Marila walked up to him with a scowl, as though prepared to resume their fight. But instead she placed her pale cheek against his darker one, and stood there, blinking, until he put his arms around her shoulders. 'When are you going to tell me why you really stowed away?' he said.
'Soon,' said Marila.
Five or six minutes passed. One of their stomachs growled. Jorl and Suzyt padded in circles, whining for Thasha.
Suddenly Marila tensed, and raised her head.
'How could Bolutu get inside the vault?' she said. 'Pazel locked it after the council meeting, with the master key. He said so.'
Neeps stared at her. A terrible notion seemed to be blossoming within him, broader and fouler by the second. He let go of Marila. Then he charged for the door and threw it open and ran, not caring who saw him or where they thought he was going.
'I've got matches,' whispered Dastu, 'but let's go as far as we can without 'em. The light could give us away.'
'I don't need any light,' said Thasha. 'I could find that room in my sleep.'
They were at the bottom of the Silver Stair. Voices reached them from the mercy deck, but they were far forwards, barely to be heard. They passed the spot where Jervik had accosted Pazel, then the smoke cellar, the paint room, the stacks of anonymous freight. Dastu was right: the path to the scuttle was perfectly clear.
'I wasn't expecting anything like this,' Pazel murmured. 'Bolutu didn't sound worried about changing back into himself. In fact I thought he was looking forward to it.'
'He shouldn't have been,' said Dastu grimly. 'Quiet now, we're almost there.'
Silent as thieves, they crept down the scuttle and into the Abandoned House. The smells, the slop of bilge, the maze of narrow passages were unchanged from the night before — and after the first turn, so was the blackness. The three youths linked hands, and groped slowly forwards. At last they reached the door of the liquor vault.
Pazel heard a creak. 'It's open,' whispered Dastu. But not the least glimmer of light came from the vault. Dastu whispered urgently: 'Say there, Bolutu! I've brought them. Pathkendle, and Thasha both. Where are you?'
No reply but the splash of the bilge. 'He had a lamp,' whispered Dastu, moving forwards. Then he stopped abruptly, as if he had stubbed a toe. 'Oh Pitfire,' he said. 'Come in, quick. Tell me when the blary door's shut.'
Still holding the elder tarboy's hand, Pazel stopped, making Thasha pause as well. Something was different about the room now. Was it the smell, the temperature? He couldn't be sure. But he knew he did not want to go into the room. He started to let go of Dastu — but the older boy's hand tightened sharply.
'Didn't you hear?' he said, voice sharp with anger. 'I said tell me when the door is shut!'
Dastu gave a savage tug. As Pazel crashed forwards, a knee struck him so hard in the stomach that he could not even cry out. Another blow landed on the back of his head, and he fell. When he regained his senses a moment later someone was lighting a lamp, and a heavy boot was on his chest. He began to rise, but the boot stomped with terrible violence, and at the same time a cold blade touched his throat. It was a broadsword, old, weather-stained, sharp as a razor. At the other end of it was Captain Rose.
'The door is shut,' said a second voice.
Pazel moaned with rage and frustration. The voice was Sandor Ott's. He turned his head and saw the spymaster holding Thasha from behind, one hand pulling her hair, making her arch her back and thrust her chin at the ceiling; the other holding his long white knife against her side.
36
9 Umbrin 941
Diadrelu felt like weeping, though she could not have said if it was with grief or joy. How they commingle, those pure extremes, whenever one feels them fully.
Two yards from her, Felthrup sat with his head on his forepaws, his throat still puffy with Dr Chadfallow's water injection, the blood from whatever battles he had survived stiff and dry in his black fur. His eyes had opened very slowly a moment ago, and were open still. But Dri knew they did not see her.
'I thought he was gone,' she said. 'I feared Mugstur had killed him at last.'
Hercol reached through the bars. She turned and leaned into his palm with a sigh. 'We are all of us exiles,' she said. 'That is what binds us: our not-belonging, our homelessness. The way our natural kin have turned on us, or turned us out, or become so strange to us that we no longer fit. But none of us are so exiled as he. Back on the Nelu Peren he begged us, begged us to accept him as a friend. My brother responded by locking him in a pipe.'
'You responded differently,' said Hercol. 'If he dies now, he at least will have known what it is to be cared for.'
Dri raised her arms in his direction. Hercol lifted her through the bars and kissed her forehead, ever so gently. When he withdrew she bent double, placed her palms flat on his open hand, and there before his worshipful eyes pressed up into a handstand, perfectly balanced and still. She smiled, crossed her legs. Hercol breathed a sigh.
'Diadrelu Tammariken,' he said, 'you're the marriage of all the dreams of women my heart has entertained.'
She laughed, gazing down at his palm. 'You yourself are not quite as perfect as all that,' she said. 'Just perfect enough for me to believe that you're real, and that you might stay with me awhile.'
'Awhile?' he said. 'After I leave this cell, I hope never to know another morning when I wake and do not find you beside me.'
'And the incomprehension of your people? And mine?'
'You spoke the answer,' he said. 'We're exiles already. We're a new people. Mongrels now, later the creators of a race.'
'The warrior becomes a visionary.' Dri lowered her legs with the same perfect control, and reclined as before on his forearm, head pillowed on his hand. 'I hope your Empress Maisa has room for such a people. Giants who yearn for crawlies, crawlies whose love their touch. Magad the Fifth would lock you in a madhouse, and feed me to the snappers in his reflecting pool.'
'Maisa, on the other hand, will receive you as one queen to another, or I never knew the woman,' said Hercol. 'She is the visionary, not I. But her visions are of solid things, things that may come to be. She is not always evoking Rin or Heaven's Tree or the promise of a paradise to come, like her stepchild the usurper. "The only paradise that concerns us, Asprodel," she told me once, "is the one we can build for all people, here in this world where we live." '
'I like that,' said Diadrelu. 'We ixchel are raised on a diet of paradise, you know. Stath Balfyr, Sanctuary-Beyond-the-Sea. A place that was stolen, a dream of an island that was ours, where perhaps our brothers dwell yet. Talag was the only one who ever thought to seek it in anything but poetry or song. But we all loved it. Sanctuary, the dream of it, made sense of our lives. It was the paradise we clung to.'
She caressed his palm. 'I don't need it anymore. Strange: two days ago I still did. Now there's something else, something closer and more real. I can let that vision go.'
A sudden noise made them both freeze: a little whimper or cough, barely audible. It seemed to come from the direction of Felthrup's cell. A moment later it came again.
'He's in pain!' said Dri, sliding to the floor. She ran towards the iron bars that separated the two cells. Hercol started to his feet.
'Keep your distance!' he said. 'Felthrup himself warned me not to reach through the bars. He gave Chadfallow a savage bite.'
'I won't get too close.'
Diadrelu slipped into Felthrup's cell. As Hercol hissed objections, she peered at the dark shape in the middle of the floor.
'He is not moving at all, Hercol.'
'Dri-!'