The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2 Read online

  Some of the old crew had yet to move beyond such terror. Most, however, had turned it into a sort of doomsday rage. Their ultimate fate was beyond their control: they were little people caught in the affairs of kings. But they bitterly resented the loss of the earthly joys of shore leave.

  Fear might nonetheless have kept these longings buried had not the Lily of Locostri, a floating brothel famous throughout the Crownless Lands, made an appearance in Simja. For two nights she had worked her way quietly about the bay, passing close enough for the breeze to carry hints of jasmine and mysorwood perfume to the Chathrand. Such teases were bad enough, but the sound of young women's laughter had sparked fights and fits of weeping, self-inflicted wounds with rusty knives, the drinking of walrus oil and other acts of pure hysterical frustration. Mr Teggatz, the mildest-mannered cook in fleet history, had thrown back four pints of basting wine, insulted the gods, chased his tarboy assistant with a meat cleaver and vomited into a dumpling stew. And then the orders had come: Stations! Weigh anchor! All hands make ready to sail!

  'If we're Alifros, Rin save this blary world,' muttered Neeps.

  Rose had yet to speak again. He gaze swept fore and aft, and his hand was still raised above the crowd.

  'He's up to something,' said Pazel. 'He's got that gleam in his eye.'

  Jervik Lank, standing right in front of them, glared over a burly shoulder. 'And you've got bilge for brains, Muketch. Shut your gob.'

  There were sniggers from several tarboys. Pazel looked at Jervik's broad back with contempt. The older boy's hatred of Ormalis was as strong as ever, but his superstitious fear of them had lately diminished. That could be remedied: a few Flikkerman-hisses or Augronga roars would set him straight. Pazel was far more worried by Jervik's new ties to Arunis. He had spotted them together again just that morning.

  'What's the matter, then, Undrabust?' said Jervik, seeing Neeps' look of rage. 'Ah, I know. You're missin' that village girly, ain't you? I've been hearin' about the two of you.'

  Pazel struggled to hide his fury. Jervik could only mean Marila, the Tholjassan girl they had met among Arunis' captives, and left behind with her little brother in Ormael. Neeps turned scarlet, and Pazel wondered if he had taken taken a shine to Marila.

  'Let it go, Neeps,' he said softly.

  'Tha's right,' laughed Jervik. 'Listen to your mate, Undrabust. After all, his girly's dead.'

  His laughter carried to Mr Uskins, who turned and froze the boys with a stare. Pazel clenched his fists until the nails bit into his palms. Jervik was goading them, as he had done from the start of the voyage, as he had done to Pazel for years on an earlier ship. But knowing that his abuse was tactical did not make it any easier to bear, and neither did the fact that Thasha was actually safe and sound. Pazel felt a loathing for Jervik so tangible he could almost chew it.

  'You are Alifros,' Rose repeated at last. 'Few among you will understand me, and the time has not yet come for me to explain. But there is one matter about which you should have no doubt. Everything has changed. The known world lies behind us. The lives you have lived, the comforts you grew fond of, the very people you have been until this moment — gone!'

  He bellowed the last word, snapping more than a few wandering eyes back to his face. When he continued his voice was lower.

  'We've said our goodbyes, men. Not just to the Imperium, but to the world of law itself — any law, save that of nature and her occulted guardians. You're amused, I know. You think, "We're not even out of the Peren, who does he think he's fooling?" But you're wrong. Everything has changed. Very soon you will discover this for yourselves.'

  He leaned towards them, daring eight hundred souls to give so much as a giggle. No one obliged. Then Rose straightened, nodded to Uskins, and went to stand beside Elkstem at the wheel.

  Mr Uskins leaped up the quarterdeck ladder and faced the crowd. He raised a sheet of parchment above his head. The first mate's teeth were set in a grimace. He crushed one end of the parchment in a fist.

  'New crewmembers will fall in on my left and be recognised!' he screamed, in a voice that suggested he would fall on them with beak and talons. 'Face forward, order of rank! And by the lions of the sea, if you waste our time I'll have you lick every man's heel on the Chathrand, beginning with those sporting boils or open sores, Rin drown me if I lie! Mr Kiprin Pondrakeri, seaman!'

  A muscular sailor with a shaved head and tattooed arms leaped forward through the crowd, knocking aside men and boys in his haste.

  'Mr Vadel Methrek, seaman!'

  A turbaned man followed the first. As they scrambled for the ladder the crew struck at them — not gently at all — and hissed, and growled Rotter or Lousehead or Bottom o' the barrel! The soldiers joined in; even the tarboys struggled to land a few blows.

  The mystified passengers looked on, appalled. But the crew were relieved: now at last they knew why they had been called on deck. No one, not even Uskins, was truly angry. This was a procedural passion, and one more way of seeking good luck on the voyage. From time out of mind it had been the practice of the Merchant Service (and the Arquali navy) to induct crew members with threats and insults — the better to protect them from the ghosts of dead sailors, who might feel jealous if they received smiles and friendly applause. Every recruit knew of these rights. They would, in fact, have taken grave offence if treated kindly.

  Pazel and Neeps jostled with the rest, looking for someone to abuse. By the weird logic of the service, to hang back now was the only true form of contempt. Rounding the starboard windscoop, Pazel saw a wiry Simjan sailor rushing forward, arms wrapped protectively about his head. 'Scum!' he cried, and pulled back his fist.

  A rough hand caught his arm. He was yanked backwards, off balance. Jervik's fist came down like a club against the side of his head. The next moment he was on the deck. Moisture struck his chin: Jervik's spit.

  'You ain't crew no more,' he said. 'Don't you forget it.'

  Then Jervik was gone into the melee. Pazel felt as though a horse had kicked him in the face. In a blind rage he forced himself to stand — and just as quickly fell, dizzied and weak. I'll get you, Jervik, I'll get you, damn your dumb soul.

  Neeps found him as the free-for-all came to an end: Pazel had crawled to the back of the crowd and laid his face against a cool iron breastplate. Neeps helped him stand up. The look the small boy wore might have given a Turach commando pause.

  'That's it. Jervik's dead. He's blary dead, is all.'

  Pazel probed the already-welling bruise at his cheekbone. He knew his immediate problem was no longer Jervik but Neeps, who might just be capable of attacking Jervik in front of eight hundred witnesses. But before Pazel could speak a new hush fell over the ship. Rose was stepping forwards. Once more all eyes were on the captain.

  'Our new bosun, Mr Alyash, will be making some changes to the rotations-'

  'Alyash looks like he just got sick on himself,' snarled Neeps, who hated everything at the moment.

  Pazel looked at the short, broad, powerful man on the quarterdeck. His skin was very dark, but on his chin and at the corners of his mouth there were pale pink blotches. A few ran in streaks halfway down his neck.

  Pazel squinted. 'There's nothing on him, you dolt. That's his skin. If he got that way by a wound it must have been a long time ago.'

  'A wound?'

  'Don't ask me,' said Pazel. 'And for Rin's sake don't ask him either! I'll bet you he's an improvement on Swellows anyway.'

  'Captains of the watch will report to Mr Alyash when we adjourn,' Rose was saying. 'Now then: as we set sail, Dr Rain was struck down by gout. I have relieved him of his duties. Henceforth Dr Chadfallow will be our chief medical officer.'

  There were hisses, but not too many. Chadfallow stood accused of many things — even of collaboration with Arunis — but poor medicine was not among them. Rain on the other hand was a fumbling menace. Better to be cured by a traitor than killed by a quack.

  'Admission to sickbay requires his signature,' Rose c
ontinued, 'but for minor concerns you may apply to our new surgeon's mate, Mr Greysan Fulbreech.'

  The boys could scarcely believe their ears. During the ceremonial violence neither had heard Uskins shout out his name (it must have come after Jervik laid Pazel on the deck). But there Fulbreech stood among the new recruits: the same glamorous young man who had accosted Hercol during the wedding procession, making the same shallow, almost condescending bow.

  'Say, we can ask him about Thasha's father!' said Neeps.

  Pazel nodded. 'And we can ask him what in the Nine Pits he's doing aboard.'

  'There is one further matter,' said Rose, silencing the crowd again. He nodded to someone below, and the tarboy Peytr Bourjon started up the ladder to the quarterdeck. Peytr was a tall, lean whip of a youth. He and Dastu were the ship's senior tarboys, just one voyage away from making full sailors. Peytr was climbing awkwardly. As he stepped onto the quarterdeck, Pazel saw why: he had a large red object tucked under one arm.

  'I'll be blowed, that's a gumfruit,' said Neeps.

  So it was: a scarlet gumfruit. The lumpy, bright-red fruit was about the size of a pineapple. The flesh was said to be spongy and bitter; they were no one's favourite, as far as Pazel knew. Pazel had never seen one aboard a ship: they spoiled quickly and attracted flies.

  'Gumfruits come from Ibithraed,' said Neeps. 'My grandmother used to buy 'em for Fifthmoon dinner.'

  'Peytr's from Ibithraed too,' said Pazel thoughtfully.

  'Is he? Pitfire, that's why he hates me! He thinks my granddad pissed on his granddad.'1

  Peytr handed the gumfruit to Rose, and took a few steps back. Clearly someone had explained what was wanted of him.

  'The worst is behind us,' shouted Rose unexpectedly. 'Do you know why that is, men? Because we've left something heavy, something suffocating, behind us in the Empire. That something is hope. I see your faces! You would laugh at me if you dared. But look at the old men among you. They are not laughing. They know what you will come to know. Hope was never something to cling to. Not for us, lads. Not for you, or for me.'

  He lifted the great scarlet fruit above his head. 'Look at this gorgeous thing,' he said. 'Brighter than the red lanterns on the Lily of Locostri. Brighter than the girls' painted nails. Who wants a bite? First come, first served! Come on, no tricks — who wants a great, juicy bellyful of red?'

  The eight hundred before him stood silent, for everyone knew that gumfruit rind was toxic.

  Rose nodded, satisfied. Then he lowered the fruit and squeezed hard with his left hand, digging in with his fingers. With wrenching motions he tore the rind away in inch-thick chunks, letting them fall carelessly about the deck. Ten seconds, and it was done. Now his hands cradled the inner fruit, cream-white and slippery as a newborn.

  'Hope is the rind,' he said. 'Beautiful, and poisoned. This is life, naked life, and it's all we've ever really had. Do you hear me, lads? You've got to strip that rind away.' His eyes were blazing now as they had not done once since Etherhorde. 'I couldn't do you that service until now — Ott would have stabbed me, if Sergeant Throatcutter over there didn't do it first. But I'm doing it today — I'm handing you the blary respect you deserve.

  'Hope is back there in Simja, back in Ormael and Opalt and Etherhorde and Besq. Hope belongs to somebody else. We're done with it. And that means I don't have to lie to you any more. Fact: we do the Emperor's bidding or he kills us, and kills our kin. Fact: we're to cross the Ruling Sea with no trial run, and in the time of the Vortex. Fact: what awaits us in Gurishal is worse, if we're ever lucky enough to get there.'

  Moans began escaping from the onlookers, but Rose spoke over them. 'Keep looking at this fruit. Look hard. It's not a choice of this or something better. We don't even have the choice of tossing it and going hungry — not unless we want our families nailed up for the birds to pick. Now get over here, Mr Bourjon, and tell me what you think of gumfruit.'

  Peytr jumped; he had been gazing at Rose in blank confusion. 'The… the truth, Captain?'

  'Gods of Death, boy, the truth!'

  'I… I like 'em, sir. Always did. Since I was small.'

  Rose looked hard at him, then nodded. Very carefully, the captain passed the wet pulpy fruit into the tarboy's hands. Turning to face the mob again, he raised his sticky fist before his face and sniffed appraisingly.

  'Gumfruit kept his people from starving, through nine known famines, ' he said, pointing at the tarboy. 'He likes it, d'you hear? When it's what you've got, you learn to like it. And that is how you stay alive! Eat it, Peytr! Show us how it's done on Ibithraed!'

  By the way the youth ate he might have spent days in preparatory fasting. He anchored his fingers deep in the fruit and tunnelled with his mouth, biting, tearing, swallowing, now and then pausing to sop his chin with his shirtsleeve. It was amazing how quickly he diminished the fruit.

  'Eat it! Eat it!' The chant began somewhere among the tarboys, and was quickly taken up by all the crew. Peytr rose to the occasion, gobbling even faster, barely seeming to breathe.

  'The koyfruits we grow on Sollochstol are tastier,' said Neeps.

  'Oh shut up,' said Pazel.

  In less than five minutes a pulp-smeared Peytr had completed his mission, and nearly every voice on the Chathrand was roaring approval. He gave them a woozy grin. Rose held out his hand for the gumfruit pit, then raised the other for silence once again.

  The thumb-sized pit was the same bright scarlet as the rind. Rose held it aloft. His face showed neither mirth nor anger, but his eyes blazed still.

  'That's hope, too, lads,' he said, extending his hand towards them. 'Hope when the bitter meal's finally over, hope at the end of everything. The kind of hope you plant in fair soil and pour sweet water on, year after year. Let an island man tell you: gumfruit trees are kindly things — good shade, sweet spring blossoms. We just might have that kind of hope to look forward to, if we're as strong and smart as I think we are, which is stronger and smarter than any crew in the history of this grandest of ships. But if you weaken yourselves by dreaming about that hope — never, never.'

  He closed his fist around the seed. 'We're off to the Nelluroq, on a voyage of ruin and death,' he said quietly. 'Some of us will perish. All of us certainly may. But so long as you count yourself among the living, guard this thought: no one can give you this little red seed but me. Some will lie and claim otherwise, but you know who tells you the truth. Dismissed.'

  Six sharp notes from the bell: it was eleven o'clock in the morning. Down on the berth deck, Pazel and Neeps were lending the other boys a hand caulking seams — driving tar-coated bits of old rope, called oakum, into tiny crevices between planks, then painting on hot resin to seal the crack against moisture and decay. The crevices were so tight one needed a mallet and chisel to force the oakum into place. But without such tender care the planks would soon leak; Pazel could touch his tongue to an old seam and taste the salt of the ocean, fighting to get in. The work was never completed: hammer in the oakum, slap on the hot resin, chalk off the plank, trade with your mate when your arm grew tired or the resin-fumes made you too dizzy to aim. Up and down ladders. Up and down the endless curve of the hull. Four times a year for six hundred years, and counting.

  'That crafty, cunning, sneaky old beast,' said Pazel, hammering. 'He's got the crew back in his pocket, doesn't he?'

  'He's a good liar,' Neeps conceded, slapping hot resin over the seam Pazel had just filled.

  'He's a monster,' said Pazel. 'He kept an ixchel man locked in his desk, and only brought him out to check his food for poison. He probably made Swellows kill Reyast, too, come to think of it.'

  'Poor Reyast,' said Neeps, remembering the gentle tarboy with the stutter. 'He would have stood with us for sure. He did stand with us, for a little while. But let me tell you something about lies, Pazel. The best kind, the kind hardest to see through, are the ones that mix a little truth into the recipe. Take Captain Rose, now: he says he's the only one who can give us hope. Well that's nothing but a
dog-dainty. But it is true that he's the only one aboard who's commanded a boat on the Ruling Sea. No, he didn't cross her, but he flirted with her and lived to tell the tale.'

  'So what?' said Pazel. 'I'll bet a lot of ships have made little darts into the Nelluroq in good weather. How do we know Rose did more than that?'

  'The Emperor must think so,' said Neeps, 'otherwise he'd have put someone else in charge. Your arm tired yet?'

  'No.'

  Pazel liked striking the chisel: he could pretend it was Jervik's skull. And the scent of resin made him think of pine trees in the Chereste Highlands, on summer days long ago. Beside him the wall sizzled like bacon with each stroke of Neeps' brush.

  Pazel shot Neeps a cautious smile. 'You did like her, eh?'

  Neeps blinked at him. 'Who, Marila?' he said, flushing. 'Don't be a clod, mate, I barely spoke to her. I just think she might have come in handy, that's all. She sure did on the Haunted Coast.'

  'She seemed blary smart,' Pazel ventured.

  Neeps shrugged. 'She was just a village girl. She probably had even less schooling than I did.'

  A note of bitterness had crept into Neeps' voice. Pazel stared at the wall to hide his unease. You could be both smart and unschooled, of course, and he wanted to say so. But how would that sound coming from someone who'd gone to city schools, and been tutored by Ignus Chadfallow?

  No, he couldn't say anything of the kind. And before he could find another way to break the silence it was broken for him by a pair of tarboys approaching from portside. Swift and Saroo were nicknamed 'the Jockeys,' for the brothers claimed to be great riders. They were nimble, quiet boys with sharp glances. Rumour held that their father had been a horse thief in Uturphe, and was shot dead in the saddle on a stolen mare.

  'Give us them tools,' said Swift. 'We're to relieve you, Uskins' orders. You're wanted topside, double quick.'