This is not what I ever had in mind, Sham thought. I ain’t even a pirate. I’m a pirate-abetter.
FIFTY-ONE
BUT WAIT. STUDENTS OF THE RAILSEA, OF COURSE YOU have questions. You are likely to narrow in on uncertain & mysterious questions of iron-rail theology.
You wish to know which is the oldest civilisation in the railsea, which island state’s records go back furthest, using which calendar? What do they tell us about the history of the world, the Lunchtime Ages, prehistory, the times before the scattered debris from offhand offworld picnicking visitors was added to aeons of salvage? Is it true the upsky used to be full of the same birds as now fly the down? & if so, what was the point of that?
What of the decline & fall of empires? Human empires & godly ones? & what about those gods—That Apt Ohm, Mary Ann the Digger, Railhater Beeching, all that brood? What, above all, about wood?
That is the key mystery. Wood makes trees trees. Wood is also what makes ties—those bars crosswise between railsea rails—ties. A thing can have only one essence. How can this, then, be?
Of all the philosophers’ answers, three stand out as least unlikely.
—Wood & wood are, in fact, appearances notwithstanding, different things.
—Trees are creations of a devil that delights in confusing us.
—Trees are the ghosts of ties, their gnarled & twisted & dreamlike echoes born when parts of the railsea are damaged & destroyed. Transubstantiated matter.
All other suggestions are deeply eccentric. One of these three is most likely true. Which you believe is up to you.
We have pirates to return to.
FIFTY-TWO
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.
These were not undangerous railsea stretches. There were a plethora of islets, here, & ill-charted woodlands & chasms in which a skilful captain might hide. It was no surprise buccaneers favoured them. They had not, though, expected quite how many would be looking for them.
A few days previously they had had the first of them. It could still have been a random encounter, they had thought. A jumped-up little beast-train had emerged from low trees remarkably close to them, & charged. The captain had cracked his enormous whip—it had been close enough with the wind going the right way for the Shroakes to hear—& goaded his snorting six-animal gang, three to each side of the rail, into massive gallops, while the small & vicious-looking pirate crew jeered & sneered on the ornate battledeck.
“Ooh look,” Dero had said. “Rhinos. Never thought I’d see rhinos.”
“Mmm-hm.” Caldera had given a contemptuous little kick, a little lick of speed, & they had left their pursuers coughing in their exhaust. The Shroake train, driven as it was by a hermetic engine, emitted no smoke: it did, though, have tanks of specially synthesised filthy fumes that could, with a button-push, be spurted out backwards to make a point.
“I liked them rhinos,” Dero said. “Did you? Caldera?” She said nothing. “Sometimes you wish I wasn’t with you, don’t you?” he muttered.
Caldera had rolled her eyes. “Don’t be absurd,” she’d said. Just occasionally it would have been nice to have someone else around, was all. “Enjoy that rhino-sighting while you can, Dero, because you ain’t going to see any more.”
“Why?”
“There ain’t many places a beast-train can relax about what pulls it,” she said. “& there’s things here’ll take a rhino no problem. They ain’t going to last long. They’re a way from home. Must be looking for something.”
The siblings had glanced at each other when she said that, but had still not assumed they were the target of these pirate forays. Until two days later, when a gang of small vehicles, each armoured like a dark tortoise, nearly caught up to them in the night, with surprisingly skilful switching. As their alarms sounded & the Shroakes powered away, they heard the lead dieselpunk shouting, “That’s them!”
Since then they had sped up to get themselves beyond any danger of detection. “You know,” Caldera said, “there are trainsfolk down south who get called ‘pirate’ all the time, & all they do is look after their coasts, ’cause for years trains of all the other places just dump junk there. Mum told me that. Loads of the people we call pirates aren’t doing anything bad at all.”
“These ones ain’t them,” Dero said, watching the progress of their pursuers.
“No,” said Caldera. “These ones seem to be the other ones.”
Their way was plotted from a combination of what their parents had told them before they left, what they had been able to glean from the notes left behind & their remaining father’s confused reminiscences. Those & the ordinator files, & the descriptions Sham had given them, from that old screen.
They were approaching a river. “Bridge?” Caldera asked the world. She could not see any.
“Um.” Dero checked the chart. “I think if we go star’d for—well, for ages—we’ll get to one.” Caldera calculated time in her head. “Know what?” Dero said slowly. “We can be quicker. What about if we take a tunnel?”
“A tunnel?” Caldera said. “You think?”
Underground was never a preferred route. There seemed something unholy about the passing, on rails, below, like some deep-digger heading home. Tunnels made the devout grumble. Usually trains would switch out of the way of such stygiana. Usually.
“Save us time,” Dero said. He was excited.
“Hmmm,” Caldera said. There were, it did look like, routes directly under the water.
The rails took them down, past a fringe of tough shrub, a mouthlike ring of rocks, into a concrete shaft. Some such were even lit, Caldera had heard. This was not. They travelled behind the fierce glare of their own bulb, the tracks, the damp-mottled cement & riblike reinforced supports of the underground passage flitting in & out of pitch as they passed.
“It sounds weird,” said Dero, his eyes wide. They were cocooned by echoes, every snap & clatter up close & reverberating against the metal of the train. “How far, do you think?”
“Shouldn’t be far,” Caldera said. “So long as we keep going roughly in this direction.”
Out of the shadow loomed more, tunnels veering from their own, a submerged maze. At each they slowed, checked the switches. Went on.
They were shocked by a sudden unearthly sound. A quavering, hooting shriek that made the tracks rattle, the ground around them shake. Caldera hit the brakes.
“What was that?” she said. Her own voice was strangulated. Dero stared & clutched her arm.
It came again. More aggressive this time, & closer. A coughing, swallowing, hollow screaming gasp. & now a faint clapping.
Staggering out of dark into the glare of the train lights, something came. It lurched. It staggered & flailed its limbs. Its great trembling throat glistened. A bird. A bird, its eyes sealed closed, covered in fluff, a bird taller than the tallest woman or man. It shook stubby wings, that could never have taken its weight, & tottered. Behind it came others, staggering into sight.
“Look at them!” shouted Dero. “What they doing here? They’re, they’re babies!” He smiled. “What are you doing, Cal?” His sister was scrabbling with the controls, checking the radar, moving fast & gritting her teeth. “Cal, they can’t get in.” The chicks could barely walk. They fell over as they came, trod on each other, eliciting squawks & pathetic little trills.
“That right there,” Caldera said, “is a nest. Those right there are the chicks of a burrowing owl that’s been too lazy to dig its own hole. Just moved in here. That noise they’re making …”
Dero gasped as realisation took hold. “… is an alarm call,” he said. He fell into his own seat, clicking through controls. They backed up. The newborns staggered after them, sounding piteously.
From behind the train came a much deeper, much louder call. It sent frost down Caldera’s bones. They heard a grating step.
Swinging side to side, eyes like giant lanterns hypnotic with rage, recurved beak an evil hook, an owl parent stepped into their hindlights. Its claws were out & ready. It rushed in to protect its babies.
“I’d go the other way,” Dero said in a choked voice.
The owl was taller than their train, hunched & stooped to scratch its way through the tunnels, filling the shaft with its wings. Its eyes shone like the worst moon. It screamed. Those claws would rip the Shroake train apart. To get at the soft Shroake grubs within.
Switch, clickety split. Caldera was getting good at these abrupt & sudden line changes.
Back past the junction while the chicks stumbled & the terrifying adult closed in, forward again down a sideline, accelerating out of that predator’s burrow.
“It’s still coming,” said Dero.
“I know,” Caldera said. Switch, forward, star’d, fast.
“It’s still coming!” Dero shouted.
“Wait!” Caldera shouted. “I think we’re—”
With a rush & the merciful dissipation of all the close-up noise, they burst out again, into the day. On the far side of the river. The raging owl stamped out after them, almost at their speed, opening wings & lurching on stilty legs, half flying, half running, fast, but not as fast as a fleeing Shroake train zipping through grass.
“& farewell to you, angry owl,” said Caldera triumphantly.
“No! More! Quick routes! Through weird things!” shouted Dero.
“Ah, hush. It was your idea. We made it, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but now I’m just wondering …” said Dero.
“What?” Caldera said. “Don’t I even get any well-dones for having got us out?”
“It’s just … doesn’t it take two big owls to make little ones?” said Dero.
A colossal noise above, a thunderclap of wings.
In this case, they learnt, as a shadow blotted out the sun beyond the upsky, it took one big & one very, very big owl. Which, that latter, descended, with a bass hoot that made the Shroakes’ bones & their train vibrate. Which swooped down towards the rear of the rearmost carriage, clenched claws like dockyard machines that split & splintered the vehicle’s roof, &, wings hammering again, ascended. Still gripping. So that one by one, from the back of the train forward, the cars of the Shroakes’ train uncoupled from the rails, began to rise.
FIFTY-FOUR