The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “I have to ask you something,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “Of course I do. Obviously.”

  She turned to face him, and suddenly he knew that what he had seen was not laughter, but tears. They were flowing still.

  “I have to ask something of you,” she said. “Have to, not want to. I have to ask you to stop. Not just this. Stop everything. Will you do that for me? Oh, my dearest-”

  Thasha had just said my dearest. The words were so strange on her tomboy tongue that for a moment they shielded him from the meaning. She closed her eyes and bit her lips and snorted and sobbed, and eventually he realized he hadn’t misunderstood.

  “Everything?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, choking.

  “It’s Fulbreech, isn’t it?”

  Thasha nodded, pinching her eyes shut so tightly she might have been trying to make them disappear.

  “You love him? Truly?”

  Against great resistance, another nod.

  Pazel took his hand away. He sat up, and she curled beside him and wept.

  “I should have known,” she whispered. “I did know. When he first came aboard.”

  Pazel sat hugging his knees. How many times? How many times could the world change, before there was nothing left that you could recognize?

  “I suppose,” he said, trying (failing) to keep the bitterness from his voice, “that it would be easier if I didn’t stay here anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  Pazel swallowed. She had agreed so quickly. She’d thought it all through.

  Then a dark notion came to him. “Hercol knows, doesn’t he? All those looks, even tonight in the surgery. When did he figure it out?”

  After a pause, Thasha said, “Before I did.”

  “But Thasha, Fulbreech? I don’t believe it, I can’t. Do you know something about him that I don’t?”

  Her eyes drifted away from him, shining, and he wished he hadn’t asked.

  “There’s a cabin for you,” she said. “Bolutu’s going to share Hercol’s room, and you can take his. You’ll be safe there. It’s still behind the magic wall.”

  Pazel had heard enough. He rose and went to his corner and began putting his clothes into his hammock. Moving like a sleepwalker, like a tol-chenni. Bolutu’s cabin was far too close; he’d go back to the tarboys’ compartment and take his chances. He cast his eyes over the stateroom, thought of the day she’d first tried to bring him here, how some instinct had made him pause at the doorway, thinking, You don’t belong in such a room.

  Not belonging. It was the story of his life.

  Thasha was sitting up, motionless, waiting for him to go. He started for the door. But as he passed her she put a hand on his leg. He stiffened. In a cold voice, he said, “A snake once bit me there.”

  Thasha looked up at him slowly. “It died,” she whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The wind, Pazel. Listen: it’s completely dead.”

  And so it was. The moaning had stopped. The oilcloth nailed over the broken windows hung limp. They rose and went to an undamaged window and flung it wide. The air was perfectly still. Below them, the Chathrand rocked motionless on the waves.

  They went topside, and found the sailors gazing with wonder at the empty sails. Moths fluttered about the deck, unmolested by any breeze. The Sandwall was out of sight, and the southern shore, wherever it was, remained invisible as well. The Great Ship sat in darkness, with no points of reference beneath the alien stars. “Black sorcery,” said a few, whispering.

  Ten minutes later the sails began to lift. Another ten, and the breeze was as strong as ever: no great blow, but enough to sail by, and shifted ever so slightly to their advantage. Men shook their heads, chuckling. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Bolutu stared into the darkness, his silver eyes wide and watchful.

  The watch-captain struck two bells; it was an hour before sunrise. Pazel left Thasha standing alone on the topdeck (the thought came unbidden: she would not be alone for long) and descended by the Silver Stair to the berth deck. He moved slowly through the maze of sleeping men and boys. The door still creaked, the tarboy called Frowsy still snored like a bleating goat. He felt his way to the eight copper nails in the ancient stanchion that had always marked his place and began to tie his hammock.

  It had all started between these two posts. He and Neeps whispering, becoming friends. His first meeting with Diadrelu, who had laughed when he said he didn’t trust her: “Wise boy. Don’t trust.” And his private decision to defy Dr. Chadfallow, who had begged him to jump ship before Thasha was even aboard.

  Back in Ormael, when his mother’s madness reached its worst pitch, when she put spiders in her mouth or made the evening soup with bathwater, he had sometimes fled deep into the plum orchard and bunched his coat up against his face and screamed. It had helped. He had never told anyone. He wished he could scream like that now. His best friend was aboard, and his blary sister, and he could not talk to either of them. He shut his eyes.

  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. “Hercol’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 wh
ore.”

  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.”