Rose stood as if turned to stone. Neeps felt cold at the back of his neck. “Captain,” he said, “be careful, sir. I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Of course he is!” said Ibjen. “His face-”
“Ah yes, my face,” said the newcomer. “I can hide my chest under a shirt, but my cheek is another matter.”
“You’re speaking of a race law, then?” said Rose. “Only a dlomu may harm another dlomu, is that it?”
The stranger laughed, wincing as he did so. “Even in our glory years we were not that kind to one another,” he said. “No, Captain, by kin I mean my extended family, nothing more.”
As if in explanation, he showed them his left hand. On the thumb shone a rough, heavy ring, like a nugget of solid silver. Rose frowned at it, hesitating, then gestured for the sailors to lower the man to his feet. “What in the Nine Pits do they call you?” he said at last.
“I am Olik,” said the stranger, wincing as his feet touched the boards.
“Just Olik?”
The stranger probed the wounds on his face and chest. He took a deep breath and straightened to his full height, which was considerable. He gazed steadily at Rose.
“My full name,” he said, “is Prince Olik Ipandracon Tastandru Bali Adro.”
He raised a hand as if to address them further, but before he could say another word, he collapsed.
The Rule of the House
24 Ilbrin 941
The thin man in the golden spectacles fled the stateroom in a rush. He was off-balance from the first, but there was no turning back. Oh, he had botched things, he was in danger-he would never again be ruled by fear. But the ship was not his. He could taste the change. A spectacular dreamer he might be, but not a practiced one, like the enemy he faced.
For ten yards the passage was silent, warm, and he sensed the life all around him. Hercol in a meditative trance. Neeps unconscious but restless in his hammock, his dream-self raising head and shoulders to gaze through wooden walls in the direction of the man in glasses. Marila awake, rigid, listening for Thasha and Fulbreech, barely allowing herself to breathe. Thasha herself far behind him in the stateroom, by the windows, hoping there would be no knock on the door. Bolutu asleep and very distant, running through dream-lands of his own.
Then the man stepped over the red line, through the magic wall, and the chaos of his dream engulfed him. The ship tilted-or was it the pull of the earth that changed-and he stumbled against the bulkhead. There was a background rumble, a groaning, in the very air, and the light was fugitive and dim. No matter, he would not be here long. He turned down the portside passage and reached for a doorknob (vaguely aware that it was the entrance to the old first-class powder room) and flung it open to see-the bakery, his own beloved bakery in Noonfirth! The humble shop where he had become a woken animal! He could smell the bread, see the black woman bent over her mixing-bowl. Couldn’t he go to her for a moment, fall on his knees, inform her of the miracle she had worked? Madam! I was a thief in your shadows, a rat. You cried one morning, your husband had run away with the butter- churn girl. I heard, and I woke: yours was the spark to the tinder that burns inside me yet.
No, he could not do that. He was looking not for comfort but for allies, and he had not a moment to spare.
Another turn, another passage. There were ghost-sailors fighting in the adjoining rooms. Translucent flashes, limbs and weapons and faces and shields, flowed by at the intersection ahead. Pirates or Volpek mercenaries, battling Chathrand’s sailors; a fight to the death among the dead. Echoes of war cries, faint sounds of steel on steel. Was it the past he was seeing? Or the disordered nightmare of another dreamer, just out of sight?
There was the door he sought. No question. He could feel eternities throbbing beyond the fragile wood. Bounding up to it (fear would not stop him) he seized the knob, turned it and pulled.
An abyss. A maelstrom. Wind tore at his cloak like a hurricane through tattered trees. All as it should be. He was better at this than he’d thought.
He forced himself to lean forward until his face crossed the threshold. The wind like a boot to the underside of his chin. He nearly lost his balance; his glasses were torn from his head and flew upward, out of sight. No matter. You don’t need them. You’ll be blind until you will yourself to see.
But he was blind for now-blind and, yes, afraid. Was it his fault if there was only darkness before him? What should he expect-warm windows, vines, music and laughter spilling onto the terrace? True, he had managed to see all that once before, and to hear a great deal. But that night he had been a stowaway in another’s dream, not the architect of his own.
Then he sensed the sorcerer.
It was true: Arunis was walking the dream-ship once again, sure enough of himself to call out with his mind: Ah, Felthrup. I wondered when you’d come back to me. Are you ready to bargain, rat?
Felthrup turned away from the door, anger crackling through his dream-body. He turned his mind in the mage’s direction. You think nothing has changed. You think you can torture me as before, use me against them, make me your fool.
I think I would know if Ramachni were guarding you, as he did last time.
Come, then. Come and talk to this rat. He is waiting for you.
He felt his dream-voice betray him. No control, no control. Somewhere Arunis was indeed rushing toward him, laughing at his forced bravado.
We have an account to settle, don’t we, vermin?
Felthrup closed the door. He turned in the direction of the mage’s voice. We most certainly do, Arunis.
He felt his slim scholar’s body throb with sudden power, hideous and sublime, the strength of a thousand- pound animal, and he spread his jaws and roared through five decks, a bear’s furious battle roar, and Arunis stopped dead in his tracks.
That’s better.
No taunting reply from the mage. Felthrup was satisfied. Within this ship, within his dream, he was his own master, and would bow to no one again.
Felthrup reopened the door. The black abyss loomed before him, unchanged; the wind made him stagger.
Where can you be going, Felthrup? said the mage, his voice suddenly affable. Come now, you don’t want to step through any… unusual doors. I know all about them, you’ll want to talk to me first.
He let go of the door frame.
Don’t you do it! You have no idea what you’re in for if you stray from this ship!
No more tricks. No more words of poison. He leaped.
As a rat he had once plunged from a moving ship into the sea. This was infinitely worse: the air current blasted him straight upward, head over heels; the door became a dim rectangle that shrank to nothing in the darkness. He rose like a cannonball fired at a midnight moon-and then the current vanished, and he became weightless, and started to fall Only for an instant. The next blast shot him faster, farther upward. Do not wake. Do not panic. Now there were windows, and cave mouths, and luminous insects somehow surviving the wind. Felthrup had lost all control of his dream. He perceived the wall of this great black tunnel, ten times the width of any mineshaft, and no sooner had he seen it than he collided, scraping along the wall shaggy with vines, while somewhere within the leaves tiny voices cursed him, You great oaf, that’s my property, you’ve knocked my mailbox into the River.
The River of Shadows. That is what the innkeeper called this place. And his name, and his tavern? Think of it, remember. Orfuin. The Orfuin Club. Anyone whose need is sincere can find his way to my doorstep.
No sooner had the thought occurred to him than he saw it: the little terrace and the wide stone archway, the scattered tables, the potbellied man at his tea. As if he had waited all these weeks for Felthrup to return. But how could he possibly get there? Felthrup spread his arms, the way he had seen Macadra and her horrible companions do, but his cloak only billowed about his head, and like a tossed playing card he flew spinning across the shaft, rising still, leaving the terrace behind. No control. He could almost hear Arunis laughing, though he knew the mage could not see or hear him in this place. He flailed, he kicked, he crashed again into a wall. He sank his hands into the vines. They were deep, but not deep enough. Fistfuls of the waxy leaves tore away in his hands as his body tried to lift away once more.
He should not have attempted this journey. You’re failing, rat. Still just a rat, with a rat’s small soul, even if
