'He'll be along,' grunted Neeps.
But an hour later there was still no sign of Pazel, and a newly irritated Neeps set off in search of him. By this time Marila was asleep on the bearskin rug, and the dogs were snoring in a call-and-refrain. Felthrup stood on the edge of the dining table, gazing at the strip of lamplight shining under Thasha's door, and leaning out in such a way that he would lose his balance if he began to doze. It was a cheerless game: each time he began to drift off, the near-fall would wake him. Then he would drag himself once around the table and return to his spot. He had done this for two nights already, unnoticed by anyone. He was terrified of sleep.
A time came when his trick failed: he was so exhausted that he slept through the vertigo, experienced an instant of weightless bliss, and landed with a thump and a whimper upon the floor. Suzyt yipped without quite waking; Marila sighed and turned over on the rug. A moment later Thasha opened her door an inch.
She was still in her deck clothes. Her face wore a distracted look. He was not sure her eyes really saw him.
'What's the matter with you?' she said.
'Not sleepy,' mumbled Felthrup.
Thasha paused, staring at him like a ghost. 'What did you do back in Noonfirth, when you couldn't sleep?' she asked.
Felthrup's ears pricked up instantly. 'In the good times, when I wasn't starving? Read, m'lady, always. Learning to read was the first task I set myself after the miracle of tears — after my waking, you understand. I lived above a bakery, a choice spot for a scavenger, and the baker's daughter was learning to read, and I would listen from the top of the stair. And one day the girl read aloud to her mother from a storybook. It was a profound tale, about a jackal captured on the Samopol Veld. The hunters planned to skin him — he was just the right size to make four jackal-fur hats — but he talked his way to freedom. He told the hunters that he was a murth in disguise, and would plague them with four years of warts and spots and piles and shingles if they harmed him. A year for each hat, you see? And they didn't dare! It was a brilliant story, m'lady. And when the girl finished I told myself that by reading I might learn almost anything, and even answer the riddle of my own existence. I've failed in that last endeavour, so far. Still I became an addict, and read everything I could. Old books, newsbills stuffed in crates, soap wrappers, lists for the greengrocer, orders of execution, ledgers forgotten in city warehouses — anything.'
'You'd read.'
'In a word, yes.'
Slowly Thasha's eyes found him, and focused. 'Why don't you come in?' she said. 'I think you can help me.'
Glad to be wanted, Felthrup went to her. But in the doorway, by long and almost involuntary habit, he stopped and sniffed. Her cabin smelled of dust, sweat, a dozen kinds of food crumbs, and very slightly of blood. He looked at her with concern. 'Are you wounded, m'lady?'
Thasha did not answer him. She shut and locked her cabin door, bent down and gently raised the lame rat onto her desk. There was something in her expression that Felthrup had never seen before. One could almost mistake it for fear; but no, she was not afraid, at least not for herself. Thasha moved around her bed to a spot by the wall, reached high, and ran her fingers along a plank. After eight or ten inches her fingers stopped. The rat found nothing special about the spot, but he could tell her fingers had. Thasha pushed, and Felthrup gave a chirp of surprise, for he could suddenly see the outline of a small door, less than two feet square. Thasha clawed it open; old hinges squeaked.
'Mr Fiffengurt showed this to me,' she said. 'The stateroom used to be the fleet admiral's cabin, when Chathrand was a navy flagship. The admiral hid the code-books in here, and his secret orders.'
In the hidden cabinet lay a book bound in fine leather. 'That's Fiffengurt's new journal; I'm hiding it for him,' Thasha explained. 'And have a look at this.'
She removed the book, and the rat saw a thick metal plate mounted on the wall, and within the plate the outline of a drawer. The latter was about five inches tall and ten wide, with a small handle at the centre. 'Solid iron, and locked fast,' said Thasha. 'And there's no proper keyhole, just a tiny round hole behind the handle. Fiffengurt has no idea what might be in there. He couldn't remember there being any inner drawer. But that's not what I wanted to show you.'
There were, Felthrup saw now, two books in her hand. The second book was much older and heftier than the quartermaster's journal. Thasha looked at him. 'I think you know what this one is.'
'Of course,' said Felthrup. 'Your special Polylex.'
'I haven't been able to make myself open it for weeks,' she said, laying the book beside him on the desk. 'It's not that the book's cursed or poisoned or anything vile like that. But ever since the Nilstone came aboard something's been happening when I sit down to read.'
'What happens?'
Thasha paused. 'Ramachni didn't want me to talk about it. But he also told me I'd have to decide when to give my trust. And I'd trust you with my life, Felthrup dear.'
The black rat looked suddenly nervous. 'If Ramachni told you to keep it secret, then you must,' he said.
But Thasha went on. 'I don't understand it myself. Sometimes I barely notice it happening; at other times it feels as if I'll never be the same, as if I'm burning inside, or dying.'
At once Felthrup leaped onto the book and raised his paws. 'Then read it no more!' he cried. 'Ramachni cannot see down every path. Surely he was wrong in this case — or perhaps Arunis has flung a curse on the book after all. Let it be, Thasha!'
'I don't understand what happens,' Thasha said again, 'but I have felt it before — or something like it. Just after my mother died, it was. Her family took care of my father, since his own family lived far off in the Westfirth. One day my father and uncle sat smoking for hours in the garden, and I got curious and crept through the bushes to listen. 'No,' I heard Daddy say, 'we didn't have the heart to go through it again. She lost two children before Thasha, you know.' They were talking about my mother, Felthrup. My uncle said, ' Thasha's was an easy birth, wasn't it?' And my father answered, 'It was when the time came. But we almost lost her too, Carlan — early on, just like the others. It was the damndest thing. Clorisuela began to bleed, and weep, and I thought the worst had come again. And then — nothing. The blood stopped, her pain vanished. And she never suffered any but the expected pains from that moment on.'
'You see? I almost died before I was born. And when I understood what I'd heard — that's when I felt it. The ache. Like being tied with ropes that are shrinking, cutting me. I never felt it again until I started reading that book.'
'No more,' said Felthrup. 'We have seen enough black magic, and some of the worst has been hurled at you.'
Thasha went to her porthole window and freed the latch. The lamplight flickered as a cool wind passed through the room. She looked out over the now-moonless sea, and the haunted expression stole over her again.
'I let Fulbreech kiss me tonight,' she said. 'He wanted to do more than that. And I was tempted to let him. What if I die on this ship?'
'Lady Thasha,' said Felthrup, 'I hope you will not soon mate with anyone. It would complicate matters indescribably. And it is most, most unpleasant.'
For a long time she gazed from the window in silence. Then at last she said, 'It's not evil, what happens when I read that book. Maybe it's even good, or at least necessary, unavoidable.' She looked at Felthrup again, and added with a note of pleading, 'I just don't want it to happen yet.'
'You frighten me,' said Felthrup, beginning to quake. 'You have been so kind, Thasha, so generous, and I have nothing to offer in return. I wish I knew what threatened you, but despite my habit of reading I'm a fool. A failure as a rat, of course; and what I know of human life feels like something snatched from a dream. I wish I were learned. I'm not. My knowledge is paltry, puny, slight, a negligible froth of wisdom, a detritus.'
His earnestness brought her back to the room. She laughed, a small frightened sound, then bent and kissed the rat on the forehead. 'Do you know something, Felthrup? I think we were meant for each other. Will you help me face this thing that's coming, whatever it is? Will you read to me from the Polylex?'
