The Red wolf conspiracy

The Rescue of Steldak

25 Modoli 941

73rd day from Etherhorde

Sunset: dry wind, coppering skies. Captain Rose shut his account book (the official, laughable one, not the secret ledger of his personal gains) and set his quill on the desk. Ten feet away his steward bustled about the dining table, polishing plates, arranging the antique silver. Rose frowned. Guests at his dinner table were a formality he disliked.

At the back of the desk his crawly prisoner hunched in its filthy cage. Rose studied the creature from the corner of his eye. Something odd there: the crawly's face was too serene. It stank and shivered and attracted flies. Ghosts whirled about it, too, chattering when Rose's back was turned: he assumed that meant it was ill. But today his poison-taster was strangely calm. Rose had even caught it stretching and limbering, like an acrobat preparing for a stunt. It was suspicious behavior, and Rose decided to replace the crawly at the first opportunity. Swellows, always on the lookout for crawly skulls, would pay him something for this wretch.

"Twenty minutes, Captain," said the steward. "Do you wish to be dressed?"

"See to the table, I'll dress myself."

He put the cage in his desk-drawer and slammed it shut with a bang. The crawly didn't even look up as Rose slid him backward into darkness.

"You witchy little grub," he said.

He stepped to the wardrobe, slid into his dinner jacket and began to comb out his beard. Mr. Teggatz came and went with little bobs and bows, carrying now the bread, now a fruit bowl, now a basin of aromatic sands into which Oggosk would spit her well-chewed sapwort. Rose's mood darkened further. She would bring the cat, naturally.

First to arrive was Sandor Ott. As Teggatz withdrew he came up behind the captain and murmured: "That's a fine guard you've placed on the Shaggat. I could not have done better myself."

"The augrongs don't care a fig who's behind that door," said Rose. "But no one else knows that."

"And His Nastiness, for all that talk of being a God, is not keen on angering those beasts. His sons are scared witless, naturally. The better to keep them all quiet, eh?"

"Nothing will keep that madman quiet for long," said Rose.

Ott smiled. "'My wolf, my red iron wolf!' Have you any idea what that means?"

"That he is mad."

"Of course-but long of memory, too. Operatives of the Secret Fist brought word of a certain Red Wolf of the Mzithrin. It was a thing men feared, and fought over. Why he raves of it now I should very much like to know." He shook his head. "In any case, Thasha Isiq will be married in ten days' time. And once we are on the empty sea the Shaggat can roar as he likes."

"As can I," said Rose. "Roar, and more than roar. That Bolutu will be the first to feel it."

Ott raised a finger. "You shall not kill the veterinarian, sir. He is odd, but also the Empire's best, and he must see to the health of our pigs and cattle and hens. Who knows how long we shall dine on their good flesh? 'Tis more than a century since anyone crossed the Ruling Sea. But after Thasha's marriage we may place him in chains if you like."

Rose grunted. "He can sleep where he works, among animals. And dine there. But what of the treasure, Ott? What do your men have to say?"

"What have they to say? Why, that none suspect our hiding place, of course. Fear not, Captain: it will not be stolen, or embezzled, or spilled into the sea. It will all be there when His Nastiness is ready to use it. But that day is distant yet."

The other guests began to arrive. Young Pacu Lapadolma, the musical niece, dragging a sour-faced Thasha Isiq. Bolutu himself, with his fine clothes and gentleman's smile. Thyne, the remaining Company man, who kept as far as possible from Ott and Rose. Syrarys, who made apologies for the ambassador (headaches again, poor dear).

Oggosk came last, with her cat in her arms. No sooner had the steward closed the door behind them than Sniraga gave an angry yowl and squirmed free, vanishing under the table. Pacu laughed, but Thasha Isiq scowled and put a hand on her necklace.

The dinner started badly, with Pacu reciting a bit of her great-aunt's patriotic poetry ("In Arqual we are happy bees / but don't forget our stingers, please!") and Thasha choosing that moment to choke on her soup. Then Thyne made everyone stand up to toast the Great Lady back in Etherhorde, and Bolutu felt compelled to speak of Lady Lapadolma's kindness to a certain stray dog, and Pacu declared how her great-aunt had given her "everything, absolutely everything that makes me what I am today," at which Thasha raised an eyebrow as if to say, And what would that be?

"Three days to Ormael!" Pacu went on. "Arqual's newest territory! What do you suppose five years in the Empire has done to her? I understand her wall has been rebuilt, and the city center tidied up, the riffraff expelled, proper Arquali families installed in the better homes. Let us drink to that!"

Oggosk (who had never budged from her chair) spat noisily into her basin. "This sapwort tastes like sludge," she said.

It did not help when Ott tried to draw Lady Thasha into the conversation: hadn't she learned rather a lot of Mzithrini by now? Thasha shook her head firmly, but Syrarys cried, "Oh, she has, I've heard her! After all, her wedding is just ten days off! Say something, dear. The sound of that language is so primal!"

Thasha looked at her with loathing, then suddenly growled out a few words. She told them it meant "My enemy's enemy is my friend." But Rose noted how Bolutu jumped, and shot her a quick glance of amazement.

Everyone was used to how little the captain spoke-and after ten weeks at sea, they did not much care. It was his cabin: they were glad enough to ignore him and devour his food. But just before the meal ended he surged to his feet with a table-jarring lurch.

"Oggosk! That thrice-damnable red cat just spoke to me!"

He pointed at his desk; all eyes turned. Sniraga was seated beside his letter box, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.

"Fah," said Oggosk.

"Captain!" cried Pacu Lapadolma. "Do you think you have a woken cat on your hands?"

"I don't have any cat at all!"

"She does cling to you, though," Bolutu observed. "What makes you her favorite, I wonder?"

Thasha Isiq's eyes narrowed. "What did she say, Captain?"

Rose hesitated, staring down at them all. "Nothing important," he said at last.

"But surely an animal's first words are important in themselves?" said Pacu.

"They're not her first."

"Well, then?"

Rose looked at the two girls. "Little spies," he said.

"I beg your pardon?!"

"That's what the cat said: "'Little spies.'"

No one dared to laugh. Then Oggosk wiped the grease from her fingers and glanced up.

"I've told you: Sniraga's no woken animal. She's clever in the way of cats, but no more. You're plagued by an evil visitation, Nilus: some spirit-cat out of your childhood or family history. Don't take it out on my pet."

She spoke as if to a wearisome child. Rose dropped into his chair and began a noisy attack on an apple. Thyne and Syrarys tried to revive the conversation, but everyone was distracted by Rose, whose staring eyes followed the cat wherever it roamed about the cabin.

At last the meal was over: the guests drained their cups and left. The steward and his boy swept about the table, clearing dishes, snuffing lamps. Then they too departed, and Rose was alone.

The cabin was dim. He stood stock-still, like a nervous bull. There was no sound but the ship's churning wake.

"You're here, aren't you?" he whispered at last.

Silence. He rubbed his beard in a sudden paroxysm of nerves. "Speak! Where are you? What do you want?"

Silence, and then piano music: distantly, from the first-class lounge. Re-mem-ber the old, old souls of Soo-li, drowned deep below.

Rose gave a mirthless laugh, almost a sob. Then he turned and stalked out of the cabin, locking the door behind him.

For two minutes nothing stirred. Then, with the tiniest sound imaginable, something did.

In the sand basin next to Oggosk's chair, among the bits of chewed sapwort, a tiny round shape broke the surface, swiveling left and right. It was a woman's head. It studied the cabin. And then in one swift movement, five ixchel burst from the sand, backs together, hands already fitting arrows to bows.

"All clear," said Diadrelu.

"Good," Talag answered. "Out of this muck, now-down and regroup. And toss some sapwort on the floor. Make a mess."

They held breathing-tubes of hollow straw: these they minced and buried in the sand. Then they brushed one another clean, smiling but not laughing as the sand fell from their hair. Four ixchel slipped from the basin's rim to the ground, and the last kicked bits of sapwort over the basin's edge. Rats were to be blamed for this raid.

"I thought he'd found us," said Diadrelu.

"You forget Rose is a madman," said Taliktrum. "Chatting with ghosts."

His father nodded. "If he knew crawlies were loose on his ship there'd be no talk. He'd smoke the ship and we'd die. Ensyl! To the door frame. Fentrelu, the beams. You must speak to the prisoner, no matter what follows."

"I can still smell that monster, Sniraga," said Fentrelu.

"Enough of that!" snapped Talag. "If we're interrupted, lie flat in the center of the beam-you'll be out of sight from the ground. We'll return for you somehow. Have your tools? Then go."

They went, five shadows rushing over the cabin floor. There was no telling how long the captain would spend aloft before turning in for the night. They might have thirty minutes, or three.

Dri, Talag and Taliktrum made straight for Rose's desk. One leap and Dri was on his chair; another, his desktop. She looked up: there was Ensyl, already perched spider-like over the cabin door. Fentrelu she could not see; he would still be scaling the wall to the deck beams. Crouching down, she watched her brother and nephew pry at the lower drawer with the flats of their blades. The wood was old, warped. It moved a fraction of an inch and stuck fast.

"I'll help," she whispered, but Talag waved her off. He was right, of course: all five of them had precise tasks and positions. Not one was optional.

She watched the men strain, gasping. The drawer seemed hopelessly wedged. Then a voice none knew called to them-from within the drawer.

"Slide in through the top drawer, brothers-slide in and lift from the back!"

Dri felt her heart thrill. It was true, Great Mother! One of their kin!

"Can you open the top drawer, sister?" Talag hissed.

Dri bent and seized the handle. The drawer slid open easily.

Talag clapped his son's arm. "Up, up!"

Taliktrum went like a shot. Two leaps, a quick smile for Dri-and into the darkness of the drawer. She heard him shoving and squirming, then a groan of effort. The lower drawer shifted in place.

Talag grabbed the brass handle and hauled with all his might. The big drawer fought him for another instant, then slid wide open.

"Get Taliktrum out of there!" Talag ordered, vaulting into the drawer.

Dri bent down and called her nephew. Out he came, smeared with pencil-dust and grime, and dropped without a word into the lower drawer, after his father.

Dimly she heard their work: assembling the crank-and-lever apparatus that would bend the bars of the prisoner's cage. If only Felthrup spoke the truth, and it was no more than a common birdcage. They could not bend hardened steel.

A thump: Fentrelu had dropped the rope from the beam above. Dri caught the end and quickly tied a pair of foot-sized loops. When she looked down again she felt a wave of relief. Talag and Taliktrum were there, helping a third man out of the drawer.

He was in bad shape-diseased, dirty-but he had not lost all his strength. If he could not quite leap to the desktop, he scrambled up the chair nimbly enough.

She would not let him bow. "You honor us by your survival, brother! I am Diadrelu of Ixphir House-Dri, you must call me."

"Formerly of Ixphir House," said Taliktrum. "We are none of us going back."

The prisoner placed his folded hands upon his forehead-an old-fashioned gesture of thanks; Dri had not seen it since her grandmothers' day. "I am Steldak, Lady Dri. My home is Йtrej in the Trothe of Chereste, but it is thirty years since I set foot in that land."

"The Trothe is gone," said Talag, "devoured by Arqual, although some giants still use the name. But I have never heard of ixchel there."

"We are there, my lord. My people had a great house in Etrela Canyon, until the giants dammed the river and flooded us out. Many died; the rest scattered on either side of the canyon. We on the east bank made our way to sea. I do not know what happened to the western group. My wife and children were among them."

He said it simply, but Dri saw by his face that the wound still ached three decades on. Was he also a bit feverish? His eyes wandered in an unfocused manner.

"No more talk," said Talag. "Put your feet in those loops, brother. Fentrelu will haul you to safety until our work here is done."

"My lord!" said Steldak suddenly. "Rose will go mad when he finds that you've freed me. You should have waited till we were in port, and could flee inland."

"My clan does not flee," said Talag fiercely. "Up with you."

He tugged sharply on the rope, and Steldak began to rise, still looking at them oddly. The others went to work. Father and son hauled the cage forward and began strewing the filth about the drawer, simulating a struggle. Dri sprinted the length of the desktop, glided across the floor on swallow-wings and landed once more in the sand basin. There she began to dig.

The rat lay comatose, about eight inches down. It was exhausting work to drag its body to the surface, her ears pricked all the while for Ensyl's warning. At last the beast was free, and she lowered it by the tail until its whiskers brushed the floor. Then she let it drop.

When she had dragged the beast to within a few feet of the cabin door she looked at it with gratitude. It was no special rat-just one they had ambushed in Night Village for this purpose, drugged with blanл and carried off to the cupboard where Oggosk's sand basin was stored between meals, where it and the five of them had lain for ten hours, waiting. But it would serve their purpose, and be killed for it.

Dri sprinted back to the desk. Blanл meant "foolsdeath." The poison was insanely difficult to make-gold cyanide, wasp blood and octopus ink, chilled for forty years in lead bottles underground-and they had not a drop to spare. The results were spectacular, however: blanл did no harm, but mimicked death almost perfectly. Even better, it could be instantly reversed.

But the antidote that would shock a creature out of blanл sleep was even harder to brew. Dri pulled the coated arrow from its quiver. She would have but one shot.

It was, like all her brother's plans, brilliant. Rose's cabin had seemed impregnable: there were no crawl spaces between decks here, no empty adjoining rooms. They would have had to pass through several occupied chambers, or down the long and busy corridor, had Talag not noticed Oggosk's love of sapwort.

A swish and they were beside her on the desktop. "I have strewn rat-filth about the floor," said Taliktrum. "And checked for footprints. The cabin's ready."

"I will be last from this chamber," said Talag. "Sister: you will run spear-point."

Taliktrum whirled. Spear-point was the most dangerous position when ixchel ran, the spot where life-and-death decisions were made. It was the place of honor.

"You promised it to me!" he said.

"But I cannot allow it now. The prisoner is too weak, and like Fentrelu I smell something amiss in this chamber. My heart warns against it. Diadrelu will lead."

Taliktrum did not hide his fury. By leading their escape he would have completed the last rite of manhood, and could claim the title of lord.

"We agreed," he hissed.

"You dare to argue?" said Talag, enraged in his turn. "Look to your aunt, boy! She is overtrusting and soft of heart-but also selfless. There is no thought of herself above the clan, no distraction at this moment of peril. That is the mark of a leader-not your insolent whining."

Taliktrum was deeply shaken. "Father-" he began.

"Silence!" snapped Talag. "By the Pits, you shame me!"

"Fentrelu," called Diadrelu, looking up at the beam, "how is Steldak? Can he run?"

"He claims so, m'lady," came Fentrelu's voice from the darkness.

"Then he must try. Make your way to the door frame, quickly."

Then Steldak cried, "No!"

"What?" cried Talag. "How no, brother?"

"I want to stay, and kill him! Help me! Lend me a sword and the tyrant dies!"

"Are you mad? Kill Rose? You'd sign all our death warrants with the act!"

"We'll make it look like suicide, Lord Talag! Everyone knows he's cracked-"

"Not another word!" said Dri. "You will obey us and make part of our clan! Surely you owe us that much? Get to the doorway, instantly!"

"You don't understand, m'lady! He's brought the Shaggat aboard! The Shaggat! God-King of the Nessarim! Whole countries will be laid waste if Rose has his way! Arqual will seize the Crownless Lands, even the Mzithrin in time!"

"The Shaggat Ness drowned at sea," Talag said.

"A lie! Arqual's master lie! He's here, aboard-that is why we stopped at Licherog!"

Brother and sister looked at each other.

"There is no time to debate," Dri said.

"None," agreed Talag. "Hear me, Steldak. Rose will not be killed. Nor will he or the Emperor achieve their foul ends. This ship is mine. I have sworn a blood oath to see my people out of the hell of fear and misery that is Arqual-to see them returned to the isle from whence all ixchel were stolen, long ages ago. Rose alone of all men can pilot us to that place. Join us and be welcome-or by my own hand be slain! Now go!"

Steldak said no more, but Dri felt horror at his revelation. Here was the conspiracy, laid bare at last, confirming the clan's worst fears about giants and their cruelty. And they are cruel. By the Nine Pits, the Shaggat! What would Arqual do with that butcher of a king?

Then Ensyl cried: "Rose is come!"

No one needed commanding now. Taliktrum leaped to the dark floor; Dri bent her bow. Talag stood beside her, tense as a cheetah ready to sprint.

The door opened: Dri's arrow flew. Lamplight from the hall spilled yellow on the floor. The rat squealed to life, terrified, and bolted under the table.

"Broil and blast you!" shouted Rose, lurching after it.

Dri and Talag were already off his desk and halfway to the door, which Rose had left open for the light-as Talag knew he would. Dri saw Ensyl flit through to safety.

And then disaster. A voice overhead shouted, "Stop!" Brother and sister turned to see Steldak fighting on the beam with Fentrelu. The prisoner had the strength of sudden mania: even as they watched he broke free of Fentrelu and hurled himself from the beam-and onto Rose's back.

The captain was bending under the table, looking for the rat. He apparently felt something, for he half stood, hit his head on the table and roared with pain. Steldak, clinging spider-like to Rose's shirt, began moving upward.

"He has my knife!" cried Fentrelu.

The next instant Dri was in flight. It nearly broke her arms to rise airborne from a standstill, but she did it. Across the cabin she flew in a heartbeat, her own sword drawn. She would kill this poor mad Steldak, bear his body away, say a prayer for him-

A black shock of pain. Claws, fangs, falling.

Sniraga!

Dri was pierced through leg and torso. A crash: she was pinned to the floor. Her sword gone. Her swallow-wings snapped. The cat's mouth closed over her head and shoulders, its blood-scented breath filled her lungs. With her left arm she drew her knife and struck-the mouth withdrew, but a claw hooked her hand and ripped it, and then the knife was gone, too.

Rose had sensed it. You're here, aren't you?

The cat had been waiting all along.

Dri was ready for death. But death did not come. Instead her brother did, and Steldak himself-two blades whirling, stabbing. She saw Talag thrust his sword deep into Sniraga's neck. A deafening yowl. She was flung free.

Somewhere close, almost on top of her it seemed, Rose was bellowing: "Kill it, animal! Kill that rat and I'll almost think well of ye!"

Dri was against a table leg, bleeding fast. She forced herself to rise. Rose was staggering around the far side of the table, holding his head. But where was Sniraga?

Taliktrum's voice, high-pitched with fear: "Papa!" Years since he called Talag that.

Then Dri saw the cat. She had leaped to a dinner chair, rolling and striking at something-at Taliktrum, as the boy parried both her front paws, his sword a blinding arc. Steldak held her tail in one hand, and with the other slashed wildly with Fentrelu's knife. Talag, limp and bloodied, hung from Sniraga's mouth.

Dri sprinted for the chair. Blood was splashing from her hand but she did not feel it. Talag! Talag!

The chair crashed over, Taliktrum was pinned. And Sniraga, with one great bound, leaped through the open door.

Dri ran until she thought her heart would burst, no longer caring who saw her. Steldak held the cat's tail for half the length of the empty passageway. Then he too fell, gripping a handful of fur. Her neck gushing blood, Sniraga skidded around the corner and was gone.

The other ixchel escaped unseen. The prayers in the hold that night were not for Steldak-who offered suicide, and sat stone-faced, alone-but for Talag, their master, slain with no thought of self above the clan.