The Red Wolf Conspiracy

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Each dash was a flirtation with death. Normally he did not move two yards without a jerk of the head, a glance back over one greasy shoulder or the other. There were flickers of motion; there were drafts and tremors, and sudden anonymous sounds. Worst of all, there were smells—cloying, crowding, smothering, flooding him with fear. The smell of man was everywhere: in the greasy fingerprints left by the longshoremen, in the sweat from their backs where they had leaned against posts, in the sailors' spit and sweet-pine residues, in the human breath oozing downward from the sleeping quarters.

  (My terror is the terror of the sleeper, buried alive.)

  He did not fear men, though—not at this hour. Past midnight the mercy deck belonged to others: rats, ixchel, that dark thing that lurked and snuffled, a few mice and snakes and spiders, a few million fleas. Men nicknamed it pest-deck, piss-deck, stowaway lane. To its residents it was simply Night Village.

  Even at noon men worked there with lamps, for the mercy deck rode twenty feet beneath the waves. The dead of night saw no more than one man an hour trudge through its depths, blinded by his own lamp, scanning the hull for leaks.

  The great danger was Sniraga. Three nights already she had come hunting, crate to crevice, an angel of death. No flood of light announced her visits, and no sound but the sudden, blood-freezing wail of a life cut short. Then the Red River cat would climb to a high place, a transverse beam, maybe, and devour her victim by meticulous stages. With the pitch of the ship, gallbladders and stomachs would fall to the deck: these she did not eat.

  But for the black rat there was something worse than Sniraga.

  (Mine is the terror of the drowned. When the surface is gone you can't swim for it, you can't aim for a sun without light, without warmth, the vanished laughing sun over the kelp, sun of man and glad day and woken beasts and the miracle of tears, but not your kind, darling, never your kind except from corners, cracks, burrows in filth, and just so long as your snout clears the waves. Oh, mad repellent rodent! Sweet rat of my soul! Poor scuttling susurrating slop-eating Felthrup, how long till the kelp rakes you under?)

  He was a freak: he knew it. He was a woken rat, and rats never woke. Nor did they sleep, not the warm, stupid sleep of normal creatures. Unlike any other beings he knew of, they were caught between intelligence and instinct, night and day. They lived short, snapping, bickering, miserable lives in the twilight. The ixchel term for them was best: palluskudge—creatures cursed by the Gods.

  “Fatten up, brother!”

  Felthrup shot two feet straight up in the air. Beside him a trio of rats laughed in their whispered, nasal way.

  “Talking to himself!” they said. “Strange Felthrup! Wise and special Felthrup! What's he doing out here on the edge of town?”

  “Water,” lied Felthrup, recovering himself. “That's all. Just looking for water.”

  “‘Just looking for water,’” said one, in perfect mimicry. Like half of what came from rats' mouths it was said for no clear reason, but it made the others laugh. They were only slinkers: weak rats driven out of the warren by night, and allowed back in only if they could pay a tribute of food. Slinkers were the only rats most humans ever saw: the small, desperate ones, forced into mortal danger in kitchens, stables, dumps. Women saw them and shrieked amazingly, as if about to be mauled by tigers. Men traded fibs about their size.

  Felthrup tried to laugh as they did, with much slurping and sniffling. “The ixchel,” he said. “They're coming out of their crates now. Have you seen them?”

  “Seen them,” said one, and they all stared and waited. It was possible they did not understand the question.

  “Yes,” Felthrup tried again. “The ixchel. Crawlies. There's more of them aboard than usual—hundreds more. They're not just passengers this time. They're up to something.”

  “Hundreds of crawlies,” muttered one of the slinkers, bored.

  “Yes! They've been watching the giants, listening to them, taking risks. I tell you, it's not normal. I thought I would take a look at them for Master Mugstur.”

  At the mention of the Head Rat their eyes lit briefly with fear.

  “Perhaps you've noticed them, brothers?” Felthrup pressed, trying not to sound too eager. “I should certainly mention your help to Master Mugstur. Back there in the manger I thought—”

  “Felthrup and his stories,” one broke in.

  “I could tell you another story, brothers, about a monster of a man who soon will walk this ship. Niriviel the falcon spoke of him, proud as a prince. But you'd never believe me. They say this voyage is all about a wedding, a wedding to bring peace between the man-warrens. But the true purpose—”

  “What's he got to eat?” shrilled the rat on his left, and the other two bristled with sudden alertness. Eating was the only subject of real interest to rats—besides the whereabouts of things that might eat them.

  Felthrup shook his head. “Nothing, I fear.”

  “Always something.”

  “Not this time,” said Felthrup. “I haven't eaten since nightfall. I'm starved.”

  “Why didn't you ask us for food, then, brother?” asked the same rat, and all three slinkers grinned.

  Because you would have lied, Felthrup thought, but he knew they had caught him. All slinkers lied when they met in Night Village, and yet the practice never kept a rat—any normal rat—from asking. If he had pestered them for food, they would have suspected nothing, and let him go. Now they were closing in, sniffing at his paws and cheeks. A few more seconds and they would smell his last meal. Talk would cease instantly. They would attack.

  He was more than a match for any one of them—any two, probably. But three were too many. And when he fought, he drowned, became a mean, blind brute—became truly their brother.

  There was just one other choice. Felthrup shook himself, with that violent whole-body spasm peculiar to rats and weasels. The slinkers jumped back, and Felthrup spat the contents of his cheek pouches at their feet.

  “Knew it!” they cried happily. “Lying, gobbling, greedy Felthrup!”

  It was only a spoon's worth of soggy biscuit (dropped by a tarboy so exhausted he had fallen asleep as he chewed), but the slinkers fell on it like starved dogs, their short tongues licking at the grimy deck. Felthrup tensed and sprang—pop!—right over their heads. No point in looking back. In seconds his food would be gone. In minutes they would not remember him.

  (Mine the terror of not remembering. Who is Felthrup? Rat, freak, monster, man?)

  Now he was angry as well as tormented. That food would have bribed the door guard. To gain the daytime shelter of the warren he must seek out more, under the boys' hammocks or among the ragged, fitfully sleeping passengers in steerage. Other rats were combing the same spots; he might need hours to locate a scrap. And he had other business first.

  There! A red glow, thimble-small, shedding only enough light for Felthrup to see two busy hands, and the dull glint of bronze. Felthrup dashed for it, reckless with longing. It had to be an ixchel cookstove. Humans could not smell the special coal burned in such stoves, but because ixchel could—and because a ship's cat or dog would trace the smell to its source—the little people cooked their meals on the open deck, away from the secret places where they made their homes.

  When he was ten feet away the light winked out. In a panic he bounded forward.

  “Cousins!” he squeaked. “Honored ixchel! Please don't go! Let me talk to you!”

  He spoke in the kindest, sanest, most un-rat-like voice he could summon. But no one answered. The light was gone, and so were the ixchel.

  Crushed, Felthrup scurried to the portside hull. He had spoken aloud, courted death, and for nothing! Safety, shelter! He had to find them at once. Rushing, panting, he spotted a bilge-pipe a few yards ahead. The pipe's heavy brass cap had been left unlatched, and even stood open an inch. Felthrup dashed for it. A moment later he was climbing inside.

  The pipe was stoppered just two feet from its mouth (it was an emergency bilge, used only
on a sinking ship) and would never do as daytime shelter. But it was dry and snug, and no Sniraga could pounce on him. Felthrup curled in a ball and began to lick the red, stinging tip of his tail. He could not manage to hate the slinkers; it was like hating cows or stones. They were one thing and he another. But if he could not hate something he would surely cry.

  (Mine is the terror of a rodent's tears. Strange spineless Felthrup, the rat who weeps in corners.)

  It was over for another night, his twenty-sixth aboard Chathrand. How long could he keep this up, this search for the little folk, when they so clearly had no intention of meeting him? Why was he risking his life? He had already lost a third of his tail on the Etherhorde quay, bitten off by one of the mob of wharf rats that controlled access to departing ships. Felthrup had been riding ships for eight months (seeking that place where life was good, better, less than very bad, as it were, unexcruciating) and in each port he faced the same snarling cabal of wharf rats, ferocious gatekeepers of the seas. This one had promised him safe passage aboard the Great Ship, but halfway across the Plaza he had suddenly doubled his price. Felthrup broke and ran, and the big rat and his cronies had chased him all the way to the top of the gangway, biting and snapping. His tail still hurt when it dragged in the dust.

  (You must not fall asleep here, Felthrup my boy. Dawn will come and the men will kill you.)

  Yet it had seemed worth it, all that risk, for here at last were beings like himself: careful, thoughtful, out to change things. Felthrup had not lied to the slinkers: the ixchel were up to something. He smelled them in the oddest places: under the ambassador's stateroom, at the door of the gunpowder vault, along the rudder chains. Strangest of all, three weeks ago a dozen or more had entered the berth deck and clustered about a tarboy's hammock. Felthrup had smelled the dry sweat on the hammock: a mark of human fear. Clearly the ixchel had spoken to the boy, and terrified him. But why in all creation would they show themselves to a human?

  They have plans, Felthrup thought for the hundredth time. And whatever those plans are—

  “Give the word, Father!”

  Felthrup jumped so hard he ricocheted up and down in the pipe like a rubber ball. The voice came from the opening—where four long spears pointed straight at his heart. The ixchel! They had come to him!

  They crowded around the mouth of the pipe, copper eyes gleaming. All men. Three of the four were bald and bareheaded. The last, a young man in light armor, had a smile that chilled Felthrup's blood. His spear-arm twitched impatiently.

  A second voice spoke: “Let me see the creature first.”

  One of the spearmen fell back, and in his place appeared an older ixchel. He was clearly their leader, gray-bearded but fierce of eye, holding a broad white knife.

  “C-c-cousins!” stammered Felthrup. “Bless your house and harvest!”

  “It walked right into the pipe,” said the young man with the smile. “We hadn't even set the bait yet.”

  “Bait?” said Felthrup, trying to laugh. “You need no bait to catch me, friends. I came looking for you! I wish to speak with you above all things.”

  “It smelled the blood of the last one,” said the gray-bearded man. “That is why it entered the pipe. Rats are all secret cannibals.”

  “Cousins, dear ones!” said Felthrup desperately. “How sad that you should think so! Even rats do not commit that sin—or only very, very rarely! And I am not like other rats! My name is Felthrup Stargraven, and I have much to tell you.”

  The ixchel men glanced at one another. Rats did not have names, for they could not remember them. If one rat called to another he used whatever nickname occurred to him—whitey, wart-face, bucktooth—and forgot it as soon as the other was out of sight.

  There was no time to lose: Felthrup had to prove his goodwill at once. He bowed his head and addressed their leader.

  “Do you know the humans' mission, sir? I do. The moon falcon told me, and he knows—his master is the Emperor's spy. Shall I tell you? It is ghastly, abominable!”

  The older man gave an irritated sigh. “Observe, Taliktrum,” he said. “It will now try cunning. Odd creatures, these Sorrophran rats—”

  “I'm a Noonfirther!” cried Felthrup.

  “Dim-witted as any of their race, of course. But when faced with death they almost appear to possess reason, like a woken beast.”

  “I am awake! I have a mind and memory!”

  “It is quite talkative,” said the young man. “Diadrelu says they spout like this when rabid.”

  They think me mad! Felthrup raised himself up and waved his forepaws, trying to recapture their attention. He succeeded: every spear-arm tensed. With a squeak of terror he dropped and covered his eyes. Then, making a supreme effort, he lowered his voice.

  “Listen, cousins, friends. I talk this way always. I talk, I reason, I think. I cannot sleep for thinking! That is why I have come looking for you. We can help one another. Trust me, believe me, sons of Ix-phir House, I am more like you than I am a rat!”

  The ixchel laughed softly. “Amazing!” said one of the bald spearmen. “Did you hear it, my Lord Talag?”

  “I heard,” said the elder. “But do not be fooled. In rats, thought is an emergency function. Many creatures have such tricks. They play dead, change color, drop their tails. This one's already used that maneuver!”

  Felthrup hid his stubby half tail, and the ixchel laughed uproariously. He wanted to speak of his dash up the gangway, and the teeth of the wharf-rat, but the word cannibals still hung in the air. Furious and frightened, he began to cry.

  “Please listen … so long … searching for you, for someone—”

  “To escape the shark,” said the elder, “certain fish leap into the air, spread fins and glide a little distance. We call them igri, flying fish. But we do not call them birds.”

  “Drowning, always drowning,” sobbed Felthrup.

  Then the old man laughed, and for the first time addressed Felthrup directly. “Never fear, sir! You'll be dry enough.”

  In a heartbeat the ixchel were gone. Felthrup hurled himself forward, guessing what was to come. Too late. The brass lid slammed; the latch clicked shut.

  Poison

  9 Ilqrin 941

  27th day from Etherhorde

  STRICTLY PRIVATE:

  SURRENDER TO THE HAND

  OF EBERZAM ISIQ ONLY

  His Excellency Ambassador Eberzam Isiq

  IMS Chathrand

  Your Excellency

  I write in haste. Three days ahead of Chathrand have I sailed, with no safe means to send word to you, and I must depart again before the Great Ship reaches this town. In fact I am already at the docks: the mate is calling us aboard.

  My news is awful, my fears and guesses worse. So bad indeed that I should not dare to write them at all were it not for this good and simple man, Rom Rulf, a chemist I trained myself at the Imperial Medical School, to whose keeping I entrust this letter.

  The Lady Syrarys betrays you, Excellency. She loves another, and would kill to hide the fact. How foul the effort to write these words, how wounding that you should read them! And yet what choice do I have?

  After Chathrand sailed with Rose at the helm I spent an hour on the headland, despondent. Then I came to my senses and jumped aboard a fast clipper to Etherhorde. We arrived just ahead of the Great Ship. If only I had gone straight to your door! Instead I galloped to Castle Maag. I still hoped to change the Emperor's mind about Rose, who is one of the vilest men ever to sully the name of Arqual.

  The Emperor was not in his castle, but Syrarys was. She lay among courtesans in the boudoir. The room was dim. When I entered she mistook me for another, and called out, laughing: “Again, love? Will you never let me sleep?” Then she saw me and went mad. “Stop him! Shoot him! He cannot leave!”

  She hurled a burning lamp in my direction. Had she been dressed I should never have made it from the castle alive, for many obeyed her once they heard her shouting. Someone chased me all down the mountain, and se
nt a falcon to dive at my face and the horse's. In the end I was thrown from the saddle and thrashed blind through the trees.

  Two days I hid in the only place one may hide from the mighty in Etherhorde: in the hovels of the poor. It was my good fortune to have cured many last year of the wax-eye blindness. They remembered me, bless them, and asked no questions. But strange men-at-arms prowled the streets, and I am sure they were looking for me.

  When the hunters came too near, my friends took a great risk and smuggled me in an apple-crate to the port. I was three days out of Etherhorde, on a ship bound for Tressek Tarn, before the crew dared let me out. And in Tressek I find myself little safer: the governor fears to meet with me, as do my fellow doctors. Only this morning armed men stormed my tavern-room—by good luck I was in Rulf's shop down the street. Have I lost the Emperor's favor? I cannot say; I only know that I have not fled far enough.

  I never saw the face of the one who chased me—but I saw Syrarys, as plain as I see this pen and ink. She is not yours, Eberzam. Do not trust her. Do not leave Thasha in her care.

  So much for my news—more bitter than any drug I ever made you swallow. But my fears! There is no time to explain them now. Beware the Nilstone! Did your mother never scare you with that word? It exists, and someone wants it, though to use it can only bring ruin on us all. You know the briny graveyard where legend says it fell. Should Chathrand near that spot, you must find a way to turn her back.

  Horrors and madness. Who would choose such a moment to unearth that weapon, that malignant hole in the weave of our world? No one but a madman, and yet—

  There is the bell, damnation! I must take to my ship or be left behind. I shall write to you again when I can. Until then I ask a final favor: take care of young Pazel, Capt. Gregory's son. He is a prickly runt of no talent or significance, but I swore to his fair mother that no harm would befall him. Do not fail me in this, I beseech you.