Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“I’ll bet you played along,” I said (his woman problems were intensely irritating). “You’d probably even accuse her of the crime, although you did it yourself.”

“I would,” he said without hesitation, “if I determined that to do so was for the good of the clan.”

“If you were my size I’d fight you here and now,” I said. “It’s blary unforgivable. You’d make love to her one day and destroy her the next.”

“Unforgivable?” The familiar, belligerent gleam was back in his eyes. “The game isn’t over, Fiffengurt. You hold both pearls. You must give me a secret to match my own. Do not speak! I will tell you the secret I want.”

He crossed the tool room- amp; leaped in one swift movement onto a sawhorse, so that our eyes were on the same level. “Here is what I would know, Fiffengurt: can you choose between life and death?”

“What in the Pits does that mean?”

“We cannot keep all the hostages alive. Some will die. All will die eventually, if they remain in the forecastle house. But I am willing to free two more tonight. Not the spymaster or his protege, Dastu: they are simply too dangerous. And not the witch. Even if she is not Rose’s mother, he loves her. That makes her too precious to give up, now that Rose himself walks free.

“Two more, then. Name your choices, and I will send my Dawn Soldiers to deliver the antidote this evening-my last act as commander. But you must decide who is to be saved. Dr. Chadfallow, surely? Or perhaps the two gang leaders, on the condition that they swear a truce? Or Elkstem, your sailmaster, the man whose hand on the wheel has saved the ship more than once already? Or the remaining tarboy, Saroo, with so many years to live?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You swine,” I said.

“Of course an ixchel would never choose the tarboy,” he went on. “The question of who might deserve life the most never occupies our thoughts as deeply as that of who is the most useful. If you look at things our way, you might do best to free the pair of soldiers. Their return would improve morale for the entire battalion.”

“You can take a leap off those cliffs,” I said. “I don’t make choices like that.”

“You don’t, because you have not had to,” he said. “Name them, Fiffengurt. Otherwise I will free no one at all.”

I slammed both pearls down beside him. “Not a chance. You’re the monsters who took ’em in the first place.”

“Rose would have killed us if I hadn’t. Now I’m willing to reduce our advantage, and you will not even choose?”

“I can’t, and I won’t. It’s inhuman.”

I must have been screaming. In the passage, two or three anxious men called my name, clearly afraid I was in danger. I wrenched open the door amp; yelled at them to keep their distance. When I turned back to the room I could not see Taliktrum or his pearls.

“What if you had enough antidote for them all?”

His voice came from near the ceiling. I looked up but could not spot him on any of the shelves or cabinets.

“That’s a stupid question, ain’t it?” I snapped. “I’d free every one of them.”

“And guarantee that my people would be hunted down, murdered, exterminated in a matter of hours?”

“Pitfire,” I sputtered. “Not… necessarily. I don’t hate you-I mean, I haven’t blary thought about it!”

“We have thought about it, Mr. Fiffengurt,” he said. “Never fear; I gave the order before I came looking for you. The doctor amp; the sailmaster are already free. Listen, you can hear them shouting.”

And it was true, when I fell silent: high above, amp; at the other end of the Chathrand, I could just catch the cries: Chadfallow! Elkstem! Hurrah!

“Then why’d you put me through all this, damn you?” I shouted.

As if in answer, something bounced off a high shelf amp; fell toward my chest. I caught it: Taliktrum’s pearl.

His laughter mocked me from above. “Not necessarily, you say. And I’d hoped to hear it straight from a giant’s mouth, just this once: either Yes, I would kill you all. Or No, I would fight for your people even against my own. The way my aunt did, Fiffengurt. But of course, you haven’t thought about it. Goodbye.”

There was a slight scraping noise in an upper corner. He’s slipping out some rat-hole or secret door, I thought. On an impulse, I called out, “Lord Taliktrum?”

The scraping stopped.

“Diadrelu was only going to kill herself if she was certain it was best for the clan. Not because something wounded her heart, or pained her personally. Although many things did. You understand?”

Silence. I cleared my throat amp; went on: “You’re not selfish, you little people. You’re better than us in that respect. Don’t be selfish about your pain, man. Go, if you have to. Run away from your cult, or from your old man. But don’t write any letter swearing you won’t be back. Tell them you’re off-following a vision or whatnot. Surely it’s better for ’em to have someone they can go on believing in? And I’ll tell you this as well: I’ve done some running in my time. All sailors have. But if you live long enough you’ll find that most of us are running in circles.”

Taliktrum said nothing amp; there was no more noise from above. I suppose I’ll never know if he heard my advice. But as I sat there, listening to the cheers grow louder, it occurred to me for the very first time that Taliktrum was an Etherhorder, like me.

I am exhausted; the lamp is sputtering out. I wonder where he has gone in this alien city. Rin keep him, the little tyrant, first of us to abandon Chathrand of his own free will.

7. Scribbled in the margin of this page, Fiffengurt adds: “This far south, only the tips amp; branches of the Holy Tree peek over the horizon, in the hour before dawn. Mr. Bolutu has ventured the farcical opinion that the Milk Tree is no tree at all, but merely the diffuse light of millions of stars, too faint to be spied one by one. I fear at times that the fellow is delusional. He sometimes speaks of Arqual amp; the Mzithrin in the past tense, as one might of nations that have ceased to exist.” — EDITOR.

8. Rule Thirty of the Ninety Rules of the Rinfaith: “What a man cannot afford to lose at dice should not be wagered; what he can should be given to those in need. Thus the man of virtue wallows not in sordid games.” Younger monks of the Rinfaith (starting with Artus in 916) labeled this one of the “Killjoy Rules,” and it is likely that Fiffengurt was aware of this noisy minority. Artus claims further that “sordid games” is a willful mistranslation, and indeed the original Ullumaic is closer to “addiction to risk.” Artus published his suggestions for a gentler, more loving Ninety Rules in a treatise titled When Rin Sees Us, Does He Smile? Days after its publication the man was expelled from the Brotherhood of Serenity; his house was also mysteriously burned down, and his dog pelted with eggs by fellow monks who thought themselves unobserved. -EDITOR.

27 Ilbrin 941

226th day from Etherhorde

You’d probably even accuse her of the crime, although you did it yourself… you’d make love to her one day and destroy her the next.

She lay in a darkness so deep not even ixchel eyes could pierce it. Somewhere in the bilge well, under the ancient floorboards of the hold. On her back, floating in the filth. It had taken determination even for an ixchel to reach this place.

She is unstable. She took to following me…

The water, like the ship, was still: there were no tides or waves in the basin to make it slosh about. Yet it was rising quickly. When her ears slipped underwater she could actually hear the bubbling of displaced air. The water should have been even fouler, here in the rank bottom of the boat, the place all slop and slime washed down to. But so much of the water was new, fresh from the crystalline gulf and the cold, gushing river that flowed through Masalym.