded, heads drawn down to their chests. And below us, thought the man, rats by the hundred are curled up almost the same. How our differences diminish, once we are still.

  As he watched, Pazel's hand rose and gently pinched the skin at his collarbone. A curious, barely audible sigh escaped his lips. Neeps lay under the gallery windows, snoring.

  The boy made an unusually feral grunt and woke Suzyt, the female mastiff. She raised her groggy head and looked around. Her eyes settled uncertainly on the man in spectacles.

  'Go back to sleep, friend,' he said aloud. 'It's only your Felthrup. Going out for a midnight stroll, a meandering, is that the word I'm looking for?'

  The dog made no response whatsoever. Felthrup's voice grew anxious.

  'Don't look at me with those accusing eyes. A dozen lashes! Men stroll about when the mood takes them. They perambulate. Go to sleep!'

  Suzyt growled low. Felthrup turned quickly and slipped out of the stateroom.

  He felt a faint electric shock as he stepped through the invisible spell-wall. The mage will notice that. He will not be long in coming.

  On these dream excursions, Felthrup sometimes inhabited a Chathrand as gritty and material as the waking ship. On other nights he turned corners and found himself transported, felt himself rise suddenly on a gust of wind into the high rigging (ghastly, wonderful) or felt the boards melt beneath his feet so that he sank abruptly to the deck below.