I reached the bone room, sealed the door behind me, turned the locking wheel until it was as tight as I could make it. My breath was like a saw cutting wood.
A voice buzzed from the wall.
‘Listen, all of you. This is Bosa speaking. It’s all over. Bosa’s got your ship, Bosa’s got your loot, Bosa’s about to have the pick of your crew.’ The voice was the one I had already heard: distorted, gashed over with static and feedback, looped over itself in strange echoes and stutters, just barely recognisable as the product of a female larynx. ‘But Bosa doesn’t need this ship, not when she already has something faster and better and stronger. She doesn’t even need most of the crew, so some of you can walk – if you do right by Bosa. And that means helping her with a new Bone Reader.’
Another voice cut across the first, but it was only Bosa Sennen’s voice that was clear.
‘Something to contribute, Captain Rackamore? Speak up now. Yes, you had a Reader in Mister Cazarary, I know. But Mister Caz is dead now, as you rightly stated. There’s just a tiny, tiny complication.’
Rackamore said something else. There was a pleading, futile tone to his voice, as if he knew that there could be no bargaining with Bosa Sennen, no reasonable outcome to her demands.
‘Yes, Captain, but here’s the thing. It’s known to Bosa that you’ve been on the look-out for a new Reader recently. Been very active in that line of recruitment, haven’t you? Rushing around like there was no tomorrow. And the word is your efforts have been rewarded. Not just one new Reader, but two! Yes, two minds come through very clearly, so Bosa’s assured.’
Rackamore said something else. Now the pleading had given way to a kind of abject despair.
‘What’s that, Pol? You say they wouldn’t work for Bosa?’ She gave a horrid, cackling laugh. ‘You don’t know much about Bosa, in that case. No; they’ll suffice, if they have the skill. The only question to be settled is which of you are the Readers. You’ll help with that, won’t you, Pol?’
Rackamore screamed.
I’ve heard some sorry sounds in my life, but that was the worst thing I ever caught coming out of another person.
‘Oh, Pol – where’s your cooperative spirit? You know that Bosa doesn’t like to ask twice. What of the tall girl? Green enough, by the squint of her, and although she hides it well, it’s plain that she doesn’t yet have her space legs. What’s your name, my pretty?’
I heard my sister answer. Her voice was strong, clear and defiant, and it made me proud and frightened all in the same moment.
‘Ness.’
‘Ness what?’
She hissed out the whole of it like a curse. ‘Adrana Ness.’
‘And can you read a bone or two, Adrana Ness? Oh, don’t look so timid. You’re frightened of me, frightened of what will become of you – and who’d blame you? You’re being addressed by Bosa Sennen, after all, and that’s enough to put a twist in anyone’s guts. But don’t believe all you hear. I’ll ask you again. Are you a Bone Reader? No? But you seem the sort. Doesn’t she, Pol?’
Rackamore didn’t give her the answer she wanted. She made him scream again.
‘You,’ she said, her focus shifting. ‘Sad-faced little man. What do you have to say about the girl? Is she the one?’
I heard Triglav answer this time.
‘No? What would she be then? Master of sail? Those hands of hers haven’t done an honest day’s work in their lives. Squint your lamps at them!’
I remembered Adrana’s hand in mine, and the imprint she’d left on the glass.
‘Admit it, sad-faced man.’
Triglav said something.
I heard a sound like a whipcrack, then a man’s scream. But the scream didn’t last long. It guttered out, became a kind of gurgling, and then the gurgling turned to silence.
I knew she’d killed Triglav.
‘Now that was rude of him, wasn’t it, Pol? Bosa asked a fair question and Bosa expected a fair answer. What about you, sharp-faced lady? Are you going to be so reticent?’
I heard a shriek, a woman’s shriek, and of those who remained I knew it belonged to Prozor rather than Jusquerel. Then Prozor let out a curse. There was no whipcrack this time, but a thud and a groan and then another thud, and then a kind of wet crunching sound, as if a skull had just been smashed in.
Then a terrible silence.
‘Stop,’ Adrana said, her voice breaking as she spoke up. ‘Stop. It’s me. I’m the one you’re after. I’m the Bone Reader.’
Again I got that shiver of admiration and terror, all mixed together. The fact that she didn’t sound brave and sure of herself only made me think more of her. She was scared and still she’d spoken.
‘Good,’ Bosa Sennen said. ‘But think of the trouble you’d have saved, if we’d got here sooner. Come here, girl. I was right, wasn’t I? You have the look for it. Can’t mistake a Sympathetic, and the more time you spend with the bones, the more it shows. Now – who’s the other one?’
‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Adrana said.
‘But Bosa had it on good authority that there were two minds sending through the Monetta’s bones.’
‘It was him . . . Cazaray. Plugging in at the same time, teaching me how it works.’
‘Teaching you how it works. So what you’re telling Bosa is, no one else came aboard with you at Mazarile? You were the only recruit?’
‘Yes,’ Adrana said. ‘Yes. Just me.’
‘But when we found you, they said there was someone on the other side of that glass. Another girl, somewhere else on this ship.’
‘There’s no one else,’ Jusquerel said, in her slow, calm way. ‘There never was. Your idiots saw her reflection in the glass, that’s all.’
I heard the whipcrack sound again. I waited for the screams, but Jusquerel didn’t give her that satisfaction.
‘You killed her for nothing,’ Adrana said.
‘Bosa was just making a point, that’s all. There’s a bone room on this ship and we’ll find it sooner or later. And if there’s another on board who so much as smells of Mazarile, we’ll have them as well.’ There was a slurping sound, like something being pulled from a pudding, then a kind of mechanical ratcheting, like a clock being wound up. ‘That’s Bosa’s promise, you see. And Pol knows that Bosa keeps her promises. Don’t I, Captain?’
Rackamore mumbled something. I had taken him to be dead by then, but it was clear that she had kept him alive, even as she butchered the rest of them.
‘Oh, Pol. What’s wrong? Don’t you want to look Bosa in the eye? Does it trouble you too much?’ And she let out a sick cackle. ‘Here. Let me help you. Fix your lamps on me, and tell me you like what you see.’
Rackamore let out a shriek, then. There was pain in it, certainly, and I didn’t doubt that she’d hurt him badly. But something more than pain. Something I didn’t care to dwell on too much, because it sounded too much like grief or despair.
Someone tried the door.
The wheel began to turn, the lock being worked from the outside. I moved to the wheel and braced my hands against it, planting my feet against the wall. I had no plan, beyond resisting the turning of that wheel for as long as I was able. For a second or two, it almost felt like I had a chance. The wheel held, and I began to force it back in the other direction, tightening the lock. I only managed a quarter turn before it jerked in my hand and began to turn hard the other way, far too strongly for me to resist.
Garval pushed her head through the widening gap.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
‘How . . .’
‘Just come.’ Garval reached in and pulled me out of the bone room. Then she closed the door and spun the wheel again, tightening it until the tendons popped out on her forearms. ‘Make them think there’s someone in there – give them a reason to waste their time.’
‘How did you get o
ut?’
‘Your sister,’ Garval said matter-of-factly. ‘She came and she undid my straps. She said if something bad was going to happen, she didn’t want me tied up in there.’
It must have been when Rackamore sent Adrana back to make one last check on the bones, while I was being shown the Gunner’s Girdle.
‘I’m glad she did. But I’m afraid it hasn’t helped us much. Did you hear Bosa Sennen just now?’
‘I heard.’
‘She’s killed most of them. Cazaray and Mattice outside, in the launch. Hirtshal and Trysil on the hull, Prozor, Triglav and Jusquerel just now. I don’t know about Rack. But she’s got Adrana, and she knows I’m somewhere else on the ship.’ I drew a heavy breath, and my eyes stung as if I were about to start crying. I thought about the ones who were already dead, and how close I’d come to accepting my own fate, and now this woman I hardly knew was here to help me. ‘Oh, Garval. I’m so glad to see you. But we’re still in trouble – I am, anyway. She’s going to keep looking until she finds me.’
‘She won’t,’ Garval said. ‘Bosa Sennen knows there’s another Reader. But she doesn’t know it’s you.’
I wiped a tear from my eye, wondering what I was expected to make of that pretty distinction.
‘The automatic door closed between us,’ I said. ‘Sealed me down here, Adrana on the other side. Bosa’s people got her. But I’d already given her my crossbow, not that it would have made much difference.’
‘You won’t need a crossbow,’ Garval said.
‘My sister fought them. I’ll do the same.’
‘No. You’ll hide.’
She took me away from the bone room in the opposite direction from that I had come, making our way in a general sense towards the stern rather than the bow. Before very long we’d come to one of the sealed bulkhead doors. Garval hammered the controls, but the door stayed shut.
‘I knew we’d be blocked.’
‘No.’
Garval dug her nails into a slit in the walling next to the door and levered away a whole panel, revealing an opening into a dingy, echoey recess. A person could just about squeeze through the opening before they met a secondary wall clotted with pipes, tubes, cables and wires, some of which glowed with a sickly radiance. I wondered if it was the work of Jusquerel, at some point in her career as Integrator. Some of it ran through the corridors on the other side of the panels, but just as much of it was hidden.
‘Get in.’
‘I’m not getting in there! My sister’s up front with Bosa Senne—’
‘She’s dead,’ Garval said bluntly. ‘Your sister. Or might as well be. Bosa’ll use her up and spit her out. You think they didn’t tell me what Bosa’s capable of? You need to stop thinking about your sister. She was kind to me, but I can’t help her, and I can help you. You hide. Sit tight and quiet. Bosa doesn’t want this ship, she wants two readers. Once she’s got them, she’ll leave.’
‘She said she’d tear the ship apart until she finds me.’
‘Only if she thinks she hasn’t already got you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You were kind to me as well, Fura. I’m sorry about all the screaming.’
Some inkling of what she meant to do formed in my mind. ‘No!’
‘Quiet. You get in that hole before it’s too late. I’ll seal you in good and tight. You wait a day at least, two if you can stand it, then you get out. Bosa’ll be gone by then.’
‘No,’ I said again, but softer this time. ‘You don’t have to do this, Garval. You can still go home.’
‘There’s no home for me, Fura. The skull cracked me open like an egg. What’s broken can’t be put right. Even Rackamore knew that. He was just making the right noises, saying they’d get me back eventually. It was never going to do me any good.’
I edged my way into the hole, trembling at the thought of being sealed in, and of how long I might have to remain there.
‘I won’t forget this.’
‘It’s not about forgetting me. It’s about remembering Bosa Sennen. If the chance ever comes for me to slip a knife into her throat, I’ll do it. But it probably won’t. You, though . . .’ She paused, measuring me up, as if at the last instant she’d called her own judgement into question. ‘You’ll remember. I know you will.’
I was in the hole. There was space to either side of me, stretching away into darkness. I had to draw my knees up high to fit into the gap. It was already uncomfortable, and I’d only been inside for seconds.
Garval reached out and took my hand.
‘Move,’ she said, before allowing our fingers to slip apart. ‘I’m sealing you in. Good luck, Fura.’
‘Good luck, Garval. When you find my sister . . . you’ll tell her I’m all right, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘And that I won’t forget her. I’ll find a way to get her back.’
‘I will.’
Garval slid the panel back into place. There was an outline of light, Garval’s fingertips on the edges of the panel, then darkness.
TWO
JASTRABARSK
7
Voices came and went. Boots and fists hammered on metal. I heard shouts, calls, once or twice a broken-off scream of fury or anguish. It was uncomfortable where I was, and more so by the hour, but the ship was always a creaky, grumbly thing and if I’d stirred I might easily have made a sound that gave away my position. I didn’t stir, though. It wasn’t because I had the willpower to keep myself still, but because the fear was running through my blood and it locked me into place just as if Doctor Morcenx had slipped some paralysing agent into me. My chin trembled and my heart sped, but the rest of me was like rock. Hours and hours passed like that, with the pain of being squeezed into that spot getting louder and sharper, but the fear of moving always beating it, like the two were playing a game to see which could get ahead of the other.
I say hours, but without a watch it was a knotty thing to know how much time was passing, and my own heartbeat was about as useful as an over-wound clock. I thought back to the boredom of long, dreary lessons and afternoons of study. If it felt like an hour, it was probably only ten minutes. Garval had said that I ought to wait two days if I could stand it, but I began to wonder if I had the fortitude to last a fraction of that time.
It was bad when the ship was noisy, because at least then I knew they were still out there, still wandering her passages, knocking on doors and panels, shouting and barking to each other. I picked up tongues and accents and rumours of accents, and without catching one sensible word I got an education in worlds and places I never knew or dreamt of.
The worst was when it got quiet.
An hour went by, maybe another, when there was nothing to hear but the common noises of the ship, sounds of wood and metal, creaking and complaining. And then even those sounds got quieter, with more space between them. I started to think that maybe they had gone. And because my fear lost its lead over the discomfort, I started unpicking myself from one position to another, my toes and fingers tingling as blood vessels and nerves untwisted themselves. Not really meaning to, I pressed my back against a rib in the ship’s outer wall and it seemed to twitch and shiver, sending a metallic sound racing away from me like a tin giggle. I froze again.
A voice sounded. It was some way off and I caught nothing of what was said, but it was one of the voices I’d heard before and I knew with a stone certainty that Bosa’s crew were still aboard.
A minute, maybe two, and I sensed movement passing my hiding spot. A fist knuckled a panel. A voice grunted out an oath. Another voice pushed out a handful of words that sounded defensive and threatening.
I kept so still that the lungstuff in my lungs started settling, like dust in a room no one enters.
Then the voices and movement went away and there was another silence.
I
can’t say how long it was before that silence hardened and I began to believe that they had finally left. But I didn’t make the error of trusting in it too quickly. I stayed put, and when the discomfort and pain had built up inside me like a hard, hot knot, I imagined pushing that knot out through my skin, until it was floating outside me like a little angry star, and I could stand it a bit better that way. By the time I was done, though, I was surrounded by little angry stars.
Six hours must have gone by that like. Then six more. Sleep had been impossible at first, between the discomfort and the fear, but now I was too tired to fight if off. Whether I napped for minutes or hours, I couldn’t say. Only that the near-silence remained, and the darkness, and I believed at last that I was truly alone.
Bosa Sennen had taken what she wanted.
Bosa Sennen was gone.
I still moved quietly. When I finally dared touch the panel I worked my fingers into the gap and levered it away with great care, scrunching my eyes against the dim glow of the corridor’s lightvine. Then the panel slipped from my fingers and drifted across to the other side of the corridor. I snatched at it but was too slow. It clattered into the wall.
I held my breath. It was pointless to hide again. If I’d been heard, they’d find me, as sure as Paladin always found Adrana and me when we used to rope him into our games. But after minutes of waiting I began to accept that the ship really was empty.
I went to the galley, where I’d last seen the others.
I could tell you how I’d have wished to have reacted, when I found the bodies; how I’d have liked to have been all bold and dignified, keeping a respectful composure – or I could tell you what really happened, including the vomit and the tears and the self-pity.