The River of Shadows by Robert V S Redick Page A

severely, but made no rebuttal. “Even allies like Mr. Fiffengurt may not yet be ready to face the truth of it. One could almost wish that his dear Annabel’s final letter had never reached him, telling him that she was with child.”
    “ You could wish it, maybe,” said Thasha. Pazel looked at her in shock. “I mean,” she added hastily, “that we can’t begin to guess what he feels like. They were going to be married; he’s been saving his pay ten years. I don’t think we should ever tell him. Let him think they’re alive, for as long as he can—Annabel and that little boy or girl. Let him hope. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
    She was still watching Hercól with surprising ire. But if her old mentor understood her anger, he did not rise to the bait. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “In time we may be forced to tell him, or he may find out some other way; but for now it can do little good. Yet we must not forget the truth for a minute, however much we long to, if we are to find a way out of this darkness.”
    “There is no way out,” said Pazel, and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. The others turned to him, astonished—and then a voice rang out in the darkness.
    “I should bite you for that, Pazel Pathkendle! No way out, for shame.”
    “Felthrup!” cried Pazel. “Are you mad? What are you doing here?”
    His tiny figure emerged from the gloom: a black rat with half a tail and a mangled forepaw. Thasha’s dogs pounced, licking and snuffling; their adoration of Felthrup knew no bounds. With a quick leap the rat was astride Suzyt, balanced between her shoulder blades. His dark eyes glistened, and a sweet, resinous smell wafted from his fur.
    “Should I be content to hide forever behind the stateroom’s magic wall?” he asked. “Ashore they may have condemned all woken beasts, but not on the Chathrand . Not yet.”
    “The crew will not stop to talk to you,” said Hercól. “They will see a rat, and they will kill it.”
    “Only if they catch it,” said Felthrup. “But the men of Chathrand are not all ignorant brutes. They do not know what is happening—and I agree that you must not tell them, yet—but they know something is terribly amiss, and a few may recall that it was I who first said so, when I smelled the emptiness of the village. Surely they will realize the utility—is that the word I want, utility?—of having a rat’s olfactory prowess at their disposal. Utility, avail, expedience—”
    “No,” said Thasha, “they won’t. They’ll be afraid that you’re about to turn into a monster before their eyes.”
    “They should fear no such thing,” said Felthrup. “I am safe, thanks to Lady Syrarys.”
    “Syrarys?” said Pazel. “Felthrup, what are you talking about?”
    Syrarys, the consort of Thasha’s father Admiral Isiq, had been revealed to be in league with Sandor Ott. She had worked for Thasha’s death, and nearly killed the admiral by poisoning his tea.
    “How excitable you are!” said Felthrup. “I was only speaking of mysorwood oil. The wicked lady used to dab it on her neck, but Mr. Bolutu pointed out that it is better even than peppermint oil at deterring fleas. He applied it to my fur, and I am a new rat! Freed, emancipated, delivered from their masticatory assaults—and are we not agreed that those hungry vermin inflicted the mutation upon the rats, and not vice versa? Rats do not, you will allow, bite fleas. But this despair, Pazel! How unlike you, how unbecoming!”
    “Unbecoming.” Pazel stared at the rat. “Do you understand that our families are dead?”
    “Your sister is not dead,” said Felthrup. “And as for my family—it is aboard this ship. My rat-brethren back in Noonfirth cast me out, the very day I woke. They were terrified of my verbosity. They slew my mother’s second litter before her eyes, ten blind bleating things not a day old, and chased her off into the streets. When I fled they were trying to determine