The Ruling Sea Read Online Free

rendezvous with Thasha Isiq; five deathsmoke addicts; two lovers outside the West Gate and the callous guard who refused to let them steal back to their marriage beds; the warrior Hercól Stanapeth, who had not slept at all; a murderer hiding in the mouth of a silver mine; Lady Oggosk, plugging her ears with greasy thumbs as she sang an enchantment-song of her own; a moon falcon standing restless on a windowsill; a poet whose twelve years without a poem had led him to a clifftop but who was now, as he listened, considering conversion; a child locked in an attic—and three men on the
Chathrand’s
quarterdeck.
    One of these was Old Gangrüne, the purser, who had the dawn watch. He slouched across the lightless deck, in a temper even before he was fully awake.
    “That’ll be your Black Rags now,” he said aloud. “Call that aprayer, d’ye, Sizzy? You’re just howlin’ like an animal, and some of us ain’t surprised. Oh, yes, yes, there’s no need to tell
me
. You’re decent folk now, ain’t ye? Gentlemen, honest coves. Until you whip out the knife when our back’s turned and
errrrgh!”
    He mimed a murder, perhaps his own, then shuffled off toward the jiggermast, oaths still leaking from his lips.
    He did not see the man in the shadow of the wheelhouse, on hands and knees, shuddering, naked but for a pair of ornate gold spectacles in danger of slipping from his nose. This man’s eyes were pinched shut, and a cascade of expressions played over his mouth—now a smile, now a grimace of fear, now a thought so striking that the mouth froze altogether. A pale man in the prime of life, though perhaps a little thin and austere.
    “Dawn is come,” said a voice beside him. “Stand up before it’s too late.”
    A hand appeared at his shoulder, offering help. The naked man seemed to battle with himself harder than ever. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
    For a heartbeat he stayed perfectly still. Then in one motion he rose, astonished; his back straightening was like rebirth after illness, his gaze above the rail like the view from a watchtower.
    Beside him stood a man in a black seafarer’s jacket, black leggings and a white scarf that might have stood out distinctly in a stronger light. He was tall and thickset, and his eyes had the sharp ravenous look of a spider’s. He gestured at a pair of trousers and a shirt folded over the rail.
    The shirt was a lustrous green. The thin man reached out and stroked it.
    “That is silk,” said the other. “And there are calfskin shoes at your feet.”
    Fumbling, the man in spectacles put on the clothes. He touched them reverently. “They warm you,” he said.
    “Of course.” The man in black knelt and tied the other’s shoes. “And what is more, they distinguish you. Green is the color of the learned, the natural leaders of men. You may walk about, now—walk, and look, and be free.”
    Slow and astonished, the thin man circled the quarterdeck. Old Gangrüne stood blinking by the mast, one finger digging halfheartedly in his ear. The bespectacled man stared at him, openmouthed, three inches from his face. Gangrüne neither saw nor heard him.
    “Eye to eye, we call that,” said the man in black. “It is how you will look at all men. Did I not say you would like it?”
    “Like it!” The man in spectacles seemed overcome with joy. But all at once his smile disappeared. He glanced darkly at his companion and scuttled away, as if he preferred a little distance between them.
    On the ladder his shoes gave him trouble, and he almost fell. The man in black chuckled and followed him down to the deck. They glided forward along the starboard rail, past the captain’s skylight through which a lamp shone already, the mizzen shrouds, the stone-faced Turach soldiers with their heavy crossbows and their scars.
    Then the thin man gave a squeal of terror, recoiling. A red cat had climbed from the No. 4 hatch and stood stretching its hindquarters. While the animal was