smothered. And the beauty of it was that they would never spot the barge and learn that they’d been tricked, for all this while the sea had been trickling in through the holes Rose had drilled in the barrels. Soon the weight of lamp and tripod would sink the barge like a stone. They’d sail west all night, trying to catch up with a ship that wasn’t there.
‘You’re a prodigy, Nilus,’ said Lady Oggosk, clinging with both scrawny hands to his arm. ‘And to think how they scorned you back in Arqual:
Left Phyreis behind this morning. No pursuit, no sails. For two days we’ve been alone on the seas. Five men and one dlomu dead of their burns. And I escaped with no more than a hair-scorching, and a little spot behind my left ear that crackles at the touch.
Winds steady and growing, as though the South were anxious to be rid of us. One or two charted isles left ahead of us, then what I must assume is barbarous territory all the way to the edge of the Ruling Sea.
Rescued that fool Druffle from a suicidal binge. I smelled only rum on him, but his behaviour suggests some fouler liquor: grebel, maybe. He thought I was his father, and he begged, weeping, for some bread and honey — ‘island honey,’ he is on about it again.
But Mr Uskins continues to improve. He is consigned to quarters now rather than sickbay, for there are no spare beds in the latter. He is shy, and eats alone, and perhaps suffers from some difficulty swallowing, for his hand is often at his neck.
No pursuit. We are rid of both vessels, it would appear. Lest we enjoy the briefest lessening of our dread, however, a terrible vision came tonight. I was far below and did not see it, but those who did can speak of nothing else. They say it was a cloud that moved. That it raced over us with the speed of birds on the wings but paused over our quarterdeck, and even lowered a little, and that it was black as pitch, and though it boiled and writhed it was thicker than any mist, seeming almost like a black growth or tumour, half as big as the
‘My life has been all wrong,’ he said.
Star of Rin, grant me courage. The nightmare we have all feared is upon us. Two men have gone mad. I am not speaking of an attack of nerves or a delusion. They have lost speech, reason, everything. They scream and run in panic; they bite and claw and fling their limbs about like monkeys. One is young Midshipman Bravun, of Besq; the other a passenger from Uturphe.
I have ordered the dlomu not to breathe the word
Chadfallow too is mortified, and hiding his fear behind an exhaustive medical inquiry. The two men were not acquainted, did not frequent the same parts of the ship, did not even eat on the same deck. Both, however, were Plapps: the midshipman had been recruited to the gang just days ago, I’m told.
There has already been some trouble on this score: Plapps are whispering that the outbreak was engineered somehow by Kruno Burnscove, maimed and imprisoned though he be. At five bells this morning a Burnscove lad was found in the bottom of the hold — gagged and tied up in his hammock and dangling by his feet. He was positioned over the bilge well, at a height that required him to arch his back and neck to keep his head out of the bilge. He’d done just that through the night, and was found at dawn just as the last of his strength was giving out. Luckily, Rose is the sort of captain who expects to wake up to a statistical report on his vessel, written out and slipped under his door by the officer of the day. Such reports naturally include the depth of water in the well.
If nothing else, Chadfallow’s investigation should help to stamp out such noxious stupidity. The Burnscove Boys did not inflict the mind-plague on the Plapps. We know from Prince Olik that the disease is not transmissible from person to person, that it struck Bali Adro like a snowfall — meaning slowly, uniformly, everywhere at once.
Mr Uskins’ symptoms were of course very similar to those of the new victims — and Uskins recovered in a fortnight. That recovery bewilders us all. Prince Olik claimed, and our dlomic crew confirms, that
So what happened to Uskins? Spoon-Ears can’t tell me, and neither can Chadfallow. Least of all can Uskins himself account for his recovery. ‘I was a long time afflicted, but the illness passed,’ he says. ‘I was warned that madness would come, and that it would be a fate worse than death. But I was spared. I am a new and happy man. Please forgive me for what I did to the tarboys.’
What he did to the tarboys! That’s a subject I can’t bear to explore with Uskins, yet, though perhaps the lads themselves can enlighten me. If he means that he was cruel to them, I know it already. If he means something more, I may just turn him over to the Turach they call the Bloody Son. Either that, or find someone (Chadfallow, Sandor Ott, old onesie-twosie Rain) to attempt a little corrective surgery. I have crossed half the world without murdering Uskins, but Rin knows I’m still prepared.
Of course that is in awful taste. One should not make a joke of murder, not on this ship at any rate. When I told the captain about the Burnscove Boy who had nearly drowned, I expected a detonation: something on the order of what had happened the day he assaulted Burnscove himself. To my surprise Rose’s reaction was quite the opposite. He listened in perfect stillness, then walked slowly to his desk, where he sat down and played with a pencil. Finally, almost sorrowfully, he told me to start naming members of the Plapp gang — just off the top of my head. I didn’t know them all, I told him.
‘Never mind,’ said Rose heavily. ‘Name all that you can.’
I complied. The names rolled off my tongue, and he sat there with eyes closed, so still that I began to wonder if he was asleep. I must have named thirty or forty when his eyes suddenly snapped open. ‘Him,’ he said. ‘Bring him to me at once.’
‘Skipper, with my utmost respect-’
‘Bring him,’ said Rose quietly. Then he looked up at me, his face strained and sad. ‘Or send the Turachs for him, if you prefer.’
Of course I went myself. The man I’d named was a tall, skinny, red-nosed Etherhorder who’d been with us from the start. He was also a personal favourite of Darius Plapp. He delivered the ganglord’s messages, brought food to his bedside and for aught I know tasted it for poison. I found him seated next to Plapp on the berth deck, grinning and whispering in his ear. He came along with a shrug, snickering at me behind my back.
‘Did you know, sir, there’s men call you Old Fool Fiffengurt, and Rat-Fancier Fiffengurt, and nastier things? Much as we try to keep ’em in line, of course.’
I did not even glance back at him. This was an old game, insulting officers with a veneer of respect. The lad was playing it crudely. On another day I’d have put him in the stocks.
‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I don’t hold with makin’ sport of a man’s life back in Arqual — do you, sir? I mean, say a dry old geezer falls in love with a brewer’s lass and wants to give up the sailing life-’
I stopped dead.
‘No one should laugh at ’im. Good luck to the geezer! Maybe he
It went on like this all the way to the captain’s door. I thought the man’s nastiness would make what was to come a little easier, but it did not. When we arrived, Rose was on his knees, unfolding a dusty oilskin over the polished floor.
