Mzithrini by now? Thasha shook her head firmly, but Syrarys cried, 'Oh, she has, I've heard her! After all, her wedding is just ten days off! Say something, dear. The sound of that language is so primal!'
Thasha looked at her with loathing, then suddenly growled out a few words. She told them it meant 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.' But Rose noted how Bolutu jumped, and shot her a quick glance of amazement.
Everyone was used to how little the captain spoke-and after ten weeks at sea, they did not much care. It was his cabin: they were glad enough to ignore him and devour his food. But just before the meal ended he surged to his feet with a table-jarring lurch.
'Oggosk! That thrice-damnable red cat just spoke to me!'
He pointed at his desk; all eyes turned. Sniraga was seated beside his letter box, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.
'Fah,' said Oggosk.
'Captain!' cried Pacu Lapadolma. 'Do you think you have a woken cat on your hands?'
'I don't have any cat at all!'
'She does cling to you, though,' Bolutu observed. 'What makes you her favorite, I wonder?'
Thasha Isiq's eyes narrowed. 'What did she say, Captain?'
Rose hesitated, staring down at them all. 'Nothing important,' he said at last.
'But surely an animal's first words are important in themselves?' said Pacu.
'They're not her first.'
'Well, then?'
Rose looked at the two girls. 'Little spies,' he said.
'I beg your pardon?!'
'That's what the cat said: ''Little spies.''
No one dared to laugh. Then Oggosk wiped the grease from her fingers and glanced up.
'I've told you: Sniraga's no woken animal. She's clever in the way of cats, but no more. You're plagued by an evil visitation, Nilus: some spirit-cat out of your childhood or family history. Don't take it out on my pet.'
She spoke as if to a wearisome child. Rose dropped into his chair and began a noisy attack on an apple. Thyne and Syrarys tried to revive the conversation, but everyone was distracted by Rose, whose staring eyes followed the cat wherever it roamed about the cabin.
At last the meal was over: the guests drained their cups and left. The steward and his boy swept about the table, clearing dishes, snuffing lamps. Then they too departed, and Rose was alone.
The cabin was dim. He stood stock-still, like a nervous bull. There was no sound but the ship's churning wake.
'You're here, aren't you?' he whispered at last.
Silence. He rubbed his beard in a sudden paroxysm of nerves. 'Speak! Where are you? What do you want?'
Silence, and then piano music: distantly, from the first-class lounge. Re-mem-ber the old, old souls of Soo-li, drowned deep below.
Rose gave a mirthless laugh, almost a sob. Then he turned and stalked out of the cabin, locking the door behind him.
For two minutes nothing stirred. Then, with the tiniest sound imaginable, something did.
In the sand basin next to Oggosk's chair, among the bits of chewed sapwort, a tiny round shape broke the surface, swiveling left and right. It was a woman's head. It studied the cabin. And then in one swift movement, five ixchel burst from the sand, backs together, hands already fitting arrows to bows.
'All clear,' said Diadrelu.
'Good,' Talag answered. 'Out of this muck, now-down and regroup. And toss some sapwort on the floor. Make a mess.'
They held breathing-tubes of hollow straw: these they minced and buried in the sand. Then they brushed one another clean, smiling but not laughing as the sand fell from their hair. Four ixchel slipped from the basin's rim to the ground, and the last kicked bits of sapwort over the basin's edge. Rats were to be blamed for this raid.
'I thought he'd found us,' said Diadrelu.
'You forget Rose is a madman,' said Taliktrum. 'Chatting with ghosts.'
His father nodded. 'If he knew crawlies were loose on his ship there'd be no talk. He'd smoke the ship and we'd die. Ensyl! To the door frame. Fentrelu, the beams. You must speak to the prisoner, no matter what follows.'
'I can still smell that monster, Sniraga,' said Fentrelu.
'Enough of that!' snapped Talag. 'If we're interrupted, lie flat in the center of the beam-you'll be out of sight from the ground. We'll return for you somehow. Have your tools? Then go.'
They went, five shadows rushing over the cabin floor. There was no telling how long the captain would spend aloft before turning in for the night. They might have thirty minutes, or three.
Dri, Talag and Taliktrum made straight for Rose's desk. One leap and Dri was on his chair; another, his desktop. She looked up: there was Ensyl, already perched spider-like over the cabin door. Fentrelu she could not see; he would still be scaling the wall to the deck beams. Crouching down, she watched her brother and nephew pry at the lower drawer with the flats of their blades. The wood was old, warped. It moved a fraction of an inch and stuck fast.
'I'll help,' she whispered, but Talag waved her off. He was right, of course: all five of them had precise tasks and positions. Not one was optional.
She watched the men strain, gasping. The drawer seemed hopelessly wedged. Then a voice none knew called to them-from within the drawer.
'Slide in through the top drawer, brothers-slide in and lift from the back!'
Dri felt her heart thrill. It was true, Great Mother! One of their kin!
'Can you open the top drawer, sister?' Talag hissed.
Dri bent and seized the handle. The drawer slid open easily.
Talag clapped his son's arm. 'Up, up!'
Taliktrum went like a shot. Two leaps, a quick smile for Dri-and into the darkness of the drawer. She heard him shoving and squirming, then a groan of effort. The lower drawer shifted in place.
Talag grabbed the brass handle and hauled with all his might. The big drawer fought him for another instant, then slid wide open.
'Get Taliktrum out of there!' Talag ordered, vaulting into the drawer.
Dri bent down and called her nephew. Out he came, smeared with pencil-dust and grime, and dropped without a word into the lower drawer, after his father.
Dimly she heard their work: assembling the crank-and-lever apparatus that would bend the bars of the prisoner's cage. If only Felthrup spoke the truth, and it was no more than a common birdcage. They could not bend hardened steel.
A thump: Fentrelu had dropped the rope from the beam above. Dri caught the end and quickly tied a pair of foot-sized loops. When she looked down again she felt a wave of relief. Talag and Taliktrum were there, helping a third man out of the drawer.
He was in bad shape-diseased, dirty-but he had not lost all his strength. If he could not quite leap to the desktop, he scrambled up the chair nimbly enough.
She would not let him bow. 'You honor us by your survival, brother! I am Diadrelu of Ixphir House-Dri, you must call me.'
'Formerly of Ixphir House,' said Taliktrum. 'We are none of us going back.'
The prisoner placed his folded hands upon his forehead-an old-fashioned gesture of thanks; Dri had not seen it since her grandmothers' day. 'I am Steldak, Lady Dri. My home is Йtrej in the Trothe of Chereste, but it is thirty years since I set foot in that land.'
'The Trothe is gone,' said Talag, 'devoured by Arqual, although some giants still use the name. But I have never heard of ixchel there.'
'We are there, my lord. My people had a great house in Etrela Canyon, until the giants dammed the river and flooded us out. Many died; the rest scattered on either side of the canyon. We on the east bank made our way to sea. I do not know what happened to the western group. My wife and children were among them.'
