'Do not rave at me, Thasha Isiq. You know His Supremacy left me no choice.'
'I'm tired of that excuse,' said Thasha sharply. 'Even today you're saying 'no choice,' when the most dangerous thing would be to take no risks at all.'
'That is juvenile idiocy. I know what risk is, girl. I have been a soldier three times as long as you've been alive. You have courage, that's something no one denies. But courage is just one of the virtues.'
Thasha heaved a sigh. 'Daddy, this is the last thing-'
'Another is wisdom, rarer and more costly to earn than skill with a blade. And dearer than either of these is honour, which is a sacred trust, and once lost not easily-'
Something changed in Thasha's face. She snatched her hand away and boxed him in the ribs. The blow made a dull clink.
'Ouch! Damn! What's that blary thing in your coat?'
Isiq looked embarrassed. 'Westfirth brandy,' he said.
'Give me some.'
'Out of the question. Listen, girl, we have just-'
'GIVE ME SOME!'
He surrendered the little bronze flask. And the Treaty Bride, head to toe the image of a virgin priestess of old, tilted back her head and drank. After the fourth swallow, quite deliberately, she spat brandy in his face.
'Don't even say the word trust. You sent me away to a school run by hags. Offered me to your Emperor when he snapped his fingers. You brought me halfway round the world to marry a coffin-worshipping blood-drinking Black Rag-'
'For Rin's sake lower your voice!'
'You denied what I told you about Syrarys.'
Isiq closed his eyes. Syrarys, the beautiful consort who had shared his bed for a decade, had been exposed two days ago as Ott's lover and spy. She had made a deathsmoke addict of him. She would have killed him as soon as Thasha wed.
'You laughed when I said the Shaggat Ness was aboard,' said Thasha, 'and that Arunis planned to use him against us. You've watched everything I warned you about come true — and you still think I'm a child.'
With slow dignity, Isiq dried his face with a sleeve.
'I also watched your mother fall through a rotten balustrade. Four stories, onto marble. She'd been waving to me. She reached out as she fell. She was twenty-six, with child again, although we'd told no one. That child would be twelve, now, Thasha. Your little brother or sister.'
He could tell she was shaken. Thasha knew, of course, how her mother had died, that horrid fall from a theatre balcony. But Isiq had never told her he'd witnessed the accident, or that Clorisuela had been pregnant at the time.
'You're all I have left,' he said. 'I can't watch you die before me as she did.'
Thasha looked up at him, tears glistening in her eyes. 'Don't watch,' she said.
Then she raised her gown and swept away down the path. 'Thasha!' he cried, knowing she would not turn around. He huffed after her, cursing his stiff joints, the throbbing in his head that had only worsened since the removal of Syrarys' poison, the red silk shoes he'd consented to wear.
Silk. It was like going out in one's socks — in women's socks. How was it that no one had laughed?
'Come back here, damn it!'
In a heartbeat she would be gone for ever. There were things yet to say. Humility to recover, love somehow to confess.
'Where are you?'
He would confess, too. Before the Mzithrin prince, that irritating king, the whole distinguished mob. Stand before them and declare that the Shaggat lived, that the wedding was a trap, and Arqual ruled by a beast of an Emperor. I am guilty. She is not. Exempt her from this infamy; let it be me whom you punish.
But of course he would do no such thing. For beneath his daughter's gown hung the necklace — his late wife's gorgeous silver necklace. Arunis had put a curse on that silver chain, and had sworn to strangle her there on the marriage dais should anyone interfere with the ceremony. He had demonstrated that power yesterday, though Isiq would never have doubted it. This was, after all, a man who had come back from the dead.
He had been hanged. Everyone agreed on that point: Arunis had been hanged, nine days on the gibbet, and his body chopped into pieces and tossed into the sea. Chadfallow had described the execution in detail; he had been there. Yet through some black magic Arunis had cheated death. For twenty years there had been no hint of him, no rumour. Like Sandor Ott, he had astonishing patience. And only when the spymaster was at last ready to deploy the Shaggat, his master weapon — only then did Arunis suddenly return, and strike.
'Do you hear the horn, Thasha? We have five minutes! Come back!' What fools the sorcerer had made of them all. Under their very noses he had left the Chathrand in Ormael, rendezvoused with Volpek mercenaries, and raided the sunken Lythra. With Pazel's forced assistance, he had retrieved an iron statue known as the Red Wolf. The statue itself was no use to him, but within its enchanted metal was the one thing he needed to make his Shaggat invincible: the Nilstone, scorge of all Alifros, a cursed rock from the world of the dead.
Yesterday, in an unnatural calm, the mage had demonstrated his power to kill Thasha with a word. His advantage proved, he had forced the crew to raise the iron forge to the Chathrand's topdeck, and to stoke a great fire under the Red Wolf. Bit by bit the Wolf had succumbed to the flames. At last, before their eyes, it had melted to bubbling iron.
There had followed an hallucinatory succession of shocks. The Nilstone, revealed. Captain Rose flying like a madman at Arunis; Sergeant Drellarek clubbing him down. The molten iron spilled, men in agony leaping into the sea. The Shaggat bellowing triumph as he grasped the artefact — and death running like a grey flame up his arm: for the Nilstone (as they all learned presently) killed at a touch any with fear in their hearts.
Finally, strangest of all, that instant silence, like the deafness after cannon-fire, and a brief but ghastly dimming of the sun. When Isiq recovered his senses, he saw Pazel with his hand on the Shaggat — on a stone Shaggat, one withered hand still clutching his prize.
It seemed this dusty tarboy was himself steeped in magic: he had a language gift (the little bastard spoke some twenty tongues; Isiq had heard him; he was a walking Carnival of Nations) as well as three powerful spell- words, Master-Words he called them, each of which could be spoken only once. He had used the first yesterday: a word that turned flesh to stone. And in a burst of genius for which Isiq would thank him forever, Pazel had foreseen that if the mad king died, Arunis would slay Thasha the next instant. Before the Nilstone could kill the Shaggat, Pazel had leaped forward and petrified him. Arunis believed he could reverse the spell — and as long as he dreamed of doing so, he had a reason to let Sandor Ott's game of betrayal go forwards.
But the necklace — every scheme for saving Thasha foundered on that necklace. Arunis would kill her if they talked, if he overheard the least rumour of a conspiracy, passing among the guests. And the necklace tightened of its own accord if any hand sought to remove it. I cannot even sacrifice myself for her. I have the courage. And no cause left to live for, witless servant that I have been. I would humble them ere they slew me, if I could but strike'Confound it all!' he thundered. 'Where are you, girl?'
'This way, Daddy.'
He turned a corner and there she was, sipping from his flask again, beside an odd little reflecting pool. No, it was a birdbath. No'Is that… a plant?'
Thasha pointed to a sign at their feet.
BIRD-EATING BRAMIAN CACTUS DO NOT TOUCH!
What seems a multicoloured pool is in fact a highly toxic jelly above a vegetal maw. Birds as large as vultures spot this cactus from the air, stoop to drink, and die. Those falling forward pass through the jelly over the course of several weeks and are dissolved. The body of a single desert finch can sustain the cactus for a month.
Isiq put an uncertain hand on her shoulder. 'A strange, cruel world,' he said.
'Yes,' said Thasha, leaning against him, 'it is.'
'They're fighting again,' said Neeps.
Pazel held still, listening. ' 'A coffin-worshipping, blood-drinking' — Rin's teeth! She shouldn't say that.'
The two ex-tarboys stood near the garden wall, Hercol and Fiffengurt at their sides. Unlike Thasha they kept their voices low. These rose gardens were smaller than their cactus counterparts, and the wedding entourage quite filled them. The flowers were scarlet, white, yolk-orange; their perfume hung like a sweet steam in the air. Caterers
