The Rats and the Ruling sea

1

7 Teala 941 86th day from Etherhorde (Treaty Day — six hours earlier)

'Eyes open, Neda.'

The Father had come to her alone. He held his own cup and candle, and he smiled at the girl asleep on the granite slab under the woollen shift, who obeyed him and smiled in kind and yet did not wake or stir. Her eyes when they winked open were blue; he had seen nothing like them in any other living face. A strand of weed in her hair. Dry streaks of saltwater on her neck and forehead. Like his other children she had spent the night in the sea.

She was twenty-two, the man six times her age, unbent, unwearied, his years betrayed only in the whiteness of his beard and in the voice deep and travelled and kindly and mad. The girl knew that he was mad, and knew also that the day she revealed such knowledge by glance or sigh or question would be the day she died.

She knew many secret things. Until the Father woke her she would sleep like the other aspirants, but there was a disobedient flame in her that gleamed on, thought on, insensible to his orders. She wished it out. She tried to snuff it with meditation, inner exorcisms, prayers: it danced on, full of heresies and mirth. And because the Father could peer into her mind as through a frosted window it was but a matter of time before he saw it. Perhaps he saw it now, this very minute. Perhaps he was considering her fate.

She loved him. She had never loved another thus. It was not an earthly or a simple love but he could read its contours in her sleeper's smile as he had on his children's faces for a century.

'You dream, do you not?'

'I do,' she replied.

'And yet the dream is unsteady. You are nearer to waking than I've asked you to be.'

It was not a question. The girl lay watching him, asleep and not asleep. The Old Faith she had taken for her own states that life is not a struggle against death, but rather towards that authentic death inscribed at the instant of one's birth. If he had come to kill her it meant fulfilment, the end of her work.

'You must not wake, best beloved. Turn your face to the dream. And when it surrounds you again, describe it.'

The girl's eyes rolled, the lids half-lowered, and watching her the Father trembled as he always did at the immensity of creation. She would see nothing more of the shrine about her — not the dawn light on the huddled sleepers nor the west arch open to the sea nor the quartz knife on his belt nor the pure white milk in his cup — but what endured were the territories within. Outside, fishermen were picking a trail through the sawgrass down to the shore, greeting one another in the happy lilt of Simja, this island unclaimed by any empire. Under the sheer wool the girl's limbs began to twitch. She was not quiet in the place of the dream.

'I am in the hills,' she said.

'Your hills. Your Chereste Highlands.'

'Yes, Father. I am very near my house — my old house, before I became your daughter and was yet simple Neda of Ormael. My city is burning. It is on fire and the smoke trails out to sea.'

'Are you alone?'

'Not yet. In a moment Suthinia my birth-mother will kiss me and run. Then the gate will shatter and the men will arrive.'

'Men of Arqual.'

'Yes, Father. Soldiers of the Cannibal-King. They are outside the gate at the end of the houserow. My mother is weeping. My mother is running away.'

'Did she speak no last word to you?'

The sleeping girl tensed visibly. One hand curled into a fist. 'Survive, she said. Not how. Not for whom.'

'Neda, Phoenix-Flame, you are there at the rape of Ormael, but also here, safe beside me, among your brothers and sisters in our holy place. Breathe, that's right. Now tell me what happens next.'

'The gate is torn from its hinges. The men with spears and axes are surrounding my house. They're in the garden, stealing fruit from my orange tree. But the oranges are not orange, they're green, green still. They're not ripe enough to eat!'

'Gently, child.'

'The men are angry. They're breaking the lower limbs.'

'Why don't they see you?'

'I'm underground. There is a trapdoor hidden in the grass, overlooking the house.'

'A trapdoor? Leading where?'

'Into a tunnel. My birth-father dug it with his smuggler friends. I don't know where it leads. Under the orchards, maybe, back into the hills. I thought he might be here, my birth-father, after leaving us long ago. But no one's here. I'm in the tunnel alone.'

'And the men are looting your house.'

'All the houses, Father. But ours they chose first-Aya!'

The girl's cry was little more than a whimper, but her face creased in misery.

'Tell me, Neda.'

'My brother is there in the street. He's so young. He is staring at the men in the garden.'

'Why do you not call to him?'

'I do. I call Pazel, Pazel — but he can't hear, and if I raise my voice they'll turn and see him. And now he's running to the garden wall.'

The Father let her continue, sipping thoughtfully at his milk. Neda told how her brother pulled himself up by the thrushberry vine, crept in at his bedroom window, emerged moments later with a skipper's knife and a whale statuette. How he fled into the plum orchards. How a mob of soldiers drew near her hiding place and spoke of her mother and the girl herself in terms that made the Father put the cup down, shaking with rage. As if they were cannibals in truth. As if souls were nothing and bodies mere cuts of meat. These men who would civilise the world.

The dawn light grew. He pinched his candle out and beckoned the vestment-boy near to keep her face in shadow, and the lad quaked when her blue eyes fixed on him. But Neda was gone — gone to Ormael, possessed by the dream she was speaking. The soldiers' roar at the discovery of the liquor cabinet. Her girlish clothes tossed with laughter from a window, socks in the orange tree, blouses held up to armoured chests. Bottles shattered, windows smashed; a ruined bleat from the neighbour's concertina. Sunset, and endless dark hours in the cave, and frost on the trapdoor at morning.

Then she cried much louder than before and he could not comfort her, for she was watching the soldiers drag her brother down the hillside, hurl him flat and beat him with their fists and a branch of her tree.

'They hate him. They want to kill him. Father. Father. They are screaming in his face.'

'Screaming what?'

'The same words over and over. I did not speak their language, then. Pazel did but he was silent.'

'And you recall those words, don't you?'

She was shaking all over. She spoke in a voice not quite her own. '"Madhu ideji? Madhu ideji?" '

The Father closed his eyes, not trusting himself to speak. Even his own slight Arquali was enough. He could hear it, in all its snarled violence, bellowed at a child in pain: Where are the women? And the boy had held his tongue.

When he opened his eyes she was gazing right at him. He tried to be stern. 'Tears, Neda? You know that is not our way. And no fury or grief or shame can best a child of the Old Faith. And no Arquali is your equal. Stop crying. You are sfvantskor, best beloved.'

'I wasn't then,' she said.

True enough. No sfvantskor or anything like. A girl of seventeen at the time. Captured that very night, when thieves skulking deeper inside the tunnel chased her out at knife-point, into the hands of the Arqualis. Unable to speak to them, to plead. Brutalised, as he would not ask her to recall, before the strange Doctor Chadfallow intervened, freeing her in a shouting match with a general that came almost to blows.

The doctor was a favourite of the Arquali Emperor, who had named him Special Envoy to the city before the invasion. A friend to Neda and her family too, it seemed, for he took the girl bleeding as she was to his Mzithrini counterpart, who was to be expelled with his household that same afternoon.

'Save her, Acheleg,' he pleaded. 'Take her with you as a daughter, open your heart.'

But this Acheleg was a beast. He had failed to predict the invasion, and so was returning to the Mzithrin in some disgrace. He saw no reason to help his rival. Both he and Chadfallow had wished to marry Suthinia, Neda's mother, and although she had refused both and vanished none knew where, Acheleg still fancied himself particularly spurned. Now fate had given him Suthinia's child. Not the great beauty her mother was, and left unclean by the enemy, but still a prize for a slouching ex-diplomat whose future conquests would be scarce. He took her to Babqri — but as a concubine, not a daughter. And only because the man was fool enough to bring her to court, when he came beetling through with his lies and flattery for the king, had the Father spotted her.

Blue eyes. He had heard of such things in the East. And when the girl saw him watching and raised those eyes, the Father knew she would be sfvantskor. A foreign sfvantskor! It was a sign of catastrophe, of the old world's end. But in a hundred years of choosing he had never needed more than a glance.

Such an odd fate, Neda's. Saved from an Arquali by an Arquali, and from one Mzithrini by another. Twice taken as plunder, the third time as a warrior for the gods.

But still not a sfvantskor, in point of fact. None of his children (he moved among them, speaking the dawn prayer, breaking their sleep-trance with his fingertips) could claim the title until he gave them up. It had always been so, and always would be: only when they knelt before one of the Five Kings and swore fealty were they sfvantskors, warrior-priests of the Mzithrin. Until that day they were his aspirants, his children. Afterwards he would not even speak their names.

Not a sfvantskor, thought the girl, her dream dissolving and the tears quite gone. Not even a normal aspirant, for she was foreign-born. It made a difference. Even the Father could not pretend otherwise, although he forbid the others to mention it. For two thousand years the elders had moulded youth into sfvantskors to serve the Mzithrin Kings, to lead their armies and terrify their foes. Power dwelt in them, power from the Forts of Forever, from the shards of the Black Casket and the vault of the wind. It was more than an honour: it was a life's destiny and a sacred trust. And only native-born Mzithrini youths were called. That was the order of things, until the Father brought Neda to his Citadel.

Neda Pathkendle. A row of old Masters spoke her name in the Greeting Hall that first day, as if the very syllables displeased them.

Neda Ygrael, said the Father. I have renamed her. Watch her; you will understand in time.

Ygrael, Phoenix-Flame. The grandness of his gesture did not help. The other six aspirants (four boys, two perfect girls) were scandalised. A hazel-skinned refugee from Ormael, one of the vassal-states of the enemy? Had they been singled out for shame? Were they such poor candidates that the timeless customs need not apply?

One did not question the Father — he who had sucked a black demon from a wound in King Ahbsan's neck, and spat the thing into a coal stove, where it howled and clattered for a month — but his choice tested faith. There was open hissing at the feast of Winterbane, when the new aspirants marched through Babqri City. There was the dove's carcass, burned black and left on her pillow, with the words Never to Rise in ash upon the floor. There was the day she learned about Belligerent Expulsion: an ancient rule by which the other aspirants, if they declared unanimously that one of their brethren had 'sought to make enemies of them all,' could cast that member out.

Neda had done no such thing; she had been obedient to their whims, tolerant of their spite; and yet five of the six had voted for her removal. When the effort failed, Neda had gone quietly to the one who sided with her, a tall proud girl named Suridin. Neda knelt before her and whispered her thanks, but the girl kicked her over with a bitter laugh.

'It wasn't for you,' she said. 'I want to serve the navy, like my birth-father, and they bring witches who can smell a lie to the swearing-in. What am I going to say when they ask if I've ever given false testimony?'

Suridin's birth-father was an admiral in the White Fleet. 'I understand, sister,' said Neda.

'You don't understand a thing. I wish you would start a fight with one of us. You don't belong here, and I'd vote against you in a heartbeat if I could.'

All this was horrid and prolonged. But five years later it was over, and it had ended just as the Father said it would: with Neda trained and deadly and strong in the Faith, and her six brethren embracing her (some loving, others merely obedient), and the Mzithrini common folk no longer quite sure why they had objected.

Neda, however, suffered no such confusion. They were right, her enemies. They saw what the Father did not: that she would fail, disgracing her title, if it were ever bestowed. She had fired an arrow over the River Bhosfal and struck a moving target. She had walked a rope stretched over the Devil's Gorge, and carried her own weight in water up the three hundred steps of the Citadel. But the way of the sfvantskor was perfection, and in one matter she was gravely imperfect. She could not forget.

For an aspirant nothing could be worse. Besides martial and religious training, a great part of the making of a warrior-priest occurred in trance. Only with those in trance could the Father share the holy mysteries; only those souls could he cleanse of fear. Neda drifted easily into the first layers of trance — sleeping and waking at his command, obeying without question, focusing her mind on whatever thought he named. But never only on what he named. The deepest and most sacred mode of trance was achieved when all other distractions melted away: in other words, when one forgot. Remove the dust of Now and Before, went the proverb, and things eternal are yours.

This Neda could never do. Year upon year she tried, stretched out on granite, listening to his voice. While the others shed memories like old clothes, she lay still and pretended. Forget yesterday and today. Forget the breath before this breath. She remembered. And when the Father told them to forget certain lessons, certain books suddenly gone from the library, certain Masters lecturing one day and the next quite vanished, Neda recalled them too. Every word, every face. And other weaknesses of the Father, shameful for an aspirant to know.

But what damned her beyond redemption were her lies. They were skilful — flawless even — for it was never an effort to recall exactly what she should pretend not to know. But how long could she hide this loathing for herself?

Alone at prayer, she beat her head on the floor. In bed she cursed herself, sfvantskor battle-curses and sea-oaths in her father's Ormali and sibilant Highland witch-curses from her mother, whose dabbling with spells had almost killed Neda and her brother before the invasion.

And should have. For her brother Pazel had been carried away unconscious, to be buried with the day's thousand dead, or nursed back to health and enslaved. And Neda, spared such a fate by the Father, could not stop her mind from betraying him.

'Rise, my seven.'

Quick as cats, they obeyed. All were dressed, none armed: the Simjans allowed visitors many privileges, but weaponry was not among them. The Father led them in silence through the east arch and along the marble wall, to the foot of a narrow unrailed staircase. At its top stood the Declarion: a high pedestal, topped with four pillars and a jade-green dome, on the inside of which was inscribed the Covenant of Truth in a script of flowing silver. The Father climbed, and they waited to be called.

The sun had not yet risen: its light touched only the peaks of the distant mountains of Simja, leaving the land below in darkness. Around the shrine a flock of goats had settled for the night and lingered yet, barely stirring, and not a window gleamed in the city of Simjalla across the fields. Neda listened to the waves' cotton roaring, felt the pull of them still. I was all night in the sea. I walked from here to the surf in trance. The creatures swarmed round me, the anglerfish and skates. A witch sang spells over the water. A murth-girl was crying for a boy she loves. I'm not supposed to remember.

She tried to empty her mind for prayer. But on the last step below the Declarion the Father abruptly turned to face them. His disciples jumped: the morning rites were not casually altered. The Father gazed at them fiercely.

'You know how long they have sought our destruction,' he said. 'You know the price in blood we have paid to survive. Now much is changed. Our Five Kings of the Holy Mzithrin have laboured long for peace with the enemy, and when today in this very shrine our prince weds Thasha Isiq, they say the time of pain and death will be over. But I see something darker, my children. A new war: brief but terrible, as if these several centuries of war were compressed to a single year, with all the ruin but no rebirth. I see the spectre of annihilation. Would you know where it resides? Look behind you, then.'

As one his disciples turned. There lay Simja Harbour, thick with ships: their own white warships and Arquali dreadnoughts, the island's tiny fighting fleet, scores of vessels bearing rulers and mystics of the lesser faiths, all gathered for the wedding that would seal the peace.

Yet dwarfing them all was the Great Ship. The Chathrand, ancient of ancients, seemingly immortal in her sea-worthiness, made by forgotten artisans in a lost age of miracles. They said six hundred men were needed just to sail her, and that twice as many could ride with ease, and still leave room for grain enough to see a city through the winter, or arms enough to gird whole legions for war. She belonged to the enemy, though not to the enemy crown. By some mad twist of Arquali thinking her ownership was private: the Emperor had had to pay some merchant-baroness for the right to convey the Treaty Bride in such style.

'The Chathrand,' said the Father. 'Like the Plague Ships of old, she comes flying the colours of peace, but in her hold the air is rife with evil. When first she weighed anchor in Etherhorde, half a world away in the bosom of the enemy, I knew she bore a threat. Each league closer I felt it grow. Wide across the Nelu Peren she sailed, and there far from land the danger grew. Then six days she lay in Ormaelport, Neda's old home, and took on some monstrous new power. And yesterday — yesterday the sun dimmed at noon, and the spell-weave of the world was stretched, almost to tearing. Then nearly I saw her true intent. But the power hid itself away, and now she lies like a great docile cow, awaiting our summons.

'And we must summon her — summon the bride's party and our own Prince Falmurqat, summon all the visiting lords and nobles to this our shrine. For that is the will of the Five Kings. Who can blame them? Who does not want peace? And perhaps yesterday's burst of magic saw the evil in Chathrand destroyed. But my heart says otherwise. This Thasha of Etherhorde will not marry our prince, and her Empire seeks no end to war — unless our end as a people be part of it.'

The Father's jaw tightened. 'The Five Kings would not hear me out. "You live in the past, Father," they chided. "All your long life the war has raged, and now in your waning years you can imagine only more of the same. The world has changed; the Empire of Arqual has changed, and so must we. Train your sfvantskors a little longer, if you are not content to rest, but leave off statecraft." But when have I been wrong?'

He paused deliberately. Neda dared not breathe: she alone knew when.

'They are blind,' said the Father. 'They see only the riches to be had through trade with the East. I see further. But I am no king, and have no spies or soldiers to command. Yet I have the friendship of certain officers in the White Fleet. And I have you, children: sfvantskors in all but final vows. You are here because of Chathrand; you are here to save us from the evil she brings. More than this I have told you in trance, but it is not right that you should remember yet. When the time comes the memory will return of itself. Now we must be quick: take my blessing, and confess your fears.'

He stepped beneath the dome, and the first aspirant ran up the staircase and knelt. The Father spoke only briefly to each, for the sun would not hide much longer. But when Neda's turn came he set his hand upon her head, and she felt him tremble.

'Would you speak?' he asked her.

Her nails bit into her palm. 'I have no fears to confess,' she said.

'You will have,' he said. 'Your brother is aboard that ship.'

In shock Neda raised her eyes. The Father's own grew wide: aspirants were forbidden any glimpse of the dome's interior. Quickly she looked down again.

'Forgive me,' she said.

'He is a servant,' said the Father. 'What they call a tarboy, I think. And he is the special friend of Doctor Chadfallow, who is also aboard.'

'Pazel,' she whispered. He was alive, alive'You must not speak to him, Neda.'

She swallowed, fighting for calm.

'Not until the wedding ends. Indeed he must not see your face. His presence here cannot be an accident. You and Ultri shall stand behind me, masked, until it is over.'

'Yes, Father. But when it's over?'

He sighed. 'Dear one, even I do not know what will happen then.'

The Father blessed her, and she groped shaking for the stairs. The last disciple knelt before him briefly. Then the lip of the sun rose over the sea and the Father raised his arms and cried out in a voice like a roll of thunder, sending the goats bolting for their lives and larks and sparrows rising in terror across the fields. It was the Annuncet, the Summons, heightened by the magic of the dome, louder than Neda had ever heard it. The Father sang the ritual words again and again, seeming to need no breath at all, and he did not cease until the lamps were burning across the city, in hall and tower and anchored ship.