Carried Away
22 Ilbrin 941
Night fell. The pool of fire dwindled behind them. Without chart or knowledge of the gulf they fled, east by southeast, pulling gradually away from the Sandwall. Ibjen wept; he had tried a second time to throw himself overboard, and had been seized again by the Turachs. Even when eight miles separated them from the northern shore he begged to be allowed to swim.
“Not on your life,” said Fiffengurt. “Besides, you told us you have family in the city.”
“I do,” said Ibjen. “But my father, those soldiers-”
“Would only grab you too, lad. You can’t help your father that way.”
“But I thought you were avoiding Masalym! Oh, where are you taking me? Why did I come aboard?”
Where indeed? Geography, at least, should not have changed in two centuries. Ibjen was too upset to be consulted, but Mr. Bolutu recalled from his schooldays that the city lay due south from Cape Lasung. “A wonder, they say: Masalym, the city above the falls. I should dearly love to see it.”
“You were the one who warned us not to pay ’em a visit,” snapped Fiffengurt. “Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re taking your first piece of advice. We need food, and a calm harbor for repairs. But most of all we need to stay away from bastards like the ones we just escaped.”
An hour later he turned the Chathrand hard to the southwest, a tack calculated to bring them in sight of land at least thirty miles west of the city. “We’ll put you ashore wherever it’s safe, Master Ibjen,” he assured the boy at last, “with a purse of gold for services rendered, and hardships endured.”
“Enough to buy a horse?”
“Enough for a blary brood stallion. Now go and eat, before Teggatz licks out the pots.”
It was a chilly night; the old moon absent, the strange little sapphire moon winking low and pale in the south. Far to the east, flashes of light could be seen, and low, deep rumblings followed, like the growls of giant dogs. Traces of a storm, the men told themselves. But Pazel recalled the armada that had sailed that way, and was not sure.
They shortened sail: even in these calm waters it would not do to come suddenly upon a lee shore, or a reef. At first light they would take in their surroundings, Fiffengurt declared: perhaps they would find another village, well away from the city, a humble settlement blessed with cove and croplands, where no army of marauders lay in wait.
Neither Pazel nor Thasha wanted to eat. They helped out in the surgery, cleaning and binding wounds, cutting cloth into bandages, rinsing blood from the floor with buckets of salt water and doing anything else Rain or Fulbreech asked. Hercol and Bolutu joined in as well: the swordsman knew a great deal of field medicine, and Bolutu was, after all, a veterinary surgeon. All the same, it was like a battle after the battle: they ran, cursed, held the bleeding men down, stabbed sutures into their wounds. If only Dr. Chadfallow-! They did not have to say it. He would have made it all look easy. He would have made them into a platoon.
Hours into the work, Pazel looked up from the pan of knives he was washing to see Fulbreech leaning exhausted over a surgical table, trembling; and Thasha supporting him, an arm over his shoulders, her chin against his cheek. Hercol noticed them too, and his eyes narrowed to slits. When he glanced at Pazel it seemed almost a warning.
Later, Pazel, Thasha and Hercol visited the forecastle house. Both moons were risen now, and their conjoined light spilled through the window, illuminating huddled sleepers, stacked dishes, Ott’s watchful eyes. Pazel’s hatred struggled in the chains of his fatigue. Did the man never sleep?
Chadfallow slept near the window, snoring through the nose Pazel had broken on Bramian. Lady Oggosk crouched by the smudge-pot, burning scraps of paper. And there in a corner lay Neeps and Marila, curled up like puppies, dead to the world. Someone might have nudged them awake, for Neeps had wanted to talk no matter the hour. But it wasn’t going to happen: Ott was already approaching, stepping over Chadfallow, demanding information. There was no defying him, not with Neeps and Marila there to punish as he liked. The damage? he asked Hercol. The course heading, the winds? And what about the Shaggat’s arm?
You’ve failed, Pazel longed to tell him. Your Emperor’s dead, and the Shaggat’s worshippers have been waiting for two hundred years. But Hercol was right: Ott’s mind would only spin new evil from whatever knowledge it gained. The only winning move was to keep him in the dark as long as they could.
It was two in the morning when Pazel, Thasha and Hercol returned to the stateroom. They didn’t speak. They fed the dogs their evening ration of biscuit, and ate the same themselves, with a bit of rye porridge (several days old) for dessert. Felthrup ran back and forth upon the table, studying and sniffing them, begging them to eat. Pazel glanced often at Thasha, but her look was far away.
Hercol sat mechanically stroking Jorl’s blue head, and at last began to tell them of the horrible deeds he had done for years as a servant of the Secret Fist. Kidnappings, betrayals, false letters designed to set prince against prince, fires sparked in the temples where uncooperative monks shielded enemies of the Arquali state.
“I told myself it was for a cause,” he declared, watching them, unblinking. “What cause? Order in Alifros, the end of war, of fiefdom against small, stupid, tyrannical fiefdom. But that was only Ott’s credo, his manic religion. ‘Arqual, Arqual, just and true.’ I was a warrior-priest of that religion, as much as any sfvantskor is of the Old Faith. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Ott did not model us on the sfvantskor, even as we fought them in the shadows. When I met your sister and the other two, Pazel, I felt at once that I was meeting kin.”
Seeing their long faces and Felthrup’s anxious twitching, he smiled. “There are the kin we are born to, or find ourselves claimed by, as the Secret Fist claimed me. And then there are the kin we seek out, with clear minds and open hearts. You are the latter. Now go and sleep; tomorrow comes all too soon.”
He left the chamber, to walk the deck as he did each night. Felthrup chattered on awhile, glad of their company; then he too bade them good night and crawled away to his basket. Pazel and Thasha drifted about the stateroom, wide awake, not looking at each other.
Somehow (Pazel wondered later exactly who had moved when) they ended up side by side on the bearskin rug, staring up at the fengas chandelier that had not been lit since Uturphe, listening to the moan of the wind. For Pazel the sound raised a sudden memory. He had been sleeping at a friend’s house, very long ago when he still had friends, before his family’s disgrace. The wind had been cold, but he had been given a pair of sheepskins to sleep between, and felt that nothing could be warmer or more comfortable. In the night a small dust viper (perhaps of the same opinion) had slithered into the room and curled up behind his knee. It had bitten him when he sat up at dawn, and his calf had swollen to the size of a ham. The friend’s father had inexplicably beaten his son; the son had never spoken to Pazel again.
Pazel realized he had taken her hand.
It was warm in his own. She held on tightly, but kept her face turned away. “I read something about you,” she said.
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“In… the Polylex? Something about me in the Merchant’s Polylex?”
“ ‘Pazel Pathkendle, tarboy of Ormael, second child of Gregory and Suthinia Pathkendle.’ Isn’t that funny? Because you’re not from Ormael, and you’re not a Pathkendle, are you? Pitfire, you’re not even a tarboy anymore. The mucking author should have known better.”^ 5
He raised her hand to his cheek. He considered telling her that he had no idea what she was talking about, but the remark seemed unnecessary.
“It’s funny,” she said, “you’re not your father’s son. And I’m not my father’s daughter. Isn’t that strange?”
“Terribly,” he managed to say. She was breathing fast. Her hand moved against his cheek. He wanted to make love to her and thought it was possible, thought the moment was here and would never come again, and yet he was beset by a kind of vertigo. He feared his mind-fit was coming on, but the telltale purring was nowhere to be heard. Thasha was shaking slightly-nervous laughter, he thought. He was aware of every inch of her, every least movement. It was a kind of madness. He imagined the bearskin coming to life and charging from the stateroom, racing to some deep spot in the hold and digging Arunis from his hiding place, like a honeycomb from a stump. It was like that, the way he wanted her. But his thoughts were darting everywhere, uncontrollably. He thought: Arunis
