Shadow Captain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “It was us,” Fura said, taking ownership of her deeds with a certain cocksure nobility. “It was what we did, in The Miser. What we started. What I started, I ought to say. I won’t pretend otherwise. I was the one who had to know.”

  “And now you do,” I said, in a small and quiet voice.

  I expected her to explode, as she had done in a thousand similar exchanges since our childhood. But she only nodded, meeting my eyes with a sad and resigned agreement. “I do, yes. And in some ways, I’m not sorry. I got half an answer, didn’t I? Whatever the quoins are, or were, it was never money. Just because we put ’em to that use …” She gave a shiver. “I can’t get that screaming out of my head. I don’t know if I did them a kindness or a cruelty, by bringing them together like that. But I do know that I’m not finished. I’ve … opened something. Like a wound. A wound wider than the Congregation, and older and deeper. And now I’ve got to put it right.”

  Surt eased in next to Strambli. “We’ll know in a few days, if this is the thing we hope it ain’t.”

  “All Occupations end,” I said, thinking back to Rackamore, and his conviction that our tenancy around the Old Sun had no more guarantee of permanence than those that had preceded it. “Perhaps this is how it happens. We crawl out of rocks, set our calendars, make a civilisation, scrabble around for quoins, build our proud little empires, and then one day someone puts too many quoins in the same place and it all comes crashing down.”

  “I do hopes it’s not the end,” Tindouf said, flipping the lid of his tankard and staring dolefully into the contents. “I hasn’t seen anywhere nears enough just yet.” Then he looked up with an eager hopefulness. “Would you likes me to run out the sails and be ready on the ions, Captain Fura?”

  “Yes,” Fura said, nodding emphatically, as if nothing pleased her more than putting some distance between us and The Miser. “Whatever’s begun here, I don’t care to be sitting at the epicentre. Get us movin’, Tindouf—quick as you can.”

  “I’ll assist,” Lagganvor said, followed quickly by: “If I may?”

  “All hands welcome,” Tindouf said, before there was a word from Fura or I. “And I don’t s’pose I need to show you the ropeses, does I, Mister Lag?”

  “I believe I can be of some tolerable assistance,” Lagganvor said.

  I watched the two men leave the galley. Only a minute or two later I heard the first indications of the sail-control gear being actuated: the groans, thumps and whines as the arms and winches commenced their labours. We were still close to The Miser so Tindouf would use due caution in running out the sails, but at the same time I think we all shared Fura’s extreme disinclination to linger near this place. I knew nothing of the secret mechanics of quoins, how they spoke to each other across inter-Congregational distances, but it was not hard to speculate that there might be a propagation delay, a lag between the effect influencing the near worlds and its eventual effect on those further away. If that were the case, then with some great diligence it might be possible to calculate the point where the influence had originated.

  “What’ve we started?” I asked, still confounded by the scale and oddness of what was transpiring, and our undoubted part in it. I felt as if we had plucked a flower from a hillside, only to start a landslide. “There’s going to be chaos. Worse than chaos. There are grudges between some of the worlds, aren’t there? Old feuds and rivalries. It’ll all boil to the surface now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this sparks off a few little wars.”

  “So long as they keep little,” Prozor said.

  “I do not think it will be quite the end just yet,” Doctor Eddralder said, setting his hand on Merrix’s wrist, as if to include her in this reassurance, as well as the rest of us. “There will be a difficult period, I don’t doubt. A readjustment. It may take months or even years, but the worlds will find a way. Wealth will redistribute itself to some degree, and there will be pain in that process. Pain as well as glory, for some. Justice and injustice alike. Wars, perhaps, as Adrana speculates. But the institutions and mechanisms that permit life on the worlds will continue to operate. There are too many vested interests for it to be otherwise—including those of our alien friends.” He paused, directing his long face at each of us in turn. “But I will say one thing with confidence.”

  “Which is?” Lagganvor asked.

  “The enemies Fura believes she has made to date? They will most assuredly connect this event to her name. And the wrath that they will wish to deliver upon her—upon us—will make all our former hardships seem like mere playground games. There will be a war, of sorts, most advisedly. But it will be gravely asymmetric. It will consist of the vested interests of the worlds marshalled against a single adversary.”

  “Let them try,” Fura said, her fist creaking as she closed her fingers. “We’ll be ready. We’ll be waiting.”

  “We’re already running,” I mouthed under my breath, as the ship gave its first low grumble, signifying the rising load from those sails already run-out.

  “No,” she said, hearing me nonetheless. “We’re moving on, and that ain’t the same. We came here to learn something, and that’s what we did. Maybe not what we hoped we’d learn, but that can’t be helped. That was my part of the arrangement, and you honoured it fair ’n square. Now it’s time for yours.”

  “Which would be?” Eddralder asked mildly.

  “I promised Adrana that if she let me find The Miser, I’d oblige with cooperation in a matter of her own. This was something I wanted to find, and somewhere out there’s something Adrana wants as well.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Or thinks she does.”

  “Perhaps now isn’t the time,” I ventured.

  “Oh, it’s exactly the time,” Fura said. “Because wherever that thing of yours lies, it’s going to be a long way out. Which—given that the Congregation ain’t going to be the most hospitable place for us, not for a while—might suit us very well, once we’ve taken a prize or two for provisions.”

  “I am none the wiser,” Eddralder said.

  “You ain’t alone, doc,” Surt said, shaking her head.

  “There’s something out there,” I answered, looking to each face in turn, feeling as if—despite my agreement with Fura—this might be my only chance to gain the lasting sympathy of the crew. “Something that has something to do with the Occupations; why they start, and just as importantly, what happens to ’em when they don’t. It’s on an orbit, a long orbit, but at the moment it can’t be terribly far from the Old Sun, and I think we might have a chance of locating it.”

  “And then what?” Surt asked.

  “I don’t know. We don’t know where to look, how far to sail, even if it’s within the reach of a ship like this, even if we could sail for a lifetime.”

  “And if it isn’t?” Eddralder asked.

  “I’d find a way.”

  The doctor’s look was sympathetic. “Sounds like something of a hopeless cause to me.”

  “Maybe it is,” I replied, with a deliberate earnestness. “But Paladin’s barely scratched the surface of what’s on this ship, in the records and private journals. There’s no telling what information Bosa gathered over the years; the secrets she barely knew she was carrying. We have to look, is all I’m saying. And now more than ever, because of what’s started today.” I drew in a breath, squaring my shoulders and lacing my hands before me. “Maybe this will all over blow over, like you say. But one thing we do know for certain is that there’ve been twelve Occupations before our own, and they all came to an end eventually. That frightens me, and I think it ought to frighten us all.” I directed a significant look at Fura. “I know it put the shivers up Pol Rackamore. But there’s no law that says we have to accept it. And if there’s something out there that explains the Occupations, maybe it can also help us keep this one going.”

  “Are you committed to this?” Eddralder asked Fura.

  “We set out to save a household,” Fura said, after a moment’s consideration. �
��Not civilisation.” Then she shrugged. “But plans change.” She reached over and closed her cold metal hand around my own. “I’m with her. It may be a hopeless cause, but we pursue it.”

  “And we get a say in this little jolly, do we?” Surt asked.

  “The time to leave us was when we were in port,” Fura stated, with a magnificent imperiousness. “Besides, we’re all accomplices now. You think there’s a one of us who’d get a fair hearing in any court on any world in the Congregation? That wasn’t the case before this trouble with the quoins, and you can bet your life today won’t have improved matters. No, we’re all in this, coves, each and every one of us.” Her hand squeezed tighter around my own. It was a sisterly gesture, or one that appeared so, but beneath that grip I was already starting to feel my bones pop. Whether she meant it to hurt, or was just too carried away by the moment to think about what she was doing, I dared not speculate.

  Luckily, Tindouf chose that moment to push his head back into the galley. “We’s set for a few thousand leagues. Once we’s further out, I’ll runs out the rest of ’em.”

  “Thank you,” Fura acknowledged, slackening her grip, and making to leave the galley. “Paladin and I will continue to review the transmissions. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my quarters.”

  I shifted my hand beneath the table and rubbed at the bruised flesh. As she departed I thought of correcting her on the matter of the joint ownership of the captain’s room, but after some deliberation decided that I would be well advised to pick some other occasion, preferably when we were without an audience. We had just presented a united front, and—daring to believe that Fura was honest in her intention of meeting my side of the bargain—I had no wish to undermine that fragile concordance, however slight my confidence in it.

  Let it be so, I thought. Let it be so.

  “Miss Adrana?” Tindouf asked gently, touching a knuckle to his lips. “Might I’s a word, seein’ as your sister’s occupied?”

  I smiled with only the slightest of misgivings.

  “Of course, Tindouf.”

  I left Eddralder, Merrix, Surt and Strambli to their mutual affairs and followed Tindouf into the warrens of the ship. Tindouf was not nearly as simple as he liked to present himself, but I believed him to be straightfoward, uncomplicated, and largely incapable of concealing a significant truth. If he informed us that the sails had been run out satisfactorily and the ship was making good headway from The Miser, then I accepted this as the case.

  What, then, could demand my attention?

  I soon learned.

  Lagganvor was waiting at one of the sail-control stations. He had an aimless, distracted look about him, his hands folded at his waist, just like a cove passing the time at a tram stop.

  “What is it, Tindouf?”

  “I told ’im to waits here, miss, and that’s what he did.”

  “And why did you tell him to wait?”

  “You tells her,” Tindouf said, in a tone that was more threatening than encouraging. “You tells her, then I’ll tells her what I thinks.”

  I had quite forgotten about the ache in my hand. Now my neck bristled and a living chill seeped its way down my spine, like a worm made of ice. “Tell me what, Lagganvor?”

  “Mister Tindouf seems to be …” Lagganvor paused, grimacing, as if he had already set off on what he knew to be the wrong tack. “He believes that I was doing something untoward.”

  “Tell her.”

  “He believes I was using the sail-control gear to deflect our course.”

  “And were you?”

  Lagganvor’s one birth-given eye flicked onto Tindouf, then back to me. Meanwhile his artificial eye gleamed with an implacable calm. “No, but I can understand his thinking. It’s just that—and no disrespect—there’s nobody on this ship who better understands her trimming than I. The sails were set quite well, a credit to Tindouf, but as I was passing this station I remembered that we always relaxed the strain on these port preventers, so that she hauled truer, and I couldn’t resist making the alteration.” He unlaced his hands and gestured at the control gear. “The strain-gauge is out of calibration; has been for years. If you trust it, she’ll limp by one or two degrees.”

  “She don’t limpses,” Tindouf said.

  “No, because you—and Paladin—will have absorbed the error with a multitude of small adjustments elsewhere. The ship will sail very well—as, to your credit, it must have done—but it won’t have sailed quite as well as it could …”

  I absorbed these words, finding in them the same slippery plausibility that I had already come to recognise where Lagganvor was concerned. An effortless disruption of doubts; an easy quelling of suspicions.

  But I turned to our Master of Ions. “It’s all right, Tindouf. Mister Lagganvor had already expressed some concerns along these lines to me. He said he’d like to take a look at our gauge-calibration when the time was right. The fault was mine for not remembering to mention it.” Not wishing Tindouf to feel put-out, I added: “You were right to question his actions, though. We’ve taken on some new guests and it behoves us all to treat them with caution, as well as respect.” I directed the full force of my stare onto Lagganvor. “You’ll bear Tindouf no malice for this incident, will you?”

  Lagganvor was calculating his position by the second. I could feel it whirring in him like some over-wound clockwork. Spinning from a moment of exposure, to a moment of salvation, however perilous.

  “I can understand his reaction. It was silly of me not to mention what I was about to do.”

  Tindouf grunted. He seemed ameliorated, but how thoroughly, and how permanently, I could not say.

  “Then I’ll be on with my businesses, I s’pose.”

  “It’s all right, Tindouf,” I said, touching his sleeve by way of friendly assurance. “No harm was done here. Quite the opposite.”

  I waited until he was gone, then waited a little longer until I was certain Lagganvor and I had this part of the ship to ourselves. The hull grumbled and groaned around us, like a monster that had eaten too much dinner. Beyond that, there was no great disturbance. We were much too far from the galley to hear the squawk, if indeed it was still receiving reports from around the Congregation.

  “Well?” Lagganvor asked finally.

  “I know who you are,” I answered.

  “I have never made any secret of it.”

  “No—your true identity, not the one of the man you stole a name from. You are not Lagganvor. You know a great deal about him, and a great deal about this ship and Bosa Sennen, but that doesn’t make you him. I believe you reached Lagganvor ahead of us; that you learned things from him—perhaps under pain of interrogation, or worse—and took his place.”

  His nod conveyed admiration, but it might just as well have been for the audacity of my speculation, as to its accuracy.

  “Then I would be … whom, precisely?”

  “You are the brother of Pol Rackamore. You are Brysca Rackamore, and you have come to avenge Pol by infiltrating and exposing the crew of Bosa Sennen.” I tilted my head at the sail-control gear. “I don’t know what Tindouf caught you doing, but I am willing to guess. You were trying to initiate sail-flash.”

  Some flicker of interest or amusement perturbed his expression, but it was there and gone just as fleetingly as an instant of sail-flash itself.

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because all other signalling options are closed to you. The skull is broken, even if you had the aptitude, and you cannot risk using the squawk. You would be found out immediately, by Paladin if not one of us. But a pre-arranged code to your employers, delivered by sail-flash? The perfect means. You could not, of course, deliver this signal until you were certain of The Miser’s nature. Now you are, and now you have acted.”

  “You are very sure of your position.”

  “I have not arrived at it by accident. I knew you, Brysca. There’s too much of Pol in you, even with the eye. I commend you. It must have been a consid
erable sacrifice, to give up a good eye for that toy.”

  At last something gave way, some last barrier being torn down with a certain weary relief. “It has its compensations.”

  “Do you deny your nature?”

  “It would seem fruitless.”

  “You are very lucky Prozor hasn’t made the same connection I did. Perhaps she will, in time.”

  “Does it matter, since you must be intent on exposing me to your sister?”

  “I see no other option. I let Tindouf go, but only because I wished to speak to you privately, to have my suspicions validated. Fura will see your true self, when the facts are laid out. She wants you to be Lagganvor, but she’s not so blinded by her own glory that she won’t admit the truth, however much it pains her.”

  “You overstate my value to her now. I gave her The Miser; what use am I henceforth?”

  “She would kill you. My sister is not a born murderess, but there is something in her just as there is something in me.”

  “I would not care to cross either one of you. Her with her glowy, you with the traces she left in you.”

  “If you think I am Bosa, and that eye still functions, you could have your vengeance on me this instant.”

  “Ah,” he said carefully, “but you are not Bosa, not exactly. You were the shadow she hoped would become the solid embodiment of her, but the process did not run its course, as I now understand. Bosa Sennen is dead. I am denied my vengeance.”

  I frowned. “Then … what is your purpose?”

  “It was as it seemed, to begin with. I wished to find you and kill you. Find Bosa, I mean. But I know her to be no more. The trouble is, in coming to this state of understanding, I appear to have dug myself into something of a hole.” He reached up to touch his collar, as if fingering a stage garment that would never feel entirely natural about his person. “I cannot easily dismantle this disguise.”

  “You were seeking to expose us, with the sail-flash.”