Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Pazel had kept one of the bread boxes near at hand. Now he was raising it with difficulty above his head. He pointed one sharp metal corner at the floor. “Stay back,” he said, and brought it down with all his might.

The resulting crash was very loud. Outside the room, voices exploded: “Pathkendle! Undrabust? What in the sweet Tree’s shade are you doing?”

The box had dented the floor, but not pierced it as he’d hoped. He raised it again, and slammed it down once more.

“Muketch! Stop it, damn you!”

This time the box gouged a pinhole through the tin. Pazel struck a third time, and the hole became a matchstick-length tear.

“Blow out the lamp, Neeps,” he said.

“Now? You’ll be blind as a mole!”

“Hurry!”

Neeps blew out the lamp, and darkness swallowed them. Pazel struck out blind, again, and again. His lungs were burning, his mind in a haze. Then the door flew open and someone leaped into the room.

“Muketch! Undrabust!”

It was Sergeant Haddismal. The Turach waved his hands before his face, choking on the fumes, and began to thrash among the bread boxes.

Pazel struck once more. Haddismal spotted them and lunged. He swatted Neeps from his path with one hand. On an impulse Pazel tossed his box aside, leaped in the air and came down hard on both heels.

The floor split like an awning stabbed by a knife. Pazel scraped through, bloodied, and was running before his feet touched the floor of the deck below.

Fulbreech glided past the gunports, the dormant cannon, the heaps of rigging struck down for repairs. Not hiding: he was the surgeon’s mate, after all, and this was the way to sickbay. No one would ask where he was bound, at this or any hour. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to find the ship so quiet. Hardly anyone about, save a few tarboys scrubbing pots in the galley, and the night shift on the main deck, shaping crosstrees for the mizzenmast. As if they were going to take her anywhere, he thought with a moment’s unease. But then he reminded himself that it no longer mattered. Once his master heard what was coming he would have no choice but to act.

I could take it now, he had told Fulbreech. Just as surely as she did, ages past, from that cavern in the Northern ice. But she was weaker than I, weaker by far. The Stone marked her, burned her hand, and from that first tiny incision the great Erithusme began to die. I have been more careful, Fulbreech-her fate will not be mine. All the same I will wait a little longer, if I can.

Thus had Arunis spoken at their last clandestine meeting, just hours after Thasha had come to Fulbreech in tears, and said, I told Pazel, Greysan. About us. He didn’t want to believe me, but he did at last. There’s no one between us anymore.

His master had smiled at that.

But Fulbreech knew there would be no smiles tonight. His master forbade any visit to his hiding place, his lair, between their scheduled meetings. Had threatened to skewer him alive if he did so, in fact-unless disaster threatened them, or threatened the Nilstone. In that case, you must come to me instantly. Decide nothing for yourself beyond the practical. You understand? While you are in my service you may entertain no philosophy, no questions of motive or end. You could never grasp the answers. Concern yourself with how, not why. You are my puppet, Fulbreech. You are my eyes, ears, hands. That would all change, his master had promised, in the life to come. But for now there was a disaster to avert.

Fulbreech quickened his pace. Just this once he was tempted to abandon the guise of the young medical apprentice. But could he bypass sickbay altogether? No, that would draw attention; he must walk through the ward at least. There was time. He’d been quick. Twenty minutes ago he’d still been fondling that girl.

He entered sickbay, with its reek of iodine and sweat, and to his unspeakable rage found Ignus Chadfallow on duty. The man was indefatigable. After midnight, and here he was, bothering patients, kneading their scalps, taking notes on the discharge from their eyeballs, poking that thermometer in whatever orifice was nearest to hand.

“Fulbreech! I’ve been looking for you, lad. Would you like to observe a nearly flawless vestibular spasm?”

“Nothing would please me more, Doctor,” said Fulbreech, “but I must beg your indulgence for ten minutes; I haven’t come for my regular rounds, you see.”

“Quite right,” said Chadfallow. “You’re here for Tarsel, naturally.”

“Tarsel,” said Fulbreech, eyes darting.

“You have a surgeon’s passion, Fulbreech. At noon I give you Lognom’s Joints and Their Injuries, and twelve hours later here you are, ready to set a man’s thumb.”

“As it happens, sir, I’m not entirely ready.”

“Good!” replied Chadfallow. “Overconfidence is a plague in our line of work. And such manipulations cause agony, nearly every time.”

Fulbreech gave a deferential nod. He had not even glanced at Joints and Their Injuries. “I hope you won’t hold this against me, sir.”

“Not at all, my boy.” Chadfallow stood and led him down the row. “Why, I too needed help restraining the patient, the first time I wrenched a thumb.”

The man in question, Tarsel the blacksmith, lay with his right hand floating in a tub of some aromatic broth of Chadfallow’s. The thumb, pointing backward, was swollen up like the thumb of a drowned man. Tarsel lay shaking. His good hand was clamped on the edge of his cot.

“Doctor,” he said, “I can’t wait no more.”

Chadfallow put his own hand in the tub. “Still warm,” he said. “The ligaments should be pliant enough. Go ahead, Mr. Fulbreech.”

“What, him?” cried Tarsel, raising himself in the bed. “Nay, Doctor, nay!”

“Silence!” said Chadfallow. “You’ve no cause for alarm. This is a simple procedure.”

“Simple for you,” said the blacksmith, “but this lad here, he’s just a clerk. And he’s nervous as a maid on her wedding day!”

Fulbreech was staring at the hideous thumb. How hard, he asked himself, could it be?

“Mr. Tarsel,” said Chadfallow, “you will kindly lower your voice. Men are sleeping. Besides, you risk distracting the surgeon, to your own inconvenience.”

“My inconvenience!” screamed Tarsel. “Look at him, he’s set to soil his breeches! Keep him away from me!”

“Shall we proceed, Mr. Fulbreech?” said the doctor.

Fulbreech never knew how he got through that wrestling match with the blacksmith, whose arm was muscled like the haunch of a bull, and whose screams must have woken men far beyond sickbay. He was not really aware, or much interested, in his own efforts to wrench the thumb. His mind was on the story he would have to tell to escape the doctor’s clutches. He finished piecing it together just as the blacksmith fainted dead away.

“Low pain tolerance,” said Chadfallow, placing two fingers on the man’s neck. “Ah well, finish up. You’ll have no trouble now.”

Somehow, brutally, Fulbreech snapped the thumb back into place, with a pop that made him fear he might be ill. Chadfallow’s praise was restrained: he might be blind to other matters, but in medicine little escaped him. Then Fulbreech explained that he would have to forgo the pleasure of the vestibular spasm, as he had actually been sent for headache tablets. “The captain’s own request, sir: he’s lying in the dark, quite unable to sleep.”

It was a perfect fib: even if the captain later denied asking for the pills, Chadfallow would attribute the contradiction to Rose’s lunacy. Chadfallow took a small vial out of a cabinet and tossed it to Fulbreech. Then he looked the youth squarely in the eye.

“You may wish to consult Lognom again,” he said.