the same age as you.'
Pazel just looked at her, irritated now. Age had nothing to do with it, of course. They were not equals. If she were a toddler and he a man of sixty, he would still be obliged to call her Lady.
'Hercуl thinks you're under a curse,' said Thasha. 'Is he right? How often does it happen?'
'Two or three times a year, Mistress.'
'You must be rather clever to survive. In the Lorg a girl with a curse like yours would be put in a barrel of icewater-to cool her evil thoughts, you know. I wonder what evil thoughts you have, Pazel Pathkendle?'
'That's not why it happens!' he said fiercely.
'Of course not. I was being ironic.' She smiled, but Pazel flushed again, because now he looked like a bumpkin who took everything seriously. He longed to show her that he knew what ironic meant, but no words came.
Then all at once his mind took in the significance of the objects around him: bed, heaped clothes, wardrobe and mirror, writing table with stationery and quill.
'This is your cabin,' he whispered. 'I can't be here.'
'Oh, blow!' she said. 'Don't you start as well.'
'You're the Treaty Bride,' said Pazel. 'I've got to get out of here.'
'Don't call me that,' said Thasha in a warning tone.
Pazel bent to look out the porthole. 'What time is it, m'lady?' he asked.
'Almost dinnertime. My father's having a drink with Captain Rose.'
'Who else knows I'm here? Who saw me come in?'
Impatiently she sketched the missing hours of his life. His encounter with Jervik had been loud. Thasha and her tutor Hercуl had left the stateroom to investigate just as Pazel rushed into the corridor. Thasha did not seem surprised that Hercуl had seized him at once, dragged him to her private room and put him to sleep with a gulp of liquor, all in a matter of seconds. Her tutor, she said, moved faster than anyone on earth.
'I saw your father,' said Pazel.
Thasha nodded. 'He didn't see you, fortunately. Syrarys closed the washroom door, and Prahba's a little hard of hearing. Syrarys saw you, though, and nearly had you thrown out again.' Thasha put on a face of mock outrage, and a strident voice: ''You put that boy in her bedroom, Hercуl? What are you thinking? What will people say?''
'She's right,' said Pazel. 'You're noble-born. You can't do this sort of thing.'
'Rubbish,' she said. 'I do exactly as I please.'
'Some of us don't get to live that way,' he said, a bit more sharply than he intended. 'And they'll gossip on the berth deck, too, m'lady. Do you know what my mates will say if they find out?'
Thasha smiled and leaned forward, intrigued-not at all the reaction he wished for. 'What will they say?' she asked.
He hesitated. If she really wanted to know-
'They'll say you like playing in the dirt.'
Thasha's look of enthusiasm died on her face. She was shocked, but clearly didn't want him to see it. She forced out a laugh. 'Tar-boys,' she said.
Pazel bit his lips. As if you knew anything about us.
'Besides,' he went on, 'you're supposed to be practicing to be a Mzithrini wife, and they're not allowed to do anything.'
'Rubbish!' said Thasha again. 'And anyway I don't care. You're not one of those mush-dull boys who does only what he's supposed to, I hope? But of course you're not-I saw you with the augrongs. Wherever did you learn to speak Augrongi?'
'Augronga,' Pazel corrected her, before he could stop himself. Then he added quickly, 'I don't really speak it, of course; nobody does. But sailing here and there, you know, you hear things. And there's this book called a Polylex, most ships carry one.'
'Not that thing,' said Thasha, with an odd look. 'It's all mixed up and wrong.'
That was perfectly true, Pazel knew. It was even likely that Mr. Uskins had pieced together his disastrous Augronga from the 'Tongues of All Alifros' chapter in the back of the book.
'Of course,' said Thasha, lowering her eyes, 'some versions are better than others. I have an old Polylex of my own. It says that drinking buffalo milk makes one smarter but also prone to 'wraths and paranoias.' And it says that long ago there were whole fleets of ships like the Chathrand, and they really did cross the Ruling Sea, and visited strange lands we've forgotten all about. Most of those ships were destroyed so long ago that we can't even recall their names. They were built by the Amber Kings, and one of them brought the foundation stone for the city of Etherhorde from the Court of the Archangel in the east. But over the centuries they built fewer and fewer, and the old ships began to sink. Three were destroyed in the Worldstorm, and one in a great whirlpool called the Nelluroq Vortex.'
'Yes, the Vortex-'
'And do you know I've been having dreams about it, or something like it? Prahba was talking about war, and how one kind of destruction leads to another, and since then I've had this dream of a whirlpool, and a ship trapped inside it, spinning like a bit of wood, lower and lower-'
'Mistress-'
'Off the point, I know. What I mean to say is that the Vortex took Stallion in the year seven fifty-two, and Urstorch and Bali Adro never returned from missions across the Ruling Sea, and the last Great Ship but this one, the Maisa, was sunk by the Mzithrinis half a century ago. She was the sister-ship to the Chathrand: same size, same trim. But Maisa wasn't her original name. She was given that name just a few years before she sank, in honor of an Empress Maisa. My Polylex says she was our Emperor's stepmother.'
'Yes, I knew that-'
'Did you? How strange. There was no Empress Maisa in my schoolbooks. But do you know the strangest thing about the Great Ships? The Yeligs-the Chathrand's owners-are the whole reason we can't build any more! They started putting the shipwrights to death so that they couldn't sell their secrets to other Trading Families. I suppose they didn't mean to kill them all.'
'Mistress!' Pazel broke in at last. 'The Lady Syrarys knows I'm in your cabin!'
'You worry too much,' said Thasha. 'I can handle Syrarys. I told her I'd cut off my hair and spit sapwort at my wedding if she disturbed you. Not that there's going to be any wedding-but perhaps you'd better not tell anyone I said that. Anyway, I doubt she could have disturbed you after you swallowed all that Keppery gin. Do you know what's crawling around in this ship?'
'M-m-my Lady?'
'Rats!' said Thasha happily. 'I saw a rat on the lower gun deck. And would you believe I heard one crawling under these very floorboards last night? It must have been a clever rat, for when I hushed my dogs it grew still, too. Are you afraid of rats?'
'No.'
'Do they bite you tarboys?'
'Yes.'
'What happened to your parents, then? Are they dead?'
It was most unusual for Pazel to be at a loss for words, and most uncomfortable. He had not been alone with any girl in his life save his sister, and he had rarely known anyone to talk as long and cheerfully as Thasha. He was also maddened by his own timidity before her. She was beautiful and important; did that mean she was smarter than he was? He swallowed. Then he folded his hands behind his back, schoolboy-fashion.
'Your questions, Lady Thasha,' he said, 'are indiscreet.'
Folding his hands proved a mistake: he could have used them to protect himself. Instead he found himself flat on his back again with Thasha astride him, thumping his cheeks and pouring out a whirlwind of abuse. 'Indiscreet! He runs in squawking like a… playing in the blary dirt… I'll show you who's practicing to be a wife!'
This was how Hercуl found them: red-faced and tangled, with Jorl howling at the ceiling and Suzyt doing her best to swallow Pazel's right foot. When he had separated them, and persuaded Suzyt to unlock her jaws, the tall man laughed.
'So good to find you improved, lad! But save your wrestling for other tarboys: they are far less dangerous. Come, get up, we have some things to decide. Won't you introduce us, Thasha?'
'I'm not marrying anyone!'
