The River of Shadows

The Choice

5 Modobrin 941

The Honorable Captain Theimat Rose

Northbeck Abbey

Mereldin Isle, South Quezans Dear Sir, I will not be astonished, Father, if this proves our last communique. You have always made plain your intention to disown any son who failed the test of obedience, no matter at what stage of life. I hardly think that death will have altered your opinion; nothing alters your opinion. But there are those on this ship (those you pressed me to slay, for their own disobedience) who hold that the possibility of change is not for us to deny. We must believe it can happen in the heart of the basest wretch, they would say, no matter to what epic depravity he has pledged his life. You will observe that I do not choose to continue our long charade with Lady Oggosk. I know full well that you are dead. This very evening I went to the witch and demanded the truth, and she had no choice but to provide it. Dead may technically be inaccurate for one who dwells in the twilight of Agaroth. But you are in sight of the Last Domain, and it is long since fitting that you be released from the Border-Kingdom and allowed to go your way. You, and the one who dwells there at your side, the one I have called Mother hitherto. All I ask before I release you is the truth. You won the three sisters at cards: I know this. You kept them as servants and concubines, and you did not care how many brats you sired on them. Such trifling issues were easily resolved, no doubt, once the Flikkermen developed a market for infants, and the slave-school on Nurth realized what returns were possible on an investment of eight or nine years. How many of my brothers and sisters (half brothers, half sisters) did you scatter to the winds? Are any of them known to you by name? Those are the first questions I should like addressed. But there is another, more vital by far: which sister gave birth to me? Is it the one who followed you to the Border-Kingdom? Or the one who simply vanished from our household, one evening of my fourteenth year? Or the third sister, Oggosk herself? All my life I have taken your side against her: never would I recognize her as family, and only in these letters have I named her Aunt. But is she my mother’s sister, or my mother? You could always strike a bargain, sir, so let us bargain away this inefficiency: tell me the truth about myself, and I will hold you and your companion in Agaroth no longer. As ever, I shall bargain in good faith. You have always demanded a full accounting of my captaincy, and this I am willing to provide. I am back aboard the Chathrand now, and my crew is for the most part reassembled-only some twenty fools broke out of the Masalym Tournament Grounds, and are hiding yet in the vast warren of the Lower City. They may end up dwelling permanently among these black-skinned, coin-eyed creatures, for we are preparing for an emergency launch, and nothing whatsoever may delay it. Not even prudence: I have given my most reluctant consent to a launch at dusk tomorrow, before the wares we are taking aboard can be secured or balanced, knowing full well (you need not remind me, sir) of the great peril involved. Any sizable swell may roll us, sink us; but such odds are better than the certainty of seizure if we remain here an hour too long. In any case we shall have thirty miles in the gulf to prepare for the open sea. Except for those few deserters, the men all but stampeded back to the Chathrand when the gate was opened at the Tournament Grounds. Days of rest and feasting had given way to fear about the dlomu’s intentions. Now they are relieved (and amazed) to have been restored to their ship, even though we sail once more into danger. They have not yet grasped the nature of the Red Storm that lies between us and home, and though rumors circulate, they are considered too outlandish to be true. I have forbidden the officers, and Pathkendle’s gang, to speak of the Red Storm to anyone. The men feel lost enough as it is, without the terror of becoming lost in time. For the moment their good spirits hold, and they are laboring with a will. So, for that matter, are the dlomu, whose orders now are clearly to see us gone with all possible haste. But they will no longer step aboard the ship, or even pass supplies directly into our hands. What is not loaded by cargo crane they carry to the center of the gangway. We must wait for them to withdraw onto the quay before retrieving it ourselves. All of this because one of them went mad and began to sing upon the quarterdeck. When we set sail at nightfall tomorrow, there are yet a few others who will not be among us. You may think it good fortune, and for most of this voyage I have wished for nothing more ardently. Now I think their absence may prove disaster. Or perhaps I misstate the case: perhaps it is my own absence from their number that haunts me now as a looming, possibly fatal, mistake. I know of course what you will say, Father, but do restrain yourself. I will welcome no advice at this juncture; the shades of Chathrand’s old skippers inflict quite enough as it is.

Thasha raised her eyes from the scribbled vellum. Crowded around her, Pazel, Neeps and Marila continued to read. Oggosk was leaning on her stick by the palace window in the bright evening sun, watching them. She had appeared suddenly in the palace, and been escorted to their waiting chambers by a pair of dlomic chamber maids. “What do you want us to do with this?” Thasha asked.

The old woman walked stiffly to them and snatched the page back. “I want you to bear it in mind,” she said. “Nilus faces a terrible decision-probably the greatest in his life. And how you speak to him next may make all the difference.”

“What’s this about ‘a few others not among us’?” asked Pazel. “Who’s he talking about?”

“You’re about to find out,” said Oggosk, glancing at the door.

“Where’s the rest of the letter?” asked Marila.

“Right here,” said the witch, pulling two more sheets from inside her cloak. Placing the three sheets together, she ripped them in quarters. Then, walking to the hearth-it was chilly in the palace, despite the warmth outside-she tossed the pieces onto the bed of glowing coals.

“Again!” cried Neeps. “I’ve never understood why you do that. Such a blary waste of time.”

Oggosk looked at him over her shoulder, contemptuous. “Scrawny little ape. When did you ever understand a thing?” She crouched before the fire and blew. The vellum smoldered, then burst suddenly into flames. Oggosk stood with a groan and turned to face the youths.

“The letters I burn, he watches forming in a fireplace, beneath the dying coals. When the last ember goes out he brushes off the ash and there they are, waiting to be read. I speak of Theimat, of course, the captain’s father. He is a prisoner in Agaroth, on the doorstep of death, a shade without the rest that every shade must long for. Until Nilus chooses to let him go.”

“And Rose keeps him there,” said Pazel, “because he wants to know which of you is his real mother?”

“You can see that much plainly,” snapped the witch. “Now listen to me: you will keep the family matters to yourselves, am I clear? Nilus will go mad if he learns I’ve made you privy to the worst secret of his childhood.”

“Why did you?” asked Thasha.

Oggosk hesitated, and the wrinkles tightened around her milky-blue eyes. “Perhaps for no good reason,” she said. “In any case we will know in a matter of hours.”

The door of the chamber banged open. It was Prince Olik’s footman. “His Highness asks his honored guests to join him on the Dais of Masalym.”

“He’s back!” cried Pazel. “Is Hercol with him? Is there any sign of Arunis?”

The man did not answer at first; like most of the dlomu he seemed caught between wonder and fear when in their presence. “I am to take you quickly,” he said at last.

They followed him, Thasha’s dogs padding at her side; Oggosk struggling irritably, leaning on both her stick and Pazel’s arm. Out of the splendid drawing room they walked, through a portrait gallery where they had tried to glean clues about Bali Adro history (and where Druffle now stood transfixed before a dlomic nude), across the dining chamber where Rain and Uskins sat earnestly masticating mul. How could they possibly be hungry, Thasha wondered, when two hours ago they had all been treated to such a staggering meal?

What they had not been treated to was information. They had climbed a broad stair from beneath the pillar to these chambers, where Alyash, Dastu and Sandor Ott were waiting already, and twenty servants (and twice as many guards) attended them, in that same abashed and fearful style. Olik and Bolutu had returned at once to the Lower City, and the frantic search. Ibjen had stayed to dote on them-carrying tea-trays, measuring their feet for new shoes when the tailor’s hands shook too much for the task. It was good luck, Thasha realized, that they had landed first in a village too small and isolated to trade in the fanciful, terrifying gossip that had swept Masalym. Ibjen had had time to realize they were simply people, before anyone declared them something else.

From the dining chamber they walked down a short corridor, then climbed a steep and narrow staircase. Then another, and another. Only after the fifth staircase did the footman speak again, announcing, “The Dais of Masalym,” and throwing open a door.

Sunlight and wind: the door let onto a small, roofless space with another staircase, very short, leading up to what Thasha saw instantly must be the roof of the entire palace, the cut-off apex of the pyramid.

“There you are! Come, hurry!” came the prince’s voice, faintly.

Up they climbed, into the last hour of daylight. The roof was flat, featureless, immense, a great courtyard thrust up into the sky, with no railing, no shelter of any kind. Here at the center they could see nothing of the city, only the snowy peaks in the south and west, and on the other side the spire of Narybir Tower, hazy across the gulf. Olik and Hercol stood close to this edge-and beside them, tiny in that enormous space, were two figures that made Thasha’s heart leap with joy.

“Ensyl! Felthrup!”

The dogs bounded forward, skidding to a halt before their beloved rat. Thasha saw that Hercol was holding Ildraquin naked in his hand. “You found it!” she cried.

“It was never lost,” said Ensyl, “though in removing it from Vadu’s reach I made it appear so, alas. Dear friends! I wondered if I should ever see you again.”

“Felthrup, you’re a hero,” said Thasha, dropping to her knees beside him.

The black rat scurried into her arms, shivering with pleasure. “I am nothing of the kind,” he said. “What sort of hero sleeps through a fight, and awakens when it has ended?”

“It has not ended,” said Oggosk, wrapping her cloak tighter against the wind.

“Quite right, Duchess,” said Prince Olik. “Listen well, you four. A great deal has changed since this morning.”

“You know where Fulbreech is, don’t you?” said Marila to Hercol.

The Tholjassan drew a deep breath. “I know,” he said. “Ildraquin has told me.” He stepped back, closing his eyes and straightening his sword-arm. At first he appeared to be pointing down at someplace in the city, but then his arm swung slowly to the right, and upward, until it was pointing southwest, at a place in the mountains between two peaks. It was a saddle, a pass, but still a very high and distant spot. The mountain peaks were white all around it; the slopes looked harsh and dry.

“There?” asked Neeps, disbelieving.

“At the Chalice of the Mai,” said Prince Olik, “where the river that flows past our feet has its source in cold Ilvaspar, the glacier lake. Yet I must doubt you, friend Hercol. Arunis stood in this very spot just twenty hours ago, with Fulbreech at his side, and the tol-chenni he took from the Conservatory, too-his ‘idiot,’ as he calls the creature. Many servants, and the Issar as well, confirmed that they were here. And even on the swiftest steed, they could not yet have reached the Chalice. It takes that long to cross our Inner Dominion, the high country that begins here, at the Upper Gate of the Upper City, and runs to the mountain’s foot. And another twelve to climb to the Chalice, and Ilvaspar’s frigid shores.”

“Yet Fulbreech is there all the same,” said Hercol. “Alone or with the sorcerer? That I cannot guess. But Ildraquin has never led me astray when we follow a blood scent.”

Olik sighed. “Then perhaps they did not use the highway at all, but some magic that let them ride the very wind. As you say, however, we have no proof that Arunis has kept the boy by his side.”

“It could well be a trick,” said Ensyl. “Arunis might have sent him to the mountains alone, to throw us off.”

“That is true,” said Hercol, “for I cannot be certain what he knows of Ildraquin’s powers.”

“You’ve got to make Ott send Niriviel,” said Thasha. “He could reach the summit by midnight, and be back here by dawn. He can tell us if Arunis is with Fulbreech or not.”

“If they are not indoors,” said the prince.

But Hercol shook his head. “You have not seen Niriviel by daylight, Thasha. He nearly died of exhaustion on the Ruling Sea, and when he made it across, he did not rest, but began weeks of searching for the Chathrand, and his master. He needs days of rest and feasting. He stole the ropes and grapples we used last night, and did some scouting for us over the Lower City, but even those efforts taxed him. If Ott sent him racing to that mountain he would go-but I fear the poor, deluded creature would fly until his heart broke, and he fell dead from the sky. No, we are blind to the sorcerer’s movements. We can only hope that he is also blind-to the danger of keeping Fulbreech near him.”

“And that we cannot know,” cried Felthrup, beside himself. “What a miserable fix!”

“You should not run in circles on a rooftop, little brother,” said Hercol. “But we may be glad that for his part, Fulbreech is holding still. He has not moved these two hours since I regained Ildraquin. Of course, that could change in an instant.”

“We should assume that it will,” said Ensyl, “unless the youth has died.”

“He has not died,” said Hercol. “That too I can sense.”

A flash of shame passed over Thasha. I’m disappointed, she thought. I wanted Hercol to say he might be dead.

“Yes, Mr. Stargraven, a fix,” said the prince, “and that is precisely why I summoned you.”

Beckoning, he led them forward, closer to the pyramid’s sharp edge. All three levels of Masalym were spread before them, looking something like an irregular layer cake, except that the decrepit first layer dwarfed the upper two. There in the raised shipyard stood the Chathrand, a dark crowd about her on the quay, paler forms on her topdeck, all of them busy as ants.

“There is a choice before you,” said Olik. “I wish you did not have to face it so quickly, but with the Kirisang approaching you dare not delay. Arunis may still be hiding in the great maze of the Lower City-or he may be on that mountain, and about to escape us farther. Regardless, the Chathrand must flee, across the gulf and into hiding. Will you be upon her? That is what you must decide.”

Thasha felt a sudden dread creeping over her. She looked from the city to the mountain pass and back again. “What’s beyond the mountain?” she asked Olik. “A lake, you say?”

“Ilvaspar, which is ‘Snowborn’ in the tongue of the mountain folk. An enormous, frigid lake, closed in wholly by the mountains except at its two narrow ends. One is there at the Maitar, the Chalice. The fisherfolk who dwell there may agree to row you down Ilvaspar’s length, for a fee, but no gold will persuade them to venture farther. The southern end of Ilvaspar is a place of many perils. The lake flows out in a second river, the Ansyndra, far greater than the Mai, but for the first twenty miles that river blasts through gorges and cataracts and canyons, and descent along its banks is impossible. The only way down is upon the Black Tongue, a cursed place, created in the early days of the Platazcra by a warlord with an eguar blade, to terrify the mountain folk into surrender. He called up magma from the depths of the earth and sent it gushing down the mountain, with his forces marching behind upon the cooling rock, a sight terrible to behold. They conquered the mountain folk, of course. But the Black Tongue kept spreading, and when the warlord tried to melt it back into the earth, he only succeeded in opening many cracks and tunnels into the roots of the mountain. On warm days, flame-trolls may issue from those cracks, and they are awful foes.

“Beyond the Black Tongue the Ansyndra flows more gently, and may even be navigable in places. The danger, however, merely changes form.” He looked at them each in turn, and at last his eyes settled on Felthrup. “You do not remember, Mr. Stargraven, but you have already faced the danger I speak of, which we call the River of Shadows.”

“The River of Shadows!” said Felthrup, his hair suddenly bristling. “Yes, yes, I know that place, certainly! No, I don’t. Oh dear. What is it?”

“It is a tunnel between worlds, and a flood that never abates,” said the prince. “The channel cut by the wild pulse of life through a hostile universe, the thought that flees on waking, the pure stuff from which souls are distilled. If I speak in riddles, Mr. Stargraven, it is only because riddles are what one meets with there. Like the nuhzat, the River of Shadows must be experienced to be understood. One way is through dream-travel, as you have done; another is by astral journey. That is high magic, for one can bring back objects, creatures even, when one returns. Lord Ramachni showed me the River that way, once.”

“But there is a third way,” said Oggosk.

“Yes,” said the prince, “a third way. As I said, the River of Shadows winds through many worlds-and travelers tell us that those it does not enter are unthinkably grim, soulless realms where men live like machines. In each world the River touches, it has a source and an exit. Between these points it usually runs deep under the earth, in the living heart of the world, so that we feel its presence beneath us only when we are very still. But here and there it comes close to the surface. In Alifros, more than a dozen such places are known to exist. After the Dawn War, the victorious Auru found most of these places and built great watchtowers beside them, for they knew that the demons they had just defeated had crept into Alifros by way of the River.”

“This is all strange and wonderful,” said Ensyl, “but why are you telling us about it, Sire?”

“Because you are looking at the place where the River of Shadows enters this world,” said the prince, pointing again at the mountains. “Somewhere under those peaks it rises, perhaps entering the deep depths of Ilvaspar, but certainly-and uniquely, in all Alifros-joining for a time with a natural river. That river is the Ansyndra. For nearly a hundred miles it and the River of Shadows follow the same course. This has made our Efaroc Peninsula one of the strangest parts of Alifros. Beings from other times, other worlds-other versions of this world-have washed or crawled up from the River over the centuries. Many perish, but some dwell on in the pockets and folds of those mountains. Bali Adro claims the peninsula, but in truth it is a land apart, beautiful and ghastly by turns.

“Ghastly wins out at last, however, in a place where no sensible person ever sets foot: the Bauracloj, the Infernal Forest. I can tell you little of that place, for I have never been near it. But it is said that a whole city of the Auru was swallowed up by that forest, and the first watchtower on the River of Shadows thrown down in pieces.”

“Great Mother!” said Ensyl. “Could Arunis possibly mean to go there?”

“Who can tell?” said the prince. “It is a place of dark magic, certainly. Many Spider Tellers believe that the Nilstone entered the world right there, carried upward by the bubbling force of the River. But none of us knows for certain.”

He stopped speaking and gazed out over Masalym again. “At dawn tomorrow,” he said, “unless Arunis be found first, an expedition made up of those who still revere me will ride out toward the Chalice of the Mai. I will not be with them, for while there is a chance that he remains here I must ensure that the hunt in the city does not fall to pieces. You would all be welcome on the expedition. But I do not ask it of you. The Chathrand will be far from Masalym before any return is possible, and no one can predict what sort of city will await those who descend from the peaks. This much is certain: I will no longer be ordering its affairs. By then I may indeed be a prisoner in the bowels of the Kirisang, waiting for transport back to Bali Adro City, and the judgment of the Ravens.”

“Well, don’t blary wait for that to happen,” said Neeps.

Olik gestured over the city. “I hold the lives of these people in trust,” he said, “and I promised them I would remain here, until all the dangers I brought with me were removed. I will not depart until I am sure that Arunis has done so.” He smiled broadly. “Then I will depart very quickly.”

Thasha swallowed. If you still can.

“I am sending you back to your ship tonight,” said the prince. “But an hour before sunrise the carriages will again be on the quay, for any who wish to join the expedition. You will have tonight to decide.”

“And to prepare,” said Oggosk, “for either choice will have its costs.”

The four youths looked at one another. They were shaken. This was something none of them had foreseen.

“Nothing to decide, is there?” said Pazel, his voice less certain than his words. “We swore an oath. That settles it.”

“Right you are,” said Neeps. But his expression was hunted. The tarboys looked anxiously at their friends. Thasha found she couldn’t speak. Marila’s face was a mask.

“It may be less simple than you think,” said Hercol. “Grant me this much, boys: that we sit with our choices in silence awhile, until we are all back on the Chathrand, at least.”

“But Hercol,” said Pazel, “we already-”

“Heed his words!” croaked Oggosk with sudden vehemence. The tarboys started; Ensyl stared up at her with great unease. Felthrup looked from Oggosk to Thasha and back again. He rubbed his paws together, a blur before his face.

Mr. Teggatz cooked a vat of pork and snake-bean stew. It was a surprising success in taste, but some kind of gelatin leaked from the bean pods and turned the whole cauldron into a translucent solid. His tarboy aides served it like a jiggling, messy pudding, and the crew devoured it without comment. They were well beyond shock.

The cook kept a few servings aside for the youths and Hercol, but none of them was hungry. They sat quietly in the stateroom, which was unchanged but for the mold in the pantry area, while everywhere else on the ship men labored in their hundreds, shouting, thumping, dragging crates, coaxing animals and once more cursing “the fish-eyed freaks.” The dlomu’s fear had infected them. Every man aboard knew that they were running from some mortal threat.

Captain Rose would keep them at it all night, and all the next day, Thasha knew. Even after they launched, the work would continue: below the waterline, the crew would keep on shifting and securing the wares by lamplight, all the way across the gulf. And if that work was ever done, there were the forty miles of ropes to double- and triple-check, and paint with tar against the damp; seams to caulk, chains and wheelblocks and pump-gears to oil, extra sails to cut and stitch, hatch-covers to mend, stanchions to shore up; some fifty new animals to fuss over, two surly augrongs to scrub, delouse and copiously feed.

Hercol was right, but so was Pazel. It had been better not to talk anymore, there atop the city with nothing to lay their hands on, no mold to wipe away, no little tasks to hide behind. Still they all knew what the morning would bring. Neeps was putting his clothes in sacks. Hercol was seated on the bearskin, sharpening weapons. Pazel was rubbing oil into the creases of Thasha’s boots.

Everyone was on edge. Neeps and Marila bickered when they spoke at all, though they never seemed to be more than an arm’s length apart. The dogs lay in deep mourning, unable to bear the sight of the bags and bundles collecting near the door. Felthrup crouched on the window seat, gazing out at the night.

It fell to Mr. Fiffengurt to break the silence, roughly at midnight, when he staggered in from a long work shift and collapsed in the admiral’s chair. Pazel silently brought him a mug of dlomic beer-frothy, fruity, black. They had spent the evening developing a taste for it.

The quartermaster drank deeply. “Rose has just let me in on the plan,” he said. “It’s the damndest bit of hide-and-seek nonsense I’ve ever heard. And I can’t for the life of me think of a better idea.”

The Chathrand was to speed by night across the gulf, he explained, and land a tiny force, just three or four men, not far from where their little boat had been capsized by the emerald serpent. Those men would hide their boat, hide themselves deep in the dunes “and live off Rinforsaken mul” while the Chathrand sped out through the inlet, tacked west and raced along the outside of the Sandwall for a good sixty or eighty miles. There were rocky islets there, like those at Cape Lasung. A hiding place. Every sixth day the men on the Sandwall would climb the tallest dune and look for mirror-signals from Masalym, giving them the all-clear. On the same day, the Chathrand would venture carefully out of hiding and creep back along the Sandwall, hoping for a corresponding signal from the landing party.

“What then?” said Thasha.

“Then?” said Fiffengurt, startled. “Why, then we come and get you, m’lady.”

“Is that the captain’s plan?”

Fiffengurt gazed at her for a long time, his fingers caressing the chair’s felt arms. “If Rose tries to sail off and leave you here,” he said, “I will put a knife into his heart. D’ye understand me, Lady?”

As if there could be two ways of understanding a statement like that. Fiffengurt drained his mug and pushed to his feet. “Time to check the watch lists,” he grumbled. “The off-duty lads won’t sleep unless I order ’em to, their heads are so twisted with worry. The damned fools. Won’t be any blessed use tomorrow if they don’t sleep, will they?”

When he was gone, Hercol shook his head. “Do not mind Fiffengurt. He is angry at himself for that game leg: he knows it would make him useless on an overland journey. I fear he’s in more pain than he cares to admit, both from the leg and the thought of Anni and their child, and the slim chance that he will ever seen them again. But he thinks his own suffering too small a thing to share with anyone, just now.”

“Dear old Fiffengurt,” said Neeps. “But he’s assuming a lot, isn’t he? I mean, we still haven’t decided to go.”

“Haven’t we, mate?” said Pazel.

No one answered. Hercol rose and left the stateroom; the others went on with their work.

They were still drinking the black beer when a shout came from beyond the stateroom. Pazel at once felt a tightness in his chest: the voice was Ignus Chadfallow’s. He went to the door and opened it. The doctor was crouched by the invisible wall, his lips near the hole Counselor Vadu had made.

“Pazel,” he said, “come out here, will you? There is something you should see.”

Pazel glanced back at the others. “Go on,” said Thasha. He went, but he dragged his feet. He had a strong sense of having wronged the doctor. He had said nothing to Chadfallow about his dream-encounter with his mother; in fact they had barely spoken since their escape from the Conservatory. And Suthinia hadn’t admitted everything, to be sure. But clearly Captain Gregory had more than one thing on his mind when he abandoned his family.

He stopped a few feet from the wall.

“It’s not the best time, Ignus,” he said.

The doctor rose to his feet, watching Pazel gravely. “It is the only time,” he said.

Pazel drew a deep breath, summoning all his reserves of patience. Then he stepped through the wall. “Make it quick, will you?” he said. “I’m blary exhausted.”

Chadfallow nodded and turned, beckoning Pazel to follow. They descended the Silver Stair to the lower gun deck and set off briskly toward the bows. Even at this late hour the deck was swarming with men. Some were inspecting the gun carriages; others were guiding freight down the tonnage shaft or muscling crates across the floor. There were a few dlomu working among them, and Pazel saw with amazement that they were in uniform-Arquali uniform. Olik’s found dlomu willing to sail with us. To run away with the humans, to be hunted by their own people. Rin’s eyes, some of them must still love that prince.

Chadfallow begged a lamp from one of the work crews and led Pazel down a side passage into forward first-class: a ravaged corner of the ship, burned in the rat-battle, and unoccupied since their landfall at Ormael. The once-luxurious cabins gaped in a line, like five missing teeth. Rose had ordered the doors removed, to prevent the ship’s deathsmokers from creeping in and lighting cigarettes-one fire per voyage was more than enough.

Chadfallow sniffed. “The drug is still in the air,” he said. “Bring an addict here and he will go feverish before your eyes.” Then he froze. “Look, there it is.”

Across from the first of the gutted cabins was a waist-high green door. Pazel was startled: he had seen that door before, but not on the lower gun deck. They approached it. The door was untouched by fire, although the wall around it was black with soot. Yet the portal was clearly ancient: warped and cracked, with peeling paint and an iron handle that had rusted to an irregular lump.

“It’s exactly like the door on the berth deck,” said Pazel. “The one Thasha showed me, the night she fell into a trance.”

“Where on the berth deck?” asked Chadfallow.

“Starboard aft, I think,” said Pazel. “The odd thing is that I never could find it again.”

“Then it is the same,” said Chadfallow. He pointed down the corridor. Twenty feet from where they stood, someone had drawn a rectangle in chalk upon a bare stretch of wall. The shape was roughly the same size as the little green door.

“I drew that not an hour ago,” he said, “around this very door. It moves, Pazel. It slides, and melts away, and reappears on other decks.”

“A vanishing compartment?”

Chadfallow nodded. “They are quite real. And they lead to other places, other Chathrands, lost in both space and time. Some are reached through doors like this one, others merely by walking passages in a prescribed order. Some flare to life when a mage is near, or a powerful spell troubles the firmament. Others flicker in and out of existence like an erratic flame, as though the well of their enchantment is running dry.”

Pazel looked again at the door. Suddenly it felt menacing, like a trap waiting to break the leg of an unlucky dog. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

“I made it my business to know,” said Chadfallow, “and I would have told you myself ere now, if you had not tried so hard to avoid me. There are benefits to a life spent in diplomatic circles. One is the chance to collect on favors. I have a friend inside the Trading Company-a record keeper, and a man obsessed with the magical architecture of this ship. Not long after I received my orders to report to Chathrand I paid him a visit.”

Chadfallow looked at the green door. “He told me about that one. It is unlike any other magical portal on this ship. It is part of a relic spell, I think, laid down even before Erithusme’s time, by the mage-shipwrights who built this ship for war.”

“Ramachni warned Thasha not to open that door,” said Pazel.

“Hercol informed me,” said Chadfallow, “but I am not Thasha, am I?”

He put his hand on the corroded knob. And Pazel was suddenly flooded with apprehension, with outright fear. “Don’t do it!” he shouted, seizing the doctor’s arm.

Chadfallow gave him an unpleasant smile. “What awful thing do you imagine lying in wait?”

“Pitfire, Ignus, do we have to find out? If Ramachni said to avoid it that’s blary well good enough!”

“Normally, yes,” said Chadfallow, “but I have an equally valid reason to want to proceed. I was told that finding this door might prove the key to our success. To ridding the world of the Nilstone, that is, and perhaps Arunis as well.”

“Told, were you? By whom?”

“By Ramachni,” said Chadfallow. When Pazel gaped at him, he added, “It was a dream, some months back, as we drew close to Bramian.”

Pazel quickly averted his gaze. “You can’t trust dreams,” he said.

“Ah, but can we afford to ignore them?”

“You’re absolutely cracked,” Pazel heard himself say. “That dream could have come from Arunis. We know he’s been getting inside people’s minds.”

“The minds of the weak and the ill,” said Chadfallow, “or do you count me one of those?”

Pazel turned away, a string of florid Ormali curses on the tip of his tongue. “Damn it all, I don’t feel like arguing,” he said at last. “Just stay away from that door, wherever it turns up. Ramachni didn’t warn Thasha through any blary dream.”

“True,” said Chadfallow thoughtfully, “it was a message in an onion-skin, wasn’t it?”

Not waiting for an answer, he walked on. After a minute Pazel hurried after him. Soon they reached the entrance to sickbay. Pazel could hear someone groaning within.

The doctor opened the door but did not enter. Pazel looked in and saw that the beds were almost full. Men and tarboys glanced up miserably, holding their stomachs, leaning over buckets and pans. Two or three called out to Chadfallow.

“I will attend you presently,” said the doctor to the room at large. Then he closed the door and looked at Pazel. “Thirty patients,” he said. “The water at the Tournament Grounds was unclean. Some sort of parasite, I expect.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Pazel, wondering if they were finished.

Chadfallow leaned against the passage wall. He looked at Pazel with great melancholy. “I am still a hostage, you see: this time to the well-being of the ship. Rain is no use. I am the only reliable doctor this side of the Ruling Sea. The only human doctor, I mean.”

“And you sure are reliable,” said Pazel, looking away.

Chadfallow’s voice grew hard. “I know what you’re thinking: that unless Arunis is stopped and the Nilstone recovered it will not make any difference whether or not these people live or die. That is true. But my own choice is not between defeating Arunis and saving these souls. It is between the certainty of saving lives here, and the small chance that I will be of decisive use on the expedition.”

“Glad to know how carefully you’ve weighed all this.”

A spasm of irritation passed over Chadfallow’s face; then his look became resigned. “You will believe what you wish of me,” he said. “I could change your mind, perhaps-but I would prefer you reached your own conclusions. That has always been my aim: to give you the freedom to think for yourself, and all the tools I could to make that thinking fine.”

“Ignus,” said Pazel. “We’re not going on that expedition, either.”

The doctor stared at him, taken aback. “None of you?”

“How could we, damn it?” said Pazel. “We cause a panic everywhere we go. It will be a hundred times better if the dlomu go by themselves.”

“You were chosen by the Red Wolf.”

“So was Diadrelu,” said Pazel, “and look where that got her. And credek, you just finished talking about choosing for oneself. Did you mean a single word? Because it seems to me I do just fine when I make choices alone. The trouble is when all of you try to choose for me. If it’s not the Wolf it’s Ramachni, or Ott, or Captain Rose. Or you.” Then Pazel added wildly, “Neeps and Thasha feel the same way I do. We’re humans. We belong on this ship. It’s not as if we brought the Nilstone into this world.”

“What does Hercol say to this?”

“You’d better ask him.”

Chadfallow straightened his back. He looked down at Pazel and nodded. “I understand your reasoning perfectly,” he said. “Your decision mirrors my own, after all.”

No words could have been less welcome to Pazel’s ear. “I think I’ll go back to the stateroom now,” he said.

“May I walk with you?” asked the doctor.

Pazel shrugged. He set off, retracing their steps, and Chadfallow walked at his side. Pazel had the grating feeling that he’d just been outmaneuvered once more by a man who’d made a lifetime game of needling him. Had someone told the doctor about his own dream of Suthinia? Was this his way of gloating over how wrong Pazel had been?

“Ignus,” he said through his teeth, “I’m going to ask you a question. And if you answer with anything but yes or no, I’m not sure I’ll ever speak to you again.”

“Mercy me,” said Chadfallow.

“Are you the reason my father abandoned us?”

Chadfallow stopped in his tracks. He looked like a man who has suddenly been hurled a great distance, and is surprised to find himself on his feet. He opened his mouth and closed it again, never breaking eye contact with Pazel.

Then he said, “Yes, I am.”

Something exploded in Pazel at those words. He flew at the doctor, aiming for the nose he had broken once before. Chadfallow jerked back his head just in time.

“Son of a whore!” Pazel shouted, lunging again. “He never mucking spoke to me again! Did you do it in his Gods-damned bed? Did he think I was your brat, your bastard child? Did he? Am I?”

“No.”

“No to what, you blary pig?”

“No, you’re not my son.”

Pazel stood frozen, his hands still in fists. He had seen Chadfallow enraged, pompous, indignant, even suicidal. But he had never heard such sadness in his voice.

“You’re sure?” he said. “How can you be sure?”

Chadfallow blinked at him slowly. “Your father,” he said, “is Captain Gregory Pathkendle.”

Men were staring. Pazel looked at them until they turned back to their work. Chadfallow stepped forward and placed a nervous hand on his shoulder.

“Captain Gregory doesn’t give a damn about me,” said Pazel.

Words he’d never meant to speak. Words too plain and factual, a truth too obvious to bear.

“Some men are not born to be fathers,” said Chadfallow. “Very few rise to all the challenges of the task.”

“Some men try.”

Pazel felt hot tears on his face. Now that they had started what could ever make them stop?

“Why… do you say you’re the reason he left?”

Chadfallow gazed into their sputtering lamp. “Because I shamed him, once. Before your mother, whom he revered even more than he loved. You know what your mother is, now, Pazel: a warrior in the fight for the soul of Alifros. That is what made me fall in love with her, by the way-not her beauty, not at first. I was swept off my feet by her goodness, the mission that had brought her over the sea. It was all I could think about. It exposed my diplomatic charades for the petty game they were. And there she was, giving it up for a commoner, a sailing captain! What was worse, she wanted Gregory, and he her. So I shamed him, purposefully. It was the lowest act of my life.”

“Tell me,” said Pazel, nails biting into his palms.

The doctor’s hand trembled on his shoulder. “I thought the three of us were alone. You were at school. Gregory was perhaps a little tipsy-he was not above a glass of wine at midday, when he was home in Ormael. And on that day he told his wife that he wished her to have no more to do with Ramachni or Bolutu, or the other survivors of the expedition, the ones Arunis had not yet killed. That he would shred their letters if they came, and stop her from attending their clandestine meetings. He was merely letting off steam, I think-and voicing a most reasonable fear for her safety. Suthinia just laughed at him. No man alive ever ordered her about, or ever will.

“But I chose to take his words seriously. Out of spite and jealousy. I said he was a fool to stand in her way. That his wife had been chosen for the greatest task imaginable and should not be thwarted by a man whose highest ambition was to corner the barley trade with Sorhn. He rose in a fury, and soon we were shouting at each other like Plapps and Burnscovers. I called him a small-minded smuggler. He answered that it was high time I stopped sticking my great Etherhorde nose into his family’s affairs.”

Chadfallow drew a sharp breath. “Things might have gone differently if Neda had not been listening at the top of the stairs. She chose that moment to remark that my nose wasn’t all I was sticking in.”

Pazel’s mouth fell open, but Chadfallow gave a dismissive wave. “It was nonsense, girlish babble. And looking back I think Neda meant only to take her father’s side, to drive the interfering Arquali from your home. Even if she had to lie.”

Pazel felt hollow inside, and cold. “She didn’t manage to drive you out,” said Pazel. “She drove Gregory away. Oh, Neda.”

“I told him it was rubbish,” said the doctor, “and he professed to take my word. We shook hands that day, affirmed our friendship. But it was never the same-and two months later, he was gone. Yes, I think he must have believed Neda in his heart. As for Suthinia, I doubt if he ever dared ask her. They are perfectly matched in one way, your parents. They are both quite terribly proud.”

Pazel slid down against the wall. He dragged a grimy arm across his eyes. “He wanted it to be true that you were sleeping with her. He was looking for an excuse to leave us. That’s what I think.”

Chadfallow sat down next to him, shaking his head. “I can’t tell you, Pazel. But I hope you won’t torture yourself with what-ifs, as I have done these many years. The past is gone; the future is wailing for its breakfast. That is what my father used to say.”

Pazel stared at him blankly. “Ignus,” he said, “we can’t go hunting Arunis. We can’t.”

“I will question you no further about the expedition.”

“But if we did,” said Pazel, “I’d understand you having to stay here. I’d… be proud of you. For seeing clearly. For knowing how to choose.”

Chadfallow dropped his eyes. He was struggling for composure, and then the struggle ended, and his shoulders shook. Pazel embraced him, for the first time in more than six years, and the Imperial Surgeon wept and said, “My lad, my excellent boy,” and the sailors passing in the corridor had the grace to look away.

Thasha entered her father’s cabin with a tin of sweetpine and placed a little in the pocket of each of his coats, to keep the moths at bay. She took down the portrait of some nameless uncle holding a cat and wrapped it in a sheet.^ 11

“I despise those creatures,” said Felthrup, startling her from behind. “Oggosk’s monster Sniraga has already been sniffing at the hole in the magic wall. Can you not repair it, Thasha?”

“Don’t you think I’d have done so by now?” answered Thasha. “For some reason I was given the power to decide who passes through the wall, and who doesn’t-but that’s as far as it goes.”

“Of course, of course.” With a sigh Felthrup leaped onto the bed, where he gazed deeply into Syrarys’ dressing mirror. When he caught Thasha looking at him, he gave a small, embarrassed squeak. “I am not vain,” he said. “There is something odd about that mirror. Whenever I look into it, I see only myself, and yet always-for no reason I can discover-I expect to see someone else.”

“Someone in particular?” asked Thasha.

“Yes,” said Felthrup. “Ramachni. I expect to see Ramachni, looking out at me. And I feel his presence in other places, Lady: standing before the magic wall, or napping on the bearskin.”

Startled anew, Thasha gazed into the mirror herself. She saw nothing strange, except her own face: eyes that were hers, but not quite hers, eyes more wary and knowing than the last time she’d studied herself in a glass. She did not much like that look of hers, and wondered how long she had worn it.

“My lady,” said Felthrup, “I will go with you to the mountains.”

Thasha turned to him, overwhelmed. The courage of the little creature, the loyalty. “If we go,” she said, “you must stay behind, darling rat.”

“No!” Felthrup whirled in a circle. “I don’t want to stay here alone! I can’t face it, this great mean ship, without you and the others beside me!”

“You wouldn’t be alone,” said Thasha. “You’d have Fiffengurt, and Jorl and Suzyt. And whether we go or stay you’ll have work to do. Someone has to find the ixchel, and make peace. And there’s something else, too: you have to dream for us, Felthrup. That is how you’ll do your traveling, from now on. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find Ramachni that way, and bring him to us.”

“Ramachni has always done the finding,” said Felthrup.

“You found Pazel Doldur,” said Thasha.

A light shone in Felthrup’s black eyes. “It was wonderful there, in the Orfuin Club, among the scholars. I felt at home with them, somehow, even the one who told me to go away and eat cake.”

Suddenly the floor heaved. The Chathrand was tilting over: a slow, scraping list to portside, accompanied by groaning timbers, creaking screws, curses from above and below. Thasha and Felthrup scrambled into the outer stateroom.

“We’re afloat,” said Neeps, mopping beer from the floor. “Credek, they’ve got a lot of rebalancing to do.”

“Let’s go up there,” said Marila.

The three youths left the stateroom. They met Pazel on the Silver Stair, and together they climbed to the topdeck. It was very dark, but even by the dim lamplight they could see how much had changed. The inner wall of the berth had been retracted, and the locks opened wide. The river had been allowed to pour back into the great basin, and the Chathrand, as Neeps said, was at last afloat. The mooring-lines creaked, the gangways rocked on their hinges.

Suddenly Thasha stifled a cry. Two beings were sweeping toward them from amidships. They were dressed in rags, which they clutched tight against the evening wind; their hands were bone-thin and colorless. One was hooded, and the other wore an ancient Merchant Service cap. But neither figure possessed a face. It was appalling: the fronts of their heads simply blurred to nothingness. She grabbed Pazel by the arm.

“You don’t see them, do you?”

“See what, Thasha?”

She knew quite well that they were ghosts. She had seen them by daylight, these shades of the former captains of the Great Ship. But by daylight they looked human-old, strange, crazed maybe, but human. Only drugged with blane, close to death herself, had she seen them in this form. A vision she had tried for months to forget.

The two figures came right for her. Thasha stepped backward, feeling the cold in them from yards away. “Duchess!” sighed the figure in the cap.

“I’m not,” said Thasha.

“Blind fool,” hissed the hooded figure to its companion. “The hag is in the cabin with her child. You’re standing before our mistress now, so keep a civil tongue.”

Her friends were talking, their voices far away. “I’m not your mistress, either,” she said. Then, a bit more bravely: “I don’t want you near me. Go to your rest, or wherever you belong.”

“We belong in the stomach of the night,” said the hooded spirit, thrusting its non-face closer to hers. “We are the bread of the unborn, the milk they will drink in their first hours. You keep us here, Mistress-you and the Red Beast. How can you order us hence, while you hold our chains in your hand?”

“Go to him!” cried the figure in the cap. “Go to Rose and help him face his doom! Go now, girl, before it’s too late!”

The hooded figure turned on its companion, outraged that it had taken such a tone with “our mistress.” They began to bicker, a sound like driving rain. Thasha turned and fled to starboard, dragging her friends with her. Suddenly another ghost rose through a glass plank on their left and began shuffling toward her purposefully. She was not going to be able to ignore them. And perhaps she shouldn’t: Oggosk too had been trying to tell them something about Rose, when she shared that letter.

“Come with me,” said Thasha to the others, and headed straight for the captain’s door beneath the quarterdeck. But as they neared it Sergeant Haddismal emerged, frowning at some inner thought. At the sight of them he was at once suspicious. He stopped in the doorway, blocking their path.

“Where d’ye imagine you’re going?” he said. “The captain’s too busy to breathe. He don’t need to hear from four lunatics on top of everything else.”

“Haven’t you learned how insulting that is?” said Marila, with such vehemence that even her friends looked at her in surprise.

“Insulting?” said Haddismal. “You taking after the fish-eyes, now?”

“Could be worse folk to take after,” said Neeps. “Right, Marila?”

“Just be quiet,” she said.

“Sergeant,” said Thasha with rising impatience, “we were told to see the captain, right now.”

“Told, eh? By whom?”

Thasha said nothing, and Haddismal’s mouth curled in anger. “Don’t muck around with me,” he said. “You know what strange fancy’s grabbed hold of him, don’t you? You’re here to take advantage. Do you know that he’s been marked for execution, just because he bled that fishy prince a little? I suppose you want him to go back ashore and walk among them. Throw himself on their mercy. Not likely, girl.”

“What in Pitfire are you talking about?” said Thasha. “What fancy’s come over him?”

Before Haddismal could reply they heard Rose himself, bellowing from behind him. “Stand clear, you tinshirt bastard! Let me out before I choke!”

Haddismal jumped aside, and Rose barreled into the doorway. For the second time in five minutes, Thasha had to contain the urge to cry out. The others did cry out, and even Haddismal made an appalled noise in his throat.

“Aya, Captain, you should leave that behind in your chambers! Don’t let the lads see you with it, sir.”

Rose was clutching the entire carcass of a leopard. It was dry and shriveled and hard as wood, but quite real. Its glass eyes were open; a waxy tongue lay rippling between huge yellow fangs. Rose was holding it against his chest with one arm. Like the Turach, he stopped dead at the sight of Thasha and her companions. His face paled; his eyes moved from one youth to another.

“You devils,” he said. “I curse the day you came aboard.”

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Haddismal. “I was about to send them away.”

“Not till dawn! Not till dawn!”

“I meant away from your door, sir.”

“I’ll do it,” said Rose, but his eyes were drifting, and it seemed he spoke neither to the Turach nor to the youths. “Do you hear me? I’ll do it! What more do you want?”

“Do what, for Rin’s sake?” asked Pazel. “What’s the matter with you? What’s that leopard for?”

Rose gave the leopard a convulsive squeeze. Then, noticing that Haddismal too was staring at the creature, he barked: “Get on with your preparations! You’re fifteen hours from launch, and I’m still captain while I walk this ship!”

Haddismal stalked off, perplexed and affronted. Rose was still looking past them-at the ghosts, of course. He had always been able to see them, those shades of his predecessors. They hounded him, jeered and poked. Thasha wondered how he managed to hold on to the least hint of sanity under such conditions. But had the ghosts’ torments made him crazy, or was he able to sense them because he was already mad? Either way, it chilled her to know that the only other person aboard who saw the figures was herself.

“I never requested the Chathrand,” he said. “Has the witch not told you? I was running inland when the Flikkermen tracked me down.”

Like everyone aboard Thasha had heard the rumor, though not from Lady Oggosk. But with Rose it was always better not to tip one’s hand. “Why are you telling us this, Captain?” she asked.

“Say it!”

Rose flinched. It was another ghost, just above them on the quarterdeck. Thasha recognized the figure as Captain Kurlstaf: no other commander of the Great Ship dabbed pink paint on his fingernails. Thasha and Rose both looked at Kurlstaf: his tattered dress, his ancient pearls. He pointed a long white finger-bone at Rose.

“Say it!” hissed the shade again. “Raise your sleeve and swear!”

Rose professed to despise Kurlstaf, called him pansy and tarboy-tickler, among uglier names. But Thasha knew he also put more stock in Kurlstaf’s opinions than those of any of the other spirits.

“I am responsible for the well-being of this ship,” said Rose.

“Swear, you hairy red dog!” cried Kurlstaf.

Most reluctantly, Rose tugged his right sleeve up above the wrist. They all knew he bore the wolf-scar there: a burn identical to those carried by Pazel, Neeps, Thasha, Hercol, Bolutu-and Diadrelu, though hers they had only seen after her death. Rose held his arm up like a talisman.

“I didn’t ask for this either, by the Night Gods,” he said, “but it’s burned too deep ever to heal. I’m stuck with it, stuck with you, to the last tack and beyond.” He was still looking at Kurlstaf. “If a hopeless quest is to be the fate of Nilus Rose-why not? I’ll swear. You’ll see and be amazed, for I’ll give the oath, live by it, and die by it if necessary. And it will be necessary-just look at these circus clowns. But I’ll swear. You don’t believe me, do you?”

“What’s the leopard for?” asked Neeps.

“Shut up about the leopard! I hate the leopard!” Rose lunged forward and swung the animal like a club. The youths jumped back. Rose dropped to his knees and smashed the leopard against the deck so violently that one of the glass eyes popped out and rolled away. “I hate it! I hate it! And you ghouls also, you dead swindlers, transvestites, whoremongers, cheats! Why should I swear anything to you? After tonight I’ll never see you again, unless we meet in the Pits!”

From within his cabin, Lady Oggosk gave a peremptory shriek: “Nilus! That is undignified! Come here, I haven’t finished with your shirt.”

The captain grew still. He hugged the leopard once more to his chest, staring at the astonished youths. “Don’t you dare be late,” he said.

When the door closed the others drifted forward along the portside rail, through the mad scramble of departure-less-fifteen-hours. The ghosts were still visible to Thasha but they kept a respectful distance. If she faced one of them directly, it bowed.

“Do you realize what he was telling us?” said Neeps. “He wants to come along! Rose! And he didn’t even stop to ask whether or not we’re going through with it.”

“He should have asked,” said Pazel, “because there’s no mucking way we can. We’d never see the ship again. We’d never see other humans again. Besides, we’d draw all sorts of attention on that highway, just as we’ve done here. I’ll bet Arunis has paid someone to keep watch for anything outlandish coming his way-human beings, for instance.”

Pazel’s argument was met with silence. He was trying to convince himself as much as anyone, Thasha mused. They walked on toward the bow, dodging the busiest work areas. Neeps tried to take Marila’s hand but she would not let him. Then out of nowhere, Bolutu rushed up and pointed excitedly at the quay.

“A snow heron! A snow heron has flown right into the city! It is a sacred bird, a blessing that comes in times of change. Look there to starboard; you will see it.”

A play of shadows in the lanternlight: then a huge, long-legged bird swept over the quay, its eight-foot wings beating slow and fragile. It was pure white, and by the lanterns’ soft glow its unruly feathers were ghostly. With a raucous croak it alighted on the Chathrand’s forecastle, a few yards from the Goose-Girl figurehead. On the quay the dlomu stood staring, their work forgotten. The heron folded its wings and stood motionless, its back to the ship, as though it knew somehow that the eight hundred humans would do it no harm.

The bird’s stillness was monumental. Thasha wanted to ask why the dlomu revered it so, but a part of her seemed to understand already. If it was an omen of change, then its stillness was the perfect opposite of what was to come. Cherish this, it might have said, for when you move again it will be gone, you will have lost it forever.

“I have seen but one other snow heron in my life,” said Bolutu. “It stood on the harbor wall as I sailed out of Masalym to cross the Nelluroq. They were rare even then, two centuries ago. Now I understand that years go by without a single sighting anywhere in the South.”

Thasha closed her eyes. An image had burst into her mind, sudden and unsought. A sky above a marsh, full of blowing confetti, living snow. Thousands, she thought, as the image sharpened, and the roar of their mingled calls echoed inside her. I’ve walked among these birds in their thousands.

Pazel’s hand on her elbow brought her back. She opened her eyes, the vision gone. She gave him a frightened smile.

Pazel turned to Bolutu. “Someone gave Rose a stuffed cat,” he said.

“A leopard,” said Bolutu, smiling. “Of course. It was a gift from the Naval Commander of Masalym-an old fellow with a ceremonial post; he commands a fleet of sixteen hulks and derelicts. But it was a grand gesture all the same. By tradition a departing captain must hold the leopard until the last mooring-line is cast off. Then he throws it ashore, and the well-wishers catch it, being most careful not to let it touch the earth. Good luck follows any who observe the rite; but if the creature so much as brushes the cobbles-disaster. And if the captain lets it be held for even an instant by another man aboard-well, that man will be his death.” He shrugged. “Dlomic seafarers are as superstitious as any.”

“No wonder he barked at Haddismal,” said Neeps. “But why is he so upset about the leopard?”

“I guess you haven’t noticed,” said Marila, “that he’s terrified of cats.”

“All his life,” said Bolutu, nodding. “That much I have gleaned from his exchanges with Lady Oggosk. It goes beyond Sniraga; he cannot abide cats of any sort. The sicunas must have struck him as horrors from the Pits.”

Thasha glanced at Bolutu. “You’ve lost your monk’s hat,” she observed.

“It is only put away,” said Bolutu, a bit sadly. “One day I may wear it again, if we indeed sail north together. But there is no Rinfaith here, Lady Thasha. Not south of the Ruling Sea, and not in my heart.”

A few sailors stopped their work and looked at him. “That’s a funny sort of faith, Brother Bolutu,” said Mr. Fegin.

“I don’t disagree,” said Bolutu, “and yet I am bound to respect the Ninety Rules, and the second of these is the call to honesty. For twenty years my body was human. Now it has reverted to its old form, and I find my old, ancestral faith contending with my adopted one.”

“But the Gods are the Gods, all the same.”

“Are they?” asked Bolutu. “We have no Gods here, Mr. Fegin. And yet we know we are observed. The Watchers, we call them: those who do not intervene, do not speak, do not instruct. One day they will be our judges. But until then they tell us absolutely nothing.”

“Well, that just beats everything,” said another sailor. “What kind of Gods-or Watchers or what have you-refuse to tell you how to worship ’em?”

“The best kind,” said Bolutu, smiling, “or so we are taught as children. There is no divine law given us, no rules, no scripture. What we are given is here, and here.” Bolutu tapped his forehead, then his heart. “Wisdom, and an instinct for the good. It is to those things we must strive to be true. As for worship, what good has it ever done? In the Last Reckoning the Watchers will judge our deeds, not our praise of them, our flattery.”

“Deeds, eh?” said Fegin, turning back to his work. “D’ye suppose they’ll like what they see?”

Mr. Bolutu looked down sadly, as if the same question had occurred to him. He walked away from the youths, trying for a closer view of the heron. The bird had not moved a feather. Thasha wondered if it would see them off at sunrise.

She drew a deep breath. “We’re really going, aren’t we?” she said.

Pazel drew her close, rested his chin on her shoulder. “Love you,” he whispered, so softly she could barely hear. Thasha wished suddenly to pull them all close, to tell them they mattered to her more than anything, more than their quest. She turned and kissed Pazel, felt his urgency, his hammering heart, and wondered just how long they had before dawn, and then Marila said, “I’m with child,” and they all looked at her, speechless. The heron lifted off, as though it had come for just this information, and Neeps covered his face with his hands.

11. Admiral Isiq’s letters refer to the dour gentleman with the cat as “Great-Uncle Torindan, the war hero.” — EDITOR.