Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Thasha isn't normal,' he admitted. 'In fact she has me worried sick.'

Since the Red Storm, he said, Thasha had been increasingly moody and distracted. Her hand, the one she had used to touch the Nilstone, seemed to fascinate her. Pazel had caught her staring at it, and picking at the old scar. And she was reading the Polylex, more and more of it, sometimes with Felthrup's assistance, sometimes alone. It still frightened her, but she couldn't seem to tear herself away. Pazel would wake in the night to the sound of her soft screams. He would sit beside her, holding her, feeling her tremble as she scanned the pages.

'Once she slammed the book and shouted at me: "What was she thinking, how could she do it to them? How could a mage be so cruel?" When I asked who she meant, she snapped, "Erithusme, who else? She wasn't good at all, she was a monster." I told her that wasn't what Ramachni said, and she just snarled at me. "How would you like to go through a Waking, like Felthrup, like Niriviel and Mugstur? Do you think you'd still be sane, Pazel? Do you think you'd still be you?" '

An even worse incident had occurred two nights ago. It had been a beautiful, warm evening. The two of them had spent a quiet hour seated against the twenty-foot skiff, watching a pod of whales cross and recross a yellow ribbon of moonlight. Thasha had seemed happy and relaxed. In time they had fallen asleep, and when Pazel awoke an hour later she was gone. He did not find her in the stateroom, and alerted Hercol. Together with Big Skip and a few other volunteers they had searched for her, deck by deck, compartment by compartment. It was Pazel who had found her at last: crossing the berth deck, walking like a dreamer among hundreds of sleeping men.

He had run to her and taken her hand. 'You shouldn't be in here,' he had whispered. 'Let's go before they wake up.'

Thasha had looked at the sleepers, shaking her head. 'They can't,' she'd said.

She led him out of the compartment and down a side passage. It was a spot he'd passed a hundred times, but this time, to his great surprise, he saw that there was a little green door, only waist-high, right at the end of the passage, where he thought the hull should have been. The door looked older and shabbier than the rest of the compartment; its handle was an ancient, corroded lump of iron. Thasha had put out her hand to open the door — but slowly, as though fighting herself. When she touched the knob Pazel had reached to help her — he was curious about the door; he'd never noticed it — and Thasha had suddenly pulled him away, screaming.

'We're running out, we're running out!'

'Don't worry,' Pazel had begged. 'We'll find water, Thasha, I swear.'

'Not water!' she'd howled, clawing at him. 'Not water! Thoughts! We're running out of thoughts and we won't have any left!' And she had wept all the way back to the stateroom.

'And later on, Neeps,' Pazel concluded, 'she couldn't remember being on the berth deck at all. I'm scared, I tell you. She's just so different, since the storm.'

Neeps looked at him, awestruck. 'Everything is different,' he said at last. 'Don't you sense it, mate? I can't put my finger on it, but I feel as if… I don't know, as if the whole world we come from, back there across the Nelluroq, had just-'

'Neeparvasi Undrabust!' rasped Lady Oggosk suddenly. 'Get away from the window, you atrocious boy! I can't sleep through your chatter!'

Quickly, Pazel put his hand on the glass. 'We'll free you,' he said in Arquali. 'I promise we'll free you both. You just have to hang on until we find a way.'

''Course we will,' said Neeps, raising his fingers briefly to the pane. Leaning slightly against him, Marila nodded and made herself smile.

Their courage made Pazel feel even worse. He glanced again at Ott and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.

'Remember what Bolutu said, after you left. The part I told you the next morning.'

'About the ones who'll be waiting for him?' Neeps whispered back. 'His masters, the ones who see through his eyes?'

'That's right,' whispered Pazel. 'But don't say another word! Just hold onto that thought, will you? They're going to find us, and help. And Ramachni's coming back as well — stronger than ever, he said. So save your strength. You'll see, this is all going to work out.'

He left them, feeling a fraud. Who was he to say that things would work out? What made his promises any better than those Taliktrum gave to his people — or for that matter, Mugstur to his rats? Had things worked out for Diadrelu? Would anything prevent their dying here, one by one, with three miles of the Ruling Sea left to cross?

He found Thasha seated on the flag locker at the back of the quarterdeck, her shoulders resting on the taffrail. 'You're seventeen,' she said, her voice flat and distant.

'By Rin,' said Pazel, for it was true: his birthday had come and gone on the Nelluroq. 'How did you know?'

Thasha made no answer. Her eyes were on Taliktrum and Elkstem, both at the wheel, arguing over safe running speeds and distances from shore. Myett stood close to Taliktrum, whispering and touching him frequently. Lord Talag, who had so far refused to discuss any return to leadership of the clan, watched his son in brooding silence from the wreckage of the wheelhouse.

On Thasha's lap lay a chipped ceramic jug from the stateroom. Pazel tipped it: bone dry.

'You'll just get thirstier, sitting out in this wind,' he said.

Thasha smiled and put out her hand. 'Come and get thirsty with me.'

He climbed onto the flag locker and settled beside her. As always when they were close, he tensed himself against the onset of pain from Klyst's shell. But it did not come — had not come, he realised, since they passed through the Red Storm. He glanced north. What had happened to the murth-girl? Was she lost in the heart of the Ruling Sea? Had she followed them (he crushed his eyes shut on the thought) into the Vortex, and perished there? Or had the Storm freed her from her own love-ripestry at last?

'The whales are back,' said Thasha pointing.

'I think they're watching us,' he said, trying for a joke.

Thasha's strong arm went around his waist. He smiled, remembering his childish vision of the two of them running away into the jungle, Lord and Lady of Bramian. It was time to tell her, although he'd blush, and she'd tease him, and demand to hear it all.

But before he could open his mouth Thasha hid her face against his shoulder. 'Diadrelu,' she whispered, clinging to him. And that was enough; he was engulfed in anguish and had to look away.

That night in the stateroom, while Hercol and Fiffengurt sat at table, speaking of the recent dead and the soon-to-be-born, and Bolutu sketched a drawing of his beloved Empire, pointing out its forests and castles and mountain ranges to a transported Felthrup, Pazel rummaged in his sea chest, among heaps of grimy clothes and knickknacks. When at last he found what he wanted he rose and went into Thasha's cabin without knocking. She was sprawled across the bed, reading the Polylex with no apparent discomfort — before his startling entrance, at least. He closed the door and went to her, and held the blue silk ribbon up for her to read.

YE DEPART FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN, AND LOVE ALONE SHALL KEEP THEE

'I was supposed to tie this to your wrist,' he said, and did.

On sunny mornings the man liked to sit by the window and watch the tailor birds repairing their nests. They never stopped or seemed to tire, these little red birds, even when the winter storms lashed the city and pulled their patchwork homes apart like old woollen hats. One of the birds came now and then to talk to him. The man had bribed him with a scrap of silk, torn from the lining of his pocket. Now with a telescope borrowed from the king he could see the silk woven into the nest. The bird had thanked him in Simjan, and when the man did not answer, tried several other tongues. The man just nodded, or tilted his head to one side. He had lost the gift of speech and the bird had gained it. The situation was awkward for them both.