The River of Shadows Read online

  Later, Pazel, Thasha and Hercól visited the forecastle house. Both moons were risen now, and their conjoined light spilled through the window, illuminating huddled sleepers, stacked dishes, Ott’s watchful eyes. Pazel’s hatred struggled in the chains of his fatigue. Did the man never sleep?

  Chadfallow slept near the window, snoring through the nose Pazel had broken on Bramian. Lady Oggosk crouched by the smudge-pot, burning scraps of paper. And there in a corner lay Neeps and Marila, curled up like puppies, dead to the world. Someone might have nudged them awake, for Neeps had wanted to talk no matter the hour. But it wasn’t going to happen: Ott was already approaching, stepping over Chadfallow, demanding information. There was no defying him, not with Neeps and Marila there to punish as he liked. The damage? he asked Hercól. The course heading, the winds? And what about the Shaggat’s arm?

  You’ve failed, Pazel longed to tell him. Your Emperor’s dead, and the Shaggat’s worshippers have been waiting for two hundred years. But Hercól was right: Ott’s mind would only spin new evil from whatever knowledge it gained. The only winning move was to keep him in the dark as long as they could.

  It was two in the morning when Pazel, Thasha and Hercól returned to the stateroom. They didn’t speak. They fed the dogs their evening ration of biscuit, and ate the same themselves, with a bit of rye porridge (several days old) for dessert. Felthrup ran back and forth upon the table, studying and sniffing them, begging them to eat. Pazel glanced often at Thasha, but her look was far away.

  Hercól sat mechanically stroking Jorl’s blue head, and at last began to tell them of the horrible deeds he had done for years as a servant of the Secret Fist. Kidnappings, betrayals, false letters designed to set prince against prince, fires sparked in the temples where uncooperative monks shielded enemies of the Arquali state.

  “I told myself it was for a cause,” he declared, watching them, unblinking. “What cause? Order in Alifros, the end of war, of fiefdom against small, stupid, tyrannical fiefdom. But that was only Ott’s credo, his manic religion. ‘Arqual, Arqual, just and true.’ I was a warrior-priest of that religion, as much as any sfvantskor is of the Old Faith. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Ott did not model us on the sfvantskor, even as we fought them in the shadows. When I met your sister and the other two, Pazel, I felt at once that I was meeting kin.”

  Seeing their long faces and Felthrup’s anxious twitching, he smiled. “There are the kin we are born to, or find ourselves claimed by, as the Secret Fist claimed me. And then there are the kin we seek out, with clear minds and open hearts. You are the latter. Now go and sleep; tomorrow comes all too soon.”

  He left the chamber, to walk the deck as he did each night. Felthrup chattered on awhile, glad of their company; then he too bade them good night and crawled away to his basket. Pazel and Thasha drifted about the stateroom, wide awake, not looking at each other.

  Somehow (Pazel wondered later exactly who had moved when) they ended up side by side on the bearskin rug, staring up at the fengas chandelier that had not been lit since Uturphe, listening to the moan of the wind. For Pazel the sound raised a sudden memory. He had been sleeping at a friend’s house, very long ago when he still had friends, before his family’s disgrace. The wind had been cold, but he had been given a pair of sheepskins to sleep between, and felt that nothing could be warmer or more comfortable. In the night a small dust viper (perhaps of the same opinion) had slithered into the room and curled up behind his knee. It had bitten him when he sat up at dawn, and his calf had swollen to the size of a ham. The friend’s father had inexplicably beaten his son; the son had never spoken to Pazel again.

  Pazel realized he had taken her hand.

  It was warm in his own. She held on tightly, but kept her face turned away. “I read something about you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “In … the Polylex? Something about me in the Merchant’s Polylex?”

  “ ‘Pazel Pathkendle, tarboy of Ormael, second child of Gregory and Suthinia Pathkendle.’ Isn’t that funny? Because you’re not from Ormael, and you’re not a Pathkendle, are you? Pitfire, you’re not even a tarboy anymore. The mucking author should have known better.”5

  He raised her hand to his cheek. He considered telling her that he had no idea what she was talking about, but the remark seemed unnecessary.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “you’re not your father’s son. And I’m not my father’s daughter. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Terribly,” he managed to say. She was breathing fast. Her hand moved against his cheek. He wanted to make love to her and thought it was possible, thought the moment was here and would never come again, and yet he was beset by a kind of vertigo. He feared his mind-fit was coming on, but the telltale purring was nowhere to be heard. Thasha was shaking slightly—nervous laughter, he thought. He was aware of every inch of her, every least movement. It was a kind of madness. He imagined the bearskin coming to life and charging from the stateroom, racing to some deep spot in the hold and digging Arunis from his hiding place, like a honeycomb from a stump. It was like that, the way he wanted her. But his thoughts were darting everywhere, uncontrollably. He thought: Arunis is afraid of this rug. What happened, what does he fear?

  He kissed the back of her hand, felt it trembling. When she exhaled there was a low moan in her voice that went through him like lightning. They hadn’t started, but it was as if they were already done. Everything was answered. He would be with her for the rest of his life.

  “I have to ask you something,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “Of course I do. Obviously.”

  She turned to face him, and suddenly he knew that what he had seen was not laughter, but tears. They were flowing still.

  “I have to ask something of you,” she said. “Have to, not want to. I have to ask you to stop. Not just this. Stop everything. Will you do that for me? Oh, my dearest—”

  Thasha had just said my dearest. The words were so strange on her tomboy tongue that for a moment they shielded him from the meaning. She closed her eyes and bit her lips and snorted and sobbed, and eventually he realized he hadn’t misunderstood.

  “Everything?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, choking.

  “It’s Fulbreech, isn’t it?”

  Thasha nodded, pinching her eyes shut so tightly she might have been trying to make them disappear.

  “You love him? Truly?”

  Against great resistance, another nod.

  Pazel took his hand away. He sat up, and she curled beside him and wept.

  “I should have known,” she whispered. “I did know. When he first came aboard.”

  Pazel sat hugging his knees. How many times? How many times could the world change, before there was nothing left that you could recognize?

  “I suppose,” he said, trying (failing) to keep the bitterness from his voice, “that it would be easier if I didn’t stay here anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  Pazel swallowed. She had agreed so quickly. She’d thought it all through.

  Then a dark notion came to him. “Hercól knows, doesn’t he? All those looks, even tonight in the surgery. When did he figure it out?”

  After a pause, Thasha said, “Before I did.”

  “But Thasha, Fulbreech? I don’t believe it, I can’t. Do you know something about him that I don’t?”

  Her eyes drifted away from him, shining, and he wished he hadn’t asked.

  “There’s a cabin for you,” she said. “Bolutu’s going to share Hercól’s room, and you can take his. You’ll be safe there. It’s still behind the magic wall.”

  Pazel had heard enough. He rose and went to his corner and began putting his clothes into his hammock. Moving like a sleepwalker, like a tol-chenni. Bolutu’s cabin was far too close; he’d go back to the tarboys’ compartment and take his chances. He cast his eyes over the stateroom, thought of the day she’d first tried to bring him here, how some instinct
had made him pause at the doorway, thinking, You don’t belong in such a room.

  Not belonging. It was the story of his life.

  Thasha was sitting up, motionless, waiting for him to go. He started for the door. But as he passed her she put a hand on his leg. He stiffened. In a cold voice, he said, “A snake once bit me there.”

  Thasha looked up at him slowly. “It died,” she whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The wind, Pazel. Listen: it’s completely dead.”

  And so it was. The moaning had stopped. The oilcloth nailed over the broken windows hung limp. They rose and went to an undamaged window and flung it wide. The air was perfectly still. Below them, the Chathrand rocked motionless on the waves.

  They went topside, and found the sailors gazing with wonder at the empty sails. Moths fluttered about the deck, unmolested by any breeze. The Sandwall was out of sight, and the southern shore, wherever it was, remained invisible as well. The Great Ship sat in darkness, with no points of reference beneath the alien stars. “Black sorcery,” said a few, whispering.

  Ten minutes later the sails began to lift. Another ten, and the breeze was as strong as ever: no great blow, but enough to sail by, and shifted ever so slightly to their advantage. Men shook their heads, chuckling. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Bolutu stared into the darkness, his silver eyes wide and watchful.

  The watch-captain struck two bells; it was an hour before sunrise. Pazel left Thasha standing alone on the topdeck (the thought came unbidden: she would not be alone for long) and descended by the Silver Stair to the berth deck. He moved slowly through the maze of sleeping men and boys. The door still creaked, the tarboy called Frowsy still snored like a bleating goat. He felt his way to the eight copper nails in the ancient stanchion that had always marked his place and began to tie his hammock.

  It had all started between these two posts. He and Neeps whispering, becoming friends. His first meeting with Diadrelu, who had laughed when he said he didn’t trust her: “Wise boy. Don’t trust.” And his private decision to defy Dr. Chadfallow, who had begged him to jump ship before Thasha was even aboard.

  Back in Ormael, when his mother’s madness reached its worst pitch, when she put spiders in her mouth or made the evening soup with bathwater, he had sometimes fled deep into the plum orchard and bunched his coat up against his face and screamed. It had helped. He had never told anyone. He wished he could scream like that now. His best friend was aboard, and his blary sister, and he could not talk to either of them. He shut his eyes.

  Five minutes later Mr. Coote appeared with his flat, detested bell, rousing the dawn shift. Pazel lay still, trying to summon the old knack for sleeping through bumps and curses, spit and scuffles in the darkness. He sank half into sleep but could go no further. Every part of him ached. In that restless trance he saw them together, Thasha and Fulbreech. Don’t trust. Stop everything. Jump over the side.

  “Muketch.”

  His eyes snapped open. The tarboy Jervik was standing over him, hands in fists, his hard face clenched in an expression it took Pazel a moment to recognize as concern.

  “What happened? Somebody beat you?”

  “Worse,” said Pazel, and instantly regretted the reply.

  Jervik was crude and violent and very strong; they had once been mortal enemies. But since the rat war everything had changed. Jervik had defected to their side—quietly, announcing it to no one but Pazel himself. He was their spy, in a sense: well positioned to learn things, if only because everyone thought him too stupid to be listening. Pazel no longer thought him stupid. He had cunning and courage. And he had come through mental torture by Arunis with his will to fight intact.

  Nonetheless he wished Jervik would go away. The older boy had the wrong idea; he thought someone had beaten Pazel the way he himself used to do. Jervik’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “You can’t let no one do this to you, Muketch, you hear? You got to learn that.”

  Pazel closed his eyes again. “I agree,” he said.

  “The way you fought them rats, eh? You laid ’em waste. That’s how you fight man to man, see?”

  “Lay them waste?”

  “Tha’s right. Never go halfsies. When you’re on the dock and they cast off the lines and the bosun shouts, ‘All aboard,’ d’ye put just one foot on the mucking boat and stand there? No, you don’t. You jump with both feet, or you keep ’em both ashore. Same with fighting. You oughta know by now.”

  Pazel opened his eyes. “You’re right again,” he said. “Only this time I can’t actually … fight him. Them. It’s not a fist-fight.”

  “Easier if it was, eh?”

  Pazel was somewhat amazed. “That’s right, Jervik. Easier if it was.”

  Jervik stood still, his face all but invisible. “I thought you were gonna laugh,” he said finally. “When I told you I wanted to switch sides. I thought you’d laugh and tell me off. ‘Get stuffed, you thug, you blary halfwit, you fool.’ Only fancier, o’course.”

  Pazel bit his lips. He’d come close to doing just that. “I’m glad I don’t have to fight you anymore,” he said truthfully.

  “You’d do all right,” said Jervik, laughing low. “Hercól’s taught you good—or was it the girly?”

  “Both of them,” said Pazel miserably.

  Jervik heard the change in his voice. As though realizing he’d overstepped, he turned to go. “Lay him waste, Muketch. And if he’s still too much for you”—Jervik’s voice dropped low and menacing—“just give the word, and I will kill the son of a whore.”

  Pazel slept and dreamed of the Nilstone. It had changed Thasha, transformed her as it did the rats, only the mutation was to her heart. She met him in a corner with a sly and secret grin. She was cradling the Stone, talking to it, caressing the blackness that was too black even for dreams. Then she put it in her pocket and crooked a finger, drawing him close. She lifted her shirt on one side, revealing a line of black stitches, and when her fingers touched it the wound opened like a mouth and let him see into her chest. Her heart was a small armored ship, secure in the dry dock of her rib cage, bilge-pumps fastened to her veins. “You see?” she said. “It was for your own good. Your heart grew like an apple, or a shell. Mine was built in Etherhorde. You can’t make love to someone who built her own heart—”

  “I could,” he protested, though in fact he wished to run.

  Thasha winced, in sudden pain. “You think you know everything,” she said, acidly. “Go ahead, then. Touch it. I bet you don’t dare.”

  The heart-ship was beating. What could it be but a trap? That was fine, he was ready, he could take iron jaws snapping shut on his wrist. He touched her smooth navel first but the sweetness there was unbearable, so obediently he put his hand into the wound.

  Thasha’s heart gave a titanic thump. And Pazel woke to shouts of alarm from a hundred men and boys. The keel! The keel! Sweet Rin, we’ve run aground!

  The ship was heeled over drastically to starboard. There was a dreadful cracking noise from below. Pazel sprang from his hammock to the tilting floor and raced in a crowd of men and boys for the ladderway, everyone slipping and groping. “She’s breaking free again!” cried the tarboy known as Crumb. And so they were: the ship righted herself (more hideous cracking) and Pazel nearly fell as the ladderway once more became vertical. He floundered onto the topdeck, took in sea and ship at a glance. Running feet. Panicked faces. A brilliant morning, strange swallow-tailed birds, flat indigo waters, and—

  Land.

  There was land off the port bow, ten or fifteen miles ahead. Everyone else was aware of it; he must have slept through the lookout’s cry. For a moment Pazel was transfixed: the new world, the Southern mainland. It was purple-brown, with rafts of mist glowing in the morning light. Higher up the sky was clear, and like a ghostly etching, a chain of distant, jagged, silver-gray mountains loomed over the coast—

  “Report!” Alyash was bellowing into a speaking-tube. “Report from the hold! Mr. Panyar, are you deaf?”
r />   Shouts aloft: debris was surfacing in the Chathrand’s wake. Wood splinters, some of them the size of table legs. Fiffengurt passed Pazel without a glance, running straight to the window of the forecastle house, where Rose waited in a fury, grime and soot coating his face.

  “Gods below, Captain,” he said, “There was simply nothing off the bow. The water’s clear to eighty feet!”

  “No! No!” Rose bellowed. “Damn it, man, didn’t you feel the impact? Whatever it was crossed our keel amidships. We didn’t run over it—it slammed into us!”

  More cries from the lookout: “Mastwood in the water! Crosstrees, cable-ends! We struck a drowned ship, Mr. Fiffengurt!”

  Rose’s expression said he thought he had misheard. When Fiffengurt repeated the lookout’s words, he adamantly shook his head. “We just rolled forty degrees! I tell you, that blow came from the side!”

  Then Rose grew still. His gaze meandered, as though he were listening to the very walls that enclosed him. “Unless … we did. Unless we’re moving sideways. What’s that? What?”

  Pazel watched the big man twitch and gape at nothing. He’s finally cracked. He never did have much sanity to spare. And yet Fiffengurt was quite sane, and ran a tight ship. If his bow lookouts claimed that there had been no obstacles ahead—

  “Quartermaster.”

  It was Alyash, looking rather stunned. Capping the speaking-tube, he sidled close to Fiffengurt. He spoke quietly, but Pazel watched his lips. It looked like Two inches. When Fiffengurt hissed and said, “Already?” Pazel knew exactly what the men were discussing. Two inches of water taken on. In less than ten minutes. They were leaking, and badly.

  Fiffengurt issued a quiet order: six hands to the bilge-pumps. Almost in a dream, Pazel moved to the starboard rail. He stood staring at the land, though he could make out little beyond the mountains.

  An ixchel voice piped behind him: a natural ixchel voice, the kind only he could hear. “A collision, perfect, typical. Can you believe it? We can’t trust the giants to operate their own ship. Mother Sky, give me patience.”