'Egg!'
'Penny for a-'
'Mine!'
Sounds of spittle and claws. The thrashing grew so crazed that the pillar actually shook. Then, beneath the pandemonium, his ears detected a tiny squeak. Putting out his hand, he found that the great bolt had at last broken free of the rust. It would move. With a bit of a struggle he could slide it free.
But why open the door? What if they could climb? Nothing but this slab of iron would stand between him and them. Fortunately the door was mighty, the bolt despite its rust still massive and intact. This was where they stoked the fires, Isiq realised suddenly, this is what turned the prison into a kiln.
Futile to fight on. Damn it, that was the truth. Already the things were scratching open the little tunnel at the base of the pit.
He was sweating again. Those things must have devoured the rats. How is it that they speak? What will they do when they find me? Where is my suit of stone?
He stumbled away from the pillar, holding his forehead, trying not to moan aloud. Almost at once he collided with a statue, his faithful sentry, the woman choking on the dark. She toppled; he tried to catch her but her weight defeated him; she struck the floor with a muffled boom.
'Oh my dear madam, forgive me-'
He found pieces of her in the blackness. Various digits. Her forehead, shattered on the stone. He felt the sting of other eyes, the focused hate of all the statues, that frozen family, that congregation of the damned.
He would have to watch himself.
15
4 Freala 941
113th day from Etherhorde
In a way unimagined by even the most superstitious crewmembers, the Great Ship had become a ghost ship, living but presumed deceased. The effect this had on those aboard her is difficult to pinpoint. At first there was bravado, and much talk of the cleverness of Rose and their Emperor. The gang leaders, Darius Plapp and Kruno Burnscove, led the cheering: they were competitors in patriotism (or what passed for it) as in every other sphere. 'We've a right to be proud,' Burnscove declared. 'Arqual's going to remake the world. A world without the Black Rags, a world of straight talk, straight deeds, and Rin's Ninety Rules taught to every wee baby with his mother's milk. And don't we know that means a better world?'
Darius Plapp had less to say on the matter, trusting his sonorous voice and deep-set eyes to carry the message. 'We're sailing into history,' he would announce, with a grave, portentous nod.
Sergeant Drellarek played his part as well. Amazingly, he had managed to portray the execution of one- seventh of his men as a victory for the rest. The price of greatness, he said, had always been far higher than ordinary men could understand. But Turachs were different: they were Magad's warrior-angels, they were the fine edge of the knife with which the Emperor was pruning the tree called Alifros. 'In the end this world will be a fair reflection of the Tree above us,' he told them. 'Most men would shrink from such a challenge. But not us. When Turachs pass through fire they emerge with the hardness of steel.'
These three men — Burnscove, Plapp and Drellarek — also began to talk about the enemy. This was done rather quietly, and often late at night, after one or more of them appeared unexpectedly to pitch in with a bit of labour, or to top off the men's grog with a flask produced from none-knew-where. Talk of the Mzithrinis invariably meant talk of war crimes, atrocities committed by whole legions or a bloodthirsty few.
'Little Orin Isle, now,' said Drellarek with a sigh, at one such gathering. 'That little speck of a place off the side of Fuln, with no more than three thousand men. You wouldn't think it would be worth much bloodshed to take her, now would you? Ah, but you're not thinking like a Black Rag! Orin had a fortified jetty, and strong memories of what them butchers did to their grandfathers. So they fought like tigers, and kept the Sizzies from landing for a week. The Sizzies took 'em at last, of course. And when the brave men of Orin knew they were beat, they lay down their weapons, and their leaders came forward and gave their word of honour that they'd fight no more, and asked for mercy.
'Do you know what sort of mercy they got? The Sizzies marched every man who could still walk out to a lead mine in the hills. They sent 'em underground, all chained together. And then they knocked out the roofing timbers and the tunnel collapsed.'
Drellarek paused, looking grimly at the shadow-etched faces about him.
'Their women and children dug with picks and spades, with their blary fingernails. For days on end. They could hear the tap-tap-tapping, the cries from under the earth, the calls for water. But each day the voices were fainter, until one by one they stopped. Can you imagine what that silence was like, gentlemen? For the little children? For the wives?
'That's the Black Rags' idea of honour. And that's why His Supremacy launched this ship. Not for some make-believe Peace. Oh we played along with their charade, all right. But just like those brave men on Orin, some of us remember. The Black Rags kill, mates. And if the Shaggat Ness gets them killing each other again — so be it. We can watch them kill each other, or wait for them to kill us. Which do you prefer?'
Soldiers and sailors alike did their best to look satisfied with this reasoning, and to a certain extent they were. None had ever dreamed of being part of such a grand effort — the triumph of Arqual, the remaking of the very order of the world! Part of the crew breathed easier, thinking of Mzithrini atrocities. Most at least felt they understood what the journey was all about.
But not all were comforted. Many recalled what Captain Rose had said the day Peytr Bourjon ate his gumfruit. Strip that rind away, he'd said. Go on without dreaming of hope. On slow watches, over breakfast biscuit, or high on the topgallant yards, they began to murmur, to frown. In their hammocks, blind to one another in the dark, they whispered: We don't exist, boys. We wiped the slate clean at Talturi. Our girls will cry, but not too long. Don't kid yourselves. They'll dry their eyes and paint 'em pretty, women are faithless useless calculating gossipy gone-with- a-sob-and-a-hankie. And what about us, eh, what about us on this ship? Memories. Names mumbled by an old aunt, a quick prayer in the Temple, a list on page ten of the Mariner, used to wrap someone's pound of halibut. That's all we are, by Rin.
For the three youths it was a time of anxiety. Thasha could tell that Pazel was struggling with some new fear: he walked about as though under a stormcloud, waiting for lightning to strike. But she never could find a chance to ask him about it, for he seemed to go out of his way not to be caught with her alone.
Their allies were troubled as well. Fiffengurt raged and sulked; he had not forgiven himself for getting his Annabel with child ('like a common rascal on shore leave'), and he was half out of his mind at the thought of Rose, or worse yet Uskins, going through his private journal. Felthrup still cried out in his sleep.
Hercol, for his part, expected an attack: some midnight assault by one of Ott's men, or a siege by Rose and Drellarek, or worst of all an attack by the sorcerer. 'Why Rose allows us to come and go from these chambers is a mystery,' he said. 'But of this I am certain: nothing could be more dangerous than coming to depend on that magic wall.'
He abandoned his valet's cabin in favour of a small chamber that Pacu Lapadolma and several other first- class passengers had used for storage. The room was still crammed with footlockers and crates and swinging garment bags, but it had the advantage of being just outside the stateroom door. He refused to sleep in the stateroom itself, saying that if some enemy should find a way through the wall he intended to be the first one they met. His own door he never closed.
He strongly embraced the idea of training the tarboys, and quickly carved two blunt-edged practice swords. But he was dismayed at the anger in the youths.
'Anger is a fire,' he told them. 'And that fire is your servant — potentially. But right now all I see is two fools trying to grab it barehanded. That may get you burned, but it won't get you through a swordfight.' When this
