The Red wolf conspiracy

Lessons Learned

11 Ilqrin 941

29th day from Etherhorde

"Blar baffin mud-me," said Thasha glumly.

Pazel looked up from the grammar book, exasperated. "Blar avfam muteti-'My husband is my trusted guide.? There's no d in the sentence, m'lady."

"Stop calling me that."

Pazel lowered his voice to a whisper. "You know I can't. They'll throw me out. Honestly, Thasha, you're not even trying."

"I'm not getting married," she whispered, furious. "And how would you know if I was trying? All you have to do is wait for your blary Gift to translate for you."

"I told you, I learned four languages by studying, before Mother cast the spell. I was already good with them. If she'd cast it on you, I suppose it would have helped your fighting. Isn't that what you're best at?"

"Fighting and tactics. That's what Hercуl and Prahba say, anyway."

"The point is, you have to start out good at something for it to make you better at it."

They were seated in velvet chairs in a corner of the first-class lounge. A few yards to their left, Brother Bolutu sat reading a book from the ship's library: Venomous Pests of Alifros. At the far end of the room, Syrarys sipped wine and chattered gaily with a crowd of women, among them Pacu Lapadolma. In the shadows behind the women stood a bucktoothed tarboy known as Sorry Suds, holding a wine jug and pulling the cord that turned the ceiling-mounted fan. Now and then a woman thrust out her cup, and the boy leaped to fill it.

Pazel's hair was so clean it felt like something he'd borrowed. Fiffengurt himself had dunked him in a tub of limewater. "You're going to tutor the Treaty Bride!" he said. "Your appearance will reflect on every boy on this ship. Imagine if a louse were to crawl from your hair onto Lady Thasha."

Jervik had called him a dandy-under his breath. He had not gotten over his terror at Pazel's unnatural fit of gibberish. But he still wouldn't return Pazel's father's knife or his mother's ivory whale-wouldn't admit to having them, in fact. "They was left on the Eniel, with a lot of my things," he'd told Pazel-but he smirked as he said it, and winked at his hangers-on.

"Your sister wasn't good at languages, I suppose," said Thasha, "otherwise the spell would have given her the same Gift, right? But she must have been good at something."

"Lots of things," said Pazel. "I used to think she was good at everything, in fact. Neda was strong, like you. She sang beautifully, and knew a thousand songs. And she understood people: that's what I remember most. I couldn't fool her, and neither could anyone else. Sometimes it made her sad. But if the spell did anything-besides nearly kill her-we didn't notice it before she ran away. I wonder sometimes if she ever forgave our mother, or if she thinks of me."

"Of course she does. Don't be daft."

"I don't even know if she's alive."

Thasha bit her lips. Pazel blinked at the page of Mzithrini script. Across the room, Pacu Lapadolma was chatting gaily about the Emperor's birthday, two weeks off but already the subject of lively anticipation. Pacu's great-aunt had presented the ship with a "party crate" to be opened on the night in question: it was certain to contain outlandish fun.

"Sound out the words, m'lady," said Pazel at last. "'My husband shall never go hungry while I live.'"

"Blur baffle-oh, I wish they'd pipe down!" Thasha glared at Pacu. "She has a voice like a tipsy rooster. We should go to my cabin."

"That's a brilliant idea," said Pazel dryly.

A month had passed since the day of his mind-fit. Ambassador Isiq had not spoken to Pazel again: when they passed on deck he pretended not to see the tarboy. Hercуl had suggested Pazel write a letter of apology. But how could he apologize for speaking the truth? In any case, the ambassador had at last given his grudging assent to these lessons. He had even come to some terms with Rose concerning Pazel's bond debt. Isiq had very little choice. Without Dr. Chadfallow, there was no Mzithrini-speaker aboard except Pazel-and at the very least, Thasha had to learn her vows.

The door opened and Hercуl stepped into the lounge. He smiled at Thasha but went at once to Syrarys, bowed and handed her a small package wrapped in muslin cloth. Syrarys gave him a brief nod and hid the package away.

Only then did Hercуl approach Thasha and Pazel.

"You found your buttons, Pathkendle," he said. "I'm amazed they were not stolen, after all those hours."

"I got lucky," said Pazel, raising a hand to his coat. In fact something far stranger than luck had come his way: the brass buttons had appeared in his pocket the morning after his mind-fit. He had thanked Neeps warmly, but the other tarboy had no idea what he was talking about. Neither did Reyast, in the hammock beneath him.

Pazel had decided they were teasing him, and forgotten all about it. But now, in the first-class lounge, another possibility struck him suddenly: the ixchel. Who else could retrieve lost buttons from cracks and crevices about the deck, and slip them unseen into his pocket?

Pazel looked with foreboding at the swordsman above him. Does he know? Hercуl was giving him another of those raptor-like stares. But he asked no questions, and instead held out a small wooden box and flipped open the lid.

Inside was what looked like clumps of glue and orange yarn. "Spider jellies," said Hercуl. "A specialty of Tressek Tarn."

Pazel thanked him, and nervously pressed one whole sticky wad into his mouth. But Thasha just sniffed at the candy.

"What did Syrarys want this time?" she asked.

Hercуl's eyebrows rose. "Medicine. Drops for your father's tea. Very thoughtful of her: she wrote ahead for them, from Ether-horde."

"Every time we're in port she sends you running about."

"As valet, I am her servant as well. Thasha, has Commander Nagan been this way?"

"Who?"

"The captain of your family's honor guard, my dear. He took ill and left us in Ulsprit, but I gather he caught up with the Chathrand and boarded today. I wish to make his acquaintance."

"I've never seen the man. Listen to me, Hercуl: you're my teacher. And there's not much time left to learn from you."

"That is so." Hercуl gave her a slight smile. "One must always keep an eye on the clock, don't you think?"

With that he turned and left the room. Thasha looked at Pazel, suddenly breathless. "That's our code," she whispered. "Ramachni's back. Pazel, you must come with me now."

She rose and half dragged Pazel from the lounge. They slipped through the empty dining room, passed the Money Gate and the officers' cabins. At her door Pazel stopped.

"This is the last place I ought to be," he said.

"Don't worry, it's all arranged. Come in."

"Arranged?" he said. "By whom? Is your father in there?"

"No, he's not, and neither is Syrarys. Pazel, can't you trust me?"

He looked at her warily. But he followed her into the stateroom.

The red light of sunset poured in through the stern windows, glittering on the brasswork and chandeliers. There was a five-foot samovar made of porcelain and jade, a wisp of steam still rising from its spout. There was a painting of a shipwreck in a great gilded frame, and the pair of crossed swords he had spotted before. But now across the center of the floor lay a huge, tawny bearskin rug, complete with head and claws.

"Another trinket from the Tarn, I guess," he said, toeing the yellow fangs.

Thasha turned to look at him. "My grandfather killed that bear with a hunting knife, on his farm in the Westfirth. Syrarys uncrated it because her feet were cold."

Pazel pulled back his toe. Thasha gave him a wry smile as she crossed the stateroom.

The money, Pazel thought. Feelings crashed together as he followed her: he was dirty, she was pampered, he was nothing, he was better than this girl.

We had old things too, he thought, trying furiously to remember. But the few objects he could recall from his life in Ormael seemed shabby and humdrum beside this splendor. On a table by the samovar lay a piece of coffee cake no one had bothered to finish. Tarboys had fistfights over less. What am I doing here? he thought.

Thasha opened the door to her own cabin. With monstrous thumps, Jorl and Suzyt rolled off the bed to greet her. She glanced instantly at the clock on her dresser: as before, its hinged, moon-patterned face stood ajar. She tugged Pazel into the room.

"Ramachni," she said. "It's me. I've brought Pazel Pathkendle."

"Have you indeed?"

The voice, high and velvet-soft and utterly inhuman, seemed to emanate from Thasha's pillows. Despite himself Pazel jumped: to his chagrin he saw an amused smile on Thasha's face.

She closed the cabin door. The pillows shifted, and from among them emerged the black mink. For a moment it was almost comical, this tidy creature shaking free of the bedclothes. Then it looked at Pazel and grew still.

Pazel did not move either: the black eyes were wide, and bottomless, and fortunately very kind. It knows me, he thought, and trembled a bit at the oddness of the notion. Then the little creature stretched luxuriously and sprang into Thasha's arms.

She laughed as it rubbed, cat-like, against her chin. "I've missed you so much!" she said.

"And I have missed those fingernails in my fur. This ship is infested with fleas of a most bloodthirsty order."

"Where have you been hiding, Ramachni?" asked Thasha. "Her-cуl and I have worried ourselves sick! We only knew you'd come aboard because Pazel told us."

"I am sorry to have abandoned you," said Ramachni. "I truly had no choice. There is a murderous power loose aboard the Chathrand: I sensed it with my first breath. It probes, and listens, and spies on our thoughts, and it thinks no more of killing than of wiping dust from a tabletop. I was caught off-guard. I could not tell who or what it was, for it keeps its face well hidden. The best I could do was to hide myself from it, so that it would not know that a power to match its own had come aboard-and not threaten those who befriend me. So I waited, just inside the clock, listening as best I could, until it seemed you had all left the cabin. But I was wrong-Mr. Pathkendle remained, and saw me, and I had to place a spell of protection on him to keep that Other from reading his thoughts."

"You used magic on me?" asked Pazel sharply.

"Trust me-I had no wish to do so," said Ramachni. "This is not my world, and when I come here I must use spells the way a nomad uses the water he carries, knowing it must last him across the desert. But fear not: the spell has long since snapped. And our meeting may yet prove lucky for us both." He flashed his white fangs at Pazel. It was perhaps as close as he could come to grinning.

Thasha sighed, and dropped him on the bed. "So you've been aboard all this time?"

Ramachni nodded. "Deep in the hold, out of sight. I had to listen to the ship, and try to gain some understanding of your peril."

"And this 'Other,'" Thasha went on, "did you learn who it is?"

"Alas, no. But I did learn what he is. He is a mage-a magic-weaver like myself."

"But less powerful, of course," said Thasha.

"Oh no," said Ramachni. "He is mightier, for he belongs to this world. I could not, for example, pierce his veil of secrecy-and with secrecy this mage is obsessed. Yes, he is strong indeed, and that troubles me. He could be a disciple of Arunis, the Blood Mage of Gurishal, the foulest sorcerer this world ever spawned. Arunis' greed was infinite. He even plundered other worlds, my own among them, in his search for deeper powers. I fought him there a century ago, in the great Library of Imbrethothe-Under-the-Earth, and cast him from my world. He limped back to Alifros, to the Mzithrin lands, and took refuge in the court of the Shaggat Ness. And the Shaggat was his doom, it seems: Dr. Chadfallow assured me that he died shortly after the Mad King himself."

"Chadfallow assured me he'd be aboard, taking care of Prahba," said Thasha. "I don't trust him. But you think this sorcerer could be Arunis' pet pupil, is that it?"

"Something of the kind," said Ramachni. "Mages, like tailors and poets, have styles to their names, and in the work of this sorcerer I detect more than a little of Arunis' influence-and all of his wickedness. We must be very careful.

"The only good news is that there are so many spells and shreds of spells, so many cobwebbed centuries of magic in this ship, that a few charms of my own may pass unnoticed for a time. Oh, he will find them eventually-he will know another mage is aboard, and fighting him-but with luck that will not happen soon."

"Mr. Uskins is a bad man," said Pazel firmly. "And Captain Rose is horrible. Come to think of it, he also hears voices-spirits, he calls them. Could he be the one you mean?"

"Anything is possible," said Ramachni. "And Nilus Rose is a born conspirator. But there is no time to speculate. I have asked Hercуl to keep Ambassador Isiq and his Lady away for thirty minutes, and we have already talked for ten."

Ramachni looked at Pazel again. "Will you hold my paw a moment?"

Pazel hesitated only long enough to remind himself that he was not facing a wild fanged animal but a great mage, and Thasha's friend. He took the little paw in his hand.

Ramachni closed his glittering eyes. He breathed deeply. "It's true," he said. "You're a Smythнdor."

"I'm an Ormali," said Pazel.

"Of course. But not just any Ormali. Your mother is Suthinia Sadralin Pathkendle-a mage herself, and the daughter of mages."

"You know her name! How?"

"Elementary, boy. She signed her spell, and I have just read the signature-" Ramachni reached up to touch Pazel's lips. "-there. A formidable spell! But dissolved in some rather unsanitary fruit juice, it appears."

"Please," said Pazel, repressing a shudder, "can you switch it off? Like the potion-seller in Sorhn? It almost killed me and my sister."

Ramachni looked up at him, compassion dawning in his eyes. "Don't you understand yet, Pazel? No one can switch it off. Your mother did not just toss a spell over you like an old coat. She changed you to the last drop of blood. In a sense, she really did kill you-killed your old self so that a new self could be born. That potion-seller did not cure you. He merely slammed a lid on the boiling kettle of your Gift-a most foolish act. If Dr. Chadfallow had not slipped those antihex-salts in your tea, sooner or later you would have run mad. As I say, lad, you're a Smythнdor, a person changed by magic forever. And I have spent half of forever looking for you."

There was a pause. Thasha looked from one to the other.

"So," she said in a constricted voice, "you've found him. And I suppose all these years you only needed my clock, needed my family and me to help you find this oh-so-special tarboy. Congratulations."

Ramachni sighed. "I will not say that you are wrong, Thasha dear."

Thasha looked as if she had hoped he would do just that. She seemed about to say more, but Ramachni spoke first:

"Mind you, I am also not saying you are right. Let me say instead that mages see but little more than normal folk of that mist-shrouded land called the future. Do you ever know why you make a friend, Thasha? Do you know what good or ill must come of it, in time?"

Thasha glanced shyly from mink to tarboy. Her face was crimson. "All these weeks I've been dying to talk to you. To ask you something I can ask of no one else."

Ramachni looked up at her. "Ask," he said.

"Will you help me escape this marriage? Please?"

The mink's head drooped. After a moment he said, "Yes, I will."

Thasha threw her arms around him in delight. But Ramachni raised a paw.

"I may not succeed. And if I do, the help may be as painful as what it remedies-or worse. But my heart tells me your fate will not be decided by marriage vows."

"Ha!" said Pazel. "That's for sure! Blur baffle-"

Thasha made a face at him. She was overjoyed.

"And now," said Ramachni, "we must concentrate on the peril at hand. This much I have learned by eavesdropping: besides the mage, who has been aboard for many weeks, another man of evil will soon be among us. Someone terrible. All the sly whispers center on him. He may be passenger or sailor or servant. He may stay aboard for weeks or hours: I do not know. But Rose and Uskins-and the mage-in-hiding, too-think of little else. And the only being of goodwill who knows this terrible man's name is a rat."

"A rat!" cried Pazel and Thasha together.

Ramachni nodded. "A woken rat, amazingly. You will know him by his stumpy tail. I've tried many times to speak to him, but the rats of Chathrand are ruled by some awful fear and attack anyone who approaches their warren. If you find him, treat him kindly. He must be the most unhappy creature on this ship."

On that point Ramachni was wrong, Pazel thought: no one could be as miserable as Steldak, the prisoner in Rose's desk. But the little mage did not seem to know about the ixchel, and Pazel dared not speak of them. He could still hear Diadrelu: They will be the last words you ever speak. And she was the friendly one.

"Ramachni," he said, "why have you been looking for me?"

"To enlist your help," said the mage. "By that I mean: to ask you to accept another Gift."

A brief, astonished silence. "You're joking," said Pazel.

The mink shook his head.

Pazel fumbled behind him for the doorknob. "Absolutely not," he said.

"It would have no unpleasant effects," said the mink. "At least, not for many years."

"Fantastic-not much chance of living many years with this crowd. But if I do? What then? Do I sprout horns and tail, so that when I start babbling like a murth I'll look the part?"

"Oh sky!" said Thasha suddenly. "Grow up, Pazel. Ramachni's so careful with magic I didn't think he could do any for the first year I knew him. If he says it's safe, it's safe."

"But he's not saying that."

The mink clicked his teeth, making him appear to grin once again. "Very true, I am not."

"Pazel," said Thasha, "are you afraid?"

Idiotic question. He opened the door and fled across the stateroom-snatching up the cake as he went. Then he heard feet pounding behind him. A whirl of motion, and Thasha stood between him and the outer door.

"You can't say no to Ramachni."

"No?"

Pazel looked back at the mage, who had walked calmly into the stateroom. "Do it to Thasha the Brave, here," he said. "One Gift was enough to ruin my life."

"It will not be enough to save your world from death," said Ramachni.

Pazel froze, the cake halfway to his mouth. Ramachni sat back on his haunches.

"Eavesdropping is difficult in the hold of a ship, but it is a thousand times more difficult from another world. For ninety years Alifros has been my chief concern, bound as it is to my own world by blood and happenstance. Dawn to dusk have I listened, and midnights, too. Now at last the moment comes. A fell power is brooding over the Chathrand. Greater than the evil mage already aboard her, or the horrible man who will board soon-though they perhaps seek to use it. What is it? When and how will it strike? I do not know. But I know that it cannot be ignored, for I have walked in lands where it prevailed, where men hoped it would pass them by, and were wrong. Trust me this far, Pazel Pathkendle: you do not know the meaning of ruin."

Pazel looked at him: a small creature on a bearskin rug, its black eyes blazing.

"What do you want?" he said.

"To listen with you. And if you should hear something… extraordinary, to teach you a word to know it by. Perhaps several words. It depends on what you hear."

"That's all?"

"That, Pazel, is enough to shake the foundations of this world. The words I would teach you are Master-Words: the very codes of creation, spoken in that ethereal court where will is matter, and rhymes become galaxies. Normal men cannot learn them, you see-"

"But he can," said Thasha.

"Perhaps," said Ramachni. "But Pazel's Gift is a tiny spark compared with the wildfire power of such words. Only two or three do I dare teach you-for your sake, and that of Alifros itself. And Pazel, you will only be able to speak each word once. After that it will vanish from your mind forever."

"But why don't you use them yourself?" Thasha asked.

"I am a visitor here," said Ramachni. "The Master-Words belong to this world, not mine. They would be as dust on my lips."

Still Pazel hesitated. "What am I to do with these Master-Words?"

"Fight the enemy."

"But how? You don't even know who he is!"

"In time he will show himself. And then you must choose the word, and the moment for its use. And you must choose wisely, for there will be no second chance."

"This is… absurd!" sputtered Pazel. "I don't even know who I'm supposed to fight! How can you expect me to beat him? What if he just stabs me in my sleep?"

"He will not know about you, either, nor of the power in your keeping. And years may pass before he strikes-years, or days, or mere hours. Try to understand: this is a battle in the dark, and I am as blind as any. I know only that I have found in you and Thasha my best champions-the very best in ninety years of searching. Will you refuse?"

Pazel walked slowly to the table and put down the cake. "No," he said. "I won't refuse."

"Then as soon as we can arrange a time-"

"Now."

Ramachni twitched his tail in surprise. "Are you certain? It will tire you greatly."

"I'm certain. Do it now. Before I change my mind."

Ramachni drew a deep breath. He looked at Thasha. "When this is done, Pazel will be tired, but I shall be exhausted. Too exhausted even to return to my world through your clock. I will go to my secret place in the hold, and sleep for some days. Can I depend on you, Thasha? Will you guard him, and guard yourself, and be strong for everyone till I awake?"

Beaming at his confidence in her, Thasha said, "I will."

"Then go to the window, Smythнdor, and lie down."

Pazel walked to the gallery windows. The window seat was eight feet long, with red silk cushions propped in the corners. Did they have time for this magic? Was he wrong to have insisted it happen now? He lay down, trying not to touch the cushions. Even after his bath he was still too dirty for this room.

The little mage sprang up into Thasha's arms, then twisted about to face him.

"Do not think," he said. "Thought is the task of all your life in this frail universe, but just now it is the wrong task. Instead, listen. Listen as though your life depended on it, as one day it shall."

Pazel looked at him, but the mage offered no further instructions. So Pazel crossed his arms on his chest and listened.

At first he merely heard the ship-sounds so familiar he scarcely noticed them anymore. Beneath the windows her sternpost churned the swell, and her rudder creaked as Mr. Elkstem turned the wheel. Gulls cried. Men laughed and shouted. There was nothing strange about any of it.

Then Ramachni whispered something to Thasha, and she leaned over Pazel and flung open a window. Wind filled the chamber, lifting her hair, and Ramachni slid from her arms to the window seat. Gingerly he crept onto Pazel's chest.

"Shut your eyes," he said.

Pazel obeyed, and the instant his lids closed he was gone-hurled like a leaf on a vast cyclone of sound. It was not loud, but it was deeper than the sea itself. He heard a thousand beating hearts: every one on the Chathrand, from the slow kettledrum hearts of the augrongs to the bipbipbip of newborn mice in the granary. He heard the sound of Thasha blinking. He heard Jervik laugh secretly at something, and Neeps retching at some foul chore in the galley, and the lookout sobbing a girl's name ("Gwenny, Gwenny") in the privacy of the crow's nest. He heard a rat speaking, howling, about the wrath of the Angel of Rin. He heard Rose whisper, "Mother!" in his sleep.

But the sounds of the Chathrand were but a puff of wind in the storm. Pazel could hear all the waves in the Nelu Peren, breaking on every rock and raft and seawall in the Empire. He could hear the layers of the wind, pouring over the world like drifts of snow, mile over mile, and thinning at last to the icy flute-song of the void. He heard sea turtles hatching on a warm Bramian beach. He heard a creature many times Chathrand's length devouring a whale on the floor of the Nelluroq.

Then a gentle breeze tamed the cyclone. It was Ramachni's breath, Pazel knew, and it flowed into that mad cauldron of sounds and silenced them-entirely. In seconds it was all gone, even his own heartbeat was gone. The world might have been dead, or frozen for eternity in solid diamond. And into that perfect silence Ramachni spoke three words.

He was sitting up. Dizzy, dazed. Thasha was stumbling toward an armchair. Ramachni trembled at his side.

What had happened? How much time had passed? For a moment Pazel was reminded of the time years before when he had woken to find the lilies grown tall in his mother's garden, and himself barely escaped from death. But no, not this time. Minutes had passed, not weeks, and he wasn't ill. Just full, to the very edge of madness, with remembered sounds.

"I heard the whole world breathing," he said.

Slowly, achingly, Ramachni raised his head. Pazel met his gaze.

"The words," he said. "I have them. I can feel them in my head! But what are they for?"

"They are the simplest of Master-Words. But when you speak them they will be spells of fabulous power. One will tame fire. Another will make stone of living flesh. And the third will blind to give new sight."

"Blind to give new sight? What does that mean?"

"You will know."

"Look at this place," said Thasha vaguely. "It's a disaster."

So it was: a whirlwind seemed to have passed through the stateroom. Pictures were crooked, chairs overturned, crumbs of cake spread everywhere. Thasha herself, with her hair bedraggled and her silver necklace twisted over one shoulder, looked as if she had just climbed down from a mast.

Ramachni touched Pazel's arm. "Remember: each word is gone forever after you speak it. Everything depends on your choices. Listen to your heart, and choose well."

He crept down from the window bench, wheezing like an old man. Thasha hurried forward and lifted him. Her face was suddenly very worried.

"Be strong, my warrior," Ramachni said to her. "Now go and find Hercуl, and let him take me to my rest."

But there was no need to go looking for Hercуl. Seconds later he threw open the outer door, leaped inside and slammed it behind him.

"Ramachni, you have kept them too long!" he whispered. "Hide! Her father comes! By the Night Gods, you two-straighten your clothes and sit down to your studies!"

Ramachni vanished into Thasha's cabin while Hercуl began frantically putting the room in order. Snatching up Thasha's grammar book, he thrust it into Pazel's hands.

"For the love of Rin, watch that tongue of yours!"

They had just enough time to drop into studious postures before Eberzam Isiq flung open the door.

"So," he said with a glance at Hercуl, "you found them."

He was furious. Pazel reflected dimly (his mind was still rather thick) that he had never apologized-but how could he apologize for speaking the truth?

Hercуl cleared his throat. "I found them. Hard at the books, Your Excellency."

"But not in public chambers," said Isiq. "Did I give you the run of my cabin, Pathkendle?"

"No, sir," said Pazel, struggling to his feet. His voice sounded odd to his own ears. Thasha started to rise as well, then sat again with a thump.

"And yet you dare return," said Isiq, breathless with rage, "after your insolence a month ago."

"Don't blame him, Prahba," said Thasha, her voice equally strange. "I couldn't stand the noise in the lounge. I made him come here."

He looked at her, clearly taken aback. "You brought him? Well, then-it is not your fault, Pathkendle. But it is most improper that you two should be alone! Bring Syrarys, next time-or fetch Nama, or Hercуl. Hmmph! And how is her Mzithrini, boy?"

Pazel swallowed. "She… amazes me, Excellency."

Isiq demanded a demonstration. Thasha cleared her throat and said, "My husband is not always a pencil."

"Are you laughing, boy?"

"No, sir." Pazel gave a gagging cough. Isiq took a step closer, studying him.

"Chadfallow might have adopted you," said Isiq.

Now it was Pazel's turned to be startled. "Yes, sir," he stammered. "I owe the doctor a great deal."

"You're an educated boy. Why did you risk insulting me that day?"

Pazel gripped the chair. "I have no excuse, Your Excellency."

"Just as well." Isiq forced out a chuckle. "You learned Mzithrini from their envoy, didn't you? Chadfallow called him a barbarian in silks. Perhaps a little barbarism rubbed off on you? Not a bad thing, that. A little barbarism fortifies a man."

"Yes, Excellency."

"Let us forget the past, shall we? You showed great valor with those augrongs. And when I learned that you were the son of Gregory Pathkendle I naturally wished to meet you. That coat is to your liking?"

"Yes, Excellency; I thank you."

"We shall forget the past." Isiq ruffled Pazel's hair. "A strange meeting for us both, eh? You're the first Ormali I've spoken to since the Rescue. And naturally I am the first soldier of that campaign to speak with you."

"No, Excellency. The first to speak with me was the corporal who kicked me unconscious because he wanted to rape my mother and sister, and could not find them."

After Hercуl had clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him from the stateroom (with a look that made it clear just how thoroughly Pazel had cooked his own goose), after Uskins appeared and stripped him to the waist and tied his wrists to a fife-rail, after men gathered by the score to gawk and mumble about Rose's wrath, after someone began to lash him with a knotted whip and a gleeful Uskins shouted, "Harder, wretch, or I'll demonstrate on you," after Pazel heard a sob and realized Neeps had been made to deliver the punishment, after Pazel felt tears streaming down his cheeks and blood trickling to his breeches-only then did the worst result of his outburst occur to him.

He would never see Thasha again.

But that was the least of his troubles, wasn't it? He had never much bothered with girls: everyone knew they spelled disaster in a seafarer's life. Like coral isles, went the saying: pretty at a distance, ringed by reefs.

He shouldn't care. He didn't even know her, and what he did know-that she was the daughter of the man who had burned Ormael, and pampered, and rather violent, and indiscreet-he did not much like. Did he?

Fire and fumes, Pazel. You do.

It was a final, unexpected lash. She might have been a friend-after all these years, a friend! — but he would never find out now. And Neeps, his other friend: he would vanish, too, and kind Mr. Fiffengurt, and-oh, sky! — the chance of finding his parents and Neda again! If Dr. Chadfallow had really been guiding him back to them, Pazel had just thrown the chance away.

Suddenly he wished very humbly for the protection of the Imperial surgeon. What would happen to him? Who would care if he died?

Dr. Rain cleaned his wounds with eucalyptus oil and sent him back to his hammock. He could not lie in it, so he lay on his stomach on the filthy floor, hardly daring to sleep for fear that boys would tread on him in the blackness. And yet he must have slept, for sometime in that miserable night he found himself suddenly awake, possessed of a terrible awareness.

I've lost all my people.

But even as the thought crossed his mind, Neeps returned from his night shift, felt his way to Pazel and gripped his arm. Pazel sat up, wincing, and Neeps handed him a pouch.

"What's this?"

Neeps did not make a sound. Pazel untied the pouch and felt inside. Coins, six or eight of them. By the weight Pazel knew they were gold.

"Where'd you get these, mate?"

Neeps said not a word. He pressed a second object into Pazel's hand. It was a folded knife.

"Neeps! Is that my father's knife? It is, isn't it?"

Neeps was still fumbling in his pockets. At last he produced a final gift: the ivory whale.

"Did you have to fight Jervik?" Pazel whispered.

Neeps sniffed. Only then did Pazel realize that he was sobbing with rage and shame.

"By my grandmother's bones on Sollochstal," he said in his squeaky voice, "I'll see them pay for what they made me do to you."