Railsea

GENERALLY IT WAS ROBALSON WHO BROUGHT SHAM his food. It was Robalson who waited around after Elfrish left, on his brief visits to double-check on picture descriptions, that left Sham quivering. “Yeah,” Robalson would say, as if agreeing with whatever terror Elfrish had instilled. He’d twist his face into a sneer, undermined only somewhat by his visible discomfort at Sham’s fear.

One time he came alone, & led Sham upstairs constrained, with his wrists shackled to a belt itself attached to a pole that Robalson held. It was a modern train. Diesel. They were moving faster than the Medes could have. They were on a strip of pondside rail star’d, with quicksand to port, from which muckworms poked bleached eyeless faces.

Sham took stock. You never knew. Seven, no, eight carriages. Two double-decker. Crew everywhere. A conning tower. Not as high as the crow’s nests he was used to, but the telescope jutting from its viewing slit looked powerful. The Tarralesh was not in pursuit, did not fly the notorious skull-&-spanners flag. But it bristled with barrels. From specialised portholes & little holes poked cannons & machine guns. & there was Elfrish. Sham shivered.

“Well?” Elfrish shouted. The captain pointed. Dead ahead a scrappy forest gave way to sand, brick-coloured in the odd light. “Was that what you saw?”

This was why they’d brought him out—not for his comfort, but to verify the landscape. Elfrish & his officers were gathered around Juddamore’s pictures.

Should Sham lie? Tell them to go to airy hell? Tell them this was not the place when—he looked, & oh, it was. He caught his breath. This was the first image he had seen over Captain Naphi’s shoulder. He should lie. Tell them no, you should be somewhere very else. Get them off the Shroakes’ tails?

A rumour & a picture? Sham thought. What kind of crazy person was Elfrish, that that was enough to send him halfway across the railsea, into unknown stretches, on the off chance of who knew what? Evil & cold & terrifying & all that he might be, but Elfrish never seemed crazy—

& he wasn’t. It hit Sham abruptly. The captain talking about missing something previously. The certainty in his voice when refuting Sham about the wreck’s contents. The sense, in all his talk of the Shroakes, not only of greed, but of work unfinished.

It was him, thought Sham. It was him took them before. It was this train wrecked the Shroakes.

Oh, Caldera, Sham thought. Dero, Caldera. He imagined the Tarralesh bearing down on what must have been a severely battered Shroake train. Grappling hooks fired across cold rails. The boarding, attackers sweeping through the tiny vehicle, swinging cutlasses, firing guns. Oh, Caldera.

A chance encounter on the Shroakes’ carefully roundabout voyage home? Elfrish must’ve found hints of the journey. Evidence of the astonishing feats of engineering & salvage. & realizing these were not just any nomads, remembered stories of the heaven the evasive coded logs hinted they’d approached, full of endless riches, the ghosts of money born & died & not yet made.

How the pirates must’ve hunted for hints as to the route. Stripped & ripped & wrecked the wreckage. Brutally demanded answers, if any Shroake then still breathed. Neglecting that frantically dug hole. No wonder Elfrish was obsessed. All possible rewards aside, those pictures were a rebuke to him. Evidence of his piracy fail.

Sham shivered at the sight of the captain. He should, he decided grimly, looking out to Railsea, he definitely should lie.

“Let me tell you why you definitely shouldn’t lie,” Elfrish said. “Because what’s keeping you alive is your directions. It’s like a checklist. You get one mark for each picture. We have a rough idea where we’re going, but we need to double-check with you. Twelve checks & you win, we get to the end. But if it’s too long between one mark to another, you don’t win, & then you stop. Dead … Stop.” Sham swallowed. “So. If this is not where we need to be, you better tell us, so we can rethink & get where we’re going fast, because you need your first checkmark.

“I just know,” Elfrish said, “you don’t want to die, do you?”

Really not. Even so, there was a part of Sham that wanted to simply tell some ludicrous untruth, have them roar off in thoroughly the wrong direction as long as he could sustain it. Would that be a glorious death?

“I can see you thinking it over,” Elfrish said kindly. “I’ll give you a minute or two. I quite understand. This is a big decision.”

“Come on,” muttered Robalson. He jerked Sham’s chain. “Don’t be stupid.”

Sham came close. Had given up hope, & why not, why not mess with them? He came close. But at that moment he looked into the little storm of railgulls arcing around the train & saw the silhouette of quite unavian wings.

Daybe! Lurching with a frantic bat flap, a careering pell-mell motion nothing like birds’. Sham kept himself still, did not show his excitement.

The bat had definitely seen him. Sham’s chest swelled. How far had Daybe come? How long been following? It was that, the sudden not-being-alone-ness, the presence of even an animal friend, that changed Sham’s mind. For reasons he couldn’t have put very clearly into words it was abruptly important to him that he keep himself alive, which at the moment meant useful, as long as possible. Because look, there was Daybe.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what was in the picture.”

“Good,” said Elfrish. “There really wasn’t very much else that first picture you described could be. If you’d told us no, I’d probably have had to chuck you off. Good decision. Welcome to staying alive.”

As he turned, Sham glimpsed Robalson’s face. To his shock, the pirate boy was staring at the bat in the air. He knew! He’d seen it! But Robalson looked at him, & said nothing.

He led Sham back to the cell, checked they were alone, then eagerly winked. “No harm in having a friendly face around,” he whispered, & gave Sham an uneasy smile.

What? thought Sham. You want to be friends?

But he would not risk his daybat’s freedom or life. Swallowing distaste, Sham smiled back.

He waited until the sound of his young jailer’s footsteps had disappeared, then quickly Sham opened the tiny window of his cell & shoved his arm out into the gusts, as far as it would go. The angle was awkward, the pain in his limb not inconsiderable, the flying specks as random-looking & momentary as soot in a storm. Sham waved & whispered & made noises that must have been snatched by the wind & track-clatter, but he made them anyway. & after mere moments of this he let out a cry of triumph, because swooping down, landing heavy & warm & shaggy on his arm, was Daybe, snickering in greeting.

FIFTY-THREE

THEM ANGELS CAN’T HAVE DONE MUCH OF A JOB ON that bridgeknot,” Dero said.

“Celestial intervention,” said Caldera. “It ain’t what it used to be.”

“Look!” Dero pointed. Smoke. In the distance. Dirty smudgy smoke—the breath of a steam engine burning something not clean—that tickled the underside of the upsky, which was roiling & hazy that day.

“What is it?” Caldera said. Dero checked & rechecked, gazed through far-seeing scopes & persuaded his on-train ordinators to extrapolate & best-guess.

“I dunno,” he said. “It’s too far. But I think—I think …” He turned to his sister. “I think it’s pirates.”

Caldera looked up. “What?” she shouted. “Again?”

AGAIN. THEIR SUBTERFUGE had lasted as long as it had lasted, the Shroakes’ misleading rumour- mongering about their intended journey. But now everyone in Manihiki who cared must know they’d gone, & that meant stories & grapevines, & that was why they had started, as the days went on, glimpsing pirate trains.