The Red Wolf Conspiracy Page 11

  His mother Suthinia was to blame. It happened at home in Ormael, just months before the Arquali invasion. Winter was breaking up in storms, and in such weather Suthinia was at her strangest and most disagreeable. She quarreled with Chadfallow, who came to dine and found Pazel and Neda chewing last year's wrinkled potatoes: Suthinia had been too distracted to go to market. At times she seemed almost mad. In electrical storms she climbed the roof and stood with arms outstretched, although Chadfallow swore that to do so was to provoke the lightning. The night she fought with Chadfallow, Pazel had lain awake, listening, but even in their fury the adults kept their voices low, and all he heard was one exceptionally desperate cry from his mother:

  “What if they were yours, Ignus? You'd do just the same! You couldn't send them away into the night as they are, friendless, lost—”

  “Friendless?” came the wounded reply. “Friendless, you say?”

  Moments later Pazel heard the doctor's footsteps in the garden, the sharp clang of the gate.

  The next morning, Pazel's mother, surly as a bear and twice as dangerous, began cooking again. She made corn cakes with plum sauce, their father's recipe no doubt, and when they had finished she poured them each a generous mug of custard-apple pulp.

  “Drink this,” she told them. “For your health.”

  “It's sour,” said Pazel, sniffing his mug.

  “From special fruits, very expensive. Drink, drink!”

  They choked the bad pulp down. After lunch she filled the mugs again, and the taste was even worse. Neda, who was seventeen and very wise, told him their mother was suffering “a lady's discomforts” in a tone of such gravity that Pazel felt ashamed for not liking anything she served. But as evening came they saw her in the garden, furiously squeezing custard-apple pulp through her fingers into a big stone bowl, and she had to resort to threats to bring her children to table. When they were finally seated she placed a tall pitcher of the translucent gruel before them.

  “Can't we at least start with the meal?” Neda sniffed.

  Suthinia filled their mugs. “This is your meal. Drink.”

  “Mother,” said Pazel gently, “I don't care for custard apple.”

  “DRINK IT ALL!”

  They drank. Pazel had never imagined such misery. His belly ached by the second mugful, and by the fourth he knew his mother was poisoning them, for she herself took not a drop. When the pitcher was finally empty she let them go, but they could do no more than stagger to their rooms and lie quaking, holding their stomachs. Minutes after climbing into bed, Pazel was unconscious.

  That night he dreamed his mother entered his room with a cage full of songbirds. They were lovely and of many colors, and their songs took shape in the air and fell like cobwebs about the room. Each time she entered the room the birds wove another layer, until a net of solid sound hung from the walls and wardrobe and bedposts. Then his mother shouted, “Wake!” and Pazel gasped and bolted upright in bed. He was alone, and his room held nothing unusual. Yet the dream had left him with a final, ludicrous image: as he woke, gasping, it seemed that the webs of birdsong had not simply vanished but rushed into his mouth, as if he had inhaled them all on that first breath.

  When he left the room he saw three startling things. The first was Neda seated at the table, head in hands, looking quite a bit skinnier than the night before. The second was his mother, in even worse shape, crying at his sister's knees, saying, “Forgive me, darling, forgive.” The third was that the garden had sprouted lilies two feet tall.

  Then his mother looked up, screamed with joy and ran to embrace him.

  Her poison had almost succeeded: they had lain at death's door for a month. Pazel returned her embrace, and when she pressed her ivory whale into his hand and asked him to keep it always he said he would. This was the mother he knew; that other, storm-worshipping, custard-apple creature was a nomad who dropped in now and then to wreck their lives. This mother was easy to love. She guarded the house from the great world beyond, and sang him highland lullabies, and if he ran into nettles at the orchard's edge, she removed them, armed with tweezers and his father's magnifying glass.

  But if he ever saw another custard apple in the house he would just run away.

  Four days after rising from his coma, the purring began. It felt warm and almost pleasant. When he told his mother about it she put down the shirt she was mending and came to face him.

  “Pazel,” she said, lifting his chin sharply, “my name is Suthinia. I am your mother. Do you understand?”

  “Of course I do, Mother.”

  “The geese fly east to chase the drakes.”

  “What geese?”

  Instead of answering, she tugged him to his father's library and pulled a crumbling volume from the shelf. She pointed at the spine and told him to read. Pazel obeyed: “Great Families of Jitril. With Sketches of Their Finest Mansions and—”

  “Ah ha ha!” she yelled in triumph.

  She kissed his forehead and ran from the room, shouting for Neda. And when Pazel looked down at the book again, he realized that he had just read a language he didn't know. His father had purchased the book for its drawings, on some long-ago voyage to Jitril; neither he nor anyone they knew could read the words. But now Pazel could. He opened the book at random: “… this dread chief, scourge of the Rekere, whose noble whiskers—”

  Mother, Pazel thought. You're a witch.

  So she was: a witch or seer or sorceress, just as the good people of Ormael had always feared. But not a very good one, it seemed. Neda did not acquire the Gift, and in fact showed no change at all except that her hair turned silver, like an old woman's. When Neda failed to read Jitrili, or to understand spoken Madingae, she gave her mother a look Pazel would remember all his life. Not one of anger, but of simple awareness: she had nearly killed her daughter for nothing.

  “It may start yet, when you've grown,” Suthinia said, and Neda shrugged.

  Despite his body's weakness, Pazel was on fire. He ate five eggs and nine strips of bacon, then ran to the city. It was annoying how few languages were to be met with in Ormael, until he reached the port. There he heard Kushal merchants denigrating the local wine; old Backlanders who feared the rains would fail; secretive Nunekkam in their domed skiffs, twittering about the crab catch; and a red-eyed lunatic, barefoot and blistered, who screamed about a coming invasion in a language no one understood.

  On that first occasion his Gift lasted three days—and ended, as it always would, in a mind-fit.

  This was pure horror. Cold talons seized his head, the odor of custard apples filled his mouth and nostrils, and the purr rose to an ugly, hysterical squawking. Pazel shouted for his mother. But what came from his mouth was nonsense, a baby's blather, noise.

  His mother spoke nonsense, too, and Neda. “Gwafamogafwa-Pazel! Magwathalol! Pazelgwenaganenebarlooch!”

  He closed his eyes, plugged his ears, but the voices got through. When he looked again, Neda was pointing at him and shrieking at their mother, as if she were the one having fits. Soon his mother responded in kind. The sound was beyond belief

  “Stop! Stop!” Pazel wailed. But no one understood. When Neda began hurling onions and saucers he ran to the neighbor's house and hid under the porch.

  In three hours the fit ended with a snap. He crept out: the neighbor was singing as she cooked, a normal human voice, and no sound was ever sweeter.

  But at home his mother said that Neda had tied her clothes up in a bundle and left. The next week he received a letter—she was with school friends, she was looking for work, she would never forgive their mother.

  Neda sent a boy for her things. She never visited, and did not write again. But one day Pazel found a letter in progress on his mother's dresser. Come back for Pazel's sake, Neda, it read. You don't have to love me. The letter sat there for days, unfinished: too many days, as it proved.

  The magic always worked the same way: first the Gift that gave him the world, then the seizures that cut him off from everyo
ne. A few days of wonder, a few hours of hell. The Gift was incredibly useful, of course—and he never forgot a language that he gained through it—but the fits scared him half to death. Once indeed they nearly caused his death: on board the Anju, the whalers sealed him in a coal sack until he fainted. He woke locked in the pigsty, and remained there till landfall. The sailors told him he was fortunate: the captain, believing him possessed by devils, had wanted to pitch him over the side.

  By chance they were in Sorhn—and Pazel made straight for the famous street where witches, alchemists and Slugdra ghost-doctors plied their trades. After many inquiries they directed him to a potion-maker, who took every penny he had saved toward his citizenship and served him a thick purple oil. It bubbled, and when the bubbles burst he heard small wheezes like dying mice and smelled something putrid. He drank it in a single gulp.

  The potion worked. Nearly a year passed without a mind-fit. The fact that he would learn no more languages—magically, anyway—had seemed a small price to pay. But thanks to Chadfallow, the Gift and its horrors were back. Any regrets at his decision to break ties with the doctor vanished when he remembered that smell of custard apples, that ghastly squawking. More bitter for you than me. How could he have done such a thing?

  Let the fits come at night, he thought. Not while I'm on duty, please!

  Shouts and Whispers

  1 Vaqrin 941

  9:19 a.m.

  In any case (Pazel told himself, climbing the gangway), there was no need to worry for several days. He had a new ship to discover, a new life to create.

  Halfway to the topdeck someone spoke his name. Pazel turned to see the small, turbaned boy walking just behind him. The boy grinned, and spoke almost in a whisper.

  “Where'd you learn that language, eh? Tell the truth!”

  “I don't know it,” said Pazel, unsettled. “Like I told Fiffengurt—someone translated for me.”

  “Rubbish!” said the boy, and held out his hand. “I have a nose for lies, and that wasn't a very clever one. You're Pazel, you said? My name's Neeps.”

  “Neeps?”

  The small boy's face turned serious. “A ridiculous name, of course.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “It means ‘thunder’ in Sollochi.”

  “Ah,” said Pazel, although he already knew.

  “Actually, it's short for Neeparvasi,” said the boy, “but you can't be a Neeparvasi in the Empire of Arqual. The Emperor's favorite concubine had a son named Neeparvasi who disgraced himself somehow—used the wrong fork at dinner, maybe, or stepped on the Queen Mother's foot. His Supremacy sent him off to the Valley of the Plague, and forbade anyone to mention him, or remind him the boy had ever existed. And so the name's on a forbidden list, and I'm just Neeps Undrabust.”

  “Pazel Pathkendle,” said Pazel. “How did you end up ashore?”

  “Dismissed for fighting. What could I do? The blary lout insulted my grandmother.”

  Pazel wasn't eager to befriend someone who turned insults into fistfights. But he had to admit he was glad to meet another boy from the margins of the Empire.

  “There's a lot of us,” he whispered, looking over the crowd of boys.

  Neeps caught his meaning. “Newly conquered folk? Yes, lots, and that's very strange. Arqualis don't trust anyone with an accent, or skin like yours, or one of these.” He tapped his turban. “In fact they hate you a little, or a lot, until your country's been part of the Empire for a hundred years—fully digested, as my old captain used to say. Well, Sollochstal's not digested, I can tell you. Not by a long shot.”

  His voice was proud but not ill-humored, and Pazel found himself smiling.

  “They think I'm just tanned, you know. About half the time.”

  “And then you open your mouth.”

  Pazel laughed, nodding. Ormali was a singsong language—and despite all his efforts its rolling cadences emerged in every tongue he spoke.

  As they neared the top of the gangway the noises of the ship grew louder. Surging ahead of the boys, Mr. Fiffengurt seized a buntline and pulled himself up on the rail, giving an expansive wave.

  “Aboard! Aboard! Step lively, now!”

  Like goats crossing a stream, the boys leaped onto the deck. Pazel would never forget what he saw in those first moments. A city, he thought. It's a city afloat!

  They were boarding amidships. Here the vessel was so wide that the Eniel could have sat athwart her without touching the rails. Fore and aft she seemed a broad wooden avenue, crowded with barrels, boxes, timbers, heaps of sailcloth, spools of cordage and chain. Swarming through these obstacles were hundreds upon hundreds of people—sailors, stevedores, customs officers, tearful sweethearts, efficient wives, a man selling little scraps of sandrat fur (“Nobody drowns with sandrat fur!”), monks leaving their holy thumbprints in ash on the foreheads of believers, two bald men fighting over a chicken, a tattoo artist etching a boar on a burly chest. The tarboys stood frozen, awed. They were the only stationary beings aboard.

  A second headcount, and Fiffengurt led them aft, past the mainmast, the longboat, the tonnage hatch yawning like a mineshaft. Clerks and midshipmen shoved by without a glance. High on the yards the sailors looked distant indeed, and Pazel was not surprised to see Mr. Uskins inspecting their work with the aid of a telescope.

  At length they reached the stern port ladderway, and Fiffengurt led them into the belly of the ship. One floor down was the main deck, every bit as crowded as the topdeck above, but quite a bit hotter and smellier. Next came the upper gun deck, where the ship's cattle were temporarily stockaded, wearing looks of bewilderment Pazel found deeply justified. Farther forward the boys caught a glimpse of the cannon themselves. They were ferocious guns, tree-trunk thick and scarred by countless years of fire and salt. “Grandfather-guns,” said Fiffengurt. “Terrible weapons, to be sure. But the bow carronades throw shot like prize pumpkins. Eighty-pounders. Down we go.”

  On the lower gun deck a sharp smell of frying onions told them the galley was near. Through the open bulkhead Pazel glimpsed it: a steamy compartment full of pots and saucepans and hanging ladles, where a squadron of cooks busied themselves around a cast-iron stove in which one might have roasted a buffalo. “Mr. Teggatz!” shouted Fiffengurt, barely pausing. “Thirty-six for breakfast, plus the old boys! Now, if you please!”

  One more descent, and they stood in darkness. Fiffengurt strode away from them, as sure and quick as he'd been on the daylit topdeck, and Pazel wondered if he had committed the whole ship's plan to memory. A minute later they heard him striking at a flint, and then a lamp sputtered to life.

  “Berth deck,” said Fiffengurt. “You'll sleep right here, lads, and eat at the rear of the main mess, past the deckhands. You'll have light from the hatches in good weather, and the windscoops freshen the air a bit, once we're under way. Never mind the smell; you won't notice it in a day or two. No windows in your compartment, but if you don't act like hooligans the sailors may leave the doors open on their own berth, and you'll have a bit more light. Come on, in with you.”

  By the dim glow of walrus oil they explored their new home: a musty wooden cavern, its far corners lost in the gloom. Massive stanchions braced the ceiling, which was low enough for the largest boys to touch. Every beam and bulkhead wall, and even the long dining tables, were carved from the same gigantic, immeasurably ancient kind of tree. The air was heavy; it smelled like a barn sealed tight against a storm.

  Fiffengurt rapped on a bulkhead. “Cloudcore oak. Strong as any wood in Alifros, but lighter by half. The gun and berth decks are almost solid cloudcore. We don't know half the secrets of the Chathrand, lads, but here's one we grasp well enough. Not that it does us much good: there are no more cloudcore oaks. The last fifty trees grow on Mount Etheg in a secret place. They harvest one tree a century, for essential repairs to this gray lady.”

  Footsteps rang on the stairs behind them. “Ah, Teggatz! Very timely!” said Fiffengurt. “My lads, be good to this man or he'll pois
on you: he's our head cook.”

  Teggatz was portly, with round red cheeks. His eyes were small and recessed nearly to the point of invisibility. He laughed, rubbing his hands together nervously. The boys waited, the laugh went on, the hands moved faster and faster. At last Teggatz spoke, in a gleeful, soft explosion:

  “Shepherd's pie!”

  “Shepherd's pie, is it?” said Fiffengurt. “Fancy that! Bring it on, then!”

  “Fancy!” giggled Teggatz, and waved up the stairs. More footsteps, and then a second group of boys appeared, bearing plates and platters and cups. They numbered about fifteen: the senior tarboys, kept on from previous voyages. Most greeted the new boys with frank, friendly looks, but a handful gazed at them with something like hostility, as if they were sizing up the competition. Fiffengurt introduced them all by name as they set their burdens on the tables.

  “These are your elder brothers,” he told the new boys. “Some of them have been four years with Chathrand. Of course, we've all got a new captain, and new rules to learn. But until you know the ship as well as they do, see that you heed 'em. Peytr and Dastu here are your chiefs because they're the oldest—turning full sailors in a year's time, if they stay out of trouble.”

  Pazel studied the two older tarboys. Peytr had narrow shoulders and a pointed chin. He smiled, but there was a wariness to his look, as if he were guarding himself against some unpleasant surprise. Dastu was broad and strong, with a look of serenity to his clean-shaven face.

  Fiffengurt left them as they sat down to eat. The shepherd's pie was delicious and hot, and when they finished, Peytr and Dastu led them on a tour of the Chathrand. This was a hasty business: the ship was set to launch at dusk and work was rising to a frenzy. Lieutenants stormed fore and aft, sweating, shouting orders nonstop. Cargo cranes rose and fell. Brigades of sailors rolled casks along the decks. The boys were shoved, stepped on, laughed at, cursed. No matter where they stood they were in someone's way.