Pazel came forward uneasily, and the admiral rested a hand on his shoulder.
'We burned your city,' he said. 'It was a terrible deed, and fate repays me in the same coin-I too am burning, with a brain fever that never quite subsides. But know this: my orders were far worse, not just to burn Ormael City but to flatten her, roll her founding-stone into the sea, fill her wells with corpses, plow her fields with salt. Our Emperor did not think we could hold Ormael, so far from the heart of Arqual, so close to the Mzithrin Kings. He wanted a wasteland, therefore: something no enemy could ever reclaim.
'I meant to give him his ruin. I sailed there with such purpose, believing the safety of Arqual depended on it. But when I arrived and saw proud young Ormael, beautiful as a Dlуmic city out of legend, I could not.'
He paused, worrying his knuckles. Thasha looked at Pazel expectantly, and Pazel felt like bolting from the room. What did they want? To be thanked?
'Imagine if I had done nothing,' said Isiq at last. 'Do you know what would have happened then? I should have been imprisoned, my consort given to another man, my daughter to Gods know whom. And your city would have bled all the same. Indeed, to see the job done His Supremacy would have sent one of his butchering Turach generals next. The best I could do was limit the damage and take Ormael for the Empire, alive but wounded.'
'The bodies piled in Darli Square didn't look wounded,' muttered Pazel.
'Silence!' barked Hercуl, as Isiq's jaw dropped in amazement. Thasha's tutor leaped forward to catch Pazel by the arm. 'Curb your tongue, rascal! Whom do you think you're speaking to? Your Excellency, a thousand pardons! I shall remove him immediately-or after his humblest apologies, if that is your wish.'
As Hercуl fell silent, Pazel saw that the ambassador was furious: red-faced, mouth a-quiver. How long had it been since anyone dared contradict him? Backed against the wall, Thasha was staring at him, wide-eyed: for better or worse Pazel had impressed her again.
Isiq rubbed his temples with both hands. 'I am more interested to know if the boy himself wishes to apologize,' he said.
Pazel looked at him in silence, remembering flies and the smell of blood. Hercуl gave his arm a ferocious squeeze.
Still Pazel hesitated-and then it was too late. A door crashed open in the outer stateroom, a woman gasped and Syrarys was there, lovely and furious, eyes ablaze.
'What is this? Eberzam, you're shaking! You've exhausted yourself!'
'I'm fine,' said Isiq, but his voice rang suddenly weaker. 'Syrarys, where have you been?'
'Making arrangements for your baths at Tressek. Sit down! Oh, Hercуl, what have you done? Get that wretched boy out of here!'
'I invited him,' said Thasha. 'And he's no more wretched than you.'
The consort turned her a scalding look. 'Haven't you done enough? Will you only be satisfied when your father collapses? Hercуl, take him away!'
Hercуl bowed and tugged Pazel roughly from the cabin. Pazel had only a fleeting impression of the outer stateroom: an immense, glittering chamber, someone's greatcoat tossed casually over a blue divan, a pair of crossed swords mounted on the wall, red ribbons wound about their sheaths. As the door closed he turned and glanced back at Thasha. Her eyes were on him still.
'Splendid work,' said Hercуl furiously. 'In ten minutes you managed to make Thasha cry, her father hate you and her tutor seem a colossal fool.'
'I'm sorry,' Pazel said, 'but you don't know what it was like.'
'Nor do you know my life's tragedies, nor hers, nor those of hundreds on this ship! Does that make your outburst any wiser? It is not a question of feelings but of self-control!'
'So I should have lied to him? Or acted grateful?'
'You should have held your tongue. Think, boy! Your father has become a Mzithrini! If anyone can help you rejoin him it will be Eberzam Isiq.'
Pazel started. Rejoin his father! It had never seemed remotely possible. But if peace took hold between the empires, almost anything could happen. And even though his father had not wanted it, Pazel did know a bit about sailing now. Wild hopes began to swirl in his head.
They crossed the gun deck, heading forward. Sailors muttered as they passed: 'That's him, that crazy Muketch. Talks like a ghost's in his guts.'
'Will the baths help Thasha's father?' Pazel asked Hercуl.
Hercуl looked grave. 'Who can tell? His illness is most peculiar; it is a bad time to be without Ignus Chadfallow. Now then: if anyone asks, you were helping Thasha practice her Mzithrini vows. And if you can keep out of trouble for a few days, I might be able to make truth of that little lie-that is, to arrange for you to be Thasha's language tutor. Of course, that would mean spending an hour or two with her every day.'
Pazel stopped in his tracks.
'What is the matter?' said Hercуl. 'You do not wish it?'
Pazel's first thought was Of course not! But something made him hold his tongue. He thought again of how she'd looked at him from atop the carriage in Etherhorde, felt again her hand on his arm. She stood up for me in front of Syrarys. Why?
'Rose won't give me time off to be a teacher,' he said.
'He might if your bond debt were paid,' said Hercуl.
Pazel gaped at him. 'Would you do that for me? Really?'
Hercol laughed. 'I would do so for every bonded servant in Arqual, if I could. Unfortunately the gold to my name would scarcely buy the two of us a good meal in Tressek Tarn. No, if you're to teach his daughter it will be the ambassador who buys your freedom. We've spoken of it already. Use your head, Pazel, and don't insult those who stand ready to help you. Hallo there, Mr. Fiffengurt! I dare say you're looking for this lad.'
Night Village
26 Vaqrin 941
14th day from Etherhorde
My terror is the terror of the rat, but my soul is my own. My soul is my own. My soul is my own.
Say that when the panic comes. If it's true then you're safe, saved, sane. You shall prosper and escape this murdering cold water of loneliness, this whirlpool, this swill of violence and want. Find love, dry land, eyes that don't hate you when they discern you from shadow.
If it is not true-then there is no you to be saved, darling Felthrup.
So thinking, the black rat worried a path among the ghostly stores and cargo of the mercy deck. He was moving in circles: not lost, but searching in frantic haste, staring into the near-perfect blackness, straining his nocturnal eyes. What he sought was a light, the smallest, palest red light. Three times he had glimpsed it already and dashed forward with hope leaping in his heart, only to see it vanish without a trace.
Each dash was a flirtation with death. Normally he did not move two yards without a jerk of the head, a glance back over one greasy shoulder or the other. There were flickers of motion; there were drafts and tremors, and sudden anonymous sounds. Worst of all, there were smells-cloying, crowding, smothering, flooding him with fear. The smell of man was everywhere: in the greasy fingerprints left by the longshoremen, in the sweat from their backs where they had leaned against posts, in the sailors' spit and sweet-pine residues, in the human breath oozing downward from the sleeping quarters.
(My terror is the terror of the sleeper, buried alive.)
He did not fear men, though-not at this hour. Past midnight the mercy deck belonged to others: rats, ixchel, that dark thing that lurked and snuffled, a few mice and snakes and spiders, a few million fleas. Men nicknamed it pest-deck, piss-deck, stowaway lane. To its residents it was simply Night Village.
Even at noon men worked there with lamps, for the mercy deck rode twenty feet beneath the waves. The dead of night saw no more than one man an hour trudge through its depths, blinded by his own lamp, scanning the hull for leaks.
The great danger was Sniraga. Three nights already she had come hunting, crate to crevice, an angel of
