Marius barely seemed to move, but suddenly he was beside the table and sweeping the coins back into the bag. The captain curled an arm around them protectively, and held his other hand up to stop Marius’ movement.
“I can offer you a private space, although it is not so big as a cabin. If it is not to your liking…” His shrug finished his argument. The docks were only a few feet down the gangway. Marius could leave any time he chose to do so. Marius straightened, and regained his monk-like pose.
“We sail without a second mate this trip. His room is on the top deck, behind and to the side of my own cabin. We’re using it as a storeroom for blankets and sundry items of clothing. It’s rather full, I’m afraid. No room for a cot. Still,” He smiled, and the curtains were no longer the oiliest things in the room. “I’m sure you could make yourself comfortable, if the need was great enough.”
Marius stared at the pile of money, contemplating, for a moment, the possibility of recovering it, making his way off the crowded ship unharmed, and finding some alternative form of escape without Keth’s assistance. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Show me.”
The captain deposited his payment in a drawer within his desk. He leaned back into his chair.
“Figgis!”
The boy emerged from the cabin’s rear door, and stood a few feet from the two men, sketching a short bow towards his master. “Yes, sir?”
“Show our guest to his quarters, will you?”
“Yes, sir.” The young lad moved to the door, and looked back at Marius. “This way, sir.”
Marius turned to follow him, noting as he did so that Figgis had not been told where his quarters were located. No need to wonder how long ago the captain had decided on his berth – it had been his intention since the start. He followed Figgis’ out onto the deck, turned to the starboard side, and shuffled sternward along the thin space between the captain’s window and the railing. Marius glanced through the glass as he passed. Bomthe was staring straight back, tracking his progress along the deck.
At the rear of the deck, thin enough that Marius would have mistaken it for a simple panel if not for the small semi-circular hole cut into it at waist height, stood the door to the second mate’s room. Figgis indicated it with a short wave of his hand, then scurried past Marius and back up towards Bomthe’s cabin. Marius tugged the door open. It was small enough that he had to turn sideways to fit through. He did so, and slipped into the tiny space beyond.
To call it a room was to sell a mule as a horse. Marius had seen larger closets in the boudoirs of Endtown brothels. It was a good thing he didn’t need to sleep, he thought as he searched for footing amongst the waist-high piles of blankets. He had never like sleeping on his side, and the room was not wide enough that he could have done so on his back. Whoever the second mate had been, he had undoubtedly left Bomthe’s service in order to undergo puberty – a grown man, surely, could not have fit within the room for any length of time. Finally happy that he had attained sure footing, he reached behind him and closed the door, plunging the room into darkness. Marius waited for a moment or two to let his eyes adjust, then slowly sunk to his knees and crawled further into the space. A small window sat halfway along the rear wall, covered by a blanket indistinguishable from those on the floor. Marius pulled it down and let moonlight into the room. Bomthe hadn’t lied. It was a cabin, it was private, and it was above decks. As to anything else, well, the dead were beyond discomfort. Or, at least, they made do with it. With nothing else to do before the ship set sail, he started to fold blankets into neat squares and pile them up in the farthest corner.
By the time the moon reached its zenith he had folded almost eighty blankets into neat columns of fabric against the rear wall. Much of the floor lay exposed, for all the good it did. Marius could, at least, stand without fear of tripping. A small shelf had appeared beneath the window. It would have been a bed, perhaps, for the resident, unless he was wider than a small snake, in which case the floor became even more important. It gave Marius somewhere to sit, but nothing more. He did so, turning to stare out of the tiny window. Whatever his privations, he was where he needed to be – on a ship, hidden, about to sail across an ocean so wide the dead would never find him. Motion. Any motion was a good one. Once the boat was underway he could relax, and make plans for landfall. The Faraway Isles would be a start. Once there, he could find an isolated village, somewhere where the dead were discarded in such a way that he wouldn’t have to live with their conversation. Then… well, he didn’t know what would happen then, but it was a start.
He emptied his pockets and laid his riches out on the narrow shelf. A handful of coins, enough to gain a whispered conversation with a knowledgeable local, at least; a variety of stones, washers, and buttons to stand in the place of coins and foil the flittering fingers of street dips; a cosh, small enough to sit in the palm of his hand, that he had used once and sworn never to use again once the swelling had gone down, but that he’d never really managed to dispense with. He laid them alongside the satchel the dead had bequeathed him; and the accursed crown. It sat at the end of his makeshift row, twinkling darkly in the weak light, taunting him with its presence. Marius backhanded it to the floor, and kicked the priceless artefact across the room. It bounced from the wall of blankets and spun round to face him. The emerald in its frontispiece blinked at him as the light hit its multi-faceted face. Marius turned his attention to the satchel – he had ignored it in his constant flight across the country, without thought for its contents. It had simply been a weight to be carried. Only now, with nothing to do but wait for his freedom, did he think to open it and spill its contents onto the shelf.
At first glance, the scraps that slid out looked like dried autumn leaves, a filthy wash of dead vegetable matter crammed into the bag like so much stuffing. It was only when Marius picked up a handful and examined them closely did he see what they actually were – scraps of paper: torn, crumpled, stained with dirt and age and, in some cases, blood; gathered from the corpses of who knew how many dead, written upon in a range of scrawls, some bearing the mark of culture and education, some barely legible, as if the hands that drew the words were controlled more by willpower than by any combination of withered and rotting muscles. Marius read through the few whose words he could discern – they were letters, from the dead to their living relatives. Marius scanned them quickly, mouth open in surprise. They were mundane, for the most part, of interest only to those who wrote them and, perhaps, those who might receive; it was the sheer number that boggled him. Each scrap was, he realized, a tiny plea for continuation, a need to reach out and reassure the author that the life they left behind had continued with some part of them remembered. Even if it were just the knowledge that Aunt Madge still complained of gout, or that young Roldo was still studying sail making at Ballico College, the dead needed
A figure stood upon the wharf, an island of stillness amidst the ceaseless stream of moving humanity. As Marius stared, the figure stepped forward until it stood on the edge of the wharf, back to the press of movement, facing the flat stern of the
“Gerd?”
Marius slid his head backwards, away from the window, blinking in sudden fear. When he could trust himself to peek out the window again without panicking he did so. Gerd stood motionless at the edge of the wharf. As Marius watched he stepped forward, off the edge of the wharf, and dropped below the edge of Marius’ vision. He
