Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'He will not kill you, Doctor,' said Rose, whose eyes had not left the ham. 'You may join us at table.'

'I am not hungry,' said Chadfallow.

'Well I certainly am,' said Ott. 'Your hospitality arrives at a crawl, Captain.'

'This is not a social occasion,' said Rose.

'Indeed not,' said the spymaster. 'Come, Doctor, the captain speaks the truth. We all know of how you've broken faith with His Supremacy, and while it might be enough to condemn you in a court of law — well, we are a long way from the nearest courtroom, aren't we? Nor shall I seek vengeance for what passed between us in Ormael, any more than I shall against the duchess here. You were not to know why Syrarys and I were poisoning your old friend Isiq. A case could even be made that you acted out of loyalty to the crown.'

Chadfallow turned from the window and looked across the wide cabin at Ott.

'A false case,' he said.

Ott shrugged. 'This ship requires a doctor, and no one disputes that you are the finest. Indeed, we'll have need of your special skills within the hour. Where is our guest of honour, Sergeant?'

'The Shaggat's son?' said Drellarek. 'He is not fit company, Master Ott. Since his brother died, Erthalon Ness raves like never before. I thought you would prefer to deal with him later.'

'Quite right,' said Ott, 'but that is not who I meant.'

'The other will be delivered as soon as we lay hands on him,' said Drellarek. 'My men face a new complication in that regard.'

'So Alyash tells me,' said Ott. 'A magical wall about the stateroom, astonishing! Your arts are no match for it, then, Lady Oggosk?'

Lady Oggosk was sucking an orange wedge. 'My arts,' she said wetly, 'are at the service of the captain, not the Imperial butcher-boy.'

Ott smiled, but no one imagined he was pleased.

Rose was looking sharply at Alyash. 'Why have you brought him to this meeting, Ott?'

'I'm glad you ask,' said the spymaster, taking Alyash by the arm. 'Gentlemen, Lady Oggosk. You've met your new bosun, but I dare say you were not properly introduced. As well as being a first-class sailor, he happens to be an agent of my western rivals in the field of clandestine security.'

Silence. Drellarek studied the bosun inscrutably. Uskins, bewildered, looked from face to face. At last Ott's meaning dawned on him.

'A spy? A spy for the Black Rags?'

'You watch your mouth,' growled Alyash. 'I'm a son of the Holy Mzithrin, no matter what I'd like to see happen to her five criminal kings.' He surveyed the room. 'You Arqualis mean to conquer and cannibalise the Pentarchy. I know that; I'm not a blary fool. I help you because I realised long ago that domination by Arqual, however great an evil, was the only way to save my homeland from gory suicide. The Shaggat Ness was the worst of the Mzithrin's open sores, but he would not have been the last. I am not a traitor. I am simply a man who faces the truth.'

'Facing the truth is easier with twelve thousand gold a year,' muttered Oggosk.

'Yes, Mr Uskins, a spy,' said Ott quickly. 'What is more, the first spy ever to penetrate the ranks of the Shaggat's faithful on Gurishal. Which is to say, the first man placed on that island who was not quickly discovered, and shipped in pieces back to Babqri. His four predecessors lasted an average of a week before the Shaggat's worshippers found them out. Alyash lasted thirteen years. And even when the doubts began he managed to escape.'

'With a few souvenirs,' said Oggosk, picking at her teeth.

Alyash regarded her coldly. 'The Lady Oggosk makes reference to my scars,' he said at last. 'Would you like to know how I earned them, Duchess?'

'Not if it delays our meal.'

'When the Nessarim suspect a man of treason they hand him a knife and a mug of seawater. In the water floats a sarcophagus jellyfish — a creature so deadly that merely to touch one's lips after handling it means certain death. The suspect is given a choice: to open his veins then and there with the knife, or to swallow the whole mug of water at a gulp, jellyfish and all, and pray that the divine Shaggat neutralises the poison. They believe him capable of such miracles, even before he returns from the dead. They believe he waits in heaven, watching everything they do.

'I was accused of being a sfvantskor informant. I struck my chest three times, swore allegiance to the Shaggat, and demanded the mug. As they filled it I went to a corner to pray, and swallowed all the antitoxins I kept on my person. The fanatics knew quite well that no Mzithrini drug could protect against a sarcophagus jelly. But I had drugs from Arqual. That was my sixteenth year in Ott's service.'

'In the service of the Emperor,' Ott corrected.

'To swallow a sarcophagus jelly is to die in seconds,' said Alyash. 'I lay writhing for six minutes, burning inside. Then the believers decided I was one of them, and shoved a goad into my mouth, and I vomited onto my chin and chest, where the dissolved jellyfish burned deep into my skin. I lost consciousness, and they were afraid even to wash me clean. That, Lady Oggosk, is how I earned my souvenirs.'

Lady Oggosk's eyes were downcast. Then all at once she glanced up, realised he had finished, and waved at Rose impatiently. 'Serve the ham, Nilus, the ham!'

Ott and Alyash took their seats. Chadfallow walked to the threshold of Rose's day cabin, and leaned on the doorframe, watching the others attack their meal.

Rose pointed at Ott with his serving fork. 'You have robbed me of a bosun, Spymaster.'

'Not at all,' said the spymaster. 'Alyash has always worked from the deck of a ship — albeit a Mzithrini ship. There's more of worth in this officer than you realised, that's all.'

Chadfallow asked a clipped question in Mzithrini. Alyash glanced up at him, then lifted his bowl of crab stew and slurped.

'The doctor wishes to know how I came to be in Simja,' he said as he finished.

'That is the best part of it,' said Ott. 'The madmen on Gurishal were close to the truth, of course: Mr Alyash was not the Shaggat-worshipper he claimed. But they guessed that he was a sfvantskor, rather than what he was: a member of the Zithmoloch, the Pentarchy's formidable, if rather outmatched and archaic, guild of spies. But neither the Shaggat's men nor the Zithmoloch itself suspected the deeper truth: that he was our man from the start. Alyash told the Five Kings what we wished them to believe concerning Gurishal: that the Nessarim were weak and divided, that the Shaggat's return was a fading dream. Of course quite the opposite is true. And Alyash, meanwhile, propagated a myth among those zealots, those people starving for hope.'

'Ah!' said Drellarek. 'Then it was you who spread the prophecy of the Shaggat's return!'

'I lay the tinder, and struck the match,' said Alyash. 'But the prophecy spread of its own accord, like a blaze in dry grass. And when word reaches Gurishal that the daughter of an Arquali general has wed into a Mzithrin royal family, every man, woman and child on Gurishal will know that the hour of their God-King's return is at hand.'

'To complete the story,' said Ott. 'The Mzithrinis had never seen such an effective spy — of course they hadn't; I trained Alyash myself — and they were not about to let his service end with Gurishal. So they extended his scars to the back of his neck, obliterating his Mzithrini tattoos, and sent him to a place they wished desperately to infiltrate: Simjalla City, where the Great Peace would begin.'

'It was a natural choice,' said Alyash. 'My father traces his family line back to the Crownless Lands. At least a part of me is Simjan.'

Ott smiled, giving his brandy an interrogatory sniff. 'You might not think so,' he said, 'but most of the best spies in history are mongrels. Transplants, half-bloods, children of vagabond fathers or women taken in war.'