A Discourse in Steel (24 page)

Egil shook his head. “Keeps my head clear.”

Rose whimpered, curled up in the bottom of the boat, her brow wrinkled with pain. Mere put her hand protectively on her sister.

“Tell me more about this mindmage,” Mere said, her tone firm.

“Do you know anything about the Deadmire?” Nix asked.

“Just what people say.”

Nix saw the swamp in his mind's eye. He'd been there before he'd first met Egil, on an expedition with his mentor, Hinse the Knife.

“Most of what they say is true, at least partially. It's vast and there are sunken ruins everywhere. It's like…it's like the earth is slowly swallowing a city ten times the size of Dur Follin.”

“You've been there, then?” Mere asked. “When?”

Nix hesitated. “Over fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen years!” Mere said. “You saw this mindmage fifteen years ago? He could be dead or gone or…”

She trailed off as Rose moaned.

Nix squared up to the rest of the story. He owed it to her to be honest.

“I never actually saw him, Mere,” he said.

“No one has,” Egil said. He racked the oars and sat sideways on the bench so he could see both Mere and Nix.

Mere eyed them, one then the other, her eyes filled with disbelief. To her credit, she didn't shout.

“No one has?” She gripped the gunwale, her knuckles white. “No one has? What have you done here, Nix?”

“Mere—” Egil started.

“No, Egil. This is…too much.”

Nix felt himself color. “I'm trying to help her.”

Mere glared at him but kept her voice low, which made it worse. “By dragging her to the Deadmire to chase a rumor? That's your plan?”

“Our plan,” Egil said in his deep voice. “I was with Nix on this.”

Mere looked at Egil as if he'd sprouted a second head.

“I think Odrhaal is real,” Nix said. “I wouldn't have done this otherwise. You know that, Mere.”

“You think lots of things, Nix Fall.”

To that he said nothing. Egil stepped into the silence.

“We wouldn't have done it if we'd had another option,” Egil said. “We love you two. You know
that,
too.”

Mere colored, blinked. She looked as if she might cry but she fought it back. She ran her hands over her face as if to wipe away the emotion there. She looked down at her hands.

“I know you do. I'm just…” She made a helpless gesture. “I'm worried.”

“Us, too,” Egil said.

Mere looked up at Nix, her eyes glistening. “Tell me why you think he's real?”

Nix wasn't sure his explanation would give her any comfort, but he had nothing else to tell her.

“Well, we set out for the Deadmire to…well, it doesn't matter why. But it went bad and they had to carry me out and I was feverish by then. We got lost and…” He hesitated to say it because it sounded ridiculous. “It was like I dreamed it but it was more than a dream.” He looked at Egil, at Ebenor's eye. “It was like Blackalley, Egil. That feeling that something else is out there in the dark, watching you, reaching out to you. I didn't imagine it. I'm certain of that. I think it was Odrhaal.”

He didn't like the pleading tone in his voice, but there it was.

Egil grunted but otherwise held his peace.

Mere spoke in a measured tone. “But you don't know it was Odrhaal?”

“No,” Nix said. “I didn't have a name for it then, but the way it feels when you're in my head…it felt a bit like that.”

She inhaled, stared out at the water, looked back at him. “All right.”

“What does that mean, all right?” Nix asked.

“It means I know you're trying to help. And you're right. There was nothing else to be done. Rose's only hope”—her expression fell, her face vibrating with withheld tears—“is that Odrhaal is real and that he'll help.”

To that, Nix said nothing.

“I could use that break, now,” Egil said.

“What? Right,” Nix said.

Egil moved to the front of the boat, near Mere and Rose. He held out his huge hands. Mere took them, hers lost in his, then fell into his arms, weeping. Nix turned his back on it and set to rowing, hoping that he wasn't half the fool he felt he was.

Nix awoke not long after dawn, stiff and achy, to the sound of Mere and Rose softly talking. He was still in the boat and so were they. Rose winced now and again as she whispered, vexed by some pain in her bifurcated mind. Egil lay flat on his back on the grass just up from the muddy beach where he'd landed the boat, his arms thrown out wide as if to embrace the sky, his snores soft and regular.

Nix glanced down at Channis, who lay in the boat's bottom, legs bent at an uncomfortable angle, yellow slit eyes open and staring and vacant. Nix nudged him with a toe—no response. Channis might not have been dead, but he certainly seemed absent. Rose had two minds in her head, but Channis had none.

“Rose,” he said, and smiled at her.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes, a gesture so her that he knew she was of sound mind, at least at that moment. “Thank you, Nix. I want you to hear that from me, whatever happens.”

Nix stood, though his legs protested. “Starting the morning that way, are we? Let's eat before we get all maudlin, yeah?”

He moved through the boat and extended a hand to Rose.

“Milady.”

She took his hand but did not try to stand. Something was in her eyes, a secret thought. Mere would not look him in the face.

“What?” he asked.

“Mere told me your plan,” she said.

She winced, her right eye blinking uncontrollably for a moment. Mere's lips pursed.

He kneeled down, took Rose's hand between his. “Are you all right? Egil, get up!”

Rose forced a smile, her right eye still blinking. “I'm as all right as I can be. Listen…”

She grimaced, her face bunching up with pain. Mere put a hand on her back, concern in her face.

“What is it?” Egil called, staggering to his feet, his hands filled with the hafts of his hammers.

“It's Rose,” Nix said.

Egil hurried over to the boat. Rose moaned with pain and Nix looked from Mere to Egil for help, but they both looked on as helpless as he.

Rose opened her eyes, looked at Mere, and nodded.

“What?” Nix said. “What?”

“Nix,” Mere said. “If Odrhaal exists—”

“He does.”

“And if he will help.”

“We'll pay whatever we have to.”

“Do you ever stop talking?” Mere asked him.

He almost replied but caught himself and kept his mouth closed. Mere went on.

“Fixing this means…cutting things out. A mindmage can do that, we think. But that's what it means.”

“The imprint of the dead man, yeah?” Nix said.

“Yes,” Mere said. She looked at Rose, who leaned back against the gunwale, her pale face pained. “But it's been in Rose's head awhile. Things are getting mixed up. Cutting it out is getting more complicated all the time.”

Rose nodded. “It's a cock-up,” she said.

Nix looked from one to the other and thought he understood. “Are you saying it could accidentally cut some of her out?”

“That's what I'm saying,” Mere said.

Rose groaned, held her head in her palm. Nix squeezed her other hand and she squeezed his back, hard, as if trying to hold on to something slipping from her grasp.

“Then we need to get moving,” Nix said. “The longer it's in her, the worse it is.”

Egil put one hand on Nix's back to keep him from standing. To Mere, he said, “What do you mean ‘cut some of her out'? You mean memories?”

Mere nodded. “Memories, ways of thinking, emotions.”

“Does she want to do that?” Egil asked.

“What the fak are you asking?” Nix said. He swatted Egil's arm from his back and turned to glare at the priest. Egil had eyes only for Mere. “There's no choice here, Egil. Mere, we don't have anything else. There are no miracles to pull. If we don't do this…”

Nix trailed off, eyeing Rose. Egil said nothing. Mere said, “No. There is a choice.”

Nix looked her in the face, looked at Rose, back at Mere. “Dying's not much of a choice. You can't mean—”

“I do and it is,” Mere said. Her dark eyes welled and her lips quivered while she spoke, but her tone was certain. “We talked about it last night. She's thought about it. If she's not going to be herself, she'd rather—”

“She'd still be herself!” Nix said. “Look at her. She's the same, she'd—”

Mere was shaking her head. “That body isn't her, Nix.” She put a finger to her head. “That's her. That's all of us. Change it and we're…someone else.”

Nix couldn't speak for a long moment. “Shite, Mere,” he finally managed.

“I know.”

Rose moaned again, rolled onto her side. Nix put his hand on her hip. He looked to Egil.

“Priest? You want to help here?”

“I can't,” Egil said, shaking his head. “She's right. She would be someone else. But maybe becoming someone else isn't that terrible.”

“There,” Nix said to Mere. “She can't just…quit.”

“It's Rose's choice,” Egil said.

“It is,” Mere said with a firm nod, a single tear running down her face. “She hasn't decided anything. She just wanted me to know her thinking in case…it gets clouded later on.”

Nix didn't press. He stared out at the Meander, its waters constantly moving, changing, no spot the same for any length of time. He knew what he wanted Rose to choose, but he also knew he couldn't choose for her. To no one in particular, he said, “I wish we'd killed every one of those guildsmen. Every one. Their sloppy shite put her here.”

Egil put a hand on his back, gently this time. Nix sniffed, looked up at Mere.

“We're almost to the Deadmire,” he said. “We keep going until you tell me we shouldn't. Well enough?”

“Well enough.”

Rose shouted a series of curses interspersed with guild cant.

“Let's move,” he said to the priest.

Egil pushed the boat back into the Meander's ever-changing waters. They were hours from the edge of the Deadmire.

Rusk delayed
as long as he could. He set matters in order at the guild, though the house was still in an uproar. He had two dozen guildsmen volunteering to join the pursuit. Every guildsman worth his symbol wanted payback from Egil and Nix. Rusk promised that payback would be coming.

Despite Trelgin's eagerness to strike out before dawn, Rusk insisted on waiting for Watch activity to die down on the wharves. Meanwhile he regularly checked his tat, but it stayed stuck on seven. Egil and Nix had croaked eighteen guildsmen in the guildhouse but hung on to Channis like he was made of gold.

By dawn, Rusk and the men were on the river. Trelgin insisted on riding with Rusk, so the two of them manned one boat and put Kherne on the oars. Mors, Varn, and Dool took the other, with Dool on the oars.

As soon as they left the city behind, Trelgin pointed the dowsing rod south and spoke the word that activated it. Rusk held out hope that it would go wrong somehow—he didn't trust sorcery—but instead it visibly pulled on Trelgin in the direction they were heading.

“They're still on the river,” Trelgin said. “Half a day ahead.”

“Half a day,” Rusk said. “Either they didn't stop to rest or that big fakker can row.”

“But we're on 'em,” Kherne said, pulling at the oars.

“Just keep rowing,” Trelgin said to him. “We're on 'em, aye.”

“That big fakker's mine,” Kherne said.

“You'll have to fight Varn for him,” Trelgin said with a sloppy chuckle.

The water
of the Meander muddied as they neared the estuary. Smaller streams fed the river from the left and right. The churn in the shallow water filled the air with a rich, organic smell. The vegetation on the left bank thickened, with cypresses and willows leaning out from the muddy bank like drowsy sentinels. A western wind carried the thick stink of the Deadmire to them—the smell of decay, of old rot best left undisturbed. Nix checked behind them often, looking for any sign of pursuit by the guildsmen, but he saw nothing but the shimmering, dark ribbon of the Meander. He took the oars for much of the morning to give Egil a rest.

Twice they passed other boats heading upriver, one manned by a leathery fisherman and his sons, the second a large scow loaded with Narascenes, the boat a swirl of colored robes and chimes and drums and songs sung in their rich, complicated language. The Narascenes, riding high enough in the water, saw Rose and Channis lying in the bottom of the boat. They chattered among themselves and drew protective symbols in the air with their fingers.

Mere sat with Rose's head on her lap, singing to her softly. Rose moaned and whimpered and babbled guild cant. In her lucid moments, she simply lay still and stared up at the sky. Nix wanted to speak to her, to make her smile or laugh, but he couldn't muster the words and she seemed to want quiet.

At his feet, Channis was changing further. His skin had coarsened, darkened, and under it there were odd lumps and bulges. Nix hardly cared. Rose filled his thoughts, and Odrhaal, and the nagging fear that Nix had brought them all on a fool's errand.

A dark, viscous fluid leaked from the corner of Channis's mouth and his teeth had grown, sharpened. Nix considered tossing him overboard—the man was as good as dead—but kept him aboard only against the possibility that they'd need him should the guild catch up to them. Egil shared a look with Nix and Nix could see that the priest, who was back at the oars, his face red and sweaty with prolonged exertion, was thinking the same thing.

“It's not going to be worth carrying him when we have to abandon the boat,” Nix said.

“Agreed,” Egil said.

Though cypress and willow and a thick wall of brush blanketed the eastern bank, Nix knew they were roughly parallel with the center of the Deadmire. It had been raining the day he had come this way with Hinse.

“There's going to be a fork up here to the east,” he said. “We take that and head in. If things are as they were, we'll stay in the boat until tomorrow. Sometime after that, we'll have to abandon it and go on foot.”

“You know where we're going?” Egil asked.

“More or less,” Nix said. Assuming the spire hadn't fallen, he'd be able use it as a landmark to guide them in. And if it had fallen, then there was no Odrhaal and Rose was lost.

Within the hour they'd reached the fork Nix remembered and Egil rowed them in. The narrower waterway brought the trees and brush closer. A canopy of willows and cypress roofed them and the boat advanced into the Deadmire in the shade. Dead logs stuck out of the waterline here and there like unearthed bones. Insects and birds called and buzzed and chirped and sang.

Rose burst out in a long series of expletives and cant. At the sound, a score or more of startled birds burst from the trees and took flight. Mere rubbed her sister's head and looked worried.

“How far?” Egil asked. “Maybe I can go faster than you did before, make up some time.”

Nix wasn't sure exactly. He was working from fifteen-year-old memories. He figured—he
hoped
—he'd know it when he saw it.

The breeze picked up, carrying the stink of something long dead.

“Just keep rowing,” he said. “Follow your nose.”

Rusk and
the men passed a few other boats on their way downstream. A fisherman and his sons admitted to seeing a boat that fit the description of their quarry, but no one else had seen them, or would admit to seeing them. Trelgin checked every half hour with the dowsing rod, to keep them on Egil and Nix's trail.

“We're gaining,” he said. “Faster,” he said to Kherne, and shouted the same order to Dool in the other boat.

Kherne and Dool, already puffing and sweating from hours at the oars, cursed him, the sky, the water, the boats, the oars, and anything that caught their eye. Hours passed and as they headed south the bush and trees thickened on the east bank. The air got thick with the stink of the Deadmire.