Icebreaker

by Lian Tanner

  Until now …

  Petrel pinched herself. The Oyster was already more than halfway past the berg, and if she didn’t act quickly it would retreat into the distance and she would never find out who this—this stranger was, and where he had come from.

  She dived through the hatch, pulling it shut behind her and taking a stub of iron from her pocket. There was a pipe running along the base of the bulkhead. Petrel banged a message on it in Engineer code.

  TO CHIEF ENGINEER ALBIE. STRANGER ON BERG. STARBOARD BOW. ORCA SAYS DON’T STOP.

  She didn’t sign it; no one would take any notice of a message signed Petrel. She just sent it on its way with an anonymous tap tap tap, so that it could have come from anyone. The echoes rattled through the pipe, all the way down to the engine rooms. Petrel pictured her uncle, the Chief Engineer, cocking his head to listen. She imagined his lips curving in a humorless smile.

  The lack of other messages in the pipes told her that she was the only one who had seen the boy. The Officers on the bridge should have seen him, but maybe they had been looking the other way, or had mistaken him for a seal. Whatever the reason, it meant that First Officer Orca, who was Dolph’s mam, could not possibly have said, “Don’t stop.”

  But it was the best way that Petrel knew of making the Chief Engineer do exactly the opposite.

  She went back out to the foredeck and waited, shivering, until she heard a change in the constant grumble of the engines. It was only a minute or two, but it seemed like forever. The boy on the berg, slowly retreating into the distance, didn’t move.

  “Maybe he’s dead,” whispered Petrel.

  But she would not let herself believe it. She wanted to know who this stranger was, and how he had come to be on a berg in the Oyster’s path. She wanted it more than anything—except perhaps a good feed and a warm safe bed.

  As soon as the ship stopped, Petrel slipped back inside the hatch and tucked herself into a corner where no one would notice her. The pipes were rattling again—this time in general ship code. Furious messages raced between the bridge and the engine room, and Petrel automatically translated them.

  TO CHIEF ENGINEER ALBIE. WHY HAVE WE STOPPED? SIGNED, ORCA.

  TO FIRST OFFICER ORCA. NUMBER TWO ENGINE OVERHEATING. SAFETY ISSUE. SIGNED, ALBIE.

  TO CHIEF ENGINEER ALBIE. RUBBISH. GET UNDER WAY IMMEDIATELY. SIGNED, ORCA.

  TO FIRST OFFICER ORCA. CAN’T. SIGNED, ALBIE.

  Petrel could hear a score of feet pounding up the Commons ladderway. She felt the blast of cold air as the hatch was dragged open, and heard the footsteps race towards the only seaworthy lifeboat. Then the hatch slammed shut again, and she was left chewing her nails, with no way of knowing what was happening outside.

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture it. The berg would be well past the Oyster’s stern by now. Perhaps the Engineers would decide it was too late. Perhaps they would think the boy dead, and not worth rescuing.

  “Or maybe the Maw’s out there waiting,” she whispered, “and they won’t dare set the lifeboat into the water, stranger or no stranger.”

  Petrel shivered and pulled her ragged coat tighter. The monstrous fish known as the Maw had been following the icebreaker for as long as anyone could remember. Sometimes it wasn’t seen for weeks, or even months. But as soon as someone died, and occasionally even before they died, it roared up from beneath the waters with its massive jaws agape, waiting for the corpse to be thrown overboard.

  The Maw frightened Petrel more than anything in the world. More than Orca. More even than Uncle Albie. According to Dolph—the information shouted across the afterdeck two years ago—shipfolk had argued long and hard over Petrel when she was a baby. Many of them had wanted to throw her to the Maw, along with her parents.

  “A traitor, your da was,” Dolph had shouted, “and your mam was mad. Shipfolk killed ’em and chucked ’em overboard, and good riddance. Pity you didn’t go with ’em. Reckon the Maw thinks so too. Reckon it feels cheated. Reckon it’s down there waiting, and one day it’s going to get you!”

  And having delivered that terrible opinion, Dolph had linked arms with her friends and strolled away laughing.

  Today however the Maw must have been elsewhere. Petrel sat bolt upright as the pipes rattled out a new message.

  TO CHIEF ENGINEER ALBIE. LIFEBOAT FOUR LAUNCHED WITHOUT PERMISSION. EXPLAIN. SIGNED, ORCA.

  TO FIRST OFFICER ORCA. NOPE. SIGNED, ALBIE.

  The next thirty minutes passed so slowly that Petrel felt as if the world had come to a standstill. There were no more messages in the pipes, but Orca’s anger seemed to filter through every part of the ship, so that even the gurgle of the ballast system and the crack of ice against the hull took on a furious note.

  The Braid border guards were doubled, then tripled. As Petrel watched, a dozen of them positioned themselves on the Commons ladderway, arms folded, so that no one could pass.

  They’re going to fight, thought Petrel, pressing farther back into her corner. Except they can’t, not on the Commons. It’s not allowed!

  At last something thumped against the hatch. Petrel heard voices, then the hatch flew open and one of the Engineers hurried through it, with ice in his beard and the boy over his shoulder. His fellows were right behind him.

  When they saw the Officers blocking the ladderway, the Engineers quickly closed ranks around the first man, so that he and his burden were hidden. Then they moved forward in a solid block, men and women together. The scars on their cheeks, that marked them as belonging to Grease Alley, twitched with unconcealed hostility.

  “Out of our way, Braid!” snapped one of the women.

  The Officers stood their ground. “What’s that you’ve got?” demanded a man with a square face. “What’ve you brought onto the ship?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “None of your business. Let us pass.”

  “You can pass whenever you want, Grease,” sneered the square-faced man. “No one’s stopping you.”

  Except they were—everyone could see that, including Petrel.

  If this had happened at any other time of year, it would probably have ended with nothing more than a bruise or two and a promise of revenge. The rules against fighting on the Commons were strict and seldom broken.

  But the winter just gone had been a long, hungry one, and folk were strung as tight as a stay line. As Petrel watched, the Engineers growled deep in their throats. The Officers flexed their tattoos and grinned nastily. Hands slid into pockets and came out holding pipe wrenches and knives …

  Petrel held her breath. But before the first blow could be struck, a voice came bawling up the ladderway, full of iron and authority. “No fighting on the Commons! Let ’em pass or I’ll chuck the lot of yez overboard.”

  It was Chief Engineer Albie.

  Every single person in Braid hated the Chief Engineer, but they respected him too, in a reluctant sort of way. He was ferocious and clever, and only a fool would turn their back on him. More importantly, he knew the Oyster’s ancient engines better than anyone; knew how to bully them through yet another winter; knew how to patch the unpatchable and mend the unmendable. Sometimes it seemed to Petrel that her uncle was the ship’s engines, and that without him they would give up the struggle and die.

  The Officers blocking the Commons swore, and for a second or two their knives wove ugly patterns in the air. But then they moved aside, and the Engineers clattered down the ladderway, jeering at their enemies as they passed.

  Petrel tucked her jacket back into its hiding place and crept after them, low and silent and stupid-faced. Five decks down, she was close enough to hear them call softly, “It’s a bratling, Chief. A boy.”

  Another deck. Then Albie called up to them, “Is he alive?”

  “Too cold to tell,” said one of the rescuers.

  “Well then,” said Albie, his voice closer now, “we’ll warm him up and see what happens. Who is he, d’you reckon? Where’d he come from?”

  “No idea. Dropped
out of the sky maybe.”

  And with that, the rescuers stepped off the Commons and hurried towards the Engineer sick bay.

  They’ll put the boy under close guard, thought Petrel. They won’t let anyone through, much less me. But I’ll get to see him somehow. I will!

  In the meantime, she had better tell Mister Smoke and Missus Slink what was happening.

  She hurried down another ladder—this one steeper than those above it—and past the ancient batteries that were fed by the wind turbines. She edged past the digester, which took all the ship’s waste and turned it into fuel for the engines, and followed a narrow passage to the propeller shaft. A walkway ran alongside the shaft, and at the far end of the walkway, tucked into the bulkhead like an afterthought, was a cramped, disused workshop.

  Just as Petrel was mostly forgotten, so were certain parts of the Oyster, and this was one of them. The lights along the walkway were broken, and the workshop itself was only dimly lit. But Petrel did not need light to find her way around. She squatted down and clapped her hands to attract the attention of the ship’s rats.

  There were two sorts of rats on the Oyster. The black rats ran across folk’s toes as they slept; they chewed the charts; they haunted the Officers’ mess and the galleys. Head Cook Krill set traps for them, and sometimes in the long winter dark they turned up in stews.

  Petrel liked the black rats for their quickness and their cunning. But it was the gray rats she loved.

  “Mister Smoke,” she hissed. “Missus Slink. Are you there?”

  There was no response, but Petrel suspected that at least one of the two grays was somewhere nearby.

  “Listen,” whispered Petrel. “There’s a stranger on the ship.”

  There was a moment of utter stillness. Then the darkness in the corner of the workshop seemed to bristle. “A stranger?” cried a small rough voice.

  “Is that you, Mister Smoke?” whispered Petrel. “Aye, a stranger, dropped out of the sky. I spotted him and told Albie, and he sent a boat—”

  She stopped, as the pipes above her head began to clang out a message in general ship code.

  STRANGER ON BOARD! STRANGER ON BOARD! STRANGER ON BOARD!

  Petrel imagined Dolph and her friends staring at the pipes openmouthed. She grinned. “That’ll put the wind up ’em,” she whispered.

  But as the clanging of the pipes died away, the grin slid from her face. Because Mister Smoke had limped out of the corner and was standing in front of her, his ragged whiskers twitching with agitation.

  “What ’ave you done, shipmate?” muttered the rat, and in all the years Petrel had known him, she had never heard him so horrified. “What ’ave you brought upon us?”

  CHAPTER 3

  A STRANGER ON THE SHIP

  The boy was alone, trapped in a nightmare of ice and snow. He had never been so cold. It slid into his bones like a knife, and he thrashed from side to side.

  “Help me!” he cried, but the words turned to frost on his tongue and fell silent to the ground. His mind tumbled from one useless question to another. Where was the ship? Where was the demon? Where was his dream of winning a Name and becoming part of the Circle of Devouts …

  He woke then, for a second or two. Just long enough to know that he was not cold after all, but warm, and that the ice was nowhere to be seen. He sighed with relief.

  But then he became aware of a relentless thump thump thump close by. He had never heard the sound before, but he knew immediately what it meant.

  Machines. The plan had worked. He was on the ship.

  He rolled his head to one side, to make sure he was alone. A sly smile touched his lips.

  “Send a boy,” he whispered. “They will never suspect a boy.” Then he closed his eyes and fell back into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  By the end of the day, the Oyster was awash with rumors. No one knew where the stranger had come from, but everyone had an opinion. Braid folk said that he must have stepped out of the mouth of a whale, right into the path of the ship. Grease Alley believed that he had fallen from the sky, and in Dufftown they claimed that he was made from seaweed and old bones, like winter soup.

  Overnight, the rumors grew even wilder. And so, as soon as the next morning’s fishing shift was underway, the rest of the crew donned their outdoor clothes (which had been handed down over the centuries and patched and mended until there was not a scrap of the original material left) and headed up to the neutral territory of the foredeck.

  None of them saw Petrel. She was hiding in Lifeboat Three, just above their heads, with her ragged hood drawn around her ears and the breath issuing in clouds from her mouth. Beside her crouched the large gray rat known as Mister Smoke.

  The foredeck might be neutral territory, but that did not make it agreeable territory. Folk gathered in their tribes, tight as a school of fish, and every one of them filled with distrust and suspicion.

  Dolph was standing by the wind fiddles, surrounded by friends and relatives. Petrel scowled at the older girl. “I hate her.”

  “Why’s that, shipmate?” whispered Mister Smoke.

  “Why do you think?”

  “Tar bucket again, is it?”

  Petrel nodded, although she suspected that her hatred was more complicated than that.

  Dolph was part of the Officer tribe, which meant she had a proper place on the Oyster. She ate when there was food and starved when there wasn’t. She didn’t have to beg or steal, or live on other folk’s scraps; she didn’t have to hide in corners and pretend to be an idiot to avoid being kicked or spat on.

  She had friends.

  Petrel wriggled uncomfortably. “I’ve got friends,” she whispered to the rat. “I’ve got you and Missus Slink.”

  “Course you ’ave,” said Mister Smoke.

  “And I saved the stranger. That makes him a friend, if he only knew it.”

  “Hmph,” said Mister Smoke, his tattered whiskers twitching. “Wouldn’t boast about it if I was you. Strangers is a bad bad thing.”

  He had been repeating those same words for most of the night, and Petrel ignored him. Despite the cold, she liked being in the lifeboat, with its albatross-eye view of the foredeck. From up here she could see things she was not supposed to see, and hear things she was not supposed to hear.

  Like the voice of Second Officer Crab, for instance, drifting upward from below …

  “We must attack Grease Alley,” hissed Crab. “Immediately after this meeting, while Albie is off-balance. We must capture the boy and throw him back to the ice!”

  First Officer Orca’s reply was as cold as the morning air. “Are you trying to instruct me in my duties, Mister Crab?”

  “Of course not, First! But this opportunity—”

  “We will attack Grease Alley when the time is right, Mister Crab, and not a moment before.”

  “But the time is right now, First! We must act! To have a stranger on the ship for a moment longer than necessary is unlucky. It is— It is untidy!”

  Petrel snorted under her breath. Everyone on the Oyster knew that Crab was obsessive about tidiness. When the sailing was clear and the ship’s course was straight, when the Engineers were in Grease Alley and the Cooks were in Dufftown, when the toothyfish returned on the correct date and the navigation equipment worked as it should and Third Officer Hump did as she was instructed, then Second Officer Crab was happy.

  But if a single one of those things was out of place, even for a moment, he would not rest until it was set right. Petrel couldn’t see him, but she could imagine his blue eyes bulging with frustration.

  “It is up to us, as Officers,” he continued, “to show the correct way. And that way is clear. We must get rid of the stranger as quickly as possible! We must!”

  “You have had my answer, Mister Crab,” said Orca. “I should not have to repeat myself.”

  “But I insist—”

  And with that, Orca lost patience. “I do not want a stranger on this ship anymore than you do,
Mister Crab!” she snapped, raising her voice so that those Officers nearby could hear her. “But Albie will be expecting an attack. He will be prepared for it. Only a lackwitted fool would oblige him.” She paused. “Only a tidy lackwitted fool.”

  Petrel heard a chorus of sniggers from the other Officers, and when she peeped over the gunwale, she saw Crab scuttling away, his face red. She pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over her hands, trying to keep her fingers warm.

  On the deck below, folk were getting restless. But no one else said anything interesting until Dolph, as sharp and proud as her mam, turned to the Engineers and shouted, “Is the stranger alive or dead? What are you going to do with him? Don’t go thinking you can keep him.”

  “We’ll do what we like with him,” cried Albie’s son, Skua, a muscular boy with red hair. “We’re the ones who rescued him, not you.”

  Three boat lengths away, a small pod of whales broke the surface of the water with a groan, then dived again. The morning sea was as flat as a biscuit.

  “But where did he come from?” shouted a woman who had pushed her hood back to show the slit earlobes of a Cook. “What’s he doing here? It’s a bad omen, a stranger on the ship.”

  “Bad omen?” roared Chief Engineer Albie, his red beard wagging. “Nonsense! It’s a gift, that’s what it is, same as the seals and the toothyfish. It’s a sign of a good fat summer on its way.”

  Beside Petrel, Mister Smoke cocked his head. “Does Albie believe that nonsense, shipmate?”

  “No, he’s just pretending,” whispered Petrel. “He doesn’t believe in signs and omens.”

  Most of the folk on the foredeck however did believe in signs and omens, and they shouted their agreement or disagreement, depending on their tribe. Insults began to fly, most of them between Officers and Engineers.

  Head Cook Krill banged on a skillet to demand attention. A dozen small bones were knitted into his beard, and an apron stretched tight across his barrel chest.

  “This ain’t a question to be decided by Grease Alley alone,” he bellowed. “If there’s a stranger on the ship, it’s a ship problem, and it needs to be thought out by cool heads.”