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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
‘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.
