The River of Shadows (15 page)

Five minutes later Mr. Coote appeared with his flat, detested bell, rousing the dawn shift. Pazel lay still, trying to summon the old knack for sleeping through bumps and curses, spit and scuffles in the darkness. He sank half into sleep but could go no further. Every part of him ached. In that restless trance he saw them together, Thasha and Fulbreech.
Don’t trust. Stop everything. Jump over the side
.

“Muketch.”

His eyes snapped open. The tarboy Jervik was standing over him, hands in fists, his hard face clenched in an expression it took Pazel a moment to recognize as concern.

“What happened? Somebody beat you?”

“Worse,” said Pazel, and instantly regretted the reply.

Jervik was crude and violent and very strong; they had once been mortal enemies. But since the rat war everything had changed. Jervik had defected to their side—quietly, announcing it to no one but Pazel himself. He was
their
spy, in a sense: well positioned to learn things, if only because everyone thought him too stupid to be listening. Pazel no longer thought him stupid. He had cunning and courage. And he had come through mental torture by Arunis with his will to fight intact.

Nonetheless he wished Jervik would go away. The older boy had the wrong idea; he thought someone had beaten Pazel the way he himself used to do. Jervik’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “You can’t let
no one
do this to you,
Muketch
, you hear? You got to learn that.”

Pazel closed his eyes again. “I agree,” he said.

“The way you fought them rats, eh? You laid ’em waste. That’s how you fight man to man, see?”

“Lay them waste?”

“Tha’s right. Never go halfsies. When you’re on the dock and they cast off the lines and the bosun shouts,
‘All aboard,’
d’ye put just one foot on the mucking boat and stand there? No, you don’t. You jump with
both
feet, or you keep ’em both ashore. Same with fighting. You oughta know by now.”

Pazel opened his eyes. “You’re right again,” he said. “Only this time I can’t actually … fight him. Them. It’s not a fist-fight.”

“Easier if it was, eh?”

Pazel was somewhat amazed. “That’s right, Jervik. Easier if it was.”

Jervik stood still, his face all but invisible. “I thought you were gonna laugh,” he said finally. “When I told you I wanted to switch sides. I thought you’d laugh and tell me off. ‘Get stuffed, you thug, you blary halfwit, you fool.’ Only fancier, o’course.”

Pazel bit his lips. He’d come close to doing just that. “I’m glad I don’t have to fight
you
anymore,” he said truthfully.

“You’d do all right,” said Jervik, laughing low. “Hercól’s taught you good—or was it the girly?”

“Both of them,” said Pazel miserably.

Jervik heard the change in his voice. As though realizing he’d overstepped, he turned to go. “Lay him waste,
Muketch
. And if he’s still too much for you”—Jervik’s voice dropped low and menacing—“just give the word, and I will kill the son of a whore.”

Pazel slept and dreamed of the Nilstone. It had changed Thasha, transformed her as it did the rats, only the mutation was to her heart. She met him in a corner with a sly and secret grin. She was cradling the Stone, talking to it, caressing the blackness that was too black even for dreams. Then she put it in her pocket and crooked a finger, drawing him close. She lifted her shirt on one side, revealing a line of black stitches, and when her fingers touched it the wound opened like a mouth and let him see into her chest. Her heart was a small armored ship, secure in the dry dock of her rib cage, bilge-pumps fastened to her veins. “You see?” she said. “It was for your own good. Your heart grew like an apple, or a shell. Mine was built in Etherhorde. You can’t make love to someone who built her own heart—”

“I could,” he protested, though in fact he wished to run.

Thasha winced, in sudden pain. “You think you know
everything,
” she said, acidly. “Go ahead, then. Touch it. I bet you don’t dare.”

The heart-ship was beating. What could it be but a trap? That was fine, he was ready, he could take iron jaws snapping shut on his wrist. He touched her smooth navel first but the sweetness there was unbearable, so obediently he put his hand into the wound.

Thasha’s heart gave a titanic
thump
. And Pazel woke to shouts of alarm from a hundred men and boys.
The keel! The keel! Sweet Rin, we’ve run aground!

The ship was heeled over drastically to starboard. There was a dreadful cracking noise from below. Pazel sprang from his hammock to the tilting floor and raced in a crowd of men and boys for the ladderway, everyone slipping and groping. “She’s breaking free again!” cried the tarboy known as Crumb. And so they were: the ship righted herself (more hideous cracking) and Pazel nearly fell as the ladderway once more became vertical. He floundered onto the topdeck, took in sea and ship at a glance. Running feet. Panicked faces. A brilliant morning, strange swallow-tailed birds, flat indigo waters, and—

Land
.

There was land off the port bow, ten or fifteen miles ahead. Everyone else was aware of it; he must have slept through the lookout’s cry. For a moment Pazel was transfixed: the new world, the Southern mainland. It was purple-brown, with rafts of mist glowing in the morning light. Higher up the sky was clear, and like a ghostly etching, a chain of distant, jagged, silver-gray mountains loomed over the coast—

“Report!” Alyash was bellowing into a speaking-tube. “Report from the hold! Mr. Panyar, are you deaf?”

Shouts aloft: debris was surfacing in the
Chathrand
’s wake. Wood splinters, some of them the size of table legs. Fiffengurt passed Pazel without a glance, running straight to the window of the forecastle house, where Rose waited in a fury, grime and soot coating his face.

“Gods below, Captain,” he said, “There was simply
nothing
off the bow. The water’s clear to eighty feet!”

“No! No!” Rose bellowed. “Damn it, man, didn’t you feel the impact? Whatever it was
crossed
our keel amidships. We didn’t run over it—it slammed into us!”

More cries from the lookout: “Mastwood in the water! Crosstrees, cable-ends! We struck a drowned ship, Mr. Fiffengurt!”

Rose’s expression said he thought he had misheard. When Fiffengurt repeated the lookout’s words, he adamantly shook his head. “We just rolled forty degrees! I tell you, that blow came from the side!”

Then Rose grew still. His gaze meandered, as though he were listening to the very walls that enclosed him. “Unless
 … we
did. Unless we’re moving sideways. What’s that? What?”

Pazel watched the big man twitch and gape at nothing.
He’s finally cracked. He never did have much sanity to spare
. And yet Fiffengurt was quite sane, and ran a tight ship. If his bow lookouts claimed that there had been no obstacles ahead—

“Quartermaster.”

It was Alyash, looking rather stunned. Capping the speaking-tube, he sidled close to Fiffengurt. He spoke quietly, but Pazel watched his lips. It looked like
Two inches
. When Fiffengurt hissed and said, “Already?” Pazel knew exactly what the men were discussing. Two inches of water taken on. In less than ten minutes. They were leaking, and badly.

Fiffengurt issued a quiet order: six hands to the bilge-pumps. Almost in a dream, Pazel moved to the starboard rail. He stood staring at the land, though he could make out little beyond the mountains.

An ixchel voice piped behind him: a natural ixchel voice, the kind only he could hear. “A collision, perfect, typical. Can you believe it? We can’t trust the giants to operate their own ship. Mother Sky, give me patience.”

“It was the clan who nearly sent the ship into the Vortex.”

That was Ensyl. Pazel smiled a little despite himself.

But the first voice said, “Do not speak of the clan, traitor. You walk free at the indulgence of He-Who-Sees.”

“You mean Taliktrum?”

“
Lord
Taliktrum, you cur!”

A moment later Ensyl appeared at Pazel’s elbow.
“He-Who-Sees,”
she said acidly. “I wouldn’t have believed things could get this bad. Soon any freedoms left to us will be at his indulgence. But then again, we may not live that long. Are we really sinking?”

“Yes,” said Pazel.

“Fast?”

Pazel shrugged. “Fast enough to worry about. But the pumps will help.”

Ensyl turned to look back at Taliktrum and his followers. “I am afraid for my people,” she said. “Warriors or not, they are terrified, and it’s fear that has driven them to this sick worship of Taliktrum. He smelled the opportunity, the weakness in the clan. They’re casting about for salvation. They want miracles, and ‘He-Who-Sees’ promises to supply them.” Hesitantly, she touched his arm. “You are not yourself, Pazel. What troubles you?”

Pazel edged his hand away, irritated by her certainty. Only a handful of women on this ship, but they were so hard, so
impossible
to avoid.

“I can’t talk about it,” he said, “and I doubt you’d understand.”

“I was engaged once.”

“That doesn’t mean you’d understand.”

Ensyl shook her head. “I suppose not.”

Pazel felt churlish, but somehow he could not apologize.
Engaged
. If that was a matter of what you did with your heart, then he had been, too. A one-sided engagement. He could have laughed aloud.

“The land drops away to the east,” said Ensyl. “How can that be, if we are west of the city?”

“How in Pitfire should I know?” Pazel cried. “Do I look like I come from the South? Why don’t you go talk to Ibjen or Bolutu, and leave me alone?”

Ensyl left him alone. Pazel heard ixchel laughter:
Running a bit short on friends, aren’t you, Ensyl?
He felt like pounding his head on the rail. Instead he squeezed it until his knuckles turned white, and blinked at the unknown shore. Then a shadow crossed his face, and he turned his head to look.

Fulbreech.

Their eyes met. The Simjan did not smirk; he did not even wear his usual wry smile. But his eyes told Pazel everything he needed to know. Fulbreech had seen Thasha already. He knew where things stood.

“Morning, Pathkendle,” he said. “Hope you slept as well as I did.”

Pazel swung at him, hard. Even in his madness of jealousy he knew the blow was skillful: a straight-on jab at the older youth’s chin, his free arm jerked backward for torque, all the strength of his torso behind it. A blow to make his fighting tutors proud. But the blow never connected. Fulbreech jerked his head sideways, dodging by a finger’s width, and brought his knee up sharp into Pazel’s groin.

Pazel just managed to keep himself from sliding to the deck. He was in searing pain, but he straightened and turned to face the older youth. There was no shouting, no pounding feet. The men on deck had not seen a thing.

Where had Fulbreech learned those reflexes?

Now the older youth did smile, ever so slightly. “Thasha was just telling me what a hothead you are. I’ll have you know that I took your side. I said that losing her could bring out the hothead in anyone.”

“Thasha,” Pazel said between gasps, “doesn’t love you … idiot.”

“Keep thinking that, if it eases the pain. Just don’t lie to yourself
about
yourself. Once you realize that you’re nothing, maybe you can start to change that fact.”

“You’re using her for something. You planned it all.”

“Planned?” Fulbreech looked amused. “Now you flatter me. Granted, I don’t leave much to chance. Old Chadfallow tells me I’m thorough in the extreme. But I did make one error.” He seized Pazel’s arm in mock concern. “I say, you’re a delicate little blossom, aren’t you? Can you breathe? Do you need to sit down?”

“Go screw yourself.”

Fulbreech raised an eyebrow. “That will be your comfort from now on, Pathkendle. Not mine.”

Pazel lashed out again. This time his fist caught Fulbreech squarely in the eye. The Simjan did not strike back; instead he twisted away, disengaging, so that Pazel’s next blow went wide. Pazel advanced, but before he could strike again someone grabbed him by the hair and jerked him sideways, off-balance. It was Mr. Alyash.

“Fiffengurt!” he cried. “The Ormali’s just put a shiner on our surgeon’s mate! Right unprovoked, too: I watched the whole thing. But I suppose you’ll let it pass. Different rules for favorites of the commander, eh?”

Fiffengurt gaped at Pazel. “You didn’t, lad. Tell me you didn’t.”

Pazel rasped: “Mr. Fiffengurt, it wasn’t like—”

“I am the commander!” piped up Taliktrum, standing on the No. 2 hatch comb. He sprang to the deck and advanced between the men’s legs. “Pathkendle, always Pathkendle! You act as though you were a law unto yourself. What was Fulbreech’s offense, pray? Did he steal your shoelaces?”

“Not exactly,” said Alyash with a smirk.

“We cannot have brawls, Fiffengurt. You know that as well as anyone. I want him in the brig for two days.”

“But Taliktrum—” cried Pazel.

“Three,” snapped the ixchel leader. “And another day for every word that leaves his mouth. See to it, Bosun! And by the Nine Pits, let us return to the matter of the leak.”

Alyash sent for wrist cuffs. Fiffengurt looked on, sorrowful and aghast. Pazel knew he could not intervene, and that Taliktrum’s wishes had little to do with it. Fights on the
Chathrand
were like sparks in a hayloft: they had to be squelched at once, or the barn would be in flames.

Pazel stood there, skewered by their looks, boiling with rage and shame. Fulbreech touched the spot where Pazel had hit him. The eye would bruise, all right, and everyone would ask who had done it. Thasha would ask. Fulbreech looked at Pazel and gave him the plainest smile yet. “Error corrected,” he said.

5
. The mucking author did. We must conclude, with the benefit of near-infinite hindsight, that Thasha Isiq is being ironic. Nowhere in the thirteenth edition of the
Polylex
do we encounter an outright falsehood about the person it identifies as “the
Smythídor
.” And while Thasha quotes her brief passage correctly, she might have spared Pazel no little anxiety had she but continued. The next part of the entry reads: “Thus, and only thus, was he known in Alifros, and to the people of the ship on which he served.” But it is not Thasha’s part to comfort Pazel tonight. —E
DITOR
.