The Red wolf conspiracy tcv-1

by Robert V. S. Redick

  "Two or three times a year, Mistress."

  "You must be rather clever to survive. In the Lorg a girl with a curse like yours would be put in a barrel of icewater-to cool her evil thoughts, you know. I wonder what evil thoughts you have, Pazel Pathkendle?"

  "That's not why it happens!" he said fiercely.

  "Of course not. I was being ironic." She smiled, but Pazel flushed again, because now he looked like a bumpkin who took everything seriously. He longed to show her that he knew what ironic meant, but no words came.

  Then all at once his mind took in the significance of the objects around him: bed, heaped clothes, wardrobe and mirror, writing table with stationery and quill.

  "This is your cabin," he whispered. "I can't be here."

  "Oh, blow!" she said. "Don't you start as well."

  "You're the Treaty Bride," said Pazel. "I've got to get out of here."

  "Don't call me that," said Thasha in a warning tone.

  Pazel bent to look out the porthole. "What time is it, m'lady?" he asked.

  "Almost dinnertime. My father's having a drink with Captain Rose."

  "Who else knows I'm here? Who saw me come in?"

  Impatiently she sketched the missing hours of his life. His encounter with Jervik had been loud. Thasha and her tutor Hercуl had left the stateroom to investigate just as Pazel rushed into the corridor. Thasha did not seem surprised that Hercуl had seized him at once, dragged him to her private room and put him to sleep with a gulp of liquor, all in a matter of seconds. Her tutor, she said, moved faster than anyone on earth.

  "I saw your father," said Pazel.

  Thasha nodded. "He didn't see you, fortunately. Syrarys closed the washroom door, and Prahba's a little hard of hearing. Syrarys saw you, though, and nearly had you thrown out again." Thasha put on a face of mock outrage, and a strident voice: "'You put that boy in her bedroom, Hercуl? What are you thinking? What will people say?'"

  "She's right," said Pazel. "You're noble-born. You can't do this sort of thing."

  "Rubbish," she said. "I do exactly as I please."

  "Some of us don't get to live that way," he said, a bit more sharply than he intended. "And they'll gossip on the berth deck, too, m'lady. Do you know what my mates will say if they find out?"

  Thasha smiled and leaned forward, intrigued-not at all the reaction he wished for. "What will they say?" she asked.

  He hesitated. If she really wanted to know-

  "They'll say you like playing in the dirt."

  Thasha's look of enthusiasm died on her face. She was shocked, but clearly didn't want him to see it. She forced out a laugh. "Tar-boys," she said.

  Pazel bit his lips. As if you knew anything about us.

  "Besides," he went on, "you're supposed to be practicing to be a Mzithrini wife, and they're not allowed to do anything."

  "Rubbish!" said Thasha again. "And anyway I don't care. You're not one of those mush-dull boys who does only what he's supposed to, I hope? But of course you're not-I saw you with the augrongs. Wherever did you learn to speak Augrongi?"

  "Augronga," Pazel corrected her, before he could stop himself. Then he added quickly, "I don't really speak it, of course; nobody does. But sailing here and there, you know, you hear things. And there's this book called a Polylex, most ships carry one."

  "Not that thing," said Thasha, with an odd look. "It's all mixed up and wrong."

  That was perfectly true, Pazel knew. It was even likely that Mr. Uskins had pieced together his disastrous Augronga from the "Tongues of All Alifros" chapter in the back of the book.

  "Of course," said Thasha, lowering her eyes, "some versions are better than others. I have an old Polylex of my own. It says that drinking buffalo milk makes one smarter but also prone to 'wraths and paranoias.' And it says that long ago there were whole fleets of ships like the Chathrand, and they really did cross the Ruling Sea, and visited strange lands we've forgotten all about. Most of those ships were destroyed so long ago that we can't even recall their names. They were built by the Amber Kings, and one of them brought the foundation stone for the city of Etherhorde from the Court of the Archangel in the east. But over the centuries they built fewer and fewer, and the old ships began to sink. Three were destroyed in the Worldstorm, and one in a great whirlpool called the Nelluroq Vortex."

  "Yes, the Vortex-"

  "And do you know I've been having dreams about it, or something like it? Prahba was talking about war, and how one kind of destruction leads to another, and since then I've had this dream of a whirlpool, and a ship trapped inside it, spinning like a bit of wood, lower and lower-"

  "Mistress-"

  "Off the point, I know. What I mean to say is that the Vortex took Stallion in the year seven fifty-two, and Urstorch and Bali Adro never returned from missions across the Ruling Sea, and the last Great Ship but this one, the Maisa, was sunk by the Mzithrinis half a century ago. She was the sister-ship to the Chathrand: same size, same trim. But Maisa wasn't her original name. She was given that name just a few years before she sank, in honor of an Empress Maisa. My Polylex says she was our Emperor's stepmother."

  "Yes, I knew that-"

  "Did you? How strange. There was no Empress Maisa in my schoolbooks. But do you know the strangest thing about the Great Ships? The Yeligs-the Chathrand's owners-are the whole reason we can't build any more! They started putting the shipwrights to death so that they couldn't sell their secrets to other Trading Families. I suppose they didn't mean to kill them all."

  "Mistress!" Pazel broke in at last. "The Lady Syrarys knows I'm in your cabin!"

  "You worry too much," said Thasha. "I can handle Syrarys. I told her I'd cut off my hair and spit sapwort at my wedding if she disturbed you. Not that there's going to be any wedding-but perhaps you'd better not tell anyone I said that. Anyway, I doubt she could have disturbed you after you swallowed all that Keppery gin. Do you know what's crawling around in this ship?"

  "M-m-my Lady?"

  "Rats!" said Thasha happily. "I saw a rat on the lower gun deck. And would you believe I heard one crawling under these very floorboards last night? It must have been a clever rat, for when I hushed my dogs it grew still, too. Are you afraid of rats?"

  "No."

  "Do they bite you tarboys?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened to your parents, then? Are they dead?"

  It was most unusual for Pazel to be at a loss for words, and most uncomfortable. He had not been alone with any girl in his life save his sister, and he had rarely known anyone to talk as long and cheerfully as Thasha. He was also maddened by his own timidity before her. She was beautiful and important; did that mean she was smarter than he was? He swallowed. Then he folded his hands behind his back, schoolboy-fashion.

  "Your questions, Lady Thasha," he said, "are indiscreet."

  Folding his hands proved a mistake: he could have used them to protect himself. Instead he found himself flat on his back again with Thasha astride him, thumping his cheeks and pouring out a whirlwind of abuse. "Indiscreet! He runs in squawking like a… playing in the blary dirt… I'll show you who's practicing to be a wife!"

  This was how Hercуl found them: red-faced and tangled, with Jorl howling at the ceiling and Suzyt doing her best to swallow Pazel's right foot. When he had separated them, and persuaded Suzyt to unlock her jaws, the tall man laughed.

  "So good to find you improved, lad! But save your wrestling for other tarboys: they are far less dangerous. Come, get up, we have some things to decide. Won't you introduce us, Thasha?"

  "I'm not marrying anyone!"

  "In fact," said Hercуl, as if no one had just bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I've heard of you already, Pathkendle. Dr. Chadfallow says you're a natural scholar. He has spoken of you for years, but I never imagined he would arrange for us all to sail on Chathrand together."

  "He's a friend of Dr. Chadfallow?" demanded Thasha incredulously.

  "No," said Pazel. "Not anymore."

  "Do not condemn Ig
nus Chadfallow for the nation he was born into," said Hercуl. "True friendship is not a thing given lightly, nor should it be lightly tossed away."

  "Tell that to him," said Pazel.

  "You have a sharp tongue," said Hercуl, "but I know a little of your reasons for it. Do me a favor, now that I've rescued you from both Thasha and your shipmates: tell me exactly what's wrong with you."

  Pazel looked up at the kindly but piercing gray eyes. If his evasions had not fooled Thasha, they had no chance with this man. So for the second time in ten days, he did what he had long sworn never to do: he told strangers about his Gift.

  "Or curse, as you say," he added. "I always imagined-from the stories in books, and Mother's stories, too-that magic would feel like a thunderclap. In fact it's more like catching a cold. You know when a fever starts, and it feels as if some army's come in through your ears and is burning up your insides, one room at a time? Well, in my case it's a good army, at first. If I need to speak Augronga, it gives me Augronga. If I look at the Chathrand's escutcheon, it tells me what I'm reading. And I never forget, even after the mind-fits."

  "How many languages have you learned this way?" asked Thasha, still glowering.

  "Twenty."

  She gave him a skeptical smile-did she think he was joking? — and then asked him his age in Opaltik, which Lorg Daughters study as one more way to pass the years before marriage. When Pazel answered instantly, she tried something much more difficult: a nursery rhyme from the Ulluprid Isles, taught to her years ago by Syrarys. Even before it ended she knew he understood, for he looked still more flustered and uncomfortable. The rhyme was "My Darling Sailor."

  "If only we could show him to Ramachni," said Thasha. She glanced at the clock on her dresser. Then her eyes grew wide. "Hercуl! It's open!"

  Hercуl had not noticed the clock face either. "He is aboard, then! Did you see him, Pathkendle?"

  "He's a mink," added Thasha helpfully.

  Pazel started. "Then I wasn't dreaming. You mean he's a woken animal? A real one? And he belongs to you?"

  "One does not own a woken beast," said Hercуl severely, "except as a slave-keeper."

  "He's not really a mink," Thasha said. "In his own world he's a bald old man."

  "Ramachni is much more than that," said Hercуl, smiling a little now.

  "Of course," said Thasha. "He's a great mage, and he's been visiting me for years by crawling through my clock."

  Pazel looked from girl to man to clock, and back again.

  "Have a look," said Hercуl. "But touch nothing, and make no sound."

  Gingerly, Thasha took hold of the clock's moon-face and opened it wide. And behind it was a tunnel.

  At least, tunnel was the word that leaped to mind, although pipe might have been more accurate. Pazel looked, blinked and looked again, and found he could not tear his eyes away. He, who lived with magic in his blood, was seeing magic today for the first time.

  And what a sight it was. Just inches wide, the tunnel ran straight through the clock and onward-forty feet onward-through wall and adjacent cabin, and the cabin beyond that. It should have ended, roughly, in the center of the first-class dining room. A cold draft flowed from its mouth, carrying a hint of cedar smoke and a few grains of dark sand that fell from the clock to scatter among Thasha's rings and bracelets.

  But at the same time the tunnel was not there. He passed his hand behind the clock and felt nothing, looked and saw nothing but the plain cabin wall. The tunnel only existed within the clock.

  And at its far end there glowed a room. It was just visible, sharp and tiny, like the view through the wrong end of a telescope: crackling firelight, a three-legged stool, a bookshelf. Just that, and the sound of a desolate wind that was not blowing around the Chathrand.

  He straightened, gaping, and Thasha returned the clock face to its just-open position.

  "Ramachni's Observatory. That's what he calls it."

  "Where… where is it?"

  "In the mountains of another world."

  "His world?"

  She nodded. "I've been there. In a manner of speaking." She laughed. "There's a secret way to open the clock, and they didn't think I knew it. But I'd watched Hercуl do it once, pretending to be asleep, and the next night I felt like talking to Ramachni before bed, and opened the clock myself. He wasn't home, but I left the clock ajar. And that night I passed along the tunnel somehow and stepped into the Observatory. I saw wonders-a sleeping cat with smoke puffing from its nose, a bookshelf that became a wall each time I put out my hand, a great glass house full of trees and flowers, hot as anything, but built on a snowpeak.

  "Suddenly Ramachni was standing among the flowers. He looked quite human. He offered me a strawberry, and when I'd eaten it he asked me to take a walk with him. We passed through the glass house and into a kind of dark toolshed, very cold-the floor was a mix of snow and sand-and then he threw open the far door and there were the peaks, huge frozen peaks all around me, and the air was thin and icy. We stepped out and I realized we were on the very edge of a cliff. So high, Pazel-I can't begin to tell you how high and terrifying it was. The wind was screaming and the ground was slick ice under my night socks, but you could see forever, and there were creatures larger than whales in the distance, gliding among the clouds. And then he asked if I knew where home lay. I was in tears, but he laughed and covered my eyes. He said the tunnel was not a plaything, and that I might be able to visit him by it just twice more in my lifetime. Then he took his hand away and I was back in my room in Etherhorde."

  "Thasha has a most spectacular dream-life," said Hercуl.

  "It wasn't a dream," she said fiercely. "My socks were wet afterward."

  "But why does he visit you?" Pazel asked. "You particularly, I mean?"

  A brief silence: Thasha looked at Hercуl. "They won't tell me," she said at last.

  "All that I am given to tell, I tell," said Hercуl. "Complain to the mage of his mysteries, once we find him. But just now, boy, I would like to test your Gift a little further."

  He then asked Pazel questions in Tholjassan and Talturik and Noonfirthic, and when Pazel answered each in turn Thasha laughed in delight. Pazel smiled despite himself. She wasn't the only one with something special to her name.

  "There's another thing," he said. "Sometimes I hear better than normal. Just voices-and come to think of it, just translated voices. If you went into the next room and whispered in Arquali, I wouldn't hear a thing, because I learned Arquali before my mother cast the spell. But I would hear perfectly if you spoke in, say, Nileskchet-"

  He stopped dead.

  Hercуl's eyes narrowed.

  Bewildered, Thasha looked from one to the other. "Nileskchet. That's a funny name for a language. I've never even heard of it. What is Nileskchet?"

  "Yes," said Hercуl, in a changed voice. "Can you tell us that?"

  Pazel knew he had made a terrible blunder. However kind these new friends appeared, they would never forgive him for associating with crawlies. And what about the ixchel themselves? Even Diadrelu had promised to kill him if he revealed their presence.

  "It's just some old language," he stammered. "I don't think anyone uses it today, except in poetry."

  Hercуl bent toward him, hawk-like. "Do you, by any chance, enjoy Nileskchet poetry?"

  "I've never heard any."

  "Few men have."

  "Why are you so strange all of a sudden, Hercуl?" said Thasha. "We should be deciding what to do about him."

  Hercуl kept his eyes on Pazel for another long moment. Then at last his gaze softened and he sat up. "True enough," he said. "Four hours of work you've missed. They know you're in here, of course, so we must invent a story to explain it. My suggestion is that we tell the truth: you have been entertaining us with your languages."

  "Languages!" said Thasha suddenly. "Pazel, tell me this, if you can: who or what is a mighra cror?"

  Pazel looked at her, startled anew. "Those are Mzithrini words, the first I've heard in f
ive years. And they mean 'red wolf.'"

  "Red wolf?"

  He nodded. "Where did you hear such a thing?"

  "From a man who hid in our garden," said Thasha. "Just before someone put an arrow in his heart."

  Hercуl was looking from one to the other. "You are both quite sure?" he said softly. "Of what you heard, Thasha-and you, boy, of the meaning?"

  They assured him they were.

  "Does it mean something to you, Hercуl?" Thasha asked.

  "It may, and it may not. I know of just one red wolf. It was a magic statue or talisman of old, fashioned by Mzithrini alchemists from enchanted iron, fused with the blood of a living man. The stories all connect this Red Wolf with some great evil that plagued the Pentarchy a thousand years ago. And yet, strangely, the Five Kings' worst fear seemed to be that it might be stolen: they carved out a mountain citadel over Babqri and placed the Wolf at its center, guarded by walls and traps and sfvantskor warrior-priests. Why they should keep a thing of evil at the heart of their Empire I cannot guess. The tales, in any case, are half forgotten, in this age when east and west do not speak. What is certain is that the citadel, for all its protections, was destroyed at the end of the last war. The fate of the Red Wolf is anyone's guess. What a peculiar thing for that man to say."

  "In the middle of Etherhorde," added Thasha, shaking her head. "In Mzithrini."

  "Stranger still, he said it to you," added Hercуl. "The Treaty Bride, on the eve of her journey."

  She turned back to Pazel. "If you speak Mzithrini, that means you heard someone speak it once when your Gift was working, right?"

  "Yes," said Pazel. "The Mzithrin Kings had an envoy in Ormael, just like Arqual did. He had to leave when the troubles began, but in earlier days he and Dr. Chadfallow used to sit on our terrace and talk about peace-or argue about war."

  "But I thought your mother cast the spell while Chadfallow was back home in Etherhorde," said Thasha.

  "She did," said Pazel. "But the Mzithrini envoy… well, he fell in love with my mother, and spent time with us right up until the Arqualis attacked. My mother didn't particularly like him, but he kept trying. Especially after Dr. Chadfallow left."