Free The Ruling Sea by Robert V S Redick Page A

closed his eyes.
    Utter pandemonium broke out.
    “No heartbeat! No heartbeat!” The cry swept the shrine. Already guests were spilling out through the arches, taking news of the disaster with them. A vast howl rose from the mob outside.
    “Annulled!” shouted the Father, raising both his scepter and the ceremonial knife. “Without a marriage the Treaty of Simja is annulled! There is no peace between the Mzithrin and cannibal Arqual! I saw death, did I not tell you, children?”
    “There must be peace, there must!”
    “There won’t be!”
    “We’ll be killed! They’ll punish Simja for sure!”
    “Death! Death!” screamed the Father.
    “Get that blade out of his hands!” shouted King Oshiram.
    “Where is the monster?” bellowed Isiq. “Where is he, where’s the fiend who slew my Thasha?”
    But Arunis was nowhere to be seen.
    Falmurqat the Elder took his son by the arm. “Let us away!” he said bitterly. “This is all a deception, and an old one at that. To marry off a convulsive, one not long for the world, and thus to shame the enemy when she expires.”
    “Hush, Illoch, what nonsense!” cried his wife.
    But the old prince paid no heed. “Some of us read history,” he said. “Huspal of Nohirin married a girl from the Rhizans. She died of seizures in a month, and the Mzithrin took the blame. This pig admiral must have counted on his girl lasting a bit longer, that’s all.”
    Pazel thought the worst had come. Isiq would fly at the man; the insults would reverberate beyond the shrine, beyond Simja; in hours or days there would be sea-battles, by week’s end a war. But Isiq did not react at all, and with immense relief Pazel realized that the older prince had used his native tongue. But what if that changed?
    Switching to Tholjassan, he looked up at Hercól.
    “We’ve got to get her out of here now.”
    Hercól nodded. “Come, Eberzam! We must do as Thasha would wish, and bear her to the Chathrand . A proper burial at home in Etherhorde must be hers.”
    “But it’s months, months away,” Isiq wept. “Her body will not last.”
    “There are remedies,” said Chadfallow quietly.
    Isiq turned on him savagely. “Want to pickle my daughter like a herring, do you? False friend that you are! Never again shall you touch one of mine!”
    “Steady, Isiq, he’s a doctor,” said the king.
    “What do you know of him?” roared Isiq, making the crowd gasp anew. “Fatuous fool! What do you know of any of this ? Puppets on strings, that is all I see around me! Little helpless dolls, twitching, dancing to the hurdy-gurdy.”
    New gasps from the onlookers. “Do not touch him!” shouted Oshiram, for the guards were already starting for Isiq. No tragedy could excuse such words to a sovereign, in his own realm and before his peers; men had been executed for less. Only the king himself could pardon Isiq, as everyone present knew.
    “But she must go to Etherhorde,” wept Pacu Lapadolma.
    “Indeed she must, Your Excellency,” said one of the Templar monks. “Only this morning she put it in writing, when we inscribed her name in the city register: Though my body rot in transit, let me be buried at my mother’s side on Maj Hill . She was quite insistent on that point.”
    To this Isiq made no rebuttal. Someone spread a cloak upon the floor. Gaping, the admiral watched Hercól lift Thasha’s body and place her on the cloth.
    Pazel felt a hand on his elbow. He turned, and to his amazement found himself face to face with the sfvantskor he had caught stealing glances at him during the ceremony. Below the white mask the lips trembled slightly.
    “The Father was right. There’s evil on your ship. Are you part of it?”
    It was the voice of a young woman, speaking broken Arquali, and whispering oddly as though trying to disguise her voice. Nonetheless Pazel felt certain he had heard it before.
    “Who are you?” he demanded.
    “Turn away before it’s too late. You’ll never belong among those who