got to have someone to blame for what happened to Wrasse, and I’m damned if it’s going to be me. So you’ll hang there till you croak, and then you’ll hang there till the smell gets too bad for even the Lost Boys to stick, and then we’ll flush you out the water-door. Just to remind everybody that Uncle Knows Best.”
A long sigh, a fumble of fingers against the microphone, then that flicked-balloon sound of the speaker switching off, and even the background hiss of static died. The rope creaked, the room spun, the sea pressed against the walls and windowpanes of Grimsby, looking for ways in. Caul drifted through blackness, woke, drifted again.
In his high chamber, Uncle watched the dying boy’s face turn on a half-dozen screens, close-up, medium close-up, long shot. He stifled a yawn and turned away. Even all-seeing eyes have to sleep sometimes, although he didn’t like any but the most faithful of his boys to know about it. “Keep a good watch on him, Gargle,” he said to his young assistant, and climbed the stairs to his bedchamber. The bed was almost hidden now by heaps of papers, by folders and files and books and documents in tin containers. Uncle snuggled under the counterpane (gold- embroidered, stolen from the Margrave of Kodz) and went quickly to sleep.
In his dreams, which were always the same, he was young again; exiled and penniless and brokenhearted.
When Caul next came round it was still night, and the rope that was strangling him had started to jerk and twist. He fought for breath, making horrible wet rattling sounds, and someone just above him hissed, “Stay still!”
He opened his good eye and looked up. In the shadows above his head a knife shone, sawing through the thick, tarry strands of the rope.
“Hey!” he tried to say.
The last strand broke. He fell through darkness, landed hard on the hull of the Screw Worm and lay there gasping for breath with great helpless whooping sounds. He felt someone cut the cords on his wrists. Hands found his shoulders and rolled him over. Gargle was looking down at him.
Caul tried to speak, but his body was too busy breathing to bother with words.
“Pull yourself together,” Gargle said softly. “You’ve got to go.”
“Go?” croaked Caul. “But Uncle will see!”
Gargle shook his head. “Uncle’s asleep.”
“Uncle never sleeps!”
“That’s what you think. Anyway, all the crab-cams that were watching you have gone wrong. I arranged it.”
“But when he finds out what you’ve done-”
“He won’t.” Gargle’s grin flashed white. “I hid the bits of the crabs I busted in Skewer’s bunk. Uncle’ll think Skewer did it.”
“Skewer hates me! Uncle knows that!”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ve been telling Uncle how well the two of you got on aboard the Screw Worm. How Skew only took charge because he was worried about you. How he’d do anything for you. Uncle thinks you and Skew are thick as thieves.”
“Gods!” Caul said hoarsely, surprised at the newbie’s cunning and appalled at the thought of what was going to happen to Skewer.
“I couldn’t let Uncle kill you,” Gargle said. “You were good to me aboard Anchorage. And that’s where you belong, Caul. Take the Screw Worm and get back to Anchorage.”
Caul massaged his throat. All his years of training were screaming at him that stealing a limpet was the most terrible sin a Lost Boy could contemplate. On the other hand, it felt good to be alive, and every breath that he drew into his starved lungs made him more determined to stay that way.
“Why Anchorage?” he said. “You heard Tom and Pennyroyal talking. Anchorage is doomed. And I’d not be welcome there anyway. Not a burglar like me.”
“They’ll welcome you all right. When they find out how much they need you, they’ll soon forget you ever burgled them. You’ll want this.” Gargle shoved something into his hand; a long tube of thin metal. “No time to talk, Caul,” he said. “You don’t belong here. You never belonged here, really. Now get into that limpet and clear off.”
“Aren’t you coming too?”
“Me? Course not. I’m a Lost Boy. I’m going to stay here and make myself useful to Uncle. He’s an old man, Caul. His eyesight and his ears are going. He’s going to need someone he can trust to run his cameras and his archives. Give me a few years and I’ll be his right hand. A few more, and who knows? Maybe I’ll be running Grimsby myself.”
“That’d be good, Gargle,” said Caul, laughing painfully. “I’d like to see you in charge of Grimsby. Put a stop to all that bullying.”
“Put a stop to it?” Gargle wore a grin Caul hadn’t seen before, a cold, sharp grin he didn’t like at all. “Not likely! I’m going to be the biggest bully of them all! That’s what kept me going, Caul, all the time Skewer and the others were roughing me up in the Burglarium. Thinking about what I’d do to them when my turn came.”
Caul stared at him a moment longer, half inclined to believe that this was all just another dream. “Go,” Gargle said again, and opened the Screw Worm ’s hatch. Dream or not, there was no arguing with him; there was such a sureness in his voice that Caul felt like a newbie again, being ordered about by some confident, older boy. He almost dropped the thing Gargle had given him, but Gargle caught it and thrust it at him again. “Go, and stay gone, and good luck!”
Caul took it, and pulled himself weakly to the hatch and then inside and down the ladder, wondering how this battered tube of japanned tin was meant to help him.
30
Freya woke early and lay for a while in the dark, feeling her city shudder beneath her as it went bucketing over scab-ice and pressure ridges. Anchorage was far to the west of Greenland now, heading south over unknown ice and the humped, rocky backs of frozen islands. Several times Mr Scabious had had to hoist up the drive-wheel and let the cats haul the city across solid, snow-covered rock and riven glaciers. Now sea-ice stretched ahead of them again, reaching unbroken towards the horizon. Miss Pye thought it was Hudson’s Bay, the great ice-plain which Professor Pennyroyal claimed would carry them into the heart of the Dead Continent, almost to the borders of his green places. But would it be strong enough to bear Anchorage’s weight?
If only Professor Pennyroyal could tell us for sure, thought Freya, kicking off her covers and padding to the window. But Pennyroyal had come this way on foot, and the desciptions in his book were really surprisingly vague. Miss Pye and Mr Scabious had tried to make him go into more detail, but he had just grown sulky and rude, and after a while he had stopped coming to Steering Committee meetings altogether. In fact, ever since Hester flew off in the Jenny Haniver, the good professor had been acting very oddly indeed.
A breath of cold blew in Freya’s face as she parted the curtains to look out at the ice. Strange, to think that this was the far side of the world! Stranger still to remember that soon they would be in the new hunting ground, and the views from her windows would all be green; grass and bushes and trees. The idea still scared her a little. Would the Ice Gods rule in lands where snow only lay for a few months of each year? Or would Anchorage need new gods?
A wedge of light yellowed the snow outside the Wheelhouse as a door opened and someone slipped out. Freya wiped away the fog her breath had made and put her face close to the glass. There was no mistaking that silhouette; a portly figure in heated robes and an outsize fur turban, creeping guiltily along Rasmussen Prospekt.
Even by Professor Pennyroyal’s recent standards this was strange behaviour. Freya dressed quickly, pulling on the simple, fleece-lined working clothes that were her usual outfit these days, and pocketing a torch. She crept out of the palace without bothering to wake Smew. Pennyroyal was nowhere to be seen, but his deep, wandering
