Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Had she lost the wineskin? No, here it was about her neck. She turned her head to the side and drank an ample throatful. An entertainment. A prophet’s plaything.

Already she could touch the boards above her, when she raised her hand. She imagined the wound in the hull. Poor Chathrand, stabbed in the darkness by a fellow ship. Wound a body and it bleeds. Wound a ship and it turns to drink, and never stops.

Yes, she had followed him. But not from jealousy-not that alone. She had feared for him, feared the demons in his eyes, the agony his father dismissed as mere fatigue. She had been born to fight those demons, protect those eyes. She had been raised with a ravenous addiction, like the children born to deathsmokers, slaves to something heartless before they even learned to speak. All her life she had searched for it, her deathsmoke, the balm for her wound. In Auxlei City, Emledri, Sorrophran, Besq. And one day her grandfather had opened a service door in the Assembly Hall and said, “Look: that is the young man sent from Etherhorde by his father, seeking crew for an assault on the Great Ship. We will dine with him tonight; so comb your hair, and be pleasant.”

She had thought him strange and severe, bickering with his elders, stabbing at a hull diagram spread out on a table. “We enter here. We will hold this space.” Then the young lord had glanced up and noticed her, and studied her young body frankly, and she had made herself walk away from the door with her chin high and her face indifferent, as though he were the needy one, as though his gaze had not gone through her like a spear, and three weeks later she was his lover on the Chathrand.

The water raised her to within a foot of the boards. She drank again, then slid the lanyard of the wineskin over her shoulder and pushed it away. No one had seen her. No one knew that she had not fled with him, had not been invited-had not even been dismissed. He had not thought it necessary to dismiss her, before abandoning the ship; one did not dismiss a toy.

But this toy had tracked him last night all the same.

She had tracked him to the secret place, the masterfully hidden door in the ceiling above the scrap-metals storeroom, beyond which the House Treasures were stored in a strongbox bolted to the inner plank. There were ixchel guards within twenty feet, port and starboard, fore and aft, guarding every known approach to this area, but even they did not know precisely where the strongbox stood. And none of them knew about the door.

She had watched him open the box with the key around his neck, stared in amazement as he set aside the ancient Cyrak Tapestries from the main hall of Ixphir House, the last vials of the blane sleep-drug, the sacred swallow-bones with which the flying suits could be repaired. He kissed the urn that held the ashes of his great-grandmother Deijanka, the saint. Then he took out the waxed-cotton bundle that held the antidote pills and broke the seal. Myett held her breath as he extracted two of the big white pills, cradling them in his arm as he sealed the bundle anew. He returned everything but these two pills to the strongbox, locked it-and after a moment’s hesitation, slipped the key from around his neck and wedged it securely beneath the box.

That last act had mystified her. Better than anyone (she hoped it was better than anyone) Myett knew how he refused to be parted from that key. Night after carnal night it had hung between them, crushed against her breast, striking her chin in time with his soft sounds of ecstasy. Only he and Talag and Ludunte, the clan-appointed Treasurer, had keys to the strongbox. Why in the Pits would Taliktrum leave his behind?

She was bumping the ceiling now. Her nose, her knees. The air that remained was close and stale.

And in her addict’s haze she had imagined that he was going to meet a lover. She had thought herself that important: that Lord Taliktrum would take pains to deceive her, to spare her feelings when he hungered for another’s touch. But all the same she could not stop following him.

She had tracked him all the way to the tool room. He had heard her only once, and not bothered to investigate, thinking he heard a mouse or beetle. To be so close to him, alone one final time, and be mistaken for vermin.

Then Fiffengurt had stomped and blundered into the room, and the horrible words had spilled out. Myett was never suitable. It had been tempting to kill the quartermaster, since she could not kill her lord. Something had to die, of course. After words like that something always did.

She could no longer float. She was treading water, pressing her lips above the surface, into the last inch of air. Was that the ship’s bell, was it morning? No matter. This was the place that morning never touched.

She makes a spectacle of her charms.

No one would find her here.

27 Ilbrin 941

The rain was gone and the sun had banished the morning chill when Prince Olik returned to the Masalym shipyard. His arrival, like his departure, was sudden and unceremonious: he fairly ran out along the walkway, fifty feet ahead of his attendants and guards. Even before he came abreast of the midship rail, he was calling loudly for permission to board. Captain Rose was duly notified, and without issuing a response of any kind he marched out to face the prince.

“You may not board,” he said, “until you are prepared to inform me when my crew is to be fed, and whether or not the city means to help us save the ship.”

The prince stopped short; evidently he had thought the asking of permission no more than a formal ritual. “I see-well, it doesn’t matter,” he said distractedly. “I’ll just-walk.”

He proceeded to do just that, marching back the way he came, waving his entourage into an about-face even as they closed on him. Dumbfounded, Rose and his crew watched him go. “Mad as a drunkard poet,” was Mr. Fiffengurt’s verdict. Then the watchman relayed an observation from the quarterdeck: the water in the basin had once more started to rise.

It was true: some further sluice-gate must have been closed, for the river was filling the basin (and lifting the Chathrand) at a rate of four inches a minute, as measured against the walkway.

Then the crisscrossed ropes that had kept the ship bobbing in place went slack, and sank under the water. From the north side of the basin, two small rowing craft approached the ship, dragging new cables. These were duly offered by the silent dlomu, who indicated with gestures that they should be attached to the port and starboard catheads. After some hesitation, Rose so ordered.

No sooner were the lines secured than they grew taut, lifting out of the water and turning Chathrand gently in place. Slowly and smoothly, they guided her across the basin.

What followed was surprisingly simple. The towlines, it soon became clear, were guiding the Chathrand toward one of the rectangular berths they had spotted the first night, along a part of the basin’s rim. These were long, squared-off tongues of water, lined with cargo cranes, loading platforms, watchtowers and buildings that might have been warehouses, or army barracks. The Chathrand was moving toward the largest of these berths.

Like a great beast being coaxed into a stable, the ship glided into the enclosure. Now the crew could perceive a pair of enormous capstans revolving on the quay. Dozens of horses, short of stature but muscled like elephants, strained at their harnesses to turn the great devices, while small dogs moved among them with short, precise dashes and darts, yipping, coaxing. The dlomu themselves seemed barely involved. But at the very last, they stepped among the working animals and eased the ship into position with exceeding care. It was a good fit: when she came to rest it was plain that the Chathrand was only some forty feet shorter than the berth itself.