Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“Before I sleep, sir,” promised Fulbreech, and slipped out.

All this time Ensyl had waited in the ceiling of the darkened passage. Her people had once had a spy-hole beneath a cot in sickbay, but it had been deemed too risky: Chadfallow liked to rearrange the furniture, and to inspect the walls for fungus with a magnifying glass. She kept watch now above a spring-loaded trapdoor. Fortunately there was no other entrance to sickbay.

What were they doing stalking Greysan Fulbreech? A fool’s watch, a fool’s errand-or the most vital task on Alifros? Ensyl had no way of knowing which of these she had undertaken. But Dri had died believing in Hercol as well as loving him. And who was she, Ensyl, if not the guardian of her mistress’ beliefs?

It had grown harder, though. Hercol explained so little. Worse, he had become morbidly obsessed with Thasha: her moods, fancies, above all her romance with the surgeon’s mate. Was he another Dastu, another spy for Sandor Ott? Ensyl had demanded. Hercol had begged her not to ask, and more strangely, not even to think overmuch about what they were doing.

It weighed on her, that last request. Don’t think? Blind obedience? That was part of what Dri called “the madness of Ixphir House,” the disorder she feared would ruin the clan. And what if Hercol was wrong about Fulbreech? What if he was no more than he seemed? A fuse was burning, Dri had whispered once: a fuse that will end in a blast to set the world on fire. The Nilstone, she’d believed, was the explosive at the fuse’s end, only waiting for its spark. How much time did they have? How many more mistakes could they survive?

Then Fulbreech stepped back into the passage, and Ensyl forgot her doubts. The youth’s eyes were desperate, his mouth tight and strained. Those were not the eyes of one whose work was done. He slid to the left of the door and stood there, back to the wall, like a hunted thing. Seeing no one in the corridor, he suddenly darted across it and threw open the door opposite sickbay.

Ensyl swore. Hercol was right all along. For the place Fulbreech had entered was a tiny pump room, a service cabin for the machinery that lifted water from the bilge or the open sea, for dousing shipboard fires. It was probably the least-visited cabin on the deck. No other door led into the chamber. Nothing stored there was used in sickbay.

She pulled the trapdoor open wide. The passage was deserted all the way to the bend at the foremast. But just around that bend, she knew, waited her accomplice. Dangling upside down, she spread her lips, tightened the muscles in her throat and produced a high, soft cheeet: very much like a cricket’s song. An answering shadow flickered at the bend in the passage. Ensyl nodded to herself, jerked her head back inside and sealed the door.

On soundless feet she ran to the space above the pump room. Four large bilge-pipes rose through the ceiling and continued to the upper gun deck. Like all handiwork on the Chathrand they were tight-fitted, built to allow no seepage of wind or moisture from one deck to another. But what luck-there had been damage here as well: a seam between board and pipe had opened, by warping or trauma to the ship. It was no more than the width of two fingers-two ixchel fingers-but it allowed Ensyl a view of half the chamber.

Fulbreech had struck a match and now was lighting a candle stub. Ensyl watched as he glued it with its own wax to the top of a cabinet. Then he pulled something else from his pocket: a brass jar, very small, no larger than a cherry. Lifting the lid, Fulbreech inserted a finger and scooped out a tiny amount of white cream. This he proceeded to rub into his palm. He rubbed thoroughly, entirely focused on his task. Then he put the jar back in his pocket and turned to face the door.

That’s it? thought Ensyl, for already Fulbreech was reaching out (with the cream-coated hand) for the knob. But no, he wasn’t exactly. The hand was aiming for a space above the doorknob. He moved slowly, and with trepidation, as though reaching into a darkened burrow. Then suddenly the hand stopped. The fingers probed, gripped, tightened. Fulbreech inhaled sharply. He stood as though holding a second doorknob, mounted above the first, but Ensyl could see plainly that he was holding only air.

Until, suddenly, he wasn’t. She gasped, and thanked Mother Sky that her voice was an ixchel’s and could not be overheard. Fulbreech was holding a second doorknob. She had seen no flash or puff of smoke. The knob was simply, suddenly there.

Fulbreech was shaking with fright. His free hand seized a pipe and held it rigidly, like a backstay in a gale. Slowly, with his eyes tightly closed, he turned the knob.

Something terrible happened. The door flew wide, Fulbreech stumbled, Ensyl drew back her head. The candle was extinguished-and strangely, no light at all came from the passage beyond. But in the last instant of light, Ensyl thought she had seen through the open door-but not into the passageway. Instead she had glimpsed a strange, dark space, not framed with wood but carved from solid rock. Ensyl had sensed some great bulky shape lunging forward, but then the light had died.

Mother Sky, what’s happening?

A low sound, half slither, half shuffle, rose from darkness. Ensyl felt like running; she felt like a child in a darkened bedroom in the clan house, frightened by the echo of human footfalls. But there was nothing human about the sound coming from the darkness beyond the door.

Fulbreech’s voice came out hoarse and aghast. “M-master?” he said.

He was answered, if answer it was, by an assortment of foul vocalizations. They were mouth-sounds, maybe, but they formed no words. The sounds were sucking, gurgling, the licking of foul slobbery lips. Suddenly Fulbreech moaned, as though he had touched something unspeakably loathsome, or been touched by it. He stumbled backward; she heard his body collide with the pipes. The door creaked shut again, and clicked.

For almost a full minute there was silence. Then a voice said, “Have you brought another match?”

The voice belonged to Arunis.

“Y-y-”

“Relight the candle, Fulbreech, and tell me why you have disturbed my rest.”

Pazel knew the Turachs were on his heels. Their pounding boots sounded right above him; they could probably hear his own progress through the sleepy ship almost as well as he heard theirs. But they would never catch him. The ship’s four great ladderways all ended on the orlop deck: there were of course other staircases, but you had to know where to find them. It kept pirates from racing straight to the hold-and a few weeks ago, mutant rats from swarming straight to the topdeck. The Turachs would have to run all the way to the tonnage hatch, where they could swing down, if catching Pazel was worth such acrobatics. Otherwise they would press on to the midship scuttle. Pazel was running for that narrow stair himself: it was the fastest way up from the mercy deck as well.

But already his heart was sinking. He had escaped the bread room, but the Turachs knew the layout of the ship as well as he did, and they were larger and faster. They’d be waiting for him at the scuttle. They’d be waiting on every Gods-damned stair.

He stopped. It was hopeless. A weird alliance of his friends and enemies was determined to keep him from getting anywhere near Thasha. And maybe that was sign enough that he ought to sit still, just as Marila had told Neeps to do. Something that could make Fiffengurt and Haddismal work together was surely a matter of life and death.

Unless…

He laughed at a sudden, ridiculous idea. Could Rose be marrying them? Could that be how Thasha meant to “end it”? Were they keeping him away out of pity, for fear he’d attack Fulbreech on the spot?

Impossible. A ship’s captain could marry anyone, it was true… but Thasha couldn’t be that far gone. Could she?