Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Tell him nothing,' Oggosk had commanded. 'Nothing with your voice, nothing with your eyes or your movements or your hands. Do you understand me, girl? Any slip could bring disaster. Let me match wits with Arunis, this time: you'll have your own chance, maybe, after I'm gone. Right now you have nothing to say to him that's not best said with a sword.'

Thasha had sensed the candour in Oggosk, the rare absence of ridicule. So she had held fast to the witch's order, despite the maddening vapours and the heat, and the hypnotic dance of the blue flames in the shattered floor. She was thinking of it still when the sorcerer burst in.

Arunis lifted the mace above his head. 'Where is it, hag?' he raged. 'Which of these bastards took it? Speak!'

Oggosk and Thasha stood flanking the doorway that led up to the temple exit. Beside them, looking rather feeble, stood Dr Chadfallow. He had crawled into the chamber minutes before, drenched and gasping. Peytr crouched a few yards away, silent and fearful.

The old woman leaned heavily on her stick, frowning, studying the mage's face. Then she glanced at Thasha and nodded. Thasha drew her sword.

Arunis descended the stone rings, snarling: 'Do you think I will hesitate to kill her, hag? Do you think me that afraid of Ramachni's spell?'

Still Oggosk said nothing. Thasha's hands were slick on the hilt of her sword. She felt terror surge in her heart — and buried it, as Hercol had taught her to do, under focused observation. The length of the mage's stride. The set of his shoulders. The bulge at the hip beneath his coat, in all likelihood a dagger.

'I knew before I landed that I would kill today,' said Arunis, still approaching.

Chadfallow gave a throaty cry: 'Pazel!'

Oggosk smacked him with her walking stick. Arunis laughed, but Thasha could tell that the laugh was forced. 'The book!' raged Arunis. 'Return it now!'

The witch placed a hand on Thasha's elbow. Arunis began to climb towards them. A look of desperation filled his eyes.

'The agony you risk by defying me exceeds the limits of language, Duchess,' he said. 'Did you not hear the sibyl? I am death's master, not its slave. I will live on when the very dust of this world disperses in the void. You prove yourself capable of some three-for-a-penny spell, the hiding or moving of a book, and you imagine this prepares you to challenge Arunis?'

Thasha risked a glance at the old woman. There was a gleam of satisfaction in the milk-blue eyes.

'Oh no,' said Oggosk. 'I imagine nothing of the kind. No, Arunis, you have nothing at all to fear from me.'

The sorcerer froze. His eyes shifted to Thasha, and narrowed suspiciously. Thasha felt a sudden prickling along her spine. He's examining me! She felt Oggosk's hand tighten in warning: Not a look, not a whisper. Unblinking, Thasha stared Arunis down. The prickling subsided. Arunis went pale.

'You,' he said.

Lady Oggosk cackled, her voice echoing loud across the chamber. Arunis retreated a step, his eyes still locked on Thasha.

'Duchess! Duchess!'

Rose's bellow filled the room. Thasha looked up with a start as the captain and Drellarek staggered into the chamber. A moment later Hercol and the two Turachs appeared as well.

In that distracted split-second, Arunis pounced. Thasha instinctively threw her arms around Lady Oggosk, knocking the old woman backwards just as Arunis swung his mace. Thasha felt a spike on the weapon flick her hair above the ear. She whirled and drew her sword, dragging Oggosk by the arm lest the next blow find the old woman prone. But there was no second blow: Arunis barrelled headlong into the exit corridor, and disappeared. Thasha heard him scrabbling up the spiral staircase as though afraid for his life.

'Let him go,' croaked Oggosk, who had fallen on her back.

Thasha bent to help her. 'Are you hurt?' she asked.

'Pah. I'm not made of crystal, girl.'

The witch was soon on her feet, though she leaned heavily on Thasha's arm. She cackled, delighted with herself. Then she pulled Thasha close and whispered, 'Don't ask what I let him believe about you, Thasha Isiq: you'll get no more out of me than he did.'

Thasha was barely listening. 'Pazel!' she shouted, pulling away from the witch. 'What happened to him, Captain? Don't any of you know where he is?'

Pazel was a long time in returning to the chamber, although he could hear the others shouting his name. He was in pitch darkness again, but the fear was mostly gone. He had crept back to the chamber where Klyst had first appeared, and put his feet in the cool water. He called her name, but neither heard nor expected a reply. Eventually he placed Arunis' Polylex in the stream and let the current bear it away.

11 Freala 941

120th day from Etherhorde

Four days after the madness at Dhola's Rib the wind swung round to the south, and a white fog came with it. Denser and lower than the fog at Talturi, it soaked the men of the First Watch right through their woolens, and brought curses from the few passengers who still participated in Smoke Hour: their pipes were wet even before the midshipman handed them out.

On the fourth day Rose shortened sail, for they were approaching the eastern Ulluprids, where charts conflicted, and there was no certainty that a rock or barren islet would not loom suddenly out of the mist. The watch-men were on edge, straining their eyes for a lee shore, their ears for breaking surf. But the featureless world gave no clues. Men on the lower spars were as blind as the deckhands, while those in the crow's nests stood just above the mist, looking out over a cotton moonscape with no visible end.

Hatches were sealed against the creeping damp: a foe more stealthy than rain but just as likely to rot the wheat in the hold. That night was chilly, and men awoke with a cough. For the better part of the fifth day they held the same slow, nervous course. Mr Elkstem sailed by the binnacle, and memory.

As night fell Captain Rose asked Fiffengurt what he could smell on the wind. Startled to be asked his opinion after months of disdain, Fiffengurt drew a deep breath and held it, considering.

'Smoke, sir,' he said at last. 'No doubt about it. But not from a land fire, I think.'

Rose nodded. 'Nor from a burning ship. That's blubber and oil, cooking down over coal. There's a whaler nearby.'

Dawn proved the captain right. The fog rose with the suddenness of a dustcloth whipped from a table; and there, broad on the port beam, rode a two-masted vessel belching dark smoke from its furnace as it crept along.

Thasha had been on deck since first light: days of fog had made her hungry for the sun. She leaned on the mizzen rail, studying the whaler through her father's telescope.

'The Sanguine,' she read aloud.

'Out of Ballytween, m'lady,' offered a sailor, swinging up to the shrouds. 'See the pennant with the wee gold harp, under His Supremacy's own? That's the Opalt flag.'

'How far off is she, do you think?'

The sailor twisted for a second glance as he climbed. 'Four leagues at the outside, m'lady.'

Not far enough, Thasha knew: if she could read that whaler's name-plate, the men aboard her could read their own. Rose had ordered black paint spread over the three-foot gold letters that spelled out CHATHRAND,but that would not prevent the men of the Sanguine from recognizing the largest ship in the known world.

Good luck at last, she thought. For it was exactly what the conspirators had been afraid of. Whaling was a cruel business — Pazel had told her ghastly stories of his days on the Anju — but for the moment she looked fondly on the smoke-spewing vessel. I hope you sail straight to Opalt and tell the world we lied.

Rose emerged from his cabin, accompanied by his steward and Mr Alyash. With dire faces they stalked to the port rail. The captain's telescope snapped up and open. Rose gave a quick order to his steward, who bolted away.