'Hold that man! I want to see him!'
The voice was Uskins'. He emerged from the wheelhouse, his blond hair flattened by the rain, and shoved his way toward the boats. Thasha followed his gaze and saw another prisoner beside the rail: a scruffy, hungry-looking man from third class. His face was sallow and bruised, and his hands were chained behind his back.
'Wrong man! Wrong man!' he shouted as Uskins neared. The first mate raised a hand for silence, then reached out and stretched one of the man's eyes wide open. He gave a satisfied nod.
'A deathsmoker, to be sure.'
'Lies!' shrieked the man. 'They put a gooney sack on my head! Filled it with deathsmoke!'
'Who did?' said Uskins.
'Don't know-they come at night, took me someplace dark, alone. Made me breathe that blary drug till I fainted. Now look how I shake! But I never used it before! I'm a tea picker is all!'
Uskins laughed aloud. 'You should have picked a milder tea.'
'I never touched that poor Mr. Hercуl! I swear on the Milk of the Tree!'
Uskins slapped him. 'Save your blasphemy for the court, you wretch! Load him in!'
As the man screamed and struggled, Thasha found herself beginning to doubt Nagan's story all over again. But before she could work out a way to intervene, Pazel leaned close to her and spoke very quietly through his teeth.
'There's another prisoner aboard.'
'What are you talking about?' Thasha whispered back.
'You've got to find Diadrelu. Tell her Rose has him. In his right-hand desk-drawer.'
'What, a key?'
'The prisoner!'
'Pazel,' said Thasha, 'have you lost your mind?'
'They'll kill you if you talk,' he whispered. 'They're ixchel, Thasha.'
'Ay! Ormali dog! How dare you touch the Lady?'
He hadn't, in fact, although his lips had nearly brushed her ear. But touch or no touch, Pazel's guards were embarrassed at their oversight and struck him so hard he fell to the deck. Almost blind with pain, Pazel felt someone lifting him again. Uskins' leering face swam into view.
'Allow me,' said the first mate. 'Some ballast is a pleasure to drop.'
He tossed Pazel into the waiting boat with a crash. Thasha shouted, 'No! No! No!' and Uskins turned to her and said not to worry, the filthy boy would never bother her again.
Pazel found his seat beside the presumed murderer, who was still shouting, 'Wrong man!' Pazel looked for Thasha, wondering what she had wanted to tell him, but the rail was crowded, and then his boat was lowered to the sea.
'You saw it,' said Talag Tammaruk ap Ixhxchr.
'Saw what?' asked Diadrelu.
'Do not fence with me, sister,' said Talag. 'The boy whispered in the bridal girl's ear. And shocked her. Now do you see why we must never take chances? What good are your threats, once he is safe ashore? Taliktrum was right. You should have killed him.'
The two ixchel were wedged in the solid oak of the quarterdeck, half choked with fresh sawdust, peering through drill holes no human eye could locate. Their spying ledge was scarcely big enough for them to lie side by side. It had taken their people four days' labor, burrowing like termites through the ancient wood, pausing with every lull in the wind lest their chisels and hammers be overheard. But it was worth it: they now had a splendid view of the mizzen topdeck, where boats disembarked and officers clustered, the very crossroads of the ship.
Dri pulled back from her spy-hole and looked at Talag. 'Thasha was scared, true enough. But what did Pathkendle whisper? That is something we cannot presume.'
'Can't we?' said Talag. 'Do you mean to say the freak tarboy might possess another secret as awful as the fact that we're aboard?'
'There are such secrets,' said Dri. 'Last night we saw the ambassador's own guard torment an innocent man with deathsmoke and demand that he confess to the murder we prevented.'
'You take the lot of them for innocent men,' said Talag derisively. 'And you prevented that murder, not the clan. You fired the quill into the murderer's leg and made him stumble, even though that fat soap merchant might have seen you-'
'He saw nothing,' said Diadrelu.
'— and the killer himself may find your quill later and expose us all.'
'He will not find my quill, Talag. It is deep in his skin. And should he dig it out, he will find a splinter, half dissolved, and never know it for ixchel work.'
'Who is presuming now?' Talag asked.
'What would you have done?' she demanded. 'Let the valet die?' She knew Talag was goading her (who but a brother could do it so well?), but knowing did not make his taunts any more bearable. 'I am not a fool, Talag! I presume no goodness among giants. But neither do I presume that they are all identical, mere strands in a single rope destined to be the hangman's noose for the innocent race of ixchel. The world is full of wickedness, yes. But none of it is simple.'
'They stole us from Sanctuary-Beyond-the-Sea. They exhibited us like insects in their museums, colleges, zoos. And like insects they have killed us, ever since we escaped to infest their ships and houses. Simple, Dri. And true.'
'The Abduction was five hundred years ago,' said Dri. 'The giants don't even remember it, and they consider our island a myth. It's over.'
Talag looked at her with cold disdain. 'It will be over when we are home,' he said. 'Since the wreck of the Maisa only one ship remains that can take us there, across the Ruling Sea. Her name is Chathrand, and by the sweet star of Rin, I'll see that she does.'
Dri said nothing. A moment later the ship's bell rang half past eight.
'We must go,' said Talag.
Moving about in the daylight was, of course, the gravest danger for the ixchel, yet there was no other way to reach the spy-ledge. Like the hollow at the center of an old tree, their tunnel bored straight down through the compartment wall, then back toward the stern by way of a two-inch gap they had found by tapping. Near the end of this crawlway Talag had drawn an X in charcoal: that marked the spot directly beneath the binnacle, or ship's compass. Talag had plans for the binnacle, but he would tell no one what they amounted to.
The crawlway ended in a tiny crack, at the ceiling of a short passageway. From there all one had to do was scurry down the rough wood to the floor, run six feet along the passage to the foot-drain and dive inside. During a storm, a bathtub or two of rain and salt spray might blow into the passage each time a sailor came in from the topdeck. The foot-drain was merely the tin pipe that let such water flow back into the sea. It had a little spring- loaded lid that swung open with the weight of water and shut again to keep out the cold ocean wind. For the ixchel it was a simple matter to cut other holes in this pipe (along its top edge, to control any telltale dripping) and use it as a corridor between the decks.
The trouble was the battalion clerk. A pale boy with the scars of recent chicken pox on his face, he crouched on a stool by the door to Sergeant Drellarek's cabin from dawn to dusk, a big weather-stained notebook on his knees. His only functions were to carry messages from Drellarek to the Chathrand's officers and to keep records of the shifts and duties, the complaints and fevers and upset stomachs of the hundred soldiers under Drellarek's command.
The clerk was always there, except when running messages, and for five minutes at the change of the watch when Drellarek had him collect reports from the sergeants-at-arms and the sailmaster. Only at these times (and only if no one else was in the hall) could the ixchel come or go from their spy-ledge. Now was such a time, and Dri and Talag made haste to descend to the floor.
Even as they did so, Midryl, their replacement on watch, slipped out of the foot-drain and began climbing swiftly. When he reached the other two he paused for instructions.
'You will pay great attention to any new passengers who board today,' said Talag. 'And make a note of who speaks to the captain, should he appear.'
'Yes, m'lord.'
