Some things were best left unsaid.
20
We hauled in twenty-one days later, swinging into a circular orbit around the smooth, bone-coloured pebble that was our target. The bauble field had dropped weeks ago, according to the auguries, but if anyone had been here in the meantime there was no trace of them. Privately, Prozor assured me it was unlikely that we had been beaten to our prize. For most crews the Fang would not have been an enticing target, with its high vaults cleaned out and the deeper levels too much trouble to bother with. ‘But they didn’t have Mattice to get through the doors that stumped ’em,’ she said.
‘Nor do we.’
‘The problem on this ship isn’t Strambli. I’ve sniffed around her and I reckon she knows her trade – and what she doesn’t, I’ll be able to fill in with what I gleaned from Mattice.’ I thought she was done, but she added: ‘And Githlow, too. He was our Assessor, but on any good team, an Assessor and an Opener aren’t leagues apart.’
She had been willing to utter the name of the Fang since we joined Trusko’s crew, but this was the first time the name of her husband had come out of her lips.
‘You’re planning on going into it, then,’ I said.
‘I’d have sooner never seen the place again, Fura. But if we’re going near it I may as well put some ghosts to bed.’
We were in the galley, talking quietly while the others were off with their duties or catching squint-time.
‘While stirring up some other Ghosties.’
‘It’s their shivery stuff we’d be stirring, not them.’ She managed a smile. ‘What’s stoppin’ you, by the way?’
‘Stopping me from what?’
‘From talkin’ old Proz out of it. Thought you’d be all over me like a big glowy rash. No, Proz, you don’t need to go into the Fang, we can leave that to Trusko and his team of experts. But you seem to be taking the other tack.’
‘I don’t know about Strambli. Or any of ’em, for that matter. Maybe they’ve been held back by Trusko. But I know this: we’re not leaving here without the Ghostie stuff, and that means we ain’t leaving anything to chance. Of course you’d be going in. You’ve spent most of the last three weeks dropping little hints that you might be able to fill Gathing’s boots. Trusko wouldn’t have put us into orbit if he weren’t going through with the expedition, and he wouldn’t be thinking of going in with just his nibs and Strambli. Maybe Surt or Drozna can step in if they’re needed, but Trusko’d be a fool not to have you on that launch, and the cove knows it.’
‘He needs a little more work,’ she admitted. ‘But he’ll crack soon enough.’
The business with Gathing was behind us, for now. The crew seemed content to accept the idea that he’d been smuggling stuff out of the bauble under their noses. Maybe they didn’t want to poke too deeply into that explanation, but it wasn’t as if any of them were sobbing their hearts out over the death of old snidey-face. It would have been different it had been Drozna or Strambli we’d had to vent, but Gathing hadn’t gone out of his way to make friends, and sometimes there’s a cost for that.
‘Here’s something else he’ll need working on,’ I said, leaning in to bring my face closer to hers. ‘I’m going in too. Not because I don’t trust you to get the job done, but because this is my chance. Jastrabarsk took me into that bauble, but that was just a nice little stroll up and down some stairs.’
‘He won’t bite on it, Fura, not after you’ve shown how useful you are with the bones.’
‘I’ll make him, won’t I?’
‘You’d be better off sitting on the ship. There’s risk in baubles, any baubles, ’specially with a narrow window.’
‘He don’t know that, though. He thinks we’ve got days.’
‘Doesn’t make him a fool, does it? He might think he’s got time in hand, but that don’t mean he’s goin’ to throw his Bone Reader into the fray, like he can just pop out and get a new one.’
‘I still want to be there.’
‘No,’ Prozor said, settling her hand on my tin one. ‘We had a plan, and we stick to it. Ain’t any part of that plan involved you goin’ into the bauble. We get the Ghostie stuff, break it to ’em gently what it is they’ve found, then set about trainin’ ’em up in how to use it. Through all that, they still think we’re what we claim to be. No mention of Bosa or the Nightjammer, not until we’re good ’n’ ready. Then – if you’re still set on this madness – you start drawin’ up a scheme to make the Queenie bait. Weeks or months from now, I don’t care. But until then, you don’t so much as twitch an eyelid out of character. You’re the Bone Reader, and Bone Readers don’t start beggin’ to go into baubles, not unless they’re up to somethin’ they oughtn’t be.’
‘But we are,’ I said.
Trusko might have lost his Assessor, but that had not stopped the preparations for the expedition. They had been going on throughout the course of the crossing, with equipment being moved in and out of the launch according to the expected needs of the next bauble. I had seen how Rackamore organised his supplies and the difference was stark. The stores on the Queenie were a jumble of bits and pieces, none of it properly stored away or classified, and quite a lot of it was broken beyond any practical repair. Just finding enough rope to run down the shaft was a challenge. It was spun from the same yardage that made up the rigging, but that didn’t mean you could swap one for the other, not without skills and equipment Trusko didn’t have. Prozor and I kept our traps buttoned while all this fumbling and rummaging was going on. It wouldn’t pay to be too critical, implying that we’d both crewed on better ships.
I thought to myself: this is the crew you expect to put up against Bosa Sennen, when Rackamore’s wasn’t sufficient?
But now wasn’t the time to lose my nerve.
The heavier, bulkier gear, though, couldn’t be loaded onto the launch through its normal locks. It would have to be lashed onto the outside, and that meant it couldn’t be done until the launch was detached from the Queenie. Drozna wasn’t happy about the launch flying around near the ship while the sails were still out, so this last stage of the preparations had to wait until we were already in orbit. Trusko didn’t really see that as a problem, but then Trusko was still under the impression he had five days before the bauble was due to start thickening over.
Prozor had refined her auguries as we crept closer. The two days she’d promised us were down to a narrow thirty-seven hours now – and we were already eating into those hours.
‘Six hours to lash the winch gear on,’ Trusko was telling us, breezily unconcerned. ‘The time won’t be wasted. While Surt and Drozna are loading the gear, Tindouf and Prozor will help us with the final suit checks.’
‘I can help as well,’ I said.
‘Keep your head glued to those bones, Fura – you’ll be doing more than your share.’
I’d have argued my case, but I didn’t want to be seen to be too desperate to help out. Prozor was right about keeping in character. Bone Readers liked their pampered status, and it wouldn’t have fitted with that if I’d been in too big a hurry to help with the grunt work.
It had been three weeks since I’d been in contact with Adrana, and I was starting to think that I wouldn’t hear from her again. The best I could do was count the instances we had been in contact as a blessing, rather than something I’d been owed by fate. Even if my sister hadn’t managed to persuade Bosa to come to the Fang, it had still been a comfort to know that Adrana was alive. But three weeks of silence had begun to eat into me like acid.
I’d taken on my share of hazard by weaselling my way into Trusko’s crew. I didn’t want to think about the consequences of being discovered for what I was, at least not until I was good and ready for it. And I would be. But I had Prozor to help me, and in any case, what I was asking of Adrana shrunk my little gamble down to nothing. Trusko was a coward, probably, but I didn’t doubt that he coul
d muster up some scatterfire when the moment came. Bosa, though, was cruel to the marrow, and that was something else. I’d asked Adrana to try to trick her, to use Bosa’s greed against her, and I didn’t doubt that my sister would have given it a try. Not straight away, not until she’d mulled it over and considered it from every angle, but she would have done it sooner or later.
I knew Adrana. She couldn’t turn down a challenge from her little sister.
And I thought: what if she just wasn’t cunning enough for Bosa Sennen? Bosa must have already had some doubts about her, after the deception with Garval. It was one thing for me to manipulate Trusko, but Trusko didn’t have any reason to think ill of me.
I’d been starting to let my imagination run, wondering about the nasty things Bosa might have done to Adrana, as punishment for her betrayal.
Might still be doing.
But then she came through, and from the first instant of contact I knew something was different.
She was nearby.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked, once we’d got over the joy of knowing we were both alive.
‘Nowhere. Bosa’s been rationing the skull, knowing it might fail on her at any moment. I stopped being on the usual watches, and after that we were never on the bones at the same time. This is the first time in five days that she’s wanted me in the bone room. She just wants to know that she’s got a clear hunting ground, and that you aren’t up to anything you shouldn’t be.’
My reaction was equal parts pleasure and pure bowel-loosening terror.
‘Then she bit. She’s coming for us.’
‘She can see you. Long-range instruments. Knows you’ve hauled in sail, and you’re getting ready for an expedition. She won’t share everything with me, but I don’t think we’re more than three or four days out from you. Maybe closer. The way she’s using her ions and sails, you won’t see her until she’s within scatterfire range.’
‘Does she suspect anything?’
‘No telling with Bosa. I did it the way you said: didn’t try and encourage her or anything. Just put it out there, and let Bosa get the scent of blood. She isn’t interested in the Queen Crimson and she doesn’t think much of Trusko’s chances of pulling anything juicy out of that bauble. But she’ll give him time, anyway. No skin off her nose, to let him go in and out once or twice. That skull of yours isn’t going anywhere, and that’s the prize she’s most interested in.’
‘Has she asked about the Queenie’s Bone Reader?’
‘I’ve told her you aren’t anything special. But when she sees you, Fura, and sees how much you look like me . . .’
‘She won’t,’ I said. ‘Not until it’s too late.’
‘I know why you chose the Fang, Fura. It’s not just because of what happened to Githlow, and the place sticking in your mind. It’s what they found down in that vault. You think it’ll give you the edge over Bosa, let you take her.’
‘Not take her,’ I answered. ‘Destroy her. End her, and end the Nightjammer.’
‘You think you’ve seen the cruelty she’s capable of,’ Adrana said. ‘But you haven’t. Not yet. Not until you see Garval. She’s dead, Fura. Finally stopped breathing, the mercy of it. But that was only the start of it for Bosa. She took her jammed-up corpse and fixed it on that bowsprit spike, and she took the one that was there before and tossed it into the Empty . . .’
‘She didn’t invent cruelty,’ I said, something tingling in my tin fingers. ‘And no one made her the queen of it.’
I heard about Surt’s accident when I came out of the bone room. She had been outside, clomping her way around the hull on magnetic boots, ferrying equipment from the Queenie’s cargo lock, around the hull, and then lashing it onto the launch, which was stationed next to the main ship. There had been a problem with the lungstuff-supply on Drozna’s suit, the kind of commonplace fault that was to be expected on old, battered equipment. Prozor had taken over his share of the work while Drozna came back inside so Tindouf could make a repair to the suit.
Prozor had been the one who found Surt. She’d been working her way past one of the hydraulically controlled sail mechanisms, when the mechanism – supposedly in its stowed configuration – had sprung out away from the hull. I remembered how Hirtshal had used the Monetta’s sail-control gear to snag the tumbling launch, after Bosa started her attack against us. This was something similar. The gear had sprung out hard, like a catapult or switchblade. The main part of it hadn’t touched Surt – she’d have been pulped if it had – but one of the rigging lines had whipped against her, flinging her back onto the hull, and the impact had damaged her suit and knocked her out. Surt had been lucky – those rigging lines could easily cut through a suit – but she had concussion and a swelling bruise on the back of her head.
‘I don’t remember,’ Surt kept saying, when Prozor got her back into the Queenie. ‘I don’t remember. I was just out there, and everything was all right . . . I don’t remember.’
Which was maybe just as well.
I felt bad about what had happened to her, because I’d found a kindness in Surt and knew she’d done her best with Paladin, even if his head had only come back to me that one time. And I’d felt that she must have seen something in me, too, to ask for my help with reading, and that was a debt that I wasn’t anywhere near discharging. But I had to put that sort of sentiment out of my mind. Surt had been in the way of our plans, and the mercy was she’d only needed to be injured a little.
‘Luck’s got something against us,’ Trusko said, when we gathered in the galley and it was clear that Surt wasn’t in any kind of state to go back into a suit. ‘First our Assessor, now our Integrator.’
‘Surt’ll be right as rain, after a few days rest,’ Drozna said.
‘But she can’t fill Gathing’s boots,’ Trusko told him. ‘And no disrespect, Drozna, but when we’ll already be pushing our lines to the limit, I wouldn’t want the heaviest man on the ship in that bucket. That forces me to fall back on Prozor, I suppose. Normally I wouldn’t countenance sending a Bauble Reader inside one, no matter how much lore she might have picked up. But with Surt out of commission . . . and Tindouf . . .’
‘I knows where I’m most useful,’ Tindouf said, and that was the end of that, to everyone’s relief.
‘I can do it,’ Prozor said, doing a good job of sounding doubtful about it, just so that no one got the idea she was too keen. ‘But if I’m riskin’ my neck in that thing, I’d like to know why the new girl gets out of it so easily.’
‘I thought you two had put your differences behind you,’ Trusko said.
‘Ain’t about differences,’ Prozor said. ‘It’s about provin’ we’re all equal to our share of the cut. Surt was ready to go in, and it wasn’t expected of her either.’
‘She feels that strongly,’ I said, ‘then let me on the expedition as well.’
‘I need you on the bones, Fura.’
‘The bones haven’t given so much as a squeak in fifteen days,’ I told him. ‘If there was another ship near us, I’d know it. We can be in and out quick, can’t we, if Strambli does her job?’
Strambli’s larger eye flared with irritation, like a tram’s headlight pushing through fog. ‘Don’t you worry about me.’ Then: ‘I’m with Proz. Let the girlie prove ’erself. The bones’ll wait, and the auguries are on our side.’
‘They are,’ Trusko mused. ‘And they do have a point, Fura, as much as I’m loath to place my Bone Reader at any unnecessary risk. I suppose some practical suit time wouldn’t hurt you, and at least you’re lighter than Drozna.’
I gave my best sneer. ‘I said I’d do it, didn’t I?’
It took another three hours to finish getting the launch ready, by which time only twenty-eight hours remained for us to get in and out of the bauble. Prozor and I knew that, of course, but no one else did. Trusko was cross at being delayed by Surt’s accident, but he w
as still acting as if he had days to spare, and there wasn’t much Prozor and I could do to put the spur into him. There was already enough buzzing around in his head without adding to it.
‘I’ve had my share of happenstance,’ he was saying, as we sealed up for final departure. ‘But the death of one crew member, and the injury of another, within weeks of each other . . .’
‘They do say bad luck comes in threes,’ Strambli said. ‘I wonder what’s next?’
‘Oh, we’ve had our run of three,’ Trusko said, smiling at his own conviction. ‘Or four, if you want to count those first two baubles separately.’
There were four of us on the launch, as against Trusko’s normal team of three. Trusko and Strambli were the common elements, with Prozor and me substituting for the absent Gathing. We left Drozna, Tindouf and the injured Surt to mind the ship. Through the launch’s little windows I watched as the Queenie grew smaller and smaller, gradually losing itself against the distant stars and the icy thumb smear of the Swirly. It was just a ship, and not much of one, but all ships come to feel like home after a while, and whatever I felt of her crew, the Queenie herself had not let any of us down. Leaving her like that, all alone and at the mercy of the Nightjammer – out there somewhere, whether we could see it or not – I felt a small, silent shame.
But I meant to return.
Trusko took it nice and easy on the descent, spending a whole hour just getting us near the surface, and once we arrived he spent another hour scouting around the bauble, just in case there was something that didn’t square with the charts. We had twenty-six hours left by the time he finally got round to setting us down, and then there was another hour of dithering about how best to move the equipment into the shaft. Prozor and I couldn’t say anything to giddy him along, but when we met eyes the tension in hers was enough to blow a blood vessel.
‘I get it,’ I mouthed back.