The River of Shadows (39 page)

“Y-y—”

“Relight the candle, Fulbreech, and tell me why you have disturbed my rest.”

Pazel knew the Turachs were on his heels. Their pounding boots sounded right above him; they could probably hear his own progress through the sleepy ship almost as well as he heard theirs. But they would never catch him. The ship’s four great ladderways all ended on the orlop deck: there were of course other staircases, but you had to know where to find them. It kept pirates from racing straight to the hold—and a few weeks ago, mutant rats from swarming straight to the topdeck. The Turachs would have to run all the way to the tonnage hatch, where they could swing down, if catching Pazel was worth such acrobatics. Otherwise they would press on to the midship scuttle. Pazel was running for that narrow stair himself: it was the fastest way
up
from the mercy deck as well.

But already his heart was sinking. He had escaped the bread room, but the Turachs knew the layout of the ship as well as he did, and they were larger and faster. They’d be waiting for him at the scuttle. They’d be waiting on
every
Gods-damned stair.

He stopped. It was hopeless. A weird alliance of his friends and enemies was determined to keep him from getting anywhere near Thasha. And maybe that was sign enough that he ought to sit still, just as Marila had told Neeps to do. Something that could make Fiffengurt and Haddismal work together was surely a matter of life and death.

Unless …

He laughed at a sudden, ridiculous idea. Could Rose be
marrying
them? Could that be how Thasha meant to “end it”? Were they keeping him away out of pity, for fear he’d attack Fulbreech on the spot?

Impossible. A ship’s captain could marry anyone, it was true … but Thasha couldn’t be that far gone. Could she?

He thought suddenly of Neda and Cayer Vispek, and his unsettling dream about the burial at sea.
The Isiq girl wants to be rid of him
. He felt ill. Maybe his mind-fit was coming early. Or maybe Thasha wanted to be married before the dlömu came to take them off for their visit to the Issár.

But hold on: the dlömu. Perhaps there
was
another way off this deck. He turned on his heel and ran straight back the way he had come. When he passed by the wreckage of the ixchel’s fortress he saw lamplight shining down through the hole in the bread room floor. Fiffengurt’s voice sounded hoarsely, calling his name. He didn’t answer. Straight on he ran, and minutes later reached the forward scuttle: a tiny, neglected laundry-chute of a staircase dropping sharply down to the hold.

He descended.
Rin’s eyes, the smell
. The flooding had washed out some of the cinders, blood and rat-filth, but what remained was exposed to the air now, and rotting … he shut his mind to such thoughts and groped into the darkness ahead. He had one chance, and if it came he would have to seize it instantly.

The scuttleway let onto a flying catwalk: a kind of bridge some twenty inches wide and eighty feet long, spanning the cavernous hold. No rail, and no way of telling if the boards were intact. Pazel set out across it, utterly blind, restraining a suicidal urge to run. The catwalk felt sound. He walked with arms stretched before him, but in fact he had no idea of his distance from the hull. And what then? How on earth would he get down to—

The catwalk ended. His foot met with empty space. He fell like a stone, and almost before he had time to be afraid struck the curving wall of the hull, and rolled and spun and crashed to the bottom of the hold.

First, a moment of stunned stillness; then the pain rushed in, and he cursed in a cascade of languages. But he was not dead, so he’d keep moving. He could still make everything all right. He crawled through a blackness of soaked and stinking wreckage. Bags of spoiled grain, ends of cables, shards of broken amphorae and scraps of wood. At times he was almost swimming in it. He doubted that he was moving in a straight line, but when he could touch the solid hull he corrected his path.

And suddenly there it was: moonlight. Not from any window above him, of course, but from below, reflected in a puddle on the stone quay beneath the
Chathrand
, through the hole in her flank. The shipwrights had not yet closed the wound: two enormous planks, or wales, remained to be fitted in place. Pazel dragged himself through the sawdust (fresh sweet smells) and looked out through the belly of the
Chathrand
. He was at the very bottom of her, just yards from the keel, and about fifteen feet off the ground.

Thasha
. Love and fury blended hopelessly inside him. He had been too timid in protecting her, too selfish and slow.
Aya Rin, let me get there in time
.

He dangled from the bottommost wale, and let go. Pain shot up his legs where they struck the stone, but he managed a clumsy take on the straight-drop-and-roll maneuver Thasha herself had tried so hard to teach him. Landfall at last, he thought absurdly, struggling to his feet. Then he ducked under the keel, dashed to the opposite scaffold and began to climb.

The cool air brought flashes of hope. Sometimes bad luck was a whale that devoured you. Sometimes you crawled out of its belly and fought on.

The dlömu ashore did not notice Pazel at first, and by the time they did, they could think of nothing to do about him. Humans were not to leave the ship, but this youth’s only wish seemed to be to get back inside. They might have scolded him, but they were under orders not to speak to the crew except in emergencies, and so held their tongues. The decision, as it happened, cost lives.

Pazel had climbed about eighty feet when, on the lower gun deck, Fulbreech stepped out of the pump room and quickly closed the door behind him. For the last time in his life he put on his old, false face. He was ready with a laugh and a self-effacing story about ducking into the chamber to collect himself, after some ugly work in sickbay—but no one had seen him, the passage was still deserted. Once again he opened the pump room door.

Arunis swept into the passage, his great mace raised before him. Fulbreech thought again how ghastly he had become. Once the mage had been stout; today he was a skeletal, staring creature, large of build but wasted within his dark, enveloping coat, the old white scarf twined about a dry and scrawny neck. And yet there was power in those hands that gripped the cruel weapon like a plaything, and his eyes still gleamed with appetite.

He was marching aft at a swift pace. “The Stone is in the manger yet,” he said, more to himself than to Fulbreech, who was half running to keep up. “I will not have to touch it. I will take it, of course. No one will dare to cross me. The Turachs will flee their posts, and those who do not flee I will burn. I will claim the Stone tonight, and it will know me for its master, the shaper of worlds, the next ascendant to the Vault of the Skies. The Stone brings death only to weaker souls. All the same I will not touch it. Why should I touch it, before I know that I can?”

“You should cross the ship by the orlop deck, Master,” said Fulbreech, touching his sleeve.

“We cross here,” said Arunis.

“On the lower gun deck? As you will, Master. You may be lucky here as well.”

Sorcerer and servant hurried on, past the gunners’ cabins and the armory. Finally the passage ended and they stepped out into the central compartment. Moonlight filtered dimly through the gunports, and the glass planks overhead. The long rows of cannon gleamed blue-black in the shadows. Arunis hesitated, glaring.

“Empty,” he said.

“As I say, Master, you’re fortunate tonight. Stanapeth and Bolutu may be huddled with Lady Oggosk, but in general the ship is asleep.”

“It is
not
asleep,” snapped Arunis, shooting him a furious look. “Scores of men are awake, whether they dare to stir from their chambers or not. I can feel them, crouched and frightened. Why should they be frightened? What has been happening this last hour, Fulbreech?”

“This last hour? Nothing, Master. I told you, I was with the girl. Pathkendle and his friends retired early. Bolutu spoke with someone dispatched by Prince Olik, who delivered the awful news.”

Arunis began to walk quickly down the row of cannon. “Delivered it to
him
, not the entire crew. I begin to wonder if you’ve kept up appearances, Fulbreech. Does Sandor Ott still consider you his agent, or has he seen through your mask?”

“He relies on me utterly, sir,” said Fulbreech, with a hint of pride. “It was he who sent me in pursuit of Thasha to begin with, as you know.”

“Then what is the great Arquali spy telling you?”

“Master, he knows nothing of Olik’s plan to take the Nilstone.”

“Sandor Ott is awake, fool! Rose is awake! I smelled their nervous brains the moment I stepped from my chambers! Why are they nervous, Fulbreech? What are they waiting for?”

“Your death, sorcerer. These many years—but no longer.”

It was Hercól. The swordsman rose from a crouch between two gun carriages. With a gliding step he moved to block their way, Ildraquin loose in his hand, murder in his eyes.

The sorcerer’s face convulsed with rage. “My death,” he managed to scoff, but there was fear in the spiteful voice.

“I think,” said Hercól, “that you have taken an interest in this blade, since last we met. Certainly your creature here saw fit to question Thasha about it—in the most unassuming way, of course.”

“You must satisfy his curiosity, Stanapeth,” said a second voice.

Arunis and Fulbreech whirled. Sandor Ott had appeared behind them, a Turach sword in hand, wearing his savage smile.

Arunis turned and seized Fulbreech by the throat. “Maggot! Your death shall be the first of many!”

“Snap his neck and you’re doing him a mercy,” laughed Ott. “My own punishment for traitors would take several minutes just to describe. But you’ve got it wrong, Arunis. I was the one he betrayed, not you.”

Arunis turned Ott a look of hateful suspicion. All the same he let go of Fulbreech. The youth fell to the floor, wheezing in agony. Arunis kicked him flat, then held him still beneath his boot.

From the corner of a bruised eye, Fulbreech saw Ott draw something from his belt: a short, cylindrical device of wood and iron. The old spy raised an eyebrow at him. “Remember this, do you, lad?”

Fulbreech did remember. The thing was a pistol: a sort of handheld cannon, the first of its kind in all the world. It was clumsy, inaccurate, fragile and useless without a match. But on Simja, Ott had shown him how the device could fire a lead sphere through an armored chest. Fulbreech had thought:
The Empire that could build such a thing cannot be opposed. That’s the winning side, my side
. And until he’d met Arunis, he’d been right.

Ott began to circle the pair, slowly, casually. “Well, Stanapeth,” he said, gesturing at Fulbreech, “you promised this would be worth my time, and I’m happy to admit you spoke the truth. A traitor in the Secret Fist! If we were in Etherhorde I’d be submitting my resignation at Magad’s knee. But why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“For the same reason I told almost no one,” said Hercól, starting to circle as well. “Because this mage has been listening to our thoughts. He cannot probe below the surface, maybe, but when our minds turn to killing and betrayal, the surface is enough. It was all I could do to keep
myself
from brooding on Fulbreech, and thus giving everything away. And of course there were appearances to maintain in front of the Simjan himself.”

Arunis turned where he stood. He looked suddenly like a cornered animal, his gaunt lips drawn back from his teeth.

“Deceiving the deceivers,” said Ott. “You always were the best in your class.”

“We had a strong incentive to succeed,” said Hercól.

“We?” said Ott.

“Yes,” said another voice in the shadows, “we.”

It was Bolutu. He walked up quickly in the moonlight on Hercól’s left. He looked at Arunis, and his face, usually so placid, was transformed by rage. “Twenty years have I given to your downfall. Twenty years—and two hundred. I lost my family, my whole world. The only friends left to me were my shipmates, those who had sailed North with me, and them too I watched you hunt down and kill. You are depravity incarnate, mage. But you have not managed to kill us all.”

“Then let us amend that,” said Arunis, and leaped at him.

“Ah-ah-ah!”

The voice was Lady Oggosk’s. Arunis was suddenly floundering, as though he had collided with an invisible curtain, or a net. There was the old woman, hobbling around the edge of the tonnage hatch, leaning heavily on her walking stick. At her feet slithered the Red River cat, Sniraga, all her fur on end.

“I warned you, sorcerer,” she said, “that if you boarded the
Chathrand
she would be your tomb. Do you remember that day, in the Straits of Simja? Do you remember how you laughed?”

“I am laughing still,” said Arunis.

“Liar,” she cackled, “you’re scared to death, and well you should be. I have done little witchcraft since we met—very little these past forty years, truth be told, and I’ll do little more in the time I’ve left. But I saved my strength for tonight, and that’s more than you can say. Your power’s been squandered of late, hasn’t it? Dream-journeys, thought-spying, healing the cracks in the Shaggat’s arm. Above all, burrowing like a ferret into weakened minds, and then throwing them at the Nilstone to see how fast it would kill them. What did those experiments teach you, eh? Were you going to claim the Stone at last?”

Arunis let the mace fall from his hands. He struggled: it was as if cottony walls enclosed him, tightening the more he fought. “The witch’s web,” he sneered. “A charm for island pranksters, for tripping the town drunk when he steals eggs from your henhouse. The most primitive magic in Alifros!”

“So primitive I doubt you’ve bothered to learn a counter-spell,” said Oggosk.

“Witless hag. This charm will not hold me.”

Oggosk kept her blue eyes fixed on the sorcerer. “Not for long, no,” she said. “But long enough. And when I wish to—”

She pinched two fingers together. Arunis ducked his head and hissed, as though the walls had just closed tighter.