The Rats and the Ruling sea

19

19 Freala 941

128th day from Etherhorde

Less than a week after the sinking of the Sanguine, her captain's prediction came true. At first the only sign was a pea-green cast to the waves. 'The mark of the true tropics,' Mr Druffle informed a small audience of tarboys. 'We're crossing the warm belly of Alifros, my dears.'

Other signs followed: a pod of sea turtles, a lonely frigate bird, a sharp eastward bent to the current. Then, just as Fiffengurt completed the noon measurements of speed and compass heading, it appeared: a dark line on the southern horizon, stretching away east and west as far as the eye could see. Mainland, thought a few with wonder, but it was nothing of the kind.

Mr Elkstem advised the captain, and received a quick reply: a scrap of paper on which was scrawled ESE.128°30′, tgs — w.w. Such were Rose's abbreviated orders: a new east-by-south-east heading, and a spread of sail up to and including topgallants, 'as weather warrants.'

Elkstem, concluding that the weather did warrant, promptly gave the signal for general quarters. The drums sounded, the lower decks roared to life, and four hundred men poured up through the hatches and took their positions at spar, brace and halyard. Frix and Alyash ran the rails, lieutenant to lieutenant. 'Free that downhaul. Where's the clearance, Bindhammer? Compose your team, sir, for the love of Rin!'

Elkstem put his weight on the wheel. 'Heave!' went the simultaneous orders along the five masts, and hundreds of men complied, and the wheel spun, and the vast mainsails turned into the wind. The Chathrand swung east, degree by hard-won degree, until she ran parallel to the dark Bramian shore.

All day they kept their distance. Rose wanted them no closer until they rounded Bramian, knowing (better than most captains in Alifros) how her cliffs gave way here and there to tiny beaches, hidden footholds on her jungles, boundless and wet. An oreship, a pirate sloop, a slaver exchanging pots and trinkets for human lives: any one of these might be anchored off such a landing. Rose did not intend to be spotted again.

They beat a weary path around the giant. For three days they held the same course, until finally the lookout perceived the island's southward curve. Even then Rose kept them east, all that day and night, as if making for Kushal or Pulduraj. Only on the fifth morning, with Bramian nearly out of sight behind them, did the order come. Ware away! West by south-west! — a hairpin turn, and such an agony of effort that the men recalled previous course changes almost fondly. The topgallants had to be furled, the mainsails double-reefed, the fore-and-aft sails braced to the fine work of running close-hauled to the wind, which now battered their faces and begrudged them every westward mile. No trim would serve for more than three hours; no sailor could long be spared for rest.

Dusk on 19 Freala found the crew limp with exhaustion. The wind had shifted in their favour, but by now they were too tired to rejoice. It was a strange, quiet evening: the sun was still above the horizon, but a sickle moon hung already in the east. The sky between them was convulsed with racing clouds.

Pazel stood on the footropes beneath the bowsprit, that great spear thrust out in front of Chathrand. He was in a dark mood, and had hoped being here might dispel it. Every few seconds the bow leaped skywards, then plummeted again towards the waves, whose cold spray just managed to graze Pazel's feet as they shattered on the keel. In normal times Pazel was in his glory here. Only high on the masts could one be flung about as thrillingly by the motions of the ship.

Of course in a storm both mast and bowsprit were living nightmares. Pazel had never experienced those particular miseries. But his spider-monkey confidence on the ropes had been hard-won, and he didn't mean to lose it just because he was no longer a tarboy. When Neeps suggested they crawl out and lend a hand with the jibsails he had quickly agreed.

The sailors, however, had brushed them off: 'No thank you, lads, we'll manage somehow. Mind you, there's always cable to scrape.' The men were afraid, of course: afraid of getting mixed up with 'them two crazy monkeys.' But it had stung to have their offer of help thrown back at them, and Neeps had left in a huff.

Pazel gazed off to portside. The Nelluroq. He was seeing it at last. Even at this distance he thought he could detect a change in the waves: grander swells, a deeper and more sombre blue. Maybe that was just his fancy. What was certain was that a ship could sail twice the width of Arqual in that direction and find no land.

Or rather, the Chathrand could.

Or rather, she could try.

The sailors had finished setting the jibs. Pazel climbed up beside the Goose-Girl's figurehead to let them slip by. Some glanced at him with fear. The last, Mr Coote, just looked embarrassed. He had known Pazel longer than any sailor aboard, having served on the IMS Swan, where Pazel's life as a tarboy had begun.

'They mean no harm,' he muttered, pausing at Pazel's side. 'Just not sure of their footing, if you follow me.'

'I do, Mr Coote.'

Coote pointed with his big East Arquali nose. 'We'll be headin' in among the Black Shoulder Isles tonight. At least that's my supprazichun.'

Dead ahead, six or eight miles off Bramian, ran a string of uninhabited islets: the Black Shoulders. They were small and jungle-clad, built of dark volcanic stone that still shook and grumbled, troubling the waves and dropping great shelves of rock into the depths on occasion. What slim fondness sailors had for them was due to the harbour they could give, in a pinch, from the battering ram of a northbound Nelluroq storm.

'Do you know why, Mr Coote?' Pazel asked. 'I mean, what have the Black Shoulders got that we need?'

Coote glanced up at him for the first time, and almost smiled. 'Thought maybe you'd know, with all your tricks.'

'I don't have many tricks, Mr Coote. I wish I did, believe me.'

Coote shrugged. 'Well, water, maybe — can't never have too much sweet water in your casks. That one to our north is Sandplume — what some call the Isle of Birds. She might have a pond worth pumping. Come on in, Pathkendle; there's no more work to be done out here.'

'Oppo, sir. I'm right behind you.'

Coote lumbered off, but Pazel didn't leave the bowsprit. He faced the sea again, his arm draped over the Goose-Girl. She was a pretty lump of wood, although her grip on the necks of her two geese always struck him as savagely tight. He had stood here that first day on the Chathrand, when Fiffengurt told him to pry the limpets off her, and Dr Chadfallow raced along Sorrophran Head on horseback, crying across the water to Pazel: Jump ship! Jump ship in Etherhorde!

He could have done it, probably. Where would he be now, who would he be, if he had obeyed?

The thought left Pazel strangely chilled. For more than five years his only dream had been to find his parents and sister, rebuild his shattered family. Just how that miracle was supposed to happen he had never quite worked out. Not even Chadfallow, personal friend of the Emperor and one of the only men in Arqual with connections inside the Mzithrin, had been able to carry off a prisoner exchange — he wasn't even sure Pazel's mother and sister were prisoners, only that they had both been in Simja on Treaty Day. And his father — well, Captain Gregory had found him, all right, after the battle on the Haunted Coast. He simply hadn't cared.

Pazel closed his eyes. There was a great black oak in Ormael, in a stand of such trees between the plum orchards and the path to the Highlands. It was not the tallest in the stand, but it was a mighty tree. Passing beneath it one day on a walk with his father, Pazel had declared with confidence that no one could climb it. Captain Gregory had laughed and shimmied up the oak like a topman scaling the shrouds. At eighty feet, he'd pulled out the knife Pazel carried today and begun to carve, slowly and carefully, at the joint of a limb.

When he had returned to the ground, Pazel had asked, 'What did you carve there, Papa?'

Gregory had just ruffled his hair. 'Go and have a look yourself,' he'd teased, making Pazel laugh aloud. It would be years before he could reach the lowest branch.

Gregory never told Pazel what he'd carved, and after his desertion Pazel had decided that he didn't care. He could climb as well as his father, now. But even if he one day saw Ormael again, why should he go looking for that tree? For years he'd tried to convince himself that his father had some heroic reason for abandoning them. But the Haunted Coast had provided a simpler, uglier truth. Captain Gregory didn't give a damn.

All at once Pazel realised that he was quite cold. He'd lingered too long, grown too still, and his pants were soaked with chilly spray. It was time to get out of the wind. Carefully reversing his grip on the Goose-Girl, Pazel negotiated an about-face. He looked down at the forecastle — and saw Arunis gliding towards him with a smile.

The mage had not harmed a soul since the day of Thasha's wedding, but the few sailors in his path leaped away as if from a marauding tiger. Pazel suddenly realised how very vulnerable he was. Everyone but the lookouts had fled the forecastle, and even the latter two sailors stood uneasily by the ladder, as though weighing the danger of abandoning their posts against the threat of that figure in black.

Pazel scrambled down the bowsprit. But Arunis, with startling quickness for such a heavyset man, leaped up to the marines' walk — that narrow platform that was the only way on or off the bowsprit. He raised an open hand, as if warning Pazel to remain where he was.

Pazel stopped. He was some eight feet from the sorcerer, and had no doubt that he could keep out of the mage's grip long enough to shout for aid. But the marines' walk had only two knotted ropes for rails. If he tried to squeeze by onto the deck Arunis could attack him, perhaps even push him into the sea.

'What do you want?' he said.

Arunis' white scarf flapped in the wind. He placed a hand on each rope. 'A little of your time,' he said. 'You have more to spare than other boys on this ship, after all.'

'I don't have anything to say to you. Murderer.'

Arunis gazed at him, unperturbed. 'Even as enemies we have rather a lot to learn from each other,' he said, 'or hasn't Hercol taught you that first maxim of the fighting man? "In single combat, your foe is the only one who can help you defeat your foe." But that, I hope, shall prove beside the point. For there is no reason why we should remain enemies, Mr Pathkendle.'

Pazel laughed. 'No, none at all. Except that you fed me powdered glass, and nearly strangled Thasha. To say nothing of what you told the sibyl on Dhola's Rib. Something about "scouring the world for its new dispensation," wasn't it? Care to explain that one to me?'

'I would like nothing better,' said Arunis. 'It is the horror of my life, being misunderstood. What you heard on Dhola's Rib, for instance: of course it sounded vile. And so must all my actions, since we were introduced as enemies. But you do not truly know me, yet — and you do not know the burden I carry.

'I am the greatest mage in Alifros. I am thrice the age of the Empire of Arqual. The Old Faith was but a collection of prayers and mumbles when I first walked the paths of Ullum, and the name of Rin had yet to be spoken by human lips. I have served this world as seer and counsellor for thirty centuries, lad. Her destiny is my destiny; her life is what I live for.'

Pazel snorted. 'Funny how much joy you take in ending lives, in that case.'

Arunis shook his head. 'No more than the gardener who pinches cutworms between his fingers to save the crop. You have closed your mind for sentimental reasons, Pazel. Did not Ramachni himself warn you to seek allies in unlikely places?'

Pazel was shocked. How Arunis could have come by such knowledge he could not begin to imagine. He's spying on us somehow. I've got to warn them.

'You are convinced you wish my defeat,' Arunis went on. 'You are persuaded that the breaking of two corrupt empires — for that is what the Shaggat's victory will mean, the end of both Arqual and the Mzithrin — will be a bad thing for this world.'

'I'm persuaded that a world ruled by you would be a thousand times worse.'

Arunis stepped towards him, impatience flashing in his eyes. 'And why is that? What do you know of my true intentions? Nothing. But I know a great deal about yours. I know you dream of finding your mother and sister. Would you like my help? I could locate them within the hour, by my arts, and tell you how they fare.'

For a moment Pazel could not speak.The faces of his mother and sister, their smiles, their laughs'No,' he said. 'I don't want your help. You wouldn't, anyway.' Arunis drew closer still. 'I know that you hate Arqual for its crimes. How could you not, when you've seen it destroy your family, your home, your very nation? When you know it is ruled by those who seduce their enemies with talk of peace, all the while hiding a knife called the Shaggat behind their backs? A knife with which they plan to reopen their enemies' deepest wound?

'Think, Pazel, of what will happen if I step aside. Either Sandor Ott's plan will succeed, and the Shaggat will rise and cripple the Mzithrin, and within a decade the Pentarchy will collapse, routed by the armies of Arqual. Or the plan will fail, and provide an immaculate excuse for a new global war — a war of equals, a war of blackest hatred, a war without end.

'In either case the innocent will die in countless numbers, and the survivors inherit a ruined world. If Ott triumphs, you may imagine the future as a bloody rag in the fist of the Magad dynasty, a fist that tightens forever, even when there is no blood left to wring out. And should he fail — two fists contending for the rag, Arquali and Mzithrini, tearing, pulling, shredding it ever finer.'

'And in your future?'

'In mine, quite simply, the Shaggat's triumph will be so swift that Alifros will be spared the worst part of war. Fleets will burn, but not cities. Armies will be destroyed, but not the countries they hail from. There will be death, but how much less so than otherwise! My future is the least of the evils arrayed before us — surely you see that now?'

Pazel said nothing. Arunis rested a foot on the bowsprit.

'Listen to me, boy. Your morals are a good thing. But they are simple hand-tools, and the world, like this ship, is a vast machine. You cannot expect your notion of the good to serve all purposes, any more than you could cut new lumber for this ship with a pocketknife.'

Pazel averted his eyes. The late sun was blazing behind Arunis, yet he felt colder than ever — almost numb with cold, and his mind was dull and doubtful.

'I don't believe you,' he said.

The mage smiled again. 'But at least you hear me — that is enough. Pazel, there are moments in history when what appears to be an evil is the only path to the good. Humans are a flawed creation. Gather them in any numbers, and they kill. Dreamers like Hercol will never admit this truth — and in the end it is they who must be blamed when their pretty fantasies collapse. Arqual and the Mzithrin are the twin banes of Alifros. How would you choose, in your youthful clarity of heart? Destroy two wicked empires — or stand back and watch them destroy the world?'

Pazel clung there, six feet from Arunis, shaking his head. 'Neither,' he managed at last.

'That too is a choice — to do nothing, shrug off the burdens fate gives us, pray that others will lead in our stead. But I do not think you are that kind of man. You're a captain's son, after all.'

Pazel looked up sharply. The mention of his father brought all his anger back in a flash.

'I'll give you one more chance to tell me what you want,' he said, 'before I shout for the guards.'

The mage looked at him steadily. 'You are shivering,' he said. 'Are you coming down with a cold?'

'I've been out here a long time.'

'Quite true,' said Arunis. 'You have been alone in more ways than most men experience in a lifetime, and you have known no rest. Your life has been marked by one terrible change after another. And I can only offer you another — a frightful change, I know, but I promise it will be the last. For you are a Smythidor, a being changed by spellcraft for ever, and because of that you will never belong with any but your own kind. You belong with me, boy, at my side as student and disciple, heir to my wisdom and arts. This is what I offer you. Will you not consider?'

Pazel found himself trapped by the mage's eyes, which had taken on a cold, bright sheen. The heat of his rage was no match for that glow, that spider's hunger. He could not look away.

'At… your side?'

'Yes, said Arunis, 'for ever. Shall I tell you something? You may be aware that I called a spirit to my cabin, before we left the Bay of Simja. It was the ghost of Sathek, a mage-king of the ancient world, and a wise and terrible king he was. Sathek told me that I should meet a child of Alifros aboard this ship who would grow into as mighty a spell-weaver as I am myself. Of course I knew at once that he meant you.'

'I'm not a mage,' said Pazel.

'But you will be,' said Arunis, extending his hand. 'Come, Pazel Pathkendle. I am the home you've been looking for. I am your natural ally. Not a coarse island boy like Mr Undrabust. Not the doctor who lusts after your mother. Not the vixen child of the man who laid waste to Ormael.'

'Who — who do you…?'

'Thasha, you simpleton, the girl who laughs when she beats you with sticks.'

'Don't you try-' Pazel's shook his head with tremendous effort. '-don't you dream of turning me against her, damn you, I-'

He broke off. Why were they even talking? Why wasn't he shouting for help?

Arunis looked at him thoughtfully. When he spoke again his voice was quite changed. 'I would never try to turn you against Thasha,' he said. 'Oh no! You misunderstand me entirely. Do you think that we mages plumb the secrets of the several worlds, yet remain ignorant of the noblest of all human feelings? Do you think us so stupid and cold?'

'C-cold-'

'No matter. Tell me of your feelings for Thasha Isiq. It will do you good to speak of them.'

But Pazel shook his head again.

'I understand,' said the mage. 'You are protecting what is new to your heart, and I shall ask no further. But you must let me help you.'

His tone was sharply aggrieved. Pazel felt a sense of guilt creep over him, stealthy and quick. He felt suddenly as though he had spat on the efforts of a kindly uncle.

'Tomorrow we shall make landfall on Bramian,' said Arunis, 'and there — surely you know this already, deep inside? — the two of you must depart. For not a soul on this ship, myself included, will ever see the placid eastern world again, once we enter the Ruling Sea. It is a mission of death, my boy. Why sacrifice yourselves? Why betray Thasha, and the bliss of a life together, before it has truly begun? Tell me, as one man to another: have you not sensed the possibility of such bliss?'

Pazel was lost, in a cold, enveloping fog; and Thasha was the only point of warmth. 'Yes,' he said quietly, 'I have.'

'Then you must hold true to that feeling, Pazel Pathkendle, no matter what you are told. Run off with your Thasha! Hide from the savages until your Gift begins to work again. Then approach those forest men and address them in their tongue. They will not only spare your lives, but worship you, and lead you to their river strongholds, and serve you like slaves. Become Lord and Lady of Bramian! There are wonders in her interior mete for a clever lad like you to discover. And you could find no safer place in Alifros to sit out the coming war.'

Pazel gazed at him in wonder. After a moment, he said, 'Leave. With Thasha.'

'Just so,' said Arunis. 'And who could blame you? Both of you have been cruelly exploited by the Empire. But instead of seeking revenge you actually helped them, risked your lives for them, over and over. They cannot ask you for more.'

'How would we get ashore?'

Arunis smiled. 'That will be my gift to you — a small gesture of amends for the feud we've overcome. Merely give me your hand, and think your promise to depart. Give it to me now; I shall hold your promise in my fist, and tend it like a seed, and before we reach the island my spell will be ready. Then bring Thasha to my cabin, between midnight and dawn. Ask her to trust you — as she will all her life, when she is yours alone — and when we three join hands I shall send you to Bramian in an instant.'

The sorcerer extended his hand. 'This should be an easy choice — between death and a strange rebirth, between loneliness and ecstasy. If you have the courage to change, that is.'

He made as if to withdraw his hand, and Pazel's heart leaped. He extended his own, desperately — then pulled back at the last instant, torn with doubt. How could this be true? How could they have got so much wrong about Arunis?

A spasm crossed the sorcerer's face, but he mastered it. 'You realise,' he said, 'that she's going anyway.'

'What?'

Arunis nodded gravely. 'Rose means to be rid of her, but he dares not kill her because of Ramachni's spell. How to be sure she lives, and yet tells no one of the conspiracy? Why, by giving her to the savages, people who fear and detest the outside world. They will bear her away to the heart of that gigantic island, and keep her, and make her one of them. Rose has decided already. He knows the trouble a lovely girl may cause on a ship full of desperate men.'

Pazel clutched at the ropes. The cold had reached his fingertips, the roots of his hair, his brain. And as he gazed at Arunis a vision rose before his eyes. He saw himself and Thasha, dressed in a strange finery of wool and parrot feathers and animal skins, standing before a great wooden lodge on a high hill over the jungle. Birds teemed in the treetops, and the sea glittered far away, and purple, snowcapped mountains rose at their backs. Strange men in the clearing below the lodge glanced up with fearful reverence, but kept their distance as befit the servants of a Lord. He and Thasha were older, taller, and she was more beautiful than ever, a woman full grown and splendid, and his arm was about her waist.

Arunis was leaning close to him. 'If she is not yours, and soon, she will be another's. She will give her love to a man of real courage, be it a sailor or some beast of the Bramian jungle. Is that what you want?'

Pazel clung to the knotted ropes. He was a coward, a fool. Thasha was escaping him, slipping through his fingers. She was almost a woman; he was just a tarboy from a conquered race. This was his one chance to have her, his one chance to know love. And it seemed as he extended his hand that it was not Arunis he was reaching for but Thasha herself.

Then something extraordinary happened. Under the skin beside his collarbone an ember of warmth sprang to life. It was distant, but real. And somewhere far away in the hollows of his mind a voice was calling, echoing, like a strange girl's voice from the depths of a cave.

Land-boy, do you forsake me?

'Klyst!'

Arunis straightened, dumbfounded. 'What's that? Klyst?'

The voice was already gone, and the heat from the murth-girl's shell was very faint. But that touch of pure longing from Klyst — still with him, still following the Chathrand! — gave Pazel the strength to tear his eyes away from Arunis' own.

The dream of Bramian vanished. The cold retreated, and strength returned to his limbs. Then Pazel saw the strain in Arunis' face, and the sweat on his brow. The spell had cost him great effort, but it had failed.

And now Pazel was angry — angry as he'd never been before in his life. He glared at the sorcerer, who stood swaying across his path, doubled over, drawing laboured breaths.

'What's it all for, Arunis?' he demanded. 'You want to rule the world — why? You'd still be a rotten beast full of hate and lies and ugliness. You'd still be you.'

Arunis sagged against the ropes, but there was an odd gleam to his exhausted eyes. 'No I wouldn't,' he said.

But Pazel was no longer listening. 'You're the one who should get off at Bramian. The greatest mage in Alifros! Go on, get out of my way.'

Swaying feebly, Arunis shook his head. Pazel could stand it no longer: he leaned forwards and grabbed Arunis' fingers, prying them easily from the rope.

'Nauldrok!'

The mage's voice whiplashed through Pazel's mind and limbs. He felt himself driven backwards. He seized desperately at the ropes, stumbled, caught himself on the bowsprit proper — and there he froze. His fingers went numb, his body weak and lifeless. The heat from Klyst's shell was gone.

Arunis looked even worse than Pazel felt. He might have been a man afflicted by a wasting disease, too weak to do more than prop himself up on the ropes, yet triumph shone in his eyes. After a few more gasping breaths, he found his voice.

'You are about to die, maggot. I would prefer to strangle you, but that would be noticed, and you have caused me difficulties enough.'

He forced himself upright. 'I am what I claimed,' he said. 'Who is greater than Arunis? Your mother, who turned you into a convulsive? The mighty Ramachni? But they show no signs of coming to your aid. And where, for that matter, are Neeps and your lovely Thasha? It appears no one is thinking of you at all.'

Pazel knew where Thasha was — in her cabin, reading the Polylex and comforting the still-frightened Marila. She would not be looking for him, true enough — he had been rude to her again, unable to forget Oggosk's threat. Neeps would not come either: he was too irritated with the sailors who had spurned their aid. And if those lookouts or the men on the spars were watching, as surely they must be, what would they notice? Arunis had not laid a hand on him.

'Ah!' said the sorcerer. 'Take heart, Pathkendle. You are not friendless after all.'

Pazel just managed to raise his eyes. Up the forecastle ladder was climbing the last person on earth he wished to see: Jervik. The older tarboy stopped to speak to the lookouts, and glanced warily at Arunis.

'You will soon lose your grip,' said the mage, 'and plummet into the sea. By then I shall be in my quarters. But I have a few thoughts for you to ponder ere you fall.

'It was your own pride that doomed you, of course. Did you feel protected by Ramachni's spell? Idiot. You were safe, until you touched me of your own volition. By doing so you let me see through you like a glass. Now I know that you are not the spell-keeper, and I risk no harm to the Shaggat by killing you.

'Consider this as well: your friends will know agony. What Thasha suffered by that necklace is but a foretaste. She will become the plaything of the Gurishal lunatics, or of the Shaggat himself if he wants her. She will bear children who will be taken from her and raised in the knowledge that their mother was a whore. Neeps Undrabust will be lowered into tanner's acid, gradually, until his screaming stops. Fiffengurt will be blinded and abandoned to the lepers of Ursyl. Hercol's queen will be devoured by wolfhounds before his eyes.

'And then there is your city. When I rule this world through the Shaggat, I shall finish the job Arqual began five years ago. Ormael will be razed, the adults taken into the Straits of Simja and drowned, the children scattered to other lands and made to forget their language. All this I shall see to personally — in memory of you, Pazel Pathkendle. Goodbye.'

The mage departed without a backward glance. As he passed Jervik he made a sharp gesture in Pazel's direction. Jervik nodded and hurried to the bowsprit.

'Muketch,' he said, in a low, gleeful voice. 'What've you got yer brown arse into now?'

The lookouts were back at their designated spots on the port and starboard rails. Pazel tried to speak, but only managed a feeble moan. With each pitch of the ship he felt his fingers loosening.

'Quiet, eh?' said Jervik. 'He said you might be. Tha's all right. I can sit here as long as you like. But if you try somethin' I'll deck you proper, s'help me Rin.'

With immense effort, Pazel shook his head. Jervik grinned, his face like a wide-mouthed frog. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he pulled something from his shirt and held it up for Pazel to admire.

On a leather cord beside his brass Citizenship Ring hung a thick gold bead. It might have weighed as much as eight or nine Arquali cockles, and been worth ten times that, if the metal was as pure as it looked.

'I'm rich,' he said. 'I'll have one o' these every week I do his biddun.'

Pazel was finding it difficult to blink. A few more pitches of the bow and he would drop like a stone.

'What're you doin' out there, you daft pig?' said the older boy after a moment. 'Get in here. I'm s'posed to watch you, is all. I'm not gonna hurt you.'

He stepped forwards. He was getting annoyed at Pazel's silence. And all at once Pazel understood the part Arunis had in mind for Jervik.

You poor imbecile.

There was no way to warn him. When Pazel's head lolled down to his chest he could not raise it again.

'I said, get in 'ere!'

Jervik cuffed the back of his head — signing his own death warrant (for murderers at sea were hanged from the yardarm, no exceptions) if he only knew. Pazel barely felt the blow, but with the next pitch of the Chathrand his arm slipped from the Goose-Girl. Jervik gave a sort of woof of surprise. Pazel was looking head-down at the churning sea. Then, as the bowsprit rose again, he fell.

Onto an outstretched arm.

Belesar Bolutu was there, shirtless, wrenching Pazel out of his fall and against his black chest. The man had leaped past Jervik and straddled the bowsprit, clinging for dear life with his legs. An incoherent howl escaped his tongueless mouth.

For a hideous moment Pazel felt them both sliding into a fall — he lifeless as a sack, Bolutu with his arms locked around his chest. Then the lookouts dived on Bolutu with cries of By the board! By the board! and hauled the two of them to safety.

Dimly, he felt hands stretch him out on the deck. The forecastle was suddenly crowded: others must have flung themselves down from the rigging the moment his fall began. The voices were far away.

'Another fit! The boy's a menace to himself!'

'He was pushed! Jervik Lank did it, the dirty bastard!'

'Are ye sure it was Lank? What about that damned Arunis?'

Sudden silence. Pazel wheezed, and they all looked down at him thoughtfully. Somewhere in the depths of the ship the white dog began to bark.

'Arunis didn't lay a finger on him,' said one of the lookouts. 'He just talked and went his way.'

'Why don't the muketch say nothin'?'

'He jumped! He jumped! Didn't he, Brother Bolutu, sir?'

A pail of seawater struck his face. Pazel gasped, and found he could move again. Even as he struggled to sit up, Neeps and Thasha pushed their way through the crowd.

'Pazel!' cried Neeps. 'Burning devils, what's happened to you now?'

'I'm all right,' he said, letting them pull him to his feet.

He was very dizzy. Scores of off-duty men surrounded them, but only Neeps and Thasha held his arms. 'What did you want die for, Pathkendle?' asked one of the lookouts.

'Oh shut up!' said Thasha. 'Pazel, it was Jervik, wasn't it? That vicious thug, I'll-'

'No,' said Pazel. 'Not this time.' He took a stumbling step, and the crowd parted before him. 'Where's Bolutu gone?' he said. 'That man just saved my life.'

'Brother Bolutu took off near as fast as he got here,' said the watch captain, hitching his thumb at the ladder. 'Didn't say a word. Oh, but then he can't, can he?'

They left the gaping men behind. Pazel's hands shook on the ladder, and when he had descended to the topdeck he found himself short of breath. He steadied himself against the wall of the forecastle house, blinking gratefully at his friends.

'Arunis… is spying on us,' he gasped. Despite his exhaustion he knew the spell was fading; already the warm tropical evening had driven the cold from his limbs. He told them of the mage's attack and the part Jervik had played. But he could not bring himself to confess how Arunis had exploited his feelings for Thasha.

'At least we know he's still weak, still recovering from Dhola's Rib, or even before. He can still cast spells, obviously — but it cost him something terrible. I doubt he could have managed the second one if I hadn't touched him.'

'Not likely he was shamming, either, since he thought you'd be dead,' said Thasha.

'He's afraid of you, Thasha. He wants to get you off this ship. Maybe he really is weak, right now. He didn't want anyone to know that he had killed me, so he left Jervik to take the blame. That fool doesn't know how close he came to earning a jump from the mizzenmast.'

'With a noose for a necktie,' said Neeps. 'And I for one wouldn't have shed a — Thasha, what's wrong?'

Thasha's eyes were gleaming with sudden realisation. 'Chadfallow was right,' she said.

Neeps looked at her, then started. 'Blow me down. So he was.'

Pazel looked from one to the other. 'What do you mean? Right about what?'

'There was a fight on the berth deck,' said Thasha. 'Half the crew ran to see it. The crowd was so thick you could hardly move.'

'What sort of a fight?'

Neeps shrugged. 'Plapps versus Burnscoves, that's all we ever heard. It started in the mess hall. Dastu took a few nasty hits — seems he tried to keep the peace, and nobody thanked him. Marila's with him right now in sickbay.'

'By the time we arrived the fight was getting ugly,' said Thasha. 'Hercol was tossing men left and right, shouting at both gangs to come to their senses. I could have helped, but Marila grabbed me around the waist and wouldn't let go. Then Neeps got knocked over and she had to let go of me and grab him before he jumped in and got himself killed.'

'Stubborn little devil, that one,' muttered Neeps.

'The next thing we knew Chadfallow was shouting at us from the edge of the mob: "On your guard! This is not a coincidence!" That's when we asked ourselves what had happened to you.'

'A diversion,' said Neeps, 'the whole blary fight. Arunis didn't want anyone watching the forecastle.' He looked at Pazel sharply. 'And you're a daft one, aren't you?'

'Daft?' said Pazel.

'As a dicky-bird!' said Thasha. 'How could you just sit out there with your back to the ship? Do you have any idea how foolish that was?'

'And it's not even the worst part,' said Neeps. 'He grabbed Arunis by the hand! Rin's chin, mate! Why didn't you just hand over your old man's knife and say, Stab me? '

They began a lively quarrel over the signature moment of Pazel's stupidity. Pazel, who thought of both friends as outrageously devoid of fear, was alarmed to realise how badly he'd shocked them. What he'd done was idiotic, to be sure. For some reason he recalled a question Chadfallow had thrown at him as a challenge, years ago, at their dinner table in Ormael: What's the real tragedy, lad? To fall from a cliff and perish — or to be the sort of man who cares so little for his life that he risks it?

He watched his friends argue: exasperating, irreplaceably dear. He wanted to live for any number of reasons. But first among them was to stop Arunis from carrying out the threats he'd made on the forecastle.

He sighed; there was worse to confess. 'He saw through me when I touched him,' he said, as Neeps and Thasha turned to stare. 'At least that's what he claimed. He said that Ramachni didn't make me the spell-keeper, when I used the Master-Word. So the Shaggat won't be made flesh again if I'm killed.'

A moment's silence. Then Thasha grabbed him by the collar, her hands literally vibrating with rage. 'You imbecile.'

'Just go straight back to the stateroom,' said Neeps, 'and get comfortable. You can make the tea from now on.'

Pazel was livid, but he knew his friends were right. Arunis had nothing to lose by killing him now. And why wouldn't he? Pazel had come closer to stopping him than anyone aboard.

'Listen,' he said. 'I'm sorry. But if you want me to spend the rest of this float in the blary stateroom you'll have to tie me up.'

'That's an idea,' said Thasha.

Pazel glared at her. 'In any case, you're the one who's in danger.' And he told them about Arunis' claim that Rose intended to sell her to the Bramian natives.

'What rubbish!' said Thasha when he had finished.

But Neeps looked worried. 'Maybe it's not,' he said. 'Rose is just crooked enough. And the tribals on Bramian wouldn't get much out of killing you, would they? Not as if you're a threat, once they've whisked you off into those jungles. More likely they'd make you a slave or a servant. That way if you turned out to be the spell-keeper the Shaggat would still be in the clear.'

'Think about it,' said Pazel. 'How else could Rose get you off the ship, keep you from dying, and prevent you from warning the outside world?'

'Thasha,' said Neeps, 'just keep to the stateroom for a while. Until we're away from Bramian.'

She looked from one to the other, exasperated. 'What's got into you two? Hide? Is that all we're going to do, until Rose decides to starve us out, or Ott starts cutting off our fingers? We need to fight back. We need to get back to the list.'

'The list?' said Neeps.

'The list of allies, you donkey — potential allies, I mean. And we need to do it soon. We can't beat them without more people on our side.'

'You're right about that,' said Neeps. 'But we'll have to be so damned careful.' He leaned closer, whispering, 'I have no idea why Rose has been so easy on us, but one thing's for sure: he won't go easy on mutineers.'

Pazel sighed. 'All right, genius. You come up with a plan.'

'We start with one person each,' said Thasha instantly, as though she'd only been waiting for someone to ask. 'Just one. Surely we can each find one person to trust on this ship? If Hercol and Marila do the same thing, we'll have ten people on our side.'

Neeps looked at her eagerly. 'And once we've all met, and decided the best way to fight these cretins-'

'We go out and find ten more,' Thasha finished. 'And if we can just keep doing that, we'll have half the crew on our side before we know it. Of course the trick will be to find them before anyone else knows it.'

Neeps was shaking his head in wonder. 'Thasha, you're as clever as my old Granny Undrabust! You really do have a head for — what's the word?'

'Tactics,' said Pazel.

'Tactics, that's it. All right then: we've got our plan, don't we?'

Pazel didn't answer. The others looked at him in surprise. At last he said, 'How can you possibly think this will work? If we guess wrong about just one person, we're dead as slag. Everything hinges on trust.'

Neeps and Thasha exchanged a glance. 'Trust, yeah,' said Neeps. 'Well, that's something we have, and they don't.'

Pazel shrugged. Once again Thasha was seeing it, that sudden darkening of his spirits, that drawing away. It was agony for her to watch, and she fought back an impulse to reach for him, right in front of Neeps. You're afraid of feeling something. Why?

Then, to her amazement, Pazel clutched her arm — tightly, a warning. He pointed up at the main yard, the giant horizontal timber that secured the Chathrand 's largest sail. The yard was still bathed in orange sunlight, although the deck beneath it lay dark. And at the end of the yard sat a bird of prey.

It was a falcon, small and exquisite, black above, cream-yellow below. It was examining them with one bright eye.

Almost as soon as Thasha saw it the bird was in flight, dropping casually from the main yard to vanish below the rail. The three youths raced across the deck. But here at its midsection the ship was over two hundred feet wide, and by the time they reached the rail and leaned out over the sea the bird was gone.

'Damnation!'

'It had to be-'

'Of course it was!'

They dropped back onto the deck, once again earning stares from the crew. Pazel groaned aloud. 'That's all we need! Pitfire, why did Ramachni have to let him go?'

But Thasha felt oddly tense, as if tremors had suddenly shaken the boards at her feet. 'He's circling,' she said.

'What?' said Neeps. "How can you know that? What's wrong with you?'

Thasha turned in place, her gaze flung wide, as if trying to catch up with something in a hurtling orbit around the ship. 'I don't know how I know,' she said, 'but he's above the deck again, teasing us — he's slowing — there!'

A blur of wings, a shrill cry, and there it was, landing neatly on a brace-line seven feet above their heads. Men shouted, pointing: a few of them remembered the falcon. None better than Thasha, however, who had watched the bird for years — loved it, she imagined, though it never paused in its flight — from the gardens of the Lorg Academy.

'Welcome back, Niriviel,' she said.

'You should not welcome me,' said the falcon, in that fierce, high voice she recalled so well: the voice that somehow belonged to both a predator and a homeless child. 'I bring you no good tidings, Thasha Death-Cheater. No comfort to the betrayers of Arqual.'

Thasha shook her head. 'We haven't betrayed anyone, Niriviel. We tried to explain that to you in Simja.'

'After you stabbed my master in the leg. Do you deny this?'

Thasha winced. 'I — no, Niriviel, I don't.'

'Oh come off it, Thasha,' said Pazel. 'It was only a dinner fork.'

Niriviel's wings were aflutter. 'You raised your hand against Sandor Ott, first defender of His Supremacy! If you are not a traitor then the word means nothing at all!'

'Fine,' said Thasha, in what she hoped was a soothing voice. 'You can call me what you like. But even if we're on different sides, I want you to know something. I'm happy to see you again.'

The bird gave an agitated hop.

'It's strange,' said Thasha, 'but I feel you're part of my life, and always will be. I can't watch you fly and not feel, I don't know — joy, I suppose.'

'Twaddle,' said the falcon.

Neeps had had enough. 'What do you want, bird?' he demanded.

Thasha motioned desperately for silence. 'I'm not lying to you,' she told the falcon. 'But why have you come back to us, anyway?'

The bird paused. His head cocked, dipped, darted. Then Thasha had a terrible thought. 'Oh, Niriviel. You didn't… lose him, did you? Sandor Ott, I mean?'

Niriviel peered at her with great intensity. Thasha arched her neck back.

'You can tell me,' she said. 'I know he was like your father. Is that why you're back? Because you have nowhere left to go?'

'What nonsense!' cried the falcon suddenly. 'And what a fool you take me for! It is not I who has lost someone. Where is your own father, girl?'

'He stayed behind. In Simja.'

'And beyond that you cannot say. Beyond that you dare not imagine.'

'What do you mean?' cried Thasha. 'Do you know something about my father? Tell me!'

'Nothing for traitors.'

Pazel tried to take her arm, but Thasha shook him off. 'I'm no traitor, you stupid bigoted bird! I'm an Arquali, do you hear? What else could I be?'

'An orphan?' said Niriviel.

Thasha was almost sobbing. 'Tell me! Tell me what you know!'

But Niriviel only cried aloud — a mocking cry, perhaps — and leaped once more into flight. Seconds later he had vanished westwards, towards the black wall of Bramian.