by Garth Nix
The Denizen ducked as he stepped through a narrow doorway. Though Arthur was considerably shorter, he had to bend his head down too. They were in a short, dark, narrow corridor with a very low ceiling.
‘Aren’t you a sailor?’ asked Arthur.
‘I’m the Captain’s Steward,’ replied Ichabod severely. ‘I was his gentleman’s gentleman when we were ashore.’
‘His what?’
‘What is sometimes called a valet,’ replied Ichabod as he opened the door at the other end, only a few yards away. The Denizen stepped through, with Arthur at his heels.
The room beyond the door was not what Arthur expected. It was far too big to be inside the ship, for a start: a huge, whitewashed space at least eighty feet long and sixty feet wide, with a decorated plaster ceiling twenty feet above, complete with a fifty-candle chandelier of cut crystal in the middle.
There was a mahogany desk right in the middle of the room with a green-shaded gas lantern on it, and a long row of glass-topped display cases all along one wall, each illuminated by its own gently hissing gaslight. In the far corner, there was a curtained four-poster bed with a blanket box at its foot, a standing screen painted with a nautical scene, and a large oak-panelled wardrobe with mirrored doors.
It was also absolutely quiet and completely stable. All the noise of the crew and the sea had vanished as soon as the door was shut behind Arthur, as had the constant roll and sway of the deck.
‘How —’
Ichabod knew what Arthur was asking before the boy even got the question out.
‘This is one of the original rooms. When the Deluge came and we had to turn the counting house into a ship, this room refused to transform to something more useful, like a gun deck. Eventually Doctor Scamandros managed to connect it to the aft passageway, but it isn’t really in the ship.’
‘Where is it, then?’
‘We’re not entirely sure. Probably not where it used to be, since the old counting house site is well submerged. The Captain thinks that this room must have been personally supervised by the Architect, and retained some of Her virtue. It lies within the House, that’s for sure, not out in the Realms.’
‘You’re not worried that it might get cut off from the ship?’ asked Arthur as they walked over to the bed. The curtains were drawn and Arthur could hear snoring behind them. Not horrendous ‘I can’t bear to hear it’ snoring, but occasional drawn-out snorts and wheezes.
‘Not at all,’ said Ichabod. ‘The ship is still mostly the counting house, albeit long-transformed and changed. This room is of the counting house, so it will always be connected somehow. If the passageway falls off, some other way will open.’
‘Through the wardrobe maybe,’ said Arthur.
Ichabod looked at him sternly, his eyebrows contracting to almost meet above his nose.
‘I doubt that, young mortal. That is where I keep the Captain’s clothes. It is not a thoroughfare of any kind.’
‘Sorry,’ said Arthur. ‘I was only . . .’
His voice trailed off as Ichabod’s eyebrows did not return to a more friendly position. There was a frosty silence for a few seconds, then the Denizen twitched his nose as if something had irritated his nostrils, and bent down to open the blanket box.
‘Here is a blanket,’ he said unnecessarily, handing it to Arthur. ‘I suggest you wrap yourself in it. It may stop that shivering. Unless of course it is merely an affectation.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Arthur. He hadn’t realised he was shivering, but now that Ichabod mentioned it, he realised he was very cold, and little tremors were running up and down his arms and legs. The heavy blanket was very welcome. ‘I am cold. I might even have a cold.’
‘Really?’ asked Ichabod, suddenly interested. ‘We must tell Doctor Scamandros. But first I suppose I should wake the Captain.’
‘I’m already awake,’ said a voice behind the curtain. A quiet, calm voice. ‘We have a visitor, I see. Anything else to report, Ichabod?’
‘Mister Sunscorch is of the opinion that we are being pursued by the awful pirate Feverfew, on account of stealing one of his treasure chests.’
‘Ah,’ said the voice. ‘Is Mister Sunscorch doing . . . um . . . things with the sails and so on? So we can, ah, flee?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ichabod. ‘May I present the potential passenger Mister Sunscorch took aboard from Feverfew’s buoy? He is a boy and, I believe I am correct in assuming, a true mortal. Not one of the Piper’s children.’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur.
‘First things first, Ichabod,’ came the reply. ‘Second-best boots, third-best coat, and my, ah, sword. The proper one with the, err, sharpened blade.’
‘The sharpened blade? Is that wise, sir?’
‘Yes, yes. If, ah, Feverfew catches us . . . now, mortal boy, what is your name?’
‘My name is — look ou —!’ said Arthur as Ichabod walked straight into the wardrobe mirror. But the Denizen didn’t hit it. He went right through, like a diver into a pool of still water, the silvered glass rippling as he passed.
‘Lookow?’ asked the Captain.
‘Sorry, I got distracted,’ said Arthur. ‘My name is Arth.’
‘Lookow sounds better than Arth,’ said the Captain. ‘Pity. Names can be a terrible burden. Take mine, for example. It’s Catapillow. Captain Catapillow, at your service.’
‘Caterpillar?’ asked Arthur, not sure he’d heard it right through the bed’s curtains.
‘No! Cat-ah-pillow. See what I mean? Suitable name for the manager of a counting house, but hardly the stuff of nautical legend.’
‘Why don’t you change it?’
‘Officers not allowed to,’ came the muffled reply. ‘Name was issued by the Architect. Inscribed in the Register of Precedence. That’s why I’m Captain. Most senior aboard, 38,598th in precedence within the House. Prefer not to be, but no choice in the matter. Mister Sunscorch is, um, the only professional sailor aboard. Boots?’
‘Here they are, sir,’ said Ichabod, inserting boots, coat, and sword between the curtains. Arthur hadn’t seen him come back through the mirrored door of the wardrobe, but there he was.
There was a muffled curse from the bed and the curtains billowed out. Then the boots thrust out under them, half on Captain Catapillow’s feet. Ichabod helped him ease them on all the way, and Catapillow slid out of the bed and stood up and bowed to Arthur.
He was tall, but not as tall as Dame Primus or Monday’s Noon. He was also not particularly handsome, though not exactly ugly either. He didn’t have any tattoos, or at least none visible. He just looked very plain and ordinary, with a rather vacant face under a short white wig with a kind of ponytail at the back tied with a blue ribbon. His blue coat was quite faded, and he only had one gold epaulette, on his left shoulder.
‘Now, young Arth,’ Catapillow said as he tried to buckle on his sword-belt and failed. He stood still while Ichabod fixed it up. ‘You want to be a passenger aboard a ship that will shortly be sunk and everyone on it put to, um, the sword or made slaves by the pirate Feverfew?’
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean I want to be a passenger, but surely we can escape? I saw that ship, the pirate one, but it was a long way away. We must have a good lead.’
‘A stern chase is a long chase,’ muttered Catapillow. ‘But they’ll, you know, probably catch us in the end. I suppose we should go and, er, have a look. Mister Sunscorch might have some — what-do-you-call-’em — ideas. Or Doctor Scamandros. Just when I was going to examine some new additions to my collection. I suppose it will be Feverfew’s collection soon, and he won’t appreciate it.’
Arthur started to ask about the Captain’s collection. He could tell from Catapillow’s fond gaze that it was housed in the display cabinets along the wall. But before he could get the words out, Ichabod trod on his foot and coughed meaningfully.
‘What’s that?’ asked Catapillow, looking back at the boy.
‘The Captain’s needed on deck!’ said Ichabod in a loud, fi
rm voice.
‘Yes! Yes!’ said Catapillow. ‘Let’s see where that vile, um, vile ship of Feverfew’s has got to. We can talk about your passage fee later, Arth. Follow me!’
He led the way back to the door. As soon as it opened, Arthur heard the deep roar of the sea, the groan of the ship’s timbers, and the continuing shouts of the crew and Sunscorch.
He had to shut his eyes as he left the room and stepped into the corridor because the floor of the ship was rocking but the room’s wasn’t, creating a very sick-making feeling at the back of his eyes. But it passed as soon as he was in the ship proper again, though the ship was pitching up and down so much he had to use a hand to steady himself every few paces.
It was bright out on the main deck. The moon was high above them, its light cool and strong. Arthur could even have read by it, he thought, and he noticed that it was strong enough to cast shadows.
He hugged his blanket tighter around his shoulders as he felt the wind. It had grown colder still, and stronger. Looking up at the masts, all the sails were full. The Moth was heeled over quite steeply to starboard and was plunging ahead at quite a rate.
Unfortunately, when he looked over his shoulder, Arthur saw that the pirate ship was sailing even faster. It was much smaller than the Moth, and narrower too, with only two masts and triangular sails rather than the square ones on the merchant vessel.
‘The ship looks white in the moonlight,’ said Arthur. ‘And are those sails brown?’
‘They’re the colour of dried blood,’ said Ichabod. ‘A shade called ‘vintage sanguinolent’ by tailors. The hull is supposedly made from a single piece of bone, that of a legendary monster from the Secondary Realms. Feverfew himself is said to be a pirate from the Realms, once mortal, who mastered the darker depths of House Sorcery and is now half-Nithling, half —’ ‘That will . . . that will do, thank you, Ichabod,’ said Catapillow nervously. ‘Come with me.’
He led the way up to the quarterdeck, where two Denizens wrestled with the wheel, and Sunscorch shouted orders at the Denizens aloft and on the deck, trimming sails and yards. There were two other Denizens there as well. One stood next to Sunscorch, nodding sagely at every order but saying nothing. He looked rather like Captain Catapillow, with a bland face and similar clothes, so was clearly an officer. Probably the First Mate, Arthur thought. The one who used to be the Chief Clerk in the counting house.
The other Denizen was completely different. He was crouched on the deck next to the wheel. A strange, small figure not much taller than Arthur, he was almost completely lost inside a voluminous yellow greatcoat with rolled-up cuffs. He was bald and his face and head were completely covered in small, colourful tattoos that Arthur realised after a moment were animated, moving and shifting around. Tattoos of ships and sea creatures, birds and clouds, maps and moons and stars and suns and planets.
‘Mister Concort, who is First Mate,’ whispered Ichabod, pointing to the Denizen next to Sunscorch. ‘And Doctor Scamandros, our most accomplished sorcerer and navigator. He’s casting the haruspices to see where we might be able to go. No one must interrupt, take note. Dreadful things would happen.’
At that moment, a gust of wind hit the Moth hard and she heeled over even farther. As everyone on the quarterdeck scrambled to keep their footing, Arthur stumbled against Captain Catapillow, and both of them ended up sliding across the deck and into the rail.
Arthur almost went over, into the dark sea that was surprisingly close below. He managed to save himself and, at the last second, his blanket, but at the cost of a jolt to his broken leg that sent a savage, stabbing pain up his side and into his head.
As the ship righted itself in response to Sunscorch’s shouted commands, Arthur noticed that almost everybody else had ended up on the starboard rail, apart from the two helmsmen clinging to the wheel, Sunscorch next to them, and Doctor Scamandros to the side. He was still crouched where he’d been, as if he were glued to the deck. All the things he was studying were also still there, which seemed impossible. Several maps were laid out on the deck, with a pair of gilt-bronze dividers on top, a ruler, and the skull of a small animal that had been converted into a cup to hold a dozen or so pencils.
There were also lots of small pieces of coloured cardboard strewn apparently at random next to the map. Doctor Scamandros was studying them and whistling through his front teeth. After a few seconds, he gathered them up into his cupped hands and threw them down again. To Arthur’s surprise, they joined together as they fell, and he realised they were jigsaw pieces. When they hit the deck, nearly all of them had joined, but two or three pieces remained separate. The jigsaw was incomplete.
Doctor Scamandros stopped whistling and the wind, as if in response, eased a little. The Denizen gathered the jigsaw pieces together again and put them in a cardboard box that had a picture of a sheep on it, which he then put inside his yellow greatcoat. After this was done, he stood up. This was obviously the point at which he could be interrupted, because Catapillow and Concort rushed over to him.
‘What are the signs, Doctor?’ asked Catapillow. ‘Is there a course out of here?’
‘No,’ said Scamandros. His voice was very high and pure, and reminded Arthur strangely of a trumpet. ‘There is some power interfering with both the goat and sheep auguries. I dare not try the ox in such circumstances. Without guidance, I can find no true course.’
‘Is it Feverfew?’ asked Sunscorch. ‘Even so far away?’
‘No,’ said Scamandros. He had caught sight of Arthur for the first time, and his dark eyes were staring straight at the boy. ‘It is much closer. Who is that?’
‘Arth,’ said Sunscorch. ‘A mortal boy. We picked him up with Feverfew’s treasure.’
‘He holds an object of great power,’ said Doctor Scamandros, excitement in his voice. He rummaged inside his coat and pulled out a pair of glasses with gold wire rims and thick smoked-quartz lenses, which he slipped onto his forehead, not over his eyes. ‘Bring him here.’
Arthur stepped forward of his own accord and staggered across the deck. Sunscorch caught him and held him, loosely enough for the grip to be either a friend helping out or a guard about to secure a prisoner.
‘What is in your pocket, boy?’ asked Doctor Scamandros. ‘It is interfering with my augury and, thus, my navigation of this ship.’
‘It’s . . . it’s a book,’ said Arthur. ‘It won’t be of any use to you.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that!’ Scamandros exclaimed. He reached forward to Arthur’s pocket, and Sunscorch tightened his grip on the boy’s arms. ‘What have we —’ As he touched the top of the Atlas, there was a loud report, like a pistol shot. Scamandros’s hand came back so quickly Arthur didn’t even see it, and then the navigator was hopping around the deck with his fingers thrust into his armpit, screeching, ‘Ow! Ow! Ow! Throw him overboard!’
Sunscorch hesitated, then picked up Arthur in a bear hug and tottered to the starboard rail, crashing into it with considerable force.
‘Sorry, lad,’ he said as he lifted Arthur up and prepared to heave him into the waiting sea. ‘We need the Doctor.’
Six
‘NO! ’ SCREAMED ARTHUR. Then, as Sunscorch continued to lift him up, ‘I’m a friend of the Mariner! Captain Tom Shelvocke!’
Sunscorch lowered Arthur to the deck.
‘Prove it,’ he said coldly. ‘If you’re lying, I’ll carve you a set of gills before I throw you over.’
Arthur reached with a shivering hand into his pyjama top and pulled out his makeshift floss-chain. For a dreadful moment he thought the disc was gone, then it slid free and hung on his chest.
‘What are you waiting for, Sunscorch?’ yelled Doctor Scamandros angrily. ‘Throw him overboard!’
Sunscorch looked closely at the disc, flipped it with his finger, and looked at the other side. Then he sighed and let go of Arthur. Just then, the ship rolled to port and back again, almost sending Arthur over the side anyway.
‘Do as the Doctor says, Mister Suns
corch!’ called Catapillow. ‘We must have a course to get away!’
‘I can’t, Captain!’ shouted Sunscorch. ‘The boy has the mark of the Mariner. If he asks for aid, as sailors we must give it.’
‘I am asking,’ said Arthur hastily. ‘I don’t want to be thrown overboard. I only want to send a message to the Lower House. Or the Far Reaches.’
‘He has the what? The who?’ asked Catapillow.
Sunscorch sighed again and helped Arthur along the sloping deck to the group gathered around the wheel. Doctor Scamandros still had his hand under his arm. He scowled at Arthur.
‘No seaman will go against the Mariner,’ said Sunscorch. ‘The boy has the Mariner’s medal, so you’ll have to figure something else out, Doc. He ain’t going over the side.’
‘The Mariner,’ said Scamandros. ‘A figure of reverence for the nautically inclined. One of the Old One’s sons, I believe?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, though the question hadn’t been asked of him. ‘And the Architect’s.’
‘Perhaps I was a little hasty,’ Scamandros continued. ‘I thought perhaps you had something in your pocket we wouldn’t want aboard. But any friend of the Mariner . . . please do accept my apology.’
‘Sure,’ said Arthur. ‘No problem.’
‘Well, ah, welcome aboard,’ said the Captain. ‘We’re delighted to have you here. Though I fear that our voyage is, um, about to be cut short.’
Everyone looked back over the stern. The Shiver had closed in, and was now less than a mile away.
‘She’ll be firing her bowchasers soon,’ said Sunscorch. ‘If they’ve any powder. They’ve the weather gauge too. We’ll have to fight it out.’
‘Oh,’ said Concort. He swallowed and frowned at the same time. ‘That doesn’t sound very good.’
‘Can you get us a better wind, Doctor?’ asked Sunscorch. ‘Untie one of your knots?’
‘No,’ replied Scamandros. ‘Feverfew is already working the wind, and his workings are stronger. There is no escape within the Border Sea.’
‘And is there, er, no plausible course out to the Realms?’ Catapillow pulled his sword partly out of its scabbard as he spoke, and almost cut his nervous fingers on the exposed blade.
