'You'd be swaying too if you tipped left and right.'
Neeps' jaw dropped. 'Lord Rin,' he whispered. 'She's drunk.'
Pazel leaned closer, sniffing. 'Brandy! Oh Thasha, that was a bad idea.'
'Yes,' she said. 'It took me about half a minute to realise that. But I'm all right.'
Hercol returned, with Mr Fiffengurt at his side. 'The girl's been drinking,' Neeps informed them. 'Eat something, Thasha. Anything. Rose petals. Grass. Make yourself sick before-'
'Neeps,' said Pazel. 'She's not exactly falling down.'
'Ha!' said Thasha. 'Not yet.'
'Don't joke about that,' hissed Fiffengurt. 'You shouldn't have drunk a blary thing! Foolish, foolish, mistress!'
'That it certainly was,' said Hercol. 'More than any of us, you need your wits about you. But we must make the best of it now. Perhaps the drink will steady you for the ordeal to come. Hello, Admiral.'
Eberzam Isiq had arrived at the gate, quite winded. He waved at Thasha in distress. 'She has — I objected fiercely — but the fact is-'
'We noticed, Excellency,' said Pazel. 'Don't worry. Neeps and I will stay close to her.'
'He will worry,' said Thasha. 'And just wait — he's going to try once more to tell us all what to do, even though he has no idea and will have to make up some useless flimflam on the spot. He's an old buffoon.'
'No he's not,' said Pazel, startling everyone. 'Leave off baiting him, won't you? Think of what Ramachni said: we're a clan, like Diadrelu's clan, and we have to work together.'
'Dri's clan took her title away,' said Thasha.
'And we are humans, not ixchel,' said Hercol. 'There are worthier comparisons. But Pazel speaks a vital truth. Our enemies bicker; we must not, for whatever advantage we may have can be lost in a heartbeat.'
At that moment King Oshiram spotted Thasha and her father. He gestured to his guard captain, who sounded a note on a boar's-tusk hunting-horn: the signal for the march to the shrine. The dignitaries rose and hurried to their places. Thasha looked Pazel swiftly in the eye. It was an involuntary look, a reflex. It was the first time since daybreak that he had glimpsed her fear.
The road to the Mzithrini shrine stretched for a gentle mile, but some of the older dukes and bishwas had not walked so far in years (or their whole lives, in some cases); and the Templar monks at the head of the procession were much given to their gongs, and stopped dead for their ritual beatings; and the Boy Prince of Fuln was stung by a wasp; and goats defiled the road, leading to an ablutionary summit of all the attendant holy men. So it was that a walk the young people might have finished in half an hour stretched to thrice that time and more.
Treaty Day was a holiday, naturally. From all over Simja the common folk had come, and from neighbouring islands, and well beyond. At first light they had rushed to the city square to watch the Rite of the Firelords, in which masked figures representing the Night Gods were driven back to their dark kingdom by dancers with torches, who then proclaimed Simjalla ready to receive the bride. Later when Thasha approached the Cactus Gardens, the crowd stretched far ahead of her, and so again when she left the city by the North Gate.
Everyone who had entered the city seemed to have raced out of it again, eager for another glimpse of the procession. Beyond the wall the land was mostly field and heath, but wherever a barn or goat-shed or granary abutted the road it was covered with well-wishers, crammed in the windows and on the rooftops. Others had scaled the stormbreak pines that rose in a thin stand halfway between the city and the shrine.
But most simply swarmed alongside. They could draw only so near: the king had caused a chain to be stretched waist-high on either side of the road, and the palace guard saw to it that the crowd stayed on the outside. But there were exceptions. Those especially favoured by King Oshiram had the freedom of the road. So did certain musicians, city elders, the rich and their voluminous families, children in school uniform, and a few dozen others whose form of distinction no one could recall.
In the last category was the same pale young man who had conducted Hercol to his meeting with the woman behind the fence. He was alone as before, although he greeted certain of the wealthier citizens with a bow. He trotted along quite close to Thasha's inner circle, hands in pockets, and now and then glanced at them sharply with a bright, knowing smile. His expression suggested a great desire to please. But he unsettled the wedding party, for none of them knew why he was there.
'If he smiles at me again I'll throw a rock at him,' growled Neeps.
'You do that,' said Pazel.
'Don't you dare, Undrabust!' said Fiffengurt. 'You stand for your birth country, and must do proud by her. But what do you suppose that hoppity-smiley fellow wants? It's blary plain he wants something. Each time I think he's about to speak he runs off again. And now there's a dog!'
For there was a dog: a little white creature with a corkscrew tail, dashing through the legs of the guard (to the king's great amusement), darting ahead of the monks, spinning on its hind legs before them all, yipping once, and vanishing into the throng.
The guests roared. 'Jolly old Simja! What next?' cried an Ipulian count.
Thasha and her friends did not laugh. They all knew the dog. It belonged to the sorcerer, Arunis.
'That cur's woken, I'd bet my beard,' hissed Fiffengurt. 'I reckon Arunis sent it to remind us that he's watching our every move.'
'It never speaks, though,' said Pazel. 'Arunis said it hadn't woken yet — as if he expected it to, one day. But it's a nasty little brute, woken or not. We'd never have been taken prisoner back in the Crab Fens if it weren't for that dog.'
'There are woken beasts cropping up everywhere,' said Neeps. 'Do you know what the tailors who dressed us this morning were gossiping about, Mr Fiffengurt? A rabbit. A little brown hare who screamed 'Mercy! Mama! Mercy!' as it ran, until the hounds caught up and killed it. And I swear I heard one of those messenger birds talking back to his rider.'
'And two woken rats on the Chathrand,' said Pazel. 'And Ott's falcon, Niriviel. Five animals in three months. Five more than I'd met in my lifetime to this point.'
'Or I in mine,' said Hercol, 'except for Ott's bird. That poor creature I have known for years.'
'Something's happening to the world,' said Thasha with conviction, 'and all these wakings are a part of it. And so is Arunis.'
Pazel looked at Hercol with alarm. 'Could he literally be causing it all?'
'No,' said Hercol. 'He is mighty, but not so mighty that he can light the flame of reason in creatures from one end of Alifros to another. If that were the case he should hardly need such servants as a prancing dog, or a washed-up smuggler like Mr Druffle. Besides, why should he wish for beasts to wake? Arunis dreams of enslaving this world, and nothing is so inimical to slavery as a thinking mind.'
'I'm a part of it too,' said Thasha, 'and the Nilstone is a part of me.'
'You're drunk,' said Neeps.
Thasha shook her head, then turned and glanced over her shoulder. 'He's close, you know.'
The others were startled. Neeps, feigning a stone in his shoe, stepped to one side of the procession and bent down. A moment later he caught up with them. 'She's right,' he said. 'Arunis is very close. Uskins is with him, looking scared out of his mind. And Dr Chadfallow's between them, talking.'
'Damn him,' whispered Pazel.
The remark did not escape Hercol. 'The doctor did not choose his walking companions,' he said. 'Rose provided a list to the Mistress of Ceremonies, and she decided who should stand with whom.'
'That doesn't mean he has to talk.'
'Nor does talk mean he is betraying us.'
'Let's not argue about the doctor,' said Fiffengurt. 'He's lost your trust, and that's the end of that. You've got a mighty task before you as well today, Pathkendle.'
'One you ought to let me help with,' said Neeps sulkily.
'Those debates are behind us,' said Hercol. 'Look: we are almost to the shrine.'
Indeed they were climbing the last little rise. The broad, whitewashed structure loomed before them, and the jade-green dome of the Declarion shone brilliant in the sun. On the broad stairs hundreds of figures, in robes of white and black, waited in silence.
'Thasha,' whispered Pazel with sudden urgency. 'Let me hear your vows.'
She looked at him blankly.
