Free The Ruling Sea by Robert V S Redick Page B

belong.”
    “What did you say?”
    She made no answer, only turned her back and fled, and then Neeps was tugging at his arm.
    “Wake up, mate! It’s time to go!”
    Pazel’s mind was in a whirl, but he knew Neeps was right. Bending, he seized a corner of the cloak on which Thasha lay. Hercól, Neeps and Fiffengurt already had their corners. Together they lifted her body, and amidst fresh wails from the onlookers bore her down the aisle and out through the arch.
    The sun blinded them. Isiq followed on their heels, weeping: “For naught, for naught! My morning star—”
    Before they reached the bottom step they heard King Oshiram above them, ordering his guards to form a phalanx before the corpse-bearers. “To the ship! Drive a wedge if necessary! Let no one hinder them in their grief!”
    The palace guard did as they were told, and the stricken mob gave way as the men and tarboys rushed Thasha back toward the city. Most were too shocked even to give pursuit. Pazel knew their paralysis would not last, however. And what then? The crowd may go mad , Hercól had warned them. It can happen, when the world seems poised to collapse . Would there be a revolt? Would they try to seize her body, steal a piece of her garment or a fistful of hair, bury her with the martyrs of Simja?
    The others might have had similar thoughts, for all four ran as quickly as they could. When Pazel glanced back he saw that the admiral was falling behind.
    “Do not wait!” Isiq shouted, waving him on. “All speed, Pathkendle! Protect her!”
    Affection as well as grief in the old warrior’s voice. Pazel raised a hand to him—he meant it as a promise, though it looked like a farewell—and staggered on.
    When he was six years old, Pazel’s mother disappeared. It was his first taste of terror, of the possibility of wounding loss, and he never forgot it, although his mother returned in just a week.
    A sentry on the city wall had watched her departure—men were always watching Suthinia Pathkendle—all the way to Black Stag Road, where she turned east toward the valley of the Cinderling. The neighbors relayed this news to Captain Gregory Pathkendle with their usual blend of sympathy and scorn. The Cinderling was an old battlefield, left for dead after the Second Sea War, and still a place of bandits and beggars and unmarked graves. The neighbors had sighed and clicked their tongues. Only Suthinia, they said.
    Pazel’s sister had taken the news with a shrug and a laugh; she was determined not to care. Captain Gregory had just rolled his eyes. “She’ll be back,” he said. “This isn’t the first time, but we can hope it’s the last.” Pazel had waited for his mother in silence, too frightened for tears.
    As it happened Gregory was right on both counts. Suthinia came back, sunburned and road-filthy but otherwise unharmed. Nor did she ever vanish again—until the Arquali invasion, when every beautiful woman in Ormael vanished, mostly into Imperial hands. No, Suthinia stayed put, because a few months after that mysterious week Gregory himself sailed out of Ormaelport, never to return. To make matters worse, Captain Gregory’s sister, who had helped out often with the children, picked that spring to elope to Étrej with a fallen monk. Suthinia, never the most attentive mother, was suddenly on her own.
    Pazel liked to think he’d not added to her worries. His father had declared him bright. Dr. Chadfallow, their illustrious family friend, had challenged him to become trilingual before his ninth birthday, and he was well on his way. Pazel wanted to sail like Gregory, but once he opened the grammar books Ignus provided, he somehow had a hard time putting them down.
    Neda was eleven and at war with everything. She hated her father for abandoning them, Suthinia for giving him reasons to, Chadfallow for not talking him out of it and Pazel for not hating the others with her own intensity. To top it all, her mother and Chadfallow were becoming close.