whispered to her, kissed her ear. Falmurqat watched in speechless horror. Thasha writhed and twisted, her face darkening with every beat of her heart.
'Away! Give her air!' Dr Chadfallow was battling forwards. Behind him, wrathful and suspicious, came the sorcerer.
Thasha's struggles grew so violent that Pazel almost lost hold of her. He was flat on his back, arms locked desperately around her chest, face buried in her shoulder. Then all at once her struggles ended. Her eyes widened in amazement, then dimmed, and her head fell back with an audible thump against the stone.
Pazel surged upright, raising her, choking on his tears. 'You Pit-damned devil!' he shouted. 'You killed her this time!'
None knew who he was accusing — the boy was clearly hysterical — but from the gaping crowd Arunis babbled in protest.
'Not I! Not with that little squeeze! Look for yourselves! The chain is loose!'
Few heeded the raving merchant from Opalt (by now everyone was shouting something), but to Thasha's friends his words meant just what they had prayed for: an instant when the very power that had laid the curse was consciously holding it at bay. Pazel's hand shot out, caught the necklace and snapped it with one brutal wrench. The silver sea-creatures Isiq had had fashioned for Thasha's mother — naiads and anemones, starfish, eels — flew in all directions. The necklace was destroyed.
But Thasha lay perfectly still.
Pazel spoke her name again and again. Dr Chadfallow felt her bloodied neck, then bent an ear swiftly to her chest. A look of pain creased the surgeon's face, and he closed his eyes.
Utter pandemonium broke out.
'No heartbeat! No heartbeat!' The cry swept the shrine. Already guests were spilling out through the arches, taking news of the disaster with them. A vast howl rose from the mob outside.
'Annulled!' shouted the Father, raising both his sceptre and the ceremonial knife. 'Without a marriage the Treaty of Simja is annulled! There is no peace between the Mzithrin and cannibal Arqual! I saw death, did I not tell you, children?'
'There must be peace, there must!'
'There won't be!'
'We'll be killed! They'll punish Simja for sure!'
'Death! Death!' screamed the Father.
'Get that blade out of his hands!' shouted King Oshiram.
'Where is the monster?' bellowed Isiq. 'Where is he, where's the fiend who slew my Thasha?'
But Arunis was nowhere to be seen.
Falmurqat the Elder took his son by the arm. 'Let us away!' he said bitterly. 'This is all a deception, and an old one at that. To marry off a convulsive, one not long for the world, and thus to shame the enemy when she expires.'
'Hush, Illoch, what nonsense!' cried his wife.
But the old prince paid no heed. 'Some of us read history,' he said. 'Huspal of Nohirin married a girl from the Rhizans. She died of seizures in a month, and the Mzithrin took the blame. This pig admiral must have counted on his girl lasting a bit longer, that's all.'
Pazel thought the worst had come. Isiq would fly at the man; the insults would reverberate beyond the shrine, beyond Simja; in hours or days there would be sea-battles, by week's end a war. But Isiq did not react at all, and with immense relief Pazel realised that the older prince had used his native tongue. But what if that changed?
Switching to Tholjassan, he looked up at Hercol.
'We've got to get her out of here now.'
Hercol nodded. 'Come, Eberzam! We must do as Thasha would wish, and bear her to the Chathrand. A proper burial at home in Etherhorde must be hers.'
'But it's months, months away,' Isiq wept. 'Her body will not last.'
'There are remedies,' said Chadfallow quietly.
Isiq turned on him savagely. 'Want to pickle my daughter like a herring, do you? False friend that you are! Never again shall you touch one of mine!'
'Steady, Isiq, he's a doctor,' said the king.
'What do you know of him?' roared Isiq, making the crowd gasp anew. 'Fatuous fool! What do you know of any of this? Puppets on strings, that is all I see around me! Little helpless dolls, twitching, dancing to the hurdy- gurdy.'
New gasps from the onlookers. 'Do not touch him!' shouted Oshiram, for the guards were already starting for Isiq. No tragedy could excuse such words to a sovereign, in his own realm and before his peers; men had been executed for less. Only the king himself could pardon Isiq, as everyone present knew.
'But she must go to Etherhorde,' wept Pacu Lapadolma.
'Indeed she must, your Excellency,' said one of the Templar monks. 'Only this morning she put it in writing, when we inscribed her name in the city register: 'Though my body rot in transit, let me be buried at my mother's side on Maj Hill.' She was quite insistent on that point.'
To this Isiq made no rebuttal. Someone spread a cloak upon the floor. Gaping, the admiral watched Hercol lift Thasha's body and place her on the cloth.
Pazel felt a hand on his elbow. He turned, and to his amazement found himself face to face with the sfvantskor he had caught stealing glances at him during the ceremony. Below the white mask the lips trembled slightly.
'The Father was right. There's evil on your ship. Are you part of it?'
It was the voice of a young woman, speaking broken Arquali, and whispering oddly as though trying to disguise her voice. Nonetheless Pazel felt certain he had heard it before.
'Who are you?' he demanded.
'Turn away before it's too late. You'll never belong among those who belong.'
'What did you say?'
She made no answer, only turned her back and fled, and then Neeps was tugging at his arm.
'Wake up, mate! It's time to go!'
Pazel's mind was in a whirl, but he knew Neeps was right. Bending, he seized a corner of the cloak on which Thasha lay. Hercol, Neeps and Fiffengurt already had their corners. Together they lifted her body, and amidst fresh wails from the onlookers bore her down the aisle and out through the arch.
The sun blinded them. Isiq followed on their heels, weeping: 'For naught, for naught! My morning star-'
Before they reached the bottom step they heard King Oshiram above them, ordering his guards to form a phalanx before the corpse-bearers. 'To the ship! Drive a wedge if necessary! Let no one hinder them in their grief!'
The palace guard did as they were told, and the stricken mob fell back as the men and tarboys rushed Thasha back towards the city. Most were too shocked even to give pursuit. Pazel knew their paralysis would not last, however. And what then? The crowd may go mad, Hercol had warned them. It can happen, when the world seems poised to collapse. Would there be a revolt? Would they try to seize her body, steal a piece of her garment or a fistful of hair, bury her with the martyrs of Simja?
The others might have had similar thoughts, for all four ran as quickly as they could. When Pazel glanced back he saw that the admiral was falling behind.
'Do not wait!' Isiq shouted, waving him on. 'All speed, Pathkendle! Protect her!'
Affection as well as grief in the old warrior's voice. Pazel raised a hand to him — he meant it as a promise, though it looked like a farewell — and staggered on.
When he was six years old, Pazel's mother disappeared. It was his first taste of terror, of the possibility of wounding loss, and he never forgot it, although his mother returned in just a week.
A sentry on the city wall had watched her departure — men were always watching Suthinia Pathkendle — all the way to Black Stag Road, where she turned east towards the valley of the Cinderling. The neighbours relayed this news to Captain Gregory Pathkendle with their usual blend of sympathy and scorn. The Cinderling was an old battlefield, left for dead after the Second Sea War, and still a place of bandits and beggars and unmarked graves.
