'They have been so kind.'
'What of it? What are their little kindnesses, beside the world I have opened to you?'
'Not opened, sir.' The thin man's voice shook. 'Expanded is perhaps the better word. The world opened to me just once, in a house in Noonfirth, when the dumb brute in me died and I became a woken being, reasoning and aware.'
The man in black stared at him a moment. Then his face contorted with such pure hatred that the other scrambled away from him across the bed.
'Reasoning and aware!' he shouted. 'You cesspool filth. Go, then, return to what you were. Run and hide and eat dead things, and be hunted by all creatures. Oh, see!'
He pointed, feigning shock. The thin man looked at his own left arm and gave a wail. From the elbow down it was lifeless, withered, crushed. The man in black reached forward and tore the glasses from the other's head.
'Gold spectacles,' he hissed derisively. 'A scholar, Felthrup, is that how you picture yourself? How fine, how truly noble — but what is this?'
A tail! The thin man had grown a tail, leathery and short and ending in a stump, as if long ago bitten in two.
'Arunis,' he said, 'please, I beg-'
The sorcerer struck him across the face, and when the thin man raised his right hand to his aching cheekbone, the hand was a long pink paw.
'Down, vermin!' bellowed the sorcerer. 'Crawl and whimper and weep! And pray that Arunis is merciful when he comes again — for I will come, and you will do my bidding, or by the Beast in the Pit I'll see you broken and mad.'
He was gone. Rose's cabin was gone. The thin man lay on gritty planks in the bowels of the ship. And when he tried to stand he toppled over onto his three good feet, and was himself again, the black rat with the soul of a scholar, caged in the nightmare that was his body. There were eyes in the darkness — his rat-brethren come to kill him, under orders from their lunatic chief — and he leaped up and ran.
'Wicked Felthrup!' they hissed, giving chase. 'Unnatural rat! Friend to men and crawlies, slave to thought! Let us eat you and end it!'
Such temptation. The deck was endless and foul. Ixchel voices laughed on his right, He only thinks he thinks, and he turned and barely saw the little figures in the shadows before their arrows began to pierce him like needles of glass. He ran on, bleeding. Walls and stores and stanchions flashed by, and there was nowhere safe from his persecutors, and from the crates above him the red cat (deathless like all his demons) purred for his blood, and ahead loomed the shapes of men deadliest of all, and he ran and dodged and prayed but there was no salvation for those cursed by the gods.
3
7 Teala 941
'You will allow, sir, that the Annuncet is more than noise: it is music, after a fashion. No two Mzithrini elders sing it quite the same, although I'm told the words are simple: This house is open to men and gods; none need fear it save devils and the devilish; come, and find the good you seek. All very pleasant. Still our sfvantskor guests were loath to part with their blades.'
King Oshiram II, Lord of Simja, chuckled at his own remark. Walking at the royal elbow, at the centre of a vast, ecstatic throng, Eberzam Isiq returned a smile: the most false in his long public life. His heart was pounding, as from battle. He was hot in his wedding regalia — antique woollens, leather epaulettes, otterskin cap with the admiralty star — and the king's chatter grated in his ears. Still the old admiral walked with lowered eyes, measured step. He was an ambassador, now, and an ambassador must show the greatest deference to a king, even the petty king of an upstart island.
'Enlightened policy, Sire,' he heard himself say. 'Simja has nothing to gain by allowing armed and violent men to walk her streets.'
'Nothing,' laughed Oshiram. 'But by that token who can we afford to exclude, hmmm?'
The sun was high over Simja: it was approaching noon. The mob of well-wishers assaulted the king's retinue with their cheers, their spark-flinging firecrackers, their piercing fishbone whistles. Onlookers filled every window, the young men dangling perilous from the balconies. Flightless messenger birds nine feet tall skirted the crowds, grimy boys clinging to their necks. Monks of the Rinfaith droned in harmony with their bells.
They passed under an arch between the port district and the Street of the Coppersmiths. The king pointed out the workshop from which he'd ordered lamps for the ambassadorial residence. Isiq nodded, in agony. The blary fool. Does he think I wish to speak of lamps?
Before the two men walked a vision. His daughter, Thasha, had been at war with lavish clothing since she was old enough to ruin it. She was not a good Arquali girl but a bruising fighter, with a conscript's temper and a grip to make a wrestler wince. And yet here she was: grey-gowned, satin-shoed, cheeks dabbed with powdered amethyst, golden hair twisted up in a braid they called a Babqri love-knot. Exquisite, beautiful, an angel in the flesh: the mob breathed the words after her in a sigh no effort could contain.
Thasha looked straight ahead, back rigid, face quiet and resolved. Isiq's pride in her stabbed him at every glance. You did this. You brought her here. You dared not fight for your child.
A small entourage surrounded Thasha: the personal friends custom allowed her to name. The swordsman, Hercol Stanapeth, her friend and tutor of many years, tall and careworn and matchless in a fight. Mr Fiffengurt, the Chathrand's good-hearted quartermaster, whose stiff walk and one-eyed way of looking at the world ('the other just points where it pleases') reminded the admiral of a fighting cock. And of course the tarboys, Pazel and Neeps.
The two youths, despite vests and silk trousers hastily provided by the king, looked terrible. Ragged, red- eyed, bruised about the face. Pazel Pathkendle, child of vanquished Ormael, gazed out through his straight nut- brown locks with an expression more like a soldier's than that of a boy of sixteen. A searching look, and a sceptical eye. He had turned that sort of look on Isiq at their first meeting, when the admiral found him with Thasha in her cabin, and Pathkendle declared, in so many words, that her father was a war criminal.
At the time the charge had felt outrageous. By tonight it could well be an understatement.
The other tarboy, Neeps Undrabust, fidgeted as he walked. A head shorter than Pathkendle, he glared at the crowds on both sides of the street, as if searching for a hidden enemy. They fear the worst, thought Isiq, but have they lived long enough to withstand it when it comes? For that matter, have I?
They had argued the night away — the tarboys, the admiral, Hercol and Thasha — and yet they'd failed to find a way to save her. Not from a loveless marriage; she would suffer that but briefly. Days, weeks, a fortnight or two. The Mzithrin Kings would need no longer to discover how they had been deceived, and to murder the girl at the deception's heart.
His cravat was too tight. He had dressed without a mirror, repelled by the thought of the face awaiting him there: the face of an imbecile patriot, a blind blunt tool in the kit of Magad V, Emperor of Arqual, and his spymaster Sandor Ott. By the fiends below, I hate myself more than Ott.
The king touched his elbow. 'Are you quite well, Ambassador?'
Isiq drew himself up straight. 'Perfectly, Sire. Forgive me, I confess I was lost in thought.'
'As a father must be at such a time. And I know the matter of your musings.'
'Do you?'
'Of course,' said the king. 'You're pondering what last words of wisdom to bestow upon the child of your flesh. Before another man takes your place, as it were. Do not fear: Simjan custom shall be observed today as well as Mzithrini. On this island fathers and daughters enjoy a private leave-taking. I trust you've understood? It is of course why we make for the Cactus Gardens.'
'I'm aware of your tradition, Majesty, and glad of it.'
'Splendid, splendid. You'll have eleven minutes alone with her. But do wave to my people, won't you, Isiq?
