Fata Morgana

by Thomas J. Radford

  “And now we run, boys,” Nel told them. “We’ve a ship to catch.”

  THE SERVANTS, OR maybe assistants was a better word, that occupied Raines’ lab were called Mandragora. Twisted little creatures. Not twisted as in they were cruel or malicious, but twisted in that they resembled the twisted lattice-work of vines and roots. They were all brown, from dark and dun-coloured to tan to the hue of sand grains. And tiny, none more than two feet in height and some were half that, smaller even than the Dunnies she’d seen in the galley. Their eyes were huge in proportion to the rest of their face, like water droplets dabbed on their faces as an afterthought. Somehow both deep and liquid, perhaps to make up for an almost non-existent nose and the tiny mouth. And their hands; the fingers were like extensions of their twisted root-tuber arms. Hairy tendrils that refused to confirm to any set design.

  They were, Violet thought, intensely interesting.

  The same could not be said about her. They universally ignored her, scurrying around the lab on whatever business or errands consumed their attention.

  “The new glasses are satisfactory?” Raines asked her.

  “What?” Violet jumped. She touched her face self-consciously. Raines had provided a pair of eye-glasses. His own design, naturally. The lenses were tinted to compensate for her not being able to see colour. It turned out, as Raines had explained it, all colour was in fact hues of other colours. The part of her eye that saw red had been damaged. The glasses compensated.

  “Oh, yes. Thank you. I can see colours again. Not walking into doorways no more.”

  “Anymore,” Raines correct her.

  “Never seen them anywhere else,” she said, ignoring the lesson, watching one carry a beaker of frothing liquid from one apparatus to another. A beaker half the size of itself—though if the task was strenuous the Mandragora didn’t show it. But what did show was the colour, a welcome change. Being able to see colour again made Violet feel . . . whole. Like something had clicked into place. Made her pace as well. The workshop was filled with things to look at.

  “The Mandragora are native to the Fata Morgana. Not the ship, rather the Fata itself, a small moon precisely,” Raines told her, then considered his own words. “Perhaps not native, rather, originated from.”

  “I meant on this ship,” Violet clarified, examining a spinning top. Like a child’s toy, only with arms, metal rods with weights attached. It bobbed and dipped with the flow of the ship, never losing its balance on a single point. Inside the Fata. The other Fata, Morgana to the Fata. “Only inside this room.”

  “They do leave on occasion,” Raines assured her. “When there is cause. They are simply more comfortable here, kept occupied. Also, the ship is technically a vessel of the Alliance Fleet. As such Aristeia Quinn wishes to maintain her own brand of discipline aboard. Myself and the Mandragora do not fall under that blanket. Stop!”

  Violet froze, fingers against a glass canister. It was filled with mist, but of a colour she’d never seen before. Active and coiling, looking for an escape. And it had followed her finger as she traced it up and down the outside. The canister rocked at her sudden touch, flinching like she had.

  Raines stilled and righted the object, holding it steady for long moments before he released it. “Curiosity is a desirable trait,” he told her. “But some things do not reward the curious. Mist from the Fata, for example. The same mist inside the mechanisms of this ship. Very dangerous, but very useful. Under the right circumstances and discipline. Would that this substance was so malleable. And speaking of discipline, I have heard about an incident between you and the master-at-arms, Mister Coldstream.”

  “Weren’t no incident,” Violet said quickly, turning away from him.

  “No?” Raines’ voice followed her. “Mors Coldstream has a formidable reputation, like many aboard this ship. I for one would not want to find myself facing off against him on a duelling field. If I were to stoop to duelling, that is.”

  “Duelling ain’t allowed on your ship.”

  “Nor is it advisable, unless one were, shall we say, rather proficient at it.”

  “Man wouldn’t be so fancy up close.” Violet remembered something, a battle fought aboard the deck of a ship. Not a duel with proscribed rules and practices. “Hard to hit someone with a wand when they’re up in your face.”

  “Indeed. An unconventional approach can overcome many obstacles. It does not pay to overlook the little things, or the little ones.” Raines regarded the short-statured creatures fondly, emphasising his point. “This ship was first conceived within the Fata. It seems appropriate we should carry a piece of that realm aboard, to accompany the name.”

  “What do you mean by realm?” Violet asked, still watching the minions go about their tasks. For that was what they were, she realised; Raines’ own private entourage. No wonder the skipper . . . Aristeia, didn’t like for them to roam. “How is the Fata a realm? Isn’t it just . . . distant?”

  If you consider a year’s voyage each way distant, it may as well be a realm unto itself.

  “A distant centre, very much so,” Raines agreed. “Realm is a way to say . . . define . . . an area of which conditions, rules, the environment . . . is not what we consider normal. The Lanes operate under one set of conditions, a calm summer’s night. The Fata is a winter storm. A maelstrom, child, of activity. Of energy.”

  Raines held his hands together, making a cupping motion. “All of it contained within a very small area, relatively speaking.”

  “And how does one go from such a maelstrom to such a ship?” Violet heard herself asking.

  “A pertinent question,” Raines said. “One observes a process, one attempts to replicate it.”

  “And was one successful?”

  “Success is but a succession of failures,” Raines shrugged. “The latter but a progression of that prior. And success often comes in places unlooked for, or in fact disguised as something other than what we expect.”

  “I don’t understand,” Violet admitted.

  “The key is not to be afraid of failure,” Raines told her. “Failure is always an option. It is something that can only occur when one makes an attempts. Thus, it follows that failure is vastly preferable to not making any attempt at all.”

  “Your first attempt was a failure, and the next ones after that.”

  “Yes?” Raines peered at her intently. “And which attempts would these be?”

  “Your test craft,” Violet said, hoping it wasn’t meant to be a secret. She wondered if Gravel’s lips were as loose as Kaspar’s. “One . . . exploded. One lost. The other just broke.”

  “Ah, yes,” Raines’ voice carried his disappointment. “That. But no matter. Worthy attempts, all of them. The next attempt was the proof of concept. As it turned out the maelstrom was best observed from . . . outside. And here we are now.”

  “People died,” Violet reminded him.

  “People die all the time. Consider fire, a primitive tool, but an essential one. How many conflagrations and singed fingers were suffered before it was mastered and brought under control? Lessons to be learned there, child. Imagine the alternative,” Raines began to pace. “Stagnation, forever frozen in the troughs of progress. That is what our people have come to. Yours. Ours.”

  “Our people?”

  Raines nodded, his tails fanning out behind him as he walked. He stopped, turning abruptly on his heels, pointing at her.

  “Two tails,” he said. “One more and you’d be expected to return home. Wasteful.”

  “How is it a waste?”

  “Ships and sailors rot in port,” Raines said mockingly. “An apt saying. One would not think to look for wisdom amongst common sailors but neither should one overlook it. Discoveries made by failure, by accident, perhaps even overheard. Apt. The purpose of a ship is to sail. It has no business lying dormant, restrained by ropes and papers, by nonsensical traditions. How are we any different?”

  Violet’s eyes fell on Raines’ tails. Seven. Seven tails. She
’d never seen the like, not outside of home. Raines had said so himself, he was long past the point of return.

  “Knowledge,” Raines said. “Discovery, opportunity, potential. All of it wasted by a feeble tradition. Why? Why return home?”

  “To share,” Violet said. “Or . . . it’s all lost. Everything you are . . .”

  Lost.

  “Ah, but there is the crux,” Raines said, his eyes bright, animated. Almost fevered. “All that we are. I could be . . . so much more. I am so much more than those who walk the familiar paths. Look where we are. They call this the Free Lanes. Still uncharted, undiscovered. Still waiting to be found. Potential. I have seen that potential, crossed it, from the Fata Morgana to the Edge, the very Edge. This is where I choose to stay. This is where I choose to be.”

  Violet shifted uncomfortably.

  Raines asked her, “Is the Alliance a bad thing, in your opinion?”

  “Seems like.”

  “And by contrast the so-called Free Lanes would be better.”

  “Free, ain’t they?”

  “Hardly,” Raines told her.

  Violet looked at him, perplexed.

  “You, you have spent most of your time travelling these free worlds. Tell me, what are some you have visited?”

  “Vice,” Violet responded immediately. “The flat world. Border, Crossed. Spent a week at White Cast and then ended up at Cauldron.”

  She frowned. That was wrong. White Cast was in the High Lanes, named for the traders’ beacon ships used to navigate there. She’d never been. Who’d put the idea of it into her head?

  “The worlds you speak of are not for the faint-hearted. Vice is free, as you say, the freedom of anarchy and lawlessness. Now Cauldron, not too dissimilar from many places in the High Lanes, if on a much larger scale. Both run by autocrats who use intimidation to control their holdings.”

  “I don’t . . . know anything about that.”

  “Ah, well, let me enlighten you then. You see, Cauldron sits along a moderate-sized shipping lane. Nothing unusual there, it makes no sense to establish a community in the outskirts of nowhere. But shipping attracts raiders, smugglers, deviants of many kinds. Eventually one rises to the top of the pile and asserts themselves. What was this one called?”

  “At Cauldron? I . . . don’t know.”

  “Ah, curious, mysterious even. But there will be someone. Perhaps several someones but power will always be concentrated in the smallest available number. It is the way of things. The way of progress. And potential.”

  “Maybe.” Violet threw herself back in the chair. This wasn’t a conversation, or an argument. It was a lecture. A point of view being imposed.

  Pay attention.

  Her head hurt. Violet pulled off the glasses, dropping them in her lap and rubbing at her eyes. A black and white world.

  “Do you understand why I led the crew to believe you were my associate? Part of the Guild?” Raines asked her.

  Violet shook her head. Staring at the glasses. Already dirty and smudged, she noticed.

  “To keep you safe,” Raines said. “The aura of the Guild carries a certain protection, which I have extended to you. It will keep Aristeia and her ilk from looking too closely into your past. This much I can do for . . . one of my own.”

  One of my own.

  “As an associate of the Guild you are safe, you have a future. As the long-serving cabin girl of a forgotten ship, you do not.”

  “But I am that girl,” Violet looked up. “I was, I mean. Not some Guild . . . anything.”

  “You cling to your past,” Raines told her, relentlessly. “Who you were. Preconceptions. Ignoring potential. Your own potential.”

  Violet snorted. “What potential?”

  Raines turned and beckoned to one of the Mandragora. The creature brought something over, wrapped in sail cloth. It was oddly out of place for the elder Kitsune’s workshop. So mundane and commonplace.

  “I see great potential in you, little one. I see the person you could be, a person I very much look forward to meeting in the future.”

  Violet sat up, not looking at Raines. There was no potential, no future. There was nothing ahead of her.

  “A memento from your past,” Raines held out the offering. “But perhaps it can help guide you towards your future. I would have discarded such a bauble, this repository of a bygone era, but it has a unique property I believe could bring out what I see in you.”

  He let the covering fall. It was Horatio’s sphere, the one the captain had given to her back on the Tantamount. It was cracked, the mist inside dull and wispy. The ship listed to one side, adrift.

  Violet reached out to take it, her fingers brushing the polished curve of the surface. It was warm. Raines covered her hand with his, pressing her fingers down around the sphere, squeezing them with his. She felt her hand start to grow warm. And glow, pale, almost blue. Sparks.

  “So much potential,” Raines told her. “Just waiting, inside of you.” He held up his other hand. It was wreathed in sparks, jagged bolts that orbited his fingers. “Just waiting for you to accept it. To be who I see you as.”

  Raines let go of her, and the thaumatic effect vanished. No glow, no sparks. But the cracks in the sphere were gone.

  “You may keep the bauble,” Raines told her. “I believe we are done for today.”

  Chapter 11

  “AIN’T NEVER SEEN one of them before.”

  “Pretty.”

  “Was talking about the glass ball, Niko.”

  Kaspar gave Gravel his long-suffering look. Violet was coming to know it well.

  “But the lass is easy on the eye too, sir, whatever you meant.”

  “You’re doing it again.” Violet put the globe away, tucked inside a pocket. Her fingers still buzzed whenever she touched the glass, and she could feel it, a solid weight against her skin. The glasses were likewise tucked away. Much as she welcomed being able to see colour again, Violet found they strained her eyes. She needed to take breaks. “Talking about me like I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

  “Aye, and when we say it so well it’s no wonder you hear. But we’ve a present for you, little Miss, and we’d be crushed if you didn’t hear so from ourselves.”

  “Brandon has a present for you,” Kaspar corrected.

  “So you don’t have a present for me?” Violet pouted in Kaspar’s direction. “Now I am crushed.”

  “I says it’s from both of us,” Gravel shrugged, “and the lass heard that so that’s how it is.”

  “What is it?” Violet stopped her teasing of the young ensign, who already looked grimmer than a Lane storm. “Can I see?”

  “Aye, it’s a sight, to be certain,” Gravel said. “Much like yourself, and yourself is where it belongs, given—”

  “It’s a pearl earring,” Kaspar interrupted. “Tradition, for those who survive a shipwreck. Stupid custom.”

  Gravel sighed, his moment spoiled. “Aye, as he said. Could have let me finish saying such but apparently he’s not of a mind.” He held out a scrap of cloth, canvas, likely once part of a sail. Violet took it and unwrapped several layers in her hands. As Kaspar had said, a pearl earring, ghostly pale and translucent and hung from a brass hook.

  Violet reached up, tugging at her earlobe between finger and thumb. There was a problem, something missing.

  “I don’t got nowhere to put it,” she said.

  “Rare girl,” Kaspar mused, “all that sailing and ink on your skin. But not ring nor a hoop to show for it.”

  “Always seemed odd,” Violet admitted. “Poking holes in yourself to hang shiny things from.”

  “Says the girl with painted skin?”

  “Got just the few. And they’re pretty.”

  “Ever so pretty, Miss,” Gravel agreed. “But I’ve thought on that, came prepared even.”

  He held out his hand, palm out, revealing a needle and a candle.

  “You want to stick holes in my ears,” Violet said, staring at the implement.


  “Just the one,” Gravel said. “Wouldn’t make no sense to do both, not with just the one earring.”

  “Which ear?”

  “Figure you might want to pick that yourself. Don’t have to be an ear, neither.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Could be the nose,” Gravel tapped hers. “Lip too, maybe tongue, might make eating hard though. Don’t recommend anywhere else. Might catch on your clothing.”

  “Where else would you—” Violet stared. Then recalled an image of a shirtless Piper. The man had had numerous piercings, not just confined to his face. And he had worn a pearl earring too, though of a different colour.

  The idea didn’t seem so unappealing when she recalled that. Just like Piper’s.

  Her gaze fell on the needle. Less appealing, but still more so than a few moments ago.

  “How’s this work?” she asked.

  “Heat the needle, pop the ear, and thread the pearl,” Gravel shrugged. “Easy as pie.”

  “You ever make pie?” Violet asked him.

  “Seen it made plenty of times,” Gravel assured her. “Seen this done too.”

  “You do your own?” Violet pointed to the three small silver hoops in Gravel’s left ear.

  “I did them,” Kaspar folded his arms. “That’s why they’re all in the same ear.”

  “Don’t follow,” Violet said.

  “Brandon did the ones in the right himself. Made a mess of it. Bled for a whole day because he used a needle too big for the job.”

  “Didn’t look so big,” Gravel said. “Didn’t hurt none either. Just never knew there was so much blood in a man’s ears.”

  “You do it,” Violet pushed the needle towards Kaspar. “Don’t want blood on my clothes.”

  “It washes,” Gravel said.

  “You doing the washing? You any good at washing blood off? You know how many times I’ve had to wash blood out of my—”

  Gravel held up his hands, sighing. “As you wish, little Miss.”

  Kaspar lit the candle, then pulled a cork-stopped flask from somewhere on his person.

  “What’s that?” Violet asked.

  “Rum,” Kaspar said. “Strong stuff, too.” He pulled the cork and dropped the needle into the vial, shaking it around before fishing it back out. He then began heating it over the small candle flame.