“Arunis,” said Hercol, his voice tight but steady, “you are defeated, and in seconds you will be dead. Once before I urged you to turn back to your true path-the path you swore to follow when your Gifts were bestowed. You responded by trying to kill us, yet again. Now there is but one thing you can do to save your life, and only if you do it this very moment, without delay or deceit.” Hercol looked at Bolutu. “Tell him,” he said.
“You must cast the Spell of Abdication,” said Bolutu.
“Ha!” cried Arunis. “To save my life! That is very droll. Cast the Final Charm, the Last Command, the spell that reduces mage to mortal, with no possibility of ever using magic again. Cripple myself, and then surrender! A kindly offer from a failed dlomic mage and a reformed assassin. How can I refuse?”
“Very well,” said Hercol. “Madam.”
Oggosk threw her scrawny arms upward. “Saikra!” she shrieked. The spell-word crackled through the deck. Arunis twisted backward one painful step toward the gunports. There he froze, arms flat against his chest, writhing only in face and fingertips. He appeared to be trying to speak, but his lips were clumsy, quivering. Oggosk, straining, gestured with one claw-like hand at Hercol.
“Do it!” she snapped. “A swift, clean stroke!”
Hercol raised Ildraquin and started forward.
Arunis’ eyes swiveled to stare at Thasha. With immense effort, he said, “Y-your mother lives.”
Thasha showed no response for an instant; then her calm shattered like a vase hurled at a wall. “Stop! Please!” she cried, leaping forward to grab Hercol’s arm.
“Do not stop!” bellowed Rose. “The duchess is tiring! Kill him!”
“Clorisuela is dead, Thasha Isiq,” said Ott. “I can guarantee that. I’m sorry.”
“Clorisuela was b-barren,” said Arunis, leering now. “Ask Ch-ch-chadfallow.”
“Chadfallow?” said Thasha.
If Arunis was breaking free of Oggosk’s spell, it was happening from the head down: already he spoke more easily. “The d-doctor c-couldn’t help her. Isiq gave up, and w-went looking elsewhere. Can you guess who he found?”
“Thasha,” said Hercol, “your mother’s name was Clorisuela Isiq.” But Thasha still held his sword-arm.
“Your mother’s name is Syrarys,” said the mage. “Isiq began to bed her years before his wife was killed. Ott arranged everything. He needed Isiq to have a daughter, after all. For Treaty purposes.”
“Lies, Thasha, lies,” said Hercol.
“Isiq paid for her rooms in the banking district. He had her two or three times a week-as often as Ott himself could stay out of her bed.”
Thasha was weeping. Ott shouted at Hercol: “Do it now, Stanapeth, or step aside.” He had pulled a box of matches from his coat.
Hercol freed his sword-arm from Thasha’s grasp.
“The whore was your mother, that’s a certainty,” said Arunis. “The question is, who was your father?”
Then came a madman’s shout from beyond the ship. Like an apparition, Pazel flung himself in through the gunport. He knocked the sorcerer from his feet, landed on his chest and struck him a blow to the face that might have broken a weaker man’s jaw.
“No! No! Idiot!” screamed Oggosk.
Pain flashed through the mage’s contorted features-and then he gasped, and his limbs moved naturally, free from Oggosk’s spell.
His first act was to shout a spell of his own: a terrible spell. The black mace rose and flew at Thasha. At the same time, two cannon swiveled on their frames like batons. The first blocked Hercol’s killing blow with Ildraquin. The second flailed at Sandor Ott. But the old spy was too quick: he leaped over the gun, pistol in one hand, a burning match in the other, and as he came down there was a deafening noise (a cannon, raised three octaves), and Arunis screamed aloud.
But the mage was far from slain. His second act was to throw Pazel upward, with such violence that nails popped in the ceiling-planks where he struck. Pazel thought his back must be broken, yet somehow he did not lose consciousness: his determination to kill Arunis, before he could strike again, with hands or spells or lies, was simply too great. But as he crashed to the floor Arunis shouted again, and darkness engulfed them all.
It was a tangible darkness, like ink poured in water. Pazel vanished into it, and found himself in a bedlam of howling, whirling bodies. Fists and feet struck at random. He heard Rose shout, “I have him!” and felt several thunderous blows shake the deck. Then the captain roared in agony, and a body lunged near Pazel, and something crashed onto the boards of the scaffold outside. Even as Pazel groped in the direction of the noise there came two similar crashes. Then Pazel found the edge of the gunport and thrust his head out.
The mage-darkness stopped at the window: beyond it, plain moonlight resumed. Pazel saw Hercol and Sandor Ott hurling themselves down the scaffolding like a pair of acrobats. Thirty feet below, something dangled over a rail: a body, it appeared, kicking feebly, perhaps even dying. When Pazel looked back into the ship the magical darkness was gone. Rose was supporting Oggosk; one of them was bleeding fast. But where was Thasha?
“No!” cried Hercol suddenly. Pazel looked and saw him holding Arunis’ empty black coat. “Trickery, illusion! Find him before he escapes!”
Pazel dived back into the ship. Rose, leaning heavily on a cannon, waved a bloody arm toward the center of the compartment. “That way! They’re chasing him! Run, run, damn your soul!”
Pazel ran. In a moment he caught sight of Bolutu, rounding the capstan, sprinting with his sword drawn. Up ahead it was brighter: moonlight was flooding down the tonnage shaft. The great foremast timber still lay there, propped at an angle-and suddenly, as his eyes traveled its length, Pazel saw Thasha, scaling the timber as fast as she could. Above her, much higher, climbed Arunis.
“Bolutu, this way!”
Pazel put on a burst of speed. He reached the tonnage hatch and climbed out onto the scaffold and then the mast. Up he went, much faster than Thasha: climbing was perhaps the only physical activity in which he outdid her.
Past the upper gun deck, the main deck, the topdeck where they had all stood and worked together a few short hours ago. Then cries rang out from the shore. Pazel glanced up-and thanked the Gods.
Fifty or sixty dlomu, mostly fighting men in uniform, had just stormed onto the quay. They were arguing, some quite heatedly. Several were fitting arrows to bows.
From the topdeck, Bolutu cried out: “Shoot him down, brothers! Shoot him, for the love of Alifros!” Seconds later Fiffengurt’s voice joined Bolutu’s, urging much the same.
Then came a general shout of alarm. Pazel looked up and saw Arunis jump from the mast. He had reached a height where it extended well past the Chathrand’s rail toward the quay. The distance looked impossibly great: Arunis, he thought, was going to fall short of the quay, plummet some 150 feet and strike hard stone, close to where Pazel had crawled out through the hull.
But it did not happen. Arunis cleared the gap with ease. The soldiers caught him, supported him-and then (Pazel felt a sudden, powerful urge to leap himself) stood back from him and raised their weapons in salute.
The mage’s voice came from below, faint but clear: “Bring a horse, and send another rider ahead to announce me. I have business in the Upper City, and I do not wish to be stopped and questioned at the gates.”
Someone darted away through the crowd. Arunis staggered over to one of the broken lampposts and leaned against it while the soldiers milled about him, offering him water, bread, someone’s coat. Arunis touched his leg, and the gaunt hand came away bloody. Then he felt his jaw, and winced. As if remembering, he turned and looked up at the mast where Pazel clung. Youth and sorcerer locked eyes for a moment. Then Arunis smiled, nodded to him almost cordially, and turned his back on the Chathrand.
“Shameless, interfering, cow-headed dullard!”
Lady Oggosk cracked her walking stick over Pazel’s back. Pazel, climbing over the tonnage hatch rail, took the pain as his due. Facing Hercol and Fiffengurt, as he did when he stood upright, hurt considerably more.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You sure as five-week fishcakes are,” said the quartermaster. “Why couldn’t you do as you were told, just once?”
“That would not be Pazel Pathkendle, would it?” said Sandor Ott, who was studying his cracked-open pistol
