What had passed through his mind as he moved through the evening air? A hundred thoughts and shadows of a hundred more. But among all these were those giant themes that overshadowed all else and were continually shouldering themselves back into his consciousness, and making his heart at their every return break out afresh with painful hammering. Within so short a time - within the last few hours - he had thrice been through an emotional turmoil for which he was in no way prepared.
Out of nowhere, suddenly, the first sight of the elusive Steerpike. Out of nowhere, suddenly, the news of Fuchsia's death. Out of nowhere, and suddenly, the uprush of his rebellion - the danger of it, the shock of it for all about him, the excitement of it, and the thrill of finding himself free of duplicity - a traitor if they liked, but a man who had torn away the brambles from his clothes, the ivy from his limbs. the bindweed from his brain.
Yet had he? Was it possible at a single jerk to wrench himself free of his responsibility to the home of his fathers?
As his bearers threaded their way through the upper stories he was sure that he was free. When Steerpike had been dragged like a water-rat from his lair and slain - what then would there be for him to stay for in this only world he knew? Rather would he die upon its borders, wherever they might be, than rot among the rites. Fuchsia was dead. Everything was dead. The Thing was dead and the world had died. He had outgrown his kingdom.
But behind all this, behind his stumbling thoughts, was this growing anger, an anger such as he had never known before. On the face of it, it might seem that the rage that was eating him was absurd. And the rational part of Titus might have admitted that this was so. For his rage was not that Fuchsia had died and as he thought at Steerpike's hand, nor that he had been thwarted in his love for the Thing by the arbitrary lightning flash - it was not, in his conscious mind, either of these that caused him to tremble with eagerness to close with the skewbald man, and if he could to kill him.
No. it was because Steerpike had stolen his canoe, his own canoe - so light, so slight: so fleet upon the flood.
What he did not guess was that the canoe was neither more nor less than the 'Thing'. Deep in the chaos of his heart and his imagination - at the core of his dreamworld it was so - the Canoe had become, perhaps had already been when he had first sent her skimming beneath him into the freedom of an outer world, the very centre of Gormenghast forest, the Thing herself.
But more than this. For another reason also. A reason of no symbolism: no darkened origin: a reason clear-cut and real as the dagger in his belt.
He saw in the canoe, now lost to the murderer, the perfect vehicle for sudden and silent attack - in other words for the avenging of his sister. He had lost his 'weapon'.
Had Titus thought sufficiently he would have realized that Steerpike could not have killed her, for he could not possibly have been so far to the north as the Headstones so soon after Fuchsia's fall. But his brain was not working in that way. Steerpike had killed his sister. And Steerpike had stolen his canoe.
When at long last the roof-top army had reached the ultimate battlements and saw below them the black waters of the bay, lookouts were posted and given instructions to inform their captains directly the first lights appeared around the nose of the south headland. Meanwhile the hordes which covered the near-by roofs were gradually drawn down by skylights, vents and hatches until they were absorbed into a deserted and melancholy wilderness of room upon room, hall upon hall, a wilderness that had yawned so emptily and for so many years until Steerpike had begun his explorations.
The torches were lit. It seemed that the advantage of being able to tell at once whether a room were empty or not outweighed the warning that the light would give the fugitive. Nevertheless the work was slow. At last and about the time that the four possible floors had been proved as empty as tongueless bells, a message came down that lights had been seen across the bay.
At once every window of the West walls became filled with heads, and sure enough the necklace of coloured sparks which Steerpike had seen through the mouth of his flood-room was strung across the darkness.
That no sign of Steerpike had been found in the scores of upper rooms more than suggested that he was still within his lair at water level. Titus had at once descended to the lowest of the unflooded floors, and leaning through a window, roughly at the centre of the façade, he was able, by reaching out dangerously, with his hand gripping an ivy branch, to recognize the very window through which Steerpike had sped into the castle.
Now that the light had appeared on the bay there was no time to lose for it was possible that if Steerpike was below, and saw them, he would make a dash for it. In the meantime Titus and the three captains who were with him turned back through the room and gaining the corridor behind, ran for a matter of sixty or seventy feet before they turned again into one of the west rooms and, on reaching its window and looking down, found that they were almost immediately above the flooded window.
There was no sign of him on the bay. As far as they could judge they gauged him to be directly below the room to their right which they could see through a connecting door, a largish, square-ish room covered with a layer of dust as soft as velvet.
'If he's below there and it were necessary, my lord, we could cut through to him from above...' and the man began to make his way into the room in question.
'No! No!' whispered Titus fiercely. 'He may hear your footsteps. Come back.'
'The boats aren't near enough,' said another man. 'I doubt he can get further into the castle. The water's only four foot from the window top. Sooner or later the doors will all be water jammed. Quite right, my lord. We must be silent.'
'Then 'be' silent.' said Titus, and in spite of his anger, the heady wine of autocracy tasted sweet upon his tongue - sweet and dangerous - for he was only now learning that he had power over others, not only through the influence of his birthright but through a native authority that was being wielded for the first time - and all this he knew to be dangerous, for as it grew, this bullying would taste ever sweeter and fiercer and the naked cry of freedom would become faint and the Thing who had taught him freedom would become no more than a memory.
It was while the boats approached and converged and before the castle barges had stationed themselves on either side of the window with their effulgence, and while there was a comparative darkness still brooding upon the water outside the mouth of his lair, that Steerpike decided that he would rather remain for the moment where he was and fight the whole world if necessary with the knowledge that he could not be attacked from the rear, than skim from his retreat only to find himself surrounded in the 'bay'. It was no easy choice and it is possible that he had not truly made it, before the barge lights flared - but in all events he stayed where he was, and turning his canoe about he made another turn of his dark room. It was then that the sudden yellow light flared cruelly outside the window and stayed - as though a curtain had gone up and the drama had begun. Even as he started at the light, he knew that his enemies could not know for 'certain' that he was in this watery room. They could not possibly know for instance that the inner doors of the room were shut and impassable. They could not be absolutely certain that, although he had been seen passing through the window, he had not passed out again. But how, if ever, to make use of their uncertainty, he had, for the moment, no idea.