The Red Wolf Conspiracy Page 16

  I must post this with the Imperial Mailguard, who even now is at my door. Please do not be silent, sir, nor Mother either.

  I have the honor to remain your most obedient son,

  N. R. ROSE

  Old Foes

  12 Vaqrin 941

  “Neeps,” said Pazel, “are your parents alive?”

  They were dangling from the stern of the Chathrand, their seat a wooden spar bound by two ropes to the taffrail, their bare feet resting on the casements of the gallery windows. Someone had the idea that Ambassador Isiq had frowned at the windows on first sight: the boys had therefore been set to polishing the brass hinges with a mixture of turpentine, tallow and cinders, until they gleamed.

  Light breeze, warm sun. And biting flies attracted by the reek of tallow. To strike at them meant letting go of something: rope, window, spar. Given the sixty-foot drop to the water, they did their best to ignore the insects.

  Neeps shook his head. “They died when I was three. The talking fever, you know. We had no medicines on Sollochstal.”

  The Great Ship was being winched away from the docks: already the Plaza lay a quarter mile behind. Small craft skated across their wake, passengers crowding the rails nearest Chathrand, just gazing at her. The society folk of Etherhorde were bemused, and slightly affronted: it was the fastest turnaround in living memory for the Great Ship. Barely three days in port, and no tours allowed! As for the demeanor of the Treaty Bride, and her choice of clothes—the less said the better.

  “Who raised you, then?” Pazel asked.

  “My father's family,” said Neeps. “They have a grand house. Ten feet above the lagoon, on strong stilts.”

  “You lived in a stilt house!”

  “Best way to live. Throw a line out through the kitchen window, snag a tasty copperfish, reel him in. Straight from cove to kettle, as my uncles used to say. Great folk, my uncles. They taught me pearl-diving. Also how to smell a lie: we had to sell our pearls to merchants from Opalt and the Quezans, and they were always trying to cheat. But no one could cheat Granny Undrabust. She ran the family business, the household, half the village. Everybody knew her because she was fearless. She used to drive off crocodiles with a bargepole. They say she killed a pirate with her fish-knife. They'd sneak into the village at night, pry jewels off the temple walls, kidnap boys. That even happened to me. Upa! Careful, mate!”

  The platform tilted madly. Pazel, lost in Neeps' words, had nearly lost his balance, too. When they recovered he was still gaping at his friend. “You were kidnapped? By real pirates?”

  “Too blary real. Their ship stank like a chamber pot. But they didn't have us long. Two months after they took us, the fools raided an Arquali fort in the Kepperies. Warships caught up with us in days, hanged the pirates and made us all into tarboys.”

  “And you never saw your family again?”

  Neeps scrubbed vigorously at a hinge. “Oh, I saw 'em. After the Empire grabbed Sollochstal. We landed for a day and I ran off and saw Granny and my uncles. And my little sister: she was so glad to see me she dropped a whole basket of fish. But the Arqualis fetched me back that same night. Said they would have taken pearls for my freedom if I'd asked, but they couldn't reward a runaway. Granny Undrabust would have fought them, but I made her stop. And she's dead now, too. Stepped on a cobra urchin, can you believe it? A Sollochi slave told me last year. The man heard she laughed before she died: ‘At least it was one of our own who finally got me. Don't be sad!’”

  “What about brothers?” Pazel asked. “Do you have any?”

  When Neeps did not answer, Pazel looked up. To his great surprise he saw that Neeps was furious.

  “Just don't talk to me about brothers,” he said.

  That's a yes, Pazel thought, but he spoke not a word.

  After a moment, Neeps said, “Your turn. Family.”

  Pazel told him about the day of the invasion, how he had never seen his mother and sister since. “But Chadfallow, that doctor I was telling you about, says they're alive. He was very fond of my mother.”

  “So where is she?”

  “He wouldn't say. But he said he planned to see them. And I think he meant to help me do so, too.”

  Neeps squinted up at the sun. “Right. This is the same chap who put something nasty in your tea. Who paid that lout of a bosun to maroon you in Sorrophran. Who galloped along a headland shouting that you should jump ship. And who never bothered to tell your family that the Arqualis were about to invade Ormael. Have I forgotten anything?”

  “He bought me out of slavery,” said Pazel.

  Neeps gave a judicious nod. “It all adds up, then. He's madder than a boiled owl.”

  “Probably,” said Pazel. “But he also knows something—about my family, and the treaty with the Mzithrin, and this whole journey to Simja. There are big secrets on this ship, Neeps.”

  “Ooooh—”

  Pazel flicked a blob of brass-cleaner at him. “Undrabust means ‘broken toe’ in Kushali, did you know that? I'm not kidding!”

  “Pathkendle means ‘smelly tarboy who dreams about rich girls.’ Did you know that?”

  They flung insults, goo and rags, never happier. The spar teetered madly, but somehow they were no longer afraid. Then a sharp voice from above made them freeze.

  “What's this? A playground? You lowborn rats! Wastin' time and 'spensive re-zor-ziz!”

  It was Mr. Swellows, the bosun: of all the officers save Uskins, the one Pazel most disliked. His bloodshot eyes glared down at them: he was a heavy drinker, rumor held. He claimed special knowledge of Captain Rose's thoughts and intentions, grinning slyly but revealing very little. He had been in Rose's service twenty years.

  “Hoist them two up 'ere!” he barked at the stern watchmen. “Pathkendle! Wash that smutch off your hands! The captain wants to see you.”

  Neeps shot Pazel a look of concern. The spar lurched upward. A moment later they were climbing over the rail.

  “Captain Rose wants me?” Pazel asked, alarmed. “What for, Mr. Swellows?”

  “The Red Beast.”

  “Sir?”

  Swellows looked at him with crafty delight. He leaned closer, made a clawing motion in the air. “The Red Beast! That's what we call him! Just hope you're not his prey, he he he!”

  “You may enter now,” said Rose, cleaning his pen on a blotter.

  But it was not, as he had guessed, the Imperial Mailguard. It was Uskins, and his hand gripped the arm of Pazel Pathkendle, who looked as though he had just been roughly shaken.

  “Your pardon, Captain,” said the first mate. “It is six bells: I report as ordered. And I found this particularly troublesome boy lingering in the passage.”

  “Bring him in. Close the door.”

  Uskins shoved Pazel into Rose's day-cabin, a large and elegant room beneath the quarterdeck, where the captain not only conducted his desk-duties but also bathed, shaved and dined, with invited favorites, from a silver service as old as the ship itself. The first mate closed the door and dragged Pazel with superfluous brutality across the room.

  “Lest I forget, sir: the good veterinarian, Brother Bolutu”—Uskins' voice dripped with ridicule—“accosted me this morning. ‘Mr. Uskins,’ says he, ‘I have a letter for the captain regarding certain peculiar qualities of the rats on this ship. I should like to inform you as well.’ He then began to chatter about the rats' ‘disciplined behavior,’ if you will believe it, sir.”

  “I will not,” said Rose. “But I have read his letter.”

  “Oppo, Captain. Stand straight, tarboy! You're in the commander's presence! Sir, may I congratulate you on your reception at the throne of our Emperor?”

  “You may do nothing that distracts you from an account of this afternoon,” said Rose. “As for this tarboy, he is here at my orders.”

  “Very good of you, sir: he is morbidly implicated in this affair. But even a tarboy deserves to hear the reason for his doom. Is it not so?”

  “Give me your blary report!”


  Uskins bowed his head, like a schoolboy preparing a recitation. His account was, to say the least, creative. He told the captain how the augrongs had suddenly run amok; how the long-eared one had rushed onto the ship, dragging twenty men with it; and how he, Uskins, managed to avert a catastrophe thanks to his grasp of the augrong language.

  “Or play-language, rather,” he added. “These brutes have no real speech as we know it. They are but little risen above the animals.”

  Rose sat back in his chair. One hand moved thoughtfully in his beard. “Dumb brutes, eh?” he said.

  “I guarantee it, Captain. Great scaly apes, they are, with little more to their grasp of living than food, work and pain.”

  “And you employed which of these?”

  “Why, pain, sir. I let them know that they would be killed, slowly, if they could not behave in a manner acceptable to civilized men. I very nearly had them tamed when this useless boy went mad and threw himself at the near one.

  “I saw at once that he would be killed, and it moved my heart, sir, despite his wicked stupidity. I do not claim to have chosen wisely, but I chose to save this boy. I rushed to the quarterdeck rail and struck the augrong with a capstan bar. I repeated that he and his friend ashore would die. I saw into the brute's mind, and knew he believed me. He let the boy go. It was then, sir, that you reached the Plaza.”

  Pazel could only gape at Uskins' tale. Nor did the captain, nodding slowly, look very inclined to let Pazel speak. As he watched, Rose opened a ledger—the same in which Fiffengurt had recorded the tarboys' names as they were dragged before him by the marines—and flipped through the rough pages, scowling.

  “What would you have us do with the boy, Uskins?”

  The first mate cleared his throat. “A broken cleat must be replaced, sir, and it is no different with a tarboy. The Ormali are notoriously low and treacherous, moreover: I beg leave to remind the captain that I objected to his inclusion from the first. As it is we are lucky to have discovered his true colors in port—and in port he should remain. I suggest he be dismissed as a rioter.”

  “He'll never sail again.”

  “Nor should he, Captain. A fit of lunacy on the high seas could bring disaster.”

  Rose looked down at the ledger. He dipped the pen in the still-open inkwell, scratched entries by several names. After a long pause, he said, “I have your report, Uskins. You may go. Send in the clerk to deal with this lad.”

  Uskins could not quite suppress his smile. He bowed low. As he turned to leave, a thought seemed to strike him. “His clothes were burned, sir. Verminous. Of course, we shall wish to repossess his uniform, barely used as it is, but I'm sure some rag or other can be—”

  In one violent motion Rose pushed to his feet. “We will not repossess his uniform, but supplement it with a cap and greatcoat. The boy will not be put ashore. I did not witness what occurred on deck, Uskins, but Ambassador Isiq had a clear view, and saw his actions not as madness but exceptional courage. He wishes to congratulate the boy in person, and to pay for the cap and coat himself. His Excellency's opinion of your conduct we will discuss another time. You are dismissed.”

  Abashed and fuming, Uskins left. Rose stood looking fixedly at Pazel, and Pazel stared back, wide-eyed and disbelieving. He was to meet the ambassador? What should he say? What would Rose expect of him?

  The captain's steward brought in a plate of kulberries and almonds, and set it on the desk with a bow. “No tea,” said Rose before the man could speak, and waved him out. Then Rose took a key from his pocket and sat down again behind his desk. Without once taking his eyes from Pazel, he unlocked a deep drawer on the right-hand side and lifted out something so horrible Pazel had to stifle a cry.

  It was a cage. Very much like a birdcage, but stronger, with a small, solid padlock. Inside the cage lay what appeared to be a wound-up knot of rags, hair and dead skin. But then it moved, and groaned. Pazel felt suddenly ill. The thing was an ixchel—old, starved and indescribably dirty. His eyes were vacant, his white beard matted with grease; the arms wrapped protectively about his head were raw with open sores. A scrap of cloth at his waist, half rotted, was all he had for clothing. As Rose set the cage on his desk, the old ixchel uncurled his shaking body, groaned again most terribly and cursed them both to the Nine Pits.

  Rose, of course, heard nothing. He chose a kulberry and two almonds and slid them through the bars of the cage.

  “Pathkendle,” he said musingly. “You're the right age, the right color. Are ye Captain Gregory's boy, then?”

  Pazel nodded, still in shock. On hands and knees, the ixchel dragged himself through the filth at the bottom of his cage and fell ravenously upon the kulberry.

  “Well, well,” said Rose. “The traitor's son. A fine sailor, Gregory—and bold at that. Faced down Simja pirates, slipped away from warships through the Talturi reefs. Few cleverer on the quarterdeck than Gregory Pathkendle. Clever with the friends he made, too. Wasn't he tight with old Chadfallow?”

  Despite himself, Pazel gave a start. Rose nodded, satisfied.

  “You see? Your father was ahead of his time—playing one empire off the other. But even he made mistakes. He thought the Mzithrin would strike before we did, and so he joined them. Who knows? If he'd guessed right he might be a citizen of Arqual today. But never a sailor. His Supremacy doesn't allow traitors to sail under his flag.”

  “My father's no traitor, sir,” said Pazel, clenching his fists behind his back.

  “Lad, he's the blary definition. You're just lucky he had no one better than Ormael to betray. If Gregory had been an officer in the Imperial fleet his every son, daughter, nephew and cousin would have been crucified.”

  “He was taken prisoner,” said Pazel, trying not to glare.

  “’Course he was. And then sailed back with his captors to make war on his own countrymen.”

  “The Mzithrin didn't make war on my country, sir. Arqual did.”

  “Wrong,” said Rose. “The Empire never did make war on Ormael. It devoured her at one sitting, like a lamb chop.”

  Pazel said nothing. At that moment he hated Rose more than Uskins, more than Swellows or Jervik or even the soldiers who had stormed his house. The old ixchel was listening intently, now, although he did not stop eating the kulberry.

  “You've done well for yourself, eh?” said Rose. “Most Ormali boys are dead in the Chereste silver mines, or cutting cane in Simja, or sold to Urnsfich privateers. And you're to be received by old Isiq himself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you see what my crawly's doing? Do you know why I keep him?”

  (“Your crawly's name is Steldak, you fat pustule,” muttered the ixchel man.)

  Pazel struggled not to look at the cage. “No, sir, I don't.”

  “Poison,” said Rose. “Oh, I have enemies, boy, many enemies. The crawly tastes my food. A crawly's heart beats six times as fast as a man's, so his blood moves six times as fast about his body. And so does any poison, you see? What would kill me in twelve minutes will kill him in two.”

  (“Your heart stopped beating long ago,” said the ixchel.)

  “Now, I don't have a crawly to spare for His Excellency,” Rose went on, “but I do have tarboys. The old man's taken a shine to you. That's earned you new orders from me.

  “Usually he will dine at the head of the first-class table, or here in my quarters, with me. But some meals he will take in privacy, in his rooms. You will take him those meals, Pathkendle. And you will taste every dish before you do so. In the galley, in the presence of our cook. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Someone will be sent for you on every occasion. If his daughter or consort asks for food you will do exactly the same. It will not do for him to be killed, Pathkendle. But you: I suppose we can agree that you have been living on borrowed time?”

  He glared suddenly at the cage. “Taste that almond, damn your eyes! I'm hungry!”

  The ixchel looked up and drew his lip
s back in what looked like a grimace of pain. But then a strange, low voice came out of him—a voice any normal man could hear, and Pazel guessed this was what Diadrelu had called bending.

  “Captain,” the old man said, “I beg to tell you that my teeth have grown weak. I cannot bite into this nut, sir. If you could but crack it with a hammer …”

  The captain snarled, but he climbed to his feet and lurched across the room. For the second time that day, Pazel knew that he had come to a moment when he must instantly do something dangerous, or else regret it for the rest of his life—and once again, he did it. Leaning close to the cage, he whispered: “I'll help you, Steldak.”

  Instantly, Rose stiffened.

  Pazel just had time to raise his head before the captain swiveled about. His eyes were wild with suspicion as he thumped back across the room. He grabbed Pazel's hand and squeezed with agonizing force. He leaned close to Pazel's face. His breath stank of garlic and tobacco.

  “You hear spirits.”

  “N-n-no, sir!”

  “I know that you do. I saw your face. There's not many of us can hear 'em, boy. One passed through this room just now, spoke to my crawly in its own tongue. You heard it, didn't you? Tell the truth!”

  “Captain, I don't—Ahh!”

  Rose's hand tightened again. His furious eyes roamed the cabin walls.

  “Watch out,” he hissed, very low. “The world's changed 'neath our feet, when brutes like me get the hearing, pick up voices dissolved in the wind. Animals always could, then mages, spell weavers, freaks. Today, here and there, a natural man like Nilus Rose. This old unsinkable hulk, now—it's clogged with spirits. In storms they snag on the topgallants, slither down to deck, crawl in our ears. You hear 'em, too! Deny it!”

  Rose was mad—but mad or not, his astonishing grip threatened to break Pazel's hand. What to say? If he gave Rose the answer he wanted, the captain would never leave Pazel alone, would expect reports on the “spirits” Pazel overheard. And what would the stowaway ixchel do to him then, when half their number already thought him a spy?