Neda glanced sharply at Cayer Vispek; her master’s face was guarded and still. The Nilstone! Their own legends spoke of it: an object like a small glass sphere, made of the compressed ash of all the devils burned in the sacred Black Casket, until the Great Devil in his agonies split the Casket asunder. Neda had never known whether or not the Stone was real; if it was, she had supposed it would lie among the other treasures of Mzithrini antiquity, in the Citadel of Hing, protected by arms and spells.
“You stole it, then?” she demanded.
“No, Neda,” said Cayer Vispek. “That is one crime for which Arqual bears no guilt. The Shaggat himself took the Nilstone from us, in his last, suicidal raid on Babqri.” Vispek hesitated a moment, then added: “We rarely speak of that theft. It does no honor to the Pentarchy to have lost the Nilstone, though in fact we wished to be rid of it for centuries. The Father spoke of it to me-just once.”
Neda closed her eyes, feeling a cold stab of loss. The Father. He was a great Mzithrini mage-priest, and her rescuer, her patron. He had taken her from the hands of a lecherous diplomat and made her a sfvantskor: the only non-Mzithrini ever admitted to the fold.
“What did he say, Master?” asked Jalantri.
“That the Nilstone is more dangerous than all the ships and legions of Arqual put together,” said the older sfvantskor. “ ‘We could not use it, Vispek,’ he told me, ‘and we dared not cast it away. Nor could any power in Alifros destroy it-one cannot destroy an absence, the idea of zero, the cold of the stellar void. In the end we guarded it merely to keep it from the hands of our enemies. And even in that we failed.’ ”
“Not your people alone,” said Hercol. “The very world has failed in the matter of the Nilstone. We have never fully grasped its nature. Your legends describe a thing of demonic ash. Others call it the eyeball of a murth-lord, or a tumor cut from the Tree of Heaven, or even a keyhole in an unseen door, leading to a place no mortal thought can penetrate. Our own leader, the mage Ramachni, tells us it is a splinter of rock from the land of the dead-and death is what it brings to any who touch it with fear in their hearts.”
“We’ve seen that with our own eyes,” added Pazel.
Neda turned him a bitter look. “You’ve seen many things,” she said, “but a few you’ve chosen to forget.”
Pazel looked at her, startled. “What are you talking about?”
“So many fine friends you’ve made,” she said. “Such worthy pursuits. To return the Shaggat to Gurishal, armed with such a weapon! How could you, Pazel? What have you become?”
Pazel’s mouth worked fitfully; he was biting back a retort. But Hercol spoke first. “Your brother has become what the world so sorely needs-a man without blind loyalties. Those who would restore the Shaggat to power are no comrades of ours. Pazel knew nothing of the conspiracy or the Nilstone when he was brought aboard the Chathrand, but he has taken an oath to fight these men, and Arunis as well, until we find a way to place the Stone beyond the reach of them all. That is our charge. None of us knows how it is to be done, but we would have failed already without your brother. Several times already the fight has turned on his courage.”
Pazel flushed, more from Hercol’s praise than the sfvantskors’ dubious looks. “We have some damn good allies,” he murmured.
“Like Thasha Isiq?” asked Neda with contempt.
“Yes,” said Pazel. “Haven’t you been listening, Neda? Thasha was fooled along with the rest of us.”
“And her father too, no doubt,” said Jalantri. “Tricked into leading fleets against the Mzithrin, all those years.”
“No,” Pazel admitted reluctantly.
But Hercol said, “Yes, tricked. Eberzam Isiq loved Arqual and believed everything its Emperor proclaimed. The very Emperor who sent a woman to his bed, to become his consort and confidante, and to slowly poison him through his tea. She would have killed him as soon as Thasha married your prince. When we left Simja, Eberzam remained, determined to expose Arqual’s plot to the world.”
“Nonsense!” said Vispek. “We remained in port for five days after you sailed. I myself was often in the court of King Oshiram. There was no sign of Isiq about the castle, nor any mention of a plot.”
Hercol and Pazel looked at each other in dismay. “They got him,” said Pazel. “Oh Pitfire, Hercol. Someone got Isiq after all. What are we going to tell Thasha?”
The sfvantskors made sounds of amazement. Tell her! thought Neda. She’s alive, then! They lied about her death on top of everything!
Hercol looked deeply shaken by Vispek’s words. He steepled his fingers for a moment, then pressed on: “Honored Cayer, you can see that Pazel and I speak in good faith. That we come to you defenseless, when we might simply have waited for rescue from the Chathrand, and left you here, marooned as you clearly are. I do not ask for trust-”
“That is well,” said Cayer Vispek.
“-but I pray that you will see one thing for yourselves. The world has changed beneath our feet. And none of us will survive unless we also change. Into what? I cannot imagine. But whatever is to come will try us all, and terribly. We need strength, Cayer-strength of mind and heart and hand. The kind of strength your order teaches.”
Jalantri laughed aloud. “What would you know of our order, stooge?”
“I know it forbids you to challenge another to a duel,” said Hercol, “unless your master commands it. To do otherwise”-he closed his eyes, remembering-“is to place pride above holy destiny, and anger over service to the Faith.”
Jalantri stared at him, abashed and furious. Cayer Vispek was surprised as well. “How is it that you quote so confidently from our scripture?” he demanded.
“Every member of the Secret Fist reads the Book of the Old Faith,” said Hercol. “My copy remained with me when I forsook Ott’s guild of spies. You see, Cayer, I know something of change. So does Neda’s brother, incidentally.”
Vispek’s eyes moved slowly from Hercol to Pazel and back again. He took a long breath, then pointed at the stack of crates across the basin.
“The one on top is full of clothing,” he said. “Go and dress. Then I will tell you of a kind of change you know nothing about.”
They had numbered seven once. Seven: the Mzithrin lucky number, the standard complement of sfvantskors dispatched as a team to a particular Mzithrin King, or an army brigade, or a warship of the White Fleet. The latter had been Vispek’s assignment: he was made votary to an elder aboard the Jistrolloq, deadliest ship in the Northern world, as famous for her speed and weaponry as the Chathrand was for size and age. Neda and Jalantri and several others came aboard after the murder of their teacher in Simja, and had been assigned to Vispek’s care. They were still aspirants, barely out of training; by rights they should have been returned to the Mzithrin to do just that. But their teacher had planned otherwise.
That teacher, the great Babqri Father, had long suspected a trap behind the Arqualis’ offer of peace. He had lived through more than a century of war and duplicity; but his knowledge was not merely that of years. He was the keeper of Sathek’s Scepter, an artifact older than the Mzithrin Empire itself, and one the Shaggat had not managed to steal. Crowning this golden rod was a crystal, and in the heart of the crystal lay a shard of the Black Casket, the broken centerpiece of the Old Faith.
Through the power of the scepter the Father had come to sense the evil approaching in the belly of the Chathrand. Weeks before Treaty Day, he had come to Simja with his aspirants, and taken up residence in the Mzithrini shrine outside the city walls. There he had held council with Mzithrini lords, merchants, soothsayers, spies, as they congregated ahead of the wedding meant to seal the Peace. And there, night after night, he put his disciples in a trance and sent them into the sea, and by the power of the scepter they cast off their human bodies and took the forms of whales.