The Ruling Sea (42 page)

“To make the people accept such treachery, Ott spread rumors about Maisa: rumors of corruption and graft, and uglier sins. A pack of lies, of course; but by the time the people saw through them it was far too late.

“Having seized the throne, the Rake set out to seize his son’s heart by equally brutal tactics. Magad the Fifth was a boy of nine, and loved his stepmother dearly, but his father and a thousand sycophants filled his head with tales of Maisa’s wickedness, and kept at them so relentlessly that the boy at last started to believe the lies. They called her embezzler, deathsmoker, torturer of children, unnatural lover of animals and flikkermen, practicer of dark western rites. By the time young Magad’s stepbrothers were found and slain in the Tsördons, the boy was denouncing Maisa himself. And to this day our Emperor repeats these lies, whenever he forgets that his stepmother does not officially exist.”

“But can he
truly
believe them,” Pazel asked, “after Maisa raised him as one of her own?”

“A fine question,” said Hercól. “All I can say with certainty is that when it mattered most he permitted Ott to go on hunting Maisa and her children. I do not know if he has ever repented. Still, there was a rumor in the Secret Fist that the death of Magad the Rake was no hunting accident, as the world was told: that he was not tossed from his horse but pulled from it, by his son. The man who is now our Emperor then took a stone and crushed his father’s skull—and the word on his lips as he did so was
Mother!”

“And yet he sits upon her stolen throne,” said Dri, “and pretends that she never existed.”

Hercól nodded. “Worse, he has never pardoned her. If a foreign king or bounty hunter laid hands on Maisa, he could claim to be holding an enemy of the crown. Ott, after all, only let Maisa and her sons flee Etherhorde to save appearances. He always meant to kill them, at a prudent distance from the capital. And as I have already told you, he succeeded with her sons.”

“How has the mother survived so long?” asked Diadrelu.

“Good luck, in part,” said Hercól. “Even a spymaster has but so many men at his command, and for decades now they have been occupied with their Shaggat deception. And the Mzithrinis have certain brilliant agents of their own, both within the territories of Arqual and in the Crownless Lands, and much of the Secret Fist’s efforts go to fighting them. But Ott scorns the very notion of luck. His edict was always
Leave nothing to chance
. And so I think it was with Maisa. He must have decided that an ex-Empress living out her declining years among poor mountain folk was better than a slain Empress who could become a martyr.”

“But she’s not in decline, is she?” said Pazel. “I mean, I saw her, and—”

Hercól looked at him, and a bright ferocity shone in his face, and the memories seemed to dance once more before his eyes. “They slew her children,” he said. “And they took her hopes for peace, and her faith in goodwill and honor among nations, and dragged them through sewers of treachery. No, she is not in decline. There is an avenging fire in her that could yet change the fate of this world, and sweep away the lesser men who bleed and abuse it.”

Dri was watching him intently. “Is that your dream as well?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Hercól. “And I am far from alone, although I have sometimes felt so. And with the approach of Treaty Day I feared I would lose her at last. I wrote letter upon letter, begging her not to gamble with her life on a visit to Simja. No answering letters came. Only once—days before boarding the
Chathrand
—did I receive a scrap of paper, slipped into my pocket by a stranger in a crowd. The words were in Maisa’s hand:
Have you forgotten our toast, Asprodel? I assure you, I have not.”

“What’s that name she called you?” asked Pazel.

Hercól smiled again. “In her service we all bear false names. Her Majesty chose mine.”

“Asprodel,” said Dri, looking up at Hercól. “The mountain-apple, whose flowers open before all others, even in the melting snow. I would not call that name a false one.”

“But what did she mean?” pressed Thasha. “What toast?”

Hercól remained silent for a moment, as if struggling to fit words to memory. “Before Simja,” he said at last, “I had not laid eyes on Empress Maisa in ten years. Not since the day we learned for certain that her sons were dead. On that day she called me to her cold chambers, in that forgotten colony of timber-men, and sent her one servant from the room, and poured us each a cup of steaming wine. ‘Today I turn, Asprodel,’ she told me. ‘Henceforth I shall face the wind and cease to live as a hunted thing. My own hunt begins, and by the souls of my children, I swear it shall only end with my death.’

“‘What do you hunt, Your Majesty?’ I asked her.

“‘Why, my throne,’ she said, as if surprised by the question. And yet anyone would have forgiven me if I had laughed. She had been a stateless monarch for thirty years. I had been with her for the last twelve, and had watched her entourage dwindle from seven hundred to sixty, half of them old, less than a dozen true warriors. Nine-tenths of her gold was spent, and her sons were in ice-coffins sailing back to Magad the Fifth. How could she even begin?

“I learned soon enough. ‘Open that chest by the window, Asprodel, and bring me what lies therein,’ she said. I obeyed her, and this is what I found.”

Hercól seized the hilt of his sword, and in a swift, quiet motion pulled the weapon from its sheath. In the dim light the blade was little more than a shadow, and yet somehow they could all sense its nearness, as though it were radiating heat, though they felt none.

“‘That is Ildraquin,’ Maisa told me.
‘Earthblood
, in the tongue of the selk, who made it from the steel of the Gates of Ajadhin, when that city was no more. Six miles beneath the earth they forged it, under Wrath Mountain. It was their gift to Bectur, last of the Amber Kings.’

“‘I have heard of that sword,’ I told her, ‘but under a different name:
Curse-Cleaver
, men call it, do they not?’

“‘They do,’ she said, ‘for in the deep heart of Alifros all curses die, and something of that heart’s molten power was caught, they say, in the tempering of the blade. And Ildraquin did break the curse that had wrapped the Amber Kings in misery and sloth, they say, for Bectur’s reign was like a last ray of sun beneath the thunderheads, before a long night of storm. It was far too late to prevent the storm. Let us hope we are not too late again.’

“With that she sheathed the sword and passed it to me. I began to object, but she silenced me with an impatient gesture. ‘Whom do you imagine I am guarding it for? A son?’ I found no words to answer, so she continued: ‘Gather your things, Asprodel. You ride today upon the river, with the timber-men to Itholoj, and thence to the coast, and by the first ship bound for Etherhorde. A great ally awaits us there: probably the greatest we shall have in this campaign, although he shall never wield a sword. He is a mage, Ramachni Fremken, and he has stepped already into the life of the daughter of my admiral, Eberzam Isiq.’”

“Ha!” cried Pazel, turning to Thasha. “And you thought Ramachni had befriended you just so that he could find me, and teach me those Master-Words. But he’s always been part of something larger.”

“Well, I knew
that
much,” said Thasha. “In fact I always thought he was part of something
enormous
—bigger than who rules Arqual, or whether it fights another war with the Mzithrin. I suppose that something was the Nilstone. But to this day I feel like there’s more to the story than he’s telling me.”

Hercól was studiously avoiding her eye. “Ott had chosen you already to play a part in the Shaggat’s return,” he said stiffly. “The prophecy with which he had infected the Nessarim required a military daughter. Ramachni knew of his interest in you almost from the moment of your birth, and bid me watch over you, and befriend your father. Alas, I never came close to guessing the nature of that interest.”

“So the admiral’s on Maisa’s side as well!” said Neeps excitedly. “Right, Hercól?”

The Tholjassan shook his head. “Eberzam suspects that Maisa lives, and even that I am pledged to her cause. But he has always had the tact not to pose the question to me directly, lest he force me into an admission that would inconvenience us both. The admiral long ago swore an oath to Magad the Fifth, and it has cost him terribly to break it. Only knowledge of the Shaggat conspiracy proved strong enough.”

“The loyalties of a lifetime are hard to part with, even for the finest reasons,” said Dri, still gazing at Hercól.

“I wish he were aboard,” whispered Thasha.

Pazel heard the stifled misery in her voice. He had to fight the urge to take her hand, right there before them all.

Suddenly the shell embedded in his skin began to burn. Pazel clenched his teeth. Klyst knew, Klyst always knew, when his heart went out to Thasha. And if the murth-girl—wherever she was, whatever she had become—could read his feelings so plainly, couldn’t Oggosk do the same?

Where Thasha is concerned I shall not be in the least forgiving
.

He looked at Diadrelu. He could kill this woman and all her people, just by caring too much for the girl at his side.

Sealed fates
, he thought.
All of us murderers before the end
. He could almost have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

And then the cannon fire began.

18

From the New Journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt, Quartermaster
^*

Wednesday, 11 Freala 941
.

Little lad or lass, in Etherhorde or wherever Anni has gone to bring you safe into the world: say a prayer for your father & his shipmates
.

What perfect nonsense; the babe is not yet even born. Nor do I see the point in begging those above, whose wisdom after all is perfect, to act according to my reckoning of what is right. Nor do I know what is right. All gone, those certainties. Should I scuttle this ship? Light a flame in the powder room, blow Miss Thasha & Pathkendle & Undrabust & that wee babe’s foolish father to smithereens, along with Rose, Arunis, Alyash, Drellarek & the rest of these rabid hyenas?

Should I kill eight hundred men?

Rin help you, Fiffengurt, you’re lost
.

Early this morning the whaleship
Sanguine
raised a cheerful flag—

[water damage: four lines illegible]

—comed their captain aboard, & with us officers in attendance took him to the wardroom for honey-cakes & beer. Rose had Mr. Thyne of the Chathrand Trading Family pulled out of mothballs for the charade, and Latzlo too; the old hide-hustler could talk whaling better than most of us, and soon had the
Sanguine
’s skipper [one Cpt. Magritte of Ballytween] rattling on about those Cazencian whales we chanced among twelve days ago
.

Was that Cazencian blubber he had boiling in his try-pots? Latzlo asked, his face aglow with excitement. No, no, said Magritte: they had spotted marblebacks just yesterday, and caught one with ease. But one Cazencian was worth fifty common marblebacks, he reminded us, “for you just don’t meet with ’em no more.” The
Sanguine
had chased the pod from Rukmast without taking a single animal, & Magritte was overjoyed to hear that we had spotted them again
.

“I’ll catch ’em yet!” he declared with a twinkle. “Lost two of my lads to those tricky fish. My best harpooner sank his shaft in the largest, and the creature dived, and the line played out half a league or more—and then a snag! Tragedy, gents! Don’t know if it was someone’s leg wrapped in the line, a shorn timber, an oarlock—but away that little boat flew, east toward Perdition-knows-where, and by the time the other boats were shipped and we tacked to chase ’em the fog was on us. We’ve been hunting for ’em ever since.”