Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

As they neared the port the streets were lined with men and women, moaning in disbelief, flags of Arqual and the Mzithrin slipping forgotten from their hands. Pazel was growing desperate. Once they put him in a boat it would be too late.

They turned another corner. At the end of the block, Pazel could see masts and rigging and wooden hulls crowding the quay. 'Listen,' he whispered urgently to the others, 'I'm going, it's time.'

'Pazel, no!' hissed Neeps. 'Everybody and his brother's watching us!'

'So what? It's Thasha they're worried about.'

'This mob's crazy with grief,' said Fiffengurt. 'You run off now and someone's likely to chase you down and break your teeth with a brick.'

'They don't care about me,' Pazel insisted. 'I'm just a tarboy who happened to know her.'

Hercol too shook his head. 'You cannot go now, lad. We must find another way.'

Pazel looked from friend to friend. They were protecting him, even at the cost of disaster. Just as old Isiq would have done, if they'd tried to reason with him, explain the path Thasha had chosen.

Pazel did not look at her, fearing he would choke if he saw her pale, cold face. How had her last minutes been with Isiq? You knew, didn't you, Thasha? A time comes when you just stop arguing.

Seconds later he was leaping and shoving his way through startled onlookers, making for a sidestreet, running for all he was worth. The other three cried out, but they were still supporting Thasha and could not let her fall. Members of the guard hooted and jeered — 'Run, you bastard! Fair-weather friend!' — but as he'd expected, none gave chase. The sidestreet had been roped off during the procession, and it was not hard to see why. It was narrow and steep, twisting up a hill by way of many crumbling staircases. After the first bend he saw only a handful of people; after the second, none at all. Still he kept running, as though speed were the only way to make sure he went through with the plan. He thought: Lose yourself. That life's finished. A new one has to begin. True, Ramachni had said that their greatest strength lay in the family they'd built on the voyage to Simja. But families splintered, and Ramachni was gone — he had been, Pazel suddenly reflected, the very first one to leave.

He turned left into an even narrower street. Here at last he allowed himself to catch his breath. He was well away from the port and the mob of mourners. It was time to think about where he should be going.

Unconsciously he put his hand in his pocket. Something sheer and light met his fingers, and he drew it out. It was the Blessing-Band, the blue silk ribbon from Thasha's Lorg School. YE DEPART FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN, AND LOVE ALONE SHALL KEEP THEE. How had it gotten there? He could distinctly remember dropping it in the shrine.

Pazel looked down the street. Decrepit balconies, bright streamers of hanging laundry. Then he lowered his eyes and saw that someone had entered the street from the far end. It was a rider, seated on one of Simja's giant messenger birds. He stopped the bird with a sharp tug on its wing harness some thirty feet from Pazel, and stared openly at the boy.

A soft sound behind him. Pazel whirled and saw another man, afoot, leaning in a doorway that had been empty a moment before. He was dressed in humble Simjan work clothes, a street sweeper or a mason perhaps. But he looked at Pazel with the same intensity as the rider.

Pazel felt the danger in them at once. Impulsively he began to walk down the alley towards the rider, as though merely continuing on his way. The bird pranced and croaked, and then the rider moved into his path. He held up his hand for Pazel to stop.

'The grain in the fields is yellow, but?' he said.

'I b-beg your — ?'

'That is the wrong answer.'

The man spurred his mount towards Pazel, and the bird lowered its head and struck him a blow like a blunt axe to the chest. Pazel staggered, his breath knocked out of him. The man in work clothes was strolling towards him, grinning. The rider turned the messenger bird again, and Pazel saw a long steel nail protruding from the toe of his boot. Pazel leaped sidelong as the man lashed out. The nail missed by inches. Cursing, the man began to dismount.

Then his head shot up. Pazel turned and saw Hercol leap into the air like a dancer, feint with his right leg, and deliver a lightning strike with the left that felled the man in work clothes like a puppet whose strings have snapped.

The moment he touched the ground Hercol was sprinting for Pazel. The rider hauled his bird about, kicking savagely with his heels. With a deep croak the bird bore him away.

Hercol seized Pazel by the chin. 'All right?' he said.

'I think so. Ouch! ' He put a hand to his chest.

'You'll be sore for a fortnight, if it was that fenneg bird that struck you.' He shook his head. 'Why didn't you listen, Pazel? I told you not to go through with it.'

'I thought you were just trying to protect me,' said Pazel.

'So I was! I saw the Secret Fist watching us from every third corner, the moment we entered the gates. Come quickly! When that rider sounds the alarm they'll fall on us in force.'

They ran back the way Pazel had come. The man Hercol had kicked lay still, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Pazel shut his eyes a moment, but he never forgot the man's look of shock, the gape of the bloodied mouth, the wide-open eyes. Like the faces of so many dead, he would glimpse it in dreams for years to come.

When they reached the port they had to fight their way through the crowd. Even in the short time he had been gone it had swollen, and its anxiety had increased. Some were literally weeping with fear. There would be war, another eternity of war; how had they ever let themselves hope it could end? Others vented their anguish on Pazel: 'Caught the little deserter! Good work! Always whip a ship-jumper, I say!'

Hercol led him to a fishing pier, at the foot of which King Oshiram's men were holding back the crowd. They were let through, and Pazel saw Fiffengurt and Neeps standing beside Thasha's body at the end of the pier. Both were looking in the direction of the Chathrand, which loomed like a sea fortress three miles offshore.

Their faces lit up at the sight of Pazel. 'Welcome back, fool,' said Neeps.

Pazel didn't argue the point. 'What are we going to do now?' he said.

'First, get Thasha back to the Chathrand,' said Hercol. 'When that is done, we shall seek another way to reveal Arqual's plot to the world. A way that doesn't require tarboys to play cat and mouse with assassins.'

'That'll be a pleasant change,' said Neeps, watching the bay. 'Dancing devils! Why are those rowers so slow?'

'Because you're watching 'em,' said Fiffengurt.

Pazel paced the dock, trying not to look at the bundle at Hercol's feet. After an interminable wait the skiff reached the pier. The men at oars saw Thasha and began shouting at once: 'Who did it, Mr Fiffengurt? Who would lay a finger on her? Can we kill him, sir?'

Lowering Thasha into the boat was an undignified affair. The Babqri love-knot slipped, and her golden hair spilled onto the slimy floor. They could not stretch her out, and at last placed her feet on the bench between the rowers. Neeps tried to clean her hair on his trousers.

The sailors wept. Like most of the crew they had not cared much for the Treaty Bride at first. Noble-born passengers came and went, often greeting sailors, if at all, with a barely disguised sneer. The men returned the favour, and accounts of first-class ignorance, seasickness, fear of rats and fleas and bedbugs and general uselessness were traded like hard candies on the lower decks.

But they had not sneered long at Thasha Isiq. Rather than fine food or bleached petticoats she had wished for a chance to climb the masts or explore the black cavern of the hold. She was also a virtuoso swearer: a lifetime of eavesdropping on captains, commodores and other guests at her father's table had made her a walking scrapbook of naval curses. By the Chathrand 's first landfall men were boasting of her beauty, and when a rumour spread that she had flattened a pair of thuggish tarboys in a brawl, they had added ferocity to her list of virtues. She was 'a good 'un,' they decided, and there was no higher praise.