Some hours later Vadu returned to the passage outside the stateroom. Half a dozen men were still attacking the wall. “Sir, it’s no good, we can’t even scratch it,” confessed his captain-at-arms.
Vadu nodded. “I will try myself,” he said. And then, noting his men’s distress: “Yes, yes, you may all leave the compartment. Seal it behind you, in fact.”
His soldiers fled with unseemly haste. Vadu filled his lungs, squared his shoulders and put his hand on the pommel of his knife.
To draw the weapon required the whole strength of his arm. In the darkened passage a fell glow surrounded him, and the air began to shimmer. But in Vadu’s grip was little more than the handle of a knife: a hilt, and an inch-long, corroded stump of a blade. Yet all the disturbance in the air flowed from this tiny splinter.
Vadu felt as he always did when he drew the Plazic Blade: impervious and ruined, a titan of steel, ripped by dragons’ jaws. Above the hilt, a ghostly outline of a knife was forming, like a pale candleflame. He staggered forward and plunged it into the wall.
(Two miles away, in a wagon clattering through the Middle City, Thasha Isiq cried out in pain. She shot to her feet, eyes wide, furious with the sudden violation.)
The counselor felt the knife begin to cut. But the spell he was fighting was no simple one. After a moment, it became clear that it was the work of a greater wizard than he had ever faced. With a grunt of effort he managed to carve down through four inches of wall. Then he turned the knife to the left.
(Thasha was thrashing. The guards marching to either side of the wagon looked in terror at a girl possessed. On the floor of the wagon, bound and weeping in the torments of his own fit, Pazel heard her screams and thought his mind would break.)
Vadu cut a square out of the magic wall. He pulled the knife free, almost dropping it in the agony of lightning that danced up his arm. Then he sheathed it and put his arm through the gap. His fingers groped toward Ildraquin.
(Thasha’s stitches tore; her side once more began to bleed. Hercol, Neeps and Marila begged her to say what was happening, but she did not hear them. “No,” she said, pressing fists against her temples, “no, I won’t let you. I won’t.”)
Vadu screamed suddenly and wrenched his arm from the hole. His tunic was smoking, the sleeve burned through. He ripped the cloth away and saw a band of red skin around his upper arm, blistering already. Hmm! That’s a pity, he thought. Still, it could have been much worse.
(Thasha whirled, flailed among her companions. When Hercol tried to seize her she knocked him aside like a doll. Then a voice came from her throat: a woman’s voice, but not her own: “Bihidra Maukslar! Bile of Droth! He is going to steal it, steal it and loose the Swarm! What are you waiting for? When will you let me strike?”)
Vadu stumbled out of the compartment. “Never mind,” he told his men. “The sword can stay where it is; tomorrow we will try our luck with rod and reel, or something of the kind. Now show me to the manger.”
They descended, passing among the few remaining humans, Vadu’s lieutenant supporting his arm. By the time they reached the manger he was recovered.
“That Stone is not to be touched,” he told his captain-at-arms, pointing at the Nilstone. “Tomorrow you will reinforce this door with iron bands, and install a new lock, and deliver the key to my person. For tonight you must secure the door with padlocks and thirty-weight chain.”
It was three in the morning when the last group of humans set off for the Tournament Grounds. The soldiers moved through the Chathrand in a dragnet, lanterns ablaze. They found two cobalt-blue dogs of great size on the lower gun deck, searching frantically for their mistress. They caught Lady Oggosk’s cat and nailed the beast up in a crate (“Take it to her before she deafens the whole pavilion,” said Vadu). They captured the augrongs after a hideous struggle and the deaths of six men, and led the beasts off together wrapped in anchor-chains. They heard the lowing of cattle but could not locate a single animal, nor the source of the noise. They saw two ixchel darting across a passage on the mercy deck, pounded after them, found no trace.
The wind rose; and thunder growled in the mountains. Vadu cursed and ordered his men off the ship until morning, when the complete inventory would begin. Large detachments were left on both gangways, more around the perimeter of the berth. Before the counselor made it to his carriage a lashing rain had begun to fall.
He slammed the door and slicked back his hair. “They are safe,” he said, “and tomorrow you may examine them. Are they really so precious to you?”
On the seat beside him, Arunis shrugged. “They are but symbols. Not important in themselves, and quite worthless to anyone this side of the Nelluroq.”
“I should say so. A hideous statue, and a magic bauble that one cannot even look at directly.”
“Think of them like the birthig, your liege-animal. Outsiders see a grotesque little creature with tusks. But the honor of the city hinges on the birthig, does it not, when strangers come to call? So it is with that bauble, Counselor. The humans covet it, as they do so many things, but in truth they can do nothing with it at all. They might even hurt themselves.”
“Are you saying it is dangerous?”
“Not very. Let us say rather that it is best left to mages.” Arunis laughed. “Do you know, the humans played a joke on me tonight? They said Prince Olik was coming to seize that Stone, and the statue, too. They woke me from a pleasant slumber on that pretense.”
“How irritating,” said Vadu. “Is that why you persuaded the Issar to send us in tonight? To turn the joke back on them?”
“In a sense. They were… complicating my work. And they would only have been in the way, when my replacement crew arrives from the capital. So will Prince Olik, if he is not managed with skill. He seemed rather to warm to the humans, even after they took knives to his flesh. You do understand that he must learn nothing of our intentions, until the replacement crew is actually aboard the Chathrand?”
“You made that quite clear, sorcerer. You expect them in a week’s time, you say?”
“Perhaps sooner, if the winds are favorable. Where is Olik, incidentally?”
“Never mind him,” said Vadu. “He is a dilettante, a lesser son of noble sires. You will find him meditating with his Spider Tellers, in a temple in the humblest corner of the Lower City.”
“Olik, a Spider Teller?” said Arunis, his eyes wide with disbelief. “A prince of the ruling family, and that is the extent of his ambition?”
“His blood is his license for eccentricity,” said the counselor. “But yes, he is a true philosopher, which is to say a buffoon. You think him fond of these… freaks? I thought him supremely indifferent. Yes, Rose appears guilty of drawing Bali Adro blood-and must therefore die, unless Emperor Nahundra himself issues a pardon. But the humans also saved the man from the Karyskans. They nearly lost the ship, protecting him. And yet he could not wait to abandon them-did not wait; he literally took to the stevedores’ tunnels as the ship was being raised. I shouldn’t wonder if he has forgotten all about them by now.”
“You must forget them too, Counselor,” said Arunis. “I know you are not fond of killing-who is? But believe what I tell you: they are incurable. In short order they will all become tol-chenni. As will every human north of the Ruling Sea. Their time in Alifros is over; soon they will take their place alongside the fantastic creatures whose bones grace your museums.”
“The doctor insisted that not one of them had yet been affected,” said Vadu.
“Denial has always been part of the plague,” said Arunis. “Here, whole cities maintained that they were clean, lest the Emperor place them in quarantine. Householders swore up and down that all was well, even as they kept a gibbering ape or two locked in the cellar. Read your history, man.”
“But there were no gibbering apes found on the Chathrand.”
“Rose is no fool,” said Arunis. “He tossed them into the gulf before we came within sight of Masalym. Pity them, if you will. I certainly
do. But don’t share in their illusions.”
Vadu fell silent a moment. “If that is how things truly stand,” he sighed, “then I begin to grasp the terrible command that came tonight from my Emperor. You might as well know. We’re to select fifty specimens, in addition to the few in the Conservatory, and chain them in the hold for transport to Bali Adro. For study, I assume. The rest will be marched into the emptied basin, sealed inside. The floodgate lifts, the basin quickly fills. It was done before with tol-chenni. I do read history, sir-at least when it pertains to my job.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” said the sorcerer.
“All told it is a merciful system,” said Vadu. “When they are drowned we simply open the lower gate, and their bodies are carried over the falls and into the gulf.” The counselor glanced upward. “What about your servant?”
“Fulbreech?” said Arunis. “I shall keep him, while his mind is whole.”
“Of course you will. I only ask if you wish to bring him into the cab, since the rain has turned so cruel.”
“By no means,” said Arunis. “He has worse ahead of him than a little soaking. And the wound he took in the battle tonight is nothing. I examined it because it was made with Ildraquin, that sword you failed to obtain.”
“So it is a special blade?”
Arunis nodded.
“But not as special as my own.”
“The difference, Vadu,” said Arunis, “is that Ildraquin has an owner, whereas the Plazic Arsenal, despite the conquering power it has granted Bali Adro, has slaves.”
Vadu laughed, but when Arunis did not even smile, he checked himself. “I am a proud servant of the House of the Leopard, and ever shall be,” he said. “The Emperor knows my loyalty, and I know how he trusts in the Raven Society. Yet I myself am often baffled by your council’s ways.”
Arunis raised a warning eyebrow.
“Macadra,” said Vadu, “never setting foot outside the palace, though they say her word is law. Stoman the Builder, obsessed with growing the navy, when already we are the sea’s unchallenged masters. Ivrea, who would send her own mother to the gallows if she suspected her of disloyal thoughts.”
“In a heartbeat,” said the mage.
Vadu’s head gave a twitching bob. “And now you, Arunis Wytterscorm, returning like a legend aboard a ship of tol-chenni freaks.”
“They are human, Vadu,” said Arunis. “Don’t make me repeat it. The North is rife with them.”
Vadu looked thoughtful. “How many are there, really?”
“They are more numerous than the crickets in the chuun-grass,” said Arunis. Then he raised his head and looked Vadu in the eye. “Before the burning season, that is.”
The driver flicked the reins, and the horses trotted off. Lightning flashed; the mountains appeared in looming silhouette, and vanished again. On the bench beside the driver, Greysan Fulbreech shivered. Not with cold, but with a sort of intoxicated wonder. His changes of luck that night had been breathtaking. He had been duped by the Isiq girl, tasted her body, faced a hideous, gelatinous devil guarding his master’s door. He had nearly been strangled by Arunis, and saved only by Ott’s wish to torture him at leisure; then he had been saved from Ott by his true master’s swift instigation of the raid. Yes, a night of dangerous gambles. But as always his hand was a little stronger than the day before. The ship was doomed; he would not stay with it. And it was clear that in all the world there was no greater patron than Arunis.
Unless this Macadra was his master, perhaps? Fulbreech was unclear on this point, but no matter. Time would tell him what to do. A flood was rising in the world, and he would do as he had always done, scramble from rock to higher rock, and who could fault his strategy? What harm, after all, had come to him during these months of violence and death? A black eye from Pathkendle, tonight a little scratch on the chin. He touched it gingerly: the bleeding had stopped already, yet for some reason he found it difficult to ignore.
The carriage left. The Great Ship sat in darkness. Rain poured down the tonnage shaft; the wind prowled as indifferently as it did the hulks and wrecks that littered shores from one end of Alifros to the other. Here and there a sound echoed in the lightless corridors: a mouse, a cricket, the ghost of a laugh. And in the stateroom, in Admiral Isiq’s former cabin, in the back of the closet, in a box turned to the wall, Felthrup Stargraven lay twitching, unconscious, dreaming with a will.
Under Observation
4 Modobrin 941
233rd day from Etherhorde
“Prisoners,” said Neeps. “We’ve crossed the entire world to become prisoners who stare at the walls.”
“It is certainly better than the forecastle house,” said Dr. Chadfallow, biting into a silver pear.
“This is more room than I’ve ever had in my life,” said Dr. Rain. “Not all of us had mansions back in Etherhorde, or crossed the Nelluroq in the Imperial Stateroom.”
“We’re being examined,” said Uskins, crouched in the weeds, his eyes on a large antlered beetle near his foot. “They’re spying on us. I can feel their fishy eyes.”
“We’re just monkeys, as far as they’re concerned,” said Mr. Druffle, rising to Uskins’ gloomy bait (he was suffering greatly from lack of rum). “The experiments will come later: the injections, the probes.”
“And then they’ll turn us into frogs and eat our legs,” said Marila, whose opinion of Druffle was even lower than Dr. Chadfallow’s.
Pazel turned his face to the sky. “At least the sun is out,” he said.
He was seated on the steps near the glass wall, eyes closed, basking. Thasha was leaning against his shoulder. They had clung together quietly since his mind-fit, and her own brief spell of strangeness. It was Thasha who had held him through his last raving hour, Thasha who had washed his bloodstained face, cradled his shivering body while he slept. Thasha who had explained, when he woke in the dawn chill, that they were in a place called the Imperial Human Conservatory, and that the hoots and squeals and grunts that woke him were the tol-chenni, in some other part of the compound, screaming for their morning food.
Now she rose and looked at their prison again.
You could call it a garden, or the remains of one. It was about fifty feet long and half as wide. Ragged shrubs and flowers, un-pruned trees, a fountain that had not flowed in years. Benches and tables of stone, a little wood-burning grill and stocky chimney, a fenced-in patch that might once have been used for vegetables (this was where Uskins sat). Five tiny bedchambers, with no doors in the frames.
The main courtyard was roofless, but the walls were nearly forty feet high. Set into the wall across from the bedchambers was an immense pane of glass, thirty feet long, six inches thick, and without a scratch on its gigantic surface. Hercol thought it might be the same crystal used in the Chathrand’s own glass planks, a substance lost to the knowledge of the Northern world. There were small bore-holes in the glass, possibly for speaking through. To one side, tucked into the corner, was a solid steel door.
It was through this glass wall that the birdwatchers came to stare at them, to take notes and whisper together. From the corridor, the birdwatchers could see the whole space within, and even much of the bedchambers. You could sleep out of sight, but the moment you got to your feet you were on display. So of course were the birdwatchers themselves. Close up, they had revealed themselves as rather careworn, older dlomu, grubbing for handkerchiefs in the pockets of their gray uniforms, squinting at their notebooks. But they were earnest in their study of the prisoners. On the second day they had brought a painter, who set up his easel in the corridor and worked for many hours, filling a number of canvases.
The birdwatchers paid unusual attention to Marila and Neeps. Once, when Neeps stood close to the glass, a dlomic woman had lowered her nose to the bore-hole and sniffed. Then she had backed away, eyes widening, and fled the corridor, calling to her fellows.
The intense scrutiny had abated, however. On this third day their keepers had so far appeared only at
mealtimes. But they had not abandoned the watch altogether: a dog had been left on duty. The musty brown creature sat upon a wooden crate carried in for the purpose, watching them through mournful eyes. Thasha had tried speaking to the dog, as she would to Jorl or Suzyt. The animal had turned its eyes her way, but it never made a sound.
The birdwatchers never spoke to them either, but they were as generous with food as everyone else in Masalym. Twice a day, under heavy guard, the steel door was unlocked and a cart rolled inside, heaped with fruit, vegetables cooked and raw, snake-beans, cheese and of course the small, chewy pyramids of mul. They never ran out of mul. Druffle was morbidly chewing one left over from breakfast.
“You know what we have to do, shipmates,” he said to no one in particular. “We have to show ’em we’re sane.”
“Ingenious,” said Chadfallow.
“You leave him alone,” said Neeps. “If the two of you start fighting they’ll throw away the key. Anyway, he could be right. It might be the only way out of here. We are sane, after all.”
“Did you hear that bird?” said Uskins, brightening. “It sounded like a falcon. Or a goose.”
The south wall was lined with cabinets and shelves. There were some books, mold-blackened, nibbled by mice, and cabinets with cups and plates and old bent spoons, a tin bread box. The north wall was a grille of iron bars, at the center of which hung a rusted sign: Treat Your Brothers with Compassion
Remember that They Bite
Beyond the iron bars stood further enclosures, which were larger and wilder, with ponds and sheds and stands of trees, all neglected, all walled off from the city. Now and then, between the trees and outbuildings, Thasha saw the tol-chenni, squatting naked, raking hay into piles and scattering it again, picking things from the dirt and eating them, or trying to. They seemed quite afraid of the newcomers. Neeps had tossed a hard dlomic roll over the gate: it had lain there in the sun all day, untouched. But by this morning it had disappeared.
The River of Shadows cv-3 Page 38