Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER NINE

In the Company of Rats

The ship sped along on its south-easterly course with its sails straining fat with wind and its prow clipping through the rise and fall of the swells. Che stood by the rail with the salty spray hissing past the hull, the vessel thrumming beneath him as it bore them across the Heart of the World.

To others, he looked as though he was merely taking in the sea air on another day on their journey east. For Che, it was a form of meditation standing like this, his mind focused on the flow of his breathing and the senses of his body. It was a pleasure to be this way, so much so that a slight unconscious smile curled the corners of his mouth.

He didn’t dare do any more than this. Not here, not in the presence of so many of his peers. To squat down now on the main deck in the customary position of a Daoist monk, or a Roshun for that matter – kneeling with spine erect, thoughtless and still – would be an open challenge to them all. Remarks would be made. Something would be said to him by one of the Monbarri, threats veiled behind skilful questions of double meaning.

His feet rocking to the gentle swaying of the ship, Che could see the wheelhouse rising high before him in the mid-section of the ship, a legion of signal flags fluttering from the top of it. Behind him, at the stern of the vessel, the quarterdeck rose three storeys tall, where the stately cabins of the Holy Matriarch were located, along with those of her two generals. Sasheen was up there now, on the uppermost deck, taking in the sea air like Che himself, though she was seated in a deep wicker chair and wrapped in a heavy fur cloak against the bite of the wind, surrounded by white screens to shield her position. Between the screens, Archgeneral Sparus and young Romano could be glimpsed sitting on either side of her, engaged in conversation and attended by slaves. The Matriarch wasn’t looking at them as they spoke. Sasheen was watching the skyship that was passing overhead, one of their birds-of-war guarding the invasion fleet; a scattering of vessels that stretched ahead and behind as far as the eye could see.

He sensed rather than heard the approach of someone behind him.

‘Don’t dwell on it,’ came the quiet voice of a man. ‘It’s always much worse than you can imagine anyway.’

Che felt a moment’s irritation, and turned his head to see Guan standing there, the young man of the Mortarus sect who had come aboard with his sister as part of Sasheen’s travelling entourage. The priest stood dwarfed by the ship’s great masts and sails that diminished half the sky.

‘And what’s that?’ Che enquired drily.

‘The invasion. You’ve never been to war, have you?’

Che simply shook his head.

‘I was there with my sister, the last time we invaded the Free Ports. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’

‘You were in Coros? You hardly look old enough.’

‘No. We hardly were. Our father was the commander of the fifty-fifth Lights. Bringing us along was his idea of an education. And we learned, all right. We learned what a warhead could do to the integrity of his skull.’

His father, Che reflected. It was rare for a priest to speak of a father; to even know who the man was.

He saw that Guan was waiting for him to ask more, so instead he said nothing. He wished only to be left alone.

It was Guan who broke the silence. ‘You don’t know what I’m saying, do you?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Then you’re not alone. The people on this ship seem to have no idea of what they’re getting into either. These aren’t some northern tribesmen that we plan to invade here. Or an army of Lagosian insurgents, for that matter. These are Khosians, with the finest chartassa in all the Free Ports. They’ve fought off more invasions than most of the southern nations combined.’

Che was in no mood for horror stories of war today. The man simply wished to show off, to notch himself a little higher than Che.

‘I see. A people to be feared.’

Guan stared hard at Che, and Che stared out to sea.

‘I’m wondering if you’ve balled anything lately, Che? You seem a little uptight.’ And Guan smiled suddenly, as though that would make it fine to say these things to him. ‘Or perhaps you’re getting plenty enough from the Matriarch herself?’

Che allowed a scowl to show in his eyes.

‘You’re either a fool or a lunatic, Guan. I think your Mortarus training leads you too close to a worship of death.’

Guan shrugged without care. A fool, then, Che decided. ‘I see you don’t deny it.’

Che turned away from the man, refusing to be drawn into this conversation. He wondered once more if Guan and his sister were not in fact Regulators in disguise, and if Guan was merely playing at being a careless fool. Indeed, Che had been surprised at this man’s insistence in befriending him, had wondered if perhaps he had been tasked with watching Che during the long voyage to Khos.

Guan sighed as though ridding himself of frustration. ‘Have you eaten yet?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Later, then. We can share a drink perhaps, and find ourselves another game of cards. It’s your turn to lose, as I recall.’

‘Perhaps,’ responded Che.

He waited until he heard the man walking away, then gradually relaxed again.

It was often this way with his peers. Even a few moments of simple chatter could seem like a squabble over spilled milk. How could it not be? They had been raised knowing three things above all else in life: their own self-importance, their freedom to pursue every desire, and their voracious need to defeat each other. Always they would look for ways to better him, to manipulate him; it grew tiresome after a while, when all he wanted was some honest companionship. It made him as hostile as they were.

The price, of course, was one of alienation, but Che had found the alternative to be even worse: alienation from his true self. He felt lost when he was with these people for too long, weakened in his own struggling convictions.

Guan was wrong about one thing. The men and women on board were hardly ignorant of what they were facing. He could feel it all around him, the tension in the air, the quietness.

Che’s gaze roamed up to look at the Matriarch again, the woman still listening to the talk of her two generals. Romano was a dangerous one to bring on this expedition. The young general was the greatest contender to Sasheen’s throne; hence, Che suspected, she had elected to suffer his presence during the campaign, fearing what troubles he might foment during her absence from the capital. But he was to be feared here too, for with him had come his contribution to the invasion force, his own private military company of sixteen thousand men. If it came to it, they would be loyal to their paymasters, Romano and his family, before even the Holy Matriarch herself.

Such a dynamic could only provoke tensions on a long voyage such as this one. Sasheen and Romano despised each other at the best of times, even when they conversed with seeming civility. Che wondered how long it would be before they were at each other’s throats, and before he himself was dragged into it.

He tried to breathe all the nonsense from his head and return to the peaceful state of before. It was no good. His calm mood had been spoilt.

Che made his way through the sailors and marines and priests on the weatherdeck and headed for the forward hatchway. On his way he passed a squad of Acolytes training naked in the sunshine, serious young men and women much the same age as himself, with a handful of older veterans amongst them. They were taking turns sparring with each other, or limbering their muscles while they waited their turn.

‘Watch it,’ one of them snapped as he backed into Che.

For an instant, Che wanted to grab his arm and break it.

‘Eat shit,’ he snapped back at him without breaking step.

Before Che descended the steps he noticed Sasheen eyeing him from her vantage above. She raised a flask of wine in a toast, and he bobbed his head at her, and quickly descended.

Blackness smothered Ash for every day and night he lay down there in the bilge of the ship, this fat rolling transport where he’d stowed himself aboard as the fleet had left Q’os harbour. Blackness, and a closeness of air so foul it was hardly fit to inhale, and a battering of noise never-ending: the ballast of sand and loose gravel shifting against the hull; the creaks and bangs of the hull; the splashes of the rats in the darkness – all of it conspired to unhinge him.

Ash had found a space above the slosh of the water on which to lie, a projection of wood near the aft of the bilge, a few feet in width, where he had wedged himself next to his sword. He lived like one of the rats down there, and although he couldn’t see the rising and setting of the sun, he knew when it was dawn by the pounding of feet overhead as the shifts were changed, and when it was night by the raucous sounds of laughter and songs.

Like a shy scavenger he stole out in the dead of night to find water and what scraps of food he could to sustain himself, creeping silently through the black spaces of the ship while most of the crew were asleep. Upon his return from these ventures he would sit on his narrow ledge and eat, and what was left he would feed to the small colony of rats that lived down there with him, muttering to them quietly in the darkness. Soon, they stopped trying to eat him in his sleep. Some even began to climb onto his body and huddle there for warmth.

His usual headaches subsided, perhaps due to the lack of any sunlight, which was fortunate, for he’d almost run out of his precious dulce leaves. Constantly he shivered from the dampness, though, and knew it was getting into his chest. His breathing was becoming tight and restricted. He feared he would develop pneumonia.

Ash thought of dying down here in this black hole, and imagined his corpse floating from one side to the other in the rancid bilge water, the rats making good use of him until he was nothing but bones settling loosely upon the ballast. He tried at times to dry his clothes – the leather leggings lined with cotton, the sleeveless tunic – by wringing them out then spreading them against the curve of the hull, but, like his boots, they refused to dry. One night, he took a risk and was lucky enough to steal a heavy oiled cloak from one of the sleeping crew above. He wrapped his naked body in it and hoped it would do.

Occasionally, Ash found himself wondering where the fleet was headed. He recalled seeing a map in the Storm Chamber when he and Aleas had finally breached it, something denoting movements of fleets. He hadn’t looked at it properly, though, and try as he might he failed to picture any details now.

Mostly, he just wondered how soon the fleet would reach land. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it down here in this bilge that had become his private misery.

Ash was sixty-two years of age, long past the life expectancy of a Roshun still working in the field. The years had certainly taken their toll on him; his body felt stretched thin and taut these days. His joints ached from arthritis, and his muscles tended to complain whenever he moved too swiftly or demanded too much of them. It took longer for him to heal; even now, the minor knife wound in his leg from the vendetta was still festering, so that daily he had to squeeze the pus from it and clean it out with seawater.

In a way, Ash didn’t mind further confinement in this black pit he had crawled into. Within his own depths he felt as if he deserved to be there, that he would gladly suffer an eternity of this desolation if it meant bringing Nico back from to the living. Beneath the oiled cloak, he could feel the small clay vial of ashes lying cold and dead against his chest.