‘My sister’s on Bosa’s ship,’ I said, relieved that the truth was at least a bit out in the open. ‘She’s in trouble, and it would have been worse for both of us if Bosa knew I was her. So I had to pretend to be someone else.’
‘What did Bosa want with your sister?’ Meveraunce asked.
‘We were meant to be the new Bone Readers. Cazaray was getting too old, so they brought us in to replace him. I can read a bone but Adrana was better than me. Bosa took her because she needed a Bone Reader as well.’
‘Why didn’t she take you?’ Jastrabarsk asked.
‘I hid. There was a woman, Garval, who offered herself to Bosa in my place.’
Meveraunce looked sceptical. ‘Noble of her, knowing Bosa’s reputation.’
‘Garval didn’t have much to lose,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s true. I’m Fura Ness.’
‘That’s supposed to mean something?’ Lusquer asked.
‘There’s something else.’
‘We may as well hear it all,’ Jastrabarsk said, settling his arms across the chestplate of his suit.
‘I’m not alone.’
They stiffened, Lusquer’s hand twitching as if he might reach for a weapon at any instant. Meveraunce eyed me doubtfully. Jastrabarsk lifted up his chin and nodded slowly.
‘Who. Where. And this had better be the last surprise out of your mouth.’
Meveraunce examined her carefully, then pronounced that she was satisfied that Prozor’s wounds were superficial.
‘Sure as hell don’t feel superficial.’
‘We’ll get you stitched up,’ Jastrabarsk said. ‘And fed and watered. And cleaned. Then you can start spilling some of that hard-earned wisdom our way. I’m sure our own Bauble Reader wouldn’t object to a good squint at your notebooks.’
We were taken aboard the launch, and then ferried back to the Iron Courtesan. Lusquer stayed behind on the Monetta’s Mourn, beginning the process of working out what might be salvaged. Once we were off-loaded, Jastrabarsk sent three more of his crew back to help Lusquer.
‘That loot still belongs to Rackamore’s crew,’ Prozor said, just in case she had not made her point the first six or seven times she uttered much the same statement. ‘We brought it back from the bauble good and proper, and it’s getting divided fair and square.’
‘Between the two of you?’ Jastrabarsk asked.
‘The four of us,’ Prozor corrected with a stern look. ‘Adrana’s still one of us, no matter who she’s being made to work with. We’ll hold her share.’
‘That’ll be a long wait. Who’s the other one?’
Prozor looked perplexed. ‘Garval, of course.’
Jastrabarsk frowned. By then he had heard more of our story. ‘You told me Garval cheated her way onto your crew.’
‘She did,’ Prozor said. ‘Then she redeemed herself. Still entitled to her cut.’
‘Magnanimous of you.’
‘Just doing things Rack’s way, is all.’
Jastrabarsk gave another of his slow nods. The way his huge, bony head tilted, it made me think of a boulder wobbling on another boulder. ‘We do things fair as well. What we find on the Monetta by way of loot, that’s yours to divide. But what’s left in the bauble, that’s nobody’s until it’s claimed.’
‘No complaints with that.’
‘You’re going back into the bauble?’ I asked.
‘Back?’ Jastrabarsk asked. ‘We haven’t been once. Yes, we’ll be going into it. But we’re too near the end of this window. Quancer’s auguries predict a high likelihood of another opening in about eighteen days. It won’t stay open long enough to make more than a few trips, but we’ll make the most of it.’
‘You could do it,’ Prozor said, her voice still raw.
‘Do what?’ Jastrabarsk asked.
‘My estimate, you’ve got another thirty hours before that surface firms over.’
Jastrabarsk set his jaw. ‘All very well saying that, when it won’t be your neck on the line.’
‘Who’s to say it wouldn’t be?’
His eyes flashed out from their gloomy depths.
‘Meaning what?’
‘I’ll stand by my reading of that bauble. I’ll go in with your team. With,’ she added, raising a finger, ‘a fair cut of the loot. And unless your Opener doesn’t know their work, we can be in and out of there with a ten-hour safety margin.’
I looked at Prozor, thinking of all that had passed between us. I believed that she was as good as her reputation maintained, but I’d really only seen the evidence of that once, when the bauble opened in exact accordance with her prediction. Only a fool would have put too much stock in that, knowing how easily blind chance could have played its role. But now that the rest of the crew was gone, there wasn’t anyone else left for me to hang my loyalty on.
‘I trust Prozor,’ I said quietly. ‘I know she wouldn’t get this wrong. And I’d like to see the inside of a bauble as well. If you allow her to go, I’ll go with her.’
‘Eighteen days with your thumbs jammed where no photon’s ever gone,’ Prozor said. ‘And nothing at the end of it after that but wait. Or you could be in and out and on your merry way inside thirty hours.’
Whether Jastrabarsk knew it himself or not, the doubt had been planted. This was Prozor, after all, one of the best Scanners that ever breathed, and she was offering him a chance to avoid weeks of tedium.
‘You’ll redo whatever it was brought you to that thirty-hour estimate,’ Jastrabarsk said, jamming a stubby finger in Prozor’s face. ‘And somewhere in the region of thirty hours isn’t good enough for me. If I was even going to think about sending in the launch now, instead of at the next opening . . . I’d want this nailed down to minutes.’
‘I’ll need my paperwork,’ Prozor said.
‘I’ll have Lusquer bring everything that belongs to you. But I’m making no promises. You don’t just turn up on my ship and start dictating terms.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Cap’n. But we’re all here to earn ourselves some quoins, aren’t we?’
Jastrabarsk snorted. But she had dropped the most persuasive argument of all.
The launch dropped to the bauble with a crew of eight. Prozor said we had twenty-seven hours and thirty minutes until the surface baked over again, and if that had been the only calculation on the table my nerves would have been bad enough. But Quancer held that the remaining time – not even the margin – was now only nine and a half hours. That was about enough time to get into the bauble, to reach the point where Rackamore’s crew had found their first haul of loot. It wasn’t anywhere near enough time to get back out again. And yet Jastrabarsk had decided to place total confidence in Prozor’s prediction, disregarding the advice of his own specialist.
It reinforced my sense that these crews had an uncommon approach to hazard. They accepted it – even welcomed it – when danger centred around the business of bauble surfaces and auguries. They were willing to place themselves at tremendous risk where it concerned loot and reward and competition between the crews, and they thrived on the challenges of doors and locks and weaponised security barriers. But they shrivelled at the idea of standing up to Bosa. She put the deep shivers in them, and since she could be avoided or ignored most of the time, they had no incentive to face the fear she embodied. But it would be wrong of me to call them cowards. In their element, there wasn’t anyone braver or more accepting of death’s inevitability.
I wondered if I could ever be like them.
Not today, that was for certain. But Prozor had enough confidence in her numbers that she was ready to join the expedition, and I’d promised I would join her if she went along. They had fitted us into suits from the Iron Courtesan’s own stores, and they were awkward and uncomfortable, but we bit down and made light of the discomfort, knowing it would have been just as bad if the Courtesan’s crew h
ad been stuffed into our own suits.
Jastrabarsk had his own versions of Loftling’s maps, but he had also recovered Rackamore’s equivalent records, and he pressed Prozor and me for all that we could recollect of the Monetta’s first expedition.
‘It went according to plan,’ was the best Prozor could offer. ‘Loftling’s charts couldn’t have been too bad. But then again, Rack had Mattice, and there never was a better Opener.’
But all crews, I was slowly learning, tended to think that they had the best of some particular specialisation. Once in a while there might even have been some truth in it. Jastrabarsk’s expedition had two Openers, two Assessors, and while I was too green to speak with any authority, they seemed confident and competent. On the way down, they had maps and charts all over the launch, and the debate was quick and difficult to follow, like a card game played by seasoned hands.
‘They know their baubles,’ Prozor whispered to me, as the rockets cut in for our final approach. ‘We’ll be golden.’
Now we had nearer to twenty-six hours, but that was still ample time, provided Prozor was right. And once again I forced myself into that state of acceptance that said she would have made no error; that to think otherwise was a kind of disloyalty.
We landed at the same point where Rackamore had put down his own launch. The depressions where its skids had cut into the ground were still visible, and it was only a short distance to the entrance on Loftling’s charts. We finished sealing up our suits, then did a round of double-checking, tugging on lungstuff-lines, watching seals for signs of failure. Squawk channels were tested, weapons, munitions and cutting equipment divided among the party. Jastrabarsk’s crew might have had different suits to Rackamore’s expedition, and some of their equipment was of older or newer vintage, but the methodology was similar. Nothing complicated was to be trusted in the environment of the bauble. They even had a system of sign language to use in case the suit-to-suit squawk became inoperable.
We left the launch and crossed the short stretch of ground to the surface door. From a distance it would have been easy to miss. A ramp led down a sheer-sided trench, with a kind of bulkhead and airlock at the end of it. Controls were set into the side of the bulkhead.
‘You see how new it all looks?’ Jastrabarsk said to me over the squawk. ‘Not a scratch from space debris, cosmic radiation . . . and I doubt more than a hundred hands have touched that panel in ten million years.’
Jastrabarsk’s Opener had brought along a heavy toolkit that hinged apart to reveal many organised compartments. She was rummaging through the contents while another of Jastrabarsk’s people held up a copy of Loftling’s charts. Above the control panel was a rectangle of neat little pictograms, arranged in vertical columns. A type of language, but nothing I thought I had ever seen before, even in Rackamore’s library.
Over the squawk I heard: ‘Typical Ice Throne stuff. All bluff, no bite.’
‘They’ve bitten us before.’
‘Not this time. If Loftling’s circuit map is righteous, should pick up a power node right about . . . here.’
‘Got it?’
‘On the mark. Good old Loftling. Could someone pass me that inductance coil? No, that’s not the coil. Yes, that compartment. No, the larger one – what do you think we’re trying to get through here, paper?’
I heard a clunk, transmitted through the ground on which I stood. The door heaved open, sliding down into a slot in the base of the trench. We filed into an antechamber where the only light came from our helmet torches, and where the walls were covered in ranks of pictograms.
‘Warnings,’ said the Assessor. ‘Meant to get us all shivery. Abandon all hope for your mortal souls, that kind of thing. I’ve seen worse. We can ignore it all.’
Inside the antechamber was another door that would not function until the outer one had been closed. I did not like the feeling of being bottled in to this ancient, dread place, knowing how few hours remained until the field surface reinstated itself, and we would be trapped. If Jastrabarsk’s Bauble Reader had it right, we would only need to endure for eighteen days before the surface opened again. That would be bearable, provided the lander had enough lungstuff and supplies for us. But Prozor said Quancer was wrong, and that when this window snapped shut, it would be years before the next opening.
Why were we going deeper into this nightmare, when the sane, sensible thing was to get out while we could?
Prozor dropped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Ain’t done this as many times as Mattice or Jusquerel, Fura. The good part is I still remember how wrong it seems, first time out. But being on the ship felt wrong to you at first, didn’t it? Then wearing a suit, going outside? You got used to those things. This is the same. Gets easier.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.
She’d started calling me Fura now, instead of girlie.
Soon we were going down the endless spiral stairs that bored their way into the heart of the sphereworld. In my mind’s eye, I’d seen a descending staircase curving down and out of sight, like the one that threaded the cupola in our house on Mazarile.
It wasn’t like that all, and I was glad not to have been forewarned.
The stairs went around the inside of a very wide shaft, about one hundred spans across, near as I could judge it. They jutted out from the walls, solid enough, and there was sufficient room for three of us to walk side by side. But there was no bannister on the stairs, and as much as I tried to fix my eyes on the next tread below, it was impossible to screen out the view of the stairs continuing on their steeply descending way, curving around onto the opposite face wall, spiralling down into a dizzying dark void. Rackamore’s party had spent most of their time in the bauble either going down or coming up these nightmare stairs, and I began to wonder if I’d the nerves to cope.
We had to move quickly, too. It was no good dawdling. The loot was a league under us, and the pitch of the stairs meant that we had to walk nearly three leagues for every vertical one. In the suits, the best that we could manage was a bit less than half a league per hour, so we would need at least six hours just to reach our prize.
It was worse than that. The effort to make each step got harder the deeper we went, and that was nothing to do with fatigue. I’d spent my life living between the crust of Mazarile and the glass skin of the skyshell, and because of that I’d never been closer than four leagues to the swallower.
When we had gone through the surface door here, there were the same four leagues between us and the swallower. By the time we reached the loot, only three leagues lay under us. That was enough to make us feel as if we weighed more than half as much again, each footfall becoming a leaden effort, each step requiring more care than the last.
Halfway to the core – where there was a house-sized bottle containing the swallower in its magnetic pinch – we’d have walked around under four times our normal weight. Except by then we’d be doing well if we could crawl.
‘The shaft goes a lot deeper,’ Jastrabarsk said, as we gathered our strength for the final twist of the staircase. ‘Maybe all the way down. But if there’s loot stashed much deeper, it’ll stay there until the Old Sun fizzles out.’
‘It’ll be even harder bringing stuff back up the stairs,’ I said, feeling as if my legs had nothing more to give.
‘Hell, to begin with,’ the captain agreed, with a sort of malicious delight in it. ‘But if there’s one consolation, you get lighter as you get higher. Not that you really notice, when you’re down to your last drop of energy. Watch your footing now, Arafura. Seen too many good people trip at the last stage.’
I had no intention of tripping. I was thinking of the story they had told me on the Monetta’s Mourn, about the Fang, about Prozor’s husband, Githlow, about Sheveril who had panicked, about their long screaming fall into the shaft.
I could think of worse ways to die, but not many.
There was a doorwa
y leading off the stairway, back into the sheer wall of the shaft, and from that modest doorway extended an ever-branching series of chambers and sub-shafts, more than we could ever hope to explore in a matter of hours. There was no light beyond that which we provided, but power still trickled through the walls and into some of the doors and their mechanisms. Jastrabarsk’s Openers and Assessors were in babbling dialogue, while Prozor and I mostly kept our gobs shut unless our opinions were sought. Loftling’s charts were turned this way and that, annotations were scribbled onto them in luminous ink.
‘Look at the mess Rackamore left behind him,’ someone grumbled, indicating a pile of tools and cutting equipment left near one of the doors.
‘They meant to return,’ I said. ‘Rack was going in another eight or nine times, that was the plan. Then Bosa jumped us. They only just had time to get back on the launch.’
‘We thank them for the head start,’ Jastrabarsk said, hands on hips as he sized up the litter left behind from the earlier expedition. ‘And the generous donation to our supplies. How much time left to us?’
‘Twenty hours, eleven minutes,’ Prozor said. Then, with a teasing edge: ‘Not getting the shivers yet, are you, Captain?’
‘I get the shivers the moment I see a bauble. Reason I’m still alive. I don’t have to like these places to make an honest profit out of them.’ Then he tapped a fist against the crown of his helmet. ‘Getting some static on squawk. Might be nothing.’
But as we worked through the doors, into the main cache of loot, our suits began breaking down in a hundred small ways. The suit-to-suit squawk was the first thing to turn unreliable, but it didn’t stop there. Torches began to flicker. Recirculation valves began to jam. My glove stiffened up to the point where I could barely move the fingers.
I had already heard the stories from Mattice and the others. This was all part of the normal pattern of things going wrong inside baubles, and not anything that was unusual to this expedition. It was why none of them trusted anything too complicated to begin with. The less you came to rely on, the less you missed when it failed. It was also why – considerations of auguries aside – it was seldom wise to spend too much time in a bauble.