warning failed to cure the boys of recklessness, he made them recite the first apothem of Tholjassan battle-dance at the start of every lesson — not just in Arquali, but also in their individual birth-tongues:
A fight is won or lost in the mind, not the body. The mind is present in the fingertips, the eyelash, the leaping forward and the holding back, the side-spring, the death-blow, the choice not to fight at all. The mind discerns the needle-narrow path to victory among the thickets of defeat.
His melees with Thasha were bruising affairs, which Pazel and Neeps watched in awe. Thasha had a good sword of her own, but Hercol had Ildraquin, and decades of skill and cunning. He was merciless and calculating. He mocked and insulted her, trying to break her concentration. He hurled bricks and staves and chairs at her, shouldered over the crates they'd stacked up as obstacles. He drove her in circles around the stateroom, kicked and beat and even cut her if she gave him a clumsy opening. After watching the first such lesson the boys realised they had been treated like children.
Pazel and Neeps found her breathtaking, but Thasha felt slow and awkward in her lessons. She had no idea why it was happening: Hercol had not actually injured her, and the chill of the blane was a fading memory. But though she held her own the fights were more taxing than they should have been, and her mind felt clouded with vague fears and phantoms. A similar feeling had lately come at night, just after she blew out the candle by her bedside — a sudden rush of doubts about her choices, the tasks before them, herself. Then she would fall asleep and dream of whirlpools, as she had been doing for months.
She knew Hercol was aware of her distraction — you could not hide that sort of thing from your martial tutor, not when he was coming at you with a blade — and knew as well that he was holding back out of concern. It was only a slight handicap, but it flew in the face of his code as a teacher. He had sternly forbidden her ever to ask for lenience, and to do so had never crossed her mind. Now she was deeply shamed. Hercol was not even reprimanding her when the lessons ended. He didn't think she could take it.
Her agitation reached a new pitch some three weeks after the Talturi affair, when she awoke with an irrepressible desire to eat an onion. She had never felt such a weird craving — an onion, for Rin's sake — but it swept over her like the onset of fever, and before she knew it, she was back in the main cabin, poking about in the food cupboards, popping open tins.
It was past midnight; the sounds of the ship were at their lowest ebb. Felthrup, who had yet to lose his battle against sleep, poked his weary nose out from her cabin door. Neeps groaned from his spot under the windows. 'Dogs,' he said.
Pazel sat up. 'No, it's Thasha. What in the Nine Pits are you up to?'
'I want an onion.'
'Well you're as loud as a pig in a pantry — did you say onion?'
Thasha turned to look at him. The sharpness in his tone caught her quite off guard.
'Well?' he demanded.
'Yes,' she said, 'onion. Didn't we have one? A big red thing.'
'What do you think we could do with a big red onion? Eat it raw?'
That was exactly what she had in mind. 'I know how crazy this sounds, Pazel, but-'
'No you don't,' he said. 'Go away and let me sleep.'
Thasha returned to her cabin without a word. But moments later she was back, fully dressed, and making for the stateroom door. 'Oh, stop, stop,' Pazel groaned. 'Wake up, Neeps, Thasha's gone mad.'
They pleaded with her to forget the onion. Thasha began to scratch nervously at her arms.
'I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know what's happening.'
'Sounds like Arunis' handiwork to me,' said Neeps, rubbing his eyes.
'Maybe,' said Thasha. 'I've been feeling a little strange for days. Not sick. Just… strange. But this is a different feeling. How late does Mr Teggatz work in the galley?'
'Depends on what's for breakfast tomorrow,' said Neeps, who'd often worked the galley shift.
'I will fetch my lady an onion,' Felthrup volunteered.
'That's blary good of you, Felthrup,' said Neeps. 'We accept.'
'No we don't,' said Pazel. 'Rin's chin, mate, you want him killed? Teggatz brags he can skewer a rat with a cleaver at thirty feet.'
The boys pulled on their clothes, surly as gravediggers at dawn. Outside the cabin door they found Hercol in a chair, sleeping with his back to the door and his hand on the pommel of Ildraquin. As Thasha opened the door he surged to his feet, unsheathing the great sword even as he leaped sidelong into fighting stance.
'What's the matter?' he said. 'Where are you going at this time of night?'
'Onions,' grumbled Neeps.
'Just one,' Thasha protested, still scratching at her arms.
Hercol also failed to turn Thasha from her goal, and so he sheathed Ildraquin and joined the march to the galley. The heat of the day was gone, and Thasha wished she had brought a coat. She wished even more that she had slipped out of the cabin without waking the boys. Neeps might groan and fuss, but then he was always groaning and fussing. There was nothing mean about it, ultimately. Pazel, on the other hand, had sounded furious, and his anger stung all the worse for being so unexpected.
But as they neared the galley she could think of little but her thirst for the vegetable. Let it be open, let it be open'Closed,' said Mr Teggatz, rounding the corner, wiping his waterpruned hands on his apron. His soft mouth gave its usual smile, one that apologised for the incoherent words that usually came from it. 'All closed, cleaned, locked. How terrible, Master Hercol. Hello.'
'We don't need food, exactly,' said Pazel.
'Of course you don't,' said Teggatz. 'So be it. Good night.'
'Mr Teggatz,' sad Hercol. 'The lady requires an onion.'
Teggatz looked mortified. 'Impossible. There's a directive. Punishments, too! If I lie Rin can squash me like a roach.' He stomped in violent demonstration, eliciting groans from the berth deck.
Neeps sighed. 'He's right, you know. Rose is a monster when it comes to galley privileges. No badgering the cook, no requests to be honoured once the galley's closed, no arguments, on pain of who-knows-what.'
Thasha scratched as if her arms were covered with biting ants. Teggatz balled up his apron in a knot. Four enemies of the crown were trying to get an onion out of him at midnight. It was more than he could bear. He bolted for the passage.
'Five bells,' he said over his shoulder. 'That's when we light the stove. Not before. Captain's rules.'
They stood staring at the locked galley door. 'Five bells is hours from now,' said Thasha, her voice desperate.
'You'll just have to survive until then,' said Neeps.
'Maybe we should tie her up,' said Pazel.
The others looked at him, stunned. Pazel shoved his hands into his pockets. 'To keep her from scratching herself raw, that's all I meant.'
Hercol struck a match, then whisked a candle from his pocket and held the wick to the flame. 'Pazel,' he said quietly, 'go to the next compartment and keep watch. Neeps, be so good as to do the same at the ladderway.'
'What are you going to do?' asked Pazel.
'Get Thasha her onion, what do you think?'
Astonished, the tarboys did as they were told. When they were alone Hercol took Thasha's hand.
'This is an unnatural hunger,' he said. 'You must not give in to it as soon as your hands close on an onion. It could very well be a trap.'
Thasha nodded. 'I know. But Hercol, you can't break down that door. You'll bring people running from all over the ship.'
Hercol smiled at her. With a quick glance along the passage, he put a hand through the neck of his shirt and drew out a leather strap. On it hung a tarnished brass key.
'This is one of the ship's master keys,' he said. 'Diadrelu found it on the berth deck.'
'You've seen Dri!' whispered Thasha.
'Alas, no. One of her sophisters appeared two nights ago in my cabin. I gather Mr Frix used the key to confiscate Fiffengurt's journal, and lost it in the scuffle that followed. As for Dri, I begin to worry. The ix-girl who brought that key looked troubled when I asked after her mistress, though she would tell me nothing. But hurry, now-' He lifted the key around his shoulders and gave it to Thasha. 'Get your onion, and get back out here, and
