“We’ll do neither of those,” said Jalantri, “will we, Cayer Vispek?”
The older sfvantskor pursed his lips and gave a thoughtful shake of his head. “Perhaps not,” he said-and flew in a blur at Hercol.
The attack was one of the swiftest Neda had ever seen. Cayer Vispek bore the swordsman backward off his crate, and by the time the two men struck the sand there was a knife at Hercol’s throat. Pazel surged to his feet, but Jalantri was far faster, and deftly kicked the youth’s legs out from under him. Pazel fell inches from the fire. The sfvantskor came down on him with both knees, caught his arm and twisted it behind his back. Jalantri looked wildly at Neda.
“I have him! Aid the Cayer, sister!”
“The Cayer needs no aid,” said Vispek, still pressing his blade to Hercol’s neck.
“That’s lucky!” snapped Jalantri. “Neda, you sat like a stone! What ails you? Were you afraid I might give your birth-brother a scratch?”
Pazel twisted helplessly, grimacing with rage. Neda shuddered. She recalled that look of defiance. He had shown it to Arquali soldiers, once.
“It was not luck,” said Cayer Vispek. “The Tholjassan chose to yield. Chose, I say: you saw my intention, didn’t you, swordsman? As plain as though I had drawn it for you in the sand.”
“I guessed,” said Hercol, motionless under the knife.
“You are too humble. I saw your readiness even as I struck. You might even have disarmed me, but you chose not to try. That was an error. You are prisoners now, and it may not go well for you.”
“What will you do now, Cayer?” asked Hercol.
“We will take the rescue boat, by persuasion or force, and seek the mainland.”
“If you take us as hostages on that boat, the Chathrand will know it,” said Hercol. “They can see our encampment plainly through their telescopes.”
“They will not wish to see you harmed,” said Cayer Vispek.
“You don’t know Arqualis,” gasped Pazel, turning his head painfully in the sand. “Prisoners of the Mzithrin are presumed good as dead. They’ll engage you whether we’re aboard or not. They’ll blow you to matchsticks.”
“We can take the boat alone,” said Neda quietly. “Leave them here, Cayer. The Chathrand will send another for them.”
“And for you, an extermination brigade,” said Hercol. “There are over a hundred Turachs aboard the Great Ship, and longboats that can outrun whatever little vessel they have dispatched to collect us.”
“We should have struck an hour ago,” growled Jalantri under his breath.
“Perhaps,” said Hercol, “but it is too late now.”
“Not too late for one thing,” said Jalantri.
“Cayer-” Neda began.
“Be silent, girl! Be silent, both of you!”
Their leader’s voice was tight with desperation. Neda and Jalantri held still as wolves about to spring. But spring where, on whom? The heresy of Neda’s thought appalled her.
“I fear Neda is right about the irons,” Hercol continued. “The crew tolerates our own freedom uneasily, since Rose charged us with mutiny. They will never tolerate yours. Nor can we hide those tattoos on your necks.”
“Those tattoos are never hidden,” snapped Cayer Vispek, pressing the knife tighter against the other’s flesh. “We are sfvantskors, not skulking thieves.” 2
“You may be reduced to worse than thieving,” said Hercol, “if you go alone into this country.”
Neda felt the readiness of her limbs, the killer’s focus trying to silence that other voice, the sister’s. Let me do it, Jalantri. If the Cayer commands us, let me end Pazel’s life.
“You grow careless with your words,” said Cayer Vispek. “If you truly know our ways, you know we cannot despair. For those who take the Last Oath it is a sin.”
“There is a related sin,” said Hercol, “but graver, in your teachings. Will you name it, or shall I?”
Cayer Vispek was very still. “Suicide,” he whispered.
When Hercol spoke again he did so courteously, almost with sorrow. “It is a hard thing, Cayer Vispek, but I must request your surrender.”
It was midmorning before the rescue skiff neared the Chathrand. Her crew was waiting in a ragged mob.
Some leaned out to help swing the hoisted boat over the scarlet rail. Most stood and watched. Never in all those months at sea had their spirits sunk so low, nor their eyes flashed so dangerously. The thirst! Not one of the eight hundred sailors had known such torturous want of water. The men’s very flesh had tightened on their bones. Their skin had peeled and blistered, and the blisters had shriveled from within. Their lips were cracked like old parchment.
They had watched in silence as the rescue boat tacked across the inlet, empty now of both serpents and ships. Passing telescopes, they had studied the captives, two men and one young woman (“Look at them arms, will you, she’s a bruiser, a wildcat, a hellion, why is every blary girl who comes aboard-”), and Old Gangrune the purser remarked on the way the strange young woman stared at Lady Thasha: with malice, or something very like.
The men had followed the boat with their eyes as it rounded the jetty, passed the great abandoned tower, and finally drew up to the landing near the village gate. They had watched ten or twelve dlomu step forth timidly, and cheered with faint derision when the creatures rolled out three small water casks and passed them down carefully to the skiff. Another mouthful each, they laughed bitterly, while over the tonnage hatch the sixty-foot yawl dangled in her harness, ready to launch, fourteen casks of five hundred gallons apiece lashed in her hold.
They had watched with impatience as Pathkendle and Lady Thasha spoke with the dlomic boy at the landing. The two youths pointed at the Chathrand; the boy shook his head. For several thirsty minutes the sailors watched a debate they could not hear. Then the young dlomu had made a gesture of surrender, and all three had climbed into the skiff, and the little boat had started out to the Chathrand.
Now they were hoisting it, dripping, above the rail. Six men caught the davit chains, guided her inboard, lowered her gently onto her skids. Haddismal shouted a quick command; the assembled Turachs surrounded the boat. The three human prisoners studied them keenly.
Fiffengurt beckoned at the water barrels. “Same ration as yesterday,” he declared, and the sailors groaned and snarled, though it could not be otherwise, and the ration, albeit painfully tiny, had been fair.
Pazel Pathkendle and the Lady Thasha leaped first from the skiff, then aided Fiffengurt, who appeared rather bruised. But when the quartermaster’s feet were planted on the deck, he straightened his back and swept the topdeck with his obedient eye.
The sfvantskors’ gaze followed his. The sailors looked where they looked, and then Fiffengurt turned to see where Pathkendle and the Lady Thasha were looking, and it was some seconds longer before they all became aware of this circular game, and stopped seeking what none could find: someone indisputably in command.
Of course Nilus Rose was still their captain. But Rose and thirteen others were hostages, caught in a trap so devious that the men struggled to believe it was the work of ixchel-crawlies-the eight-inch-tall beings that most humans had learned to fear and kill from their first days at sea. The crawlies had introduced a sleeping drug into the ship’s fresh water (hence the shortage) and when all were asleep had used ropes and wheelblocks to drag their victims to a cabin under the forecastle, which they had filled with a light, sweet-smelling smoke. The latter did no harm until one was deprived of it: then, in a matter of seconds, it killed. The hostages, all addicts now, stayed alive by tending a fire in a tiny smudge-pot, feeding it with dry berries provided several times a day by the ixchel. As long as the berry-fire sputtered on, they lived.
Given his plight, Captain Rose had temporarily entrusted the ship to Mr. Fiffengurt. So surely Fiffengurt was in command? But Sergeant Haddismal walked free as well-the crawlies had fed him an antidote that morning, fearing the Turachs might riot without their commander. Perhaps it was time for the military to take charge? But Haddismal was not the highest military officer on the Chathrand: that was Sandor Ott, the Imperial spymaster, the architect of their deadly mission. And Ott remained a hostage.