The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  'Once she slammed the book and shouted at me: "What was she thinking, how could she do it to them? How could a mage be so cruel?" When I asked who she meant, she snapped, "Erithusme, who else? She wasn't good at all, she was a monster." I told her that wasn't what Ramachni said, and she just snarled at me. "How would you like to go through a Waking, like Felthrup, like Niriviel and Mugstur? Do you think you'd still be sane, Pazel? Do you think you'd still be you?" '

  An even worse incident had occurred two nights ago. It had been a beautiful, warm evening. The two of them had spent a quiet hour seated against the twenty-foot skiff, watching a pod of whales cross and recross a yellow ribbon of moonlight. Thasha had seemed happy and relaxed. In time they had fallen asleep, and when Pazel awoke an hour later she was gone. He did not find her in the stateroom, and alerted Hercol. Together with Big Skip and a few other volunteers they had searched for her, deck by deck, compartment by compartment. It was Pazel who had found her at last: crossing the berth deck, walking like a dreamer among hundreds of sleeping men.

  He had run to her and taken her hand. 'You shouldn't be in here,' he had whispered. 'Let's go before they wake up.'

  Thasha had looked at the sleepers, shaking her head. 'They can't,' she'd said.

  She led him out of the compartment and down a side passage. It was a spot he'd passed a hundred times, but this time, to his great surprise, he saw that there was a little green door, only waist-high, right at the end of the passage, where he thought the hull should have been. The door looked older and shabbier than the rest of the compartment; its handle was an ancient, corroded lump of iron. Thasha had put out her hand to open the door — but slowly, as though fighting herself. When she touched the knob Pazel had reached to help her — he was curious about the door; he'd never noticed it — and Thasha had suddenly pulled him away, screaming.

  'We're running out, we're running out!'

  'Don't worry,' Pazel had begged. 'We'll find water, Thasha, I swear.'

  'Not water!' she'd howled, clawing at him. 'Not water! Thoughts! We're running out of thoughts and we won't have any left!' And she had wept all the way back to the stateroom.

  'And later on, Neeps,' Pazel concluded, 'she couldn't remember being on the berth deck at all. I'm scared, I tell you. She's just so different, since the storm.'

  Neeps looked at him, awestruck. 'Everything is different,' he said at last. 'Don't you sense it, mate? I can't put my finger on it, but I feel as if… I don't know, as if the whole world we come from, back there across the Nelluroq, had just-'

  'Neeparvasi Undrabust!' rasped Lady Oggosk suddenly. 'Get away from the window, you atrocious boy! I can't sleep through your chatter!'

  Quickly, Pazel put his hand on the glass. 'We'll free you,' he said in Arquali. 'I promise we'll free you both. You just have to hang on until we find a way.'

  ''Course we will,' said Neeps, raising his fingers briefly to the pane. Leaning slightly against him, Marila nodded and made herself smile.

  Their courage made Pazel feel even worse. He glanced again at Ott and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.

  'Remember what Bolutu said, after you left. The part I told you the next morning.'

  'About the ones who'll be waiting for him?' Neeps whispered back. 'His masters, the ones who see through his eyes?'

  'That's right,' whispered Pazel. 'But don't say another word! Just hold onto that thought, will you? They're going to find us, and help. And Ramachni's coming back as well — stronger than ever, he said. So save your strength. You'll see, this is all going to work out.'

  He left them, feeling a fraud. Who was he to say that things would work out? What made his promises any better than those Taliktrum gave to his people — or for that matter, Mugstur to his rats? Had things worked out for Diadrelu? Would anything prevent their dying here, one by one, with three miles of the Ruling Sea left to cross?

  He found Thasha seated on the flag locker at the back of the quarterdeck, her shoulders resting on the taffrail. 'You're seventeen,' she said, her voice flat and distant.

  'By Rin,' said Pazel, for it was true: his birthday had come and gone on the Nelluroq. 'How did you know?'

  Thasha made no answer. Her eyes were on Taliktrum and Elkstem, both at the wheel, arguing over safe running speeds and distances from shore. Myett stood close to Taliktrum, whispering and touching him frequently. Lord Talag, who had so far refused to discuss any return to leadership of the clan, watched his son in brooding silence from the wreckage of the wheelhouse.

  On Thasha's lap lay a chipped ceramic jug from the stateroom. Pazel tipped it: bone dry.

  'You'll just get thirstier, sitting out in this wind,' he said.

  Thasha smiled and put out her hand. 'Come and get thirsty with me.'

  He climbed onto the flag locker and settled beside her. As always when they were close, he tensed himself against the onset of pain from Klyst's shell. But it did not come — had not come, he realised, since they passed through the Red Storm. He glanced north. What had happened to the murth-girl? Was she lost in the heart of the Ruling Sea? Had she followed them (he crushed his eyes shut on the thought) into the Vortex, and perished there? Or had the Storm freed her from her own love-ripestry at last?

  'The whales are back,' said Thasha pointing.

  'I think they're watching us,' he said, trying for a joke.

  Thasha's strong arm went around his waist. He smiled, remembering his childish vision of the two of them running away into the jungle, Lord and Lady of Bramian. It was time to tell her, although he'd blush, and she'd tease him, and demand to hear it all.

  But before he could open his mouth Thasha hid her face against his shoulder. 'Diadrelu,' she whispered, clinging to him. And that was enough; he was engulfed in anguish and had to look away.

  That night in the stateroom, while Hercol and Fiffengurt sat at table, speaking of the recent dead and the soon-to-be-born, and Bolutu sketched a drawing of his beloved Empire, pointing out its forests and castles and mountain ranges to a transported Felthrup, Pazel rummaged in his sea chest, among heaps of grimy clothes and knickknacks. When at last he found what he wanted he rose and went into Thasha's cabin without knocking. She was sprawled across the bed, reading the Polylex with no apparent discomfort — before his startling entrance, at least. He closed the door and went to her, and held the blue silk ribbon up for her to read.

  YE DEPART FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN, AND LOVE ALONE SHALL KEEP THEE

  'I was supposed to tie this to your wrist,' he said, and did.

  42

  The Kindness of the King

  On sunny mornings the man liked to sit by the window and watch the tailor birds repairing their nests. They never stopped or seemed to tire, these little red birds, even when the winter storms lashed the city and pulled their patchwork homes apart like old woollen hats. One of the birds came now and then to talk to him. The man had bribed him with a scrap of silk, torn from the lining of his pocket. Now with a telescope borrowed from the king he could see the silk woven into the nest. The bird had thanked him in Simjan, and when the man did not answer, tried several other tongues. The man just nodded, or tilted his head to one side. He had lost the gift of speech and the bird had gained it. The situation was awkward for them both.

  Long winter nights the man would lie on the rug, staring at the firelight dancing on the ceiling and worrying about the bird. It was always good humoured but he knew it was in pain. I'm alone in the world except for you, sir. My mate hasn't woken and I fear she never will.

  When he closed his eyes the rats came looking for him. First he would hear them scuffling below in the depths of the castle, and he would have to get up and check the lock on the door. Later he would hear them sniffing and scrabbling just outside the room. Sometimes they spoke to him in their familiar, horrid way. Penny for a colonel's widow? Often he heard them gnawing at the base of the door.

  The man had no weapon, and no kiln in which to hide. He knew his only chance was to lie still and make no sound.
/>   They gave him a cat, but it harassed the bird and he told the nurse with gestures to take it away. They gave him books, all the books written in Arquali that the king could readily obtain, and these were his great comfort. When they hung a mirror above the dressing table the man stood in front of it for a long time, studying himself. A bald, veined head, deepset eyes, chin held high out of habit, not feeling. Then the man turned the mirror's face to the wall.

  The king's physician gave him bloodroot tea. He was not surprised that the man had lost both speech and memory. He had treated many battle survivors, and knew the caves into which the mind, like a wounded animal, withdrew in defeat.

  'Traumatic semi-catatonia,' he told King Oshiram. 'He's made a pact with the gods, Your Majesty: "Torture me no further and I'll sit here quietly, you'll see, I won't make a sound." '

  'Admiral Isiq is a war hero,' said the king.

  'Yes, Sire. And also, unfortunately, a man.'

  Daytime was pleasant enough. The room in the tower overlooked the Ancestors' Grove, a stand of gnarled beeches surrounding a rush-fringed pool where, as King Oshiram had explained, the frogs were said to sing with the voices of the royal dead. It was a small, ancient, walled-in wood. Beyond it lay the rose gardens, dormant now and dead-looking, and farther on the sprawling Cactus Gardens, where the man's last conversation with a loved one had taken place.

  The king had installed a sheet of translucent glass over the whole of the window, with only a tiny aperture to look through. 'For your safety,' the king had told him, very serious and grim. 'The ones who put you in that black pit are still among us, I'd bet my mother's jewels on that. The rat creatures did not kill them all. That is why we can't let your face be seen, and why you must never, ever shout. Use the bell pull; someone will always be listening. Do you understand me, Isiq?'

  The king's eyes always told him when to nod.

  King Oshiram was intelligent and kind. He did not talk down to his guest or presume that what he said was forgotten. Quite the contrary, he spoke to the man seriously, as to a peer, about the intractable problems of the Isle of Simja, and darker matters in the outer world. He often called him Ambassador or Admiral. He even brought an Arquali fish-and-dagger flag and set it up on a pole in the corner, but after the king left the man had folded it sadly and left it by the door.

  One day the king told him with great anxiety of the death of Pacu Lapadolma. 'An accident, they said, an allergic reaction to her food, isn't that a preposterous claim!' It was, said the king, a sign of much worse things to come. It meant the Great Peace was unravelling. Then he shrugged, and glowered, and scratched the back of his neck, and murmured almost inaudibly that perhaps it was never meant to succeed.

  After that, each visit brought more awful news. The Mzithrinis were in a state of panic and suspicion. They had cancelled their goodwill missions to Arqual, and were preventing visits — all visits, commercial, scholarly and diplomatic — to their own country, just as in the worst years after the war. The Permanent Blockade by the White Fleet, which just that autumn they had talked of abolishing, was now tighter than ever. Ships that strayed too close to the Mzithrini line of control were met with warning shots across their bows.

  The doctor advised the king to spare his guest these stories — 'if you ever want to see him recover, that is.' The king frowned, but obeyed. For almost a week. Then came a day when, after struggling through an amusing tale about his nephew's habit of putting trousers on dogs, he fell silent, until the man stopped glancing out the window and looked at the monarch with concern.

  The king met his eye. 'The Shaggat Ness,' he said quietly. 'Do you remember who he was, Admiral, even if you've forgotten yourself?'

  The man nodded, for he did.

  'All this ferocity and paranoia, this self-quarantine they've imposed, this blasting of guns and practising for war. It's all about the Shaggat. Word's leaked out. The whole Pentarchy is ablaze with rumours that the Shaggat Ness is coming back. From the grave! From the bottom of the Gulf of Thol! His old minions on Gurishal have some daft prophecy — connected I gather with the Great Peace itself, and now they're delirious with the prospect of his return. And the Five Kings, damn them, are as superstitious as the blary Nessarim. So they're turning away every possible ship that might be trying to smuggle the madman back to Gurishal. Even though he's forty years dead and gone!'

  Suddenly he laughed. 'Religious lunatics. Someone had better break it to them, that's all. "Listen, you dumb bastards, the dead don't just wake up one day and return to life." '

  Then the king stopped laughing, and looked at the man uneasily. 'Of course, you did,' he said.

  The tailor bird had overheard the king. 'Isiq, your name is Isiq! A splendid name! And an admiral, did I get that right?'

  The man neither nodded nor shook his head. Something the king had said made him feel it would be wrong to answer.

  'No matter! Isiq! We have that, and it's more than we had yesterday! Every twig in the nest, eh? Tomorrow I'll listen to His Highness again, and we shall add another twig.'

  Eberzam Isiq put his fingers in the aperture. The bird for the first time let him touch its velvet throat.

  But for almost a week the king did not come. Isiq heard him pass through the lower chambers, his voice high and merry as he shouted to his scribe and chamberlain. When he came at last he slipped in quietly and chattered for an hour about things that had nothing to do with war.

  Isiq returned his smile, for he felt the king's new joy as his own. Something on the admiral's face must have revealed his curiosity, for the king laughed and drew his stool closer.

  'I can tell you, can't I? You won't go gossiping. I've fallen in love. I'm smitten, I tell you, done for.'

  Isiq sat up straight. The king went right on talking.

  'Oh, she won't be queen — that'll be dreary Princess Urjan of Urnsfich, one of these years — ah, but this girl! Once in a lifetime, Isiq. A dancer, with a body to prove it. But she's had a hard life. Was forced to dance for piggish men in Ballytween — dance, and maybe more than dance. Now she's too timid to step in front of an audience, or even enter a crowded room. I seem to have been born to shelter-Never mind, sir, never mind. Ah, but she dances for me, Admiral. I wish you could see her. Beauty like that would make you recall your youth in a heartbeat.'

  None of this made any great impression on Eberzam Isiq. He knew only that the king's visits would be rare henceforth, and they were. The doctor came, and the nurse brought food, and new books, and laundered clothes. The little tailor bird came and spoke sadly of his mate. The winter deepened. And Isiq grew somewhat stronger. His body at the very least was healing. He started calisthenics, though he could not recall having learned them fifty years ago as a cadet.

  One day, nibbling soda bread with a blanket across his knees, staring at a page of Arquali poetry as the bird pecked crumbs from the floor, he heard the king beneath him, laughing deep in his throat. The monarch raised his voice to a shout: 'Yes, yes, darling, you win, by all the gods! Your wish is my own!' And then, very faintly, Isiq heard a woman's musical laugh.

  He shot to his feet, scaring the bird back to the window. Book and blanket and cake fell to the floor. He took a step forwards, lips trembling, possessed by yearnings the very existence of which he had forgotten.

  'Syrarys?' he whispered.

  'Isiq!' screeched the tailor bird, beside himself. 'Isiq, best friend, only friend, you can talk!'

  43

  A Meeting of Empires

  20 Ilbrin 941

  219th day from Etherhorde

  With the lookout's cry at dawn, grown men wept with relief.

  'Tower ashore! Tower ashore!'

  Felthrup's eyes snapped open. Had he heard correctly?

  He was in the doorway of the wedding cupboard, under Hercol's chair. Hercol was already on his feet. 'A tower!' he cried softly. 'Thank the sweet star of Rin!'

  'We are saved!' said Felthrup. 'Any settlement will have water! They cannot refuse us enough to stay a
live!'

  'To me, little brother,' said Hercol, and lifted the rat to his shoulder. Felthrup clung tight, revelling in the strength of his three good legs. Just like Master Mugstur, he had seen his battle-wounds healed when he took monstrous shape. Then (a far greater blessing) the Red Storm had nullified the hideous change, restoring him to his true body, just as it had done to Belesar Bolutu. Even with his burning thirst, Felthrup had not felt so strong in years.

  The door to Pacu Lapadolma's cabin opened, and Bolutu himself stepped out, his silver eyes shining with anticipation. The dlomic man had lately moved into Pacu's cabin, which like Hercol's cupboard stood inside the magic wall. He wore an amulet about his neck: a lovely sea-green stone, inlaid with gold likenesses of tiger and snake. It was a sacred emblem, he'd explained vaguely: and this was the first time he'd dared display it in twenty years.

  He had also taken to wearing a broadsword. Felthrup didn't know where the sword had come from, but he knew why Bolutu kept it at hand, and why he had changed his quarters. The mood on the Chathrand was explosive; men were almost as thirsty for a scapegoat as they were for water. Felthrup himself went nowhere without a guardian. The only thing worse than being the sole dlomu aboard the Great Ship was being its last surviving rat.

  Scores of men were already rushing up the Silver Stair, with ixchel flowing past them left and right.. Hercol threw open the stateroom door. 'Thasha! Pathkendle!'

  Pazel and Thasha stumbled into the passage, blinking. Ensyl was there as well, riding on Pazel's shoulder. Felthrup leaped into Thasha's arms. 'Wake up, my lady!' he said, wriggling with excitement. Thasha nodded vaguely; she did not seem to know quite where she was.