While I have him, I pop another question that’s been haunting me, but this one I can only whisper: ‘You worked on the Chathrand ’s repairs, when she was in drydock?’
‘I was present,’ he says with a nod.
‘Then tell me: is our keel cracked, by damn? Are we sailing with a broken spine?’
He shakes his head, and I breathe a great sigh of relief. ‘But it was cracked, to be sure,’ he adds. ‘I saw the damage myself. Amidships, it was, close to her lowest draft.’
‘You patched a mucking keel?’
His eyes glance left and right. ‘Not at all,’ he murmurs finally. ‘That is what is so strange. The crack closed of its own accord. When we came back it was gone — totally self-sealed, as if the wood were living flesh — but better even then flesh, for it healed with no scar. Not even the master shipwrights could find the spot again. But do you know what else is strange? That crack. . bled.’
‘Bled?’
‘For the short time it was open, yes. Like young sapwood. I saw it myself: a thin, red-gold nectar. There were still drops of it about the keel when the crack disappeared.’
Nectar from six-hundred-year wood. Cracks that heal themselves. If I needed more convincing that the Grey Lady was like no ship afloat, I have it now.
The Island Wilderness is vast and varied, like a big plate dropped on stone and shattered into thousands of pieces. Those pieces lie flung over a greater expanse of sea than all the waters claimed by Arqual, where many a doughty sailor has passed his whole career. Only the southern third of the Wilderness is charted, and we are nearing the end of that region. Afterwards we will depend on what Prince Olik sketched back in Masalym, and the remarks he made to our sailmaster.
All this effort to find Stath Balfyr, from which island we have course headings leading precisely nowhere: course headings fabricated years ago by one Lord Talag, for no other reason than to lure us there. And now Ratty’s learned that Talag and his clan are still aboard, still waiting for us to reach their homeland, waiting for their moment to strike again. How will they do it? What will they try? Ratty thinks there is good in Talag yet, and that our best hope is to appeal to it. For myself I’m not interested in the mix of good or bad in the fellow. But I know this: a man who could shape his entire life around such a deranged and brilliant scheme as Talag’s is capable of anything, mass murder included. If it is part of that scheme to poison us all on landing, he will do it.
Simply to wait for that moment would be lunacy. We must warn Rose, somehow, and hope he is calm enough to believe us — and then sane enough to turn back. That this would require defiance of Sandor Ott is a given, and not on Rose’s part alone. Haddismal will be forced to choose between them, and heretofore whenever a choice has arisen he has stood with Ott.
Yet we must turn back. Without knowledge of the currents, we might wander in the Nelluroq until we die of thirst. And even if we managed to cross in safety, where would we emerge? We have no knowledge of our position relative to the Northern lands. We could arrive in the heart of the Mzithrin, and be sunk by the White Fleet. Or in Arquali territory, where our own dear Emperor has promised to kill us and our families should we return without completing the mission. We might get lucky and scuttle into some port in the Crownless Lands. But even if they granted us sanctuary, the news of the Chathrand ’s resurrection would soon escape, and both would descend on our poor hosts in fury.
No, we must return to Bali Adro sooner or later, and seek better information from some quarter. So why haven’t I told Rose yet, before we ran northwards for weeks? Do I fear that he too will take Ott’s side? Am I that much a coward, after seeing what the spymaster did to Chadfallow?
Each day we creep nearer. The whole crew is yearning for Stath Balfyr; you can hear it in their voices, see it in their darting eyes. They are dreaming of home, and in their morally weakened state they forget, for moments, all the heartless immensities of Alifros that lie between.
I am not immune from temptation. Our bow points north; my heart pulls north like a lodestone, and pays no heed to reason. Some nights I think of Anni and me together, keeping house, raising our little one, making sweet love. That is when I feel most evil: when I catch myself imagining such an end, without regard for the ones we’re leaving behind.
Against such gloom Felthrup is my strange defender. He cannot say why, but he believes our friends will catch us yet. ‘There is Ildraquin and its compass-needle power,’ he reminds me, ‘and more to the point, there is wisdom and fearlessness in that company.’ But is there a blary boat, and could it ever catch up with the Chathrand? A pity that there’s no Ildraquin at our disposal. We speak of them like guests who are fully expected, just running a little late, when in truth we do not even know if they are alive.
I do not ply him with these doubts. What if his hope is but a shield against smothering despair? Ratty feels things so acutely; in many ways he too is like a child. But his understanding of things runs deeper than any child’s — deeper than his few years of woken life can easily account for. ‘My only gift is dreaming,’ he told us recently, but that is a splendid gift in dark times. And it was his dreaming, they say, that saved us once before.
In another dream, however, he saw the face of Macadra, and that face is much on his mind. ‘She too is searching for us,’ he told me yesterday. ‘She does not know if the Nilstone left Masalym by land or sea, and so she scours both. We have a head start, but she has engines of madness to propel her. We will not be alone out here much longer.’
And still there’s nothing. Weird evening glimmers, a lost pelican, a peal of thunder on a day without clouds. I would almost prefer a sail on the horizon. Better to spot the wolves at a distance than to worry each day that they’re padding behind you, sniffing out your trail.
Tuesday, 12 Halar 942.
There are odd fish, and there is Uskins. Since this voyage began, our first mate has been a dandy, a despot, a pretender to noble blood, a torment to me personally, a whipping boy for Captain Rose and most recently a madman who gobbles pork. Now, apparently, he is a soul reborn. To the whole crew’s amazement he has recovered his wits and his self-control. There can be no question of him returning to his duties (indeed he has had no duties pertaining to the ship’s functions since the day he tried to plunge her to the bottom of the Nelluroq Vortex) but there is talk of him returning to his cabin, any day. For now he may be glimpsed walking the deck with Dr Chadfallow, looking saner (and better groomed) than he has since Etherhorde.
This very afternoon he came to me quietly, the doctor a few paces behind, and asked my pardon for his ‘many trespasses’ against both me and the tarboys under my charge. He called himself a man emerging ‘from a nightmare that has lasted longer than you’ve known my name’. I think he wanted to shake hands, and busied mine with a greasy wheelblock. ‘Glad you’re mending,’ was the best I could do, and I dare say it came out less than heartfelt. Why I could find sympathy for the man when he was raving, but feel only contempt at the sight of him dressed and decent is a matter for philosophers. I only know that I do not like him, and never expect to. Perhaps this is my failing, for are we not told to answer trust with trust, humility with respect? Uskins shuffled off with the doctor’s hand on his shoulder. To this very hour I feel like a cur.
Wednesday, 13 Halar.
There has a been a knife fight on the orlop, and a Plapp’s Pier man is fighting for his life. No witnesses, but there was deathsmoke in the air when the Turachs arrived. Before Chadfallow put him under the ether, the lad swore he’d been jumped. This is likely a fib: a number of lads on the deck above heard two men shouting at each other well before the thumps and crashes began.
The Burnscove Boys swagger about like new fathers, unable to hide their joy. The victim is particularly hated for some deed back in Etherhorde involving the Imperial police and a shipment of ivory. Rose is livid. Haddismal is both angry and concerned. There has been a shaky truce since Masalym, but it is clearly breaking down. And that is in no one�
��s interest: the balance of power on the Chathrand is just too fine.
I’ve long known that Rose depends on the gangs’ mutual hatred to ensure that the crew never comes together to oppose him. But last night I learned another thing. It was that boozy smuggler Mr Druffle, of all people, who opened my eyes.
I’d set Druffle and Teggatz at work together on a comprehensive food inventory: part of my report to the captain on our readiness to brave the Ruling Sea. It was a poor partnership: between Druffle’s laziness and Teggatz’s incoherence, the inventory had simply ground to a halt. I had knocked their heads together rather roughly, then felt mean about it and joined in the effort, thinking it could not take long.
We finished near sunrise. Poor Teggatz had to go right into his morning ritual of stoking the galley stove. Druffle and I watched him, too tired to crawl away. Then our beloved cook produced a jug of good rum from some cubbyhole in the galley and poured us each a dram.
Druffle’s eyes grew moist. ‘That’s some fine nectar, Teggatz. Oh, for the sweet things in life! Have you never tasted island honey? A gentle soul like me could kill for it, die for it.’
‘Let’s have no talk of dying,’ I said.
We sat on the floor and talked awhile — or rather Druffle and I talked, and Teggatz made his usual blurts and interjections. But the rum loosened his lips (he should drink more often) and when I began talking about the gangs he shook his head.
‘Ain’t you curious?’ he said.
‘Well now, Rexstam, I don’t think of myself as such.’
‘As to why they don’t recruit? Eh, eh?’ He poked me in the chest. ‘The gangs. They don’t recruit. Why not, why not?’
‘But of course they recruit,’ I said.
Teggatz shook his head. ‘Not for serious. Not like Etherhorde.’
‘He’s right,’ said Druffle. ‘There’s a lot of scare-talk here. But in the capital, Pitfire! Say no and it’s choppy-choppy, off-with-his-private-parts-into-the-soup.’
I drank, meditating on the matter. They had a point. Nearly forty per cent of our boys remained neutral, outside of either gang. In the dockyards that situation wouldn’t have lasted a week. Invitations to join up were not really invitations: they were orders. The ones who said Bugger off showed up floating in the marshes, if they showed up at all.
Why had the gangs taken it so easy? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. ‘All right, you’ve stumped me,’ I said at last. ‘Explain it to me if you can.’
Teggatz rubbed his apron sorrowfully: he could not explain. But Mr Druffle had a gleam in his drunken eye. He beckoned me closer. He winked.
‘I have a suppository.’
‘Do you now?’
He nodded proudly. ‘Want me to share it?’
Fortunately he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Listen, Graff: on most ships, you have your Plapps or your Burnscovers — but just the lads, just the membership. The two kingpins never used to sign on with nobody. They’d sit home in Etherhorde, plotting to kill each other, getting richer by the year. And they didn’t care what their lads had to do to win new recruits. But this time Rose changed the game. He made your Emperor stick Kruno and Darius aboard personally. Was that easy, I ask you?’
‘Bah ha,’ said Teggatz.
‘Not likely,’ I said.
‘Likely!’ said Druffle. ‘It was a pig’s business, and you know it! But Rose got it done, and now what do we have?’ He held up both index fingers. ‘Balance. Order. And if one of ’em tries too hard to tip the balance, Rose can do something no other captain ever could.’
He folded away one finger.
‘Kill him?’ I said, appalled. ‘Kill a ganglord?’
‘Who’s to stop him?’
‘But my dear Druffle, that would bring the house down! Boss or no boss, the gang would explode!’
‘BOOM!’ shouted Teggatz, flinging his arms and spilling precious rum.
‘Boom is right,’ said Mr Druffle, ‘but boom don’t help a dead man. I’ll bet you a bottle Rose warned each gang not to use their old, bloody methods to boost their numbers — not to rock the boat, see? And if one of ’em does anyway — well, our captain knows what to do.’
Druffle sat back and drank. There was nothing more to his ‘suppository’, but he had made his point. The gangs were actually weaker with their bosses aboard. If there was anyone the members feared more than a ship’s captain, it was their bosses back home. This time the bosses had been dragged along — and they were the ones who had to be afraid.
Teggatz, in his halting way, put the cap on the discussion. ‘Plapp, Burnscove — is it bad to have them aboard? Too bad! Nasty, icky, wash your hands. Only one thing could be worse.’
‘And that would be, Mr Teggatz?’
‘Not having them,’ he said.
Thursday, 14 Halar. A spot of embarrassment and confusion. The dlomic woman who spit the seeds that day caught me looking at her. She was kneeling beside a bucket, bathing her face and arms. I think it was the way her half-webbed hands held the sponge that made me stare. I’m sure I did not know I was doing it, though, until those sly silver eyes caught my own and held me like a predator for a moment. I turned away, reddening, and she mumbled something caustic that made her fellow dlomu laugh. Their eyes tracked me too, until I invented a reason to march swiftly amidships. She is lovely. Also hideous. Black skin and silver hair and bright eyes that can’t ever be read.
Friday, 15 Halar.
Of the two ganglords, Darius Plapp has generally distinguished himself as the stupider (a remarkable achievement). In a bar in Etherhorde, I watched him drop a fat purse before a stunning, green-eyed girl seated alone at a table for two.
‘It’s a blary crime, love,’ he said, ‘a peach like you, sittin’ there all neglected-like. Tuck that gold away, now, and come upstairs. I’ll tickle your sweet spot. Might even make you laugh a bit.’
The room fell suddenly silent. Plapp went on leering at her, a tomcat watching a bird. At last the girl did indeed tuck his gold away, gazing at him with disbelief. And then he found out why she was ‘all neglected-like’, when Sergeant Drellarek (‘the Throatcutter’) returned from the privy. Plapp’s departure was so fast it was almost a magic trick. I expect he gave her more laughs than he’d counted on.
As I say, no titan of intellect. Yet lately Kruno Burnscove’s been vying for his dullard’s crown. Tonight he and two of his heavies caught a Plapp sailor on the No. 4 ladderway. With the thugs keeping an eye out for officers above and below, Kruno backed the lad up against the wall and set his knife casually to his throat. He wanted to know what Darius Plapp had in mind once we were back safely north of the Nelluroq. Did Plapp mean to go on cooperating with Rose and Sandor Ott, even though they were leading us to Gurishal on a mission of no return? Or was he maybe thinking someone other than Rose might be better suited to taking the wheel?
I have this on good authority: Kruno Burnscove wanted to know if his rival was plotting mutiny. But did he truly imagine he’d get an answer? Of course the lad swore his ignorance backwards and forward. Burnscove pressed the knife harder against his flesh.
‘I know there’s an endgame coming, boy. What’s more, Darius knows I know. He expects someone to spill the gravy sooner or later, see? By talking now you’ll just be living up to his expectations.’
No use: the Plapp boy had no gravy to spill. His resistance must have irritated Burnscove. ‘You think I’m fooling with you?’ he said. ‘You suppose I’d think twice about gutting you like a fish? Don’t throw your life away, lad. Nothing old Darius might do to you compares with what you’re risking here and now.’
At that moment his goon on the lower stair gave a whistle that meant ‘officer approaching’. Kruno sheathed his knife, but he struck the lad a parting blow to the stomach that left him writhing on the stair. ‘You know what I think, boys?’ he said, as they hurried away. ‘I think that if these Plapps keep turning into monkeys, we’re going to have to chain the bastards up and keep ’em as pets!�
��
The second warning, from his man above, came too late. Burnscove rounded the corner, laughing at his own witticism. There, with folded arms, stood Captain Rose. For a moment no one moved, and in the silence Rose heard the wheezing of the injured man.
Burnscove is the captain’s equal in size and ten years younger, but that did not stop Rose from charging down the stairs at him with a roar. The ganglord should have committed decisively to some action: running like a coward, say, or fighting for his very life. I suppose he did neither, for when I arrived moments later (I was the ‘officer approaching’ from below) the captain was beating him with fists like wooden mallets, the blows knocking Burnscove against the wall with such force that he toppled forward again into the next piece of punishment, and the next. In desperation Burnscove pulled his knife again. Seeing it, Rose hit a new threshold of rage. Most men put distance from a knife by sheer (sane) instinct. Rose just smacked it from Burnscove’s hand. Then he seized the ganglord’s forearm near wrist and elbow and snapped the arm like a stick over his knee.
Burnscove fainted dead away. One of his underlings had fled already; the other vomited on the stairs. I was close to doing the same: Burnscove’s forearm made a right angle halfway down its length, and from the torn skin a bone protruded obscenely.
Still swearing like a Volpek, Rose dragged the man by his hair onto the lower deck and ordered the Turachs to throw his ‘worthless carcass’ in the brig. That is where Chadfallow straightened and splinted his arm, and that is where he remains. It is the first time either ganglord has been harmed or jailed since the journey began (save by the ixchel, who locked them up together, sensibly) and it is a deep humiliation for the Burnscove Boys. That, I suppose, is why Rose attacked the man himself. He, Ott and Haddismal are the only men aboard the ganglords fear. And blast me if Druffle’s ‘suppository’ isn’t turning out to be true. However maimed, Kruno Burnscove is still alive. He is trapped here, with nothing but thin cabin doors between him and a hundred Turach spearpoints. He cannot act against the captain, and neither can Darius Plapp. While the ganglords live, Rose has nothing to fear from the gangs.
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