Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“Tell me about the note, Ignus,” said Pazel quietly.

“It was vile and sarcastic,” said Chadfallow. “Play God, it said. Hand out life and death like sweets to children. The ones who die first may be the luckiest. It was written by an ixchel hand, I’m certain of that. And the ink was not yet dry.”

Pazel looked away, and for several minutes he and the doctor just studied the deck. No, it was not all good. Taliktrum’s Dawn Soldiers were eating in a huddle apart, scowling at those of their brethren who mingled most freely with the humans. A Turach glanced from a pie to a group of ixchel and back again; he frowned, as though concluding that they had touched it.

“You can’t just let them out,” whispered Pazel.

“No,” said Chadfallow, “not yet.”

“You should hide the pills.”

After a moment the doctor nodded. “Hide them, and negotiate. Once we are certain who speaks for the little people. Is it Talag, now that his son has fled? Or Taliktrum’s security chief, the one called Saturyk? In either case, if we are intelligent we may prevent bloodshed altogether.”

Their eyes met. To his own surprise Pazel actually smiled. “Diplomacy, Ignus?” he said.

The doctor inclined his head. “My specialty.”

They both laughed-and it hurt to share a laugh with Chadfallow, after so much betrayal and deceit. But it felt good, too. Ignus had once been like a second father. He had even saved Pazel from slavery. After Pazel’s real father, Captain Gregory, abandoned them, Chadfallow had protected the family, and at last revealed his consuming love for Pazel’s mother. But halfway across the Nelluroq, Mr. Druffle (who had also known Gregory) had told Pazel that the doctor’s love for Suthinia had begun years earlier-that it was, in fact, the very thing that had driven Gregory away. Pazel had begged Chadfallow to deny it. The doctor had only replied that things were more complicated than they appeared.

Pazel doubted he could ever forgive Chadfallow for breaking up his family. Still, in the midst of so much waste and ruin and killing, that sort of sin, loving another man’s wife, suddenly appeared very small. Of course, Chadfallow had done other things, darker and more suspicious, things that love could not explain.

“You let Arunis board the ship, Ignus,” he said. “That day in the Straits of Simja. Why in the Pits did you do that?”

“He was about to kill Thasha with that necklace. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

Pazel scowled. He’d asked himself the same question, many times. No answer he could come up with made him feel good.

“You would have done so out of love for the girl,” said the doctor. “I might have wished to do so out of love for her father, but I would not have. No, I would have let her die, if I had not felt-”

“What?”

Chadfallow drew a slow breath. “A hunch, nothing more,” he said at last. “An instinct, that her death would bring a greater disaster than any of us could foresee. I feel it still. In the way Hercol speaks of her; the way Ramachni called her ‘my champion.’ They have never trusted me with the whole story of Thasha Isiq. Nor have any of you.”

Pazel averted his eyes. He thinks I know more than I do. But he’s right, I haven’t trusted him. How could I, how could I, after “Ignus,” he heard himself say, “why didn’t you warn us of the invasion? You could have saved us then and there. We could have escaped.”

It was the question he had never dared ask, the question that had burned inside him for almost six years. Chadfallow looked as though he had expected it.

“Escape?” he said. “Do you think Suthinia Sadralin Pathkendle would have been content to escape, to run off into the Highlands with her children? Or”-he hesitated, swallowed; his face was suddenly vulnerable and young-“with me?”

“Definitely not with you,” said Pazel. “Oh, damn it-that’s not what I meant-”

“She would have raised the alarm. She would have stormed out into the city and told everyone the Arqualis were coming.”

“They’d never have listened. They all thought she was crazy.”

“But they did not think I was,” said Chadfallow. “Suthinia would have named me as her source immediately. And I could not afford to lie. I was doing everything I could to negotiate Ormael’s peaceful surrender, with guarantees that the city would not be looted, the people enslaved or slaughtered, the women raped.”

Pazel shut his eyes. Neda, he thought.

“Admiral Isiq agreed,” said Chadfallow, “although it meant disobeying his Emperor. We had it all arranged, Pazel. Not a shot was to be fired, not a woman touched. The Turachs hated the plan, but we had them under control. Tenuous control, boy. Any friction and we knew they’d riot. It was your own lord, the Suzain of Ormael, who provided that friction. He dug in his heels and swore Ormael would fight to the last man.”

Pazel’s head felt rather light. “Against all those Turach battalions? Against that whole mucking fleet?”

“Why do you think the palace was so badly damaged? They had to pry him out like an oyster from a shell. Your fool of a leader could not accept the simple truth, that his days of courtesans and clotted cream were over. He preferred to bask in glory-in the bonfire Arqual made of your city.”

“But for Rin’s sake, Ignus! Why didn’t Thasha’s father just tell me all this? Did he think I wouldn’t believe him?”

“You had just called him a mass murderer, as I recall,” said Chadfallow.

Pazel squeezed his eyes shut in pure frustration. A peaceful surrender. It wouldn’t have been justice, but it wouldn’t have been that, either: the burning and looting, the blood and death and rape. The terrible words of the eguar rang in his ears: Acceptance is agony, denial is death.

Suddenly he realized that he was once more staring at the leather pouch with the antidote inside. He started. “Pitfire, Ignus, you shouldn’t be walking around with that thing!”

“I don’t know where to hide it,” said Chadfallow. “Someone is still doing Ott’s work, you know. I find small items moved in my cabin, and in the surgery too.”

“Well put it in your pocket, for Rin’s sake. Are you daft?”

Chadfallow glared at him, then sighed and looked down at the pouch.

“Listen,” said Pazel, “why don’t you let me hide them in the stateroom? There’s no safer place. Thasha hasn’t shut me out, yet, and even if she does, Neeps or Marila could-”

“Hello there, Doctor.”

The voice, loud and abrasively cheerful, belonged to Alyash. He had sidled up to them without a sound. Above the grotesque scars on his throat and chin he was smiling, and his eyes were bright and merry. His hands dangled empty at his sides.

Chadfallow started to get to his feet, but Alyash put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Didn’t you blary eat? You’ve got to get your strength back, after all those weeks locked in a cage.”

“Don’t answer, he’s up to something,” said Pazel in Ormali. Alyash just went on smiling.

Chadfallow looked nervously at the bosun’s hand. “I ate my fill,” he said.

“No discomfort, then? Mr. Elkstem had a little discomfort.”

“Of course he did,” said Chadfallow, sounding a bit like a cross professor. “He ate sausage. He spurned my advice. When one has been confined to a small space for weeks with little to eat, the gut contracts and heavy foods become the enemy, for a while.”

“Ignus,” said Pazel.

“Elkstem should have concentrated on the vegetables,” Chadfallow went on. “That is what I did. Naturally my stomach is at peace.”

Alyash’s grin widened. “The vegetables, you say?”

“And for my circulation, an ounce of fish.”