Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Felthrup scurried off. The humans returned the way they had come, and proceeded to the aftmost passage of the orlop deck. Foul air, sticky floorboards. Pazel knew with a hint of shame that he had not only been worrying for Thasha’s sake. He hated the manger like no other part of the ship.

The passage brought them to the looted granary, and thence to the manger door. Here the stench was astonishing: fur, blood, bile, ashes, rot. Pazel saw the flicker of lamplight, heard the voices of men and ixchel, arguing.

“-can’t let one person beyond this room know what’s happened to human beings,” Fiffengurt was saying. “I’ve seen vessels in the grip of plague-panic. They can’t be sailed. The men get frightened of every cough, sneeze, hiccup-”

Thasha and her dogs stepped into the chamber. The mastiffs tensed and growled, and the talking ceased.

“At last,” snapped Taliktrum’s voice. “What took you so long, girl? Do you think we assembled here for the pleasure of one another’s company?”

Pazel and Hercol followed her inside. The manger was wide and deep, built to store fodder for two hundred cattle, in the days when the Great Ship had carried whole herds across the Narrow Sea. Their own cattle had all perished: some had broken legs or hips during the Nelluroq storms and had to be slaughtered quickly; most were savaged by the rats. But no one had yet removed the hay.

Pazel looked at the wall of square bales tied up at the back of the chamber, saw the stain down the front like a dark dried stream. He and Thasha had made their stand on that wall. The rats had seemed endless in number, demonic in their hate. Pazel had fought with every ounce of his strength; Thasha, ten times the fighter he was, had hewn the creatures down like weeds. But the rats had swarmed around them, leaping from behind. They would have perished in minutes without the Nilstone.

It was still there, at the center of the manger, clenched in the stone hand of the Shaggat Ness, that lifeless maniac, that king become a statue. Pazel could not see the Stone-Fiffengurt had ordered the Shaggat’s arm draped with cloth, and the cloth firmly tied about the statue’s wrist-but he could feel it all the same. What was he sensing? Not a sound, not a glimmer. The feeling was closest to heat. With every step into the chamber he could feel it grow.

The Shaggat himself was kept upright by a wooden frame, girdling his waist and bolted heavily to the floor. He stared at his upraised hand with a weirdly shifting expression: triumph giving way to terror and shock. He had remained flesh and blood just long enough to see the weapon he craved begin to kill him.

On the mad king’s shoulder stood tiny Lord Taliktrum. His consort, Myett, crouched beside him, one hand on his calf, tensed for flight or combat as she always was when humans approached. Pazel felt a keen hatred for the pair. Murderers. They had not actually slain Diadrelu, Pazel and Thasha’s dear friend and the ixchel’s former commander. But they might as well have. Steldak, the ixchel man who had jerked the spear through her neck, was deranged, and perished himself in short order. It was Taliktrum and his fanatics who had ambushed Diadrelu, and held her while the deed was done. Pazel would never forgive them.

Around the statue were gathered some twelve or thirteen humans, along with Bolutu and Ibjen. Pazel still marveled at the dlomic boy’s willingness to help them. He had said no more about it since the fire on the beach, never explained who had told him that some on the Chathrand were trying to “redeem the world.” But his courage was being sorely tested. He’d been promised a safe return to the village by nightfall. From the look on his face he was counting the hours.

Six Turachs were present, including Haddismal. And there was Big Skip Sunderling: a welcome surprise, for the carpenter’s mate was a trusted friend. Not so the bosun, Mr. Alyash, who greeted the newcomers with a scowl: a gruesome expression, owing to the blotchy scars that covered him from mouth to chest. Alyash was a spy in the service of Sandor Ott. The scars, Pazel had heard him claim, were marks of torture with a sarcophagus jellyfish by the followers of the Shaggat Ness.

Mr. Uskins was here as well-tall, fair Uskins, the disgraced first mate. The man had loathed Pazel and Neeps from the start-they belonged to inferior races, but failed to cringe before their betters-and the tarboys returned the sentiment. But lately Pazel had begun to feel sorry for Uskins. The man looked like a shipwreck. Once fastidious in the extreme, he had neglected both his beard and his uniform. His blond hair dangled greasy and uncombed. When he looked at Pazel his eyes lit with antipathy, but it was a vague, distracted sort of hate.

The last two figures were even more unexpected. One was Claudius Rain-addled Dr. Rain, the worst quack Pazel had ever encountered. Rain had barely stirred from his cabin since the legendary Dr. Chadfallow replaced him as ship’s surgeon. But here he was, following the flies with his gaze, muttering to himself. And there beside him, damn it all, stood the surgeon’s mate, Greysan Fulbreech.

The handsome Simjan youth beamed at Thasha, who returned a brief, uneasy smile. Pazel wanted to smash something. He was visited by the absurd idea that Fulbreech, five or six years older and unbearably decent to everyone, was the true reason Thasha had insisted on attending the meeting. Fulbreech had appeared suddenly one day in the wedding crowd on Simja, bearing a mysterious message for Hercol. Pazel had mistrusted him from that first moment, though he had to admit he had no definite cause. Not for mistrust, anyway; jealousy was another matter. He knew quite well that Thasha had fancied the surgeon’s mate-had kissed him once or twice, even, when Oggosk’s threats made Pazel treat her with disdain. Of course, that was over now Fulbreech gave him a frank, friendly smile. “Hello, Pathkendle.”

Pazel nodded, failing to bring an answering smile to his lips. Do I hate him just because Thasha doesn’t? What’s the matter with me?

Behind them, Alyash closed the chamber door.

Taliktrum cleared his throat. “We’re alive,” he said. “That is something. But no one should suppose that we have earned the right to breathe easy. Only giants think in terms of merits and rewards; our people think of survival. That is what we are here to determine: how to survive together, until we can go our separate ways.”

Fiffengurt laughed grimly. “Did you see that Gods-forsaken serpent? Did you hear those drums? We’re babes in the woods, Mr. Taliktrum. How in Pitfire do you determine the best way to survive in a world you know nothing about?”

“You must address him as ‘commander’ or ‘lord,’ ” hissed Myett.

“You are not equipped to understand,” said Taliktrum, “but we are. The ixchel have not grown fat in their time of exile; they have not grown soft and selfish. Every house in Etherhorde, every dog-prowled, cat-infested alley, was to us a place of menace and persecution. Do you see how fortunate you are that we seized your drifting helm? Trust me, you are adrift no longer. The Chathrand shall move through this great, strange South as the ixchel move through a city: in the shadows, in darting runs and swift concealments, inch by hard-won inch.”

His words tumbled out like an unpracticed speech, or a man trying to convince himself of his own consequence. When he finished, he appeared at a loss. Without releasing his leg, Myett looked up and caught his eye, and then subtly directed his attention to Old Gangrune.

“I have asked our purser,” said Taliktrum at once, “to remind us of the assets that remain aboard this ship. That is the purser’s duty, among other things. Are you prepared, Mr. Gangrune?”

The old, bent fellow nodded sourly. He was fussing with an extremely tattered and dog-eared accounting book.