The Ruling Sea (29 page)

*
In the late Becturian era, Prince Axmal of Dremland persuaded four minor lords, who had taken up arms against one another and Axmal himself, to drop their feuds and attend his son’s tenth birthday party. Each lord had a son or daughter of about the same age, and Axmal hoped to pacify the lords with the sight of their children at blissful play in his courtyard, over which he had hung a sign reading
THE GARDEN OF HAPPINESS.
The plan worked: the lords were entranced by the children’s innate goodness, and toasted one another, and declared themselves brothers for all time.

13
Illusions at Talturi

29 Teala 941
108th day from Etherhorde

The Honorable Captain Theimat Rose
Northbeck Abbey, Mereldín Isle, South Quezans

Dear Sir
,

Fond greetings from your only son.
^*
We are making no less than fourteen knots as I write these words, for the gale that carried us from Simja still blows favorably, east by southeast, and the warm Bramian Current works to our advantage as well. Today we passed the islet called Death’s Cap: that lone round rock with its forest of poles, on which for countless years the Arquali navy has displayed the skulls of pirates and mercenaries, and others who dare to live untamed by Magad’s fleets. Our last glimpse of Imperial civilization
.

We are yet some days from the Ruling Sea; by my reckoning the ship is currently due west of the Quezans. I shall
drink your health
raise a glass in your direction at supper tonight
.

In fact I should like a bit more of a storm. Not only to speed us on our way, but also to keep lesser boats in port. Now that the deed at Talturi is done we must, above all things, remain unseen. And while we have kept to the loneliest stretch of the Nelu Peren, there is always the chance of an encounter. Last Thursday a ship appeared on the northern horizon, but she was too far even to count our masts, let alone identify us. We kept our distance until nightfall, and when the dawn came there was fog to the north, and we saw her no more
.

Rougher seas would have made the great charade at Talturi more convincing as well. You know the island: brave mariners along the western coast, especially those from the city-state of Manturl Cove. But the northeast is another world: the men there are witless clam-diggers and reef fishermen, all under the sway of a daft Bishwa who has them forever building seawalls against a tidal wave that never appears. This is where we chose to sink
.

The fog might have ruined everything
—
for on this one occasion we had to be noticed. Fortunately it did not reach Talturi until well past dusk, and in the end it even worked to our advantage. Just before nightfall we paraded, close and clumsy, along the north shore and the Village of Three Rivers. I made certain they saw us; I even saluted their mean little wharf with one of the forecastle guns. The storm was chasing their fishing-fleet home with tucked tails, though of course we barely felt it on the Great Ship. We ran before the wind with excessive canvas. If any true sailors watched, they must have noted our fouled mizzentop, our wagging rudder, our overall carelessness (it cost me much to force the men to work poorly; it appalled my every instinct, and theirs). Worst of all, we ran due east: straight at Talturi Reef, as though we knew nothing of it and could not hear the
clang-clang-clang
of the warning buoy. The fisherfolk leaped and gestured, and one or two
signaled danger with a scarlet flag. We ignored them and ran on
.

But as soon as night closed in we tacked three points to windward, circumnavigated the reef, and crept back under shortened sail to Octurl Point, the eastern extreme of Talturi Island. The Bishwa keeps a lighthouse there, but its lamp is weak and could not pierce the fog: only the buoy told us our distance from the coral. I need not explain to you that the danger was real: dropping anchor was out of the question, and yet we were not half a league from a submerged wall that would tear the bottom out of
Chathrand
as surely as any other ship
.

We turned
Chathrand
into the wind, striking all but the fore topsail in order to keep us pointed true, and to hold our shoreward drift to a minimum. Then I set six hundred men to work
.

All that vital and expensive wreckage had been raised from the hold already: broken spars, shattered mastwood and gunwales, cabin doors with brass nameplates, boxes of engraved cutlery, footlockers, water casks, wine bottles, life preservers, a perfect replica of the Goose-Girl, a fine Arquali cello, first-class children’s toys, a ruined longboat with
IMS
CHATHRAND emblazoned on her stern. All was genuine; even the tar on the tattered rigging matched our own. At my orders men pried open the crates, slit the burlap, severed the ropes that had secured all this flotsam, and dragged it to the gunwales, port and starboard, bow to stern. It was a weird sight, Father: our untouched
Chathrand,
draped in artifacts of her own demise
.

Then we distributed the bodies of our slain. Rarely have I seen men look more mutinous, sir. Even that trader in pelts and carcasses Mr. Latzlo (still mooning for the Lapadolma girl, who despised him) roused himself to grumble about the wrongness of tossing our own sailors and soldiers out with the garbage, especially as they had died fighting for the ship. Probably Sandor Ott intended to use the bodies of criminals: the governor of Ormael had some twenty waiting to be executed. But after the violence in which Ott was driven from the palace the governor
(too great a fool to be trusted with details of the Plan) was no longer cooperative. In a sense we are indebted to Arunis for killing as many of us as he did: shipwrecks must have bodies. Old Swellows, who served you as a tarboy on the
Indomitable,
lay among them: bloated and red-faced, a drunkard even in death
.

Brother Bolutu prayed beside each corpse, and sent their spirits to final rest with the sign of the Tree. His gesture calmed the men. It was the first time he has proved useful since the start of the voyage
.

For two hours I stared into perfect darkness. The clanging buoy grew louder, nearer; all over the ship men listened, barely breathing. We were surely no more than a quarter mile off the reef
.

In another minute I would have given the order to abort and run. Then a dim glow swept over the
Chathrand.
It was the lighthouse: the fog was thinning at last. “Over the side!” I declared. “Over the side with everything, the whole confabulation! They can see our lights too, make haste, make haste!” I did not shout, for the wind was behind us and my voice might have carried to the lighthouse keepers. But the lieutenants took up the command, and at once the men began to heave and hurl the wreckage into the sea. Ott’s attention to detail was flawless, not to say maniacal: he had lain away bags of straw, silage, chicken feathers and other debris that would toss on the wave-tops, and casks of walrus oil and turpentine to stain the Talturi shore
.

The corpses proved most difficult: even after Bolutu’s blessing we had to tear some of them from the arms of their shipmates, who sobbed like children. I let them. If those voices reached Talturi, so much the better
.

Next we extinguished every light aboard, save the running-lights facing the island, and a few handheld lamps. There are five of these running-lights: big fengas contraptions designed to self-extinguish if their glass hoods so much as crack. With great care my men detached them from the rigging and lowered them, still burning, toward the sea. Those of us holding lamps rushed and staggered, dipped and bobbed: I think Mr. Uskins was quite enjoying himself
.

By now I could hear voices hailing us from Octurl Point. We answered with screams, distress-whistles, frantic peals of the ship’s bell. Teggatz beat a cauldron with an iron spoon. Alyash, the new bosun, lit a flare and hurled it in a blazing arc into the sea. Of the officers, Fiffengurt alone stood silent, arms crossed, as if the scene was highly offensive to him. I know what you will say, Father: that I have not punished him sufficiently, taught him to fear my every glance, my least displeasure. Better a dead man than a disobedient one, etc. But I cannot do without Fiffengurt yet. Although he suspects nothing, he is going to betray his friends to me. He is a man with too much to lose
.

The storm had us rolling, and one of the running-lights smashed against our hull. But the others we managed to drown in the waves
—
one after another, as though our keel had shattered on the reef and we were flooding fast. I sent the men with the deck lamps a short way up the masts: they were the lone survivors, now, trying to keep their heads above water. One by one we snuffed the lamps. I dangled the last one from the quarterdeck, waved it fitfully and blew it out. And in deep darkness the men set mainsails, and we tacked sharp into the wind and bore away
.

“Congratulations, Nilus,” said Lady Oggosk, who had come out into the rain to watch the show. “Once more you prove that you were born to deceive. By mid-autumn all Etherhorde will know that the Great Ship went down off Talturi. Lady Lapadolma will die of heartache. Come to think of it, she’ll learn of her niece’s death at about the same time.”

“She took the
Chathrand
from me once,” I said. “Now I have taken the ship from her and her damnable Company, forever.”

It was then that the ghost intervened. Oggosk’s lips kept moving, she was cackling and delighted, but instead of her voice I heard another, cold as a tomb, and saw the walking shadow approaching me from the jiggermast. “Forever!” it hissed. “That is but one of the black immensities! You know nothing of them, but I do. I know them, Nilus Rose. They
gape at me like cavern mouths. One of them shall claim and devour me.”

The wind tore at its burial wraps. The rain passed through it, however: a sign of one whose years of death do not yet outnumber those of his life, if you believe the
Polylex.

“Captain Levirac,” I guessed aloud, pretending I did not feel its icy hand on my heart
.

“No more!” hissed the faceless thing. “I am forbidden that name, any name, they took my names from me as they shall take yours from you.”

All the same it was Levirac. His wheezing voice had not changed in forty years: from the time when he commanded the
Chathrand,
and I the young purser waited on his orders. I fancied I could still smell his rotten teeth: in life he chewed sugarcane day and night
.

“Go to your rest, and pay me no further visits,” I said (one must never show weakness before a ghost)
.