by Barbara Else
“Ma’am.” The butler guided Vosco, still bundled up like a comic-book kid, past an alcove with a desk and into the bathroom.
“I’m sorry, Madam Butterly.” Rufkin gave the Nod-respectful that he’d worked on for The Good, the Ugly, the Terribly Cheeky. “We are rather grubby.”
Madam Butterly’s eyes were such a deep brown. “So you’re all on your own.” Her voice was almost a purr, which suited the fur coat. Foxes were good parents. They sang purring songs to their cubs and the cubs would purr back.
Rufkin nodded again. “This is Nissy Symore. Her mother runs the engineering yard and marina on the estuary.”
“Far away near the City of Spires.” Madam Butterly’s smile was very welcoming. It seemed to Rufkin he even heard a deep purr while she spoke.
“And my name’s Rufkin. I’m a Robiasson.”
She looked startled. Well, it would be a shock to find the son of people she knew in this situation. He ought to say it wasn’t his parents’ fault.
She smiled again and raised her hands. “This is a strange place to meet.”
“It’s like a slow whirlpool that the ships are stirred into,” said Rufkin, playing up the Blink-innocent. It often worked on grown-ups. Yep, she seemed to fall for it, though her face was not easy to read. He repeated the Blink-innocent and added a tiny head-tilt. “I saw your super-yacht stuck there. Even the Fighting Hawk is caught up in it. I hope it isn’t really the end-of-days.”
Nissy gave a tut as if he’d said something obvious. Of course he had. She ought to know you have to start a conversation somehow.
“It has caught us by surprise. But it is not the end yet.” Madam Butterly’s smooth face managed an inspiring Smile-determined. She put her notebook on the desk and sat at last on a sofa that faced out to sea. “Nissy,” she said. “A pretty name.”
Nissy blushed.
“She wants to be as successful as you, if it doesn’t turn out to be the end-of-days.” Ah, Rufkin knew how to get Madam Butterly definitely on their side… “If you have a moment, maybe you could give her some tips.”
Nissy went even redder. Rufkin wanted to laugh. He kept his lips together, eyes wide.
Madam Butterly chuckled. “Another apprentice? Calleena’s been my excellent assistant for years but Harry’s new.” She tossed a quick smile in his direction. “Watch out, Harry. Nissy could be competition for you.” She turned back to Nissy. “Tips? Of course. Start as young as you can. By the time I was twenty, I was working for a woman of astonishing talent and I learned a lot. Grab any chances. No dolleros spent on research are ever lost, remember that. When you do your research, all sorts of surprises spring up, but you avoid costly mistakes. Hey ho, look at us now—no research predicted this exactly, did it? But never let anything stand in your way. And last—” her smile at Nissy almost turned sassy— “present yourself well. Your turn for the bathroom when the little boy’s finished. Let’s see how you clean up.”
Nissy didn’t look too pleased at that. Rufkin knew he was grimy too, and probably smelly. He had a little sniff of his own shoulder. Phoo, bad mistake.
“Who did you work for?” asked Nissy. “Who started you off?”
There was a flicker in Madam Butterly’s eyes. “No one you would remember.” She smiled again. “Don’t worry, the pair of you. What we have here, the tangle of ships, isn’t the end-of-days yet. We’ll figure it out.”
Rufkin felt warmth in his chest. She was too nice to upset him or Nissy by saying things that might not be true, such as Our prospects are grim, hopeless and dire.
“So,” she continued, “none of you are with your parents. Rufkin, didn’t I read that your family was about to set out on tour?”
It had been in the society pages. Rufkin could only nod. His throat choked up with missing them all.
“You can stay with me till we hear something. Perhaps all we need is a change in the weather.” Madam Butterly stroked her fur collar. “Now, Nissy. Tell me more about yourself.”
Rufkin went to the window and shoved his hands deep in his pants pockets.
From this high, the view was staggering. People below looked like dolls. They swarmed on the walkways between the yachts, freighters, and barges. They were staring at the swivel guns on the Fighting Hawk, up at the sky, out at Old Ocean. Beyond the hundreds of ships, Rufkin could almost see the movement of current that kept all the vessels penned.
He narrowed his eyes to see better. No, that wasn’t a current—it was a shadow passing below the surface. The same shape that had scared him before. Too long for a whale. The wrong outline for a giant squid. For just a moment the shape looked like a dragon sniffing the great knot of shipping.
It must be illusion. It had to be. But again a feeling of loneliness knifed deep into him. His knees nearly buckled. Then the shape seemed to head away under the ocean. Rufkin let out a gasp which was covered by the click of a door. He turned back to the room.
Vosco was ushered out of the bathroom and Nissy marched in.
The butler carried Rufkin’s jacket over his arm and offered it to him. “Yours, I believe, sir? I have sponged it.”
“Thank you.” Rufkin put it on and checked the pocket for the Lord Hodie figurine. The butler also passed him the purple beanie as if it was something disgusting. It was. Rufkin tucked it behind a sofa cushion.
Vosco’s face and hands had been spruced up and his waistcoat wiped too. He didn’t look happy about it. He spotted the trumpet, marched straight over and picked it up. Harry frowned at the kid through his dark curls.
The butler looked at Madam Butterly with lifted eyebrows. “So here is little mister made as tidy as I can manage, Ma’am. He seems not to have shoes. And that sticky rust with the dust of blue is industrial dirt, Ma’am, never easy to remove.”
Madam Butterly looked at Vosco more closely. Calleena leaned forward on the sofa. Harry had tensed like a catcher ready for serious slogball. Was there something special about the little kid’s waistcoat? The industrial dirt?
“How did you get yourself in such a state?” asked Madam Butterly. “Over all that lovely pattern. Of feathers, is it? Come closer. Let me see.”
Oh—they must have spotted a royal design. It would be dragon-eagle feathers.
But Vosco ignored her. He fished the beanie back out from behind the cushion and pulled it on. Then he leaned against the sofa and pushed the finger stops on the trumpet.
“She wants you closer.” Calleena’s voice was rather sharp.
“Little boy?” Madam Butterly used a softer tone. She opened a shiny box with words on the lid saying Treats of Dogjaw. “Goodness me. I found some peppermints.”
Vosco cocked his head. From under a sofa crept a large fluffy cat, golden and purring. So there had been a real purr. It slunk up to Madam Butterly, but she pushed it away with her soft yellow shoe.
“Not for you. Come on, little boy, these are the best peppermints in all the world.” She beckoned Vosco again, eyes on his waistcoat.
Rufkin kept a grin to himself and waited for the big reveal—this was the youngest duke! The cat meowed. Vosco glanced at it. The cat nudged him with its head. Rufkin noticed Nissy come out of the bathroom. It was his turn for it now, but he couldn’t miss the moment.
“This is my pet. See how it matches my coat.” Madam Butterly smiled at Vosco. “Have you got a cat at home?”
“Ee-ow,” said Vosco.
The cat meowed again.
The little boy took a step backwards, then another, still holding the trumpet. Then he turned, grabbed the door handle, and was out and away.
Harry took off after him.
“Vosco, wait!” Rufkin pounded out too, along the celebrity corridor, down the great flight of stairs. In the foyer Vosco headed for the deck.
No, cried Rufkin inside, not back near the ocean—not near that shape.
Rufkin kept running. The dragon shape couldn’t be real but nothing was safe anyway. Old Ocean wasn’t safe. As soon as the weather changed, the knot woul
d break up. The ships might be damaged from being crushed together. How many of them might start to sink? But he had to get Vosco.
His feet carried him over the old metal gangway, over the deck of a yacht. Harry should have caught Vosco by now but Rufkin himself passed Harry easily.
The end-of-days parties still rollicked. From somewhere he heard a violin, wild with energy and as lovely as when Oscar played, one moment making the listener want to shout with laughter, the next to sob. It was joined by a voice so pure it loosened his heart-strings. Ahria’s voice! His family was here? The Lordly Sword was caught in the tangle?
Vosco was heading to a gangplank onto a freighter. He staggered—he would fall in! With a slogball dive, Rufkin seized Vosco at last. He knelt with him to catch his breath.
Above him was a shout. “Rufkin!”
He glanced up. His brother Oscar stared down from an upper deck, pointing with the bow of his violin. “How did you get here?”
Rufkin only just heard him amid the roar of parties—and the growing howl of wind at last. He waved his arms and hands in the code they used mucking about backstage when their parents were performing. Are you all right?
Oscar pointed with the bow and violin. “Wait right there!” He disappeared.
Someone grabbed Rufkin’s shoulder. It was Harry. “Keep going!” He yanked Vosco from Rufkin’s arms, but then set the kid down on the deck and scooted him off on his own like a wind-up toy—in the direction they’d first come from the barge? The man must be crazy! Vosco was out of sight in a moment. Rufkin sped after him.
Ahead, Oscar slithered down a set of metal stairs and came running. Harry pushed him aside. The violin went spinning over the deck and through a doorway.
“Run!” Harry shouted to Rufkin. “Get Vosco. Run!”
There wasn’t a choice. Rufkin took off again.
When he glanced back, he couldn’t see Oscar, but Calleena and the butler were pounding behind Harry. Harry was weaving about as if he was trying to head them off, pointing them all the wrong ways. Definitely crazy!
Rufkin raced along the deck of a freighter beside the Fighting Hawk, over a plank to a yacht—another freighter—but it was hard to spot Vosco, such a small boy among all the grown-ups—
There was a flash of something purple, like a bouncing ball. The pom-pom.
Rufkin leapt and landed on the red barge where he’d played the trumpet. He glanced behind again. Calleena in her scarlet boots was still following Harry. By now, so was Nissy.
“Little thief! That’s not your trumpet,” Harry cried in the wail of wind. But he flapped his hand as if he was desperate for Vosco to keep running.
By now the little boy was staggering with every step, making for the rope ladder still hooked over the side to the rusty old launch. Rufkin reached the railing at the same time and held him steady.
Harry stopped Calleena a fair distance back, but he let Nissy sprint on. It seemed as if he was beginning to say something, but he glanced at the sky. Calleena stared up too and stiffened with shock.
The cloud bank was purple-gray now, heavy with rain, but on the bottom a sort of prong had started to form. In an instant it lengthened into a rope of dense cloud reaching down for the sea. The ocean below started to churn, then it too began to rise in a rope of spray. It was forming a waterspout.
Vosco’s shoulders trembled under Rufkin’s hands. Gasping, Nissy arrived. Rufkin pointed at the cloud.
The ropes of water and cloud met and made a high twisting funnel. At first it looked like a toy—now it grew like some sort of magician’s trick—and now it sent out flashes like a scientist’s crazy experiment. A second waterspout began to form. The first was speeding across the ocean for the knot of ships.
Something shoved Rufkin. It was Harry again. “Get down there!” He hustled him to the rope ladder.
But they wouldn’t be safe in the launch. “Look at the waterspouts!” Rufkin cried.
“Get down!” Harry shoved Rufkin again. “All of you.”
Nissy bashed Harry’s arm. “Let him go!”
“Take Vosco,” cried Harry. “Get him away!”
Bending and snaking, the first spout flew right at the ships. A blast of gunfire came from the Fighting Hawk. The sailors ran about like rats on a hotplate. The guns fired again.
“They can’t shoot the wind!” shouted Rufkin.
“The guns are firing by themselves. The men can’t stop it.”
It was true. The swivel-gun turntable was breaking apart, guns discharging in all directions.
Harry wrestled Rufkin onto the ladder at last. He loaded Vosco into Rufkin’s arms, and pushed.
A scream of wind like a monstrous engine nearly burst Rufkin’s ears. Sliding—rope burn—Vosco’s little legs kicking—Rufkin landed flat on his back in the launch beside the sled and the puppet. The trumpet was under his legs and the kid on top of him. As he lifted his head, Nissy’s binoculars flew past and smashed. Then Nissy tumbled down the ladder and sprawled next to him.
Harry stared down from the top.
He’d called Vosco by name—he knew Vosco was the little duke and he’d tried to kill him!
The roar of wind slammed over the barge. Its red side rocked. The launch knocked against it with a screech of metal. Open-mouthed, Rufkin saw Harry loosen the rope ladder and fling it down into the launch. In the spray and wind, the terrible roaring, the hook of the grappling iron tore away and broke off part of the rail. The wall of the barge swayed above. Rufkin knew they would be crushed—
Vosco cried out, scrambled into the sled and huddled next to the puppet.
Harry had a foot on the railing, ready to jump—but his face was suddenly shocked, then furious. He gathered himself again to leap down. But the launch was already floating well away.
The distance from the barge grew greater and greater. In the sky, each waterspout circled like a monstrous lasso. The tangle of ships was breaking apart, gangplanks and walkways wrenching and splitting as the vessels separated. Even through the booming wind came the crack! of timber and groans of metal, the reverberating twang! of great ropes snapping.
The launch somehow moved on its own smooth current. White stones as big as hens’ eggs began rattling on the water. Hailstones—hard and icy. But even as Rufkin ducked, he saw that after the first one or two, they fell only on the sea, not into the launch.
He picked himself up. The launch must be in some sort of invisible bubble. This had to be magic—it must be because Vosco was royal. Hail kept pelting from the black clouds, but Rufkin, Nissy, and Vosco were warm and dry.
For half a second Rufkin was terrified—magic. Then he went giddy—they were safe.
But then he thought—safe for the moment. What about next? Magic might not last very long. Madam Butterly would have protected them. She had food. She was on the sturdy Princess of Dogjaw, not a tub that would start to leak in the next five minutes. Harry had forced them over the side and hoped they would die.
And at last he let himself think—his family was there. He’d heard his sister’s voice. He’d seen Oscar. He might even have made Oscar lose his violin.
He tried to make out the Lordly Sword through the hail, through fountains of spray whirled up by the waterspouts. He’d been furious and sick to be sent to the Mucclacks, but a lump as big as a duck egg stuck in his throat. Be safe, he thought to his parents, Oscar, and Ahria, please, be safe.
The splashing of hailstones eased to a scatter, then nothing. The waterspouts vanished. The rage of the wind died right away.
For a second Rufkin remembered the shock of seeing the two necks of tornado. His whole body trembled as it had when that shape moved past in the ocean. Maybe it had somehow been a reflection of the coming waterspouts?
Far off, dozens of ships dotted the sea. Even the biggest of them—it must be the Princess of Dogjaw—diminished in the distance. He hoped the boats were all the right way up, especially the Sword. He wanted Calleena and Madam Butterly to be safe too, wherever they were
now. He didn’t give a ten-cent stuff what had happened to Harry.
Nissy was huddled on the deck, eyes closed. Sleeping, or fainting. At least she was breathing. Vosco, the beanie down to his eyebrows, was sitting beside the shabby puppet, playing with the keys of the trumpet. Serve Harry right that he’d lost it for good. The puppet’s face was covered by the yellow sun hat. Whoever Rufkin had seen wearing it must have popped it there for a joke. He hoped they hadn’t stolen the oat-bars while they were about it. He checked. The packet was there, opened, with one bar missing. He should save the rest till they were really starving, when the awful things might taste delicious.
But what next? He climbed onto the cabin roof. Way, way back, he could just make out the last of the tangle of ships breaking away. Lucky that the wind had helped move them to safety—well, luck, mixed with magic.
He felt exhausted, so he climbed down. Vosco was sleeping now, with his legs under the coverlet. Rufkin lay on the foot of the sled and tried to sleep too. But Nissy gave a grumble and either woke or stopped fainting.
She sat up and stared at the vast emptiness of Old Ocean. “What happened?”
“Did you faint?” Rufkin asked. “What did it feel like?”
She frowned. “Things went sort of gray, that’s all.” She jutted her chin at the smashed binoculars. Then she blinked at the puppet. “Why did you give it the hat?”
“I didn’t,” said Rufkin.
Nissy crawled over and picked the hat off. She looked closely at the puppet’s blue face and rusty hair.
“What?” Rufkin peered at it too. The light wasn’t good.
“Don’t scoff before I’ve finished talking…” Nissy chewed her bottom lip. “It looks a bit like the Queen. What a mess it’s in. You know—if Vosco’s a duke, then that riverboat might be the one that went upriver with Queen Sibilla and the scientists. So the puppet could be a decoy. That rusty dust could be from mining. The cave-lizards come from an underground mine, don’t they?”
“No, they just live in mud. And all mines are underground,” said Rufkin.
