and stood up from his meal. “Now see here,” he squeaked. “You owe your life to Ixphir House.”
“Don’t lecture me, rodent,” said Myett with a caustic laugh. “I know my debts, all right.”
“Be quiet, you know very little,” said Felthrup, his mouth twitching so hard that crumbs flew from his whiskers. “You have a grievance with Taliktrum. That is plain as a bruise on your face. Be quiet, be quiet! You have no grievance with Ensyl, who has only shown you kindness. And you have no right to destroy the clan that raised you. No right by your people’s laws, nor by the moral constant that unites all woken souls.”
“You read too much,” said Myett.
“A clan, a crew, a colony of rats: they are neither blessed nor damned, neither chosen nor cast out. But they are your family. Some have mistreated you. What of it? The rest need your strength, and more wisdom than you’ve shown.”
What had happened to Felthrup in his sleep? Ensyl wondered. He was shaking and nervous as ever, but at the same time he was speaking in a rapture of certainty, not breaking eye contact with Myett.
“They need you,” he said, “and that matters more than your damage and pain. You must let it matter more.”
“They despise me,” said Myett. “They have taken decades of my life and given back only scorn.”
“And did they take nothing from me?” Felthrup displayed his mangled forepaw. “They sealed me in a bilge- pipe to suffocate. But they rescued me, too-from my family, my diseased and mutant kin, the ones who bit three inches off my tail. I gnawed at that stump, Myett-gnawed it back to bleeding, each time it started to heal. Oh, how I pitied myself! I dreamed of drowning, and I did not care who drowned with me.”
At the word drowning, Myett’s face changed. “That was you, scrabbling in the dark!” she cried. “You little vermin. You followed me, you watched. You watched me and said nothing!”
“I watched you rush into the hold as the water rose,” said Felthrup, “and wondered what you sought there. I never dreamed it was death.”
Ensyl turned her back, so as not to shame the young woman before her. Aya Rin, Myett. Was it love of Taliktrum that drove you to this?
“I will not tell you again,” said Myett, breathing hard, “to leave me in peace.”
“That is what I mean to do,” said Felthrup. “I will go to the manger, to have a look at the Nilstone. And you, friend Myett: you will do the right thing, and be strong. Take Ensyl to warn your people. The water spared you for a reason, as that pipe spared me. It is up to us to discover those reasons, I think-and if we cannot, then to find reasons, create them if necessary. Yes, I mean it. Sometimes we must fabricate reasons to live.”
Ensyl looked at Myett once more, and saw a broken agony in her face, a desperation. Myett lifted a hand toward her knife, and Ensyl froze. Don’t make me fight you, Myett. Don’t make one of us die. We’re both victims of our love for that family.
Myett’s hand hovered over the knife. Then it rose, slowly, as though she would touch Felthrup on the muzzle. She did not complete the gesture, but something in her own face changed, and she turned swiftly to the wall. She could not face them, maybe, but Ensyl thought she stood a little straighter than before.
“Damn you, Stanapeth! We’re not ready to tackle the ship!”
Alyash was fuming. Neither Sandor Ott nor Hercol responded to his whispered outburst. They were moving as only trained assassins could, shadow to shadow, crouch to crouch. Alert to the tiniest noises, wearing dark clothes swapped with or stripped from other crew members, faces and hands and bare feet blackened from a pouch of soot. Boots would have been safer: glass and splinters and rusty nails littered the streets. But they had no proper, soft- soled footwear, and one accidental thump could make the difference between life and death.
“Do you hear me? Nabbing the Stone tonight is blary impossible! We’ll be lucky to get aboard her at all.”
Ott did not like sudden changes to careful plans anymore than Alyash. But Hercol’s reasoning was sound. Take the Nilstone tonight or lose it to enemies tomorrow. Lose it to enemies, and you will never defeat them.
But Alyash had a point as well. The ship was under heavy guard, and they had not yet cased her fully. Blind terrain! How he hated it! Ott himself had already been attacked: a dozen creatures, like small monkeys but for their hairlessness and fangs, had exploded from the window of a gutted house. All on him, coordinated as a wolf pack, and Ott wondered if they had somehow decided that he was the weakest of the three. He had responded with a frenzy of killing, and sent the few survivors screeching into the night.
In fact the ruined state of the Lower City was mostly to their advantage. Only near the cliff where the Middle City began did the streets come to life. Descending that cliff had been a moderate challenge. It had been more difficult to persuade Thasha Isiq to go with Dastu, seeking an exit to the mountains, a place they might flee to, a hideout.
They were halfway to the port.
Right now the greatest danger was the dogs. Killing them was too dangerous: they had only six arrows and one bow, of strange dlomic design, taken off a man Ott had personally authorized Dastu to kill. A foot soldier, sent back to the barracks for a cough, and quite unaware of the falcon gliding soundlessly overhead, guiding Dastu through the darkened city. The cough, at least, would bother him no more.
But they could not waste those precious arrows on dogs. And a wounded dog might howl. That wouldn’t do. They had to mount to the rooftops whenever the creatures stirred. Luckily the houses were low and ramshackle, and often abandoned. Four or five empty streets for every one where citizens clung together, fearful and poor, night watchmen armed with no more than sticks to keep the feral dogs and other, stranger animals at bay. Given a month Ott could have learned to mimic the sounds of these animals, and thus moved through Masalym with far greater ease. But they had only tonight. Had they been spotted already, though? Taken for dlomic criminals? Surely there were many such parasites, feasting on this carcass of a city.
Most of the houses were slate-roofed-easy to climb, hazardous to cross-but eventually Hercol beckoned, and sprinted to a flat-roofed building. It was the drainpipe he’d spotted: a solid iron thing. It bore his weight as he pulled himself up, hand over hand. Despite himself Ott had to smile as he watched Hercol’s fluid movements. Alyash had strength and utter fearlessness, and a mind like a steel trap. But Hercol had something more: blazing intuition, a welding together of thought and deed that was swifter even than Ott’s own. Such a masterful tool. And yet Hercol was not his to wield, ever again, for Arqual or any other cause. He’s wielding you, if anything, old man. Your hunting days are numbered.
When he crawled forward to the roof’s edge, Ott saw why Hercol had chosen it. Before them stretched a wide, dark road: the avenue up which the captives had been marched. Half a mile to the south the Chathrand towered over the quay. The lamps of the dlomic guard blazed on her topdeck.
“They’ve mounted the new foremast,” said Alyash. “There’s rigging on it too, by the hairy devil. They work fast.”
“The breach in the hull is surely repaired as well,” said Hercol. “No boarding her from below, then. And if we climb the scaffold they will spot us for certain. We will have to enter by one of the starboard hawse-holes.”
“Like rats,” said Ott, and smiled.
“I just hope your knife’s good and sharp,” muttered Alyash. “The splash-guard on the inside of those holes is made of walrus hide. You’re going to have a dandy job cutting through it while dangling from the cable.”
“My knife is sharp,” said Hercol, “and your plan is sound, of course, Master Ott. A direct approach would be suicide. But this way we have a chance.”
He calls me master! By the Night Gods, I taught him respect! He was not deceived, of course: there was hateful irony when Hercol spoke the word, even if he had never found another to replace it.
Sudden wings overhead. Ott rolled onto his back: Niriviel swept over them, cutting a turn that meant No enemies moving. “All clear,” said Ott. “Let’s get on with it, gentlemen.”
They climbed down, rounded the building, broke across the road. At once a door slammed off to their right. Well, Pitfire, they’d been seen. But recognized? Not likely. You open a door, you see figures running in deadly earnest, you slam it. Nine men in ten will hold their breath and hope the danger passes. Of course, these were not exactly men.
Keep running, keep cold. In the lead, Hercol reached the far side of the avenue and dived into a side street, ducked left at the first alley, then right into the next. This one was straight and long and amazingly narrow, three- and four-story row houses so close together that you could, at times, touch both walls at once. Mounds of refuse, scent of just-burned garbage, rodents squeaking and popping out of their way, fitful candlelight in scattered windows. They ran.
One block, two. No incidents. Then disaster-a dlomic woman’s shriek, half a dozen answering voices, rage
