'Got a flint?'
'No, ma'am,' said Pazel.
'That's Lady Oggosk to you! Fetch a lamp, then.'
It was difficult to fetch anything while holding the tea-tray. Pazel thought his arms would break, hoisting a brass deck lamp heavy with walrus oil as Lady Oggosk struggled with her pipe. Wafts of burning walrus, tobacco and lukka seeds flooded his nostrils, and the Lady's breath as she puffed and hiccuped was like a draft from a ginger-scented tomb. At last the pipe lit, and she cackled.
'Don't cry, my little monkey. He hasn't forgotten you-oh, not for an instant, no!'
Pazel gaped at her. She could only mean Chadfallow, but what did she know of their connection? Before he could find a way to ask, she turned from him, still chuckling to herself.
The third passenger was a merchant, well groomed and well fed. At first glance, Pazel thought him ill: he had a white scarf wrapped tight about his neck, and one hand rested there as if nursing a sore spot. He cleared his throat with a painful noise-CHHRCK! — nearly making Pazel spill the tea. The man had an appetite, too: four biscuits vanished into his mouth, followed by the next largest ginger candy.
'You're not very clean,' he said suddenly, looking Pazel up and down. 'Whose soap do you use?'
'Whose soap, sir?'
'Is that a difficult question? Who makes the soap you scrub your face with?'
'We're given potash, sir.'
'You're a servant.'
'Not for much longer, sir,' said Pazel. 'Captain Nestef has extended me his hand of friendship, for which I bless him thrice over. He says I have genuine prospects, with my flair for languages, and-'
'My own prospects are excellent, of course,' the man informed him. 'My name is Ket-a name worth remembering, worth jotting down. I am about to make transactions valued at sixty thousand gold cockles. And that is just one trading voyage.'
'How grand for you, sir. I say, sir! Would you be sailing on the Chathrand?'
'You will not see sixty thousand in your lifetime-nor even six. Go now.'
He placed something on the tea-tray and waved Pazel off. Pazel bowed and withdrew, then looked at the object. It was a pale green disc, stamped with the words KET SOAP.
One of those sixty thousand coins would have suited him better, but he hid the soap in his pocket nonetheless. Then he looked at the tray and his heart sank. He had nothing left for Chadfallow but a small rind of ginger and a broken biscuit.
The doctor ignored these, but pointed at the tea flask. Carefully, Pazel filled a mug. The doctor wrapped his long fingers around it, raised it to his lips and inhaled the steam, as he had told Pazel one should in cold weather, to 'vivify the nostrils.' He did not look at the boy, and Pazel did not know whether to stay or leave. At last, very softly, the doctor spoke.
'You're not ill?'
'No,' said Pazel.
'Your mind-fits?'
'They're cured,' said Pazel quickly, very glad they were alone. No one on the Eniel knew about his mind- fits.
'Cured?' said the doctor. 'How did you manage that?'
Pazel shrugged. 'I bought some medicine in Sorhn. Everyone goes to Sorhn for that kind of thing.'
'Everyone does not live under the influence of magic spells,' said Chadfallow. 'And how much did they charge you for this… medicine?'
'They took… what I had,' admitted Pazel, frowning. 'But it was worth every penny. I'd do it again tomorrow.'
Chadfallow sighed. 'I dare say you would. Now what about your teeth?'
Pazel looked up, startled by the quick change of focus: his mind-fits were the doctor's favorite subject. 'My teeth are just fine,' he said carefully.
'That's good. But this tea is not. Taste it.'
Chadfallow passed him the cup, and watched as he drank.
Pazel grimaced. 'It's bitter,' he said.
'More bitter for you than me. Or so you may well imagine.'
'What do you mean by that?' Pazel's voice rose in confusion. 'Why are you all so odd?'
But like the duchess and the soap man, Chadfallow merely turned to face the sea. And all through that night's crossing he showed no more interest in Pazel than in the common sailors who bustled around him.
Now, at midnight, battered and soaking and chilled to the bone, Pazel watched the Shipworks loom nearer. They were minutes from port, and still the moonlight held.
Pazel knew he'd been a fool to hope for better treatment from Chadfallow. The doctor was a changed man since the invasion of Ormael, which as the Emperor's Special Envoy he had witnessed firsthand. The violence had left him morose, and whatever spring of warmth he used to draw upon seemed to have dried up. At their last meeting, two years ago, he had pretended not to know Pazel at all.
But why was he here, on the eve of the Chathrand's launch? For the doctor never appeared but when some great change was about to explode into Pazel's life. Tonight would be no different, he thought, and so he lingered by the foremast to see what Chadfallow would do.
A voice ashore hailed them: 'Bring to, Eniel! Bring to, there! Crowded port!'
Captain Nestef bellowed, 'Aye, Sorrophran!' and tugged hard at the wheel. The bosun shouted, men leaped for ropes, the white sails of the Eniel furled. Coasting, she passed the Sorrophran dry docks, the long files of warships with their armored bows and gunwales bristling with spikes, the shrimping fleet, the porcelain-domed Nunekkam houseboats. Then a sigh of wonder passed over the deck, breathed by officer and sailor and tarboy alike. The Chathrand had swung into view.
No wonder the port was full! Chathrand alone nearly filled it. Now that Pazel saw her plainly by moonlight, the ship seemed a thing not of men but of giants. The tip of the Eniel's mainmast scarcely reached her quarterdeck, and a sailor high in her crosstrees looked no bigger than a gull. Her own masts made Pazel think of the towers of the Noonfirth Kings, soaring over the black cliffs at Pуl. Beside her even the Emperor's warships seemed like toys.
'She is the last of her kind,' said a voice behind him. 'Do not turn around, Pazel.'
Pazel froze, one hand on the mast. The voice was Chadfallow's.
'A living relic,' the doctor continued. 'A five-masted Segral Wind-Palace, the largest ship ever built since the days of the Amber Kings before the Worldstorm. Even the trees of which she is made are passed into legend: m'xingu for keel, tritne pine for mast and yard, rock maple for deck and wales. Mages as well as shipwrights played their part in her creation, or so the old tales claim. Such arts are lost to us now-along with so much else.'
'Is it true, she crossed the Ruling Sea?'
'The Segrals braved those waters, yes: that is why they were built, in fact. But Chathrand is six hundred years old, boy. Her youth is a mystery. Only the elders of her Trading Family have seen the logs of her earliest journeys.'
'Captain Nestef says it makes no sense to outfit Chathrand here, when Etherhorde is just six days away,' said Pazel. 'He says there are shipwrights in Etherhorde who train for years just to work on her.'
'They have been brought here from the capital.'
'But why? Captain Nestef says Etherhorde will be her first stop anyway.'
'Your curiosity is in perfect health,' said Chadfallow dryly.
'Thank you!' said Pazel. 'And after Etherhorde? Where will they send her next?'
The doctor hesitated. 'Pazel,' he said at last, 'how much do you remember of our lessons, back in Ormael?'
'Everything. I can name all the bones in the body, and the six kinds of bile, and the eleven organs, and the tubes in your gut-'
'Not anatomy,' said Chadfallow. 'Think back to what I told you of politics. You know about the Mzithrin, our great enemies in the west.'
