The Red Wolf Conspiracy (46 page)

“A merchant, sayest thou?”

“Aye, Froggy,” said Druffle. “A gentleman bound for Ormael himself. We're to meet there in a week's time. So you see I must depart with the dawn—absolutely no later. Two more divers, just two, and I'll chance it. You!” He stopped before a skinny boy on Pazel's left. “Ever dived for pearls?”

Flabbergasted, the boy sputtered: “Yes! Oh yes, sir! Lots of times!”

“Where?”

“Where … where them pearls is found, sir.”

“You lie. Bah, hold your breath anyway. Go ahead.”

A silver pocket watch appeared in Druffle's hand. The boy took a deep breath. Druffle put his ear close to the other's face, listening for any cheating breath. Soon the boy's face began to purple.

At the end of the row, Pazel saw Neeps lean forward to look at him. Quite out loud, but in Sollochi, he said:
“Start breathing now, mate. Breathe as deep as you can—augh!”

A Flikker cuffed him into silence. But Pazel had understood. Neeps
was
a diver—a pearl diver, in fact. Druffle would certainly buy him. And if there was any chance of them staying together, Pazel would have to pass the test as well.

The skinny boy was looking ill. Druffle slid the huge eel off his shoulder. With a wink he brought the gray-green head close to the boy's face—and then suddenly clamped its jaws tight on his nose.

“You're underwater, lad! Don't breathe, don't breathe!”

“Taauugh!”

The boy breathed. Druffle gave a snort of disgust.

Following Neeps' instruction, Pazel started gulping huge breaths. Light-headed but determined, he watched Neeps easily pass the test, and Druffle counting gold into a Flikker's hand. The man looked up and down the row.

“One more,” he said.

Taking a risk, Pazel sang out in Ormali: “Try me, sir!”

The head Flikkerman raised a warning finger. Druffle, however, broke into a smile. “A Chereste boy!” he said. “Well, that makes two of us. Long since you've been home?”

“A very long time,” said Pazel.

“So you'll tell me anything to get back to Ormael. Just as Froggy here will tell me anything for gold. Where did you dive?”

“Off the side of a whaler. My captain made us look for salt-worms, every fortnight.”

Druffle sighed, turning away. “No long dives, then?”

“Well, sir!” said Pazel, catching his sleeve. “You wanted the truth, and the truth is I can dive like a blary seal! Pardon the adjective, sir. You'll find my lungs
capacious
, out of proportion to my size—”

“He he,” laughed Druffle.

“And the murths, Mr. Druffle! I nearly forgot the sea-murths! They love whales and hate whalers, that's what our captain said. He feared they wrote hexes on the bottom of the ship, and we had to dive and look for them, sir, and erase them thoroughly, which was quite a challenge when they didn't exist—”

“Shut up! If you can hold your breath after that jib'rishing you're a diver indeed! Go on, try.”

Pazel's outburst had indeed canceled out all his deep-breathing efforts, but what choice did he have? He took a last gulp of air and held it. Druffle looked at his watch. The Flikkers looked at Pazel. The Volpeks shook their massive heads.

Rather soon Pazel's own head began to feel as though it were being stepped on by a horse. “Don't breathe!” hissed Druffle, and, “Don't breathe! Don't breathe!” croaked all his captors, waving their hands and flashing like lightning bugs. The head Flikker pinched his nose.

When he had lasted twice as long as the first boy, purple spots rose before his eyes.
Don't breathe! Don't breathe!
He stamped his foot. Neeps' anxious face swam into view, but it was blotted out by Druffle's face, which seemed to be morphing into that of the eel. The purple spots became black. He was about to fall.

Goodbye, Neeps
.

Suddenly Druffle lunged, knocking the Flikker's hand away. “Breathe, breathe, for the love of Rin!” he shouted. “You're mine!”

The Rescue of Steldak

25 Modoli 941

73rd day from Etherhorde

Sunset: dry wind, coppering skies. Captain Rose shut his account book (the official, laughable one, not the secret ledger of his personal gains) and set his quill on the desk. Ten feet away his steward bustled about the dining table, polishing plates, arranging the antique silver. Rose frowned. Guests at his dinner table were a formality he disliked.

At the back of the desk his crawly prisoner hunched in its filthy cage. Rose studied the creature from the corner of his eye. Something odd there: the crawly's face was too serene. It stank and shivered and attracted flies. Ghosts whirled about it, too, chattering when Rose's back was turned: he assumed that meant it was ill. But today his poison-taster was strangely calm. Rose had even caught it stretching and limbering, like an acrobat preparing for a stunt. It was suspicious behavior, and Rose decided to replace the crawly at the first opportunity. Swellows, always on the lookout for crawly skulls, would pay him something for this wretch.

“Twenty minutes, Captain,” said the steward. “Do you wish to be dressed?”

“See to the table, I'll dress myself.”

He put the cage in his desk-drawer and slammed it shut with a bang. The crawly didn't even look up as Rose slid him backward into darkness.

“You witchy little grub,” he said.

He stepped to the wardrobe, slid into his dinner jacket and began to comb out his beard. Mr. Teggatz came and went with little bobs and bows, carrying now the bread, now a fruit bowl, now a basin of aromatic sands into which Oggosk would spit her well-chewed sapwort. Rose's mood darkened further. She would bring the cat, naturally.

First to arrive was Sandor Ott. As Teggatz withdrew he came up behind the captain and murmured: “That's a fine guard you've placed on the Shaggat. I could not have done better myself.”

“The augrongs don't care a fig who's behind that door,” said Rose. “But no one else knows that.”

“And His Nastiness, for all that talk of being a God, is not keen on angering those beasts. His sons are scared witless, naturally. The better to keep them all quiet, eh?”

“Nothing will keep that madman quiet for long,” said Rose.

Ott smiled. “
‘My wolf, my red iron wolf!’
Have you any idea what that means?”

“That he is mad.”

“Of course—but long of memory, too. Operatives of the Secret Fist brought word of a certain Red Wolf of the Mzithrin. It was a thing men feared, and fought over. Why he raves of it now I should very much like to know.” He shook his head. “In any case, Thasha Isiq will be married in ten days' time. And once we are on the empty sea the Shaggat can roar as he likes.”

“As can I,” said Rose. “Roar, and more than roar. That Bolutu will be the first to feel it.”

Ott raised a finger. “You shall not kill the veterinarian, sir. He is odd, but also the Empire's best, and he must see to the health of our pigs and cattle and hens. Who knows how long we shall dine on their good flesh? 'Tis more than a century since anyone crossed the Ruling Sea. But after Thasha's marriage we may place him in chains if you like.”

Rose grunted. “He can sleep where he works, among animals. And dine there. But what of the treasure, Ott? What do your men have to say?”

“What have they to say? Why, that none suspect our hiding place, of course. Fear not, Captain: it will not be stolen, or embezzled, or spilled into the sea. It will all be there when His Nastiness is ready to use it. But that day is distant yet.”

The other guests began to arrive. Young Pacu Lapadolma, the musical niece, dragging a sour-faced Thasha Isiq. Bolutu himself, with his fine clothes and gentleman's smile. Thyne, the remaining Company man, who kept as far as possible from Ott and Rose. Syrarys, who made apologies for the ambassador (headaches again, poor dear).

Oggosk came last, with her cat in her arms. No sooner had the steward closed the door behind them than Sniraga gave an angry yowl and squirmed free, vanishing under the table. Pacu laughed, but Thasha Isiq scowled and put a hand on her necklace.

The dinner started badly, with Pacu reciting a bit of her great-aunt's patriotic poetry
(“In Arqual we are happy bees / but don't forget our stingers, please!”)
and Thasha choosing that moment to choke on her soup. Then Thyne made everyone stand up to toast the Great Lady back in Etherhorde, and Bolutu felt compelled to speak of Lady Lapadolma's kindness to a certain stray dog, and Pacu declared how her great-aunt had given her “everything, absolutely everything that makes me what I am today,” at which Thasha raised an eyebrow as if to say,
And what would that be?

“Three days to Ormael!” Pacu went on. “Arqual's newest territory! What do you suppose five years in the Empire has done to her? I understand her wall has been rebuilt, and the city center tidied up, the riffraff expelled, proper Arquali families installed in the better homes. Let us drink to that!”

Oggosk (who had never budged from her chair) spat noisily into her basin. “This sapwort tastes like sludge,” she said.

It did not help when Ott tried to draw Lady Thasha into the conversation: hadn't she learned rather a lot of Mzithrini by now? Thasha shook her head firmly, but Syrarys cried, “Oh, she has, I've heard her! After all, her wedding is just ten days off! Say something, dear. The sound of that language is so
primal!”

Thasha looked at her with loathing, then suddenly growled out a few words. She told them it meant
“My enemy's enemy is my friend.”
But Rose noted how Bolutu jumped, and shot her a quick glance of amazement.

Everyone was used to how little the captain spoke—and after ten weeks at sea, they did not much care. It was his cabin: they were glad enough to ignore him and devour his food. But just before the meal ended he surged to his feet with a table-jarring lurch.

“Oggosk! That thrice-damnable red cat just spoke to me!”

He pointed at his desk; all eyes turned. Sniraga was seated beside his letter box, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.

“Fah,” said Oggosk.

“Captain!” cried Pacu Lapadolma. “Do you think you have a
woken
cat on your hands?”

“I
don't have any cat at all!”

“She does cling to you, though,” Bolutu observed. “What makes you her favorite, I wonder?”

Thasha Isiq's eyes narrowed. “What did she say, Captain?”

Rose hesitated, staring down at them all. “Nothing important,” he said at last.

“But
surely
an animal's first words are important in themselves?” said Pacu.

“They're not her first.”

“Well, then?”

Rose looked at the two girls. “Little spies,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?!”

“That's what the cat said: “‘Little spies.’”

No one dared to laugh. Then Oggosk wiped the grease from her fingers and glanced up.

“I've told you: Sniraga's no woken animal. She's clever in the way of cats, but no more. You're plagued by an evil visitation, Nilus: some spirit-cat out of your childhood or family history. Don't take it out on my pet.”

She spoke as if to a wearisome child. Rose dropped into his chair and began a noisy attack on an apple. Thyne and Syrarys tried to revive the conversation, but everyone was distracted by Rose, whose staring eyes followed the cat wherever it roamed about the cabin.

At last the meal was over: the guests drained their cups and left. The steward and his boy swept about the table, clearing dishes, snuffing lamps. Then they too departed, and Rose was alone.

The cabin was dim. He stood stock-still, like a nervous bull. There was no sound but the ship's churning wake.

“You're here, aren't you?” he whispered at last.

Silence. He rubbed his beard in a sudden paroxysm of nerves. “Speak! Where are you? What do you want?”

Silence, and then piano music: distantly, from the first-class lounge.
Re-mem-ber the old, old souls of Soo-li, drowned deep below
.

Rose gave a mirthless laugh, almost a sob. Then he turned and stalked out of the cabin, locking the door behind him.

For two minutes nothing stirred. Then, with the tiniest sound imaginable, something did.

In the sand basin next to Oggosk's chair, among the bits of chewed sapwort, a tiny round shape broke the surface, swiveling left and right. It was a woman's head. It studied the cabin. And then in one swift movement, five ixchel burst from the sand, backs together, hands already fitting arrows to bows.

“All clear,” said Diadrelu.

“Good,” Talag answered. “Out of this muck, now—down and regroup. And toss some sapwort on the floor. Make a mess.”

They held breathing-tubes of hollow straw: these they minced and buried in the sand. Then they brushed one another clean, smiling but not laughing as the sand fell from their hair. Four ixchel slipped from the basin's rim to the ground, and the last kicked bits of sapwort over the basin's edge. Rats were to be blamed for this raid.

“I thought he'd found us,” said Diadrelu.

“You forget Rose is a madman,” said Taliktrum. “Chatting with ghosts.”