Haddismal’s lips curled in a sneer. He said, “You still don’t see it. Ain’t there a brain behind those fishy eyes?”
Ibjen looked from face to face. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“We needed some proof of your story,” said Pazel. “We wanted to know if you were mad.”
The dlomic youth was shocked, then furious. He leaped to his feet and started toward Pazel, hands in fists, only to turn on his heel and stalk away into the darkness. Bolutu went after him, shooting an angry look of his own back over a shoulder.
In a short time both dlomu returned. Ibjen, eyes locked on the fire, apologized to the humans. “I assumed you were like us,” he murmured. “That was foolish of me.”
“Like you how?” said Thasha.
“I thought you would know how vicious a thing it is to call a person mad. But Mr. Bolutu tells me it is no grave insult in your country.”
“Nor was it here, when I departed,” said Bolutu. “And I’ve no doubt it became an insult because of the catastrophe. By all the Gods, a third of the Imperial population was human! No one could have been unmoved. We were one people-dlomu, human, Nemmocian, k’urin, mizrald, selk. There were even marriages, occasionally. My cousin Daranta took a human wife.”
Ibjen gave a twitch of disgust, clearly involuntary. The wounded Turach laughed, and everyone looked at him. He flinched at this concentrated scrutiny, pressed his bunch of grass tighter against his waist. “My sister married a bloke from Noonfirth,” he said.
Haddismal looked at him with vague distaste. Noonfirthers were jet-black. Worse, their kingdom, though small by Arquali standards, was peaceful, fashionable, educated and rich. “You’ll keep that to yourself if you know what’s good for you,” he said.
Night brought no rescue, but it brought other visitors. Eyes gleamed from the dune grass. Some low swift creatures loped by in the surf, panting like wolves. And when the wind ebbed they heard a rustling all about them, accompanied by a noise like the breaking of small sticks. The sound was persistent and strangely unsettling, and in time Thasha realized that the creatures, whatever they might be, were moving about them in a closing spiral. At last Pazel tossed a burning branch out of their circle, and half a dozen crabs the size of sunflowers, with translucent eyestalks and the delicate legs of spiders, recoiled into the night.
“Irraketch,” said Bolutu. “Lucky crabs. Don’t hurt them. They can be taught to mimic human speech, like parrots. Some part of them, legs or back or claw, is deadly poison.”
Ibjen professed to know nothing of these creatures. He did not leave the village at night, he said. A bit later, as though reaching some difficult threshold of trust, he stated that he had come to live with his father just the year before. All his life his parents had been estranged, he said, and he had spent most of those years with his mother in the City of Masalym across the gulf. But the previous winter she had sent him to his father’s dying village on the Northern Sandwall, to hide him from the military press gangs that robbed the mainland of its children.
“Don’t tell,” Ibjen pleaded. “None of the villagers know. They’d set me adrift in the gulf, or kill me outright. They’re afraid to harbor runaways.”
“What’s the fighting about?” said Haddismal. “A threat to Imperial territory, is it?”
Ibjen shook his head. “The enemy is the realm of Karysk, in the east. Not long ago they were our friends-but we are not supposed to say that. In any case I know nothing of the recent war.”
“Recent,” said Pazel, in a hollow voice.
The Turach commander glanced at Hercol. “I assume,” he said, indicating Pazel with his chin, “that you’ll be taking our genius here off to read that inscription at sunrise.”
“Perhaps,” said Hercol.
“Perhaps?” cried Haddismal. “Damn your eyes, ain’t that what we came for?”
“He won’t be able to read it either,” said Ibjen.
“ ’Course he will!” said Haddismal. “Translating’s all our Muketch is good for. That runt can speak, read and write every language under Heaven’s Tree.”
Hercol said nothing, and Thasha waited, perplexed. The Turach was exaggerating Pazel’s Gift: it only let him learn new languages a few times a year, during a few days of magical insight, though he never forgot them afterward. He had acquired some twenty-five languages during these interludes. But they ended in such violent fits that he’d thrown away his savings from five years as a tarboy (an amount Thasha had seen her cook spend preparing for a dinner party) on a cure that had failed. Still, Haddismal’s question was a good one. They’d come here to learn something. Why not show Pazel the memorial?
Haddismal clearly thought his question more than good. “You answer me, Stanapeth. Don’t you dare sit there mute.”
“My silence is not meant to insult you,” said Hercol.
“Your blary existence insults me. You’re under sentence of death, you and these two brats and the rest of your gang. A delayed sentence, but not rescinded. It’s beyond everything that you’re still at liberty, defying the ship’s commander.”
“Who?” said Pazel.
Thasha could have hugged him. Even Haddismal looked caught between amusement and rage. Nothing was less clear than who was in charge on the Chathrand.
The Turach threw up his hands. “I can’t talk to you people. You’re all cracked-not you, Mr. Ibjen, don’t get sore, you’re quite sensible for a fish-eyed freak. Keep the fire burning, for Rin’s sake. Long live His Supremacy.”
He dropped on his side. The junior Turach echoed his praise of the Emperor, then his example, and in scant minutes both men were breathing deep. The others sat up a long time, listening to the scuttling crabs, the wail of nightbirds, the surf. Their whispered conversations went nowhere; they were, like Haddismal, too bewildered for words.
Thasha would remember their smiles. Bitter, perhaps even unhinged. But none of them cruel-not even Haddismal, at the last, though she had seen terrible cruelty from the man. She thought: It’s the world that’s cruel, not its poor stupid creatures. It’s the world that stabs a wall of gorgeous scales until they bleed. The world that makes you monstrous, holds you by the neck, tightens and tightens its jaws till something snaps.
She looked Pazel over when she was sure his head was turned. He would always be thin, light, something less than a deadly fighter. But he was growing, and he’d embraced the lessons she and Hercol had thrust on him. They were brutal, those lessons: every one involved pain; and Pazel had few natural gifts as a fighter. But he wanted it, now, and that made all the difference. “One day I’ll protect you,” he’d told her, “instead of being protected.” From the far end of the stateroom Felthrup had called: “You protect us already with your mind, your scholar’s mind! You’re a genius, Pazel Pathkendle.” Thasha had stabbed at him with the practice sword, because he’d dropped his guard to answer Felthrup. She could see the scar on his hip even now, above his clutch of weeds.
Skinny boy, genius. Someone she loved. Would it happen to him? In three months, six months, tomorrow? Would she wake up and find an animal looking back at her with those eyes?
Perhaps he hates me. The thought ambushed her again. She knew that no one else suspected, and that Pazel himself would deny it to his last breath. Hadn’t they been inseparable for weeks? Hadn’t he shivered when she kissed him last?
Yet sometimes people knew more than they knew. Perhaps in his heart Pazel sensed what Thasha was already certain of: that she deserved it. Deserved not just his hatred, but everyone’s, deserved to be loathed, tortured, dismembered, dead. Why? Thasha could not bring her thoughts to bear on that question: there was a gauze curtain between her and the truth, and though it lurked there like some vulgar actor awaiting his cue, she could not yet tear the curtain down.
But she knew this much: if Pazel didn’t hate her yet, she would soon be giving him a reason.
A hand touched Thasha’s foot. It was Hercol, his eyes stern but kind. “Brood no more,” he said, and the command in his voice was made healing by their years of trust. His hand withdrew, and Thasha did her best to obey.
They fed the fire. At length they found a way to sleep that cut no one off entirely from its warmth. Thasha lay down, her head bumping Ibjen’s knees, her foot on Hercol’s shoulder. If anything was still blessed in this world, it was sleep.
