Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

128th day from Etherhorde

Less than a week after the sinking of the Sanguine, her captain's prediction came true. At first the only sign was a pea-green cast to the waves. 'The mark of the true tropics,' Mr Druffle informed a small audience of tarboys. 'We're crossing the warm belly of Alifros, my dears.'

Other signs followed: a pod of sea turtles, a lonely frigate bird, a sharp eastward bent to the current. Then, just as Fiffengurt completed the noon measurements of speed and compass heading, it appeared: a dark line on the southern horizon, stretching away east and west as far as the eye could see. Mainland, thought a few with wonder, but it was nothing of the kind.

Mr Elkstem advised the captain, and received a quick reply: a scrap of paper on which was scrawled ESE.128°30′, tgs — w.w. Such were Rose's abbreviated orders: a new east-by-south-east heading, and a spread of sail up to and including topgallants, 'as weather warrants.'

Elkstem, concluding that the weather did warrant, promptly gave the signal for general quarters. The drums sounded, the lower decks roared to life, and four hundred men poured up through the hatches and took their positions at spar, brace and halyard. Frix and Alyash ran the rails, lieutenant to lieutenant. 'Free that downhaul. Where's the clearance, Bindhammer? Compose your team, sir, for the love of Rin!'

Elkstem put his weight on the wheel. 'Heave!' went the simultaneous orders along the five masts, and hundreds of men complied, and the wheel spun, and the vast mainsails turned into the wind. The Chathrand swung east, degree by hard-won degree, until she ran parallel to the dark Bramian shore.

All day they kept their distance. Rose wanted them no closer until they rounded Bramian, knowing (better than most captains in Alifros) how her cliffs gave way here and there to tiny beaches, hidden footholds on her jungles, boundless and wet. An oreship, a pirate sloop, a slaver exchanging pots and trinkets for human lives: any one of these might be anchored off such a landing. Rose did not intend to be spotted again.

They beat a weary path around the giant. For three days they held the same course, until finally the lookout perceived the island's southward curve. Even then Rose kept them east, all that day and night, as if making for Kushal or Pulduraj. Only on the fifth morning, with Bramian nearly out of sight behind them, did the order come. Ware away! West by south-west! — a hairpin turn, and such an agony of effort that the men recalled previous course changes almost fondly. The topgallants had to be furled, the mainsails double-reefed, the fore-and-aft sails braced to the fine work of running close-hauled to the wind, which now battered their faces and begrudged them every westward mile. No trim would serve for more than three hours; no sailor could long be spared for rest.

Dusk on 19 Freala found the crew limp with exhaustion. The wind had shifted in their favour, but by now they were too tired to rejoice. It was a strange, quiet evening: the sun was still above the horizon, but a sickle moon hung already in the east. The sky between them was convulsed with racing clouds.

Pazel stood on the footropes beneath the bowsprit, that great spear thrust out in front of Chathrand. He was in a dark mood, and had hoped being here might dispel it. Every few seconds the bow leaped skywards, then plummeted again towards the waves, whose cold spray just managed to graze Pazel's feet as they shattered on the keel. In normal times Pazel was in his glory here. Only high on the masts could one be flung about as thrillingly by the motions of the ship.

Of course in a storm both mast and bowsprit were living nightmares. Pazel had never experienced those particular miseries. But his spider-monkey confidence on the ropes had been hard-won, and he didn't mean to lose it just because he was no longer a tarboy. When Neeps suggested they crawl out and lend a hand with the jibsails he had quickly agreed.

The sailors, however, had brushed them off: 'No thank you, lads, we'll manage somehow. Mind you, there's always cable to scrape.' The men were afraid, of course: afraid of getting mixed up with 'them two crazy monkeys.' But it had stung to have their offer of help thrown back at them, and Neeps had left in a huff.

Pazel gazed off to portside. The Nelluroq. He was seeing it at last. Even at this distance he thought he could detect a change in the waves: grander swells, a deeper and more sombre blue. Maybe that was just his fancy. What was certain was that a ship could sail twice the width of Arqual in that direction and find no land.

Or rather, the Chathrand could.

Or rather, she could try.

The sailors had finished setting the jibs. Pazel climbed up beside the Goose-Girl's figurehead to let them slip by. Some glanced at him with fear. The last, Mr Coote, just looked embarrassed. He had known Pazel longer than any sailor aboard, having served on the IMS Swan, where Pazel's life as a tarboy had begun.

'They mean no harm,' he muttered, pausing at Pazel's side. 'Just not sure of their footing, if you follow me.'

'I do, Mr Coote.'

Coote pointed with his big East Arquali nose. 'We'll be headin' in among the Black Shoulder Isles tonight. At least that's my supprazichun.'

Dead ahead, six or eight miles off Bramian, ran a string of uninhabited islets: the Black Shoulders. They were small and jungle-clad, built of dark volcanic stone that still shook and grumbled, troubling the waves and dropping great shelves of rock into the depths on occasion. What slim fondness sailors had for them was due to the harbour they could give, in a pinch, from the battering ram of a northbound Nelluroq storm.

'Do you know why, Mr Coote?' Pazel asked. 'I mean, what have the Black Shoulders got that we need?'

Coote glanced up at him for the first time, and almost smiled. 'Thought maybe you'd know, with all your tricks.'

'I don't have many tricks, Mr Coote. I wish I did, believe me.'

Coote shrugged. 'Well, water, maybe — can't never have too much sweet water in your casks. That one to our north is Sandplume — what some call the Isle of Birds. She might have a pond worth pumping. Come on in, Pathkendle; there's no more work to be done out here.'

'Oppo, sir. I'm right behind you.'

Coote lumbered off, but Pazel didn't leave the bowsprit. He faced the sea again, his arm draped over the Goose-Girl. She was a pretty lump of wood, although her grip on the necks of her two geese always struck him as savagely tight. He had stood here that first day on the Chathrand, when Fiffengurt told him to pry the limpets off her, and Dr Chadfallow raced along Sorrophran Head on horseback, crying across the water to Pazel: Jump ship! Jump ship in Etherhorde!

He could have done it, probably. Where would he be now, who would he be, if he had obeyed?

The thought left Pazel strangely chilled. For more than five years his only dream had been to find his parents and sister, rebuild his shattered family. Just how that miracle was supposed to happen he had never quite worked out. Not even Chadfallow, personal friend of the Emperor and one of the only men in Arqual with connections inside the Mzithrin, had been able to carry off a prisoner exchange — he wasn't even sure Pazel's mother and sister were prisoners, only that they had both been in Simja on Treaty Day. And his father — well, Captain Gregory had found him, all right, after the battle on the Haunted Coast. He simply hadn't cared.

Pazel closed his eyes. There was a great black oak in Ormael, in a stand of such trees between the plum orchards and the path to the Highlands. It was not the tallest in the stand, but it was a mighty tree. Passing beneath it one day on a walk with his father, Pazel had declared with confidence that no one could climb it. Captain Gregory had laughed and shimmied up the oak like a topman scaling the shrouds. At eighty feet, he'd pulled out the knife Pazel carried today and begun to carve, slowly and carefully, at the joint of a limb.