'He's listening,' said Marila. 'One of them's always listening — Ott, or Dastu, or Rose.'
'He doesn't speak Sollochi, does he?' asked Pazel, switching to Neeps' birth tongue.
Neeps shrugged. 'With Ott you can never be sure.'
I could have been, thought Pazel, if I'd let the eguar show me the rest of his life. I'd have known about Dastu as well, maybe — and Thasha's father, if there's anything to know. Was it trying to help me, after all?
He looked once more into the assassin's eyes. Would I have learned everything he knows? Could I have stood if I did? He thought again of the eguar's strangest phrase of alclass="underline" the world my brethren made. It still worried him that Bolutu had no idea what the creature could have meant.
He shook himself; this was doing his friends no good. 'We're not so bad off,' he said. 'Bolutu thinks the Red Storm may have wiped out any ugly spells Arunis was brewing. He figures it acts like "scouring powder for magic." I was afraid it might have knocked out the magic wall around the stateroom, but no fear; it's as strong as ever. And we've found all seven of our allies, all seven carrying the wolf-scar — even if it is blary strange that Rose is one of them.'
'Pazel,' said Neeps, his voice abruptly flat, 'we're not seven, anymore. Dri is dead. Whatever we were meant to do together isn't going to happen.'
'Don't talk like that,' said Pazel fiercely. 'Nothing's gone as planned for them, either. We'll find another way, even if we can't do what the Red Wolf had in mind when it burned us. I told you what Ramachni said.'
Neeps' eyes flashed, and Pazel feared he might be spoiling for a fight. Then the small boy took a deep breath, and nodded. 'You told me. Sorry, mate.'
'Right,' said Pazel, relieved but shaken. 'One of us will visit you every hour or so. Thasha's next, at four bells.'
'How is our Angel of Rin, anyway?'
'Back to normal,' said Pazel with a quick smile.
'You're lying,' said Marila.
Pazel blinked at her. Marila did not speak Sollochi; she was merely listening to his tone. Neeps' talent was rubbing off on her.
'Thasha isn't normal,' he admitted. 'In fact she has me worried sick.'
Since the Red Storm, he said, Thasha had been increasingly moody and distracted. Her hand, the one she had used to touch the Nilstone, seemed to fascinate her. Pazel had caught her staring at it, and picking at the old scar. And she was reading the Polylex, more and more of it, sometimes with Felthrup's assistance, sometimes alone. It still frightened her, but she couldn't seem to tear herself away. Pazel would wake in the night to the sound of her soft screams. He would sit beside her, holding her, feeling her tremble as she scanned the pages.
'Once she slammed the book and shouted at me: "What was she thinking, how could she do it to them? How could a mage be so cruel?" When I asked who she meant, she snapped, "Erithusme, who else? She wasn't good at all, she was a monster." I told her that wasn't what Ramachni said, and she just snarled at me. "How would you like to go through a Waking, like Felthrup, like Niriviel and Mugstur? Do you think you'd still be sane, Pazel? Do you think you'd still be you?" '
An even worse incident had occurred two nights ago. It had been a beautiful, warm evening. The two of them had spent a quiet hour seated against the twenty-foot skiff, watching a pod of whales cross and recross a yellow ribbon of moonlight. Thasha had seemed happy and relaxed. In time they had fallen asleep, and when Pazel awoke an hour later she was gone. He did not find her in the stateroom, and alerted Hercol. Together with Big Skip and a few other volunteers they had searched for her, deck by deck, compartment by compartment. It was Pazel who had found her at last: crossing the berth deck, walking like a dreamer among hundreds of sleeping men.
He had run to her and taken her hand. 'You shouldn't be in here,' he had whispered. 'Let's go before they wake up.'
Thasha had looked at the sleepers, shaking her head. 'They can't,' she'd said.
She led him out of the compartment and down a side passage. It was a spot he'd passed a hundred times, but this time, to his great surprise, he saw that there was a little green door, only waist-high, right at the end of the passage, where he thought the hull should have been. The door looked older and shabbier than the rest of the compartment; its handle was an ancient, corroded lump of iron. Thasha had put out her hand to open the door — but slowly, as though fighting herself. When she touched the knob Pazel had reached to help her — he was curious about the door; he'd never noticed it — and Thasha had suddenly pulled him away, screaming.
'We're running out, we're running out!'
'Don't worry,' Pazel had begged. 'We'll find water, Thasha, I swear.'
'Not water!' she'd howled, clawing at him. 'Not water! Thoughts! We're running out of thoughts and we won't have any left!' And she had wept all the way back to the stateroom.
'And later on, Neeps,' Pazel concluded, 'she couldn't remember being on the berth deck at all. I'm scared, I tell you. She's just so different, since the storm.'
Neeps looked at him, awestruck. 'Everything is different,' he said at last. 'Don't you sense it, mate? I can't put my finger on it, but I feel as if… I don't know, as if the whole world we come from, back there across the Nelluroq, had just-'
'Neeparvasi Undrabust!' rasped Lady Oggosk suddenly. 'Get away from the window, you atrocious boy! I can't sleep through your chatter!'
Quickly, Pazel put his hand on the glass. 'We'll free you,' he said in Arquali. 'I promise we'll free you both. You just have to hang on until we find a way.'
''Course we will,' said Neeps, raising his fingers briefly to the pane. Leaning slightly against him, Marila nodded and made herself smile.
Their courage made Pazel feel even worse. He glanced again at Ott and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.
'Remember what Bolutu said, after you left. The part I told you the next morning.'
'About the ones who'll be waiting for him?' Neeps whispered back. 'His masters, the ones who see through his eyes?'
'That's right,' whispered Pazel. 'But don't say another word! Just hold onto that thought, will you? They're going to find us, and help. And Ramachni's coming back as well — stronger than ever, he said. So save your strength. You'll see, this is all going to work out.'
He left them, feeling a fraud. Who was he to say that things would work out? What made his promises any better than those Taliktrum gave to his people — or for that matter, Mugstur to his rats? Had things worked out for Diadrelu? Would anything prevent their dying here, one by one, with three miles of the Ruling Sea left to cross?
He found Thasha seated on the flag locker at the back of the quarterdeck, her shoulders resting on the taffrail. 'You're seventeen,' she said, her voice flat and distant.
'By Rin,' said Pazel, for it was true: his birthday had come and gone on the Nelluroq. 'How did you know?'
Thasha made no answer. Her eyes were on Taliktrum and Elkstem, both at the wheel, arguing over safe running speeds and distances from shore. Myett stood close to Taliktrum, whispering and touching him frequently. Lord Talag, who had so far refused to discuss any return to leadership of the clan, watched his son in brooding silence from the wreckage of the wheelhouse.
On Thasha's lap lay a chipped ceramic jug from the stateroom. Pazel tipped it: bone dry.
'You'll just get thirstier, sitting out in this wind,' he said.
Thasha smiled and put out her hand. 'Come and get thirsty with me.'
He climbed onto the flag locker and settled beside her. As always when they were close, he tensed himself against the onset of pain from Klyst's shell. But it did not come — had not come, he realised, since they passed through the Red Storm. He glanced north. What had happened to the murth-girl? Was she lost in the heart of the Ruling Sea? Had she followed them (he crushed his eyes shut on the thought) into the Vortex, and perished there? Or had the Storm freed her from her own love-ripestry at last?