The Ruling Sea (89 page)

“Stop!” said Thasha abruptly. “Good! You’ve learned something. Those were fine parries.”

“Thanks,” said Pazel, amazed.

“Fine, but useless. Blocking won’t stop these rats. You stab, or they bite you. Stab them first, Pazel. Every time.”

They took to the stairs again. “And don’t let your blade swing loose in your hand,” Thasha added. “I made that mistake once with Hercól, and broke my thumb in the knuckle guard.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“Yes. Ouch. But it sure as Pitfire taught me to—Oh!”

She caught his arm. They were emerging onto the topdeck for the first time in many hours. And everything around them was strange.

It was past sunset; the world should have been dark. Instead it glowed a fiery orange-red. They stepped into the chilly wind. Straight ahead of the
Chathrand
, the Red Storm blazed across the sky, an unbroken wall of silent, softly boiling light. It was hard to tell just how big it was, and thus how far away—sixty miles, eighty? Whatever the distance, it was much closer than when the tarboys and Fegin had watched it at dawn.

But the storm was not the only wonder, or the worst. Roughly the same distance off the port beam, there was a lowering and twisting of clouds—and, Pazel realized with a sickening jolt,
of the sea itself
. A great, round expanse of ocean had become vaguely, but undeniably, concave, as if an invisible finger were pressing down on the dark blanket of the sea. The center of the depression was beneath their line of sight. Above it, the clouds churned in a descending spiral.

“The Vortex,” Pazel said, “that has to be the Nelluroq Vortex. O Bakru, Bakru! Call off your lions, save the ship.”

He had never meant the prayer more sincerely. For the last strange thing about the topdeck was how empty it was. Bow to stern, there could not have been more than thirty men at the sails. A few dozen more were flying up and down the deck, hauling the sheets, relaying orders. There should have been ten times as many hands on deck.

“Pazel,” said Thasha, her voice gone deadly cold, “that’s the whirlpool from my dream. The one I’ve been having since Etherhorde.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “You’ve been dreaming about the Vortex.”

“But I didn’t just imagine it,” said Thasha. “I saw it, perfectly. It’s
exactly
the same.”

Pazel looked at her with alarm. She had changed before his eyes. Gone was the confident
thojmélé
fighter. In its place was the haunted Thasha, the one who appeared each time she read the
Polylex
. The one who looked inexplicably older. “What happens in this dream?” he asked her.

Thasha closed her eyes. “I’m striking a bargain,” she said. “Someone wants me gone from wherever I am. And I say that I’ll go, as long as they agree to leave too. Whoever it is always agrees, but at the last minute they add something to the deal. Something that makes leaving much harder. Ramachni’s there, looking on—guarding me, maybe, in case there’s cheating. But I still have to say yes. As soon as I do, I start moving—very fast, with no effort at all. Straight toward that whirlpool. And I think,
This is how it feels, to die and remain alive
. And just as I start to fall into the Vortex I wake up.”

She opened her eyes and smiled ruefully at him. “I’m waiting for you to say,
You’re not crazy, Thasha.”

Pazel said nothing. He was trying to think of better, more comforting words. Whether or not he still fully believed in her sanity hardly mattered. Thasha stared, clearly upset by his hesitation.

Then Uskins appeared, barreling around the starboard longboat. He was hysterical. He did not appear to be wounded, but his eyes had a wild light in them, and his face was red. He skidded to a halt before them and screamed.

“Muketch!
Girl! Don’t stand there, grab a line! Get forward, to Lapwing’s team on the port halyard! Run, blast you, we need everyone we’ve got!”

Pazel and Thasha did as they were told, if only to get away from Uskins. As they ran, Pazel became aware of a new sound, distant but immensely powerful. A sound that was neither wind nor waves. It made him think of a titanic millstone: inexorable, grinding. It was the sound of the Vortex.

“You’re all right, Thasha,” he huffed as they ran, “it’s the world outside your head that’s gone mad.”

Thasha burst out laughing: “Thanks, I feel
much
better.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She was so perversely amused that he couldn’t help joining in her laughter. He wished he could stop right there, kiss her full on the lips.

“There’s Neeps!” cried Thasha suddenly, pointing. He was halfway up the mainmast, a good hundred feet above the deck, working alongside a dozen sailors trying to reef the topsail. They were crawling out along the yard, fighting the wayward canvas, not looking down.

“They need more men for that job, don’t they?” Thasha asked.

“You’re damn right,” said Pazel. “Twice as many, and hands on the halyards. Come on, let’s help. Maybe together we can pull it off.”

They ran to the port rail, swung out to the great mainmast shrouds, and began the ascent. They were both sure-footed climbers: what Thasha lacked in experience she made up for in strength. But as they rose, so did the wind, quite suddenly in fact. Pazel, already exhausted by blows and blood loss, found he had to slow and catch his breath. “I’m dizzy,” he said.

“What?” she shouted.

“DIZZY.”

How the men on the topsail yard could hear a thing he had no idea. At last Neeps saw them, and his face glowed with relief. He beckoned urgently.
Hurry up!

Pazel resumed the climb. They passed the titanic main yard, that vast tree lashed horizontally above the ship, and for a few minutes the broad platform of the fighting top cut off their view of Neeps and the sailors. He could just hear them, though: it sounded as though Neeps was shouting his name. “I’m coming, mate, I don’t have blary wings,” he muttered testily.

They reached the fighting top, and Pazel squeezed up deftly through the climbing hole. The wind was momentarily blocked. Suddenly he could hear Neeps and all the others above him. They were screaming.

“No! No! No! Look out! Turn around!”

Pazel twisted, looking wildly everywhere for the source of their fear. Left, right, out, down—

Down.

The rats had broken out onto the topdeck. The space around the mainmast was thick with their squirming bodies. And a dozen or more were clawing straight up the wooden pillar toward them, salivating. “Mine!” they screeched. “Angel! Heaven! Kill!”

Pitfire
, thought Pazel,
they were five decks below!

Everything happened quickly. Pazel and Thasha could not descend, and to climb higher would have been sheer madness. The only possible choice was to make a stand on the fighting top. “Don’t slash,” Thasha shouted in his ear. “Lunge. Thrust. If you let ’em get in close they’ll tear you to bits.”

Scarcely had the words left her mouth when the first rats came boiling up from the hole. Pazel was starkly terrified. He had fought them one-on-one with the crowbar, but now there were three on him at once, and a pitching mast, and sixty feet between him and the deck. He stabbed, kicked at their faces and bellies, managing only to stay alive as Thasha killed and killed. More than once she skewered a rat through the neck or chest just as it drove its four-inch teeth past his defenses. She was protecting them both, he knew, and the thought enraged him.
Focus
. He groped for an edge, for the speed required to know what those teeth and claws were doing before the creature he fought knew the same about his sword. It was possible, with fury it was possible. There, and
there
.

Neeps and the sailors climbed down to join the battle. With them, Pazel realized, was one other tarboy: Jervik. As he dropped onto the platform he caught Pazel’s eye. “Yaarh,
Muketch!
Now yer fightin’ like a man!”

He dived into the fray, brandishing the knife he considered “rusty trash,” throwing the rats’ curses back at them. He had none of Thasha’s finesse, but he did have speed and muscle, and a furious instinct for battle. Yet even with the reinforcements the fight seemed endless. The rats kept coming, in a foul geyser of teeth and claws and fur. Everything was red: their eyes, Pazel’s arms, the light from the soundless storm. What was happening below Pazel didn’t dare imagine.

But a moment came at last when he killed a rat and no creature took its place. Thasha stabbed a grizzle-jawed beast on his right; Jervik kicked a third to its death. And then there were no more.

They looked down. Turachs and sailors once more held the deck, which from where he stood resembled the floor of a slaughterhouse. Big Skip was hurriedly climbing the shrouds.

“The bastards wormed their way up a light-shaft, got round behind us!” he boomed. “Come down, lads, the fighting’s nearly done. Just the hold to take back now.”

There were muttered thanks to Rin. “We still have to set that muckin’ sail,” said Jervik, glancing hastily at the Vortex.

Pazel sighed. “Right. Let’s do it, then.”

“I never found Marila,” said Neeps. “Uskins nabbed me the minute I came outside.”

“She’s dead, I reckon,” said Jervik bluntly. “I saw what them rats—Eh! Crawly! Crawly!”

He was shouting, pointing at a spot in the topmast shrouds, about eight feet from them. There in his swallow-suit, looking very small and harried in the wind, clung Taliktrum.

They hushed Jervik with some difficulty. The ixchel man watched, clearly impatient. “You should get down from the rigging,” he said at last, bending his voice so they all could hear.

“We’ve got a job to do,” said Neeps. “What do you want?”

“Do the job later,” said Taliktrum. “Right now you must all get down. We don’t mean to kill you.”

“Kill us, is it?” growled Jervik. “Like to see him try, the little louse!”

“Diadrelu revealed our presence to so many of you, you understand?” said Taliktrum. “She left me no choice. I had to act before Rose killed us. And I was right, wasn’t I? Even now he’s getting ready to poison the hold.”

“What are you saying?” Pazel demanded.
“What
did you have to do?”

“Seize the ship,” said Taliktrum.

At that very moment a man above them gave a shrill cry. The crowd on the fighting top jumped and cried out: a body had snagged in the rigging, five feet from them. It was one of the sailors who had not helped with the fight. The arm that had caught in the rigging was wrenched at an unnatural angle.

Thasha was closest, and carefully edged nearer. “He’s still breathing,” she said. “He’s
… asleep!”

Pazel looked down again. His eyes landed first on Big Skip: the carpenter’s mate was dangling, arms and legs through the shrouds, head lolled to one side. On the deck, a Turach was slapping a fellow soldier hard in the face. Beside them Mr. Uskins was pumping his fist, screaming at a midshipman. But even as Pazel watched, the sailor stumbled, raised a hand to his forehead, and slid languidly to the boards.

Pazel whirled on Taliktrum. “You vicious little fool. It’s
blanë
, isn’t it? You shot them with
blanë.”

“We shot no one,” said Taliktrum. “You drank it yourselves. All of you. In your water, over the last many days. A slow-acting variety; we had to make sure everyone aboard got a taste, before you saw what was happening.”

“Abandon masts! Abandon masts, you fools! Climb down before it hits you!”

It was Fiffengurt, hobbling aft at a near-run, and leaving a bloody footprint at every other step. His voice snapped the men out of their shock; they began to swarm downward toward the deck.

Thasha was still looking at Taliktrum. “You blary
idiot
. We’re sliding into the Vortex.”

“Get down,” said Taliktrum once again, “we can’t talk if you fall to your deaths.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Neeps shouted. “You’ve got to use your antidote, that’s all. Otherwise we all go down together.”

“Damn you, giants! There is no more antidote! Dri stole the last of it for your little caper in Simja! But we’re not butchering you, as you planned to do with us! It’s a dilute formula. You’ll all wake naturally, perfectly unharmed.”

“How soon?” asked Pazel.

Taliktrum was staring at the Vortex. “Not very soon,” he said.

He let go of the rigging, teetering a moment in the wind. “You can’t judge me,” he said. “This is war. I’m a general, and more than a general. I’ve been selected—yes, selected, chosen, to lead my people home. Don’t deceive yourselves. If it was your family you’d have done exactly the same.”

The three friends were wide awake when they reached the topdeck, but scores of others were not so lucky. A man from Tressek Tarn had dropped from the mizzenmast and struck the rail; the fall killed him instantly. Fiffengurt was organizing men with safety lines to climb up and rescue those tangled in the rigging. Even as he did so another man slipped from the bowsprit into the sea.

Taliktrum had vanished; several Turach archers had fired arrows in his direction. What had he wanted to tell them? Pazel wondered desperately. Could it have been some clue as to how to beat the drug?

“I’m not sleepy,” said Neeps. “Maybe they didn’t manage to get it in everyone’s water.”

“He sounded sure that they had,” said Pazel. “Come to think of it, that was the
only
thing he sounded sure of.”

“They had this in mind all along, didn’t they?” said Thasha. “Ensyl and her friends knew about it—why else would they say the ixchel didn’t need our protection? Which means Dri must have known too. Oh, how could she keep it from us? How
could
she?”

Pazel had no answer. All he felt certain of was that Taliktrum had unleashed forces beyond his control.

Fiffengurt came stumbling back their way, his wounded foot making a
squilch
each time it touched the deck. “Lord Rin, children, what now?” he cried. “Sleeping sickness?”

“Not quite,” said Pazel. They told the quartermaster about the ixchel’s drug. Fiffengurt pulled miserably at his whiskers.