Revenger 9780575090569 (18 page)

‘I hid.’ I reached up slowly and drew the blade away from my throat, fighting the strength in her at first, then overwhelming her. ‘Garval helped me. Adrana helped her get loose, and . . . worlds, Prozor, I was just in the middle of signalling Jastrabarsk!’

‘In league with him, are you? Setting us up for a call from Bosa, then arranging to split the leftovers with Captain Jastrabarsk?’

‘No, nothing like that! Were you listening to what I just said? Garval showed me a hiding place, a panel in the wall. I got in there and kept quiet until Bosa was gone. It’s been two days, and now I’m chancing a message to Jastrabarsk’s ship. That’s it on the sweeper. It’s coming our way, as fast as they can make sail. That’s the end of it. Bosa has my sister. If I’d cooked up a plan, do you honestly think that’d be any part of it?’

The line of her lips tightened into something hard and judgemental.

‘You were tight, both of you.’

‘Yes. It’s called being sisters. Prozor! I wasn’t in league with anyone and right now all I care about is finding a way to get Adrana and Garval back.’

‘What did she want with the screamer?’

‘Garval said she was going to put herself up in my place, make Bosa think she already had both Bone Readers. I know, it never stood a chance of fooling Bosa for long. But if she hadn’t done it, they’d have picked the ship apart looking for me. Garval saved my life, and I owe her.’

There was one last long, appraising look from her, then she put the blade away.

‘If a word of this turns out to be anything but gospel, girlie . . .’

‘You’ve seen the bodies, Prozor. Do you think I made them up, or did those things to them?’

After a while she said: ‘They’ve got Bosa’s look about ’em. But you could’ve . . .’ She shook her head. ‘No, you ain’t got the spine for cruelty. Not like that.’

‘Thank you for that ringing endorsement.’

‘You made sure Bosa’s out of the scene, before you started blabbing all over the squawk?’

‘I made sure, yes. And I wasn’t blabbing. Did you hear what I said to Jastrabarsk? Nothing that would let Bosa know I’m Adrana’s sister. I made up a name, Incer. Jastrabarsk can get the full story when we’re eye to eye. He’ll understand why I had to bend a few facts, knowing she might be listening in.’

‘Maybe you should have checked with me before beggin’ for rescue. Seeing as I’m as close to captain now as I’ll ever get.’

‘You were unconscious, Prozor. So unconscious you looked dead. You know what my next plan was? I was going to move all the bodies into the airlock, one at a time, so I didn’t have to share the ship with them. Then I was going to vent all the lungstuff in the lock so they’d freeze up and stop decaying. You’d have been one of them. So instead of giving me the hard stare, you can start counting your blessings I didn’t get to it sooner. And there was no begging to Jastrabarsk. Rack told me he knew the man and they were friends. I don’t mean to die on this ship, so I did what I needed to do. Besides, Jastrabarsk was already on his way – I just asked him to get here sooner if he could.’

She chewed on that for a few moments.

‘The ship took a beating. I remember that much. Maybe we could use some outside help. Just to get us straight again, patch up our sails . . .’

‘And then we sail her, just the two of us? Rack said he ran a light crew, Prozor, and it still took seven of you. The ship’s finished. If it keeps us alive until Jastrabarsk gets here, I’ll be grateful.’

‘You sound harder than you used to. Almost like you could have been one of us.’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’

‘Maybe,’ Prozor said, and I suppose I’d have to take what I could get.

‘I never saw Bosa. But I heard it, and that was bad enough. Heard her hitting you, too. You can’t blame me for thinking you were dead.’

‘Did you move the bodies?’

‘No . . . not much.’ I didn’t want her to know I’d had to clean my own sick off them. ‘I got rid of some of the blood, that’s all. Other than that, they’re the way I found them.’

‘Then that’s how she left Rack?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, not quite reading her drift.

‘That crossbow he was clutching to himself?’

‘Yes?’

‘It was Rack’s own crossbow. Not Bosa’s.’

Prozor might have had that tin plate under her scalp, but she’d still taken a good beating. I knew she was weak, but there was no water to offer, and when I told her I could cut her some lightvine she just laughed. ‘You got to cook it, girlie. You don’t just eat it raw, not if you don’t want the glowy getting into you. You ain’t been eating’ it raw, have you?’

‘No . . . no,’ I stammered. ‘That would be silly, wouldn’t it? What’s the glowy?’

Prozor might have picked up on my hesitation, but she wasn’t pulling on all sails and her focus kept slipping away. It was like trying to have a conversation with a very old person, someone whose memory doesn’t stretch back more than a few minutes.

‘Water in the ion coolers,’ she said, during one of the interludes when she was sharper. ‘Separate system from the drinking water, and maybe not as pure, but it’ll keep us alive for now.’ And she gave me instructions on how to siphon water out of the cooling system, situated in what had been Triglav’s ion control room. There wasn’t enough heat to cook the lightvine, but Prozor said it was getting water in us that mattered more than food, and if we looked famished when Jastrabarsk rescued us they’d treat us nicer.

I had a lot of questions for her. It was finding the right moment to ask them that was the tricky part.

‘I told Jastrabarsk it was Bosa that had taken us, and he asked me if I was certain it was her. Why would he doubt?’

‘Bosa Sennen’s a name,’ Prozor said. ‘One that’s been spoken of for too long for it to be just one person.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No one lives longer than a hundred years – not in this Occupation anyway. Nothing that anyone’s ever found in a bauble’s changed that, although that ain’t stopped ’em looking. But crews were being picked off by Bosa Sennen long before I was born, and her name already went back a generation or two then. It ain’t possible.’

‘But you saw her. You know she’s real.’

‘I know there’s someone calling themselves Bosa Sennen, and using the power of that name to put the shivers into people. But that don’t mean it’s the same Bosa Sennen that was taking ships fifty years ago, or a hundred.’

‘But Rack knew her. It was Bosa that took his daughter, wasn’t it? And the same Bosa that came back this time.’

‘Ain’t been more than fifteen years between ’em, so – yes – probably that was the same person using the name. But that’s all it is – a mask for whoever’s decided to earn their keep by plunderin’ what doesn’t belong to ’em, and using crueller means than they need to to do it.’

‘So you’re saying it’s not always the same Bosa, not always the same ship?’

‘I ain’t sayin’ one thing or another. Just layin’ out the simple facts of it, which is that there ain’t a cove in the Congregation gets to live that long.’

‘That ship didn’t show up on the sweeper until it was almost on top of us. How it that possible?’

‘The
Nightjammer
’s sails ain’t like normal sails. Light just falls into ’em. Reason they’re black; blacker than any thing’s got any right to be.’

‘But sails need to reflect light to work, don’t they? That’s why ours stood out so strongly on the sweeper.’

‘These sails don’t. Ain’t my job to know how they work, just that they do.’

I nodded. ‘But then sails like that would be pretty handy for any crew, wouldn’t they?’

‘What’s the point you’re makin’, girlie?’

‘I think that ship must be unique, the way it operates. Lurking out here, hardly showing up on the sweep . . . how likely is it that someone just happens to have a ship like that, whenever they show up calling themselves Bosa Sennen?’

‘You got an answer, I s’pose.’

‘I think there’s only ever that one ship, and its other name is the
Dame Scarlet
, and if those sails are as rare as you make them seem, it must be the same ship each time, under the same Bosa Sennen. Whatever you say about people not living long enough, somehow it doesn’t apply to her. Maybe she did find something in a bauble, an elixir or something . . .’

‘Elixir,’ Prozor said. ‘Listen to you.’

‘I’m just trying to make sense of what happened.’

‘Then you’re wasting your time. There ain’t no sense to be had out of it. You crossed orbits with Bosa Sennen once. If the fates are sweet to you, you’ll go to your grave still sayin’ you only met her once.’

‘That didn’t work for Rack, did it?’

‘It was different with him, and we all knew it. When Bosa took Illyria from him, he should’ve put the both of them out of his mind for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t, and for that you can’t blame the cove. He wanted to see his daughter again, and if that meant seeing Bosa another time, he was ready to pay that price.’

‘He did,’ I said.

I wanted to ask her more about Illyria Rackamore, all the things I couldn’t have asked before, but Prozor was fading on me and I knew she needed rest.

I’d settled one thing, at least. Rack had history with Bosa and he’d got to see her again, even if it did take fifteen years.

That meant there was a chance for me, too.

Because we had history too, now. Whether Bosa knew it or not.

8

On the ninth day since the bauble’s opening, the yellow blob on our sweeper swelled until it had the flowered form of a sunjammer under full sail. The signature was distinct and
sharp-
edged, nothing like the furtive, ragged echo of Bosa’s ship. The
Iron Courtesan
hauled in sail and used ions to find its own orbit around the bauble, higher and more eccentric than ours. A nervous few hours passed, then a launch crossed over to the
Monetta
.

There were three of them in the party, and they all came aboard. Their suits were older and more
battered-
looking than ours, and where ours were shades of brown and brass, these were all dull pewters and
blue-
greys. But they clanked and huffed and smelled the same, they had the same little grilled windows for faceplates, and when Jastrabarsk removed his helmet and scuffed a hand through his hair, something in his manner reminded me of Rackamore. He was older, I reckon, wider in the face, with a heavy brow ridge and cheekbones that looked as hard and swollen as bruises. He had a scar between his lip and his chin, his teeth were metal, and his eyes were dark and fathomless – sunk so deeply that they were almost like sockets – but still there was that swagger that I recognised. His hair was grey, curly, and it had begun to recede above that high, overhanging brow.

‘You did well, Incer. You know me, of course.’ He nodded at the
narrow-
faced man to his right, who was squinting at a scratch on the crown of his helmet, now cradled in his hands. ‘This is Lusquer. Next to Lusquer is Meveraunce. Meveraunce is our sawbones – she’ll be taking care of you.’

Meveraunce was the tallest of them all. She had a plump face, very white hair, an upturned nose. She was already looking around.

‘Thank you,’ I began. ‘Captain . . . before we go on.’

Eyes flashed in the gloom of those sockets. ‘Yes, Incer?’

‘Are we on squawk now?’

‘Why would we be?’

‘I need to know.’

Jastrabarsk cracked a grin full of metal teeth at his colleagues. ‘Then we’re not, if it matters so much.’

‘I’m not Incer.’ Now that I was speaking the words tumbled out. ‘There’s no such person. I couldn’t tell you who I was, not when Bosa Sennen might be listening in.’

‘We had an inkling,’ Lusquer said, matching the captain’s smile. ‘Not that your name was a lie, but that
something
didn’t quite fit.’

‘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 had 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.’