The River of Shadows by Robert V S Redick

ceremony allotted to him, and tied it around her wrist. The meaning of the act, of course, had utterly changed, but those ambiguous words troubled him yet. Wasn’t she still departing? Not into life with a Mzithrini husband, but into some region of the mind where he could not follow?
    Nonsense. Nerves. Thasha was touched by magic, somehow—but not touched in the head. Pazel himself had been living for years under a potent charm and had managed to remain who he was. He put his arm around her, drew her closer, felt her breath tickling his chin.
    “You’re trembling,” she whispered. “Why are you afraid?”
    Why was he afraid? He had torn a cursed necklace away fromher throat, dragged her up flaming stairwells; he had seen her naked and bleeding on a beach. He could kiss her here and now (so far she had planted the kisses, though not always on him) and no disaster would follow.
    Presumably.
    It was never supposed to happen. You believe me, don’t you?
    Rin’s teeth, he was sweating. And Thasha, impatient, was slipping under his arm and down the staircase, slipping away.
    “I’m stronger now,” she said. “I can face them. They can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”
    On they went, past the berth deck with its sound of snoring (some forty victims of the ixchel’s sleep-drug remained unconscious) and out into the rear compartment of the orlop deck. The darkness increased, and so did the stench. And flies—more flies with every step, droning like tormented ghosts.
    Then Pazel stopped, overcome with sudden disgust.
Pitfire, they’ve still not cleaned the lower decks
. He was smelling dead men, dead animals—above all, dead rats. Six weeks ago, every last rat on the
Chathrand
had suffered a hideous change, swollen to the size of Thasha’s dogs, and rampaged through the ship. Only their mass suicide had prevented the creatures from killing everyone aboard.
    “Pathkendle. Thasha.”
    Hercól was crossing the dim compartment. As he drew close, the swordsman noticed Pazel’s look of revulsion. “The bodies are gone,” he said, “but not the blood. Fiffengurt chose to risk disease rather than oblige the men to sweat away the last of their water scrubbing gore out of the planks.”
    He and Thasha regarded each other warily. They had exchanged many such looks recently, before and after their arrival at the cape. Pazel had no idea what those looks were about, but he knew that Thasha’s mood darkened whenever the swordsman approached, as though he reminded her of some unwelcome duty or predicament.
    “I hoped Pazel would convince you not to attend this council,” he said.
    “He failed,” said Thasha, “and so will you. Enough nonsense, Hercól. I want to get this over with.”
    Hercól gripped her shoulder, looking at them each in turn. “Let them wait a bit longer. Come with me first, won’t you?”
    He led them across the dim compartment, around a jagged hole in the floor (there were many such scars on the
Chathrand
,marks of the suicide-fire of the rats) and out through the bulkhead door in the north wall. They stepped into a small square cabin with two other doors, through one of which some light poured down from a shaft in the adjoining corridor. Dominating the room was a round porcelain washtub. This was the “silk knickers room” (as tarboys called it): the chamber where first-class servants scrubbed their employers’ socks and shirts and petticoats. The big tub had survived the crossing, but it was smeared with dried blood and fur, and the benches and washboards had been reduced to charcoal.
    Hercól closed the door by which they had entered. “Once we join the others we must watch our every word. It is well that we told Taliktrum of the mind-plague, but of the time-skip His Lordship knows nothing, and I do not think we should enlighten him today. Let us not speak of it.”
    “Let’s not speak to him at all,” said Pazel. “He’s not fit to lead his clan, let alone this