The Red Wolf Conspiracy (22 page)

I had no choice: he was a prince, and could not be reasoned with. But I saw to it that he knew better than to dream of letting those killers dispose of Nilus Rose when his usefulness was done:

“Nothing whatsoever shall I hide, Sire: neither my fears, nor my sensible precautions. In the second category are letters dispatched months ago, to certain professionals outside the Empire. In the case of my demise they will be forwarded over a span of years to the lords of the Crownless Lands, and a number of your family's internal rivals.”

“Where no doubt they would be read with astonishment,” laughed the blind man. He was shaken and furious and wished none to see it. Probably he could think of little besides killing me, and yet realized (as you and I did long ago) that Arqual's treason can never be revealed, nor the exact number of those letters known, even should they extract my confession with hot iron and blades. Yet he might have threatened. He might even have had me dragged back to those tunnels and tortured for my insolence
—
for that I was ready. Nothing, however, prepared me for what he actually did: groping for my face again, he pulled me savagely by hair and beard, forcing his lips against my ear
.

“I know these rivals you speak of,” he whispered. “Some are banished, most are dead. The sons of Maisa are dead
—
we have their bodies in an ice chest. The astrologers have spoken; the dead stir and the living smell death. You cannot stop us
—
it is the hour of Arqual, you fool.”

Then he released me and smiled. We dined, the royal sons
insulted one another, and I left the Keep of Five Domes just in time to avert disaster with the augrongs
.

All this I tell you, sir, knowing it will gladden your heart that a Rose met the Imperial Person and set sail with a third of his wealth. Did you not swear we would one day parley with kings, and even use them for ends of our own? Perhaps you will have forgotten the occasion, but I never shall: it was a summer on Littelcatch, when you caught me dawdling with hammer and chisel, simply wasting the day, laughing among the penniless boys of the isle. I had hacked a crude figure out of driftwood. “The purpose of this, Nilus, if you please?” you asked, and I had the cheek to reply that I would learn proper sculpture, and one day carve a goddess for the figurehead of your ship. How right you were to strap me! Nonsense must be cured with clarity, and there is nothing clearer than pain
.

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.”