Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

The junipers, he realised now, were arranged to hide a section of the iron fence around the gardens. The gaps were few and narrow. But framed in the largest, just beyond the fence, were the head and shoulders of an old but striking woman. She was tall and stern, grey eyes under a grey mane of hair, a face not so much wrinkled as creased with long thought. A royal face, Pazel thought, for he had been looking at royalty all morning; and yet there was something about this face that was like no other he had ever seen.

Her eyes met the Tholjassan's. Hercol kept very still, but it was like the stillness of a hunting hound tensed to spring. Then the woman drew a hood over her face and turned away. Pazel saw a pair of large, hard-faced men beside her, gripping her arms in the manner of body-guards. An instant later she was gone.

'What in the Pits?' muttered Pazel.

A hand touched his elbow. It was Neeps, looking rather flustered. 'Where've you been?' he demanded. 'Thasha will be here any minute, and Pacu's throwing a first-class fit.'

'You won't believe what I just saw.'

'Try me,' said Neeps.

Before Pazel could say more, a voice cried shrilly: 'Here she comes now! Boys! Boys!'

Neeps sighed. 'Come on, before she calls out the marines.'

They hurried back to the gate. The fact that they were Thasha's best friends did not matter a fig to Pacu Lapadolma. To her they were just tarboys, born to serve their betters, and nothing short of marrying royalty themselves could change that.

She snapped her fingers at them. 'Get in position! You' — she pointed at Pazel — 'must straighten your coat, and your hat, and keep your hair out of sight if possible. And there is a rose petal stuck to your shoe.'

Pazel raked uselessly at his hair. They had already thought of a dozen choice insults for the general's daughter. Neeps for his part was only awaiting the end of the crisis to deliver them.

'Do you have the Blessing-Band?'

Pazel tapped his vest pocket, where the silk ribbon lay coiled. 'Nothing's happened to it since the last time you asked.'

The young woman might have snapped a retort had Thasha not appeared just then at the gate.

'Darling!' said Pacu, seizing her arm.

Thasha firmly detached the hand. 'The last person who called me 'darling' was poisoning my father, Pacu.'

'What a dreadful comparison, you heartless thing! Syrarys never meant the word, and I love you like a sister. But you're simply gorgeous, Thasha Isiq! Yes, a sister, that's the exact sensation in my heart!'

'You're an only child.'

Pacu rescued an orchid that was sliding free of Thasha's love-knot. She gave an inquisitive sniff, and her eyes widened. 'Have you put on some new perfume? Or is it your father's cologne?'

'Never mind that,' said Thasha quickly. 'Be an angel, Pacu. Fetch me a glass of water.'

When she had gone Thasha turned and looked at the tarboys. 'Darlings!' she said.

'Thasha,' said Pazel. 'You're swaying.'

'You'd be swaying too if you tipped left and right.'

Neeps' jaw dropped. 'Lord Rin,' he whispered. 'She's drunk.'

Pazel leaned closer, sniffing. 'Brandy! Oh Thasha, that was a bad idea.'

'Yes,' she said. 'It took me about half a minute to realise that. But I'm all right.'

Hercol returned, with Mr Fiffengurt at his side. 'The girl's been drinking,' Neeps informed them. 'Eat something, Thasha. Anything. Rose petals. Grass. Make yourself sick before-'

'Neeps,' said Pazel. 'She's not exactly falling down.'

'Ha!' said Thasha. 'Not yet.'

'Don't joke about that,' hissed Fiffengurt. 'You shouldn't have drunk a blary thing! Foolish, foolish, mistress!'

'That it certainly was,' said Hercol. 'More than any of us, you need your wits about you. But we must make the best of it now. Perhaps the drink will steady you for the ordeal to come. Hello, Admiral.'

Eberzam Isiq had arrived at the gate, quite winded. He waved at Thasha in distress. 'She has — I objected fiercely — but the fact is-'

'We noticed, Excellency,' said Pazel. 'Don't worry. Neeps and I will stay close to her.'

'He will worry,' said Thasha. 'And just wait — he's going to try once more to tell us all what to do, even though he has no idea and will have to make up some useless flimflam on the spot. He's an old buffoon.'

'No he's not,' said Pazel, startling everyone. 'Leave off baiting him, won't you? Think of what Ramachni said: we're a clan, like Diadrelu's clan, and we have to work together.'

'Dri's clan took her title away,' said Thasha.

'And we are humans, not ixchel,' said Hercol. 'There are worthier comparisons. But Pazel speaks a vital truth. Our enemies bicker; we must not, for whatever advantage we may have can be lost in a heartbeat.'

At that moment King Oshiram spotted Thasha and her father. He gestured to his guard captain, who sounded a note on a boar's-tusk hunting-horn: the signal for the march to the shrine. The dignitaries rose and hurried to their places. Thasha looked Pazel swiftly in the eye. It was an involuntary look, a reflex. It was the first time since daybreak that he had glimpsed her fear.

The road to the Mzithrini shrine stretched for a gentle mile, but some of the older dukes and bishwas had not walked so far in years (or their whole lives, in some cases); and the Templar monks at the head of the procession were much given to their gongs, and stopped dead for their ritual beatings; and the Boy Prince of Fuln was stung by a wasp; and goats defiled the road, leading to an ablutionary summit of all the attendant holy men. So it was that a walk the young people might have finished in half an hour stretched to thrice that time and more.

Treaty Day was a holiday, naturally. From all over Simja the common folk had come, and from neighbouring islands, and well beyond. At first light they had rushed to the city square to watch the Rite of the Firelords, in which masked figures representing the Night Gods were driven back to their dark kingdom by dancers with torches, who then proclaimed Simjalla ready to receive the bride. Later when Thasha approached the Cactus Gardens, the crowd stretched far ahead of her, and so again when she left the city by the North Gate.

Everyone who had entered the city seemed to have raced out of it again, eager for another glimpse of the procession. Beyond the wall the land was mostly field and heath, but wherever a barn or goat-shed or granary abutted the road it was covered with well-wishers, crammed in the windows and on the rooftops. Others had scaled the stormbreak pines that rose in a thin stand halfway between the city and the shrine.

But most simply swarmed alongside. They could draw only so near: the king had caused a chain to be stretched waist-high on either side of the road, and the palace guard saw to it that the crowd stayed on the outside. But there were exceptions. Those especially favoured by King Oshiram had the freedom of the road. So did certain musicians, city elders, the rich and their voluminous families, children in school uniform, and a few dozen others whose form of distinction no one could recall.

In the last category was the same pale young man who had conducted Hercol to his meeting with the woman behind the fence. He was alone as before, although he greeted certain of the wealthier citizens with a bow. He trotted along quite close to Thasha's inner circle, hands in pockets, and now and then glanced at them sharply with a bright, knowing smile. His expression suggested a great desire to please. But he unsettled the wedding party, for none of them knew why he was there.

'If he smiles at me again I'll throw a rock at him,' growled Neeps.

'You do that,' said Pazel.

'Don't you dare, Undrabust!' said Fiffengurt. 'You stand for your birth country, and must do proud by her. But what do you suppose that hoppity-smiley fellow wants? It's blary plain he wants something. Each time I think he's about to speak he runs off again. And now there's a dog!'