Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

He lifted the great scarlet fruit above his head. 'Look at this gorgeous thing,' he said. 'Brighter than the red lanterns on the Lily of Locostri. Brighter than the girls' painted nails. Who wants a bite? First come, first served! Come on, no tricks — who wants a great, juicy bellyful of red?'

The eight hundred before him stood silent, for everyone knew that gumfruit rind was toxic.

Rose nodded, satisfied. Then he lowered the fruit and squeezed hard with his left hand, digging in with his fingers. With wrenching motions he tore the rind away in inch-thick chunks, letting them fall carelessly about the deck. Ten seconds, and it was done. Now his hands cradled the inner fruit, cream-white and slippery as a newborn.

'Hope is the rind,' he said. 'Beautiful, and poisoned. This is life, naked life, and it's all we've ever really had. Do you hear me, lads? You've got to strip that rind away.' His eyes were blazing now as they had not done once since Etherhorde. 'I couldn't do you that service until now — Ott would have stabbed me, if Sergeant Throatcutter over there didn't do it first. But I'm doing it today — I'm handing you the blary respect you deserve.

'Hope is back there in Simja, back in Ormael and Opalt and Etherhorde and Besq. Hope belongs to somebody else. We're done with it. And that means I don't have to lie to you any more. Fact: we do the Emperor's bidding or he kills us, and kills our kin. Fact: we're to cross the Ruling Sea with no trial run, and in the time of the Vortex. Fact: what awaits us in Gurishal is worse, if we're ever lucky enough to get there.'

Moans began escaping from the onlookers, but Rose spoke over them. 'Keep looking at this fruit. Look hard. It's not a choice of this or something better. We don't even have the choice of tossing it and going hungry — not unless we want our families nailed up for the birds to pick. Now get over here, Mr Bourjon, and tell me what you think of gumfruit.'

Peytr jumped; he had been gazing at Rose in blank confusion. 'The… the truth, Captain?'

'Gods of Death, boy, the truth!'

'I… I like 'em, sir. Always did. Since I was small.'

Rose looked hard at him, then nodded. Very carefully, the captain passed the wet pulpy fruit into the tarboy's hands. Turning to face the mob again, he raised his sticky fist before his face and sniffed appraisingly.

'Gumfruit kept his people from starving, through nine known famines, ' he said, pointing at the tarboy. 'He likes it, d'you hear? When it's what you've got, you learn to like it. And that is how you stay alive! Eat it, Peytr! Show us how it's done on Ibithraed!'

By the way the youth ate he might have spent days in preparatory fasting. He anchored his fingers deep in the fruit and tunnelled with his mouth, biting, tearing, swallowing, now and then pausing to sop his chin with his shirtsleeve. It was amazing how quickly he diminished the fruit.

'Eat it! Eat it!' The chant began somewhere among the tarboys, and was quickly taken up by all the crew. Peytr rose to the occasion, gobbling even faster, barely seeming to breathe.

'The koyfruits we grow on Sollochstol are tastier,' said Neeps.

'Oh shut up,' said Pazel.

In less than five minutes a pulp-smeared Peytr had completed his mission, and nearly every voice on the Chathrand was roaring approval. He gave them a woozy grin. Rose held out his hand for the gumfruit pit, then raised the other for silence once again.

The thumb-sized pit was the same bright scarlet as the rind. Rose held it aloft. His face showed neither mirth nor anger, but his eyes blazed still.

'That's hope, too, lads,' he said, extending his hand towards them. 'Hope when the bitter meal's finally over, hope at the end of everything. The kind of hope you plant in fair soil and pour sweet water on, year after year. Let an island man tell you: gumfruit trees are kindly things — good shade, sweet spring blossoms. We just might have that kind of hope to look forward to, if we're as strong and smart as I think we are, which is stronger and smarter than any crew in the history of this grandest of ships. But if you weaken yourselves by dreaming about that hope — never, never.'

He closed his fist around the seed. 'We're off to the Nelluroq, on a voyage of ruin and death,' he said quietly. 'Some of us will perish. All of us certainly may. But so long as you count yourself among the living, guard this thought: no one can give you this little red seed but me. Some will lie and claim otherwise, but you know who tells you the truth. Dismissed.'

Six sharp notes from the bell: it was eleven o'clock in the morning. Down on the berth deck, Pazel and Neeps were lending the other boys a hand caulking seams — driving tar-coated bits of old rope, called oakum, into tiny crevices between planks, then painting on hot resin to seal the crack against moisture and decay. The crevices were so tight one needed a mallet and chisel to force the oakum into place. But without such tender care the planks would soon leak; Pazel could touch his tongue to an old seam and taste the salt of the ocean, fighting to get in. The work was never completed: hammer in the oakum, slap on the hot resin, chalk off the plank, trade with your mate when your arm grew tired or the resin-fumes made you too dizzy to aim. Up and down ladders. Up and down the endless curve of the hull. Four times a year for six hundred years, and counting.

'That crafty, cunning, sneaky old beast,' said Pazel, hammering. 'He's got the crew back in his pocket, doesn't he?'

'He's a good liar,' Neeps conceded, slapping hot resin over the seam Pazel had just filled.

'He's a monster,' said Pazel. 'He kept an ixchel man locked in his desk, and only brought him out to check his food for poison. He probably made Swellows kill Reyast, too, come to think of it.'

'Poor Reyast,' said Neeps, remembering the gentle tarboy with the stutter. 'He would have stood with us for sure. He did stand with us, for a little while. But let me tell you something about lies, Pazel. The best kind, the kind hardest to see through, are the ones that mix a little truth into the recipe. Take Captain Rose, now: he says he's the only one who can give us hope. Well that's nothing but a dog-dainty. But it is true that he's the only one aboard who's commanded a boat on the Ruling Sea. No, he didn't cross her, but he flirted with her and lived to tell the tale.'

'So what?' said Pazel. 'I'll bet a lot of ships have made little darts into the Nelluroq in good weather. How do we know Rose did more than that?'

'The Emperor must think so,' said Neeps, 'otherwise he'd have put someone else in charge. Your arm tired yet?'

'No.'

Pazel liked striking the chisel: he could pretend it was Jervik's skull. And the scent of resin made him think of pine trees in the Chereste Highlands, on summer days long ago. Beside him the wall sizzled like bacon with each stroke of Neeps' brush.

Pazel shot Neeps a cautious smile. 'You did like her, eh?'

Neeps blinked at him. 'Who, Marila?' he said, flushing. 'Don't be a clod, mate, I barely spoke to her. I just think she might have come in handy, that's all. She sure did on the Haunted Coast.'

'She seemed blary smart,' Pazel ventured.

Neeps shrugged. 'She was just a village girl. She probably had even less schooling than I did.'

A note of bitterness had crept into Neeps' voice. Pazel stared at the wall to hide his unease. You could be both smart and unschooled, of course, and he wanted to say so. But how would that sound coming from someone who'd gone to city schools, and been tutored by Ignus Chadfallow?

No, he couldn't say anything of the kind. And before he could find another way to break the silence it was broken for him by a pair of tarboys approaching from portside. Swift and Saroo were nicknamed 'the Jockeys,' for the brothers claimed to be great riders. They were nimble, quiet boys with sharp glances. Rumour held that their father had been a horse thief in Uturphe, and was shot dead in the saddle on a stolen mare.