likes it, d'you hear? When it's what you've got, you learn to like it. And that is how you stay alive! Eat it, Peytr! Show us how it's done on Ibithraed!'
By the way the youth ate he might have spent days in preparatory fasting. He anchored his fingers deep in the fruit and tunnelled with his mouth, biting, tearing, swallowing, now and then pausing to sop his chin with his shirtsleeve. It was amazing how quickly he diminished the fruit.
'Eat it! Eat it!' The chant began somewhere among the tarboys, and was quickly taken up by all the crew. Peytr rose to the occasion, gobbling even faster, barely seeming to breathe.
'The koyfruits we grow on Sollochstol are tastier,' said Neeps.
'Oh shut up,' said Pazel.
In less than five minutes a pulp-smeared Peytr had completed his mission, and nearly every voice on the Chathrand was roaring approval. He gave them a woozy grin. Rose held out his hand for the gumfruit pit, then raised the other for silence once again.
The thumb-sized pit was the same bright scarlet as the rind. Rose held it aloft. His face showed neither mirth nor anger, but his eyes blazed still.
'That's hope, too, lads,' he said, extending his hand towards them. 'Hope when the bitter meal's finally over, hope at the end of everything. The kind of hope you plant in fair soil and pour sweet water on, year after year. Let an island man tell you: gumfruit trees are kindly things — good shade, sweet spring blossoms. We just might have that kind of hope to look forward to, if we're as strong and smart as I think we are, which is stronger and smarter than any crew in the history of this grandest of ships. But if you weaken yourselves by dreaming about that hope — never, never.'
He closed his fist around the seed. 'We're off to the Nelluroq, on a voyage of ruin and death,' he said quietly. 'Some of us will perish. All of us certainly may. But so long as you count yourself among the living, guard this thought: no one can give you this little red seed but me. Some will lie and claim otherwise, but you know who tells you the truth. Dismissed.'
Six sharp notes from the bell: it was eleven o'clock in the morning. Down on the berth deck, Pazel and Neeps were lending the other boys a hand caulking seams — driving tar-coated bits of old rope, called oakum, into tiny crevices between planks, then painting on hot resin to seal the crack against moisture and decay. The crevices were so tight one needed a mallet and chisel to force the oakum into place. But without such tender care the planks would soon leak; Pazel could touch his tongue to an old seam and taste the salt of the ocean, fighting to get in. The work was never completed: hammer in the oakum, slap on the hot resin, chalk off the plank, trade with your mate when your arm grew tired or the resin-fumes made you too dizzy to aim. Up and down ladders. Up and down the endless curve of the hull. Four times a year for six hundred years, and counting.
'That crafty, cunning, sneaky old beast,' said Pazel, hammering. 'He's got the crew back in his pocket, doesn't he?'
'He's a good liar,' Neeps conceded, slapping hot resin over the seam Pazel had just filled.
'He's a monster,' said Pazel. 'He kept an ixchel man locked in his desk, and only brought him out to check his food for poison. He probably made Swellows kill Reyast, too, come to think of it.'
'Poor Reyast,' said Neeps, remembering the gentle tarboy with the stutter. 'He would have stood with us for sure. He did stand with us, for a little while. But let me tell you something about lies, Pazel. The best kind, the kind hardest to see through, are the ones that mix a little truth into the recipe. Take Captain Rose, now: he says he's the only one who can give us hope. Well that's nothing but a dog-dainty. But it is true that he's the only one aboard who's commanded a boat on the Ruling Sea. No, he didn't cross her, but he flirted with her and lived to tell the tale.'
'So what?' said Pazel. 'I'll bet a lot of ships have made little darts into the Nelluroq in good weather. How do we know Rose did more than that?'
'The Emperor must think so,' said Neeps, 'otherwise he'd have put someone else in charge. Your arm tired yet?'
'No.'
Pazel liked striking the chisel: he could pretend it was Jervik's skull. And the scent of resin made him think of pine trees in the Chereste Highlands, on summer days long ago. Beside him the wall sizzled like bacon with each stroke of Neeps' brush.
Pazel shot Neeps a cautious smile. 'You did like her, eh?'
Neeps blinked at him. 'Who, Marila?' he said, flushing. 'Don't be a clod, mate, I barely spoke to her. I just think she might have come in handy, that's all. She sure did on the Haunted Coast.'
'She seemed blary smart,' Pazel ventured.
Neeps shrugged. 'She was just a village girl. She probably had even less schooling than I did.'
A note of bitterness had crept into Neeps' voice. Pazel stared at the wall to hide his unease. You could be both smart and unschooled, of course, and he wanted to say so. But how would that sound coming from someone who'd gone to city schools, and been tutored by Ignus Chadfallow?
No, he couldn't say anything of the kind. And before he could find another way to break the silence it was broken for him by a pair of tarboys approaching from portside. Swift and Saroo were nicknamed 'the Jockeys,' for the brothers claimed to be great riders. They were nimble, quiet boys with sharp glances. Rumour held that their father had been a horse thief in Uturphe, and was shot dead in the saddle on a stolen mare.
'Give us them tools,' said Swift. 'We're to relieve you, Uskins' orders. You're wanted topside, double quick.'
'Wanted by Uskins?' said Pazel with a groan.
'Not exactly,' said Saroo.
Neeps lathered boiling resin on a final seam. 'Who wants us, then?'
Saroo leaned close. 'It's Oggosk,' he said. 'Lady Oggosk. She wants to see you in her cabin. Uskins was just passing the word.'
Pazel and Neeps traded startled glances. 'Oggosk?' said Pazel. 'What can she want with us?'
The Jockeys shrugged, in a way that made it clear they would rather not know. 'Just don't keep her waiting,' Swift advised. 'One dirty look from that witch could kill a buffalo.'
Pazel and Neeps handed over their tools. But even as they turned to leave cries broke out in the next compartment.
'You give that blary thing back to me, Coxilrane!'
'Can't, sir, can't!'
'Blast you to Bodendel! It's mine!'
All down the passage boys were turning from their work. The voices drew nearer. Suddenly Firecracker Frix galloped into the compartment in a kind of terror, his long beard flapping and a notebook of some sort tucked under his arm. Behind him came Fiffengurt, barefoot and red with fury, shaking his fists above his head.
'Thief, thief!' he roared. 'I'll tear out your damned beard by the roots!'
Frix apparently believed him: he was running for his life. But as he drew even with Pazel he took a bad step. Groping for balance, his palm slapped the last spot on the wall Neeps had painted with resin. There was an audible sizzle. Frix screamed; the notebook flew from his hands, slid across the deck — and stopped at the feet of Mr Uskins, who had just entered the passage from the opposite side.
'What's all this, Second Mate?' he snapped.
'My h-hand-'
Uskins scooped up the book and examined it suspiciously.
'Now, Uskins, don't involve yourself,' shouted Fiffengurt, closing the distance.
Uskins put his back to the quartermaster. 'Mr Frix?' he demanded.
'It's his p-private journal, sir,' said Frix, still shuddering on the deck. 'Captain Rose knew about it, somehow. He sent me to take it from his quarters — it wasn't my idea, Mr Fiffengurt! See here, he gave me the master key and all! Whoopsy!'
Frix dropped the key and scrambled after it. Fiffengurt kicked his prominently displayed backside, then reached out to Uskins for the book. Uskins ignored the gesture. He had opened the journal and was flipping through the sheets of neat blue handwriting.
'There must be two hundred pages,' he said. 'You've kept yourself busy, Quartermaster.'
'It's none of your business,' said Fiffengurt. 'Hand it over.'
