Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Pazel mentioned the looks to Neeps. “You see? These blokes aren’t unfriendly-at least no more than they were that first night. They’re afraid of us, sure. But this not-talking business: it’s coming from somewhere else. I’d bet my right foot they’ve been ordered not to speak.”

“Maybe,” said Neeps, watching the baskets collect on the quarterdeck. “Or maybe it’s spreading, that old woman’s idea about us bringing the end of the world. Maybe they even think we have a choice about it. ‘Treat us nice, see, or die in storms of fire.’ ”

After the sausage came pies-round, glistening, stuffed with meat and curious vegetables and aromatic herbs. Rose fed his men in reverse order of rank: tarboys and ordinary seamen first, then rated sailors, Turachs, petty officers, lieutenants. The senior officers waited stoically: they had known all along that they would be last. Rose was merely applying the Sailing Code, and most of them knew the wisdom of the old law. Nothing would break a crew’s loyalty faster than injustice with food.

But there was no shortage. Fresh bread followed, and olives cured in wine, and small cuts of fish wrapped in aromatic leaves, and a second round of pies stuffed with sweet orange tubers and sprinkled with a spice that tasted like nutmeg and licorice at once and yet was neither. There was no shortage. They ate and they ate. Mr. Bolutu sat with his back to a hatch comb, using both hands, and Pazel saw tears in his eyes.

Twenty years since he tasted his people’s food, he thought. And suddenly he wondered if he would ever again bite into an Ormali plum.

For a time the Chathrand was a happy ship. The tarboys sang a tarboy shanty, but collapsed in disarray before the obscene punch line (even this was more than they had ever dared in Rose’s presence). The steerage passengers wolfed down everything they were given. The door of the forecastle house was opened just long enough for five baskets to be slid within, and all who stood near heard Lady Oggosk’s delighted cackle. When the dlomu sent over boxes of sticky mul as a final offering, the sailors even managed to finish a few out of politeness, though no one had yet explained what they were.

Hercol brought Felthrup, Jorl and Suzyt to the topdeck, tied the dogs to a steel deadeye and brought them bread and fish. The dogs ate. Felthrup sat snug by Thasha’s knee, and ate. Deep in the ship, someone managed to wake the augrongs; their groans of monstrous satisfaction made the dlomu freeze, and the humans laugh.

Even the ixchel celebrated, in their way. They were in shock over Taliktrum’s disappearance (the rumors had escaped already, and sprouted hydra-heads: He’s a runaway, a coward, some said, and others, He’s off talking with the lord of the dlomu. He and Talag planned it all from the start) but they still had appetites. They ate well, but in shifts, guarding one another as ixchel always did at mealtime. Only Ensyl ate alone, not quite joining the humans but shunned by her people.

Pazel, Neeps and Marila sat in a crowd of tarboys near the spankermast. Marila made little chirping sounds of happiness as she chewed her fish. Neeps dipped morsels of bread in the juice from the meat pies, grinning as he popped each one into his mouth. Overhead, the dlomu watched in fascination, murmuring and occasionally pointing.

“Feeding time at the zoo,” said Marila, glancing up at them.

Neeps frowned at her. “There’s a cheery thought. What put that into your head?”

“The way you eat,” said Marila.

The tarboys laughed, and so did Pazel, for there was nothing mean or cutting in the other boys’ voices: they appeared ready, for the moment anyway, to let Pazel and Neeps back into their fold. About blary time, he thought.

Then he saw Thasha a short distance away, eating olives from Fulbreech’s hand. She was turned away and did not see him-but Fulbreech did, and raised an eyebrow in his direction, a wry salute.

Rage went through Pazel, sudden and murderous. He turned away with the remains of his meal. And found himself facing Ignus Chadfallow.

“Hello,” said Pazel, not very warmly.

Captivity had aged the doctor. His craggy face was stained with soot that no amount of washing had yet been able to remove. His deep-set eyes shone with a new, more desperate fervor. The nose Pazel had broken on Bramian had healed with a subtle clockwise twist.

“I’ve been looking for you since yesterday, Pazel,” he said at last. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

Pazel shrugged. “I’m here now,” he said.

They had crossed paths twice since the doctor gained his freedom. Both times Pazel had hurried by, mumbling about his duties. He had no desire to be cornered and questioned by the man.

“You should eat less sausage, more fish and greens,” said the doctor. Neeps slid a whole sausage into his mouth.

Pazel scowled. “What is it you want, Ignus? Missed trying out drugs on me?”

“May I sit down?”

Neeps and Marila glanced at each other and edged away. Pazel sighed, and Chadfallow lowered himself stiffly to the deck. He was not holding a plate. Instead he cradled a leather pouch in both hands. It appeared to contain some object no larger than a matchbox. Chadfallow held it as one might a fine glass figurine.

“I’m a doctor,” he said. “I took an oath to defend life.”

Pazel gave him a discouraging look. No philosophy, please.

“Would you like to know what I’ve been asking myself this morning?” Chadfallow continued.

“Dying to,” said Pazel.

“What if it were you in there? What would I be thinking now? Would I have even stopped to think?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Pazel. “In where?”

Chadfallow lifted his eyes in the direction of the forecastle house. Pazel grew still.

“Hercol is my oldest friend, after Thasha’s father,” said Chadfallow, “and he loved an ixchel woman, desperately. I honestly don’t know what to do.”

“Ignus,” said Pazel, trying to keep his eyes off the pouch, “what’s going on? What is that you’re carrying?”

“I’ve just told you,” said Chadfallow, “the antidote.”

Pazel gasped. “The permanent antidote? What, another pill?”

“Another ten pills. One for every remaining hostage. At least, that is what the note said. When I reached my desk in the sickbay the pouch was waiting for me.”

“But that’s fantastic! You can set them free!”

“Softly, you fool,” hissed Chadfallow.

Glancing about, Pazel quickly understood. There were ixchel all over the deck. And men who had been taught to hate ixchel all their lives. Thasha, he noticed suddenly, was now seated alone; Fulbreech had moved off to starboard. Perhaps they’re fighting, thought Pazel, with a vague sense of hope.

“Why can’t it always be this way?” said Chadfallow suddenly, his eyes sweeping the deck. “Peace and cooperation, sanity. There’s enough room on this ship for men and ixchel. And Rin knows there’s enough room in Alifros. Why do we fight? Why don’t we get on with living, while we’re alive?”

Now that the doctor pointed it out, the scene did look more harmonious than ever before. Men and ixchel milled about together, not exactly with warmth, but with a sated sort of tolerance, as if the feasting had crowded their mutual animosities to one side. At the starboard rail a Turach was holding an ixchel sword in the palm of his hand, squinting at it, while its owner chattered on about the workmanship. Beyond the circle of tarboys, several topmen actually seemed to be trading jokes with the little people.

Diadrelu, Pazel thought. You should be here. I’m looking at your dream.

But of course he wasn’t, really. The jokes had a bitter edge. Each side had too many deaths to blame on the other. Rose was an infamous crawly-killer, and others-Uskins, Alyash, Haddismal-were almost as bad.