'Now!' Hercol exploded.
Taliktrum fled the table, and his people fled with him, leaping, whirling, so many copper leaves in a gale. But with that uncanny ixchel coordination, they came together again a heartbeat later, schooling, sprinting as one body out the surgery door. The dozen ixchel standing guard in front of Chadfallow did not move.
Thasha rushed towards the doctor. Pazel followed, although a part of him wanted to run the other way, close his eyes, stop his ears. Anything rather than see what he was about to see.
The young ixchel woman brandished her sword at them. 'You are not to touch her, either,' she said.
'Peace, Ensyl,' said Hercol, his voice close to breaking. 'They will use only their eyes.'
'Pazel,' said Chadfallow, looking at him sternly, 'how long have you known they were aboard?'
Pazel ignored the question. He stared at the bundle the doctor held against his chest. He could not move. He felt Hercol standing close behind him, frozen like himself. At last, trembling, Thasha put out her hand — careful not to touch the bloodstained cloths — and gently tugged the doctor's sleeve. Chadfallow lowered his arm.
Diadrelu lay there, pale and beautiful and dead, her neck wrapped in a crimson bandage. Chadfallow had washed the blood from her shoulders and her hands, which were folded across her breast. She had never looked more calm, more full of vision, although her eyes were closed. Pazel didn't know just when he started to cry, but he knew he had never cried like this in his lifetime. Louder, sure, for his lost family, for Ormael, but not with this despair, this sense of something that was both part of him and too good to be part of him, and at the same time something he'd built — trust, love, language — torn away and trampled, gone. He was pathetic. Sobbing in front of Chadfallow. But so was Thasha, her head on Pazel's shoulder; and so was Hercol, leaning upon the table, his sword cast aside. The three stood there, weeping, stripped naked by their grief. Chadfallow looked at Pazel with shock. It was as if he had just realised that the boy had stepped onto some other ship, swiftly departing, leaving him behind. The ixchel too stared, as the humans cried for their queen; and one of them, Pazel never learned which, spoke under his breath.
'She knew. She insisted. They are not all the same. We used to talk as if we owned them, owned their debt to us, their sins. We were fools, because she knew them alone.'
It was a strange party that ascended the ladderway. Hercol held Diadrelu to his chest, where she passed for a thick bandage, hiding some wound. Ensyl and two other ixchel rode in the folds of his bloody shirt, and Thasha, Pazel and Chadfallow carried six more in similar fashion. Ensyl sent the remaining four off on foot, to contact whatever members of the clan remained loyal to Dri, and tell them who had slain her. How many will believe it? Pazel thought. A giant named Hercol was the only witness.
But another secret was out at last. Old Gangrune had seen to that. On every deck Pazel heard the gossip flying: It's not just the rats, it's crawlies too, they must be behind all this, they fed the rats something to make monsters of 'em all.
The men rushing to join the battle looked at the three climbing upward with contempt. 'Running off,' Pazel heard one sailor growl, 'just as we're getting the upper hand.'
It did appear that the humans were winning. The rats had not yet been driven from the orlop deck, but all those forwards of the main compartment were slain, and the Turachs were holding both cargo hatches. There was talk of a second outbreak at the stern of the orlop: rats in great numbers erupting from the manger, where the Shaggat Ness stood clutching the Nilstone. Sailors and Turachs were dying still, but the rats were dying faster. Doors slowed them down, and for all their ferocity they could not advance through a hail of Turach arrows, or a wall of spears.
If the crew could win back the orlop, Pazel mused, they could do the same with the mercy deck beneath it. But the hold? That was where the rats had lived all along. There were few doors and endless hiding places. Cable tiers, pump shafts, wing spaces, vents. Tunnels in the sand ballast, gaps between casks and crates. Rose would surely resort to smoking them out, or using sulphur gas. And he had crawlies to kill as well now.
The middle decks were all but deserted. Outside the stateroom, even the lone Turach had been called off to join the battle. Thasha was startled to find herself momentarily stopped by the invisible wall; then she silently gave permission to the ixchel she carried (and the other six, and Dr Chadfallow) to pass through. Moments later the party was inside.
They laid Diadrelu on the bench under the windows, exactly where she had woken Thasha all those months ago. 'Taliktrum spoke the truth in one way,' said Ensyl. 'The rites must be observed. My mistress must be parcelled, and the parcels given to the sea. No peace will come to her if this is not done.'
'Is that why the nine of you are here?' said Pazel.
'To see it done, yes. But not to do it ourselves. That privilege belongs to her kin, and it is a mortal offence to deny them the same.'
'Even if they're the ones who killed her?' asked Thasha bitterly.
'Not in that case, no,' said Ensyl.
'I thank you with all my heart,' said Hercol, 'for keeping her safe. And you as well, Doctor. And I must thank Felthrup, last of alclass="underline" he rose from his deathlike trance mere seconds after that beast Steldak killed my lady, as if a part of him sensed the crime. And perhaps it did at that. In any case, he flew at them in such a rage that they blundered towards my cell. It was only because of Felthrup that I was able to take her body from them.'
'Ensyl,' said Pazel, 'you realise the whole ship knows about your clan, now?'
'I do,' she said grimly.
'They'll have to come here too, won't they?' said Thasha. 'All six hundred. They won't be safe anywhere else.'
'Do not let them!' cried several ixchel at once. Ensyl agreed. 'You must not, m'lady. They do not deserve your protection.'
'Nor do they need it,' blurted a round-faced ixchel youth. Ensyl gave him a sharp look.
'No?' said Chadfallow, peering at him. 'How is that? What defences have the ixchel against giant rats and sulphur?'
'We are not permitted to speak of it,' said Ensyl quietly.
Hercol sighed. 'That phrase I have heard before. Very well, keep your secrets. It is time to return to battle.'
'You must not, Hercol,' said Ensyl with a strange urgency. 'The parcelling-'
'We will decide all that when the fighting's done,' said Chadfallow.
Ensyl shook her head. 'You don't understand, there's nothing to decide. And by the time the fighting ends it may be too late. You are her kin, Hercol Stanapeth. She chose you, and you her, and none of us who loved her dispute your right. The parcelling of her body must be done by your hand, and no other. The last one to touch her must be you.'
Thasha closed the makeshift curtain over the washroom doorway, leaving Hercol, Chadfallow and Ensyl alone with Diadrelu's body. Pazel turned away with a shudder. Chadfallow had just handed Hercol a scalpeclass="underline" probably the one blade in Alifros he didn't know how to use.
Thasha went into her cabin, and emerged a moment later wearing her sword. Then she went straight to her father's crossed blades, mounted on the wall above his reading chair, and took one of them down. She thrust the scabbard awkwardly through Pazel's belt. 'We'll fix you a proper baldric later on,' she said. 'Right now I want to get out of here.'
They left the stateroom and made for the Silver Stair. Pazel tried not to think of what was happening in the washroom. Twenty-seven pieces.
'It's blary cruel,' he said as they climbed the ladderway. 'To lose someone, and then have to do that to her. I couldn't do it.'
Thasha spoke without turning. 'You could if you had to. If your honour depended on it. And… the other's.'