the White Fleet. And I have you, children: sfvantskors in all but final vows. You are here because of Chathrand; you are here to save us from the evil she brings. More than this I have told you in trance, but it is not right that you should remember yet. When the time comes the memory will return of itself. Now we must be quick: take my blessing, and confess your fears.'
He stepped beneath the dome, and the first aspirant ran up the staircase and knelt. The Father spoke only briefly to each, for the sun would not hide much longer. But when Neda's turn came he set his hand upon her head, and she felt him tremble.
'Would you speak?' he asked her.
Her nails bit into her palm. 'I have no fears to confess,' she said.
'You will have,' he said. 'Your brother is aboard that ship.'
In shock Neda raised her eyes. The Father's own grew wide: aspirants were forbidden any glimpse of the dome's interior. Quickly she looked down again.
'Forgive me,' she said.
'He is a servant,' said the Father. 'What they call a tarboy, I think. And he is the special friend of Doctor Chadfallow, who is also aboard.'
'Pazel,' she whispered. He was alive, alive'You must not speak to him, Neda.'
She swallowed, fighting for calm.
'Not until the wedding ends. Indeed he must not see your face. His presence here cannot be an accident. You and Ultri shall stand behind me, masked, until it is over.'
'Yes, Father. But when it's over?'
He sighed. 'Dear one, even I do not know what will happen then.'
The Father blessed her, and she groped shaking for the stairs. The last disciple knelt before him briefly. Then the lip of the sun rose over the sea and the Father raised his arms and cried out in a voice like a roll of thunder, sending the goats bolting for their lives and larks and sparrows rising in terror across the fields. It was the Annuncet, the Summons, heightened by the magic of the dome, louder than Neda had ever heard it. The Father sang the ritual words again and again, seeming to need no breath at all, and he did not cease until the lamps were burning across the city, in hall and tower and anchored ship.
2
7 Teala 941
In his twenty-one minutes of unbroken song the Father woke tens of thousands, and sang the holy word karishin ('purest good') exactly forty-nine times. But his first utterance of the word — the most auspicious, though few Simjans knew or cared — reached the ears of fewer than one hundred: sixty lobstermen wrestling traps from the seabed; eighteen Templar monks, already rowing for the Great Ship and their rendezvous with Thasha Isiq; five deathsmoke addicts; two lovers outside the West Gate and the callous guard who refused to let them steal back to their marriage beds; the warrior Hercol Stanapeth, who had not slept at all; a murderer hiding in the mouth of a silver mine; Lady Oggosk, plugging her ears with greasy thumbs as she sang an enchantment-song of her own; a moon falcon standing restless on a windowsill; a poet whose twelve years without a poem had led him to a clifftop but who was now, as he listened, considering conversion; a child locked in an attic — and three men on the Chathrand 's quarterdeck.
One of these was Old Gangrune, the purser, who had the dawn watch. He slouched across the lightless deck, in a temper even before he was fully awake.
'That'll be your Black Rags now,' he said aloud. 'Call that a prayer, d'ye, Sizzy? You're just howlin' like an animal, and some of us ain't surprised. Oh, yes, yes, there's no need to tell me. You're decent folk now, ain't ye? Gentlemen, honest coves. Until you whip out the knife when our back's turned and errrrgh!'
He mimed a murder, perhaps his own, then shuffled off towards the jiggermast, oaths still leaking from his lips.
He did not see the man in the shadow of the wheelhouse, on hands and knees, shuddering, naked but for a pair of ornate gold spectacles in danger of slipping from his nose. This man's eyes were pinched shut, and a cascade of expressions played over his mouth — now a smile, now a grimace of fear, now a thought so striking that the mouth froze altogether. A pale man in the prime of life, though perhaps a little thin and austere.
'Dawn is come,' said a voice beside him. 'Stand up before it's too late.'
A hand appeared at his shoulder, offering help. The naked man seemed to battle with himself harder than ever. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
For a heartbeat he stayed perfectly still. Then in one motion he rose, astonished, his back straightening was like rebirth after illness, his gaze above the rail like the view from a watchtower.
Beside him stood a man in a black seafarer's jacket, black leggings and a white scarf that might have stood out distinctly in a stronger light. He was tall and thickset, and his eyes had the sharp ravenous look of a spider's. He gestured at a pair of trousers and a shirt folded over the rail.
The shirt was a lustrous green. The thin man reached out and stroked it.
'That is silk,' said the other. 'And there are calfskin shoes at your feet.'
Fumbling, the man in spectacles put on the clothes. He touched them reverently. 'They warm you,' he said.
'Of course.' The man in black knelt and tied the other's shoes. 'And what is more, they distinguish you. Green is the colour of the learned, the natural leaders of men. You may walk about, now — walk, and look, and be free.'
Slow and astonished, the thin man circled the quarterdeck. Old Gangrune stood blinking by the mast, one finger digging half-heartedly in his ear. The bespectacled man stared at him, open-mouthed, three inches from his face. Gangrune neither saw nor heard him.
'Eye to eye, we call that,' said the man in black. 'It is how you will look at all men. Did I not say you would like it?'
'Like it!' The man in spectacles seemed overcome with joy. But all at once his smile disappeared. He glanced darkly at his companion and scuttled away, as if he preferred a little distance between them.
On the ladder his shoes gave him trouble and he almost fell. The man in black chuckled and followed him down to the deck. They glided forwards along the starboard rail, past the captain's skylight through which a lamp shone already, the mizzen shrouds, the stone-faced Turach soldiers with their heavy crossbows and their scars.
Then the thin man gave a squeal of terror, recoiling. A red cat had climbed from the No. 4 hatch and stood stretching its hindquarters. While the animal was undeniably huge for a housecat, the man's reaction more befitted one facing a tiger with gore-stained jaws. Before he could run the man in black seized his arm.
'She cannot touch you. Have you forgotten yourself already?'
The cat walked primly towards them. The thin man positively writhed with fear. When the animal passed them, it paused and crouched, and the fur rose along its back. The thin man squealed again. But the cat heard nothing, and though it looked about suspiciously, its eyes passed over them unseeing.
'One kick,' said the man in black. 'Your left foot, or your right.'
'I won't do it!'
The man in black took a step forward and seized the cat by the scruff of the neck. It yowled and twisted, but before it could scratch him the man flung it with all his strength over the rail. Two seconds sprawled, noiseless; then came a faint splash.
He turned on the man in glasses.
'Imbecile. Where is the intelligence you're so proud of? Any such creature you may now drive off, or kill, or punish as it deserves. Savour the fact. Taste that new joy. We have a word for it, incidentally.'
'Wh-what word is that?'
