The Rats and the Ruling sea

27

24 Freala 941

133rd day from Etherhorde

By the time they reached the hill overlooking the Chathrand, Diadrelu was winded, and the man beside her was panting like a hound. Even at nine in the morning the heat was fierce — particularly at eight inches above the barren ground. Seabirds whirled over them, innumerable: the dry side of Sandplume was one great eyrie, where gull and plover and albatross and tern vied for every available inch of nesting space. The birds had no real stomach for fighting creatures who could take off one of their wings with the swipe of a blade, but their pecking and diving made it hard to attend to other matters. Their noises — outraged wails, honks, brays, screeches — made Diadrelu think of the torments of the damned.

'A fool's errand,' grunted the man, whose name was Steldak.

Diadrelu shaded her eyes. Three hundred feet below them, the Chathrand and Sandor Ott's single-masted ship lay at anchor, hidden on three sides by the horseshoe-shaped isle.

'Look there.'

She pointed. From behind the cutter the Chathrand 's skiff was gliding into view. Her sail was down already. Aboard the Great Ship men were running out the davit-chains to receive the little craft.

Diadrelu took a short monocular telescope from her pocket and raised it to her eye. There was Pazel. She heaved a great sigh of relief. The boy had survived another misadventure ashore. Rin only knew what they had done to him this time.

'Erthalon Ness is not aboard,' she said aloud.

Steldak hissed through his teeth. 'It's as I foretold, then,' he said. 'They have given him to someone on Bramian, someone who will put him to evil use. How I wish you had stabbed them both!'

The rejoinder flashed through Dri's mind: How I wish I'd stabbed you. She closed her eyes, deeply shamed by the thought. Steldak was gaunt, despite the food and nursing lavished on him these past two months. He had spent years in a cage in Rose's desk, lifted out only at mealtimes, to test the captain's food for poison. His rescue had been a triumph of cunning on her brother's part. But Steldak's disobedience — he had tried to assassinate Rose on the spot — had cost Lord Talag his life.

He was delirious, Dri reminded herself. He'd believed for years that he would die in that cage. And he has done his penance, and sworn an oath to the clan.

Still she was glad she'd remembered the little scope, if only to give her something besides Steldak to focus on. The very sound of his breathing set her teeth on edge. Hate (so her people's adage went) was the place where death entered the living, the blind mote in the eye of the soul. Dri had always liked the adage, although she could not remember the last time she heard it on any tongue but her own. It was wrong to hate Steldak. But she did.

'There was a death ashore — a military death.' She pointed at a black ribbon of canvas snapping in the breeze from the masthead. 'I do not see Drellarek, the Turach commander. I wonder if it was he who fell.'

Steldak shrugged. 'It was not Rose, more's the pity. Beyond that I am not much interested.' He lunged at a gull, which sheered away with a ravenous wail. 'Let us go, Diadrelu. There is nothing more to be learned here.'

'What of the winds?' she asked. Steldak, who claimed to have been born at sea, had also declared himself a fine judge of weather.

'A storm from the north-east,' he said, glancing vaguely at the sky. 'These westerlies are not half what they were twelve hours ago. Some gale is sucking all the force from them. Soon they will turn back on themselves, and then we shall see.'

'How soon?'

Steldak's eyes travelled the horizon. 'After midday, if you force me to guess. But Bakru's lions answer to no one but Bakru, and sometimes not even to him. Lady Dri, I would return to our commander's side. He may have need of us.'

'Lord Taliktrum knows where we are.'

Nonetheless she relented, and the two ixchel started back down the hill. The footing was treacherous, and the birds, excited by movement, redoubled their attack. By the time they reached the island's highest shrubs they were winded again.

They groped beneath a stand of spiny, wind-tortured thorbal trees, their legs sinking to the knees in a powder of dead moss and lichen, and then began an easier descent, under greener growth. The Black Shoulder Ott had chosen as the Great Ship's final harbour in the northern world had two faces: the parched east, scoured by the rising sun, and the lush west, doused by the fogs that drifted almost daily from the Bramian landmass. They had crossed from one side to the other, and soon were able to slake their thirst on beads of water clinging to leaf-tips. From below the sound of pipes grew stronger.

'There they are,' said Diadrelu.

Just ahead, the land fell away in a cleft, like a jagged pie-slice cut from the island, all the way to the sea. At the edge of the precipice stood Taliktrum and two other ixchel, gazing down at the bright rock walls. The cliffs, like the hilltop, were alive with nesting birds; but here the birds were shore-swallows: cousins to the common birds that dwelled in barns and outbuildings. They screeched and bickered; you could hardly call it song. Their nests dappled the cliffs, grass-woven, mud-mortared, dried to the harness of stone. Thousands of the birds came and went on wings like dark flames, bringing grubs and insects to their fledglings.

It was, thought Dri, like a scene out of legend: the wall of sacred birds (swallows alone were sacred to her people), the crashing surf, and above them the young master of a noble House, resplendent in a swallow-suit of his own. The suit was one of but two such feathered coats in the possession of the clan. They were treasures, cared for and mended over centuries. But their value was more than ceremonial: with hands thrust into the cloak's wingbone gauntlets, any reasonably strong ixchel could fly.

Beside her nephew stood Ghali, the old Pachet seer; and his granddaughter, Myett, a wary, wide-eyed thing of twenty, whose first glance always seemed to anticipate a threat. Sensing their approach before the others, Myett recoiled into catlike fighting stance, and relaxed but slowly as Dri and Steldak emerged from the trees.

'How do we fare, my lord?' asked Steldak, hurrying to Taliktrum's side.

The young commander of Ixphir House did not alter his gaze in the slightest, nor was his answer, when it came, directed at Steldak.

'It will not do,' he said. 'No, Pachet, it will not do at all. Where does the problem lie, can you fathom that at least? With the pipes? With the swallows? With your playing, if you'll pardon the question?'

The old man turned. He was stern and very dignified, with his combed grey beard and eyebrows thick as foxtails. In his hands was a splendid instrument: a set of black wooden pan pipes, joined with hoops of gold that sparkled in the sun.

'All three, to be sure,' said the Pachet. 'Every colony of swallows has its own music, its own signature and key. The pipes, too, have not seen use in a generation.' He lowered his eyes. 'And I, perhaps, cannot call on-'

'The skill you once were known for?'

The old man looked up sharply. 'The lungs of my youth,' he said calmly. 'That is all I meant to say.'

'Very honest of you, Pachet. But don't forget my title.'

'Your pardon, Lord Taliktrum.'

Once again Dri felt scalded by shame — this time for the conduct of her nephew. In front of the Pachet's granddaughter! That man played at your birth-feast, you little tyrant, not to mention your father's, and my own.

'Master Ghali,' she said, stepping forwards, 'do you have it in you to play once more?'

'It is no use,' said Taliktrum. 'The birds are deaf to him. We must think about our return to the ship.'

'You're quite right, my lord,' said Steldak. 'The weather is changing, and if thunderheads roll out of Bramian we shall not gain the ship at all.'

Dri took a step nearer, pointing. 'If we but walk a little along the southern cliff, there is an outcropping. The sound may carry better there.'

An awkward silence followed. Dri had been sprung from her house arrest and brought ashore precisely because she knew something of the old lore of the swallow-pipes. But Taliktrum did not want it forgotten for an instant that she was no longer in command. She had only made a suggestion, but to accept it — that was to play the younger nephew, not the lord.

'Come, Grandfather,' said the young woman, casting a distrustful eye on Dri. 'Let us put your instrument away.'

But Taliktrum raised a staying hand. 'We will do as my aunt recommends. Take the Pachet's arm, Myett, and guide him carefully.'

They made their way single-file along the cliff's edge. He's learning, thought Diadrelu. As am I.

When they reached the rock outcropping the plain sense of her suggestion was clear to all. The rock was nearer to the nests, and the wind did not gust back in the Pachet's face. Taliktrum grew animated. He beckoned to the old man, waved Dri and Myett impatiently away. 'You'll startle the birds, blast you, fall back!' Then he spread his hands wide, froze there for an instant, and swept them towards the old musician. He was, Dri realised with sudden heartache, mimicking her brother's gesture: that pompous double-wave that told a singer or a poet that he might proceed. She had never imagined it was something she could miss.

Pachet Ghali knelt, and filled his lungs, and played. The music was like nothing else in ixchel tradition. It was not a melody as such, and yet there was a loud and lilting refrain. It was no attempt at birdsong, and yet it was a summons to the creatures. It was spellcraft: one of the last shards of magic in the collective memory of her people. Among the ixchel, only artists retained any link to the ancient disciplines whereby (it was said) miracles had once been performed. It was part of her brother's genius and audacity that he had planned to wed ixchel magic, for the first time in centuries, to a practical use.

But her brother was dead, and the Pachet was old, and the birds did not seem to hear him.

They all stood listening, hoping. The sound contended with the wind, the surf, the noise of the swallows themselves. At last Taliktrum sliced the air with a despairing hand.

'Enough,' he said. 'Save your breath, old man.'

The Pachet did not cease playing, however. Instead he rose slowly to his feet. His eyes were wide. Taliktrum looked from the player to the cliffs and back again. And then Dri realised that the birds had fallen silent.

The others stood as tense as she, watching the cliffs. Pachet Ghali played on. Suddenly a dark shadow flitted past his shoulder. Two more followed in the wink of an eye. Then it was as if the whole colony of birds had become of one mind. They flowed over the rim of the crevasse in a dark torrent and swept among the ixchel, so close that Dri felt the caress of wingtips on her shoulders. The Pachet turned, chasing the swallows with his eyes. All at once his music changed, and from a summons it became an order, a sharp and definite command.

Only twenty or thirty birds heeded him this time, but they were enough. Peeling away from the flock, they formed a racing circle about the ixchel. The Pachet raised his song a whole octave, his face amber-red with the strain.

Then the birds fell on Taliktrum. They jostled and crowded, vying to seize some part of his shirt or leggings. Dri had coached him for this moment, from the old lore of their House, the memories passed down to her by her great-aunts and uncles. Taliktrum raised his arms as though preparing to dive, and then it seemed almost that he was diving, but upwards, as the swallows bore him swiftly through the tree tops.

'Gods of earth and air,' said Diadrelu.

She heard his triumphant laugh. The birds flew where he wished: up the slope of the island, out over the cauldron of waves, down in a plummeting dive from which they were scarcely able to recover.

Myett approached Diadrelu and gripped her arm. 'My grandfather tires,' she said. 'You must tell your nephew to come down.'

'Let him cease playing when he will!' Steldak laughed. 'Our commander wears the swallow-suit; if they drop him he will fly back to us himself. And he no longer answers to Diadrelu, girl: she has been sanctioned by the clan, and walks free by his mercy. Aya Rin, see how they obey! It is as if-'

Steldak never finished his thought. Taliktrum and his swallow-servants raced by overhead, and the young lord swept a hand over the four figures beneath him. And before they could wonder at the move the swallows were boiling around them, black eyes shining with urgency, talons seizing at their clothes.

They rose together in the grip of the birds. The flock winged after Taliktrum, who was racing out over the sea. We'll die! thought Dri. For the Pachet's music had ceased: he could barely hold onto his instrument, let alone play.

But the birds still held them tightly, and still flew where Taliktrum willed. He led them far from the cliff, and high into the sky. For Dri, who had flown many times by swallow-suit, it was a frightful but thrilling experience. For the others it was pure terror. Steldak wore the look of a man in free fall, watching his death rush towards him. Myett and the Pachet were reciting prayers.

Only Taliktrum was fearless: indeed he looked half-crazed with ecstasy. Roaring, he made the birds climb higher still, until they saw beneath them all five Black Shoulder Isles, and the belching cone of an active volcano, and a fantastic mountaintop ruin on Bramian with serpentine walls that vanished in the mist. How is he doing it? Dri wondered. Will they obey him as long as he wears the suit? Then the flock wheeled round and Dri saw fear enter her nephew's face at last.

Great Mother!

A human stood atop the hill she and Steldak had climbed an hour before. He was a tall man in late-middle years, head shaved, dressed in a sand-coloured cloak tied with a crimson belt. His hands were raised above his head, and in one of them he held a sceptre of gold topped with a dark and jagged crystal. The furious seabirds whirled about him, fearing for their eggs, and it was a moment before Dri saw his face. When she did at last, she knew with a certainty that it was not the first time.

The man did not glance skywards; they had not been seen. As Taliktrum brought the flock around for another pass, Dri took out the monocular and trained it on him. The man had lowered his sceptre until it pointed at the Chathrand, and Dri could see his lips moving in some chant or incantation. A moment later he turned and quickly left the hill.

How had he landed, and where was his boat? Dri could not imagine that such a personage had been aboard the Chathrand all along. But where else could he have come from? And where in the Nine Pits had she seen his face?

Taliktrum struggled to draw nearer to his aunt, but he could not control individual birds, and merely sent them all zig-zagging above the isle. 'What do we do?' he shouted in the ixchel-voice no human could hear. For a moment all his pride of lordship was forgotten.

'Land!' Dri shouted back. 'Sweep low around the isle, and land! We must get back to the ship! This magic is no use to us now!'

Taliktrum nodded, still in shock. He swept his hand in a circle, and as if reading his very thought the birds dived for Sandplume. Soon they were safely out of sight, with trees and hill between them and the stranger above.

Then Myett screamed like a child, and pointed out over the western sea.

A warship was racing towards them, around the south shore of Bramian. Dri snapped the monocular to her eye: she was a great sleek predator of a ship, seven falling stars upon her foresail and a hull painted white as snow. It was a Mzithrini Blodmel. No more than twelve miles off. And of course it was not making for them at all — nothing as small as an ixchel was visible at such a distance — but rather for the Chathrand, the unsuspecting Chathrand, still moored on the blind side of the isle.

Taliktrum's gestures became frantic, crude. Wary of being seen by the man above, he drove the flock so low that a few unlucky birds flew full-tilt into the crest of a wave, perishing instantly. Then the nesting-cliff came into view and he veered so sharply that Myett's birds nearly lost their grip. Their landing was rough to say the least. Dri and Steldak were flung against the sides of trees. The old Pachet landed with a grimace of pain, but he kept his instrument safe in his arms.

Taliktrum ran to Diadrelu's side. 'Get up, Aunt, we have to think! It was a Blodmel, wasn't it?'

Dri climbed painfully to her feet. 'Not just any Blodmel,' she said. 'That is the Jistrolloq, the White Reaper. And it cannot be here by chance.'

'But perhaps they still respect the new peace?' asked Pachet Ghali.

'Yes, and they have come all this way to invite us to a game of pass-the-sandal, ' said Taliktrum acidly.

'Keep silent, old fool,' snapped Steldak, 'and let His Lordship think.' Taliktrum pulled a large bundle from under a drift of leaves. It was the other swallow-suit, which they had hidden an hour ago. He tore it roughly from its travel sack.

Diadrelu shook her head. 'No, Pachet, they have come too far for any task but murder. They blame us for their elder's death, and indeed it was Arunis who flung the incubus at their shrine.'

'How long do we have?' demanded Taliktrum.

'If the wind does not freshen?' said Steldak. 'Perhaps forty minutes, my lord.'

'That old giant on the hilltop is in league with them, isn't he?' demanded Taliktrum. 'I know his face, somehow.'

'He is a sfvantskor,' said Diadrelu. 'It has come back to me at last. He was aboard the Jistrolloq when it came alongside us in Simja. And I would guess that the wand he holds is what Arunis called Sathek's Sceptre, which he dispatched the incubus to steal. But this is no time for guesswork. You must fly to the ship at once, Taliktrum, and take the Pachet with you.'

'And what then, Aunt? Those devils are going to sink her!'

Taliktrum's voice had come out shrill. Dri stared at him, appalled: he had the look of a cornered animal. She had any number of misgivings about her nephew's role as clan leader, but paralysis in the face of danger was something she had never imagined.

'The Jistrolloq is a terrible foe,' she said cautiously, 'but the Chathrand is not defenceless, and she is nearly twice their size. Go, Taliktrum. See the Pachet safely to Night Village, then warn the humans.'

'Of course!' laughed Taliktrum. 'What other counsel should I expect from you? Talk to the giants, trust them, embrace them! Let them decide our fate!'

'If you would not do this,' said Diadrelu, 'give me the other suit, and I will.'

'Do you believe me now, Lord?' said Myett suddenly, her eyes locked on Diadrelu. 'I warned you that she would seek to usurp your place.'

'Oh child, nonsense,' said Pachet Ghali.

'Diadrelu has no business here,' said Steldak. 'What is it she advises? To sweep into the ship, crying an alarm? That would bring doom on our clan no matter what followed. If the Chathrand did indeed escape, Rose's first act when out of danger would be to exterminate us all.'

'Madness,' whispered Taliktrum.

'Yes, nephew, it is,' said Diadrelu. 'While we bicker they are closing. Our people will be dead by midday if we do not act. But I never suggested that we abandon secrecy. Go to the stateroom and alert Hercol or Thasha or Neeps Undrabust, or even the woken rat. They may sound the alarm in our stead.'

Still Taliktrum demurred. Dri fell silent: the facts had all been spoken; he would face the deed before him or he would not. And you, Diadrelu Tammariken? Will you face what must be done, if his will breaks?

'They cannot see the Jistrolloq,' said Myett, 'and they will not believe the ravings of the Tholjassan or the Isiq girl, to say nothing of the rat.'

'They are still at anchor,' said Steldak. 'A light anchor, but it will take more than an hour to raise it. And if they should be caught in the cove by the Jistrolloq they will be utterly destroyed.'

'Then our mission fails,' said Taliktrum.

His voice was hollow with despair. While the others looked at him, speechless, Dri studied the footing between her nephew and the cliff.

'We will indeed sound an alarm,' Taliktrum continued, 'but it must be more than that. Pachet Ghali, you must play for the birds again. What my brother hoped for at Sanctuary-Beyond-the-Sea must happen now, this very minute. We must abandon the ship.'

'Lord Commander,' said the old man, turning pale, 'I do not know if my skills are equal to such a task! There are so many of us — and the birds heeded me but once out of all my attempts.'

'They will heed me, I think,' said Taliktrum, 'as soon as you cast your spell.'

'Are they to bring us… here?' asked Steldak, aghast. 'To this heap of an island, this birdhouse?'

'Better here than the bottom of the sea,' said Taliktrum. 'And later swallows can bear us to Bramian, a few at a time. We may rebuild our House there, and find some measure of peace, and one day our children may try again.'

'It is broad daylight,' said Diadrelu, 'and the deed on Sanctuary was to be accomplished under cover of darkness. How many will the humans kill when our people rush to the topdeck?'

'Not all,' said Taliktrum, 'that is the main thing.'

'And what of your father's dream, the one he gave his life for?'

'He gave his life to save Steldak from a cat,' said Taliktrum. 'As for dreams, it is time we woke from them. But providence does favour us in one way — had we not come ashore we would be as ignorant of the danger as the giants, and soon to perish with them. Not even you, Aunt, could prefer that fate.'

Their eyes met, lady and young lord, the old commander and her replacement. Then Dri shut her eyes, said a prayer to Mother Sky, and leaped at him.

Taliktrum had a warrior's instincts, if not a leader's. He moved into a whirling sidestep that would have kept Dri's blow from ever landing — had she tried to land one. But her nephew was not the target: she was after the other swallow-suit, gripped under the arm he raised to block her, and in that first split-second leap she snatched it from his hand.

Taliktrum's reaction was just as she hoped: the young man expected an outright attack, and sought to put distance between them lest she press her advantage. When Dri spun in the opposite direction there was suddenly a yard between them — all the room in the world for a battle-dancer.

Her second leap brought her between the Pachet and his granddaughter. Myett was quick as a spider: she had her knife out and slashed the air before her, and Dri felt the wind of the blade as she twisted under the blow. No time to parry: she struck the Pachet as gently as she could with her elbow, seized the swallow-pipes and rolled out of range of the girl's next stab.

She came out of the roll with her feet planted, saw the flash of the descending knife and struck out with a blocking-blow almost hard enough to shatter Myett's forearm. The knife flew from the girl's hand; for an instant she seemed frozen with pain. In that instant Dri seized her by the arm and the belt and hurled her bodily at Steldak, who was sidling towards her.

A shadow. Dri threw herself sideways, and Taliktrum's sword bit the earth where she had stood a moment before. Gods above, he's drawn his sword against his family!

The shock of having nearly died at the hands of one she had held as an infant — and one adorned in the ancient feather-coat, like a soothsayer of old — nearly cost Dri her life. Taliktrum was in deadly earnest: he wrenched the blade from the ground straight into an upward thrust. Dri avoided the blow with room to spare, but she was off-balance now, and when the blade came down a third time it missed her chest by an inch. Her third dodge had left her so spread-eagled that Taliktrum was able to kick her right foot out from under her, throwing her backwards over his blade.

She knew as well as any fighter alive how to turn a setback into an advantage. But once more she hesitated: this time on the point of a crippling kick to her nephew's face. She knew the sound of a snapped neck, and could not live with the sound of his inside her, the knowledge that she had dealt the killing blow. Then Taliktrum wrenched his sword from beneath her, and as he did so the blade's edge tore a diagonal gash across her back.

What Dri did next she could not afterwards remember. She only knew (in thought too quick for words) that she must be faster than her spilling blood. She did not see her own attack, or how it felled Taliktrum in an instant; only the pain in one foot and one fist told her what she had used to bring him down. She was standing; he lay twisting in the leaves, stunned but not mortally wounded, the sword that had drawn her blood still clenched in his hand.

She turned and ran, straight out along the edge of the cliff, pulling on the swallow-suit as she went. Behind her Steldak was howling: 'Lord Taliktrum! Murder! Regicide!' And Myett was giving chase. Dri ran so close to the precipice that earth and leaves sheered off with every footfall. How her back bled! The ancient coat would be defiled for ever, and how would their descendents speak of the one whose blood stained the garment? Heroine, traitor, fool?

She stumbled. Her shoulder met the cliff's edge, and then she was falling, spinning, the boiling waves rushing towards her. She closed her eyes and extended her arms, thrust her hands into the wing-bone gauntletsAnd soared.

'What do you mean, refuses?' said Neeps.

'I mean he refuses — he flat-out won't come near her,' said Fiffengurt with a significant look at Thasha's cabin. She had retreated there well before sunrise, with Felthrup and her dogs, and had only responded to their knocking with irritated grunts. Felthrup's muffled voice went on and on, however, as if the rat were delivering an endless speech.

The quartermaster entered the stateroom and closed the door behind him. He looked worried and morose. 'As a matter of fact, Pathkendle doesn't want to see any of you. He's asked for his hammock to be brought to the midship compartment on the berth deck. He says he'll be as safe there as he would in the stateroom, because there's always hundreds of sailors around. And of course no woman may set foot there. I don't think he's in his right mind, Undrabust, if you want the truth. He says Alyash is a Mzithrini! And he says he watched Drellarek get eaten.'

'Did Pazel get bumped on the head, maybe?' asked Marila sensibly.

Fiffengurt shook his head. 'He looks like he's been wrestling snakes in the bottom of the Pits. And there's more, by Rin.' He lowered his voice, although they were quite alone. 'Pathkendle says Rose has got a wolf burned into his forearm. How d'ye like that development, lad? Rose carries the same mark as you and Pathkendle and Thasha and Mr Hercol. Does that mean what I think, now — that the captain's going to help us?'

Neeps' eyes widened in disbelief. 'Pazel must be wrong,' he said. 'He saw some other scar on Rose's arm, and got carried away.'

'I'm sure you're right, Undrabust,' said Fiffengurt uneasily.

'Hang that fool, he's impossible!' Neeps exploded. 'Gone for three days of Rin-knows-what on Bramian, and he can't even bring himself to say, "Hello, I survived? " '

'Obviously not,' said Marila.

Neeps glared at her. 'Anything else obvious to you?'

Marila nodded firmly. She began to count on her fingers.

'Pazel won't actually be safe on the berth deck, because it's full of violent men. And all that chatter from Felthrup — it's just like the night before last. He's reading to her from the Polylex, Neeps. And Thasha must have asked him to, because who could put up with it otherwise? And Rose hasn't imprisoned you yet because he thinks you'll be useful to him, just like Pazel must have been on Bramian.'

'Finished?' Neeps demanded.

'No,' said Marila. 'It's also obvious that you and Pazel had a fight before he left — you get angry whenever he's mentioned. And one more thing: since Ramachni left we haven't won any battles, unless you count what happened on Dhola's Rib. Mostly we've been fighting just to stay alive. We're… lost, and our enemies are stronger than ever.'

Fiffengurt sighed and worried his beard. 'That last part's certain,' he said. 'But they did take one hit on Bramian: Sergeant Drellarek met his death, in some horrid way no one wants to explain.'

Thasha's door creaked open. There she stood, bedraggled and wild-eyed between her dogs.

'Where is Pazel?'

Awkward silence. Neeps and Fiffengurt glanced sidelong at each other, as if each was hoping the other would speak first.

Marila came to their rescue. 'He's annoyed with us — with the two of you, anyway. He and Neeps got into a fight-'

'What?' cried Thasha.

'-and Pazel's mad at you for kissing Fulbreech-'

'What? ' shouted Neeps. 'Thasha, you kissed that snake-tongued stooge? That palace bootlick?'

Thasha looked ready to smack him. 'You don't know a thing about Greysan. He's no more a bootlick than you, he's worked for what he's got-'

'Aye,' laughed Neeps acidly. 'I've no doubt he earns his wages. Just didn't imagine you'd be paying 'em.'

'You pig!' Thasha took a step towards Neeps. 'Did you try to strangle Pazel too?'

'Are you both touched in the head?' cried Fiffengurt, stepping between them. 'I've never seen such a pair of beasts! Enough, enough, or by the Night Gods you can have done with any help from this old man!'

His rage shamed them all to silence. Fiffengurt took a deep breath. 'That's much better. Now then-'

A terrified squeal cut him off. It was Felthrup, still in Thasha's cabin. They rushed into the chamber and saw the rat upon her bed, eyes riveted on the single porthole, which stood ajar. Collapsed on the sash was what they first took for an injured bird. But then the bird rose on shaky human legs.

'It's Diadrelu!' cried Thasha, leaping to her side. 'She's been stabbed!'

She lifted the ixchel woman gently from the sill. 'The coat, don't harm the coat!' Diadrelu gasped.

'Devil take the coat!' said Felthrup. 'Where is your wound, Diadrelu?'

'Lord Rin!' said Fiffengurt. 'That thing's a crawly!'

Dri looked up at him, copper eyes sharp.

'Put it down, Thasha!' cried Fiffengurt. 'They're worse than scorpions! Trust me, I know!'

'Will he talk?' said Diadrelu quietly.

'Will I talk?' cried Fiffengurt. 'You can bet your ship-sinking blood I'll talk!'

'No you won't!' shouted Neeps and Thasha together.

Fiffengurt looked from one to the other, like a man being circled by strangers in an alley. 'You don't understand,' he whispered. 'That's a crawly.'

'We've no time for this,' husked Diadrelu.

'It's your back that's cut, isn't it?' said Neeps, trying to peel the coat away from the bloody spot. Dri dug her nails into his thumb.

'You're under attack,' she said.

The warning spilled from her, even as her blood soaked Thasha's arm: the old priest on the island, Sathek's Sceptre, the Jistrolloq tearing east with a full spread of sail. The humans stood gaping. Once more Thasha was the first to reach a decision.

'Take her, Marila.'

Gingerly she passed Diadrelu to the Tholjassan girl. 'What are you doing, Thasha?' Felthrup asked.

'Alerting Rose,' she said. 'It has to be me, don't you understand?'

Without waiting for an answer, she flew from the stateroom. They heard her shouting from the passage: 'Turachs! Rose wanted me captured, right? Here I am, take me! I surrender!'

Neeps started to run after her, but a glance at Fiffengurt's tortured expression stopped him dead.

'Listen,' Neeps said, 'we owe our lives to this crawly. She saved me and Pazel in the Crab Fens. And she was the one who guessed the right moment to turn the Shaggat to stone.'

'Then she's using you, Undrabust — exploiting your good nature.'

'Oh come on,' said Neeps. 'My what?'

Marila had put Diadrelu on the bed and was easing her out of the feather-coat. 'We'll need a doctor,' she said.

'No!' said Diadrelu. 'I told you, the wound is not deep. Give me your knife, Mr Fiffengurt.'

'You know who I am!'

Diadrelu sighed. 'I also know that the Jistrolloq will make short work of this vessel, if her other officers move half as slowly as you do. Come then, do it yourself — cut this shirt from me.'

No room for modesty in her manner: she was a soldier in need of aid. 'Do it!' shrilled Felthrup, pawing at the quartermaster's leg. Stunned, Fiffengurt drew his skipper's knife. He slid it under the bloodsoaked shirt, and cut it with a quick upward slash.

Like any sailor worthy of the name, Fiffengurt kept his blade very sharp. The cloth parted neatly, and Diadrelu stood bare to the waist. The quartermaster blinked and dropped his eyes. He had never seen a more beautiful woman — not a woman, a crawly, damn it all. She twisted to examine herself: her back was crimson. A long diagonal gash crossed her shoulder.

'Bruch,' she swore, 'I can't fly like this. Hear me, I beg you. We have just two swallow-suits, and my nephew is wearing the other. He and three of our people are on Sandplume. They cannot escape the isle except by relaying both suits back and forth — carrying an empty suit back to the isle after each trip, you understand? — and this must happen before the Chathrand escapes the harbour. We cannot fly more than a half-mile without rest. Someone from my clan must take this suit back to Sandplume, immediately.'

'How can we make that happen?' said Neeps.

'Leave it to me!' said Felthrup, jumping. 'I know where they are! And the Turachs will never catch this rat, even if they bother to try! Leave it to me!'

And he too was gone.

Diadrelu hissed: Marila had dipped a handkerchief in brandy and was swabbing her wound. Fiffengurt would not let himself look at her again — or just once, just to confirm a suspicion. There it was, by Rin, he hadn't dreamed it: the wolf-scar, the same shape the others carried, burned into that astonishing'They will need you aloft, Quartermaster,' said the crawly woman, looking at him over her shoulder.

He wrenched his eyes away, blushing. 'Never could I have dreamed that I would see such a day,' he mumbled.

The crawly woman laughed, though tears of pain streaked her face. 'Stay alive long enough and you'll see it all.'

Thasha found the captain in the chart room, checking figures in a log-book with Elkstem, a great map of the Outer Isles spooling over the table's edges and draping to the floor. His steward blocked her way, but she shouted past him. 'Captain Rose! Captain Rose! We're under attack!'

He looked up at her, threatening. Then he lumbered to the door, waving the steward aside.

'How dare you,' he snarled, leaning over her.

'It's true,' she said, meeting his wolfish eyes. 'The Jistrolloq is running straight for us, Captain, on the other side of Sandplume. She's probably less than ten miles off.'

Rose's eyes blazed down at her. 'The Jistrolloq. You are hysterical, girl. Steward, have the guard escort-'

'No!' said Thasha, seizing his coat. 'It's here, it's followed us! Captain, for Rin's sake-'

'Be silent, you little fool!'

Thasha said nothing, but a look passed between them. He had called her that before: in the Straits of Simja, when the fleshancs were storming the Chathrand, leaving dead men around them in heaps. Rose's face paled slightly, and she knew that he remembered which of them had been in the right.

'How do you know this?' he whispered.

'Does it matter?' she said. 'Look at me, Captain. I know.'

Their faces were inches apart. One moment longer Rose crouched, stock-still, only his eyes whirling here and there like bats, and Thasha had the odd impression that he was listening to voices other than her own. Then he shoved her aside and charged from the room like a marauding bull.

'BEAT TO Q UARTERS! EVERY LAST MAN TO QUARTERS! THE BLACK RAGS ARE MINUTES FROM OUR BOWS!'