“How irritating,” said Vadu. “Is that why you persuaded the Issar to send us in tonight? To turn the joke back on them?”
“In a sense. They were… complicating my work. And they would only have been in the way, when my replacement crew arrives from the capital. So will Prince Olik, if he is not managed with skill. He seemed rather to warm to the humans, even after they took knives to his flesh. You do understand that he must learn nothing of our intentions, until the replacement crew is actually aboard the Chathrand?”
“You made that quite clear, sorcerer. You expect them in a week’s time, you say?”
“Perhaps sooner, if the winds are favorable. Where is Olik, incidentally?”
“Never mind him,” said Vadu. “He is a dilettante, a lesser son of noble sires. You will find him meditating with his Spider Tellers, in a temple in the humblest corner of the Lower City.”
“Olik, a Spider Teller?” said Arunis, his eyes wide with disbelief. “A prince of the ruling family, and that is the extent of his ambition?”
“His blood is his license for eccentricity,” said the counselor. “But yes, he is a true philosopher, which is to say a buffoon. You think him fond of these… freaks? I thought him supremely indifferent. Yes, Rose appears guilty of drawing Bali Adro blood-and must therefore die, unless Emperor Nahundra himself issues a pardon. But the humans also saved the man from the Karyskans. They nearly lost the ship, protecting him. And yet he could not wait to abandon them-did not wait; he literally took to the stevedores’ tunnels as the ship was being raised. I shouldn’t wonder if he has forgotten all about them by now.”
“You must forget them too, Counselor,” said Arunis. “I know you are not fond of killing-who is? But believe what I tell you: they are incurable. In short order they will all become tol-chenni. As will every human north of the Ruling Sea. Their time in Alifros is over; soon they will take their place alongside the fantastic creatures whose bones grace your museums.”
“The doctor insisted that not one of them had yet been affected,” said Vadu.
“Denial has always been part of the plague,” said Arunis. “Here, whole cities maintained that they were clean, lest the Emperor place them in quarantine. Householders swore up and down that all was well, even as they kept a gibbering ape or two locked in the cellar. Read your history, man.”
“But there were no gibbering apes found on the Chathrand.”
“Rose is no fool,” said Arunis. “He tossed them into the gulf before we came within sight of Masalym. Pity them, if you will. I certainly do. But don’t share in their illusions.”
Vadu fell silent a moment. “If that is how things truly stand,” he sighed, “then I begin to grasp the terrible command that came tonight from my Emperor. You might as well know. We’re to select fifty specimens, in addition to the few in the Conservatory, and chain them in the hold for transport to Bali Adro. For study, I assume. The rest will be marched into the emptied basin, sealed inside. The floodgate lifts, the basin quickly fills. It was done before with tol-chenni. I do read history, sir-at least when it pertains to my job.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” said the sorcerer.
“All told it is a merciful system,” said Vadu. “When they are drowned we simply open the lower gate, and their bodies are carried over the falls and into the gulf.” The counselor glanced upward. “What about your servant?”
“Fulbreech?” said Arunis. “I shall keep him, while his mind is whole.”
“Of course you will. I only ask if you wish to bring him into the cab, since the rain has turned so cruel.”
“By no means,” said Arunis. “He has worse ahead of him than a little soaking. And the wound he took in the battle tonight is nothing. I examined it because it was made with Ildraquin, that sword you failed to obtain.”
“So it is a special blade?”
Arunis nodded.
“But not as special as my own.”
“The difference, Vadu,” said Arunis, “is that Ildraquin has an owner, whereas the Plazic Arsenal, despite the conquering power it has granted Bali Adro, has slaves.”
Vadu laughed, but when Arunis did not even smile, he checked himself. “I am a proud servant of the House of the Leopard, and ever shall be,” he said. “The Emperor knows my loyalty, and I know how he trusts in the Raven Society. Yet I myself am often baffled by your council’s ways.”
Arunis raised a warning eyebrow.
“Macadra,” said Vadu, “never setting foot outside the palace, though they say her word is law. Stoman the Builder, obsessed with growing the navy, when already we are the sea’s unchallenged masters. Ivrea, who would send her own mother to the gallows if she suspected her of disloyal thoughts.”
“In a heartbeat,” said the mage.
Vadu’s head gave a twitching bob. “And now you, Arunis Wytterscorm, returning like a legend aboard a ship of tol-chenni freaks.”
“They are human, Vadu,” said Arunis. “Don’t make me repeat it. The North is rife with them.”
Vadu looked thoughtful. “How many are there, really?”
“They are more numerous than the crickets in the chuun-grass,” said Arunis. Then he raised his head and looked Vadu in the eye. “Before the burning season, that is.”
The driver flicked the reins, and the horses trotted off. Lightning flashed; the mountains appeared in looming silhouette, and vanished again. On the bench beside the driver, Greysan Fulbreech shivered. Not with cold, but with a sort of intoxicated wonder. His changes of luck that night had been breathtaking. He had been duped by the Isiq girl, tasted her body, faced a hideous, gelatinous devil guarding his master’s door. He had nearly been strangled by Arunis, and saved only by Ott’s wish to torture him at leisure; then he had been saved from Ott by his true master’s swift instigation of the raid. Yes, a night of dangerous gambles. But as always his hand was a little stronger than the day before. The ship was doomed; he would not stay with it. And it was clear that in all the world there was no greater patron than Arunis.
Unless this Macadra was his master, perhaps? Fulbreech was unclear on this point, but no matter. Time would tell him what to do. A flood was rising in the world, and he would do as he had always done, scramble from rock to higher rock, and who could fault his strategy? What harm, after all, had come to him during these months of violence and death? A black eye from Pathkendle, tonight a little scratch on the chin. He touched it gingerly: the bleeding had stopped already, yet for some reason he found it difficult to ignore.
The carriage left. The Great Ship sat in darkness. Rain poured down the tonnage shaft; the wind prowled as indifferently as it did the hulks and wrecks that littered shores from one end of Alifros to the other. Here and there a sound echoed in the lightless corridors: a mouse, a cricket, the ghost of a laugh. And in the stateroom, in Admiral Isiq’s former cabin, in the back of the closet, in a box turned to the wall, Felthrup Stargraven lay twitching, unconscious, dreaming with a will.
Under Observation
4 Modobrin 941
233rd day from Etherhorde
“Prisoners,” said Neeps. “We’ve crossed the entire world to become prisoners who stare at the walls.”
“It is certainly better than the forecastle house,” said Dr. Chadfallow, biting into a silver pear.
“This is more room than I’ve ever had in my life,” said Dr. Rain. “Not all of us had mansions back in Etherhorde, or crossed the Nelluroq in the Imperial Stateroom.”
“We’re being examined,” said Uskins, crouched in the weeds, his eyes on a large antlered beetle near his foot. “They’re spying on us. I can feel their fishy eyes.”
“We’re just monkeys, as far as they’re concerned,” said Mr. Druffle, rising to Uskins’ gloomy bait (he was suffering greatly from lack of rum). “The experiments will come later: the injections, the probes.”
“And then they’ll turn us into frogs and eat our legs,” said Marila, whose opinion of Druffle was even lower than Dr. Chadfallow’s.