The Ruling Sea (75 page)

Hercól’s smile was gone. His eyes slid once around the cell block, professionally.

“You truly think you can break out of here?” she asked.

“It has been arranged,” he said, matter-of-fact, and glanced briefly at the ceiling. “But the harder question is, whom can I help by escaping? When I break out, I shall have only a short time to accomplish something before I’m put back in again. I could run to the stateroom, and perhaps find refuge there, but I do not wish to do so while Rose is leaving our friends in relative peace. They would merely place ten Turachs on the doorstep, and we should all be prisoners together.”

“You would be safe, at least,” said Diadrelu.

Not a flicker of response showed on Hercól’s face. “What news of our friends?” he asked.

Diadrelu sighed. “Neeps and Marila have become somewhat more than friends; Pazel and Thasha, somewhat less. They are cold to each other. Pazel simply will not remain in her presence, and Thasha is too proud to ask him why. In any case, they have all been busy recruiting people to our cause—and debating how much to tell them.”

“They are going ahead with the council meeting, then?” asked Hercól.

“It begins just minutes from now,” said Diadrelu. “That’s why I’ve woken you at such an hour, I—well, it was an impulse, I was passing near—”

“You’re
not
going to show yourself to six strangers!”

“Hercól,” said Diadrelu, “I am an outcast, not an imbecile. My
sophisters
and I will keep watch from the ceiling.”

Hercól nodded, realizing he had overstepped. “What of your quarrel with the clan?”

“It is not a quarrel,” she said. “It is death, if they should lay hands on me. And not because my people are hot for my blood. No, if it came to that, I think a good number would rather die defending me than obey Taliktrum’s order to kill. I should have to help them do it, and swiftly.”

Hercól leaned nearer, blinking in the darkness. “Help them? What are you saying?”

“That I would take my own life, rather than watch my clan torn to pieces by a blood feud. That is our way. Surely by now you understand?”

Suddenly Hercól cupped his hands beneath her and lifted, as though she were an injured bird that might start into flight. Diadrelu froze, her breath caught in her throat. It was all she could do to keep her mind from battle-patterns, the twenty ways she had learned to slash and bite and twist out of such hands. The swordsman brought her close to his face.

“I do
not
understand,” he said. “How can you think the clan would be well served by your death? Surely your nephew’s rule will tear it apart anyway?”

“Not surely, my friend. Only probably. That is beside the point, however. Of all my people’s maxims, the most sacred is
clan before self
. None of us quite lives up to that maxim, but all of us aspire to. When we abandon the effort, we die. It has happened countless times in our history, as we learn when the survivors of massacred Houses share their tales. Almost always the death of a clan can be traced back to selfishness. A leader who has lost the people’s love tries to stay in power through fear. An ixchel chased by humans runs
toward
the clan house instead of away. Two ixchel duel over a lover, and one dies—or two.”

“Or even three, if the lover is too heartbroken to live on,” said Hercól. “So at least it happens in our fables.”

“I think you do understand me, Hercól,” she said. “The sort of questions you people face only in wartime or feuds of passion, we face endlessly, throughout our lives. What deed of mine will protect the clan? What will endanger them? What will keep death at bay until tomorrow?”

Hercól’s hands trembled slightly beneath her. “I have been thinking of that day,” he said. “The day you asked us to kill Master Mugstur.”

“I had no right to address you thus,” said Diadrelu.

“You had every right. How were you to know that we were not your equals in honesty?”

“Honesty?” Dri frowned. “Speak plainly, man. I must go soon.”

“Of course I am a killer,” whispered Hercól. “Did I not say that I was Ott’s right-hand man? That I worked his will, pursued his mad notion of Arquali ‘interests,’ until the day he went too far?”

“The day he ordered you to slay the Empress and her sons,” said Diadrelu. “You told us.”

“I failed the sons,” said Hercól. “They were the age of Pazel and Neeps—indeed I look at those two and am reminded of Maisa’s children. Like the tarboys, they grew up with danger and loss, and yet somehow their hearts remained open. They would be grown men by now, if I had saved them. Ott keeps their bodies packed in ice, in a cave under Mol Etheg. Shall I tell you why he goes to such trouble?”

“If you wish to,” she said.

“When a spy has completed all his other training, he must pass one final test. He must go with Ott to that cave and look at Maisa’s sons, lying there gray and wrinkled with their throats slit. Princes of Arqual, he tells the trainee, but also enemies of Magad the Fifth—and therefore of all the people. Ott asks for the trainee’s opinion. If the young man objects, or questions the idea that blind loyalty is what Arqual needs; if he so much as
looks
troubled, then he never joins the Secret Fist. Instead he joins the host of the disappeared, one more sacrifice on the altar of the State.”

“You left that world behind,” said Diadrelu softly, “and have atoned for it thrice over. As for her sons: you must let those memories go. You cannot save everyone, Hercól. That is another thing we ixchel learn as children.”

The warrior’s hands were still trembling. A bit impatient now—did he think his burden so special?—she turned her head, so that she was looking down on the fingers encircling her.

“Hérid aj!”

Someone had been at his fingernails. On his left hand, one nail was torn out completely, and the finger hideously swollen. Another nail had had slivers cut from it, as though by the tip of a very sharp knife, and the shards that remained dangled by their roots. On Hercól’s right hand the fingertips were blue-black, the nails crushed into the flesh. It might have been done with a hammer, or the heel of a boot.

“No,” she said, breathless with fury. “Hercól—brother—who did this to you?”

“My old master,” said Hercól, setting her carefully on the floor, “though I swear he did not enjoy himself. Perhaps Ott still dreams that I will return to the fold, and lead the Secret Fist when he no longer can.” Hercól considered his hands. “Something held him back, in any case. If he had enjoyed himself I would be far worse off.”

The ixchel woman drew her sword. “All the same, he has signed his death warrant.”

“Are you mad?” said Hercól, starting upright. “This is Sandor Ott we are speaking of. A man who has listened for the assassin’s tread for fifty years. Put revenge out of your mind.”

“It is not for revenge alone that I shall strike,” she said, “though revenge is cause enough.”

“Dri,” said Hercól, “the man is poison. I have heard him give
lectures
on the dangers of ixchel infestations.”

“Infestations!”

Before Hercól could say more she raised her hand. A voice was calling from the passage. It was Ludunte, shouting in ixchel-speech. “Hurry, mistress! All the giants have assembled!”

“I come,” Dri shouted back. To Hercól, she said, “The council begins, I must go. But when it is over I will return to you. That I promise.”

“The promise I ask is that you stay away from Sandor Ott,” said Hercól.

“You do not have it,” she said. “None of this would be happening if it were not for that man’s evil inspiration. And he was not aboard when Ramachni cast his spell, so he cannot be the spell-keeper. Let us discuss it no further. I am a warrior, the same as you, and will choose my own kill.”

“No, I say! He is too deadly. Not for nothing has he led the Secret Fist for so long.”

“Long enough, I think.
Infestations
, he actually—”

“Damn it, woman, I forbid this!”

“Forbid?”
said Diadrelu. “Am I your dog, then, to be sent to a corner? One man on this ship has a claim to my obedience—my nephew Taliktrum—and him too I have chosen to disobey.
Forbid!
Think carefully, human, before you use that word with me again.”

Hercól dropped forward onto an elbow, forcing her back a step. “Hear me,” he pleaded, his voice quite changed. He held up his fingers. “I will recover from these wounds. Don’t leave me with one from which I never shall.”

She had never been so utterly lost for words. The human’s breath washed over her. His eyes, rheumy and dilated and as big as her head, were close enough to touch. She could not look at both of them at once.

“Mistress!” called Ludunte again.

Now it was Dri who was trembling. What was wrong with her? She closed her eyes and reached out, burying her hand in the warm bristles of his eyebrow, which leaped at her touch like a horse’s flank.

“I will never understand you people,” she said.

The space between the floor of the mercy deck and the ceiling of the hold was just four inches. Dri entered through a “jug-stopper,” a quick improvised door, cut by Ludunte that very morning. As soon as she was inside Dri knew rats had been here before her. The smell was faint, but not old.
A terrible place to meet with rats. They would have every advantage here
.

She crawled forward, through dust that lay like a gray snow, deeper than her wrists. She saw her hand in his eyebrow, parting the sleek black hairs. When he spoke, she felt the vibration in her arm.

The planks stretched in all directions. In such crawl spaces one could usually spot the humans three compartments off, by the splinters of lamplight that pierced the cracks in floor or ceiling. Tonight not a glimmer met her eyes. But ixchel can see without the light of the sun or lamp: there ahead lay her
sophisters
, looking down through the tiny gap Ensyl had opened with the spyjack.

Dri crawled up between them. “We must take care with this dust,” she said. “Humans cannot hear our speech, but coughs and sneezes are another matter. The day may come when we stand with them—stand as brothers, but—”

Ensyl glanced at her in surprise; Dri did not commonly lose the thread of her pronouncements. Angry with herself now, Dri wiped the dust from her clothes.

That man is not here. Banish him, face and voice
.

“They’re just sitting down there,” said Ludunte. “I don’t understand, Mistress. For ten minutes they’ve just been sitting in the dark, blind as puppies, not saying a word.”

“Ten minutes was my suggestion,” said Diadrelu. “If no one approaches, if no footfall sounds an alarm—then it will be safe to proceed.”

“There is our resistance force,” said Ensyl, shaking her head. “Rin save us.”

Diadrelu set her eye to the crack. Ensyl was right; the scene did not inspire confidence. Ten humans perched on barrels and boxes, timid in the dark, unable to see one another’s faces. Their alliance, their seawall against the worst storm of villainy ever to bear down on the world. “Pazel,” she said aloud, “if you can hear me, scratch the back of your neck.”

Pazel scratched the back of his neck. Months ago he had learned that his Gift extended his hearing to ixchel frequencies—an ability that had almost cost him his life, for Taliktrum had realized what he was hearing before Pazel himself. It was comforting, if a bit strange, to know that Dri was watching from eight feet overhead. He cleared his throat twice in the darkness. It was another sign they had agreed upon, this one for Thasha and Neeps: it meant
All present and accounted for
.

“Right, let’s begin,” said Thasha nervously. “I think we’ve been quiet long enough.”

“That’s for damn sure,” growled Fiffengurt.

A match blazed; and Thasha’s face appeared, dazzled by the sudden light she held.
I miss her
, Pazel thought, watching a strand of her hair singe as she tried to light the candle. The wick caught, and she raised her eyes suddenly, freezing him with the directness of her look. He felt as he did when he faced Ramachni: transparent, naked, perfectly understood. An intolerable feeling. He dropped his eyes.

“Remember,” he mumbled, “if anyone asks, we’re just here for a drink.”

The laughter was barely audible. Thasha passed the candle to Neeps, and Marila lit her candle from his. Soon half a dozen were burning around the chamber.

The reserve liquor vault was where the better drink was kept, rather than the briny rum used to mix the sailor’s daily grog. It was about ten feet square. Floor to ceiling, it was jammed with casks of white Opalt rum and Hubbox sherry, tins of cider vinegar and cooking wine, vats of brandy, and here and there a case of something truly fine, like spruce gin or the cactus-orange liquor of Pól. Despite the bottled luxuries, the vault smelled putrid: they were only a few feet above the bilge well, that cesspool at the bottom of the ship into which filth from every deck found its way. Because they were so far aft, the water slopped and churned, with a sound like cattle floundering in a pond. At least they would not easily be overheard.

So far, so good: not one person they’d approached had turned them down. Pazel’s choice had been Bolutu. They’d met in the veterinarian’s cabin on the orlop deck; when Bolutu had grasped what Pazel was talking about he had jumped from his chair and scribbled
As soon as possible!
on a page of his notebook. Neeps had recruited Dastu. When the older tarboy had slipped into the vault, Pazel had felt suddenly hopeful, as though only now believing that they had a chance. The other tarboys looked up to Dastu, for his decency as much as his toughness and good sense. He could bring dozens over to their side.

Marila’s choice was more troubling: Dollywilliams Druffle. Neeps had urged her to choose the freebooter, reminding her that no one hated Arunis more than the one he’d magically enslaved. Pazel couldn’t argue with that; Druffle grew spitting mad whenever talk turned to the sorcerer. He’d also known about the ixchel for months and not breathed a word. So for all his chatter, he could keep a secret. But did that mean they could trust him? Druffle’s moods were erratic, and his way of thinking peculiar. It had never crossed his mind, for instance, to tell Pazel that his mother had had an affair with Chadfallow, until the night the doctor had insulted him. And again this morning his breath stank of rum.