Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

It was a falcon, small and exquisite, black above, cream-yellow below. It was examining them with one bright eye.

Almost as soon as Thasha saw it the bird was in flight, dropping casually from the main yard to vanish below the rail. The three youths raced across the deck. But here at its midsection the ship was over two hundred feet wide, and by the time they reached the rail and leaned out over the sea the bird was gone.

'Damnation!'

'It had to be-'

'Of course it was!'

They dropped back onto the deck, once again earning stares from the crew. Pazel groaned aloud. 'That's all we need! Pitfire, why did Ramachni have to let him go?'

But Thasha felt oddly tense, as if tremors had suddenly shaken the boards at her feet. 'He's circling,' she said.

'What?' said Neeps. "How can you know that? What's wrong with you?'

Thasha turned in place, her gaze flung wide, as if trying to catch up with something in a hurtling orbit around the ship. 'I don't know how I know,' she said, 'but he's above the deck again, teasing us — he's slowing — there!'

A blur of wings, a shrill cry, and there it was, landing neatly on a brace-line seven feet above their heads. Men shouted, pointing: a few of them remembered the falcon. None better than Thasha, however, who had watched the bird for years — loved it, she imagined, though it never paused in its flight — from the gardens of the Lorg Academy.

'Welcome back, Niriviel,' she said.

'You should not welcome me,' said the falcon, in that fierce, high voice she recalled so well: the voice that somehow belonged to both a predator and a homeless child. 'I bring you no good tidings, Thasha Death-Cheater. No comfort to the betrayers of Arqual.'

Thasha shook her head. 'We haven't betrayed anyone, Niriviel. We tried to explain that to you in Simja.'

'After you stabbed my master in the leg. Do you deny this?'

Thasha winced. 'I — no, Niriviel, I don't.'

'Oh come off it, Thasha,' said Pazel. 'It was only a dinner fork.'

Niriviel's wings were aflutter. 'You raised your hand against Sandor Ott, first defender of His Supremacy! If you are not a traitor then the word means nothing at all!'

'Fine,' said Thasha, in what she hoped was a soothing voice. 'You can call me what you like. But even if we're on different sides, I want you to know something. I'm happy to see you again.'

The bird gave an agitated hop.

'It's strange,' said Thasha, 'but I feel you're part of my life, and always will be. I can't watch you fly and not feel, I don't know — joy, I suppose.'

'Twaddle,' said the falcon.

Neeps had had enough. 'What do you want, bird?' he demanded.

Thasha motioned desperately for silence. 'I'm not lying to you,' she told the falcon. 'But why have you come back to us, anyway?'

The bird paused. His head cocked, dipped, darted. Then Thasha had a terrible thought. 'Oh, Niriviel. You didn't… lose him, did you? Sandor Ott, I mean?'

Niriviel peered at her with great intensity. Thasha arched her neck back.

'You can tell me,' she said. 'I know he was like your father. Is that why you're back? Because you have nowhere left to go?'

'What nonsense!' cried the falcon suddenly. 'And what a fool you take me for! It is not I who has lost someone. Where is your own father, girl?'

'He stayed behind. In Simja.'

'And beyond that you cannot say. Beyond that you dare not imagine.'

'What do you mean?' cried Thasha. 'Do you know something about my father? Tell me!'

'Nothing for traitors.'

Pazel tried to take her arm, but Thasha shook him off. 'I'm no traitor, you stupid bigoted bird! I'm an Arquali, do you hear? What else could I be?'

'An orphan?' said Niriviel.

Thasha was almost sobbing. 'Tell me! Tell me what you know!'

But Niriviel only cried aloud — a mocking cry, perhaps — and leaped once more into flight. Seconds later he had vanished westwards, towards the black wall of Bramian.

17 Freala 941

Mr Coote had guessed correctly: within the hour the Chathrand was among the Black Shoulder Isles. They were dark and stone-shored and choked with greenery, miniature copies of their great mother to the west. Plenty of sea-room, thought Mr Elkstem: two or three leagues between one Black Shoulder and the next, and Bramian itself no closer than five. Still he took no chances.

'Topgallants and courses down, Mr Frix, if you please. We'll stand in on fore and spanker topsails, double-reefed.'

In the moonlight the watch furled sail after sail, and the bow wave sank to nothing. When the log was cast they were all but stationary, rocking forwards at a quarter knot. Shore birds, night jars and kestrels, spun hopefully above the deck, their shrill cries blending with the distant, mortal booming of the Bramian surf.

The three youths were still on the topdeck. Thasha had led the boys on a meandering march, port to starboard, bow to quarterdeck and back. She had barely spoken since Niriviel's departure, but she was glad of their company, and they seemed to understand her silence. The falcon's insinuations about Eberzam Isiq might have been pure spite, but Thasha could scarcely breathe for fear that something real lay behind them.

Eventually their random tour of the topdeck ceased to distract her, and began to make her think of animals in cages. She chose a quiet spot near the No. 3 hatch, folded her legs and sat.

'I don't want dinner tonight,' she said. 'You two had better go ahead.'

She leaned back against a coiled hawser. The boys looked at each other, and she imagined stomachs and solidarity at war. Then Neeps sat down on her left and Pazel, after a bit of awkward foot-shuffling, did the same on her right. She tried to catch his eye, but he avoided it, staring up at the gently billowing mainsail. Sailors of the third watch moved around them, chattering, while off to portside someone attempted (perhaps for the first time in his life, for the sound was painful) to tune a fiddle.

She sat between them, watching them fidget, wondering which of them would break the silence first, and with what kind, doltish attempt to ease her fears. Just when she had decided it could only be Pazel, Neeps began to talk.

'They ought to send us ashore to gather eggs,' he said. 'On the Black Shoulders, I mean. There was a Sollochi fisherman wrecked on one of 'em fifty years ago. He lived for three whole years on seabird eggs. For nine months he ate 'em raw; then he found a big clamshell and boiled his eggs inside it, but after three more months it cracked on the fire. Then the volcano came to life and there were steam vents everywhere, and he found he could cook his eggs by putting 'em in an old piece of fish-net, tying the net to a pole, and dangling it over one of the vents. And when the steam stopped coming he climbed to the lip of the volcano and fried the eggs on hot rocks, but he ended up burning his tongue so badly he couldn't taste 'em any more. But they rescued him soon after, and he lived a good long life back on Sollochstol. I guess there's a lesson in that, isn't there?'

'Sure,' said Pazel. 'Don't be a blary ass and lick hot rocks.'

Neeps leaned over and gave him a good-natured whack on the head. 'You're the ass, remember? I hate to think what you'd have done on that island. Turned your back on the volcano, for starters.'

Thasha smiled despite herself. Neeps had knocked her against Pazel's side, and she had not quite straightened up again. She did want some kind of comfort. Not an arm around her, not a voice telling her that all would be well. She'd been given those sorts of comforts her whole life, and they had usually failed. What she wanted was Pazel's hand locked in her own, fingers laced tight: a promise that he at least would not disappear. She wanted his touch, his attention, his eyes, the startled brightness of them before they'd kissed in the washroom. This is first love, she thought, slightly revolted by the banality. I love him. How absurd.