is afraid of this rug. What happened, what does he fear?
He kissed the back of her hand, felt it trembling. When she exhaled there was a low moan in her voice that went through him like lightning. They hadn’t started, but it was as if they were already done. Everything was answered. He would be with her for the rest of his life.
“I have to ask you something,” she said.
“I do,” he said. “Of course I do. Obviously.”
She turned to face him, and suddenly he knew that what he had seen was not laughter, but tears. They were flowing still.
“I have to ask something of you,” she said. “Have to, not want to. I have to ask you to stop. Not just this. Stop everything. Will you do that for me? Oh, my dearest-”
Thasha had just said my dearest. The words were so strange on her tomboy tongue that for a moment they shielded him from the meaning. She closed her eyes and bit her lips and snorted and sobbed, and eventually he realized he hadn’t misunderstood.
“Everything?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, choking.
“It’s Fulbreech, isn’t it?”
Thasha nodded, pinching her eyes shut so tightly she might have been trying to make them disappear.
“You love him? Truly?”
Against great resistance, another nod.
Pazel took his hand away. He sat up, and she curled beside him and wept.
“I should have known,” she whispered. “I did know. When he first came aboard.”
Pazel sat hugging his knees. How many times? How many times could the world change, before there was nothing left that you could recognize?
“I suppose,” he said, trying (failing) to keep the bitterness from his voice, “that it would be easier if I didn’t stay here anymore?”
“Yes.”
Pazel swallowed. She had agreed so quickly. She’d thought it all through.
Then a dark notion came to him. “Hercol knows, doesn’t he? All those looks, even tonight in the surgery. When did he figure it out?”
After a pause, Thasha said, “Before I did.”
“But Thasha, Fulbreech? I don’t believe it, I can’t. Do you know something about him that I don’t?”
Her eyes drifted away from him, shining, and he wished he hadn’t asked.
“There’s a cabin for you,” she said. “Bolutu’s going to share Hercol’s room, and you can take his. You’ll be safe there. It’s still behind the magic wall.”
Pazel had heard enough. He rose and went to his corner and began putting his clothes into his hammock. Moving like a sleepwalker, like a tol-chenni. Bolutu’s cabin was far too close; he’d go back to the tarboys’ compartment and take his chances. He cast his eyes over the stateroom, thought of the day she’d first tried to bring him here, how some instinct had made him pause at the doorway, thinking, You don’t belong in such a room.
Not belonging. It was the story of his life.
Thasha was sitting up, motionless, waiting for him to go. He started for the door. But as he passed her she put a hand on his leg. He stiffened. In a cold voice, he said, “A snake once bit me there.”
Thasha looked up at him slowly. “It died,” she whispered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The wind, Pazel. Listen: it’s completely dead.”
And so it was. The moaning had stopped. The oilcloth nailed over the broken windows hung limp. They rose and went to an undamaged window and flung it wide. The air was perfectly still. Below them, the Chathrand rocked motionless on the waves.
They went topside, and found the sailors gazing with wonder at the empty sails. Moths fluttered about the deck, unmolested by any breeze. The Sandwall was out of sight, and the southern shore, wherever it was, remained invisible as well. The Great Ship sat in darkness, with no points of reference beneath the alien stars. “Black sorcery,” said a few, whispering.
Ten minutes later the sails began to lift. Another ten, and the breeze was as strong as ever: no great blow, but enough to sail by, and shifted ever so slightly to their advantage. Men shook their heads, chuckling. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Bolutu stared into the darkness, his silver eyes wide and watchful.
The watch-captain struck two bells; it was an hour before sunrise. Pazel left Thasha standing alone on the topdeck (the thought came unbidden: she would not be alone for long) and descended by the Silver Stair to the berth deck. He moved slowly through the maze of sleeping men and boys. The door still creaked, the tarboy called Frowsy still snored like a bleating goat. He felt his way to the eight copper nails in the ancient stanchion that had always marked his place and began to tie his hammock.
It had all started between these two posts. He and Neeps whispering, becoming friends. His first meeting with Diadrelu, who had laughed when he said he didn’t trust her: “Wise boy. Don’t trust.” And his private decision to defy Dr. Chadfallow, who had begged him to jump ship before Thasha was even aboard.
Back in Ormael, when his mother’s madness reached its worst pitch, when she put spiders in her mouth or made the evening soup with bathwater, he had sometimes fled deep into the plum orchard and bunched his coat up against his face and screamed. It had helped. He had never told anyone. He wished he could scream like that now. His best friend was aboard, and his blary sister, and he could not talk to either of them. He shut his eyes.
Five minutes later Mr. Coote appeared with his flat, detested bell, rousing the dawn shift. Pazel lay still, trying to summon the old knack for sleeping through bumps and curses, spit and scuffles in the darkness. He sank half into sleep but could go no further. Every part of him ached. In that restless trance he saw them together, Thasha and Fulbreech. Don’t trust. Stop everything. Jump over the side.
“Muketch.”
His eyes snapped open. The tarboy Jervik was standing over him, hands in fists, his hard face clenched in an expression it took Pazel a moment to recognize as concern.
“What happened? Somebody beat you?”
“Worse,” said Pazel, and instantly regretted the reply.
Jervik was crude and violent and very strong; they had once been mortal enemies. But since the rat war everything had changed. Jervik had defected to their side-quietly, announcing it to no one but Pazel himself. He was their spy, in a sense: well positioned to learn things, if only because everyone thought him too stupid to be listening. Pazel no longer thought him stupid. He had cunning and courage. And he had come through mental torture by Arunis with his will to fight intact.
Nonetheless he wished Jervik would go away. The older boy had the wrong idea; he thought someone had beaten Pazel the way he himself used to do. Jervik’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “You can’t let no one do this to you, Muketch, you hear? You got to learn that.”
Pazel closed his eyes again. “I agree,” he said.
“The way you fought them rats, eh? You laid ’em waste. That’s how you fight man to man, see?”
“Lay them waste?”
“Tha’s right. Never go halfsies. When you’re on the dock and they cast off the lines and the bosun shouts, ‘All aboard,’ d’ye put just one foot on the mucking boat and stand there? No, you don’t. You jump with both feet, or you keep ’em both ashore. Same with fighting. You oughta know by now.”
Pazel opened his eyes. “You’re right again,” he said. “Only this time I can’t actually… fight him. Them. It’s not a fist-fight.”
“Easier if it was, eh?”
Pazel was somewhat amazed. “That’s right, Jervik. Easier if it was.”
Jervik stood still, his face all but invisible. “I thought you were gonna laugh,” he said finally. “When I told you I wanted to switch sides. I thought you’d laugh and tell me off. ‘Get stuffed, you thug, you blary halfwit, you fool.’ Only fancier, o’course.”
Pazel bit his lips. He’d come close to doing just that. “I’m glad I don’t have to fight you anymore,” he said truthfully.
“You’d do all right,” said Jervik, laughing low. “Hercol’s taught you good-or was it the girly?”
