red thirst

by ich du

"The Magrittans have gone crazy."

  "That might literally be true. I've heard..." Marya stopped, and her forehead tightened. Ariel could not decide whether from fear or hatred.

  "What?"

  "Nothing you need to know, girl."

  Ariel waited. It was plain that Marya wanted to tell her.

  The sailor stared at the bulkhead. "Escribano has allied himself to a Power." Her mouth stretched in an attempt at a smile. Ariel was not sure that she had heard right. "Cat got your tongue?"

  "Which..." Ariel cleared her throat. "Which one?"

  "The Blood God."

  Khorne. The Destroyer. And Escribano had allied himself to this Chaos Power. Deliberately, she let her grief overwhelm her fear: Escribano had at least one more death to offer his God. That was what she had to think about.

  She looked at the map again, trying to understand the enormity of the Magrittan's corporeal influence.

  "Why didn't I know about all this?"

  Marya shrugged. "People tend to know only what affects them. When the price of Tilean glass goes up or you can't get your Cathay silks any more because nobody'll risk that journey only to have their profits taxed to nothing, then you'd know about it."

  Ariel wondered if her father knew all this. Not yet. Most of the family business was centred around river trade. It occurred to her that the Rosamund might be carrying de Courtivron goods.

  "What are we carrying?"

  "I'll show you in a minute." She stowed the map in her bundle, pulled something else out, She weighed it in her hands a moment then held it towards Ariel. It was a knife. The handle was plain wood, well polished. The blade was twice the length of her hand. "Might be useful."

  Ariel accepted it silently.

  "There's a loop on the sheath. Put it on your belt."

  Ariel did, settling it comfortably on her right hip. Marya nodded. "I'll take you to the hold."

  To Ariel's unpractised eye, the cargo seemed haphazardly arranged. Huge crates were stowed forward of smaller cases, while timber obviously from the same lumber merchant lay stacked in different piles. One corner of the hold was full of empty trays stacked one atop the other.

  Marya patted them. "These are for the Cixous paté. Captain Helseher will work us half to death getting it to Laguiller. Paté doesn't last too long away from ice. The fresher it is when we get it there, the more it'll sell for. And for that cargo, we get a percentage of the profit."

  "We?"

  "Helseher. But if he doesn't make much then it's one less hired next voyage. But there's no real worry this time, it's downstream all the way. Means we can take the short route through white water. On the way up we carried Cixous paté to Quenelles. Upstream. We had to come through the slow curve of the river. Helseher nearly had us in the boat, towing."

  "How many stops are we making?"

  "Eight. Cixous, then Brusse, then through the gorge to Laguiller. After that it's Aubenas, Muret, Ferignac, Sibourne and Brionne."

  "Then back to Quenelles?"

  "If we must." Marya shrugged. "Let's find you some proper clothes, then I'll take you on deck."

  The Rosamund nosed its way into Cixous past floating pieces of dead fish and old netting. It smelled worse than Quenelles. Jean-Luc and Gerber the cook had taken the boat and rowed into harbour earlier to arrange for their onward cargo to be waiting when they docked. Ariel stood on deck, holding the bundle of rope ladder ready. The muscles in her shoulders and back burned with the strain of hauling her own weight up and down the masts. Her face was red and peeling. Sweat ran down her arms and soaked through the strips of cloth wound around her hands. Her raw palms began to itch.

  The anchor rattled and she threw the bundle over the side. It unwound with a wooden clacking and bumped gently against the side. Marya and the thick-armed Rudi took one rope, Hugner and Uti the other as they swung the cradle into position and began lowering it. Helseher paced. The stacked lumber shifted slightly. Uti cursed and staggered.

  "Ariel, you're the lightest." Helseher gestured at the cradle. "Get that wood balanced."

  Ariel used Rudi as a mounting block, fitting her bare feet first on his bunched thigh, then his shoulder. The hilt of her knife dug into her side. She gritted her teeth as she pulled herself up by her hands. Marya grunted with the strain of the extra weight. She worked quickly, efficiently, then let herself down by her hands, not letting go until she was sure her weight was firm on the deck and would not set the cradle swinging again. Hugner managed a brief nod of approval.

  "Well done, girl," Helseher muttered. He leaned over the side, looking down at the cobbles. There was no sign of Jean-Luc. "Where in the name of the gods is he?" He wiped his forehead. "Damn this heat."

  The cradle reached the dock safely. Ariel climbed down the ladder with the others to help unload. She found that if she swore very softly under her breath as she and Marya stacked plank after plank, she did not notice the pain in her hands so much.

  The owners of the timber were already supervising its removal when Jean-Luc and Gerber arrived on an ox cart driven by a patient young woman. Jean-Luc scrambled down and strode over to Helseher, where he started talking in a quiet voice. Ariel helped the driver unlace the leather sheet covering her wagon. Jean-Luc paused and Helseher looked over at Ariel for a moment, then turned back to his first mate. Ariel wondered what they were talking about.

  "Girl!" Helseher's voice was sharp. "Get back on the Rosamund and go below."

  Ariel blinked, uncertain.

  "Hurry it up. I want Gerber to take a look at your hands. And stay below out of the sun, hear? I don't want you getting feverish in this heat."

  Ariel did as she was told, wondering.

  She was sitting on her bundle of clothes, her hands freshly bandaged and still stinging from Gerber's attentions, when she felt the anchor come up. A few minutes later, Marya put her head through the hatch.

  "Helseher wants you." She withdrew, then put her head back through. "That story you told me about your sister. Was it true?"

  Ariel nodded.

  "Well, that's something."

  Helseher's cabin was crowded with the captain, Jean-Luc and Marya. They were all standing.

  "I don't want this to take too long, girl. We've a ship to get to Laguiller and a cargo to sell. But I want the truth from you and I want it now. Marya here tells me you've been asking questions about a man I hired to Quenelles, that he's mixed up somehow in your sister's death."

  "I have reason to believe that he sold some deliberately contaminated olla to a man who gave it to my sister. She died as a result."

  "And?"

  "And now I'm trying to find Jorge and ask why. If I can't find him then I'll go to Magritta and find someone who can tell me."

  "Magritta. That's interesting. Perhaps that explains why Magrittans have been asking about you all over Cixous."

  Ariel could find nothing to say.

  Jean-Luc cleared his throat. "The paté seller told me that a Magrittan woman who made port earlier in the day has been asking around to see if the Rosamund had docked and if one woman in particular - tall, pale, long blonde hair, icy eyes - had been seen. Apparently she was most anxious, offered the paté seller a great deal of money for information and to keep his silence. He told me anyhow. Doesn't like Magrittans, he said."

  Helseher nodded then gestured for Marya to speak.

  "When I was in the tavern, the innkeeper told me a story: last night a strange man, very tall, very thin, was asking questions about the crew of the Rosamund and what our ports of call were likely to be. According to the innkeeper, the man wasn't Magrittan."

  Helseher turned to Ariel. "I want to know what they want of you and why, and whether they're likely to harm the Rosamund."

  "I don't know." She laid her hand on her knife.

  "Is it your family?"

  "No. They wouldn't do it like this."

  "So who?" Helseher sat behind a table and tapped at a chart in irritation. "I don't like this sneaking about."

/>   "Nor does the girl, Captain," Marya said softly, nodding at Ariel's hand on the knife. With an effort, Ariel put her hands behind her back.

  Helseher stood up abruptly.

  "From now on, when we come to a port, stay below. It won't do you any harm to keep out of sight."

  Ariel's hands healed; she had to strap them only for the roughest work; her face and arms were no longer red and peeling and her legs, bare below her knees, were lean and brown. Without sandals, her feet hardened. She had proved to the rest of the crew that she was quick and reliable and that if she was unfamiliar with a knot or a method of splicing, she needed to be shown only once. Out on the river she drank the rough red wine with her meals like everyone else. Several days out of Cixous she had taken to wearing a cap to cover her silver-gold hair; she no longer ducked out of sight everytime the Rosamund tacked past a river boat or was overtaken by some sleek dinghy. The knife at her hip was just another eating implement.

  Ariel was lying between the ribs of the ship, her head propped on the small bundle made of the clothes she had first come aboard in. It was hot. The others were either unloading on the docks or in the waterfront's two taverns, finding out if anyone had been asking questions about the Rosamund or about Ariel.

  Time dragged. The ship rocked slightly at anchor; the lamp hanging from the beam above her swung from side to side. She stretched, imagining that she was lying on the sloping grass of the river bank, drying off in the sun. During the summer when she was twelve and Bel ten, they were always by the river playing with the local children. What was the game they had perfected that summer? It had no name: the only rule was to throw someone in the river, then they had to help you throw someone else in. The trick was to sweep the victim's legs out from under them while at the same time clapping your hand over their mouth and nose to stop them yelling to alert the others, then both jump in together. It had the added bonus of stopping the victim swallowing water as they plunged headfirst. Between them, she and Bel had raised the game to an art.

  She fell asleep with tears running down her cheeks.

  When she woke an hour later, her tears had dried leaving her face drawn and tight. She heard the hatch swing open. It did not bang; whoever had opened it was trying hard not to be heard. She eased her knife from her sheath and stood up. A step creaked: someone was coming down the stairs.

  He had to duck to get through the doorway. It was the same man she had seen on the wharf at Quenelles: she recognized the cap pulled low over his ears. He was as slender as a dart.

  They looked at each other. Ariel stood poised, knife drawn; the man was relaxed, still, with no weapon that she could see.

  "Who are you?"

  "Mademoiselle de Courtivron, I have no intention of harming you in any way. I have come to give you a warning."

  She lifted the knife. "Out." Her voice was thick and tight.

  "I could have that breadknife away from you and at your own throat without breaking into a sweat."

  All her fear, all the uncertainty and grief of the last weeks, coalesced around a point in the middle of his breastbone. She went for him.

  She dived into a roll and came to her feet under his chin, her knife striking up like a snake. It surprised him: she got close enough to see the empty earring holes in his lobes before he moved faster than she thought possible to take the knife point across his shoulder. Then, she did not know how, he had the knife at her throat and her arms pinned behind her. His body felt odd: padded in strange places. Blood, his blood, dripped on her wrists.

  "You scratched me. No-one's done that in years," he said softly.

  "Let me go."

  "Not until you listen. I want you to leave the Rosamund.Go back upriver, go home, go anywhere. Don't stay on this ship and don't ask any more questions."

  Ariel noticed that his hands were very long and slim, and calloused in the wrong places.

  "Why?"

  "Because you're ruining months of work with your blundering. You're alerting dangerous people. When they've killed you they'll start asking questions of their own. They might find out that other people have been interested in them for a long time. You don't know what you're dealing with."

  "Let me go."

  He did. She backed off, hands spread. He laughed but it was flat, like his eyes. He threw her the knife. She sheathed it.

  "They killed my sister. I want to know why."

  "This is about much more than the death of a young woman."

  "Not to me."

  "Go home before you learn too much. Or they will kill you."

  "Who? Capitano Jorge Martinez Castelltort-in-disguise, or Admiral Escribano himself?" Her voice was sharp.

  His face flattened into something alien. "Perhaps it is already too late for you," he said softly. Then he was gone.

  When Helseher returned, Ariel went to his cabin and told him about their visitor.

  "Do you think I should go back home?"

  "Yes, but I'm not going to try and persuade you: you're too useful to me as crew."

  "Thank you."

  "I'm not sure I'm doing you a favour."

  Half a day downstream from Brusse, the Brienne was joined by the fast flowing Sirthelle tributary. Where the two rivers met, their churning waters had carved out a gorge two miles long with granite cliffs a hundred yards high in places. As they approached the gorge, Helseher took the wheel himself.

  Ariel worked a capstan with Uti on the starboard side. They were sweating. The ship hit white water and lurched. Spray arced over the bow and drenched Ariel. She grinned at Uti: the water was deliciously cold.

  "Brace yourselves."

  The Rosamund, and a skiff also taking the white water short cut, bucked and slid into the gorge. Helseher spun the wheel this way and that, then hauled it right over. With most of the canvas furled they were relying on the current. It made steering difficult.

  They were thrown into the deep shadow cast by the cliffs to starboard where the thunder of water echoed and re-echoed from the granite.

  "It's calmer when we get past the bend!" Uti shouted through the roar.

  The bend loomed ahead: a curve to port so sharp that it looked like a dead end. Rocks, black and slick, reared through the foam. Ariel shivered. Helseher spun the wheel clockwise, held it, spun it counterclockwise and they headed straight for the biggest rock in the river. At what seemed like the last minute to Ariel, Helseher moved the wheel a fraction and the Rosamund slipped sweetly through. They glided into calm open water; sunlight glistened on the taffrail and Ariel's wet hair.

  "Raise sail," Helseher called to nobody in particular. He sounded pleased with himself. He squinted at the sun. "If we get that paté to Laguiller before first light tomorrow, five hours shore leave for everyone."

  Ariel scrambled for the rigging along with Rudi and Marya.

  Below, the river looked beautiful: sandbars covered in stands of white-plumed cane jutted out from the bank and in the small lateral channels thickets of oak crowded behind willows whose leaves swept the water with their fingertips. Behind them, the skiff had come through unharmed.

  "Why before first light?" she called across the yard arm to Marya. She swayed as she edged along the rope.

  "The market starts first thing. Paté always fetches a better price if the buyers have seen it being unloaded from the hold an hour before."

  "But we could have been lying at anchor for hours, days even."

  "Doesn't matter. If they think it's fresh, they pay more." She laughed.

  Ariel wondered if her brother or father ever paid too much for a cargo. And suddenly she missed them, missed her room with its cool white linens, missed the whisper of trees outside her window. She smiled to herself, hearing the whisper of those trees...

  But it was not trees. It was the splash of six pairs of oars as two boats swung out from opposite side channels towards them, it was the soft buzz of arrow fletching cutting the air. Ariel watched, fascinated, as an arrow caught the sunlight on its downward spiral towards He
lseher.

  "Captain!" Marya, already halfway down the rigging, jumped the rest, knocking Helseher to the deck. The arrow thunked into the wheel, still humming. Then the air was full of them.

  The archers were on the left bank; Ariel could see them clearly as they nocked, drew, released and nocked again. She kept the mast between her and them as she shinned her way down. The skiff behind them raised sail, chopping through the water towards them. While it was still four hundred yards astern, a tall, thin figure stood in the bow and raised a bow of his own. Ariel heard each arrow he loosed at the archers on the bank: a deeper, stronger sound. More deadly, like his aim. He killed three in the time it took Ariel to draw as many breaths. The archers retreated.

  The first boat drew alongside their starboard bow. Two of the six stayed sitting; the others shipped their oars. A grapple thumped onto the planking and snaked back, gripping the rail. Ariel half fell and half jumped the rest of the way down; without standing upright, she scrambled across the deck like a four-legged spider. She hacked at the rope. Everything slowed down; even the smallest movement took forever; while she hacked and sawed, a man leapt for the rail. Then he was clambering aboard and everything clicked back into real time. Ariel howled and lunged at him, stabbing without science or method. She stabbed him in the face, the neck. Blood, hot and bright, arced through the air, spattering her mouth and hair. The man screamed and screamed and Ariel stabbed him again. He would not die. His screams went on and on. She heard the grinding thump of the second boat coming alongside, Helseher bellowing, Marya singing of all things and the hatch banging as Gerber and Jean-Luc charged onto the deck armed with a meat cleaver and boat-hook - but she was crazy with revulsion for the blood clinging thick and sticky to her hair and clothes, insane with the need to rid the ship of people so she could wash herself clean again. She attacked mindlessly. A man facing her dropped with an arrow in his hip; she slashed at him anyway.

  On the other side of the deck, a man lifted his short sword at Gerber but fell gurgling with an arrow in his throat. A woman hacked at Rudi, had time to swing a second time before she groaned and fell, a purple-fletched arrow in her back.

  Now the attackers were outnumbered. They leapt over the rails for their boats. One missed and thrashed in the water until the stranger's arrows found him. The skiff altered course to chase the boats down. The bow hummed again and again. Soon, the Rosamund was the only thing in sight on the river.