The Red Wolf Conspiracy (12 page)

Thasha said, “I won't cause trouble in Simja. I have grown up.”

“How delightful. Is that a promise to stop throwing your cousins into hedges?”

“I didn't throw him! He fell!”

“Who wouldn't have, dear, after the thumping you gave him? Poor young man, the lasting damage was to his pride. Knocked silly by a girl who barely reached his shoulder. Come, your father is in the summerhouse. Let's surprise him.”

Thasha followed her through den and dining room, and out into the rear gardens. Syrarys had not changed. Smooth, crafty, clever-tongued. Thasha had seen her argue a duchess into tongue-tied rage, then walk off serenely to dance with her duke. In a city addicted to gossip she was an object of fascination. Everyone assumed she had a younger man, or probably several, hidden about the metropolis, for how could an old man satisfy a woman like that? “You can't kiss a medal on a wintry night, eh?” said a leering Lord Somebody, seated beside Thasha at a banquet. When he stepped away from the table she emptied a bottle of salad oil into his cushioned chair.

She had no great wish to defend Syrarys, but she would let no one cast shame on her father. He had been wounded so many times—five in battle, and once at least in love, when the wife he cherished died six days after giving birth to a daughter. Isiq's grief was so intense, his memories of his lost Clorisuela so many and sharp, that Thasha was astounded one day to hear him speak of her as “my motherless girl.” Of course she had a mother—as permanently present as she was permanently lost.

Syrarys, for her part, scarcely needed defending. The consort glided among the ambushes and betrayals of high society as if born to them. Which was astounding, since she had come to Etherhorde just eight years ago in chains. Silver chains, maybe, but chains nonetheless.

Admiral Isiq had returned from the siege of Ibithraéd to find her waiting in his chambers, along with a note scrawled in His Supremacy's childish hand:
We send this woman full trained in arts of love, may she be unto you joy's elixir
.

She was a pleasure-slave. Not officially, of course: slavery had by then gone out of fashion and was restricted to the Outer Isles and newly conquered territories, where the Empire's hardest labor was done. In the inner Empire, bonded servants had taken their place—or consorts, in the case of pleasure-slaves. By law such women were one's property, but Thasha had heard of them won and lost in gambling matches, or sent back to slave territories when their looks began to fade.

She was barely eight when Syrarys arrived. Still, she would never forget how the young woman looked at her father: not cringing like other servants, but quietly intrigued, as though he were a lock she might pick with skill and patience.

Eberzam detested slavery by any name, calling it “the gangrene of empires.” But to refuse a gift from the Emperor was unthinkable, so Thasha's father took the only step that occurred to him. He kept Syrarys in the house for a plausible six weeks and then declared himself in love. He petitioned the crown at once for her citizenship, but surprisingly he was rebuffed. The second note from Castle Maag read:
Wait one year one day Adml at that time if love yet flourish we shall raise this seedling to status propitiatory
. What that could mean no one knew, but the admiral obeyed, and became a reluctant slave-keeper for the first time in his life.

That year Syrarys was effectively imprisoned in the family mansion, but the sentence did not seem to trouble her. She turned her attention to Thasha, embracing the little girl half as a mother, half as older sister. She taught her Ulluprid games and songs, and persuaded the cook to make the dishes of her childhood, which Thasha agreed were more sumptuous than the best Etherhorde fare. In turn Thasha helped to perfect her Arquali, which was strong but leaned too heavily on the slave school's vocabulary of seduction.

They were best friends. The admiral couldn't have been happier. Thasha barely noticed when he stopped visiting Syrarys' bedroom and installed her in his own.

At the end of the required year he wrote again to Castle Maag, declaring his love stronger than ever, and this time it was the simple truth. Days later, admiral and slave were summoned to the Ametrine Throne, where Syrarys knelt and was named Lady Syrarys, consort to Eberzam Isiq.

The city gasped. With the stroke of a pen the Emperor had changed Isiq's slave—mere property in the eyes of the law—into a member of the aristocracy. In the long history of the Magads' rule, nothing of the kind had been done. By granting Isiq this boon, the Emperor was raising him immensely on the ladder of power. And no one knew why.

So it was that the most beautiful slave in Arqual became its most mysterious Great Lady. And ceased, from one day to the next, to be Thasha's friend.

A blue fengas lamp blazed in the summerhouse—actually just a large gazebo with a liquor cabinet. Admiral Eberzam Isiq, Prosecutor of the Liberation of Chereste and the Rescue of Ormael, among other violences, sat reading in a wicker lounger, a blanket over his legs and nearly as many moths bouncing off his bright bald head as circling the lamp above. The startling thing was that he didn't notice. As Thasha drew near she saw a big moth crawl from her father's ear to the top of his scalp. He didn't move. One hand whisked irritably at the page where his eyes were trained; that was all.

“Prahba!” she said.

It was her private nickname:
Prahba
was “the old sailor nobody could kill,” a storybook hero who conquered every sea, and even outran Death, when the specter chased him against the wind. The admiral jumped, scattering the moths and slamming several in his book. He twisted to look at Thasha. He made a wordless sound of joy. Then she was hugging him, half in his lap, scratching her face on his stubbled neck and giggling as if she were not sixteen but six, and he had never banished her to a school run by hags.

“Thasha, my great girl!”

“I want to come with you.”

“What? Oh, Thasha, morning star! What are you saying?”

His voice dry as coal. Two years had passed, but it might have been ten. His jaw trembled more than before, and the sideburns that were all that remained of his hair had lost their color: they were milk-white. But his arms were still strong, his beard neat, and his blue eyes, when they ceased their wandering and settled on you, were piercing.

“You can't leave me here,” she said. “I'll be no trouble in Simja, I promise.”

The admiral shook his head. “Simja will be the trouble, not you. A motherless girl in that cesspit. Unmarried, unprotected.”

“Silly fool,” she said, kissing his forehead. This was going to be easier than she thought. “You protected the whole Empire. You can protect me.”

“How long?”

Thasha sat back to look at him. His eyes were forlorn.

“And the ship,” he wheezed. “Those animals.”

“Prahba,” she said seriously, “I have to tell you something quickly. I saw Hercól on the way back from the school—”

“Eberzam!” cried Syrarys, mounting the steps. “Look who I found at the garden gate!”

The admiral had started at the mention of Hercól, but now he smiled at his daughter. “You're the living image of your mother. And that reminds me …” He took a small wooden box from the table and passed it to Thasha. “Open it,” he said.

Thasha opened the box. Coiled inside was an exquisite silver necklace. She lifted it out: each link was a tiny ocean creature: starfish, sea horse, octopus, eel. But they were all so finely and fluidly wrought that at arm's length one saw only a silver chain.

“It's so beautiful,” she whispered.

“That was hers, your mother's,” said Isiq. “She loved it very much, hardly ever took it off.”

Thasha looked from her father to Syrarys, barely trusting herself to speak. “But you gave it—”

“He gave it to me, years ago,” said Syrarys, “because he thought he had to. As if I needed him to prove his feelings! I only accepted it as a guardian—keeping it safe until you came of age. Which, as you've just finished saying, you have.” She took the necklace and put it around Thasha's neck. “Breathtaking!” she said. “Well, Eberzam, perhaps you'll consent to wear a dinner jacket tonight? Nama has lost all patience with him, Thasha. Puffing on sapwort cigars in his dressing gown. Rambling the garden in his slippers.”

Isiq's eyes twinkled as he looked from one to the other. “You see how I am persecuted. In my own home.”

He tossed the blanket aside and swung to his feet: an old man's imitation of military quickness. Thasha almost took his arm, but his hand waved her gently away. He leaned on no one, yet.

Thasha greeted the servants in the kitchen—Nama especially she had missed—washed her hands and ran upstairs to her old bedroom. Nothing had changed: the short, plush bed, the candle on the dresser, the table with the mariner's clock. She closed the door behind her and turned the key.

“Ramachni!”

There was no reply.

“It's me, Thasha! Come out, the door is locked!”

Silence again. Thasha rushed to the table, lifted the clock, looked behind it. Nothing.

“Blast and
damn!”

She had spent too long in the garden, and Ramachni had left. He was a great mage; he could travel between worlds; Hercól had even seen him call up storms. He had causes and struggles everywhere. Why had she expected him to wait while she dawdled below?

“You're not going to spring out at me, are you? Like Hercól?”

Although he sometimes looked like an ordinary man, Ramachni usually visited her in the form of a mink. A jet-black mink, slightly larger than a squirrel, and he was not above nipping her if her attention wandered during their studies.

But there was no black mink in her room tonight. He was gone, and might not reappear for days, weeks, years. She could not even blame Syrarys, for the simple reason that Syrarys did not know Ramachni existed. Feeling a perfect idiot, Thasha flopped down on the bed. And froze.

Words burned on her ceiling in a pale blue fire. They were magic beyond any doubt, and her heart thrilled, for Ramachni very rarely let her see his magic. Even now she had only an instant to enjoy it, for as soon as she read a word it flickered and died. It was like blowing out candles with her mind.

Welcome out of prison, Thasha Isiq! I do not say
Welcome home
, for your notions of home are about to change, I think. Don't worry about missing me: I shall return before you know it. But Nama comes in and out of this room every minute, making sure it is ready for you, and I am tired of hiding under the dresser.

Hercól is quite correct, by the way: someone is prowling your garden. Your dogs swear to it. Jorl is so anxious he barely makes sense. When I ask about the intruder, he responds: “Little people in the earth! Little people in the earth!”

By prison you may think I mean the Lorg. Not at all! The prison you are escaping is a beautjful one: beautiful and terrible, lethal even, should you remain in it much longer. You shall miss it. Often you will long to retreat to it, to nestle in its warmth as you do now in that bed you've outgrown. Brave soul, you cannot. It is your childhood, this prison, and its door is locked behind you.

At dinner, Thasha's father spoke of his ambassadorship. In every sense an honor. Simja was a Crownless State of tremendous importance, lying as it did between Arqual and her great rival the Mzithrin. The two empires had kept an uneasy truce for forty years, since the end of the horrific Second Sea War.

But battles or not, the power-struggle continued. The Crownless Lands knew the peril surrounding them, for the last war had been fought in their waters, on their shores and streets.

“They look at us and see angels of death, as Nagan put it,” said Isiq. “You remember Commander Nagan? Perhaps you were too young.”

“I remember him,” said Thasha. “One of the Emperor's private guards.”

“Right you are,” said Isiq approvingly. “But on this trip he will be protecting us. A fine man, a professional.”

“He used to visit,” said Syrarys. “Such a
careful
man! I feel safer knowing he'll be aboard.”

Isiq waved impatiently. “The point is, the Crownless Lands fear us as much as they do the Mzithrin. And now they've gone clever on us, with this damnable Simja Pact.” He bit savagely at the dinner bread. “Fine footwork, that. Don't know how they managed it in just five years.”

“What is a pact?” asked Thasha.

“An agreement, darling,” said Syrarys. “The Crownless Lands have sworn to keep both Arqual and the Mzithrin out of their waters. And they've promised that if one Crownless State is attacked, the rest will all come to their aid.”

“But I thought Arqual had the greatest fleet on earth.”

“She does!” said Isiq. “That fleet bested the Mzithrin once, and could do so again. Nor could all seven Crownless Lands defy us, should we be so cruel and stupid as to make war on them. But what if the Crownless Lands and the Sizzies fought us together?” He shook his head. “We should be hard pressed, hard pressed. And the Mzithrin Kings have the same fear: that those seven States could one day turn on them, with our own fleet alongside, and lay their empire to waste. That is what the Simja Pact guarantees: utter annihilation for either empire, should they try to seize the least barren islet of the Crownless Lands.”

His hand slapped the table so hard the dishes jumped. “Obvious!” he shouted, forgetting Thasha and Syrarys entirely. “How did we not see it? Of course they'd flirt with both sides! Who wouldn't prefer a quiet wolf to one baying for your blood?”

“Prahba,” said Thasha quietly, “if we're the wolves, does that make Simja the trailing elk?”

The admiral stopped chewing. Even Syrarys looked momentarily shocked. Eberzam Isiq had wanted a boy, and Thasha knew it: someone to build model ships with, to read his battle-logs to and show off his wounds. A boy to set up one day with a ship of his own. Thasha could never be an officer, nor wanted to be. Her models looked like shipwrecks, not ships.