Free The River of Shadows by Robert V S Redick Page A

well. “How is it that you quote so confidently from our scripture?” he demanded.
    “Every member of the Secret Fist reads the Book of the Old Faith,” said Hercól. “My copy remained with me when I forsook Ott’s guild of spies. You see, Cayer, I know something of change. So does Neda’s brother, incidentally.”
    Vispek’s eyes moved slowly from Hercól to Pazel and back again. He took a long breath, then pointed at the stack of crates across the basin.
    “The one on top is full of clothing,” he said. “Go and dress. Then I will tell you of a kind of change you know nothing about.”
    They had numbered seven once. Seven: the Mzithrin lucky number, the standard complement of
sfvantskor
s dispatched as a team to a particular Mzithrin King, or an army brigade, or a warship of the White Fleet. The latter had been Vispek’s assignment: he was made votary to an elder aboard the
Jistrolloq
, deadliest ship in the Northern world, as famous for her speed and weaponry as the
Chathrand
was for size and age. Neda and Jalantri and several others came aboard after the murder of their teacher in Simja, and had been assigned to Vispek’s care. They were still aspirants, barely out of training; by rights they should have been returned to the Mzithrin to do just that. But their teacher had planned otherwise.
    That teacher, the great Babqri Father, had long suspected a trap behind the Arqualis’ offer of peace. He had lived through more than a century of war and duplicity; but his knowledge was not merely that of years. He was the keeper of Sathek’s Scepter, an artifact older than the Mzithrin Empire itself, and one the Shaggat had not managed to steal. Crowning this golden rod was a crystal, and in the heart of the crystal lay a shard of the Black Casket, the broken centerpiece of the Old Faith.
    Through the power of the scepter the Father had come to sense the evil approaching in the belly of the
Chathrand
. Weeks before Treaty Day, he had come to Simja with his aspirants, and taken up residence in the Mzithrini shrine outside the city walls. There he had held council with Mzithrini lords, merchants, soothsayers, spies, as they congregated ahead of the wedding meant to seal the Peace. And there, night after night, he puthis disciples in a trance and sent them into the sea, and by the power of the scepter they cast off their human bodies and took the forms of whales.
    “Whales?” said Pazel.
    “Whales,” said Vispek. “The better to observe your approach, and your doings aboard the
Chathrand.
”
    “Your crew spotted us,” said Jalantri. “We were a rare sort of whale, blue-black and small.”
    “Cazencians,” said Pazel. “Yes, I saw you—but it was here, on this side of the Ruling Sea. Neda, was that
you
?”
    She gave a curt nod. “We trailed you along the Sandwall.”
    “Until attacked by sharks,” said Vispek. “They were vicious and innumerable; we escaped them only by hurling ourselves upon this shore.”
    “And these possessions?”
    Vispek gestured with a turn of his head. “Shipwreck. Three or four miles west, along the inner beach. A grim discovery, that. The bark itself was weird and slender, and partly burned; we thought it a derelict. But inside it was full of murdered creatures, like black men except for their hands, hair and eyes. Their throats were slit, all of them. On the deck where we found the bodies a word was scrawled in blood: P LATAZCRA . Can you tell us the meaning of that word, boy?”
    He looked expectantly at Pazel, who nodded reluctantly, knowing his face had given him away. He knitted his eyebrows. “Something like ‘victory’—no, ‘conquest’ is closer. ‘Infinite conquest,’ that’s it.”
    They all looked at him, shaken. “The boat was maimed,” said Cayer Vispek at last, “but only partly looted. We found fine goods—fabrics, dyes, leather boots of excellent workmanship, even gold coins, scattered underfoot. It was as if the attackers had struck in haste, or