Tourmaline

by James Brogden

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ Allie told him. ‘Her parents don’t know. They want her to marry some rich merchant’s cousin.’

  ‘Can we just go, please?’

  They paddled with muffled oars away from the lights of Timini, and when the harbourfront came into view around the edge of the cove, they held their breaths, anxiously watching the dark bulk of the steamship for any signs of increased activity which would indicate that their escape had been discovered. It was slow going, but they didn’t dare raise sail for fear that it would be seen against the stars. No lights flared aboard. No voices were raised. The only sounds were distant music drifting from one of the dockside tavernas, the gentle slop of water and their own laboured breathing as they rowed their supplies painstakingly out into the open sea.

  Chapter 19

  The Flats

  1

  The following morning’s chaos began shortly before dawn, when Serjeant Osk marched up to the Spinner’s gangplank with a group of his deputies, demanding to know what Berylin though she was doing by stealing his prisoners away in the dead of night. Nobody really believed this, of course – especially once it turned out that one of his own men had also disappeared along with his sweetheart – but the noise and bluster did at least allow Osk to save a certain amount of face. The harbour-front was in uproar. There was much indignant shouting and waving of arms as houses and boats were searched without the need for anything as tedious as actual warrants. Elderly maroon-clad matriarchs berated the officers shrilly from their balconies, and children swarmed excitedly along with hysterical stray dogs, each feeding the other’s madness.

  Runce and Berylin watched all of this from the Spinner’s foredeck. Captain Mair had ordered all hands to stay aboard for fear of local reprisals – it didn’t matter that the only casualty so far had been one of his own crew.

  ‘I doubt this lot could find their arses with both hands,’ commented Runce. ‘Our runaways could be halfway to Drava by now.’

  ‘The deputy and his girl, possibly,’ she agreed. ‘But our two? No. They’re out there.’ She turned her back on the harbour and out at the glimmering horizon. ‘They’ve gone back out to where they belong. The Flats. The hole that they’ve torn open in our world.’

  ‘Neither of them could have been the suborning phantasm, though, ma’am. If they were, they’d have brought the effect with them. We’d have felt it.’

  ‘Maybe we did, Runce. Did you ever stop to wonder how one unarmed man and a woman older than myself could have taken on that many men and then escaped all the locks and watches put on them?’

  ‘Simplest answer’d be that they’re suborned locals themselves.’

  She shook her head. ‘Remember Bles Gabril? We didn’t feel that until we were right in the middle of it. They’re subtle, Runce. They’re treading lightly in our world to avoid drawing attention to themselves. But it won’t work. I’ve seen where they come from. I’ve got the stink of it in my nostrils – it’s like smoke in one of your horrible officers’ clubs. It clings to your clothes and skin. I’ve been trying to scrub it off since Bles Gabril, but it won’t go.’

  Runce looked at her sidelong, worried. Her face was pale and shining with perspiration, which he thought had little to do with the heat. She’d long since given up her uncomfortable Oraillean clothes and was dressed in loose shirt-and-britches like one of the crew. Strands of her hair – usually so tightly pinned – had come loose and drifted in her eyes as she stared at the horizon.

  ‘I tell you,’ she continued, ‘I can smell it out there. He was wrong, the old man. The disease wasn’t in his bones – it is in their whole world. They’re a tumour in the skin of ours, and they have to be cut out. Now. Runce, go up and order the Captain to set a course into the Flats.

  This was an order that was easier given than obeyed.

  ‘Ma’am, you need to understand,’ said the Captain, indicating the charts spread out across his desk. The labyrinthine islands of the Tourmaline Archipelago were etched around with depth soundings and indications of reefs, sandbars, and all manner of submerged threats, but more threatening than any of these was the blank white space into which she insisted they turn. ‘Island hopping is one thing. A comprehensive survey of an area of open ocean that size would take a squadron of ships weeks.’

  ‘I thought I’d made it clear that I am not talking about a survey any longer, Captain,’ she replied. ‘This mission was never about establishing the extent of the subornation zone known as the Flats, never mind – Reason forbid – about stabilising it for the blinkered short-term military purposes of a third-world conflict. We are going to put a stop to it for good. And I know precisely where we are going. Here.’ She stabbed a finger into the dead centre of the empty white space.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ he grunted. ‘I’m not saying no to you, Miss Hooper, but we’re going to need resupplying somewhere a damn sight bigger than here – somewhere they have minor things like coal and fresh water, for example.’

  ‘We have just enough to get us there and back. That’s all we need.’

  Runce could see that the man had tried to be patient and reasonable, but that she was pushing him too far.

  ‘Just enough to perish if the weather turns against us, you mean,’ Mair snorted. Not forgetting I’ve got a dead crewman whose kin need informing and two more injured who I’d rather trust to a sea-cow than the witch-doctors they’ve got here.’

  ‘Our mission for the King is more important than a few broken bones…’

  ‘Your mission for you, is what you mean!’ He was red-faced and furious. ‘My ship and my crew are not playthings for politicians and women!’

  ‘Captain Mair, listen to me very closely,’ she said, each word as cold and precise as a piece of oiled machinery, ‘because this woman speaks with the voice of the King. I have been given total discretion in this matter by the Department of Counter Subornation, and in case you’ve spent so long at sea that the salt has dried out your brains, let me remind you of what we do. We stop dreamers from a nightmare world taking over the bodies of your wives, sons, and daughters and suborning them for the foulest of purposes. We clear up the mess afterwards, patch up the bodies and minds, and seal up the holes in the world. We stand on the ramparts of reality and stop the nightmares, and if sometimes in the process we must become worse than any nightmare to do so, then so be it. Because I promise you this, Captain: I am not playing. If you stand in my way and prevent me from doing my duty, then I will see to it personally that you, this ship, and every man aboard never receives another charter, government or private, from Oraille or any other member of the Southern Alliance. I will impoverish them and their families without a second’s hesitation, I will revoke every licence and permit you have ever been granted, and after I have this ship impounded and sold for scrap, I will finally see you, Mair, working the remainder of your miserable little life mopping the shit out of prison hulks.

  ‘Now get this ship underway and chase down those two fugitives.’

  She strode out of the wheelhouse without bothering to check that her orders were being obeyed.

  2

  Danae and her sister islands glowed golden in the growing light of dawn, even as they slowly dwindled behind Tatters, creating the dismaying impression that she was making no progress – and even going backwards.

  ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t get some sail up on this thing?’ Bobby asked.

  Allie squinted ahead towards where the sun was still veiled behind the horizon. ‘Give it another few minutes,’ she decided. ‘When the sun’s fully in our faces nobody behind will be able to see us for the glare.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan, except for one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That.’

  From Danae a black, accusatory finger of smoke was pointing into the salmon pink sky.

  ‘Shit! Let’s get her up!’

  �
�We can’t possibly outrun them!’

  ‘We don’t need to. We only need to get as far as the Flats. They’ll take care of us.’

  Bobby looked ahead and thought he could see where the Flats began – a bright strip of mirror-flat ocean – but it was hard to tell anything for certain in the light of the rising sun. They raised sail but, loaded as they were, the going was still agonisingly slow. He watched a small black speck develop at the bottom of the smoke-finger and grow rapidly. Their patchwork sail flapped and bellied as Allie fought to extract every knot of speed from the slight morning breeze, and he could tell that it simply wasn’t going to be enough.

  3

  On the Spinner’s compass deck above the wheelhouse, the forward watch raised a yell: ‘Sail! Sail!’

  Berylin nodded with satisfaction. ‘See, Captain? We’ll have them before they’ve gone three leagues.’

  Mair bit back a retort, instead ordering a course correction and full steam.

  4

  It shocked Bobby just how quickly the pursuing ship began to catch up with them; within minutes the speck had grown into a definable shape and he could hear the splash of its bow-wave and the crew calling to each other over the locomotive roar of its engines. Despite the ship’s speed, the tiny figures on deck were readying themselves with a cold and professional calm, rather than yelling and brandishing weapons. Barring a miracle, there was nothing to prevent the Tatterdemalion’s capture.

  He squinted ahead but couldn’t see anything which might possibly help them, never mind what Allie had said. The Flats were only a few hundred yards away, with no transitional zone between them and normal ocean. It looked like someone had simply drawn a line across the sea and rolled everything on the other side flat like a piece of tinfoil. But there was still nothing other than empty sky and horizon – nowhere to hide or take shelter when they reached it.

  ‘Nearly there…’ said Allie, straining at the sail.

  The rowing was petrifying his arms, turning them into useless, cramped, rock-hard lumps of agonised stone which he had to fight to bend. On the foredeck, he saw the woman, Hooper, standing as far forward as she could get, as if dragging the ship after her with the force of her will. She unholstered that strange-looking gun – all brass and levers with the flex trailing behind – and he was close enough to see cruel satisfaction in her smile.

  5

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Runce cautiously, from his position at her elbow. ‘You’re going to tez them straight away? Oughtn’t we see if they’re suborned natives first? Procedure…’

  ‘Procedure be damned!’ she snarled. ‘There is no procedure out here, Runce.’

  Runce watched the tiny craft and its hopelessly battling crew of two and began to feel a measure of sympathy for them.

  6

  With barely a few hundred yards separating the two craft, Tatters lunged over the line and into the Flats, and immediately Bobby found the rowing easier, as if the water had lost some essential hold on their hull. Gritting his teeth against the burning cramps in his arms, he hauled at the oars harder, and Tatters shot forward like a greased dart.

  The Spinner crossed, close enough that Berylin could hear Bobby’s grunts of pain as he dragged at the oars.

  ‘Ready the grapnels!’ she ordered.

  And a hole opened in the ocean between them.

  It was not wide or particularly deep, but the Spinner ran over it like a speeding carriage hitting a pot-hole. Her bow dipped into it with a sharp lurch that threw many of the crew off their feet. Berylin grabbed the foredeck rail just in time and received a faceful of cold spray as the Spinner cut through the other side and wallowed back onto level water. Behind them now, the hole suddenly everted itself in a surging column of water, which collapsed and drenched everyone astern similarly. When it had gone, the surface was littered with bits of flotsam.

  ‘What in blazes was that?’ roared Captain Mair from the bridge. There was much running to and fro, but nobody could provide a coherent answer.

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ she shouted in reply. ‘We keep going!’ They’d slowed and lost some of their lead, and she wasn’t having that. At the same time, she felt a thrill of vindication. That had been a clear protean effect intended to throw her off the chase. If she’d harboured any lingering doubts, they disappeared entirely now.

  Black smoke belched from the engine stack as they accelerated again.

  Two more holes opened a-port, and a third appeared on their starboard bow. This last one was much larger, and the spiral vortex which it caused was strong enough to drag the Spinner off-course, its straight line becoming a curve.

  Berylin stared into its throat, aghast. It seemed to funnel down into the very Abyss, swirling prisms of green and blue darkening to purple and black at some appalling, unfathomable depth. She was paralysed as much by the total unexpectedness of its appearance as the awful destruction it threatened. If the Spinner were caught by it, they would all surely be crushed and drowned.

  ‘Ma’am, tez it!’ yelled Runce, but she barely heard him. ‘Berry!’ he bellowed at her, and the shock of hearing him call her that snapped her out of it. ‘Tez the fucking thing!’

  Reflexes kicked in. She aimed the tezlar pistol down into the roaring maelstrom and fired. A gout of steam erupted from where the crackling bolt of purple-white plasma was swallowed, and the hole inverted itself just as the other had done, in a huge water column filled with pieces of debris which swamped the entire deck fore of the wheelhouse.

  He staggered towards her, drenched. ‘Makes sense,’ he gasped. ‘We’re in an Event, after all.’

  ‘Well, we know what to do about that, don’t we? Here, take it.’ She passed him the tez. ‘I must talk with Mair.’

  Up in the wheelhouse, the Captain’s eyes were wild. ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded. ‘What are those things?’

  Seeing the terror and incomprehension in his expression did something to help her regain her poise. ‘Protean manipulations of our reality caused by the irruption of an active subornation event,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Damn it woman, this is not the time…’

  ‘It’s a dream, Captain. Somebody dreaming in another world and making it come to life in ours. Nothing that Runce and I have not handled a dozen times before. Just get us back on course after that boat and don’t worry – so long as there aren’t too many more of them.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘The tezlar gun only has so many shots before it requires recharging.’ Runce had already crossed to the other side of the deck and fired into the vortices in that direction, closing them.

  ‘This is not…’

  ‘This is exactly what you signed up for, Captain. Now show some bloody backbone and resume course.’

  But more holes appeared, on either side, fore and aft. The ocean around the Spinner was riddled with them, each spewing its own debris field of wreckage. A large one opened directly under her stern, and for a moment her propeller screw was clearly visible, turning impotently in open air until the ship’s momentum carried them past and it bit into water again – but not so far forward that it could escape the water column which erupted, driving her bow deeply down and flooding the deck in sheets of green water. She popped up again like a cork and settled in a cloud of spray.

  Navigation became impossible. When the ship wasn’t ploughing into vortices or swerving to avoid them, their spiralling eddies slewed her about such that it was the most Mair could do to simply avoid plunging straight into another yawning chasm, never mind following the other craft. There were certainly too many vortices for Runce to handle, and the tez was soon spent closing the nearest and worst-looking ones. Even so, the flotsam belched up by them soon became almost as much of a hazard, with splintered fragments of wood raining down on deck and tangled lines threatening to foul the propeller. Mair had no choice – des
pite Berylin’s curses – but to turn the Spinner about and send her wallowing chaotically back into normal waters.

  7

  Bobby and Allie watched the ship retreat and collapsed into each other’s aching arms, relieved and exhausted. The waters of the Flats calmed as quickly as they had risen and were soon their customary preternatural stillness.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ asked Bobby, dazed.

  Allie didn’t reply but set the tiller, and Tatters drifted slowly towards home.

  8

  ‘I woke up, once,’ she said, out of the blue. They’d been drifting for some time, regaining their strength. Stray was a small dark smudge ahead of them, and for the first time, Bobby appreciated how insignificant and vulnerable his home was. The fact that he even thought of it as his home, now, was frightening enough.

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me what those things were back there?’ he asked.

  ‘I am. Just shut up and listen for a moment, will you? This isn’t easy for me to talk about.’

  ‘Sorry. You mean you woke up from…’

  ‘My coma, yeah. Just once. At first I could only hear stuff: nurses, the machines, voices. My mom coming in every day to talk to me about her ridiculous friends and her charity work. I was so excited, you have no idea. I couldn’t move or speak to let anyone know, but I think they must have figured it out somehow because they started talking to me directly and getting me to do these bio-feedback visualisation exercises to try and get my brain limbered up again. You know, imagine that you’re wiggling your toes, that kind of thing. Trying to build new connections out of the broken wiring in my head. Then one day there was a big bright blur, and slowly that turned into lots of little blurs, and the blurs turned into things and I could see, too.’

  ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘Sort of. I was left with terrible tunnel vision – it was like looking at the world through a toilet roll, you know?’