The Ruling Sea (72 page)

“The captain wants him
observed,
Fiffengurt, not just quarantined. He chose me for my tact, and my gift for obtaining information.”

Your slime-craft & snooping,
I thought. But I left him to his vigil & said no more. Arunis may be lying through his teeth, but that purple glint on the clouds’ underbellies was plain to see, & remained so through nightfall
.

Tonight Dastu pressed a slip of paper into my hand. On it were these words:
Find us a safe and secret compartment. When the storm ends we’re going to take some chances with trust. Pzl.

Dastu glanced back at me over his shoulder
. There’s one they’ve chosen to trust already,
I thought
, just as they chose me back at Simja.

I am plotting against the captain. My mutiny is now a fact
.

Saturday, 5 Norn 941
.

Eight solid days of storm. Nothing to do but fight it, fight it ceaselessly. Nights by far the worst, for though we stab at the darkness with fog lamps the waves are ever breaking upon us before we rightly see them. We have been close to broaching more often than I can recall, & five or six times had water over the deck. Pumps have failed, oilskins parted, and a hand run along half the walls on the orlop comes up wet: the Nelluroq is oozing through the seams, pressed in by the battering waves. There was a ghastly morning when the water in the well rose ten feet in three hours: a wad of grime and rat-hair had clogged a bilge-pipe. Dawn & dusk are blurry notions, & noon is when you stand beside one mast & can see the next
.

Another three men lost, & reports of fever among the unhappy folk down in steerage. Chadfallow & Fulbreech handing out pills. The tarboy Macom Drell, of Hansprit, crushed on the mercy deck by shifting cargo. The lad was found hours after his death; he could not fill his lungs to cry for aid. Also a suicide among the Turachs. One of the guards on the Shaggat simply walked up & put his hand on the Nilstone. I saw what was left of him: bone & gristle & ash. They say he had been staring at the thing for a week
.

Friday, 11 Norn 941
.

Wave height doubled & still we lack [
illegible
] end of our voyage & this ship’s proud history unless [
illegible
] flooding the [
illegible
] down the ladderway and broke his leg [
illegible
] wind screams in the rigging with the sound of tortured animals [
illegible
] blary hand shaking too much to wr [
unfinished
]
.

Thursday, 17 Norn 941
.

Something in this universe must love the
Chathrand,
for she has looked her own death in the face every day for a week. Three days ago the waves reached 80 ft. Rose put her into the wind, for at that height the lower gallery windows were getting slapped on every swell & one rogue breaker could have smashed them in, flooding the deck & sending us to join the
Jistrolloq
in minutes flat. Once we had her about with the stormsails trimmed we were better off for a while, treading in place through the daylight hours, praying & fighting for steerage through the night
.

But the day before yesterday the seas grew taller yet. Surely it has been a century or more since any man stood on the Great Ship’s forecastle & looked
up
at a cresting wave, but I am that
man, by Rin. Yet with Elkstem at the wheel & Rose beside him, we did all right until nightfall. Then the waves grew even larger, & the dark hours were one long frenzied struggle against obliteration, tacking up the sides of mountains, piercing the frothing crest with the bowsprit, clawing over the top & falling forward with a hull-shaking thump, looking up again at once as the next mountain rushed us. The crew was simply breaking. No one talked anymore. No one wanted to eat, or dared to rest, or remembered the needs of their bodies. I had to order men to drink water, & watch that they did so: they were so frightened that only by working perpetually did they keep from shrieking or diving into the sea
.

So passed that hideous night, & all of yesterday, & last night too. I don’t think a man on this ship believed he could fight the sea as long as we did. There were lads had to be smacked to make ’em stop working the pumps, when their shifts ended. But no one had to be smacked awake. We worked like machines, like windup toys in the hands of a maniac, with no purpose but to see how much twisting our mechanisms could take
.

Dawn seemed to have been abolished, the night stretched into weeks or months. In the worst of it I saw cloud-murths on feral steeds, galloping back & forth on the wave-crests, threatening us with their halberds & pikes. I shall never know if they were real; indeed I’m not sure I want to
.

But at last the dawn did come, & with it a gentler wind & seas that rapidly diminished to a mere forty or fifty feet—waves that would have decimated any harbor in Alifros, yet we took them for our salvation. If my count is right we have been twenty days in storm (and without a foremast, by all the gods!). In that time how many hours have I slept? Ten, fifteen? We have all become like Felthrup: creatures who no longer shut our eyes, for fear of what will happen if we do
.

Of Felthrup himself there is no sign
.

Saturday, 19 Norn 941
.

Someone must list the dead: we owe all human beings that minimum courtesy. But the bookkeeper’s an oathsworn Plapp & may “forget” to mention the losses among the Burnscove Boys; & by the Sailing Code his tabulation goes first to Uskins (Stukey), who so detests lowborns like Uskins (Stukey) that he may abbreviate the list even further. I don’t know why this strikes me as part & parcel of the wickedness being done on this voyage, but I will scribble names as I think of them & hope this book falls into the hands of some who loved these unfortunates:

[here follows a list of 37 dead]
^*

May Bakru bring them all to tearless rest
, edalage.

Sunday, 20 Norn 941
.

As fine & innocent a day as one could hope for. Swells of an easy 25 ft., wind behind us & powerful instead of crippling, very much the conditions the Great Ship was built for. We’ve had an easy run these past three days, though a state of nervous collapse followed the storm—men afflicted with flux, vomiting, chills & nightmares; fights breaking out between the cursed gangs; drunken ness rampant beyond anything possible on their small rations of rum. The gods only know what sort of ship-brewed rotgut they’re drinking
.

Managed to raise a guide spar on the stump of the foremast: the best we can hope to do until we reach still waters. Cazencian whales, of all things, spotted a quarter mile to windward, on a parallel run. Told Mr. Latzlo & got a snarl for thanks. He does not look normal, Latzlo. He used to shave & primp & perfume himself each day for the Lapadolma girl; now he resembles something escaped from one of his cages
.

Friday, 25 Norn 941
.

Little lad or lass, asleep yet in Annabel’s womb: how I should love you to grow up knowing these four youths. If the dream of the rain of ashes should prove true somehow—if my kin disowns me for the choices I’ve made—still I must believe that you and your dear mother will accept me. Lady Thasha, Pathkendle, Undrabust, Marila: we’ll call them your honorary aunts & uncles, & you will scarce believe the tales they tell
.

The good weather holds. Somewhere it is winter; the first frosts are surely etched on your mother’s window, but here fungus is blooming in our footlockers & tar bubbles out of the deck seams at noon. The whales still with us. The Vortex gone from sight
.

Last night I brought food once again to the stateroom. Undrabust & the stowaway girl, Marila, were the only ones I saw at first. Then a whirling swept across the floor at ankle height. It was Diadrelu, of course. The crawly woman was dancing a kind of ballet with her sword in the middle of the chamber. She moved so quickly one could not tell where flesh ended & steel began. If she were human-sized she’d be a match for any Turach who ever drew a blade
.

“Where are—”

Marila raised a finger to her lips. Undrabust, meanwhile, came forward and asked loudly, “Did you bring it, then?”

For once he meant something other than food. Undrabust had slipped me a second note, asking for the weirdest thing: my old mandoloro,
^*
which I’d not played or even thought about since my commission began, nigh two years ago—

(Had I known then who was to be my captain, I should have left the mandoloro behind. How sad to recall what I imagined then: nights on the Nelu Peren with a happy ship, a crew of contented Burnscove gangsters under my command,
^*
&
one scant year before I handed the honor over to a fresh face & settled down with my own sweet ’Bel. Oh Anni, don’t hate me, none of this was my choice.)

“How in the putrid Pits did you know I had a squeezebox?” I’d asked Undrabust. The tarboy replied that Felthrup had mentioned it, weeks ago. Which is odder still, as I’m sure I never discussed music with the poor little rat
.

I’d no sooner taken it from its case than Undrabust snatched it up & began to play. Or rather to squeeze & mash buttons. He might have been attempting “The Lighthouse Girl.” It does not matter; I have seen men flogged for less. Undrabust himself frowned at the bleating & honking, but that did not stop him from grinding away. Marila took my hand & led me to one side
.

“They may be listening,” she whispered. “Neeps is just drowning them out.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked
.

“Rose’s men,” she said, “or maybe Ott’s. It was Khalmet who warned us—the Turach second in command. We
think
he’s on our side.”

“A Turach, siding against the Emperor? That’s impossible, missy.”

Marila shrugged
.

“Skies of fire! If it’s true, you must never
, never
give him away. The things they’d do to a disloyal Turach!”

“That’s just what Thasha said.”

“Where is the young mistress? And Pathkendle?”

Marila pointed to Thasha’s cabin. “She’s in there. Reading her
Polylex,
or trying to. Since Felthrup disappeared she’s acted very strange about that book. She just cracks it open anywhere, reads for a moment, and then sits still, gazing off into space. It’s very strange. She looks … old, when she’s sitting there. And when she stands up she’s tired.”

Marila looked sourly at Thasha’s door. “She and Pazel are still fighting. Last night it got bad. Thasha mentioned Fulbreech, and Pazel just hit the roof. He said it was time she decided who her friends were, and she yelled back that he should take his own advice, and stop hating her for what her father did to Ormael. Then everyone started yelling at once. Pazel said he could just clear out, since she’d be wanting
Greysan
to move in any day. ‘Admit it,’ he kept saying. ‘You’d be happier. Admit it.’ Neeps said he was sure Lady Oggosk was feeling happy—I don’t know what he meant by
that—
and Pazel told him to be quiet. Then Pazel asked Thasha how much Fulbreech had
got out of her.
He meant how much information, but that’s not how she took it. She went into her cabin and slammed the door. And Pazel found somewhere else to sleep.”

“Horns of the hairy devil!” I exploded. “Leave it to me! I’ll straighten that fool of a tarboy out!”

But Marila had something else on her mind. “Did you find us a room, Mr. Fiffengurt?”

“I found one,” I said. “The reserve liquor vault, in the afterhold. It’s dark and small, and the stink could wilt every branch on the Blessed Tree, but it’s also as remote as you can get. Just a narrow little scuttleway from the mercy deck, and there’s no light-shafts or speaking-tubes to give you away. Trouble is, it’s locked tight as a drum. Otherwise you’d have lads breakin’ in, ye see, no matter how dire the punishment.”