The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  27 Ilbrin 941

  The rain was gone and the sun had banished the morning chill when Prince Olik returned to the Masalym shipyard. His arrival, like his departure, was sudden and unceremonious: he fairly ran out along the walkway, fifty feet ahead of his attendants and guards. Even before he came abreast of the midship rail, he was calling loudly for permission to board. Captain Rose was duly notified, and without issuing a response of any kind he marched out to face the prince.

  “You may not board,” he said, “until you are prepared to inform me when my crew is to be fed, and whether or not the city means to help us save the ship.”

  The prince stopped short; evidently he had thought the asking of permission no more than a formal ritual. “I see—well, it doesn’t matter,” he said distractedly. “I’ll just—walk.”

  He proceeded to do just that, marching back the way he came, waving his entourage into an about-face even as they closed on him. Dumbfounded, Rose and his crew watched him go. “Mad as a drunkard poet,” was Mr. Fiffengurt’s verdict. Then the watchman relayed an observation from the quarterdeck: the water in the basin had once more started to rise.

  It was true: some further sluice-gate must have been closed, for the river was filling the basin (and lifting the Chathrand) at a rate of four inches a minute, as measured against the walkway.

  Then the crisscrossed ropes that had kept the ship bobbing in place went slack, and sank under the water. From the north side of the basin, two small rowing craft approached the ship, dragging new cables. These were duly offered by the silent dlömu, who indicated with gestures that they should be attached to the port and starboard catheads. After some hesitation, Rose so ordered.

  No sooner were the lines secured than they grew taut, lifting out of the water and turning Chathrand gently in place. Slowly and smoothly, they guided her across the basin.

  What followed was surprisingly simple. The towlines, it soon became clear, were guiding the Chathrand toward one of the rectangular berths they had spotted the first night, along a part of the basin’s rim. These were long, squared-off tongues of water, lined with cargo cranes, loading platforms, watchtowers and buildings that might have been warehouses, or army barracks. The Chathrand was moving toward the largest of these berths.

  Like a great beast being coaxed into a stable, the ship glided into the enclosure. Now the crew could perceive a pair of enormous capstans revolving on the quay. Dozens of horses, short of stature but muscled like elephants, strained at their harnesses to turn the great devices, while small dogs moved among them with short, precise dashes and darts, yipping, coaxing. The dlömu themselves seemed barely involved. But at the very last, they stepped among the working animals and eased the ship into position with exceeding care. It was a good fit: when she came to rest it was plain that the Chathrand was only some forty feet shorter than the berth itself.

  More ropes were tossed to the humans, fore and aft. When these were secured the dlömu nudged the ship’s bow back and forth, checking her alignment against grooves carved into the stone. At last the Chathrand was truly still. Shouts of Squared off, let fall! went up from the dlömu. A deep vibration troubled the basin’s surface. And then the water level began to drop once more.

  It fell far more quickly than it had risen. In twenty minutes, the Chathrand descended forty feet. In another twenty, they saw heavy structures of some kind beneath the water. “Merciful heavens, it’s a buildframe!” shouted Mr. Fegin, dangling from the futtock shrouds and suddenly boyish with delight. “Can’t ye see what they’re doing, Captain? They’re lowering us straight into dry dock, by damn!”

  The water continued to drop, and beneath them a great V-shaped armature of wood and steel came into view, and the Chathrand settled into it with all the dignity of her six hundred years. The outer hull of rock maple groaned as the supporting water drained away from her sides; the long timbers of m’xingu and cloudcore oak strained and shuddered, but held. On the topdeck the crew gave a great, spontaneous cheer. They were on dry land, or over it. For some it had been more than two hundred days.

  The pumps clattered on: no one would dream of stepping away from that lifesaving chore without permission. But already the water jetting from them was splashing down upon bare stone. Mr. Uskins sent word to the captain: barring outside interference, the ship could be pumped empty by midday.

  There were staircases cut into the walls of the berth, and the dlömu were already descending, studying the hull, nodding and pointing. But they still said not a word to the humans. They’re under orders, thought Pazel. They must think we’re terribly dangerous. But we’re not, are we?

  In the darkness of the bilge well, Myett stood dripping and cold. The air reeked, and the wine was still very strong in her blood. She heard the far-off cheering and thought it cruel. Her death had been stolen. Her lord was gone and her love defiled, but she remained. Though she had come here to die an ugly death she stood unharmed, and the whole ship found this amusing. She was here to amuse. She always had been.

  She crawled through the nameless, poisonous muck. Out through crevices, rat-gnawed boards, a long pile of stone ballast, alga-slick. When she reached the hold she heard her people’s voices in the distance. She moved away from them, silent, unsuspected.

  It occurred to her dimly that no one would wonder at her absence. They would assume she had gone after him. Whenever she chose to let herself be seen, she could tell them that she had done just that. No dishonor, that way, no confinement, chained at wrist and ankle, like others who tried suicide and failed.

  Unless he had denounced her.

  Suddenly she could almost hear the letter: Nothing to me. Unsuitable from the start. Could he have gone so far? How should she know? It was useless to pretend that she could guess, now that she understood how little she had ever known him at all.

  To be missing, but not missed … it was strangely appealing to be answerable to no one (that is the wine, the wine and the chill you took, do not trust it, do not follow your whim). She had no clan duties, for she had no clan. She had no promise to keep to herself. What self? Only her nose and lips had stayed dry. Everything else had been submerged in death.

  The Dremland Spirit! That was what she had become. Myett smiled at the thought of the woman from the children’s tale (stop thinking, stop crying, go somewhere and sleep) whose people, husband included, had let her die out of cowardice. They had been gathering shellfish at low tide; the woman had fallen and broken her leg. And though they could hear her calling to them in the fog they told themselves that it was too late, the tide already turning, and they stole away and left her to drown.

  But after midnight, back in the safety of the clan house, the woman’s cries had resumed, ethereal and cold. Here I am! Your clan-sister, your wife! I’ll not be abandoned again!

  Myett scaled the inner hull, past the catwalks, seeking the ixchel door that gave entrance to the mercy deck. Taliktrum had admitted to a fondness for ghost stories. He had trusted her that much (only briefly, don’t start lying now, only in those minutes while you waited for his body’s appetite to build). They chill my blood, he’d whispered once, sharing a secret grin. Can you keep that to yourself, my little guardian?

  How did the story end? With the moan growing louder and louder, putting all the clan in danger. First the mice and burrowing creatures heard it, then surface animals, the prowling street dogs, the cats. Finally the giants themselves began to hear the ghost. What could be done? Myett’s grandfather would have known the right sort of penance, the act of contrition that a ghost would accept. But in the tale, the foolish clan heaped all the blame on the husband, and threw him into the sea at the place where his wife had perished. Monsters, murdering fools! Couldn’t they see that the woman had actually loved him? That she might love him still? They had earned their final punishment; they had begged for it.

  The hidden door-latch opened to her fingers. She crawled into the mercy deck and wandered aft, leaving the secret door ajar. Past the empty rice
barrels, the swept-out bread room, the brig where guards stood exclaiming to their prisoners: Them fish-eyes have shipwrights underneath us already! They’re going to fix this old boat after all!

  The Mzithrini girl, Neda, looked out through her prison bars and saw her plainly. But that did not matter. All crawlies look the same in the shadows, don’t they? And besides, no one listens to the enemy.

  Minutes later she was teasing open another door: above the scrap-metals storeroom. The strongbox lay bolted in place, and wedged beneath it, Taliktrum’s key. She pried it out and laid it on her palm. How it had hurt, with all his weight pressing down. It had always been between them, a witness to his hunger, her addiction; a painful proof that she would never get closer than his skin.

  They had driven him away. With their worship, their torturous need. They had exiled him to a city of dark giants, a city without Houses, without safety. He might already have met his death.

  He’d been tender with her. More than once. But their worship had made his love impossible.

  She opened the box, set the other treasures aside, took out all the remaining antidote. She would give the clan what it had earned. No one could stop her. No law applied to a woman who had ceased to exist.

  The dlömu erected a stone oven on the quayside and kindled a fire within. Soon a sweet-smelling woodsmoke drifted over the Chathrand. Then carts began to arrive, some drawn by stout little horses, others by dogs. Crowds of workers assembled around these carts, making it difficult to see what they contained. Then someone scurried up to the fighting top and gave a shout: “Food, food! And loads of it, by the Tree! Bless them fish-eyes, they’re going to feed us at last!”

  It began with sausage, seared to bursting on the open flames, and ample servings of thick-skinned tubers. The hot food was placed in baskets like those of the first night, and the baskets were placed on hooks at the end of long poles and swung gingerly over the chasm to the Chathrand’s quarterdeck. Even as they passed out the food, the dlömu kept silent, although the humans and ixchel thanked them with great feeling. Still, as he watched the orderly business unfold, Pazel caught smiles, and even an occasional wink of a silver eye. They were covert, those looks. The dlömu were hiding their kindness, but less from the humans than from one another.

  Pazel mentioned the looks to Neeps. “You see? These blokes aren’t unfriendly—at least no more than they were that first night. They’re afraid of us, sure. But this not-talking business: it’s coming from somewhere else. I’d bet my right foot they’ve been ordered not to speak.”

  “Maybe,” said Neeps, watching the baskets collect on the quarterdeck. “Or maybe it’s spreading, that old woman’s idea about us bringing the end of the world. Maybe they even think we have a choice about it. ‘Treat us nice, see, or die in storms of fire.’ ”

  After the sausage came pies—round, glistening, stuffed with meat and curious vegetables and aromatic herbs. Rose fed his men in reverse order of rank: tarboys and ordinary seamen first, then rated sailors, Turachs, petty officers, lieutenants. The senior officers waited stoically: they had known all along that they would be last. Rose was merely applying the Sailing Code, and most of them knew the wisdom of the old law. Nothing would break a crew’s loyalty faster than injustice with food.

  But there was no shortage. Fresh bread followed, and olives cured in wine, and small cuts of fish wrapped in aromatic leaves, and a second round of pies stuffed with sweet orange tubers and sprinkled with a spice that tasted like nutmeg and licorice at once and yet was neither. There was no shortage. They ate and they ate. Mr. Bolutu sat with his back to a hatch comb, using both hands, and Pazel saw tears in his eyes.

  Twenty years since he tasted his people’s food, he thought. And suddenly he wondered if he would ever again bite into an Ormali plum.

  For a time the Chathrand was a happy ship. The tarboys sang a tarboy shanty, but collapsed in disarray before the obscene punch line (even this was more than they had ever dared in Rose’s presence). The steerage passengers wolfed down everything they were given. The door of the forecastle house was opened just long enough for five baskets to be slid within, and all who stood near heard Lady Oggosk’s delighted cackle. When the dlömu sent over boxes of sticky mül as a final offering, the sailors even managed to finish a few out of politeness, though no one had yet explained what they were.

  Hercól brought Felthrup, Jorl and Suzyt to the topdeck, tied the dogs to a steel deadeye and brought them bread and fish. The dogs ate. Felthrup sat snug by Thasha’s knee, and ate. Deep in the ship, someone managed to wake the augrongs; their groans of monstrous satisfaction made the dlömu freeze, and the humans laugh.

  Even the ixchel celebrated, in their way. They were in shock over Taliktrum’s disappearance (the rumors had escaped already, and sprouted hydra-heads: He’s a runaway, a coward, some said, and others, He’s off talking with the lord of the dlömu. He and Talag planned it all from the start) but they still had appetites. They ate well, but in shifts, guarding one another as ixchel always did at mealtime. Only Ensyl ate alone, not quite joining the humans but shunned by her people.

  Pazel, Neeps and Marila sat in a crowd of tarboys near the spankermast. Marila made little chirping sounds of happiness as she chewed her fish. Neeps dipped morsels of bread in the juice from the meat pies, grinning as he popped each one into his mouth. Overhead, the dlömu watched in fascination, murmuring and occasionally pointing.

  “Feeding time at the zoo,” said Marila, glancing up at them.

  Neeps frowned at her. “There’s a cheery thought. What put that into your head?”

  “The way you eat,” said Marila.

  The tarboys laughed, and so did Pazel, for there was nothing mean or cutting in the other boys’ voices: they appeared ready, for the moment anyway, to let Pazel and Neeps back into their fold. About blary time, he thought.

  Then he saw Thasha a short distance away, eating olives from Fulbreech’s hand. She was turned away and did not see him—but Fulbreech did, and raised an eyebrow in his direction, a wry salute.

  Rage went through Pazel, sudden and murderous. He turned away with the remains of his meal. And found himself facing Ignus Chadfallow.

  “Hello,” said Pazel, not very warmly.

  Captivity had aged the doctor. His craggy face was stained with soot that no amount of washing had yet been able to remove. His deep-set eyes shone with a new, more desperate fervor. The nose Pazel had broken on Bramian had healed with a subtle clockwise twist.

  “I’ve been looking for you since yesterday, Pazel,” he said at last. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

  Pazel shrugged. “I’m here now,” he said.

  They had crossed paths twice since the doctor gained his freedom. Both times Pazel had hurried by, mumbling about his duties. He had no desire to be cornered and questioned by the man.

  “You should eat less sausage, more fish and greens,” said the doctor. Neeps slid a whole sausage into his mouth.

  Pazel scowled. “What is it you want, Ignus? Missed trying out drugs on me?”

  “May I sit down?”

  Neeps and Marila glanced at each other and edged away. Pazel sighed, and Chadfallow lowered himself stiffly to the deck. He was not holding a plate. Instead he cradled a leather pouch in both hands. It appeared to contain some object no larger than a matchbox. Chadfallow held it as one might a fine glass figurine.

  “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I took an oath to defend life.”

  Pazel gave him a discouraging look. No philosophy, please.

  “Would you like to know what I’ve been asking myself this morning?” Chadfallow continued.

  “Dying to,” said Pazel.

  “What if it were you in there? What would I be thinking now? Would I have even stopped to think?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Pazel. “In where?”

  Chadfallow lifted his eyes in the direction of the forecastle house. Pazel grew still.

  “Hercól is my oldest friend, after
Thasha’s father,” said Chadfallow, “and he loved an ixchel woman, desperately. I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “Ignus,” said Pazel, trying to keep his eyes off the pouch, “what’s going on? What is that you’re carrying?”

  “I’ve just told you,” said Chadfallow, “the antidote.”

  Pazel gasped. “The permanent antidote? What, another pill?”

  “Another ten pills. One for every remaining hostage. At least, that is what the note said. When I reached my desk in the sickbay the pouch was waiting for me.”

  “But that’s fantastic! You can set them free!”

  “Softly, you fool,” hissed Chadfallow.

  Glancing about, Pazel quickly understood. There were ixchel all over the deck. And men who had been taught to hate ixchel all their lives. Thasha, he noticed suddenly, was now seated alone; Fulbreech had moved off to starboard. Perhaps they’re fighting, thought Pazel, with a vague sense of hope.

  “Why can’t it always be this way?” said Chadfallow suddenly, his eyes sweeping the deck. “Peace and cooperation, sanity. There’s enough room on this ship for men and ixchel. And Rin knows there’s enough room in Alifros. Why do we fight? Why don’t we get on with living, while we’re alive?”

  Now that the doctor pointed it out, the scene did look more harmonious than ever before. Men and ixchel milled about together, not exactly with warmth, but with a sated sort of tolerance, as if the feasting had crowded their mutual animosities to one side. At the starboard rail a Turach was holding an ixchel sword in the palm of his hand, squinting at it, while its owner chattered on about the workmanship. Beyond the circle of tarboys, several topmen actually seemed to be trading jokes with the little people.

  Diadrelu, Pazel thought. You should be here. I’m looking at your dream.

  But of course he wasn’t, really. The jokes had a bitter edge. Each side had too many deaths to blame on the other. Rose was an infamous crawly-killer, and others—Uskins, Alyash, Haddismal—were almost as bad.