The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  So passed that hideous night, & all of yesterday, & last night too. I don’t think a man on this ship believed he could fight the sea as long as we did. There were lads had to be smacked to make ’em stop working the pumps, when their shifts ended. But no one had to be smacked awake. We worked like machines, like windup toys in the hands of a maniac, with no purpose but to see how much twisting our mechanisms could take.

  Dawn seemed to have been abolished, the night stretched into weeks or months. In the worst of it I saw cloud-murths on feral steeds, galloping back & forth on the wave-crests, threatening us with their halberds & pikes. I shall never know if they were real; indeed I’m not sure I want to.

  But at last the dawn did come, & with it a gentler wind & seas that rapidly diminished to a mere forty or fifty feet—waves that would have decimated any harbor in Alifros, yet we took them for our salvation. If my count is right we have been twenty days in storm (and without a foremast, by all the gods!). In that time how many hours have I slept? Ten, fifteen? We have all become like Felthrup: creatures who no longer shut our eyes, for fear of what will happen if we do.

  Of Felthrup himself there is no sign.

  Saturday, 19 Norn 941.

  Someone must list the dead: we owe all human beings that minimum courtesy. But the bookkeeper’s an oathsworn Plapp & may “forget” to mention the losses among the Burnscove Boys; & by the Sailing Code his tabulation goes first to Uskins (Stukey), who so detests lowborns like Uskins (Stukey) that he may abbreviate the list even further. I don’t know why this strikes me as part & parcel of the wickedness being done on this voyage, but I will scribble names as I think of them & hope this book falls into the hands of some who loved these unfortunates:

  [here follows a list of 37 dead]*

  May Bakru bring them all to tearless rest, edalage.

  Sunday, 20 Norn 941.

  As fine & innocent a day as one could hope for. Swells of an easy 25 ft., wind behind us & powerful instead of crippling, very much the conditions the Great Ship was built for. We’ve had an easy run these past three days, though a state of nervous collapse followed the storm—men afflicted with flux, vomiting, chills & nightmares; fights breaking out between the cursed gangs; drunken ness rampant beyond anything possible on their small rations of rum. The gods only know what sort of ship-brewed rotgut they’re drinking.

  Managed to raise a guide spar on the stump of the foremast: the best we can hope to do until we reach still waters. Cazencian whales, of all things, spotted a quarter mile to windward, on a parallel run. Told Mr. Latzlo & got a snarl for thanks. He does not look normal, Latzlo. He used to shave & primp & perfume himself each day for the Lapadolma girl; now he resembles something escaped from one of his cages.

  Friday, 25 Norn 941.

  Little lad or lass, asleep yet in Annabel’s womb: how I should love you to grow up knowing these four youths. If the dream of the rain of ashes should prove true somehow—if my kin disowns me for the choices I’ve made—still I must believe that you and your dear mother will accept me. Lady Thasha, Pathkendle, Undrabust, Marila: we’ll call them your honorary aunts & uncles, & you will scarce believe the tales they tell.

  The good weather holds. Somewhere it is winter; the first frosts are surely etched on your mother’s window, but here fungus is blooming in our footlockers & tar bubbles out of the deck seams at noon. The whales still with us. The Vortex gone from sight.

  Last night I brought food once again to the stateroom. Undrabust & the stowaway girl, Marila, were the only ones I saw at first. Then a whirling swept across the floor at ankle height. It was Diadrelu, of course. The crawly woman was dancing a kind of ballet with her sword in the middle of the chamber. She moved so quickly one could not tell where flesh ended & steel began. If she were human-sized she’d be a match for any Turach who ever drew a blade.

  “Where are—”

  Marila raised a finger to her lips. Undrabust, meanwhile, came forward and asked loudly, “Did you bring it, then?”

  For once he meant something other than food. Undrabust had slipped me a second note, asking for the weirdest thing: my old mandoloro,* which I’d not played or even thought about since my commission began, nigh two years ago—

  (Had I known then who was to be my captain, I should have left the mandoloro behind. How sad to recall what I imagined then: nights on the Nelu Peren with a happy ship, a crew of contented Burnscove gangsters under my command,* & one scant year before I handed the honor over to a fresh face & settled down with my own sweet ’Bel. Oh Anni, don’t hate me, none of this was my choice.)

  “How in the putrid Pits did you know I had a squeezebox?” I’d asked Undrabust. The tarboy replied that Felthrup had mentioned it, weeks ago. Which is odder still, as I’m sure I never discussed music with the poor little rat.

  I’d no sooner taken it from its case than Undrabust snatched it up & began to play. Or rather to squeeze & mash buttons. He might have been attempting “The Lighthouse Girl.” It does not matter; I have seen men flogged for less. Undrabust himself frowned at the bleating & honking, but that did not stop him from grinding away. Marila took my hand & led me to one side.

  “They may be listening,” she whispered. “Neeps is just drowning them out.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” I asked.

  “Rose’s men,” she said, “or maybe Ott’s. It was Khalmet who warned us—the Turach second in command. We think he’s on our side.”

  “A Turach, siding against the Emperor? That’s impossible, missy.”

  Marila shrugged.

  “Skies of fire! If it’s true, you must never, never give him away. The things they’d do to a disloyal Turach!”

  “That’s just what Thasha said.”

  “Where is the young mistress? And Pathkendle?”

  Marila pointed to Thasha’s cabin. “She’s in there. Reading her Polylex, or trying to. Since Felthrup disappeared she’s acted very strange about that book. She just cracks it open anywhere, reads for a moment, and then sits still, gazing off into space. It’s very strange. She looks … old, when she’s sitting there. And when she stands up she’s tired.”

  Marila looked sourly at Thasha’s door. “She and Pazel are still fighting. Last night it got bad. Thasha mentioned Fulbreech, and Pazel just hit the roof. He said it was time she decided who her friends were, and she yelled back that he should take his own advice, and stop hating her for what her father did to Ormael. Then everyone started yelling at once. Pazel said he could just clear out, since she’d be wanting Greysan to move in any day. ‘Admit it,’ he kept saying. ‘You’d be happier. Admit it.’ Neeps said he was sure Lady Oggosk was feeling happy—I don’t know what he meant by that—and Pazel told him to be quiet. Then Pazel asked Thasha how much Fulbreech had got out of her. He meant how much information, but that’s not how she took it. She went into her cabin and slammed the door. And Pazel found somewhere else to sleep.”

  “Horns of the hairy devil!” I exploded. “Leave it to me! I’ll straighten that fool of a tarboy out!”

  But Marila had something else on her mind. “Did you find us a room, Mr. Fiffengurt?”

  “I found one,” I said. “The reserve liquor vault, in the afterhold. It’s dark and small, and the stink could wilt every branch on the Blessed Tree, but it’s also as remote as you can get. Just a narrow little scuttleway from the mercy deck, and there’s no light-shafts or speaking-tubes to give you away. Trouble is, it’s locked tight as a drum. Otherwise you’d have lads breakin’ in, ye see, no matter how dire the punishment.”

  Then I saw Marila’s mouth twitch. Blow me broadside, I thought, the girl knows how to smile.

  “Locks are nothing to worry about,” she said. And with that she produced a large brass key. It was the ship’s master key—the very one Frix had used to sneak into my cabin and steal my first journal, the one he’d dropped just before I kicked him in the rump. When I babbled, “How—how—” Marila pointed at Diadrelu, fencing with shadows on the bearskin rug.

>   “She found it in a crevice on the berth deck. And she brought it to us, Mr. Fiffengurt, not to her clan.”

  I knew what Marila was telling me: the crawly had chosen sides, turned her back on her own people, in favor of us. But she’s just one, I thought.

  “Listen,” I said to Marila, “you must never be caught with that key on your person. Rose would murder you in cold blood. And that’s not a figure of speech, lass. Our captain’s a man of extremes, you might say—but you’ve not seen him angry till you’ve seen him dealing with a trespasser! Paranoia, that’s what ails him. He’d think you were looking for the Imperial hoard, wherever they’ve hidden it—or worse, spying on him, sneaking into his cabin for a look around.”

  “So this does open his chambers,” said Marila, satisfied. “How about the steerage compartment? And Arunis’ cabin?”

  I didn’t much like the drift of her questions, & said so. Her response (she is a girl after all) was to ask another question. “How many days until the dark of the moon?”

  “The dark of the moon? Well now. Six, eight. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s how long we have to choose someone to bring to the council. You’ve got to bring someone too. Pazel says it doesn’t matter if they’re strong or brave or clever—just absolutely trustworthy. But I don’t trust anyone except the people who come to this room. Who should I bring, Mr. Fiffengurt?”

  Neeps’ arms were slowing; the mandoloro moaned like a lynx in heat.

  “Best come alone,” I said at last. “Don’t take chances. Guess wrong and Rose will have us all killed.”

  Marila shook her head. “He won’t kill Pazel or Thasha. Haven’t you noticed how strange he is about them? He arrests and abuses Pazel, then sets him free and invites him to lunch. He plans to sell Thasha to the Leopard People, then keeps her by his side all through the battle. Why does he put up with them, or any of us? All he’d have to do is cut off our food until we surrender.”

  She might have read my mind—or this journal—so close did her wonderings mirror my own. But I’d come up with a theory & was anxious to tell someone. “D’ye know what I think, missy? I think he doesn’t want to beat Pazel or Thasha. He needs ’em. He wants ’em walking this ship, free and visible, and for one very good reason: because they frighten Arunis.”

  Marila looked at me blankly.

  “Thasha defeated the mage’s fleshancs,” I went on, “and there’s her friendship with Ramachni to consider. And Pazel turned his Shaggat into a lump of stone. As long as Arunis has them to worry about, he won’t be so quick to try something else. Like taking over the Chathrand.”

  “You’re right,” said Marila, her face creasing with thought. “Oh, how stupid I am! Yes, yes—and that’s why there are Plapps and Burnscove Boys.”

  “Eh—um—”

  “Aboard the Chathrand, I mean. That’s why Rose brought so many Plapps onto a Burnscove ship. Don’t you understand? As long as the crew’s divided he never has to worry about a mutiny, no matter what he puts us all through. It makes perfect sense.”

  It did make perfect sense, & little Marila is anything but stupid. The crew is one-third Burnscove Boys, one-third Plapp’s Pier, & one-third men from neither gang. Foolproof, you might say. Their numbers were large enough to divide the crew, but too small for either gang to take over. And if the thought of mutiny ever did cross a few minds—well, the only way they could dream of taking on those deadly Turachs would be as a ship united. And we’ll see the moon hatch tadpoles before that day ever comes.

  These thoughts all but crushed me. “We have no hope, do we, lass? They’ve been planning this for decades.”

  “So has Ramachni,” she said.

  “Was he planning for Arunis to whack him so hard he could barely crawl home?”

  My tongue had got ahead of me; I didn’t mean to speak such words of despair to this brave young thing. Marila took it calmly, however.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I bet you’ll get a chance to ask him.”

  Sunday, 27 Norn 941.

  The sorcerer has murdered Peytr Bourjon. Old Gangrüne saw it happen, in the passage outside his cabin. Seems the daft tarboy never had quite left off serving Arunis. Gangrüne watched them through a crack in his cabin door: they met, talked, the boy pleaded for something on his knees. Arunis held out his hand & Peytr took it. Then the monster reached out and snapped his neck. One-handed. Gangrüne slammed his door and started howling murder murder murder. Arunis merely walked away.

  No clue from any quarter as to how Bourjon had angered the mage. Perhaps he never did. Perhaps Arunis merely wanted to attract our attention, lest anyone imagine his powers or his wickedness decreased.

  How sick I am of death, of walking, living, sleeping among killers. Of serving as their quartermaster, their fool. There’s little I wouldn’t hazard to put an end to them. Forgive me, my Anni, my heart.

  * Names available upon request.—EDITOR.

  * The mandoloro is a small Opaltine accordion, traditionally constructed of two solid gourds and a rubbery bellows made from a shark’s bladder. The instrument produces a reedy & singularly piercing yowl. It was upon first hearing a mandoloro in the Opalt backcountry that the explorer Jelan Gergandri doubled the number of men on night watch, declaring that “in a country where that is labeled music we must be ready for anything.”—EDITOR.

  ** The later testimony of Lady Lapadolma Yelig and others indicates that Fiffengurt was indeed to be appointed captain of the Great Ship, before His Supremacy proclaimed that the post would once again belong to Rose.—EDITOR.

  31

  Metamorphoses

  24 Freala 941

  The White Reaper, pride of the Pentarchy, holy avenger of the Mzithrin, spun beneath the killing waves in a state of chaos no seafarer had ever lived to describe. Up was down, falling was rising, solid rails became splinters; the very air one tried to gulp was seawater that stabbed one to the heart with cold, and the blackness of the depths was over and under and within her. She was vanquished, and her five hundred men were perishing in the imploding coffin of her hull.

  Neda Ygraël felt her body whirl in the blind cyclone, heard her people’s screams extinguished chamber by chamber as the sea advanced, felt the ship’s armored bulk cleaving down into the permanent night of the Nelluroq. She was on the berth deck, somewhere; footlockers were smashing about like boulders; shreds of hammocks caught at her limbs. Her brother sfvantskors had been near her when the Jistrolloq rolled, and she could still hear them, crying to one another, only a shade less mad than the rest. Nurin was closest, and when the lamps went out he cried her name. There was an instant when she felt his hand, a clawing thing as violent as the sea, groping at her with broken fingers before the water tore him away. Then another hand seized her, Cayer Vispek’s this time, and wrenched her up (or down?) through a hatch and onto a deck where air remained, where it was possible if agonizing to thrust the debris and bodies aside and raise one’s head above the flood, where a pale green glow illuminated the horrors around her. The glow came from Sathek’s Scepter, wielded in desperation by Cayerad Hael.

  The elder sfvantskor was bleeding from the scalp. As the ship rolled over and over he was thrashed about like a rag doll. But he held on to the scepter, and Neda groped toward him, to what purpose she could not say, and when she and Cayer Vispek were within ten feet the old man screeched one intelligible word:

  “Soglorigatre!”

  With the word came a red light, a searing light, and a blast of steam that made her plunge again beneath the water. At once the dead face of Cayerad Hael’s steward rose before her, the boy’s mouth open wide as a well. Then something else burst in the ship and the body was sucked instantly away. Down, down they were plummeting, her ears all but bleeding from the pressure, and not knowing if she were fighting to live or to hasten a merciful death Neda thrust her head above the surface again.

  Cayerad Hael had called the red flame from the scepter, just as he had on Sandplume, but now he ha
d used it to burn a ragged hole in the side of the ship. He himself was scalded terribly, his hand a black stump fused forever to the magic artifact, though forever would be brief enough. But he lived yet, and commanded them yet; and most amazing of all, four of his sfvantskors remained alive to be commanded. Neda and Cayer Vispek, bobbing and thrashing toward him; and huge Jalantri close behind; and last of all, clear-eyed and furious, Malabron.