Mad Ship

by Robin Hobb

  “Jani, I am so—” she began, but the other woman turned to her quickly with a twisted smile.

  “We both well know that we have cause to worry with those two. Reyn has come to this passion late in his life. Malta has been distant with him since she arrived, yet I do not believe her heart is cold toward him. The sooner they come to an understanding, the easier it will be for all of us.”

  Keffria nodded wearily, grateful for her understanding. “But where could she be? She is too ill to be out and about alone.”

  “I share your concern. Let me send out some runners to see if anyone has seen her. Could she have gone off with Selden, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. The last few weeks have brought them closer. I know he has been longing to show her the city.” Keffria lifted her splinted hand to her forehead. “This behavior makes me wonder if I am wise to leave them here. I thought Malta was maturing, but for her to go off like this, with no word at all … ”

  Jani halted on the narrow walk and took Keffria’s arm. Her eyes, still unveiled in the morning’s haste, met Keffria’s squarely. “I promise I shall care for them as my own. There is no need to foster Selden anywhere else but with us. It will do Reyn good to have the care of a young boy, before he has sons of his own.” Jani smiled and the hope on her face took away much of the Rain Wild strangeness. Then an almost pleading look replaced it. “What you offered to do for us yesterday is incredibly brave. I feel selfish to urge you toward it. Yet, you are the only one so uniquely suited to spy for us.”

  “Spy.” The word sat oddly on her tongue. “I suppose—” Keffria began, but her words were broken by the bronze tones of a great bell. “What is that?” she asked, but Jani was staring, stricken, toward the ancient city.

  “It means that there has been a collapse, and folk may be trapped. That is the only time the bell is rung. All who can work, must. I have to go, Keffria.” Without another word, the Rain Wild Trader turned and sprinted away, leaving Keffria gaping after her. Slowly she turned her eyes toward the buried city. She could not see much of it through the trees, but the panorama of Trehaug was spread out in levels before her. People were calling to one another, men dragging on shirts as they crossed catwalks, while women came after them carrying tools and water jugs. Keffria resolved she would find Malta and Selden. They would go together, to help wherever they could, if Malta was up to it. It might provide an opportunity for her to tell them she was returning to Bingtown as soon as the Kendry sailed.

  MALTA HAD LOST TRACK of how many dead ends they had discovered. It was maddening to watch the phantom inhabitants of the dead city vanish down the collapsed tunnels. The apparitions simply disappeared into the cascades of earth and stone. Each time she fetched up against a barrier of damp earth, the Satrap and his Companion became more distressed.

  “You said you knew the way!” he accused her.

  “I do know the way. I know all the ways. All we have to do is find one that is not blocked.”

  She had concluded long ago that he did not recognize her as the girl from the dance and the coach ride. He treated her as a rather stupid servant. She did not blame him. She was having a hard time holding on to that Malta, too. Her memories of the ball and the accident seemed hazier and more distant than the memories of the city around her. Her life as Malta seemed the tale of a frivolous and spoiled girl. Even now, escape and survival did not drive her as hard as her need to find her brother and return with rods so they might free the dragon. She had to find a way out. Helping them was incidental.

  She passed the theatre, then abruptly turned back to the entrance to that vast chamber. The door gaped blackly in the wall. She held the wavering lantern high to see how it had fared. The once-magnificent chamber had partially collapsed. Efforts had been made to remove the earth, but the great blocks of stone that had once supported the lofty ceiling had thwarted the diggers. She peered hopefully and decided it was worth a chance. “This way,” she said to those following her.

  Kekki wailed, “Oh, that is foolish. It has already mostly fallen down. We need to find a way out, not go deeper into ruin.”

  Easier to explain than to argue. “Every theatre must have a way for the actors to come and go. The Elderlings preferred that they remain unseen, to better preserve the illusion of the play. Behind the stage, which yet stands, there are apartments and a means of egress. Often have I come and gone that way. Come. Follow me with trust and you may yet be saved.”

  Kekki looked affronted. “Don’t give yourself airs with me, little maid. You forget yourself.”

  Malta was silent for a moment. “More than you know,” she agreed in a stranger’s voice. Whose words had those been, whose diction? She did not know and there was no time to trace a single memory. She led them to the stage, up and across it and then down behind it. Some debris blocked the hidden door, but most of it was wood rather than stone. No one had been this way in a long, long time. Perhaps the Rain Wild folk had never even discovered this door. She put the lantern down and set to work clearing it while the Satrap and his Companion watched. She worked the latch by tracing the sign of the actors’ guild upon the light panel. When that did not work, she kicked the door. It swung slowly into darkness. The lintel above groaned threateningly, but held.

  She prayed the corridor would be clear. She set her hand to the light strip in the wall, and the narrow hall suddenly glowed into life. Clear and straight, it ran off ahead of her, beckoning them to freedom. “This way,” Malta announced. Kekki caught up the lantern, but Malta was ready to trust to the light strip now. Her fingers rode it lightly as she walked the hall. Echoes of someone else’s anticipation rustled in her heart. That door led to the wardrobe, those to the chambers where the dancers might change and loosen their limbs. It had been a great theatre, the finest in any of the Elderlings’ cities. The back door, she recalled, opened onto a wonderful verandah and a boathouse that overlooked the river. Some of the actors and singers had kept their own small vessels stored there, for moonlit trysts on the river.

  With a shake of her head, Malta rattled it free of dreams. A door out, she told herself. That was all she sought, a door out of the buried city.

  The corridor ran on and on, past practice rooms and past the small shops of those who supported the artists of the theatre. That had been a costumer’s shop, and this door had gone to a fine little drug den. Here was the wigmaker, and there was the paint-and-paste artist’s shop. Gone, all gone, still and dead. This had been the beating heart of the city, for what art is greater than art that imitates life itself? Malta hurried past them, but inside her heart, the memories of a hundred artists mourned their own demise.

  When she did see daylight ahead, it was so pale and gray, it seemed a cheat. The final stretch of the corridor was damaged. The light strip was gone, and their lantern failing. They would have to hurry now. The blocks that made up the walls had lost their plaster and frescoes. They bowed in, and gleams of water edged down them. Stains on the wall showed Malta that this corridor had been flooded, and more than once. Whenever the river was swollen with the rains, it probably filled these tunnels. It was only good fortune that the way was clear now. Even so, they waded through soft muck. Malta had long ago given up any care for her clothes, but both the Satrap and his Companion made dismayed noises as they squelched along behind her.

  The verandah and boathouse that had once been the terminus of this corridor were now tumbled wreckage. There was no clear pathway. Malta ignored the protests of the others, and picked her way through, moving always toward the gray daylight ahead. Rains had washed dirt and leaves into what remained of the corridor. Some quake long ago had cleft both earth and corridor. “We’re out!” Malta called back to them. She climbed over the remains of stacked boats, wriggled through the muddy cleft and suddenly stumbled out into early morning light. She drew breath after breath of the fresh air, rejoicing simply in the open space around her. She had not realized how being surrounded by dark and earth had oppressed her spirits until she stood clear o
f it. She stood clear, also, of all the whispering spirits. It was like wakening from a long and confusing dream. She started to rub her face, then stopped. Her hands were smeared and gritty. The few fingernails she had left were packed with mud. Her clothing clung to her in muddy rags. She discovered she had but one shoe on. Where and who had she been?

  She was still blinking as the Satrap and his Companion emerged. They were a bit muddy, but not near as bedraggled as Malta. She turned to smile at them, expecting thanks. Instead, Magnadon Satrap Cosgo demanded, “Where is the city? What is the use of bringing us out of the wreckage to this forsaken spot?”

  Malta gazed all around her. Trees. Sluggish gray water around the bases of the trees. She stood on a hump of tussocky ground in the middle of a swamp. She had lost all her bearings in her time underground. She oriented herself by the rising sun and looked for Trehaug. The forest blocked her view. She shrugged. “We’re either upriver or downriver of it,” she hazarded to herself.

  “As we seem to be on a tiny island, that seems a very safe thing to say,” the Satrap opined.

  Malta climbed to higher ground for a better view, but it only confirmed his sour guess. It was not so much an island as a hummock in a swamp. She could not be sure which direction was the river channel and which led to swamp. The immense gray columns of the river trees extended as far as she could see in every direction.

  “We’ll have to go back,” she concluded, her heart sinking. She did not know if she could face those ranked ghosts again.

  “No!” Kekki uttered the word with a little shriek, then sat flat on the ground. She began sobbing hopelessly. “I cannot. I will not go back into the dark. I won’t.”

  “Obviously we don’t have to,” the Satrap observed impatiently. “We climbed over a number of little boats getting out. Maid, go back in and find the best one. Drag it out here, and row us back to the city.” He looked about in disgust, then drew a kerchief out of his pocket and spread it on the ground. He sat down on it. “I shall rest here.” He shook his head. “This is a poor way for these Traders to treat their rightful leader. They will regret their careless misuse of me.”

  “Possibly. But not as much as we regret how we have allowed you to misuse us,” Malta heard herself say. She was suddenly angry with these ungrateful wretches. She had toiled through the night to guide them out of the tunnels, and this was her thanks? To be ordered to fetch a boat and row them to Trehaug? She shook out her ragged skirts and mocked a curtsey at the Satrap. “Malta Vestrit, of the Bingtown Traders, bids Magnadon Satrap Cosgo and his Companion Kekki farewell. I am not your servant to be put to your bidding. Nor do I consider myself your subject anymore. Good-bye.”

  She pushed her hair back from her face and turned toward the muddy crack in the earth. She took a deep breath. She could do this. She had to do this. Once she got back to Trehaug, they could send a rescue party after the Satrap. Perhaps a time sitting marooned on this hummock of land would teach him a little humility.

  “Wait!” he commanded. “Malta Vestrit? The girl from the Summer Ball?”

  She looked over her shoulder. She acknowledged the connection with a nod.

  “Leave me here, and I will never send my ships to rescue your father!” he informed her grandiosely.

  “Your ships?” She laughed, a bit wildly. “What ships? You never intended to help me. I am surprised you can even remember that you said you would.”

  “Fetch the boat and row us to safety. Then you shall see how a Satrap of Jamaillia keeps his promises.”

  “Probably much the same way as he honors the charters of his ancestors,” Malta scoffed. She turned her back and began to climb back down into the dark. Far down the corridor, she heard sounds like distant but thunderous applause. Dread rose in her. Drowned in memories. She knew what it meant now. Could she traverse the city again and remain herself? She forced herself to keep going. Once more, she scrabbled over the boats, noting in passing that they were not as dilapidated as she had thought. Some sort of hammered metal had been applied to the hulls. As she clambered over them, her hands came away powdered white where she had touched them. Far down the corridor, there was another roar of applause. She walked slowly toward it, but suddenly a cloud of dust wafted into her face. She coughed and choked for a moment. When she blinked her eyes clear of grit and looked down the corridor, she could see a mist of dust hanging in the air. She stared a moment longer, refusing to recognize what she instinctively knew. The corridor had caved in. There was no going back that way.

  She swayed with weariness, then stiffened her back and stood straight. When it was all over, then she could rest. She walked back slowly to the stacked rowboats. She eyed them skeptically. The top one had broken seats. She picked at a splinter of it, then recognized the wood. Cedar. Her father called it eternity wood. She began to work the top boat loose from the others, to see if the one below it might be better.

  “REYN? REYN, DEAR, WE NEED YOU. You have to wake up now.”

  He rolled away from the gentle voice and the hands that plucked at him. “Go away,” he said distinctly, and dragged the pillow over his head. Dimly he wondered why he was sleeping in his clothes and shoes.

  Bendir had always been more direct. He seized his younger brother’s ankles. Reyn came all the way awake as he thudded onto the floor. He was instantly furious.

  “Bendir!” Mother rebuked him, but his brother was unrepentant.

  “We don’t have time to talk nicely. He should have come as soon as the bell rang. I don’t care how lovesick he is, or how hungover.”

  The words penetrated both his anger and sleepiness. “The bell? A cave-in?”

  “Half the damn city has fallen in,” Bendir explained tersely. “While you were drunk enough to walk on your lips, we had two quakes last night. Sharp shocks. We have crews digging in and shoring up as we go, but it’s taking a long time. You know the structure of the city better than anyone does. We need you.”

  “Malta? Is Malta all right?” Reyn asked anxiously. She had been in the dragon chamber. Had they got her out in time?

  “Forget Malta!” his brother ordered him roughly. “If you want to worry about someone, the Satrap and his woman are blocked in down there, unless they’re already dead. That would be a fine irony, for us to bring him up the river to protect him only to have him die in the city.”

  Reyn staggered upright. He was already dressed, down to his boots. He pushed his wild curls back from his face. “Let’s go. You got Malta out all right, last night?”

  The question was no more than a formality. His brother and mother would not be so calm if she were trapped down there.

  “That was just a dream you had,” Bendir said roughly.

  Reyn halted where he stood. “No,” he said flatly. “It wasn’t. She went into the city, to the Crowned Rooster Chamber. I told you that. I know I did. I told you that you had to get her out of there. Didn’t you do it?”

  “She’s sick in bed, not down in the city,” Bendir exclaimed in annoyance.

  His mother had gone pale. She set her hand to the doorframe and clutched it. Breathlessly she said, “Keffria came to me at dawn. Malta was not in her bed. She thought—” she shook her head at both of them. “She thought her daughter might be with Reyn. We came here, and of course, she was not. Then, the bell rang and … ” Her voice trailed off. More determinedly, she added, “But how could Malta have reached the city, let alone gone into it? She has scarcely left her bed since she got here. She would not know the way, let alone how to reach the Crowned Rooster Chamber.”

  “Selden,” Reyn said harshly. “Her little brother. He’s been all over Trehaug with Wilee Crane. Sa knows I’ve chased Wilee out of the city a score of times. Her brother would know the way in by now, if he has been playing with Wilee. Where’s Selden?”

  “I don’t know,” his mother admitted it with dread.

  Bendir broke in without apology. “There are people who are definitely buried in the city, Reyn. The Satrap and his Companion, no
t to mention the Vintagli family’s digging crew. They had just begun excavating a chamber near the one where they found the butterfly murals. At least two other families had night crews at work down there. We don’t have time to worry about those who might be down there. We need to concentrate on the ones we know are down there.”

  “I know Malta is down there,” Reyn said bitterly. “And I know where. The Crowned Rooster Chamber. I told you that last night. I’m going after her first.”

  “You can’t!” Bendir barked, but Jani cut him off.

  “Don’t argue. Reyn, come and dig. The main tunnel leads toward both the Crowned Rooster Chamber and the apartments we allotted to the Satrap. Work together and you can get access to both.”

  Reyn gave his brother a betrayed look. “If only you’d listened to me last night,” he said accusingly.

  “If only you’d been sober last night,” Bendir retorted. He turned on his heel and left the room. Jani and Reyn hastened after him.

  UNSTACKING THE BOATS to find the best one was a difficult task in the tight space of the collapsed boat-house. After she had chosen the best one, getting it outside proved even more of a task. Kekki was virtually useless. When her weeping finally stilled, it was because she had fallen asleep. The Satrap made an effort, but it was like being assisted by a large child. He had no concept of physical work. She tried to keep her temper with him, even reminding herself that last year she had been just as ignorant.

  He was afraid of the work. He would not grip the wood, let alone put real muscle into dragging the boat out. With an effort, Malta held her tongue. By the time they had managed to get the boat out of the cleft and onto the leaf-strewn ground outside, she was completely exhausted. The Satrap brushed his hands and beamed down on the boat as if he had brought it out himself. “Well,” he declared with satisfaction. “That’s done it. Fetch some oars and we’re off.”

  Malta had sunk down to the ground and leaned back against a tree. “Don’t you think,” she asked, fighting to hold back the sarcasm, “that we should see if it still floats first?”