The Red wolf conspiracy

Carriage

1 Vaqrin 941

7:40 a.m.

Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose felt the cat nuzzle his leg and repressed an urge to lash out. A good kick would remind the animal to keep its distance. He knew better, of course. The big red cat, Sniraga, was Lady Oggosk's darling. With luck the beast would remember his great aversion to being touched, without need of a blow that could cost him the hag's services. They had sailed together before, these three.

The carriage lumped along uphill. He sat with his big arms folded against his beard, watching the hag smoke. A new pipe. Clenched in drier lips. Lost in deeper wrinkles. But the milk-blue eyes with their predatory gaze were unchanged, and he thought: She'll be sizing me up the same. Best note these eyes, too, you deadly old crone.

"So," he said, "they nabbed you in Besq."

"Fah."

"Beg your pardon," said Rose. "They wooed you, perhaps? Called you Duchess? Handed you a card in silver writ?"

The old woman rubbed her nose vigorously. Repulsed, the captain turned to the window.

"Why are we going uphill?" he demanded. "Why aren't we making for the port?"

"Because there's a crowd like a Ballytween Fair about your vessel," muttered Oggosk. "And we've two more to pick up."

"Two? The mayor spoke of just one-that preening doctor."

Oggosk snorted. "The mayor of Sorrophran is the Emperor's bootshine-boy-nay, the rag itself. But His Supremacy doesn't own the Chathrand. If he hires the Great Ship, he does so at the pleasure of the Chathrand Trading Family. There will never be a crew aboard her but meets with the Family's blessing."

"Don't lecture me, Oggosk," said Rose, his voice a warning rumble. "I've commanded her. Farther and better than any man alive."

"Then you'll recall Lady Lapadolma's most irritating habit."

"Reciting that foul verse?"

"Stocking the crew!" snapped Oggosk. "Intruding on your rights as captain! Every voyage she afflicts us with one or two, her personal tattlers. No other Family presumes so much."

Rose grunted. Lady Lapadolma Yelig was the ruling grandmother of the Trading Family that had owned and outfitted the Chathrand for twelve generations. She was the Emperor's own cousin, but showed no better than a formal loyalty to the Ametrine Throne. Her family had always married power, both within the Imperium and without: Lapadolma herself was the widow of the Bishwa Egalguk, monarch of the Isle of Fulne.

The Yeligs owned dozens of ships, but the Chathrand was their great glory. No other vessel could carry a third what she did on a trading voyage, nor earn a third the gold. And no other Family managed, under the very nose of the Emperor, to keep so much of that gold for itself. The culprit was tradition: to the Emperor's long fury, a belief held that the day Chathrand left port in the hands of another owner would be the day she sank. Nonsense, probably. But not even His Supremacy could risk disaster on such a monstrous scale.

Of course tradition-and nearly everything else-was about to change…

From her cloud of rancid smoke, the old woman chuckled. "Nabbed!" she said. "If there's anyone nabbed it was you, Captain."

Rose shot her a dark look. The cat purred against his leg.

"You didn't want this commission," she said flatly. "You didn't want another turn behind the wheel of the Chathrand. Why not, when they pay you so handsomely?"

"I was bespoken."

"Only by a wish to hide. You led the Emperor on a yearlong chase, island to island, port to port. And you almost escaped-"

"Still a blary witch." Rose glared at her. "Still a trickster and a spy."

"You almost escaped," Oggosk repeated. "The Flikkermen caught you last night, with a ticket for an inland coach. Inland! Why, Captain, that'd be the first time in your life!"

"Oggosk," he growled, "be silent."

Her eyes remained fixed on him. "A secret commission, too. Sorrophran is like a hive of ants, everyone knowing the captain will be named this morning, everyone guessing wrong. Above all they wonder why Chathrand spent three months in this kennel of a town, and not mighty Etherhorde across the bay. Will you tell them, Captain Rose? Will you tell how certain powerful men in the capital might have grown suspicious at, say, the twelve months' provisions being laid in our hold, for a voyage of three? It would be difficult to explain-above all to the Yeligs. Suppose you gave them the truth: that His Supremacy's astrologers have convinced old Magad that this is the hour of his destiny, the moment that will see him crushed-or raised above all princes that ever were or will be. Naya, has it ever been different? A man will leap into a furnace if you tell him it's the way to power over others. It's a madness and a wonder that we let you rule. But the greatest wonder is the threat."

Rose's head jerked up, and Oggosk cackled.

"Ehe! The threat! What did they use on you, Captain? What drives Nilus Rotheby Rose to set sail when he hasn't the mind?"

Captain Rose's face was scarlet, but his voice when it came was low and venomous. "You will recall, Lady Oggosk, that we shall soon be weighing anchor. And you will recall further how very few compulsions indeed this captain tolerates at sea."

The old woman dropped her eyes and shrank into her corner. For several moments they lurched along in silence. Then with a sudden "Whoh!" the driver pulled the horses up, bounded from his seat and flung open the door.

A black man stood framed in the doorway, clearly ready to enter the coach. He wore a dark vest over a white silk shirt, and most incongruously, a round woolen hat such as Templar monks donned for traveling. In one hand he held a parchment case, in the other a black bag with two rough wooden handles. The bag was old and worn and filled nearly to bursting. The man bowed courteously to Oggosk, then to Rose.

"Who in the nine fiery pits are you?" bellowed Rose, his nerves breaking at last.

"Bolutu, my name is Bolutu." The man had a precise voice and an unfamiliar accent. He appeared quite unaffected by Rose's outburst, which irked the captain further.

"Get along, you've no business here."

The stranger cocked his head. "No business? Perhaps that is literally true. Irrelevant, however. For although I must leave my business behind, I have orders to respect-or ignore at my peril."

"What's this Noonfirth prig raving about?" shouted Rose with a glance at his seer.

"He's no Noonfirther," said Oggosk flatly.

"He's as black as a tarboy's heel."

"I am a Slevran, Captain Rose."

Momentary confusion. Lady Oggosk dropped her pipe. It would scarcely have been more startling if the man had claimed to be a lynx. The Slevrans were savage men of the far interior, nomads of the steppe. It was they who attacked and slaughtered caravans making west to the Idhe Lands. The Emperor sent legions to exterminate them, but they merely withdrew into the hills and waited for the soldiers to grow bored and hungry, and as soon as these expeditionaries left the raids began anew. Were they even men? some asked. Did they have morals, language, souls?

"You're a liar as well as mad," said Rose. He waved impatiently at the bewildered coachman. "Drive on, you. We've a commission to respect."

"I have the same commission," said Bolutu, his hand still on the door.

"You're a barking Noonfirth dog!"

"No, Captain, I have never been to the Summer Realm. But you will be taking on a cargo of animals at Etherhorde, and I am a veterinarian. And I am ordered, by His Supremacy Magad the Fifth, to take my place as such aboard the Chathrand. I yet hope to soothe your anxieties about my person."

"Why do you wear a monk's hat?"

Bolutu smiled. "I was raised by the Templar brothers, and keep the journeyman's vows. Some call me Brother Bolutu, but Mister is quite acceptable."

"If you're not a Noonfirther, where'd you learn that tea-and-pastries talk?"

"In Yelig House."

Shocked silence again. The man was claiming to be an intimate of the Chathrand Trading Family. Rose looked at Oggosk, but the witch drew the hood of her cloak over her head, whispering and muttering. The black man climbed into the coach and sat beside her. Relieved, the driver raised the footstool and slammed the door shut.

The trip resumed. Oggosk muttered in Swalish, which the captain did not speak. Having been at sea for forty years, however, he knew a smattering of words in many tongues: jult, which Oggosk said many times with happy emphasis, meant "disease." At her side the black man sat motionless, eyelids half lowered. Rose thought suddenly of how he would look tumbling over the Chathrand's bulwarks, head over heels into the waves. Then he recalled the Special Protection every captain of Arqual swore to provide friends of the Company. If harm befell this Bolutu, a Company inspection would follow. Merely to be the subject of such an inspection would mark one for life.

"Is your cat a woken animal, Duchess?" asked Bolutu suddenly.

Oggosk made a rude sound in her throat: "Glah."

Bolutu was unperturbed. "Do you know, Captain, that the frequency of wakings is exploding? How many such animals have you heard of, in all your life? Three in twenty-eight years, for my part, and just one-a lovely bull with a taste for choral music-did I meet with face to face. But this year all bets are off! Just last month a she-wolf on Kushal pleaded for her life: sadly the hunters killed her anyway. From Bramian comes news of a stork eager to talk gold miners out of poisoning his lake. And several cats have been heard to speak in the alleys of Etherhorde itself. The Mariner had a report."

Sniraga purred, sliding among their legs. Rose stared out through the window. Accidents, he thought. So many kinds of accidents…

They had nearly reached the port: he could hear a vague roaring that could only be the muster of the crew. Then the carriage stopped again. The door opened, and before him stood Ignus Chad-fallow.

This time Rose was prepared, if not pleased: the doctor was Special Envoy-at-Large to His Supremacy, dispatched throughout the world as the human seal on certain Imperial promises. Where Chadfallow sailed, Magad's word was kept. Rose should have guessed the doctor would be tossed into the bargain.

Chadfallow himself, however, looked stunned. His eyes were fixed on the captain, his face visibly paled. He made no move to enter the carriage.

"Rose," he said.

The carriage driver, holding the door once again, began to tremble. From the folds of her hood, Oggosk laughed.

"Climb in, Doctor," said Rose. And then, with a glance at Bolutu: "If you don't mind the company."

Chadfallow didn't move.

"Of course, you won't have the use of the stateroom this time," Rose added. "That goes to Isiq and his family."

"But there's some mistake," said Chadfallow. "You were in the Pellurids."

"I was," said Rose. "But that is not your concern."

"You cannot have been given the Chathrand."

Rose pitched forward, rage contorting his features. Oggosk touched his arm. The captain twitched in her direction, then paused and sat back. One finger stabbed out at Chadfallow.

"We're ashore, Doctor, where your tongue is your own. But tomorrow we sail. Remember that. For I am the captain of the Great Ship. And if you mean to board her, I warn you, envoy though you be: on the water there's no law but mine. The law of Nilus Rotheby Rose. There's a thorn in that name, and a bee-sting, and a blade: my kin knew what they were about when they named me Nilus-dagger. Climb in!"

"No," said Chadfallow, slowly shaking his head. "I won't sail with you, no."

Their eyes met. Rose looked caught between satisfaction and offense.

"Well," he said at last, "that is between you and your Emperor. Don't expect me to beg. Driver!"

The driver abruptly shrank three inches, his knees buckling.

"Drive on, you dumb, staring, scrofulous cur!"

Moments later the carriage was vanishing around the corner of the street. Chadfallow stood motionless, alarmed as he could not remember being in his life. When the porters reached the tavern door with his sea chest he did not know what to tell them.