by Lian Tanner
He did howl then. His fingers spammed. The imp was gone. And the boy was left alone in the darkness.
As he lay there, panting, the steady reverberation of the engines seemed to change, and take on a mocking tone. At first the boy did his best to ignore it. He was starting to feel sick again. Not nauseous this time, but thick-headed and dopey, as if his skull were filled with sawdust. His arm hurt, and so did his throat and chest.
The sound of the engines changed again—and now it seemed to form a word. Finnnn, rumbled the engines. Finnn, Finnn, Finnn.
“That is not my name,” whispered the boy. “I do not have a name!”
Still the engines rumbled, Finnn Finnn Finnn. And the ice, scraping against the hull, joined in. Fffin, Fffin, Ffffin.
The boy gritted his teeth. This was a test, he told himself, and nothing more. In fact, the whole ship was a test. Everything about it unsettled him—including Petrel. When he had been given this mission he pictured himself being calm and clever, no matter what happened. But instead he felt as if he was losing control …
He took a deep breath and bent his mind to the Spire Contemplation. Then he stood up and fumbled along the wall, searching for the all-important hatch. He would try again. He would not be beaten!
But the imp had turned him around somehow, and the hatch was nowhere to be found. What’s more, his head felt thicker than ever, so that he could hardly think straight.
With a groan he bent down and groped along the floor, hoping to find a weapon of some sort, in case the imp came back. The darkness was so profound in this part of the ship that he could barely find his own fingertips, but he eventually tripped over an iron device. It was narrow, and curved at the end like a crescent moon, and he knew that it was something to do with machines. He did not want to use a machine-thing, in case it corrupted him. But he did need a weapon …
As he hesitated, weighing the device in his hand, he thought he heard footsteps. He stiffened. Had someone discovered his presence? Were they after him? Who could it be? Albie? Skua? The demon?
It was a terrifying thought. The demon was supposed to be asleep, but perhaps all his bumbling around had woken it. Perhaps it was coming for him, right now!
The boy clutched the iron device, wishing that his throat and chest did not hurt so much. Wishing that his head was clearer. According to legend, the demon could kill with a glance. It could destroy whole cities. It could boil the blood in a man’s veins …
And then the footsteps were upon him, and it was not Albie or Skua or the demon after all. It was Petrel.
She put her face right up to his in the darkness, so that the boy could feel her hot breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” she said. “I thought Albie’d got you, and no wonder. I told you to stay put, Fin!”
“That is not my name,” said the boy automatically.
“I don’t care. What d’you think you’re doing down here?”
The boy grasped at the first excuse he could think of. “I— I thought I heard someone searching for me, so I had to move. I got lost.” He shivered. “And there were rats, dozens of them. They attacked me.”
“You’re lucky it was just rats,” said Petrel. “The whole ship’s in a fizz, and getting worse by the minute. Albie’s seething, Cooks are sharpening their knives, Officers are just about frothing at the mouth. I nearly bumped into Crab on the afterdeck. Never seen him acting so daft, washing his hands in the snow over and over again. And it’s all ’cos of you murdering Orca!”
“But I did not murder her!” cried the boy, trying to ignore the fuzziness in his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Petrel. “Everyone thinks you did, and that’s what counts.”
Above all things, the boy hated feeling helpless. But that was how he felt now. Helpless and alone. These savages are mad, he thought.
He tried to recall Brother Thrawn’s voice, but it was drowned out by the subterranean sounds of the ship, the distant scurry of rats and the beating of his own pulse.
It does not matter if they kill me, he told himself. As long as I can first destroy the demon, I will die knowing that I have helped cleanse the world of evil.
The thought was not nearly as comforting as it should have been.
* * *
“I brought you something to eat,” said Petrel, when they were back in the lockers.
Fin stared at her and said nothing. And when she unwrapped the package of fish, he merely picked at the sweet toothy flesh with his left hand. In his other hand, he clutched something and would not put it down.
“What’s that you’ve got?” asked Petrel. “An old spanner? Where’d you find that?”
The boy didn’t answer. His face was paler than ever.
“I thought you’d be hungry, Fin.”
“That is not my name,” said the boy.
“I said, I thought you’d be hungry.”
“No, I—” Fin stared at his greasy fingers. “I need a cloth.”
“What for?”
The boy set his teeth and said very slowly, “To—wipe—my—hands.”
He was almost as annoying, thought Petrel, as Mister Smoke. What’s more, his eyes had gone all blank, as if he were peering down at her from a great height, which made her feel small and ugly.
“Wipe ’em on your clothes,” she said.
“I am not a savage!”
“No,” snapped Petrel, “you’re just plain foolish. What do you think keeps the cold out? Grease, that’s what. Helps keep things waterproof too. So you be glad of those mucky fingers of yours, and wipe ’em all over your clothes, like everyone else does.”
Fin looked for a moment as if he might snarl back at her, but then he clamped his lips together and did as she suggested.
“Now,” said Petrel, “wriggle over here where there’s a bit more light and show me your arm.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to sew it up, that’s why.”
She took out Squid’s needle, and Fin’s eyes widened. “It does not need sewing.”
“Course it does. I should know. I’m the one who cut you.” Petrel grinned. “You scared?”
“No!”
“You are. You’re afraid of a little needle.” She jabbed it at him, and he flinched. “No use being scared,” she said. “There’s lots of things worse than needles. Knives and fish hooks and pipe wrenches, and that’s just the start of it.” She shook her head in mock sorrow. “Maybe I should tell Albie where you’re hiding. He’ll put you out of your misery quick enough—”
That shook him. The blank wall of his face cracked open for a second, and Petrel could see the real boy behind it. The boy who was afraid, but would never admit it, not even to himself.
She almost laughed. But she was not a cruel girl, and fear was fear, after all. So instead of laughing she said, “I wouldn’t, not really. Don’t be scared.”
By then, of course, the crack in the wall had closed, and the boy was as blank as ever. “Scared?” he said distantly. “I do not know what you are talking about.” And he rolled up his sleeve and thrust his arm under Petrel’s nose.
When she saw the wound again, Petrel’s anger died instantly. “Ooh, I bet that hurts.”
Fin said nothing, but there was a thin line of sweat on his forehead. Petrel took the lidded cup from her pocket and poured icy water over his arm. “Grog’d be better,” she said, “but I ain’t got any, so I fetched this from the afterdeck. You can drink the rest, if you want.” The boy took the cup and finished off the water.
“Now hold still,” said Petrel, “or I’ll sew up the wrong bit of you.”
It was strange and horrible, poking the bone needle through the boy’s skin. Petrel winced with every stitch, and so did Fin, his eyes squeezed shut and his other hand gripping the old spanner so hard that his knuckles were white. But he didn’t yelp, which made Petrel think better of him, and neither did he complain about the ragged stitches, which were nowhere near as small and neat as Missus Slink would have made th
em.
Instead, when she had finished, he dragged his eyes away from the wound and said, “The rats— They will not come in here, will they?” He glanced at Petrel and added quickly, “I am not afraid of them.”
Petrel wanted to laugh again, but she didn’t. “No, they won’t come in. Not while we’re here.”
“What about the crew? The Engineers?”
Petrel yawned. She’d been up all night and all day too, and she was suddenly exhausted. “The Truce ain’t official yet, so Albie’ll still have his fighters on guard, just in case. Plus he has to keep the engines and the digester running, which takes a good few folk. And there’s more hidey-holes in Grease Alley than in Dufftown and Braid put together. I reckon we’re safe down here till after Orca’s funeral.”
“When is that?”
“Tomorrow morning. We’ll move then.” And Petrel yawned again, made herself as comfortable as she could on the lumpy floor, and closed her eyes.
The sounds of the ship soothed her, as always. The slow rumble of the engines. The gurgle of the ballast pipes. The creaking and groaning of the iron hull as it plowed the ocean.
Don’t spose Fin can help being annoying, thought Petrel. He’s a bit like that orphaned penguin chick Krill caught last summer. All it did for the first week was snap at folk and squawk its head off. But Krill didn’t give up on it, and after a while it followed him around as if he was its mam.
She opened her eyes and said kindly, “Don’t worry, Fin, I’ll look after you.”
“That is not my na—”
“It was me who saved you, right back at the beginning. That means I’ve got a responsibility for you. You were gunna die on that berg. If it weren’t for me, you’d be lost.”
“Albie rescued me,” said Fin, “not you.”
“But I’m the one who told Albie you were there.”
The boy didn’t believe her; Petrel could see it in his face. “You should be grateful to me,” she said, annoyed with him all over again. “And grateful for the name too, seeing as how you forgot yours!”
But that, it seemed, was the wrong thing to say. Fin’s expression darkened, and he turned away from her and refused to utter another word.
CHAPTER 11
FEVER
The boy did not think he would sleep. Not with bits of rusty iron jabbing at his back, and the whole ship hunting him. But he closed his eyes anyway, and when he opened them again an unknown amount of time had passed, and he ached all over, as if he had been beaten. His head was so heavy and thick and sore he could hardly lift it.
He wondered if the imp had cursed him. Or perhaps Petrel had poisoned him. Such a possibility should have filled him with alarm, but for some reason he could not muster the energy to worry about it.
Petrel was still asleep, curled up against the wall with her mouth open. She is a fool, thought the boy.
But then, unwillingly, he found himself thinking about her dark hair bent over his arm, and the care she had taken with his stitches. Someone else had taken care of him like that once. Someone whose face he could not quite remember …
He shoved the thought back into the locked recesses of his mind, where it belonged, and told himself that of course Petrel had taken care. After all, she was the one who had cut him in the first place.
On the pile of broken machinery, something moved. The boy stiffened. It was the imp, the one with the green ribbon! The one he had tried to kill!
A dreadful coldness crept over him. He tried to think, which was not easy with his head so sore and jumbled. He gripped the spanner.
But the imp was still making its way across the machinery when the dreadful coldness turned to a dreadful heat. The boy blinked, and blinked again. That is odd, he thought. The creature is dancing.
It ought not have been funny, because the Circle of Devouts did not approve of dancing. But it was funny. Hoppity hop, went the imp. Hoppity hop. The boy wanted to wake Petrel and tell her about it, but when he tried to raise his hand it would not obey him.
That brought him to his senses, for a moment at least. There is something wrong with me, he thought. The creature is not dancing, it is coming to kill me. And I cannot lift a finger to fight it.
The imp, however, merely inspected him. It began at his toes and examined him inch by inch, all the while muttering to itself as if it were taking notes.
What if it can read my mind? thought the boy, and he tried desperately and unsuccessfully not to think about the sailing ship that had brought him here—the ship that even now was following the Oyster, waiting for the boy to kill the demon. Waiting for the signal to attack …
The wrongness took hold once more. The boy hardly noticed when the imp left him. He thought he heard the tick tick tick of its claws heading towards Petrel, but it might just as easily have been his heart beating too fast, or Brother Thrawn’s cane tapping the desk in front of him.
Petrel woke up and crawled past him, whispering to the imp as if they had known each other for years. The boy tried to be angry with her. How could she befriend a servant of the demon? How could she betray the human race like that?
Perhaps, whispered his fevered mind, she does not know what the imp is. Perhaps she is just ignorant.
But then Brother Thrawn was leaning over him, saying, “Ignorance is no excuse. Most people choose to be ignorant. And to be poor and lazy and dirty. It is only right that we should be severe with them.”
To his astonishment, the boy found himself protesting. The people on the Oyster might be poor and dirty, but they were not lazy. The fishing shift worked extremely hard, he had seen that for himself.
Which was confusing, because hard work was virtuous, and the crew of the Oyster was definitely not virtuous …
The boy groaned and tightened his grip on the spanner. “I must move,” he whispered. “I have a mission to carry out. I must move. I must!”
* * *
Mister Smoke was waiting for Petrel in the darkness outside the rope locker. But it was Missus Slink who began the attack.
“That boy,” she said, “went poking around where he had no business to poke around. And he launched a vicious assault on my person.”
“Don’t be cross with him, Missus Slink,” said Petrel. “He’s scared of rats, that’s all.”
Missus Slink’s voice was stiff with offense. “‘That’s all’? I say he’s dangerous, and those who want to get rid of him are right.”
“No!” said Petrel, who was not yet ready to give up on Fin, despite his foolishness. “We have to get those answers, don’t we? You were the ones who were so keen. You were the ones who wouldn’t rest till I got ’em.”
The rats were silent for a moment, as if they were talking in some way that Petrel couldn’t hear.
“There’s things that matter more than answers, shipmate,” said Mister Smoke. “We can’t ’ave the boy pokin’ round the ship, no matter what.”
Petrel had never heard him sound so serious and determined. But she was determined too. “Well then,” she said, “I’ll stay with him! All the time. Then he can’t assault anyone and he can’t go poking round, ’cos I’ll stop him.”
“And how’re ya gunna eat, with a stranger hangin’ round yer neck like a sea anchor?” asked Mister Smoke. “Can’t take ’im up to the galley to beg for scraps. Can’t take ’im anywhere, specially now Orca’s been done away with. Everyone’s on the lookout for ’im.”
He was right and Petrel knew it. But she said, “Can’t you give him one more chance? Please? I’ll question him. I’ll start right now. I’ll get those answers, you’ll see.”
Without waiting for a reply she wriggled back into the locker. “Fin,” she hissed, squatting next to the boy. “Wake up. How did you get on the ice?”
“What?” said Fin, opening his eyes and blinking up at Petrel. In the thin light that trickled down from above, his face looked gray and blotchy.
“How’d you get on the ice?” she repeated. “You said you’d tell me.”
The bo
y nodded vaguely. “I did—say so.”
“Are you all right?” asked Petrel.
“No— Yes— Did you poison me?”
Petrel stared at him.
“It was to be expected, I suppose,” continued Fin. “They told me there would be—” His eyes changed, as if he had just realized where he was and who he was talking to. He swallowed. “I did not mean—”
“I reckon you’re sick,” said Petrel.
“No.” Fin turned away from her and closed his eyes.
Petrel watched him for a moment, then climbed back out to where Missus Slink and Mister Smoke were waiting. “He’s sick,” she said into the darkness.
“All the more reason to be rid of ’im,” said Mister Smoke. “Don’t want sickness on the ship. Throw ’im off before it spreads, that’s my advice.”
“No!” cried Petrel, dismayed.
“Has to be said, shipmate.”
“No, it doesn’t. Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.” And Petrel squirmed back past the machinery and sat beside Fin, taking care not to bump his sore arm.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I won’t let ’em throw you overboard. You’re not really sick, are you? This is prob’ly the worst of it already. You’ll be up and skipping around by the end of the middle watch. And then it won’t be just me against the rest of the ship. It’ll be both of us.”
* * *
But by the end of the middle watch, in the early hours of the morning, Fin was no better; in fact, he was considerably worse. His teeth chattered and he shivered uncontrollably, even though he was still wearing his outdoor clothes.
At first Petrel’s main worry was how she would move him if the searchers came. But it was not long before she began to wonder if he might die.
Death was commonplace on the Oyster, especially in winter. Folk perished from the cold or the lack of food or the unseen coil of a fishing line that snatched them up and dragged them overboard before they could cry for help. They got hit on the head by falling ice or a pipe wrench. They ventured onto the wrong deck and were found hours later at the bottom of a ladder with their neck broken.
