The Ruling Sea (18 page)

“Like the shedding of a skin,” he continued. “One we’d die inside, if we didn’t cast it off. Ah, but once we let it fall—new worlds, lass. New worlds await us.”

Suddenly Neda leaped back and away. “You don’t know a gods-damn thing! A spy, an Arquali spy!” She was weeping, outraged and disbelieving that he should be here, poisoning her last thoughts, coming between her and death.

For the first time he took a step, in her direction. Stiff, old, slow! He was mad, or lying. He would be easy to kill.

“I don’t know why you want to die,” he said, “but I know the
sfvantskor
way—better than you, perhaps. I’ve watched your kind for years. Go on, lass, give it up. You don’t want
soul-traitor
for an epitaph. You don’t want to be buried with the waste from the slaughterhouse.”

Such was the fate of suicides in the Mzithrin. The man knew. Perhaps he was exactly what he claimed.

“I’ll kill you,” she said again, without conviction.

The man grinned—wolfish, hideous. “Don’t make threats,” he said. “Not when I can tell your Masters exactly what I saw tonight. And I saw quite a lot, lass. A privilege: I suppose no other man ever shall, until the day they strip you for the tomb. Unless the old Father’s more corrupt than I know?”

Neda lunged. No man alive would slander the Father to her face. As she drove forward she tossed the blade expertly from right hand to left. Her eyes did not betray the move, nor did her right hand fall away. It was a feint she’d practiced ten thousand times.

But her left hand closed empty. The man had moved like a cobra and plucked the knife from the air, and in the split-second that followed Neda learned the astonishing limits of her skills. She was facedown, choking on sand and seawater, helpless with the pain of blows she’d never seen coming.

He spoke from off to her right. “You’re the foreign-born
sfvantskor,”
he said. “I’ve heard rumors about you. Tell me, where did the Father dig you up? Where is home?”

With a gasp Neda rolled on her side. The man was holding the blade by two fingers as he studied her face. “Do you know,” he said in a changed voice, “I’ve just had the strangest—Rin’s blood, the
strangest
—idea about you.” He squatted close to her. “How’s your Ormali, girl?”

She spat out a mouthful of sand. The old man laughed and shook his head. Then he rose and walked around her, not too close, and started up the beach.

“If you are his sister, consider this: he was smitten with the Treaty Bride. The daughter of the man who sent the marines into Ormael. He’d have died in her place, I’ll warrant.”

Neda managed hands and knees. She crawled after him, feeling her strength return.

The man called over his shoulder: “They told you no Arquali could outfight you, didn’t they? Well, girl, I’ve stolen your death tonight: a shameful death it would have been. Go back, and wonder what other lies your Masters are peddling.”

He was gone. Neda put her forehead down on the sand. Wishing her heart would stop, knowing it wouldn’t. Even at death she was a failure.

Pazel, in love with that butchering admiral’s daughter? That couldn’t be. She’d seen what they did to him. She’d watched the blows, felt them. The old man was a liar and a fiend.

Then she saw the glint of the knife. He’d left it blade-down in the sand. She rose and went to it and pulled it free, and as she did so she felt exactly what he had described, a rupture of her certainties, a skin tearing away. What was beneath it? Was there anything she would recognize as herself?

A flash of red light. Brilliant, almost blinding. Neda froze: it had come from the direction of the shrine. Then, faint above the noise of the waves, she heard the screams begin.

“Father!”

She ran as she had never run before. The Father was using Sathek’s Scepter: he was facing some terrible threat. She clawed her way up the beach, passed the horrible old man (transfixed, staring), and flew straight at the shrine. There was fire in the courtyard: fire among the pillars, fire spinning overhead like a great ignited bird.

She could hear war-cries from Cayer Vispek and Suridín, and then came the Father’s roar and another flash of light. Neda ran blind, smashing through the underbrush. When her eyes cleared she saw an impossibly hideous shape—burning, fanged, doglike, childlike—dive from the air over the courtyard.

The Father waited beneath it, his beard half scorched away, and he caught the incubus with a blow from the scepter that hurled it shrieking into the night.

Howls from the windswept pasture. The last of the revelers were fleeing for their lives.

Suridín chased after the thing, wielding an iron skewer from the feast. Cayer Vispek held the Father in his arms: the old man had nearly collapsed. Then Neda’s feet touched marble and she was in the courtyard, shouting to them, raising the blade she had stolen to end her life. The Father whirled to face her, his eyes brightening with what looked like joy. And then the demon screamed back through the pillars and struck him in the chest.

Both men were felled by the blow. Cayer Vispek grabbed at the creature, though it was still wreathed in flames. The Father, his chest spouting blood, cried out in a strange language, and the black crystal in the scepter glowed. A sudden change came over the incubus: the deformed creature vanished, and some milder, weaker shape flickered where it had been. Only for an instant; then the incubus resumed its monstrous form and closed its jaws on the Father’s neck.

Neda closed the distance and pounced. Down she stabbed, burying the knife in the creature’s spine. The incubus twisted, slashing at her arm, spitting fire. The knife shattered. The incubus released the Father and rose on its burning wings. It flew wild about the courtyard, howling with the voices of the damned, spilling gouts of blood that vanished in flames before they touched the ground.

A hand closed on Neda’s arm: Suridín was hauling her to her feet. The girl shoved Neda to the left of the Father while she took his right, and Cayer Vispek tried to stanch his gushing wounds.

Again the incubus dived—this time on the scepter, tearing it from the Father’s weakening grasp. The Father cried out. The demon leaped, beating its wings with effort, rising—

Suridín grabbed its leg. Neda could smell her hands burning—it was like taking hold of a log in the fire. The demon dragged her across the courtyard as Neda tried desperately to strike the creature herself. Then the incubus dropped the scepter, twisted in midair, and tore into the arm that held it earthbound.

Suridín screamed in agony. With no forethought at all Neda snatched up the scepter and struck. The incubus wailed and its flame sank low. Neda felt the power in the black crystal, shard of the Casket that was the bane of demonkind. Suridín fell; the incubus crashed beside her on the marble, and with a cry Neda brought the scepter down again.

The fire went out. The demon fought on, a black smoking shape. Neda struck again and its howling ceased, but still its claws tore at Suridín. Once more Neda struck, with a cry of
“Rashta helid!”

And suddenly it was gone. No corpse lay beneath the scepter. Not a whiff of its demon-smoke lingered in the air. The incubus left nothing in its wake but wounds.

Cayer Vispek brought the other aspirants back from the sea. The Father lived two hours more: long enough for Neda to summon the courage to tell him where and how she wished to begin her life as a
sfvantskor
, and for the old priest to give his consent. It was long enough too for old Cayerad Hael to be woken and rushed ashore from the
Jistrolloq
, for the scepter belonged in the hands of the eldest
sfvantskor
. And it was long enough for the Father to point in the direction of the harbor, and wheeze into Neda’s ear.

“The demonetta … it came from that ship … from
Chathrand
. I knew. I knew from the start.”

Neda did not leave the Father’s side. His life was slipping away, and so was the aspirants’ self-control. They bickered and shouted and stood apart to hide their tears. He could not leave them, the world could not be meant to turn out this way. But the Father looked at Neda and his smile was proud, as if to say,
Remember, daughter. They despaired; you did not. You were stronger than any of them
.

Could he see through her, even now? Would he learn how wrong he was?

When he died at last their grief spilled over. Malabron was the worst. He spoke blasphemies about the death of the Faith, and glared at Cayer Vispek as if he would fight him, and said that the whole tragedy was Neda’s fault.

At that the others shouted him down. The Father had clung to Neda in his last moments, after all, and it was she who had dealt the creature its death-blow. And Suridín, the admiral’s daughter, who perished just minutes after the incubus, had put three fingers on Neda’s cheek in an old Mzithrini gesture, one reserved for closest kin. “Sister,” she’d said.

9
Standoff in Simja Bay

8 Teala 941
87th day from Etherhorde

Esteemed and Cherished Friends
,

If you are reading this, you will know that I have not returned to the Great Ship. With great regret I must declare that I do not intend to
.

My daughter is dead. My heart has sustained a blow from which it will not recover: not in a century, let alone in the few years that remain to me. Like all of you I hoped we might somehow triumph over sorcerer and spy. We did not triumph. The enemy was stronger, better prepared. It is my shame to have misidentified the enemy
—
and to have been slow to identify my friends
.

But the fight does not end with this parting. I have begun to mend ties with King Oshiram. Already I have persuaded him to ask a few key delegations, including the Mzithrinis, to linger after the other guests depart. To them I shall reveal all I know of our Emperor’s conspiracy, the plottings of Arunis and the threat of the Nilstone. From this base of believers I will set out to convince the world, and to build a seawall
against these twin evils. At the very least the Mzithrinis will be warned to guard every approach to Gurishal, even from the western Nelluroq, whence they have assumed no approach could ever come. The Shaggat, stone or flesh, will never reach his worshippers
.

I told Thasha once that I had set aside my admiral’s stripes for good, and I meant it. Now more than ever I believe in my duty as a diplomat
—
but not Magad’s diplomat. Arqual must be represented by a voice and a face besides the Emperor’s: a voice men will learn to trust; a face associated with honor and goodwill. Our future
—
and never again shall I believe that there is any future but that which we build together
—
depends on these things, even more than on tactics and the sword
.

When you have taken a moment to reflect, as I have, you will realize that this task is mine alone
.

You five swore an oath, and to that oath you must hold true. A mighty spirit chose you for the task, no doubt because it sensed in you the strength to see it done. Thasha’s sacrifice will not be the last. But you must never falter. Let an old soldier tell you: comrades fall, but the mission endures
.

Farewell, friends. We shall never see each other more, unless as some believe there is peace hereafter in the shade of the Tree
.

Unvanquished
,
E. ISIQ

Thasha put down the letter, stunned. “He’s not coming with us,” she said.

“Don’t tell me you believe that thing,” said Neeps.