Revenger 9780575090569 (16 page)

‘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.

But when I started scratching this thick red ink down onto this rough and leathery paper, I vowed that I’d stick to what happened, not what I might have wanted to happen. Setting down these letters and words is hard enough as it is, the way my fingers work, and I don’t want to waste my time by putting out anything but the solid truth of it, as I see it. It can’t be
The True and Accurate Testimony of Arafura Ness
unless I give it to you straight, so that’s what I’ve got to do.

So I suppose I’d best stick with the facts.

The fact that there were bodies wasn’t the main shock of it. I’d been expecting as much. I couldn’t see Bosa killing people and then going to the bother of disposing their corpses, like she was tidying up after herself.

I was also expecting – hoping, I suppose – not to find Adrana or Garval among the bodies. That wasn’t me being selfish in not wanting to see them dead, or not liking the idea of my sister taking her own life in desperation, just that them not being here meant there was a good chance they’d been taken, and if that was the case then it meant – for the time being, at least – Bosa had swallowed Garval’s lie.

No, the bad part was what she’d done to these people.

Cazaray, Mattice, Trysil and Hirtshal had died outside the ship, before Bosa ever set foot on it. I won’t say they were the lucky ones – what happened to Trysil and Hirtshal was nothing you’d wish on someone – but at least they weren’t face to face with Bosa when she killed them. Jusquerel and Triglav hadn’t been so fortunate, though. They’d got crossbow bolts for their trouble; Jusquerel above the sternum, through a soft part of her suit, and Triglav through the throat. There was blood all over the walls, spattered in little stars and craters, and there was more blood just floating around, in gluey red clots. If the blood wasn’t enough of a clue, I didn’t need much more to tell me that they were dead. Their bodies had stiffened up and their eyes were fixed open but not really looking at anything. It was cold in the ship and for once I wasn’t sorry, because the cold had kept them from decomposing too quickly.

Prozor was next. She’d been bludgeoned. Bosa had smashed her across the side of the skull with something blunt and heavy, like the stock of a crossbow. The wound was a knot of blood and hair, and as I touched it I felt a yielding, like wallpaper giving way over a patch of rotten wall.

Prozor and I hadn’t exactly been close. But I touched another hand to her, willing her some peace, and turned to Rackamore.

He was the worst.

The bolt was about twice as long as an index finger. It had gone in through his open mouth, aimed at an angle that took it through the roof of the mouth, into the brain cavity. It must have been going at quite a clip as half the length of the bolt had come out the back of his head before stopping in place. His eyes were still open, and it was like they were stuck rolling back into his sockets, as if he was trying to see the damage done by the bolt for himself.

I told myself that a shot like that, cutting through the precious structures of the brain – the delicate architecture of the temporal lobe, the hippocampus – couldn’t be anything but instantaneously fatal, slamming consciousness shut like a door after an angry visitor. There wasn’t any chance that he’d felt pain, was there?

But I couldn’t be sure.

The worst of it was the way Bosa had left the crossbow with him, like she didn’t even care to take the weapon with her. It was resting across Rackamore’s chest, his own fingers
half-
clutching at it. I imagined him fighting to keep the end of the weapon from being jammed into his mouth, but finally unable to resist.

‘You did what you could,’ I whispered, as if there were a chance of disturbing any of them.

I’d handled it well until then. I’d braced myself for the bodies, seen what she’d done to them, and studied it all with a sort of detachment, like they weren’t really there, or I was seeing them all behind glass, like wax dummies in a museum. Trying to persuade myself that they weren’t really bodies at all, or at least not the bodies of the same people I’d been talking to and laughing with not long ago.

But I couldn’t keep it up. It hit me in a wave, and I suppose all I’d ever been doing was putting off that moment. These bodies were the flesh and bones and meat of people who’d been speaking and breathing and moving around the last time I saw them, and they were people with names, and pasts; people I knew too much about; people who’d been kind and firm to me at times but mainly fair, and I knew I’d been halfway down the road to calling most of them friends, and the fact that they’d become these ruined, sightless things was too much.

I spewed my guts. I painted the walls with it, adding my vomit to the blood spatters that were already there. And the more I spewed, the more it wanted to come out of me, over and over, until all I could do was make dry heaving noises, like some braying animal. And then I curled myself up into a ball in the corner of the room and closed my eyes and thought about how I’d survived and they hadn’t, and the guilt of simply not being dead pushed down on me like an iron shroud. And with the guilt came a half measure of pity because while I was breathing, and the rest of them either dead or taken, that didn’t exactly mean I was home and dry.

I was the only living being on a damaged ship, surrounded by the
blood-
and
vomit-
spattered corpses of what had once been its crew, and what I knew about the operation of sunjammers you could scratch on the tip of one finger with a fat rusty nail and still have room to spare.

In other words, I’d got myself into quite a predicament.

As I scribble these scarlet words down – waiting for the ink to dry before I scuff it like a bloodstain – it occurs to me that there’s a version of Fura Ness that just gave up and died on the
Monetta
. She curled up and gave up – on surviving; on Adrana and Garval; on the hope for justice and vengeance; on the hard burden of carrying the memory of her crew; and on making good the powerful wrong that was done to them.

I don’t blame that version of Fura. I don’t judge her or think ill of her. In some ways I think she was probably a better, nicer version than the cove setting down these words. Being dead, she didn’t have to face some of the things I’ve seen, or hold some of the knowledge stinking up my skull. And if she had handwriting – which would be a tricky proposition, being dead – you can bet your last quoin it wouldn’t be as scrawly as mine.

But I’m not her.

I can’t tell you what snapped in me, only that something did. It was like that last sob you give when you know you’re done crying and it’s time to dry your eyes and face the world. Maybe it was because I kept seeing Garval’s face, before she slid the panel into place and offered herself up to Bosa. Maybe it was Adrana, on the other side of the glass, pressing her hand against it like she needed that last touch with her living kin. Or maybe it was just some stubborn survival instinct, one that told me I’d done enough heaving and bawling and feeling sorry for myself, and now was the time to act.

So I did.

I cleaned myself up as best I could, then cleaned up what I could of the blood and the puke in the galley. I left the bodies where they were for now, then went to the control room. The first thing I paid heed to was the ship’s clock, which told me I’d been in Garval’s hideaway for a day and a half – about half what it felt like. The second thing I noticed was the sickly pulsing glow of the sweeper. The instrument was still running on some minimal power. Captain Jastrabarsk’s ship was still showing up at maximum range, but unless I was reading the sweeper wrong, there was no one close to us.

Except there wasn’t any ‘us’ now.

Just me.

I went to the squawk console. Its dials and readouts were still aglow, but faintly. I’d watched Rackamore and the others when they used it, and although there were aspects I hadn’t got straight in my head, the basics weren’t too knotty. There were switches to receive and to talk, and various channel and power selectors. The console was still set as it had been in when Bosa Sennen made her demands to board.

I snapped the switches, worked the selector toggles, watched as the dials flickered almost to darkness before regaining their glow. My hand trembled on the ‘talk’ switch. I had seen Rackamore use it so many times, and the urge to scream for help was almost more than I could bear.

Almost.

I moved my hand from the switch, then found the main control that put the console to sleep. It snapped with a hard, definite clunk. The dials and readouts faded to darkness. I hoped they’d come back on again when next I tried.

I went to the sweeper and was about to do the same thing when a cold dread passed through me. I’d almost given myself away to Bosa. If the sweeper was active now, she would be aware of it – and she would know if someone was around to switch it off suddenly.

So I let the sweeper remain.

The cold was beginning to get to me, so I worked back through the ship to find some extra clothes, blanking the corpses in the galley as I passed through. The ship was cooler than it had been before the attack, her metal surfaces turning icy under my fingertips. My breath was showing up in the lungstuff.

The cold wasn’t the worst of it, though. I was thirsty. Hungry, too, but it was the thirst that was making itself felt the loudest. So I went to one of the water spigots and pressed my lips around the nozzle. Water had come out when I needed to clean up the galley, but now it wasn’t more than a dribble. Then the spigot dried up completely, and when I went to try the others it was the same. Never mind, I told myself, thinking of the bottled reserves.