The Ruling Sea (41 page)

“I want you to lure Master Mugstur into the open,” said Diadrelu, “before some terrible harm is done to us all. Use blasphemy, use bribery—use your Gift, Pazel, if it gives you rat-speech, although Mugstur speaks a passable Arquali. Say whatever you must to coax that murderous beast out of his warren and into the cabin of your choice. And be sure he does not leave that cabin alive.”

“You’re asking us to kill a woken animal?” said Thasha, frowning. “The only woken rat on the ship besides Felthrup himself?”

“Mugstur’s fate is sealed already,” said Diadrelu. “He thinks himself the instrument of divine retribution. When he attacks Rose he will die, but what harm might he do with my nephew’s help before then?”

“Incalculable harm,” said Hercól.

Dri nodded. “Together they might even deal the
Chathrand
her fatal blow. Yes, I am asking you to commit a murder, if by that act you prevent many hundreds more. Have no illusions, my friends. We shall all of us be murderers before this voyage ends.”

“You sound like my father,” said Thasha, “telling Pazel why he had to destroy Ormael before someone else did. Well, I don’t believe anyone’s fate is sealed.”

“Mugstur’s is,” Dri insisted. “He has sealed it himself, and tightens the screws every waking hour.”

“But that’s the point, he’s
woken
. You know what Ramachni told us, that when these creatures suddenly—” Thasha waved her hands. “—
erupt
into consciousness, after years as simple animals, they’re so frightened it’s a wonder they don’t all run mad. It must be horrifying! Like your mind-fits, Pazel, but with no escape.”

Pazel shuddered. “What would you have us do?” he said to Thasha. “Go down into the hold and reason with him? Tell him this Angel business is all in his head?”

Thasha looked wounded by his spiteful tone. “We could trap him,” she said. “In a box, or something.”

“We’re talking about a
rat,”
said Neeps.

“Oh, just a rat!” said Thasha furiously. “Just another vermin. Not worth the air he breathes. Where have I heard that before?”

“Everywhere,” said Hercól. “It is the false, cursed verdict of our times. Somewhere in Alifros one resentful soul inflicts it on another, every minute of every day. Thasha, the moral point is yours, but the tactical goes to Diadrelu. Mugstur threatens the very survival of this ship—and intentionally so. He must therefore be stopped.”

“Mugstur’s too smart to crawl into a box,” said Pazel.

“Oh, can’t you blary
concentrate,”
snapped Thasha. But in fact she was finding it difficult to concentrate herself: the axeman’s cries of agony still rang in her mind. “Listen, Hercól. I can kill if I have to. You’ve been teaching me how to do it for years. But I’m not a
murderer.”

“I am,” said Diadrelu. “And I daresay so is your tutor.”

“I will speak for myself, Lady Diadrelu,” said Hercól quietly.

Dri gave him a startled glance. “I mean no insult. You come from a warrior people, and have lived a warrior’s life. This is not a secret, I think?”

“There is more to the Tholjassan Dominion than warcraft,” said Hercól, “and more to me as well. I must agree with Thasha in this matter: our fates are what we make of them.”

Dri shook her head. “That is not what we ixchel believe. We say it is our slumbering hearts that choose for us, and that in them resides the will of a thousand years of ancestors who cannot be denied. And it has always seemed to me that this philosophy is borne out even more by your history than our own. How many wars might have been avoided but for ancient grievances, long-dead matters of honor and revenge? We at least admit this part of ourselves.”

“If that is so,” said Hercól, “why not tell us what honor or ancestry requires of
your
clan, such that it risks annihilation by boarding the Great Ship on this voyage?”

“You go too far,” said Diadrelu. “You know that I am not free to speak of such things.”

“We know that much,” said Hercól, “and not a word more.”

For a moment Diadrelu was speechless. Neither she nor Hercól seemed to trust themselves to continue. At last the ixchel woman turned to look at Thasha.

“If you do not believe that fates can be sealed,” she said, “I suggest you look to the mark all five of us carry on our skin. A wolf can mean different things to different people, but all wolves are predators.”

“We got these scars to help us save the world from the Nilstone,” Thasha countered, “not to let us kill anyone who gets in our way.”

“Mugstur is not just anyone. He is a lethal zealot, a depraved and dangerous rat.”

“Felthrup’s a rat, too,” said Thasha. “What if he somehow threatened our safety? Would you kill him, just like that?”

“Yes,” said Dri. “As I killed the son of the Shaggat Ness—just like that. No ixchel would be alive today if our people had not answered such questions in their hearts long ago.”

“But you spared me,” said Pazel.

The others looked at him in surprise.

“You fought your whole clan the night we met,” he went on. “They wanted to stab me dead in my hammock, but you wouldn’t let them. And come to think of it, you spared Felthrup too—didn’t Talag want to kill him after he blocked your escape down that storm-pipe?”

For the first time in many days Thasha looked at him fondly. Pazel dropped his eyes. “I think I know how the Red Wolf chose us,” he said. “I think it wanted people like you, Dri. People who can do whatever it takes—even kill—but who hated the idea of killing so much that they’d even fight their friends to avoid it. Because we all do hate it, don’t we?”

A long silence. Diadrelu would not look at Hercól. The swordsman, for his part, sat back against the wall. His eyes took on a distant look, as though he were quite alone in the passage, or in some other place altogether.

“Shall I tell you how I broke with Sandor Ott?” he said suddenly. “It is a dark story, and too long to tell in full, but at the heart of it was my refusal to kill a mother and her sons. They were the lever that has moved my life: had I not faced that choice, to murder innocents or join them in exile, I would today perhaps be serving Ott rather than fighting him. I do not know if you are right about the Red Wolf and its choices, Pazel, but you are surely right about us.”

“What happened?” asked Thasha in a whisper. In all her life Hercól had never spoken so openly of his past.

“We fled together,” said Hercól simply, “from the Mindrei Vale in Tholjassa over cold Lake Ikren, and thence by the Pilgrims’ Road into the icewalled maze of the central Tsördons. And Ott’s men pursued us, village by village, peak by peak. For eleven years I gave myself to their protection, and used all I knew of the spymaster’s methods against him. It was not enough to save the children. Ott tracked them down and killed them, and took their bodies back to Etherhorde on slabs of ice.”

“And the mother?” asked Diadrelu.

“The mother survives. And with her survives the hope of a better world. She is old, now, but her hand is steady, and her mind is tempered steel. Have you not guessed, Pazel? She was the woman you saw in the garden, and we are far enough from that garden now for me to speak without breaking my oath. Her name is Maisa, Empress Maisa, daughter of Magad the Third, aunt and stepmother to the current usurper, and sole rightful ruler of Arqual.”

The agitation his words caused can barely be described. Pazel alone knew of Maisa from his school days—Neeps’ village had had no history teacher, and Thasha’s own had never breathed a single word about such a woman—but they all understood that Hercól was denouncing the Emperor, and even speaking of his overthrow.

“Hercól,” whispered Neeps, “you sly old dog!”

“My mother used to talk about her,” said Pazel. “As if she
knew
her, almost.”

“Just a minute,” said Thasha. “If Maisa’s the daughter of Magad the Third, who’s that woman they call the Queen Mother? The one who hardly ever leaves Castle Maag?”

“That one?” said Hercól. “A blameless impostor. An old royal cousin, who somehow survived the Twelve Days’ Massacre in Jenetra, and who Magad the Third brought to court as a widow. She has lived there ever since, half mad but peaceful. I believe she really thinks herself a queen. His Supremacy has made good use of her. When foreign princes call on Etherhorde, that woman’s mere presence casts doubt on the rumor that someone named Maisa once existed.”

“What about Maisa herself?” said Pazel. “What in the nine nasty Pits was she doing on Simja—on
Treaty Day
? She couldn’t have found a more dangerous place if she tried.”

“That is true,” said Hercól, “and I said as much to her myself. She replied that the world and its assembled rulers had begun to doubt that she still drew breath. ‘They will doubt no longer,’ she said. ‘Neither will the Secret Fist,’ I countered, but Her Highness told me that Ott would not catch her unprepared, and would risk no open assault on her in Simja, eager as he was to robe Magad in the garb of peacemaker. I can only pray that she was right.”

He smiled. “At last I am free to speak her name aloud—and my listeners do not know of whom I speak! Listen; I will tell you of her briefly.

“Maisa was the daughter of Magad the Third—a vain and violent prince in his youth, but one who found wisdom in his declining years. She was his second child. Maisa’s older brother was Magad the Fourth, also known as Magad the Rake. This youth had all his father’s defects of character, and none of his strengths. His worst fault was to see the world’s ills and conflicts with brute simplicity. Enemies were to be crushed. Arqual was to be loved. Arquali customs, poetry, history, gods—they were the best under the sun, obviously. This he knew, without bothering to learn a poem, study a history, or meditate upon the teachings of the faith he claimed as his own. He did not, for instance, obey the Twenty-second of the Ninety Rules.”

Thasha thought for a moment, then recited: “‘To lie with a woman is to pledge oneself to her well-being, and that of the child that may follow. I shall seek no pleasure there but in the knowledge that part of my life shall be the payment. Nor shall I …’ Blast it, I’m forgetting—”

“‘Nor shall I deny the wages of love, which are the soul,’” finished Diadrelu.

Hercól looked at her, startled, and appeared to lose his train of thought for a moment. Then he nodded and went on. “Magad the Rake did just that,” he said. “At twenty-six, the prince seduced a blacksmith’s daughter and got her with child. When she could no longer hide her pregnancy, he paid the Burns cove Boys to whisk her offshore and drown her. But his father caught wind of the scheme in time and brought the girl back unharmed. The old Emperor was livid: word had leaked of the attempted murder, and across Etherhorde thousands were taking portraits of the royal family from their walls and tossing them in shame upon the streets.

“The Emperor hobbled out into the Plaza of the Palmeries and swore that his son would raise the child as his own—or else forfeit the crown of Arqual. But the young prince rode up on a charger, leaped to the ground with a snarl, and spat at his father’s feet. What other son could replace him? he asked. And the old man struck his son across the mouth.

“Magad the Rake was driven from Arqual. He fled east, to the Isle of Bodendel, under the flag of the Noonfirth Kings. His father disowned him, and the Abbot of Etherhorde cast him from the Rinfaith. In Castle Maag some months later, the blacksmith’s daughter bore a son: Magad the Fifth.”

“His Supremacy,” said Thasha.

“A title invented by his father the Rake,” said Hercól. “Alas, the blacksmith’s girl was still in love with her foul seducer, and blamed herself for tearing the royal household apart. It seems the royal servants blamed her too. One day, for spite, they told her how the Rake had kept other women scattered about the city, and had often declared that the mother of his son meant less to him than the hunting-bitches in the kennels. The girl left Castle Maag, went straight to her father’s smithy and drank hot lead.”

Diadrelu closed her eyes.

“The Emperor had no other son, it is true. But he did have his beloved daughter, Maisa. She took the orphaned princeling, Magad the Fifth, as her own child, and vowed to care for him always. And her father, in the finest deed of his life, named Maisa his heir.

“The old man lived another six years, and in that time Maisa wed a baronet and bore two sons of her own. They were never jealous of their cousin, who would rule when Maisa’s time on earth was over; they did not hunger for more blessings than those life had already showered upon them. But jealousy there was: somewhere in East Arqual, Magad the Rake was plotting his return. And the Secret Fist took his side, for Sandor Ott feared to serve under a woman. He knew also that Empress Maisa would not let him run the occult affairs of Arqual as he saw fit—a practice he had grown used to under her father. This was, after all, when Ott first began dreaming of the use he might make of a certain heretic king in the Mzithrin lands.”

“The Shaggat,” said Pazel.

Hercól nodded. “Ott’s agents provoked the skirmishes that grew into the Second Sea War, and the old Emperor, weakened by tales of the ghastly bloodshed engulfing the west, died halfway through the campaign. Maisa was crowned Empress, and at once sent emissaries of peace to the Mzithrin capital. Among them was a young genius of a surgeon by the name of Chadfallow.”

“Ignus?” said Pazel in disbelief. “But that was forty years ago! He can’t be
that
old.”

“He does not look it,” Hercól agreed, “but he is past sixty without a doubt. Years ago I asked his age. ‘Old enough to be your father,’ he told me shortly, ‘and to be spared such idle questions.’ In any case, he went to Babqri as Maisa’s standard-bearer. It is to the Empress that Chadfallow owes his career as special envoy, although at times I think he forgets this.

“The war was by now quite out of control, raging throughout Ipulia and the Crownless Lands. Still, the last, worst years of it might have been prevented, but for what happened next. In great secrecy Ott brought Magad the Rake back to Etherhorde, and with the aid of certain generals, who had always loathed taking orders from a woman, drove Maisa from the city. Her baronet was killed, her birth-sons driven into exile beside her. Magad the Fifth, the Rake’s child, was torn from her arms and taken to the father who had tried to drown him before his birth.