Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“I left it behind in the stateroom,” she said, tracing the words with her fingers. “It’s not something I’m willing to lose.”

The silk band was to have played a role in Thasha’s wedding back in Simja. Three nights ago, Pazel had at last performed the tiny part of the ceremony allotted to him, and tied it around her wrist. The meaning of the act, of course, had utterly changed, but those ambiguous words troubled him yet. Wasn’t she still departing? Not into life with a Mzithrini husband, but into some region of the mind where he could not follow?

Nonsense. Nerves. Thasha was touched by magic, somehow-but not touched in the head. Pazel himself had been living for years under a potent charm and had managed to remain who he was. He put his arm around her, drew her closer, felt her breath tickling his chin.

“You’re trembling,” she whispered. “Why are you afraid?”

Why was he afraid? He had torn a cursed necklace away from her throat, dragged her up flaming stairwells; he had seen her naked and bleeding on a beach. He could kiss her here and now (so far she had planted the kisses, though not always on him) and no disaster would follow.

Presumably.

It was never supposed to happen. You believe me, don’t you?

Rin’s teeth, he was sweating. And Thasha, impatient, was slipping under his arm and down the staircase, slipping away.

“I’m stronger now,” she said. “I can face them. They can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

On they went, past the berth deck with its sound of snoring (some forty victims of the ixchel’s sleep-drug remained unconscious) and out into the rear compartment of the orlop deck. The darkness increased, and so did the stench. And flies-more flies with every step, droning like tormented ghosts.

Then Pazel stopped, overcome with sudden disgust. Pitfire, they’ve still not cleaned the lower decks. He was smelling dead men, dead animals-above all, dead rats. Six weeks ago, every last rat on the Chathrand had suffered a hideous change, swollen to the size of Thasha’s dogs, and rampaged through the ship. Only their mass suicide had prevented the creatures from killing everyone aboard.

“Pathkendle. Thasha.”

Hercol was crossing the dim compartment. As he drew close, the swordsman noticed Pazel’s look of revulsion. “The bodies are gone,” he said, “but not the blood. Fiffengurt chose to risk disease rather than oblige the men to sweat away the last of their water scrubbing gore out of the planks.”

He and Thasha regarded each other warily. They had exchanged many such looks recently, before and after their arrival at the cape. Pazel had no idea what those looks were about, but he knew that Thasha’s mood darkened whenever the swordsman approached, as though he reminded her of some unwelcome duty or predicament.

“I hoped Pazel would convince you not to attend this council,” he said.

“He failed,” said Thasha, “and so will you. Enough nonsense, Hercol. I want to get this over with.”

Hercol gripped her shoulder, looking at them each in turn. “Let them wait a bit longer. Come with me first, won’t you?”

He led them across the dim compartment, around a jagged hole in the floor (there were many such scars on the Chathrand, marks of the suicide-fire of the rats) and out through the bulkhead door in the north wall. They stepped into a small square cabin with two other doors, through one of which some light poured down from a shaft in the adjoining corridor. Dominating the room was a round porcelain washtub. This was the “silk knickers room” (as tarboys called it): the chamber where first-class servants scrubbed their employers’ socks and shirts and petticoats. The big tub had survived the crossing, but it was smeared with dried blood and fur, and the benches and washboards had been reduced to charcoal.

Hercol closed the door by which they had entered. “Once we join the others we must watch our every word. It is well that we told Taliktrum of the mind-plague, but of the time-skip His Lordship knows nothing, and I do not think we should enlighten him today. Let us not speak of it.”

“Let’s not speak to him at all,” said Pazel. “He’s not fit to lead his clan, let alone this ship.”

Hercol looked at him severely, but made no rebuttal. “Even allies like Mr. Fiffengurt may not yet be ready to face the truth of it. One could almost wish that his dear Annabel’s final letter had never reached him, telling him that she was with child.”

“You could wish it, maybe,” said Thasha. Pazel looked at her in shock. “I mean,” she added hastily, “that we can’t begin to guess what he feels like. They were going to be married; he’s been saving his pay ten years. I don’t think we should ever tell him. Let him think they’re alive, for as long as he can-Annabel and that little boy or girl. Let him hope. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

She was still watching Hercol with surprising ire. But if her old mentor understood her anger, he did not rise to the bait. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “In time we may be forced to tell him, or he may find out some other way; but for now it can do little good. Yet we must not forget the truth for a minute, however much we long to, if we are to find a way out of this darkness.”

“There is no way out,” said Pazel, and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. The others turned to him, astonished-and then a voice rang out in the darkness.

“I should bite you for that, Pazel Pathkendle! No way out, for shame.”

“Felthrup!” cried Pazel. “Are you mad? What are you doing here?”

His tiny figure emerged from the gloom: a black rat with half a tail and a mangled forepaw. Thasha’s dogs pounced, licking and snuffling; their adoration of Felthrup knew no bounds. With a quick leap the rat was astride Suzyt, balanced between her shoulder blades. His dark eyes glistened, and a sweet, resinous smell wafted from his fur.

“Should I be content to hide forever behind the stateroom’s magic wall?” he asked. “Ashore they may have condemned all woken beasts, but not on the Chathrand. Not yet.”

“The crew will not stop to talk to you,” said Hercol. “They will see a rat, and they will kill it.”

“Only if they catch it,” said Felthrup. “But the men of Chathrand are not all ignorant brutes. They do not know what is happening-and I agree that you must not tell them, yet-but they know something is terribly amiss, and a few may recall that it was I who first said so, when I smelled the emptiness of the village. Surely they will realize the utility-is that the word I want, utility? — of having a rat’s olfactory prowess at their disposal. Utility, avail, expedience-”

“No,” said Thasha, “they won’t. They’ll be afraid that you’re about to turn into a monster before their eyes.”

“They should fear no such thing,” said Felthrup. “I am safe, thanks to Lady Syrarys.”

“Syrarys?” said Pazel. “Felthrup, what are you talking about?”

Syrarys, the consort of Thasha’s father Admiral Isiq, had been revealed to be in league with Sandor Ott. She had worked for Thasha’s death, and nearly killed the admiral by poisoning his tea.

“How excitable you are!” said Felthrup. “I was only speaking of mysorwood oil. The wicked lady used to dab it on her neck, but Mr. Bolutu pointed out that it is better even than peppermint oil at deterring fleas. He applied it to my fur, and I am a new rat! Freed, emancipated, delivered from their masticatory assaults-and are we not agreed that those hungry vermin inflicted the mutation upon the rats, and not vice versa? Rats do not, you will allow, bite fleas. But this despair, Pazel! How unlike you, how unbecoming!”

“Unbecoming.” Pazel stared at the rat. “Do you understand that our families are dead?”