Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

One day Captain Gregory's ship was spotted near Ormael, with Gregory himself at her wheel: but now the ship was flying the colours of the Mzithrin. Gregory was at once renamed Pathkendle the Traitor, and Pazel's family shared in his disgrace. The neighbours looked through them; Pazel's friends discovered that they had never really liked him at all. Neda, who had taken work on a goat farm, paid them brief, resentful visits, leaving gifts of sour cheese, but she never again spent a night under Suthinia's roof.

Only Chadfallow was unchanged. He still came to dinner — brought dinner, usually, for Suthinia was all but destitute — and drilled Pazel in Arquali for an hour. He was the best thing that could have happened to a traitor's son. Until he became the worst.

The night before the invasion — about which Chadfallow had breathed not a word — Pazel had found himself seated beside the doctor, under Neda's orange tree, assembling a kite. Pazel could not recall much of what they talked about (his mind was on the doctor's present more than his words) but the last part of the conversation he would never forget.

'Ignus, where did my mother go? That time she ran away.'

'You should ask her, my boy.'

Pazel said nothing; they both knew he had asked a thousand times.

'Well,' said the doctor reluctantly, 'let us say that she went to be with her own people awhile.'

'My father never came back. What if she hadn't either?'

'She came back. You're her son and she loves you.'

'What if she hadn't?'

Pazel's question was a plea. As if he could already sense them, somehow: the fire and the death shrieks, the enslavements, the notion of rape, the battle axe history was about to take to his world.

Chadfallow looked at him squarely. Lowering his voice, he said, 'If she had not returned I would have taken you to Etherhorde, and made a proper Arquali of you, and sent you to a proper school. One of the three High Academies, to be sure. And when you graduated, you would not have received a pat on the head, but a line of your own in the Endless Scroll, which the Young Scholars of the Imperium have signed for eight centuries. And you should have had friends who loved you for your cleverness instead of being jealous of it. And though you may not believe me, in a few years you would have forgotten these dullards and jackanapes, and been at home as never before.'

Pazel was dumbstruck. He couldn't possibly deserve all that. Chadfallow looked at him, almost smirking — until Suthinia appeared from nowhere, pushed the doctor back in his chair, and smacked him hard.

'You'll take him when they bury me, Ignus,' she said. Then she grabbed Pazel by the arm and marched him into the house.

'Mother, Mother,' Pazel said as they rushed up the stairs. 'He meant if I was alone, if something happened to you. Let go. You don't understand.'

'I understand more than you think,' she snapped.

She was hurting his arm. 'You're an animal,' he shouted, inspired. 'I wish you had stayed away. I want to go with him to Etherhorde.'

She dragged him into the washroom, thrust him before the mirror. 'Look at your skin. In Etherhorde they'd take you for a tarboy, or a slave.'

He bellowed right back at her: 'I'm not the colour of Ormalis either!' Which was true, if just barely: he had a bit too much caramel in his complexion, and his hair was too brown.

Suthinia shrugged. 'You're close enough.'

'I look like you,' he sobbed. At that moment it was the worst insult that occurred to him. His mother began to laugh, which enraged him all the more. 'Etherhorde's a proper city,' he shouted. 'Ignus belongs there, and so could I, if you'd just leave me alone.'

She would leave him the very next day, and possibly for ever, but at that moment his words had a curious effect. Her laughter and her fury vanished, and she looked at him with a kind of sad wonder, as if she had only just understood what they were talking about.

'You couldn't belong there,' she said. 'We will never belong among those who belong. The best thing to do is to cobble together some tribe of outcasts, when you're old enough to find them.'

'But Ignus-'

'Ignus is a dreamer. He's thinking of some other boy, some life that might have been, if the world were very different. I don't care if you believe what I say. Just remember it, love, and decide for yourself who told the truth.'

Pazel stumbled, bashing Thasha with his shins. Her body was growing heavy. Fiffengurt was hobbling, favouring a knee.

'This blary guard's right on top of us,' he said in a low voice, glancing nervously at Pazel. 'You'll never be able to — you know.'

'Sure he will,' said Neeps. 'You didn't see us in the Crab Fens, with the Volpeks behind us. My mate here can run like a whiplash hound.'

Pazel smiled grimly. He had a stitch in his side. 'I'll lose them, don't worry,' he said.

'They may not even try to stop you,' said Hercol. But his voice was reluctant, as though something else entirely was worrying his thoughts.

Fiffengurt took no notice. 'I'll miss you, Pathkendle,' he said gruffly, 'damned troublemaker though you are.'

Pazel dropped his eyes. He would miss them too. For somewhere in the heart of the city he was going to slip away. He had to do it; even Hercol had agreed. There was a fight to be waged on the Chathrand, but there was another, just as vital, ashore: the fight to expose the conspiracy. No better chance would come than this one, with delegations from every land packed into Simjalla. And no better person existed for the job than Pazel. He had learned something from his Gift: when you spoke to people in their own language, they tended to listen. Pazel would speak the truth to everyone he met — servants, sailors, kings — until it was the talk of Simja, and no power on earth could suppress it.

'You won't be missing him long,' said Neeps vehemently. 'Just watch, he'll be aboard the Chathrand by nightfall.'

No one said anything to that. There was no telling what would become of Pazel, once he started speaking the truth. It was more likely that sunset would find him in some kitchen, cowering under the sink, or at the bottom of a laundry hamper, or in a temple belfry, hiding from the Secret Fist. And then only if he managed to win someone's trust. If he sounded not just clever, but sane.

They had carried Thasha as far as the stormbreak pines when the Fulbreech youth reappeared. The palace guard warded him off at spearpoint, until Hercol told them to let him approach.

'The lady Thasha is dead,' he said to Fulbreech. 'Send a carriage for her father — that is him on the road behind us — and find us at the docks, straight away. You and I must must speak again, Fulbreech.'

The youth stared at Thasha, wide-eyed. 'I shall fetch that carriage,' he said at last, and dashed ahead of them towards the city.

Pazel was burning to ask Hercol about Fulbreech. Who was he, why did he keep popping up? But the Tholjassan's face made it plain that he would breathe no word of explanation, at least not here in the presence of the guard.

Some minutes later they reached the city gate. Poor folk were busy here, filling sacks with isporelli petals to render into perfume. Thasha's body gave them a terrible shock. Old monks, too feeble for the march to the shrine, burst into shouts of Aya Rin! Children screamed; old women raised their arms to heaven and wept.

Straight through Simjalla they ran, a morbid reversal of the procession, and with every block the wails grew louder. Pazel was tensed, now, waiting for his chance to break away. But the chance did not come. The captain of the guard was following the king's instructions to the letter: his men ran ahead and behind the foursome and let no one approach. Pazel glanced beseechingly at Neeps, who frowned and shook his head.