“Then why haven’t you shared it with me? You nearly took the secret to your grave!”
Talag just stared at him, unsmiling.
“Do the elders know?” asked Taliktrum.
“Several,” said Talag, nodding, “and chosen others. Ten in all.”
“But I should know as well!”
“Taliktrum,” said his father, “has it occurred to you that if we lose the hostages, the first result may well be your torture? Rose will take you to the galley and jam your leg into Teggatz’s meat grinder, and ask you questions designed to make it easier to kill us all. There are some answers it is better for a commander to be unable to provide. Do not concern yourself with our move of last resort. Devote your energies to seeing that we never need to make it.”
Taliktrum stared at his father, struggling to be still. At last with an anxious twitch he rushed to Talag and leaned close to him, gripping his chair.
“I would follow you again,” he said. “Resume your command, my lord! You need not go out scouting as before. We can do that. You can lead us from right here, until you’re fully yourself again. Just think how the people would rally to you! Their divisions would vanish like a puff of smoke.”
Talag sipped his wine. Then he rose, forcing his son back a step. He stood almost a head taller than Taliktrum. His eyes shone with anger and disgust.
“Would they?” he said. “After I endorsed this ugly cult you’ve built around yourself? Though it profanes the creed that has preserved us for centuries, that no one life must ever be exalted above the needs of the clan? I escape the rats and find my house in ruins, my people so frightened and confused that they would believe in anything-would have ended up kneeling before Mugstur himself, if matters had gone much further. You think I can lead, having declared that I subscribe to this rubbish, that your vision is my own? ‘Ah, but that was yesterday, men of Ixphir House. Today it is not the prophet’s word but Lord Talag’s you must accept. Or some muddled combination of the two.’ No, Taliktrum. You wanted command. You ached for it like a drunkard for his wine. Now it is yours, and you must keep it.”
“I did not always want it,” said Taliktrum, almost pleading. “There was a time before all this, before you and Dri began my training. My flutes, Father, do you recall how well I-”
Talag dashed wine in the face of his son.
“Find the traitor and punish him,” he said. “There was a childhood for each of us. It’s dead and gone, and I will speak of it no further.”
In the Jaws of Masalym
24 Ilbrin 941
Hunger, thirst, loss of blood: such was Dr. Rain’s diagnosis. Fortunately the bleeding proved easy to control; the prince’s wounds were ugly but not deep. A cabin was readied with lightning speed, the bed salvaged from the ample store of first-class wreckage, a new mattress stitched and stuffed, a coal stove mounted on the floor and its chimney pipe routed out through the porthole. “I’m not cold,” the prince mumbled, waking briefly, but Rose took no more chances. He brought his own feather pillows for the invalid, and plumped them as the prince was carried in. Thasha watched his efforts with grim amusement. The captain didn’t mean to be executed at their first port of call.
But was the man truly who he claimed? The other two dlomu certainly thought so. Ibjen said he knew the prince’s face from coins, and even Bolutu declared that he recognized the features of the ruling family.
Olik did wake again, heavy-lidded and weak, but only long enough to seize the captain’s arm and speak a warning. “Hug the shore, as tightly as you dare. That will keep you out of the rip tide. And you must also manufacture a flag in great haste-a leopard leaping a red sun, both on black-or the Masalym cliff batteries will rain down enough iron to sink this ship by weight alone.”
“That is your banner… Sire?” asked Rose.
Olik nodded wearily. “And when you pass safe under those guns, perhaps you will consider yourself repaid for the Karyskans’ assault. Go to Masalym, Captain. Only there can you safely repair your ship. Now, I think-”
He plummeted again into sleep. This time it was profound, and Rose ordered the cabin off-limits to all save Fulbreech and Rain.
About the time of the prince’s collapse a great smoke began to rise in the south. It spread quickly (or they were swept quickly toward it), low and black and boiling over land and water. Beneath the lid of smoke the dark hulks, the weird shimmer of the armada came and went, licked now and then by flashes of fire. Thasha aimed her father’s telescope at the melee. It was still too distant-fortunately-for her to make out individual ships, but even blurred and indistinct the scene was terrifying. Wood and stone, steel and serpent-flesh, water and city and ships: they were all in collision, blending and bleeding together in a haze of fire. Nandirag: that was what Prince Olik had called the city. What would it be called after today, and who would be left to name it?
By nightfall the Chathrand had drawn within a league of the shore. From this distance one could see the effects of the rip tide with the naked eye: a powerful leeway, a slippage, as though the ship were a man walking across a rug while a dozen hands pulled it sideways. How far did it carry us? wondered Thasha, studying the shore through her father’s telescope. How long before it sweeps us right into the fray?
Nearer to the Chathrand, the coast was a line of high, rocky hills, silver-gray and crevassed like the hide of an elephant, crowned with shaggy meadowlands. In the last minutes of daylight Thasha saw dark boulders and sharp solitary trees, a wall of fieldstones that might have marked some pasture’s edge, and here and there an immense clinging vine dangling garlands of fire-red flowers over the sea. Among the flowers, winged creatures, tiny birds or great insects or something else altogether, rose and settled in clouds.
Darkness was falling when they cleared the rip tide. It was unmistakable: a line of churning water and disordered waves, a sudden heaving swell to starboard, a rise in the apparent wind. A scramble ensued: Rose actually spread sail, driving them another half-league shoreward in a matter of minutes. Then he brought the ship about to the north and ordered nearly all the canvas taken in. Until dawn they would creep northward, following a narrow, safe path between the current and the cliffs.
Thasha watched the ship wheel northward and felt a chill. It was happening. They were doing exactly what they had said they must never do: taking the Nilstone straight to evil hands. Was there any doubt that Masalym was evil? It was a part of Bali Adro, the Empire that was even now destroying the city at their backs, that Nandirag. But was there any other choice? The ship was sinking. Without repairs she could neither run nor fight well enough to keep the Nilstone safe much longer. And there was the small matter of food.
Neeps and Marila had gone to sleep on the floor of the brig, next to Pazel’s cell. Thasha wanted to go to them, ached to do so, could not. She went to Fulbreech and kissed him long and deep, her arms over his shoulders, her back against the doorway of his cabinette. His hands gripping her hips, two fingers grazing her skin beneath the shirt. He tried to coax her into his chamber but she shook her head, breathless and shivering; it was not yet time. She left him, ran blind across the lower gun deck, pounded up the Silver Stair and through the magic wall. She flung open Hercol’s cabin door and flew at him and struck him with both fists in the chest. Hercol kicked the door shut. In the room adjacent Bolutu heard her curses and her sobs, and the warrior’s answering voice, low and intimate and stern.
Sergeant Haddismal tossed and turned in his cabin. When he managed to sleep, the same object rose persistently in his dreams. An arm, pulsating, yellow-gray, somehow both dead and alive, groping through the ship on a mission of its own.
It was the Shaggat’s arm, and his dream was hardly stranger than the reality that had prompted it. He had inspected the Shaggat that very evening: first with his naked eye, then with a tape measure. Impossibly, the cracks that were threatening the statue had stopped growing, and even-very slightly, but unmistakably, for Haddismal was a meticulous record keeper-shortened. The mad king was not just alive inside his stone curse. He was healing.
Many others shared the Turach’s restlessness. All night Lady Oggosk sat awake in the forecastle house, irritating the other prisoners, mumbling Thasha’s name. All night Rose paced the quarterdeck, listening to his ship, pretending not to heed the taunts and whispers of the ghosts who walked at his side. All night the chain-pumps
