The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “You left that world behind,” said Diadrelu softly, “and have atoned for it thrice over. As for her sons: you must let those memories go. You cannot save everyone, Hercól. That is another thing we ixchel learn as children.”

  The warrior’s hands were still trembling. A bit impatient now—did he think his burden so special?—she turned her head, so that she was looking down on the fingers encircling her.

  “Hérid aj!”

  Someone had been at his fingernails. On his left hand, one nail was torn out completely, and the finger hideously swollen. Another nail had had slivers cut from it, as though by the tip of a very sharp knife, and the shards that remained dangled by their roots. On Hercól’s right hand the fingertips were blue-black, the nails crushed into the flesh. It might have been done with a hammer, or the heel of a boot.

  “No,” she said, breathless with fury. “Hercól—brother—who did this to you?”

  “My old master,” said Hercól, setting her carefully on the floor, “though I swear he did not enjoy himself. Perhaps Ott still dreams that I will return to the fold, and lead the Secret Fist when he no longer can.” Hercól considered his hands. “Something held him back, in any case. If he had enjoyed himself I would be far worse off.”

  The ixchel woman drew her sword. “All the same, he has signed his death warrant.”

  “Are you mad?” said Hercól, starting upright. “This is Sandor Ott we are speaking of. A man who has listened for the assassin’s tread for fifty years. Put revenge out of your mind.”

  “It is not for revenge alone that I shall strike,” she said, “though revenge is cause enough.”

  “Dri,” said Hercól, “the man is poison. I have heard him give lectures on the dangers of ixchel infestations.”

  “Infestations!”

  Before Hercól could say more she raised her hand. A voice was calling from the passage. It was Ludunte, shouting in ixchel-speech. “Hurry, mistress! All the giants have assembled!”

  “I come,” Dri shouted back. To Hercól, she said, “The council begins, I must go. But when it is over I will return to you. That I promise.”

  “The promise I ask is that you stay away from Sandor Ott,” said Hercól.

  “You do not have it,” she said. “None of this would be happening if it were not for that man’s evil inspiration. And he was not aboard when Ramachni cast his spell, so he cannot be the spell-keeper. Let us discuss it no further. I am a warrior, the same as you, and will choose my own kill.”

  “No, I say! He is too deadly. Not for nothing has he led the Secret Fist for so long.”

  “Long enough, I think. Infestations, he actually—”

  “Damn it, woman, I forbid this!”

  “Forbid?” said Diadrelu. “Am I your dog, then, to be sent to a corner? One man on this ship has a claim to my obedience—my nephew Taliktrum—and him too I have chosen to disobey. Forbid! Think carefully, human, before you use that word with me again.”

  Hercól dropped forward onto an elbow, forcing her back a step. “Hear me,” he pleaded, his voice quite changed. He held up his fingers. “I will recover from these wounds. Don’t leave me with one from which I never shall.”

  She had never been so utterly lost for words. The human’s breath washed over her. His eyes, rheumy and dilated and as big as her head, were close enough to touch. She could not look at both of them at once.

  “Mistress!” called Ludunte again.

  Now it was Dri who was trembling. What was wrong with her? She closed her eyes and reached out, burying her hand in the warm bristles of his eyebrow, which leaped at her touch like a horse’s flank.

  “I will never understand you people,” she said.

  The space between the floor of the mercy deck and the ceiling of the hold was just four inches. Dri entered through a “jug-stopper,” a quick improvised door, cut by Ludunte that very morning. As soon as she was inside Dri knew rats had been here before her. The smell was faint, but not old. A terrible place to meet with rats. They would have every advantage here.

  She crawled forward, through dust that lay like a gray snow, deeper than her wrists. She saw her hand in his eyebrow, parting the sleek black hairs. When he spoke, she felt the vibration in her arm.

  The planks stretched in all directions. In such crawl spaces one could usually spot the humans three compartments off, by the splinters of lamplight that pierced the cracks in floor or ceiling. Tonight not a glimmer met her eyes. But ixchel can see without the light of the sun or lamp: there ahead lay her sophisters, looking down through the tiny gap Ensyl had opened with the spyjack.

  Dri crawled up between them. “We must take care with this dust,” she said. “Humans cannot hear our speech, but coughs and sneezes are another matter. The day may come when we stand with them—stand as brothers, but—”

  Ensyl glanced at her in surprise; Dri did not commonly lose the thread of her pronouncements. Angry with herself now, Dri wiped the dust from her clothes.

  That man is not here. Banish him, face and voice.

  “They’re just sitting down there,” said Ludunte. “I don’t understand, Mistress. For ten minutes they’ve just been sitting in the dark, blind as puppies, not saying a word.”

  “Ten minutes was my suggestion,” said Diadrelu. “If no one approaches, if no footfall sounds an alarm—then it will be safe to proceed.”

  “There is our resistance force,” said Ensyl, shaking her head. “Rin save us.”

  Diadrelu set her eye to the crack. Ensyl was right; the scene did not inspire confidence. Ten humans perched on barrels and boxes, timid in the dark, unable to see one another’s faces. Their alliance, their seawall against the worst storm of villainy ever to bear down on the world. “Pazel,” she said aloud, “if you can hear me, scratch the back of your neck.”

  Pazel scratched the back of his neck. Months ago he had learned that his Gift extended his hearing to ixchel frequencies—an ability that had almost cost him his life, for Taliktrum had realized what he was hearing before Pazel himself. It was comforting, if a bit strange, to know that Dri was watching from eight feet overhead. He cleared his throat twice in the darkness. It was another sign they had agreed upon, this one for Thasha and Neeps: it meant All present and accounted for.

  “Right, let’s begin,” said Thasha nervously. “I think we’ve been quiet long enough.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” growled Fiffengurt.

  A match blazed; and Thasha’s face appeared, dazzled by the sudden light she held. I miss her, Pazel thought, watching a strand of her hair singe as she tried to light the candle. The wick caught, and she raised her eyes suddenly, freezing him with the directness of her look. He felt as he did when he faced Ramachni: transparent, naked, perfectly understood. An intolerable feeling. He dropped his eyes.

  “Remember,” he mumbled, “if anyone asks, we’re just here for a drink.”

  The laughter was barely audible. Thasha passed the candle to Neeps, and Marila lit her candle from his. Soon half a dozen were burning around the chamber.

  The reserve liquor vault was where the better drink was kept, rather than the briny rum used to mix the sailor’s daily grog. It was about ten feet square. Floor to ceiling, it was jammed with casks of white Opalt rum and Hubbox sherry, tins of cider vinegar and cooking wine, vats of brandy, and here and there a case of something truly fine, like spruce gin or the cactus-orange liquor of Pól. Despite the bottled luxuries, the vault smelled putrid: they were only a few feet above the bilge well, that cesspool at the bottom of the ship into which filth from every deck found its way. Because they were so far aft, the water slopped and churned, with a sound like cattle floundering in a pond. At least they would not easily be overheard.

  So far, so good: not one person they’d approached had turned them down. Pazel’s choice had been Bolutu. They’d met in the veterinarian’s cabin on the orlop deck; when Bolutu had grasped what Pazel was talking about he had jumped from his chair and scribbled As soon as possible! on a pa
ge of his notebook. Neeps had recruited Dastu. When the older tarboy had slipped into the vault, Pazel had felt suddenly hopeful, as though only now believing that they had a chance. The other tarboys looked up to Dastu, for his decency as much as his toughness and good sense. He could bring dozens over to their side.

  Marila’s choice was more troubling: Dollywilliams Druffle. Neeps had urged her to choose the freebooter, reminding her that no one hated Arunis more than the one he’d magically enslaved. Pazel couldn’t argue with that; Druffle grew spitting mad whenever talk turned to the sorcerer. He’d also known about the ixchel for months and not breathed a word. So for all his chatter, he could keep a secret. But did that mean they could trust him? Druffle’s moods were erratic, and his way of thinking peculiar. It had never crossed his mind, for instance, to tell Pazel that his mother had had an affair with Chadfallow, until the night the doctor had insulted him. And again this morning his breath stank of rum.

  Fiffengurt, for his part, had actually brought two men. His own choice was “Big Skip” Sunderling, the new carpenter’s mate. Big Skip was tall and ox-strong, a woodsman before he took to the sea. His eyes were small but very bright, often with amusement, and his hands when at rest seemed merely to be waiting for the next opportunity to wield a saw or chisel. Pazel had rarely seen him without a good-natured smile. But he was not smiling now.

  The second man was Hercól’s choice: Lieutenant Khalmet. Everyone in the room stole glances at the Turach soldier. Khalmet looked just as strong and twice as dangerous as Big Skip. He could not have been over thirty, but there was a hardness to his face, as if he had seen or done things that had robbed him of all merriment. Pazel wondered if any Turach escaped such a fate.

  Khalmet had given only the slightest of hints that he might oppose what was happening on the Great Ship. The first had been his suggestion that Rose free Hercól, the second his warning to Marila (‘someone is listening’) nine days ago. Then one day he had begun to deliver Hercól’s food—without stealing from the dish, like the man he replaced. Finally, yesterday, Hercól had put all their lives in the soldier’s hands by telling him of this council meeting.

  Once again the risk had paid off—or at least not backfired yet. For here he was, without his Turach shield and helmet, but still wearing his longsword. Pazel felt safer just looking at the man. Then he recalled that over a hundred other Turachs stood ready to cut them down.

  He looked again at Thasha, and a welter of feelings—anger, worry, grief—stole over him. They’d stopped shouting at each other days ago, but they had never made up. They talked coldly of the tasks before them, and nothing else. Pazel had returned to the stateroom, but now he slept in the little reading chamber that hung like a glass shelf from the Chathrand’s starboard flank. The room was freezing by morning, and he often woke with his face pressed to the cold glass, looking out on the slate-gray emptiness of the Ruling Sea. But Thasha’s reproachful looks, and his own fear that she was going to see Greysan each time she left, kept him from the common room. Behind the door of the reading room he succumbed to a new temptation, and pressed his ear to her cabin wall. Often he heard her reading aloud from the Polylex; once, three nights ago, he caught a sob.

  Last night, over a meal of rye mush and figs, Thasha had told them that she would be coming alone. Everyone was shocked, and Pazel had asked immediately if she’d misjudged someone’s character. Thasha had popped a fig into her mouth and skewered him with a look.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Of all strange things, she had brought a suitcase to the council. A bulky cloth-sided case, embroidered by some spinster aunt; Pazel had seen it belching shirts and sweaters onto her floor. Now it sat before her, tightly sealed, and crowding their toes.

  “At last,” said Dastu suddenly. “At last we’re starting to fight back.”

  Thasha was looking straight at her candle flame. “I don’t know how to start,” she said, “so I’ll start by saying thank you. For being brave enough to come here. For not doing the easy thing, which would be to turn us in. The day Arunis tried to give the Shaggat the Nilstone, some of us found out that we had to fight back. We’re kind of stuck—me, Pazel, Neeps and Hercól, and a few others we’re still looking for. But the rest of you—well, you could have just chosen to look away, and wait for some chance to escape. Or you could have decided we were crazy, that there was no hope at all. But you’re here. And now I know we have a chance.”

  She is older, Pazel thought. Where was the awkwardness, the rich-girl confusion that irritated him so? Where had that look of knowing come from, and that confidence? Was it Fulbreech or the Polylex that had turned her into a woman before his eyes?

  Pathkendle is staring at Thasha Isiq, said a male ixchel above him.

  Pazel jumped, and dropped his candle underfoot. The other two ixchel began to scold the man. Pathkendle can hear us, you silly ass, said Diadrelu.

  Pazel scooped up his candle. “Sorry, Thasha,” he muttered.

  “Now look here, Mistress,” said Druffle suddenly. “Just by gathering we’ve put ourselves in danger, even in this devil’s washtub in the dead of night. So I’ll be blunt, shall I? This is hopeless, or nearly hopeless. Who are we to think we can take on these bastards? Ten malcontents, against eight hundred enemies. Of which one hundred are blary Imperial commandos.”

  “One hundred and nine,” put in Khalmet, “with the reinforcements from Bramian.”

  “Rin’s gizzard, it just gets worse!” said Druffle. “Turachs, Ott’s spies, that serpent of a mage. How are we supposed to take ’em all on? We’d have a better chance of stopping an avalanche!”

  “If that’s your verdict, why’d you come here?” asked Fiffengurt testily.

  Druffle looked sidelong at the quartermaster. “I owe my life to these two,” he said, looking at Pazel and Neeps, “and I’ll give it for them, if the time comes. But that doesn’t mean I want to hasten the day.”

  “Nobody does,” said Thasha. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’re not about to march on the quarterdeck, Mr. Druffle. The point of this council, if you want to call it that, is to come up with a next step. One that doesn’t get us killed by morning. Of course Mr. Druffle’s right about the odds. Whatever we do, we’ll need more people to do it.”

  “Then let’s start with some names,” said Dastu. “Are there others you trust?”

  A moment’s silence ensued. “There have to be,” said Thasha at last, “but choosing them may be the hardest thing we ever do. For the moment, trust me. There are more than you think.”

  She’s right, said Diadrelu.

  “And the next step is to find more people, Dastu,” said Pazel. “But when we do, we’re going to need to be able to tell them we have some sort of a plan.”

  Big Skip shook his head slowly. “I’ve been worrying over that one,” he said. “A plan the crew might stand up and support has to do one thing. It has to keep ’em alive. You want to beat these villains? Scuttle the ship. Wreck her. Drive her onto a lee shore, if we ever see land again. Or sail her right into the Vortex. But most folk don’t want to die, see? Where’s the plan that gets ’em off this ship alive?”

  Fiffengurt leaned forward. In a whisper, he said, “We could fill a crate with powder-charges and blast this ship’s belly wide open. The ten of us could handle that.”

  His hand shook as he drew it across his face. Pazel looked at him, aghast. Had it really come to this?

  “No,” Pazel heard himself saying, “not yet. I don’t think Ramachni wants us to kill ourselves. And I think the Nilstone might be a danger to this world even at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Then what is our plan?” said Neeps. “What are we going to tell the next ten people we try to recruit for this mutiny?”

  No one moved, no one breathed. Neeps had said it, the hangman’s word, the word from which there was no turning back. Suddenly Pazel realized the terrible danger they were in. All it would take is one of them to panic. To get up and try to leave right now. We
could stop him, but not quietly enough. If anyone moves, we hang.

  The one who moved was Fiffengurt—but only to hook Neeps around the neck with his elbow, like a fond uncle. The quartermaster turned his good eye this way and that, and he smiled a mad, anxious, damn-’em-all-to-the-deep-depths smile.

  “Here’s a plan for you, blast it. We work our backsides off for Captain Rose. We give two hundred percent, and we’re humble about it. We warm their blary hearts with our good natures, see? And we sail this Gray Lady safe across the Nelluroq.”

  “All the while recruiting,” whispered Pazel.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said Fiffengurt. “And when we’ve brought the Chathrand into whatever sheltered harbor awaits us on the far side, what’ll we have? A fighting chance to turn the rest of ’em—or at least enough of ’em—to rush the boats. We desert, like rats. If necessary we battle our way to shore. And we refuse to come within five miles of the Chathrand until they hand over the Shaggat, nailed up tight in a crate where that damnable Stone can’t kill anybody.”

  “And drive off Arunis at the point of a spear,” said Druffle, “or drive a spear through ’im. Keep talking, Quartermaster.”

  “We would have to scatter across the land,” said Khalmet, “else the Turachs could rout us with a single charge.”

  “Oppo, Lieutenant, whatever you say.” Fiffengurt was growing excited. “They can rage and spout and murder us—I’m sure they’ll do a lot of all three—but they can’t sail the Great Ship without a crew, now, can they? And it beats dying in gods-forsaken Gurishal.”