“Who can tell?” said the prince. “It is a place of dark magic, certainly. Many Spider Tellers believe that the Nilstone entered the world right there, carried upward by the bubbling force of the River. But none of us knows for certain.”
He stopped speaking and gazed out over Masalym again. “At dawn tomorrow,” he said, “unless Arunis be found first, an expedition made up of those who still revere me will ride out toward the Chalice of the Mai. I will not be with them, for while there is a chance that he remains here I must ensure that the hunt in the city does not fall to pieces. You would all be welcome on the expedition. But I do not ask it of you. The Chathrand will be far from Masalym before any return is possible, and no one can predict what sort of city will await those who descend from the peaks. This much is certain: I will no longer be ordering its affairs. By then I may indeed be a prisoner in the bowels of the Kirisang, waiting for transport back to Bali Adro City, and the judgment of the Ravens.”
“Well, don’t blary wait for that to happen,” said Neeps.
Olik gestured over the city. “I hold the lives of these people in trust,” he said, “and I promised them I would remain here, until all the dangers I brought with me were removed. I will not depart until I am sure that Arunis has done so.” He smiled broadly. “Then I will depart very quickly.”
Thasha swallowed. If you still can.
“I am sending you back to your ship tonight,” said the prince. “But an hour before sunrise the carriages will again be on the quay, for any who wish to join the expedition. You will have tonight to decide.”
“And to prepare,” said Oggosk, “for either choice will have its costs.”
The four youths looked at one another. They were shaken. This was something none of them had foreseen.
“Nothing to decide, is there?” said Pazel, his voice less certain than his words. “We swore an oath. That settles it.”
“Right you are,” said Neeps. But his expression was hunted. The tarboys looked anxiously at their friends. Thasha found she couldn’t speak. Marila’s face was a mask.
“It may be less simple than you think,” said Hercol. “Grant me this much, boys: that we sit with our choices in silence awhile, until we are all back on the Chathrand, at least.”
“But Hercol,” said Pazel, “we already-”
“Heed his words!” croaked Oggosk with sudden vehemence. The tarboys started; Ensyl stared up at her with great unease. Felthrup looked from Oggosk to Thasha and back again. He rubbed his paws together, a blur before his face.
Mr. Teggatz cooked a vat of pork and snake-bean stew. It was a surprising success in taste, but some kind of gelatin leaked from the bean pods and turned the whole cauldron into a translucent solid. His tarboy aides served it like a jiggling, messy pudding, and the crew devoured it without comment. They were well beyond shock.
The cook kept a few servings aside for the youths and Hercol, but none of them was hungry. They sat quietly in the stateroom, which was unchanged but for the mold in the pantry area, while everywhere else on the ship men labored in their hundreds, shouting, thumping, dragging crates, coaxing animals and once more cursing “the fish- eyed freaks.” The dlomu’s fear had infected them. Every man aboard knew that they were running from some mortal threat.
Captain Rose would keep them at it all night, and all the next day, Thasha knew. Even after they launched, the work would continue: below the waterline, the crew would keep on shifting and securing the wares by lamplight, all the way across the gulf. And if that work was ever done, there were the forty miles of ropes to double- and triple-check, and paint with tar against the damp; seams to caulk, chains and wheelblocks and pump- gears to oil, extra sails to cut and stitch, hatch-covers to mend, stanchions to shore up; some fifty new animals to fuss over, two surly augrongs to scrub, delouse and copiously feed.
Hercol was right, but so was Pazel. It had been better not to talk anymore, there atop the city with nothing to lay their hands on, no mold to wipe away, no little tasks to hide behind. Still they all knew what the morning would bring. Neeps was putting his clothes in sacks. Hercol was seated on the bearskin, sharpening weapons. Pazel was rubbing oil into the creases of Thasha’s boots.
Everyone was on edge. Neeps and Marila bickered when they spoke at all, though they never seemed to be more than an arm’s length apart. The dogs lay in deep mourning, unable to bear the sight of the bags and bundles collecting near the door. Felthrup crouched on the window seat, gazing out at the night.
It fell to Mr. Fiffengurt to break the silence, roughly at midnight, when he staggered in from a long work shift and collapsed in the admiral’s chair. Pazel silently brought him a mug of dlomic beer-frothy, fruity, black. They had spent the evening developing a taste for it.
The quartermaster drank deeply. “Rose has just let me in on the plan,” he said. “It’s the damndest bit of hide-and-seek nonsense I’ve ever heard. And I can’t for the life of me think of a better idea.”
The Chathrand was to speed by night across the gulf, he explained, and land a tiny force, just three or four men, not far from where their little boat had been capsized by the emerald serpent. Those men would hide their boat, hide themselves deep in the dunes “and live off Rinforsaken mul” while the Chathrand sped out through the inlet, tacked west and raced along the outside of the Sandwall for a good sixty or eighty miles. There were rocky islets there, like those at Cape Lasung. A hiding place. Every sixth day the men on the Sandwall would climb the tallest dune and look for mirror-signals from Masalym, giving them the all-clear. On the same day, the Chathrand would venture carefully out of hiding and creep back along the Sandwall, hoping for a corresponding signal from the landing party.
“What then?” said Thasha.
“Then?” said Fiffengurt, startled. “Why, then we come and get you, m’lady.”
“Is that the captain’s plan?”
Fiffengurt gazed at her for a long time, his fingers caressing the chair’s felt arms. “If Rose tries to sail off and leave you here,” he said, “I will put a knife into his heart. D’ye understand me, Lady?”
As if there could be two ways of understanding a statement like that. Fiffengurt drained his mug and pushed to his feet. “Time to check the watch lists,” he grumbled. “The off-duty lads won’t sleep unless I order ’em to, their heads are so twisted with worry. The damned fools. Won’t be any blessed use tomorrow if they don’t sleep, will they?”
When he was gone, Hercol shook his head. “Do not mind Fiffengurt. He is angry at himself for that game leg: he knows it would make him useless on an overland journey. I fear he’s in more pain than he cares to admit, both from the leg and the thought of Anni and their child, and the slim chance that he will ever seen them again. But he thinks his own suffering too small a thing to share with anyone, just now.”
“Dear old Fiffengurt,” said Neeps. “But he’s assuming a lot, isn’t he? I mean, we still haven’t decided to go.”
“Haven’t we, mate?” said Pazel.
No one answered. Hercol rose and left the stateroom; the others went on with their work.
They were still drinking the black beer when a shout came from beyond the stateroom. Pazel at once felt a tightness in his chest: the voice was Ignus Chadfallow’s. He went to the door and opened it. The doctor was crouched by the invisible wall, his lips near the hole Counselor Vadu had made.
“Pazel,” he said, “come out here, will you? There is something you should see.”
Pazel glanced back at the others. “Go on,” said Thasha. He went, but he dragged his feet. He had a strong sense of having wronged the doctor. He had said nothing to Chadfallow about his dream-encounter with his mother; in fact they had barely spoken since their escape from the Conservatory. And Suthinia hadn’t admitted everything, to be sure. But clearly Captain Gregory had more than one thing on his mind when he abandoned his family.
He stopped a few feet from the wall.
“It’s not the best time, Ignus,” he said.
The doctor rose to his feet, watching Pazel gravely. “It is the only time,” he said.
Pazel drew a deep breath, summoning all his reserves of patience. Then he stepped through the wall. “Make it quick, will you?” he said. “I’m blary exhausted.”
Chadfallow nodded and turned, beckoning Pazel to follow. They descended the Silver Stair to the lower gun deck and set off briskly toward the bows. Even at this late hour the deck was swarming with men. Some were inspecting the gun carriages; others were guiding freight down the tonnage shaft or muscling crates across the floor. There were a few dlomu working among them, and Pazel saw with amazement that they were in uniform- Arquali uniform. Olik’s found dlomu willing to sail with us. To run away with the humans, to be hunted by their own
