Revenger 9780575090569 (36 page)

‘You’ve been through this once, Fura. Why would you bring it on yourself again?’

‘Because I’ve learned. Because we’ll be ready. Because I promised Garval I wouldn’t forget what she’d done. Do this for me, Adrana. Do this for
us
.’

The skulls broke the connection without any warning. They did that sometimes, when something got out of phase in the twinkly, but it was always unnerving, especially as there wasn’t any guarantee of
re-
establishing contact. I was about to give it a try, anyway, figuring there was no harm in it, when someone hammered hard on the door to the bone room.

I disconnected and hung up my equipment, all methodical and proper, taking pride in this odd little profession of mine.

I spun the wheel. It was Surt, with her
drawn-
in face.

‘What?’

She gave me a sidelong look. ‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Gathing’s dead. He was screaming, struggling, loud enough to wake ’em up all the way to Trevenza. You
sure
you didn’t hear any of that?’

‘I’d have come, wouldn’t I?’ I said, closing the door behind me.

I knew right then that it was Prozor’s work. Maybe Gathing had other enemies – he hadn’t struck me as the kind that picks up many friends – but it was Prozor he’d singled out for a snidey comment in the galley, and me that was tangled up in the implications of it.

No one else had seemed to make much of it there and then, but it wouldn’t have taken more than a second or third remark to start stirring up their curiosity. Prozor coming on the
Queenie
, then me, and then all of a sudden Trusko’s got a bee in his bonnet about the Fang . . .

No, it wouldn’t have taken much at all. So he had to go. I didn’t have a problem with that, not in principle. It was just the executing of it that was knotty.

He’d died in his quarters and that was where everyone was gathered. He had a hammock, like the rest of us, and he was still in it. But he wasn’t in any kind of restful repose. Gathing looked like he’d had electricity run through him, or more properly that it was still running through him, bunching up his nerves and muscles so that he was all stiff and arched, with his hands drawn up before his face, all clawed and useless. It wasn’t electricity, though. We could touch him, and there was no trace of burning or scalding on him, his clothes or his bedding. That face of his, though, wasn’t one I was going to forget in a hurry. His jaw was locked open, like he was still screaming, and his eyes were so wide it was like there was invisible rigging tugging his eyelids apart. You could start to see around the curve of his eyes, and I didn’t like that at all. No one wants to know what we’ve got going on in our sockets.

‘Looks like poison to me,’ Drozna said, plucking at his own lower lip as he mused the scene.

‘The cove only ate with the rest of us,’ Strambli said. ‘Or what he cooked for himself. Wouldn’t have taken a glass of water from one of us if he’d been on fire.’

‘He looks like he
was
on fire,’ Surt said. ‘All clenched up like that. Except he ain’t burned.’

‘He was alive when you got to him?’ Trusko asked, buttoning up the top of his shirt, for he had been drawn from his quarters unexpectedly. ‘Convulsing, screaming, and so on?’

‘You ’eard it yourself, Captain,’ Strambli said. ‘Any screamier, he’d have started popping the hull plates.’

‘Look at his handses,’ Tindouf said, pointing with the tip of his pipe. ‘Like he was trying to gets at something in his throat. I thinks Drozna’s right. It was poison after alls.’

‘It wouldn’t have been poison,’ Prozor said. ‘Poison’s hard to use on a ship. You can’t get rid of it easily and there’s a risk of it poisonin’ the ones you don’t want to poison.’

Drozna settled his gaze on her. ‘Were you thinking of poisoning him, then?’

‘No more than the rest of you were,’ Prozor answered.

‘Fura?’ Trusko asked.

‘I didn’t like him,’ I said, steering the closest path to the truth I could think of. ‘And I’d be lying if I said I was going to shed any tears now. He didn’t like any of us, did he?’

‘He had a certain . . . way,’ Trusko said. ‘But murder is murder, and I can’t countenance it. Besides, I hardly need remind any of you that he was our Assessor. Our only Assessor.’

I glanced at Prozor. Wisely, she was saying nothing for the moment.

‘Look,’ Surt said, with a quiver in her voice. ‘There’s something in his throat. Something coming
out
of his throat.’

‘Back,’ Trusko said. ‘Everyone.’

I didn’t need the captain’s suggestion for that. I was frightened enough as it was. With his mouth jammed open the way it was, we could see right down past his tongue. And there was something coming up from his gullet, bubbling up into daylight. It was a milky, silvery presence, and it seemed to be climbing up his gullet in deliberate steps, almost putting out feelers each time, like a thief hauling themselves up a chimney.

‘Tweezers,’ Prozor said. ‘Now. Before it gets out.’

‘What is it?’ Trusko asked, while Strambli dashed away to find something that met Prozor’s requirements.

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it’s alive and inside him, and it’s ten to one this is the thing that had him bawlin’. What we don’t want is it gettin’ out and causing more mischief. Hurry up!’

Strambli was back inside thirty seconds, but it felt like minutes. The milky thing was nearly at the top of Gathing’s mouth by then. The rest of him was still, so it wasn’t some gastric tide coming up from his stomach. It was more like a thing that had climbed into him that was now intent on climbing back out.

Prozor took the tweezers. They were
long-
handled, which was good. She used one hand to lever Gathing’s jaw a little wider, and then dipped the tweezers in with the other. She poked around a bit, then drew them out with a jerk and a slurp, biting down on her lip with the concentration.

Pinched on the end of the tweezers was a squirming milky ball, with arms and feelers thrashing around and trying to grow away from it. Prozor held it up for us all to see, keeping her fingers safely clear of those feelers.

‘What . . .?’ Trusko said, trailing off.

‘I ain’t never seen one of these,’ Prozor said, looking us all in the eyes, and making it seem powerfully convincing. ‘But I’ve read of ’em. It’s an engineered organism, made for assassinatin’ folk. Called a Kill Star. A living weapon. It lives on a cove – binds to their nervous system, drinks off their blood, hides where it’ll be hard to see. Looks like a scar or blemish if you can see it at all, and matches their body temperature, so you can’t read it on a thermal scan. Doesn’t trouble the cove, and they can waltz in almost anywhere and not have anyone know they’re carrying a Kill Star. But when they need someone killed . . .’

‘It detaches,’ Strambli said, with a quiet horror.

‘Learns through the nervous system who to go after – picks up on hate and body chemistry. Finds itself a dark corner like a shoe or a pocket and waits. Then it crawls out and creeps its way into you. Into your mouth, into your lughole, any orifice it chooses. By the time it’s going in, it’s too late. Little gooey thing works its way into your innards and starts pulling you apart from inside, using those little feelers.’ Prozor’s face was a mask of hard indifference. ‘Brain’s the best way to go. Once it starts rippin’ up your grey, there ain’t a lot of
you
left to feel it happen. But Gathing’s must’ve come in through his gob – down into his guts. No wonder he was screamin’. ’ Prozor was still holding up the tweezers, with the milky thing writhing and squirming on the end of it. The others were keeping their distance.

‘You know a lot about it,’ Drozna said, arms folded across his chest. ‘Sorry, but it’s only what we’re all thinking.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘And if I’d had plans to vent Gathing, a Kill Star would have suited me nicely, if I’d had the quoins to afford one, or known where to ask. Bring me a tankard, Strambli. Drozna: you got some of that hydraulic fluid you use in your
sail-
control gear?’

He looked doubtful. ‘I can fetch some. How much?’

‘About a tankard.’

While Strambli and Drozna were occupied, Trusko said: ‘
Someone
managed to bring it aboard, Prozor, regardless of how expensive or difficult those things are to find. You’d understand why we might have misgivings, especially concerning our most recen—’

‘It weren’t me,’ she said. ‘Fura can speak for herself, but she was in the bone room when Gathing started screaming, wasn’t she?’

‘You said it could have been hidden away, waiting for its chance,’ Trusko said. ‘I’d say that makes any one of us a possible suspect.’

‘Wait,’ Surt said, bending down to reach something tucked behind Gathing’s hammock. ‘Cove’s got his vacuum boots here. Why weren’t they racked away with the rest of the suits?’

‘No law against it,’ Trusko said.

Surt dragged out the boots, grunting as the magnetic soles caught on the decking. ‘Pockets on the side of the boots, Cap’n.’

‘There’s no law against that either.’

‘But this one’s open,’ Surt said, bending back the leathery flap. ‘And there’s glass in here, all broken and sticky. Let me . . .’

Prozor closed a hand around Surt’s stick of a wrist. ‘Careful, friend. You wouldn’t know what’s on that glass, or what’s still in that pocket.’

‘What are you saying?’ Trusko asked.

‘I ain’t sayin’ anything.’ She let that hang there for a second or two. ‘But I’ve worked with Assessors of every stripe and I’ve met some you could trust and some you couldn’t. Pretty easy for an Assessor to slip something past their own crew. Something valuable that they find in a bauble and don’t want to be sharin’ with the rest of them. ’Specially somethin’ you can slip into a pocket, when no one’s lookin’. ’

Trusko paled. ‘You’re suggesting Gathing smuggled that thing back from one of the baubles?’

‘You’d need to be the judge. I didn’t know the man.’

‘I did,’ Surt decided. ‘And I didn’t care for him much. Always acting like he was better’n the rest of us, like we were the fools for stickin’ with you, Cap’n, while he had better plans . . . no disrespect.’

‘None taken,’ Trusko answered levelly.

Drozna and Strambli were back. They had the tankard and the hydraulic fluid.

‘Now what?’ Strambli asked.

‘Take the lid off the tankard. Then squirt that fluid into it. Get it good and full.’

Strambli undid the cover on the tankard. We were weightless, but the fluid was viscous and it glooped out into the tankard in a single green blob and stayed put, quivering like a fresh dog turd.

‘Be ready with the lid.’

Prozor took the tweezered organism and forced it into the tankard, pushing it all the way in. As soon as it touched the fluid, it started squirming much more vigorously, sending out longer feelers, trying to get a grip on the tankard’s rim. Prozor rammed it down. The organism began to give off a high, keening squeal.

‘That’s so you know it’s being damaged,’ she explained. ‘Now the lid. Get it on quick and tight, Strambli. I’m pullin’ the tweezers away . . . now.’

She jerked the tweezers out, and Strambli raced to get the lid attached and tightened. The squealing was still going on, but muffled now, and tinny. Slowly it faded away to silence.

‘You just happened to know that my hydraulic fluid would kill it,’ Drozna said.

‘Burned my hand on that fluid once,’ Prozor answered. ‘Got a main hydraulic leak, squirting right back into the core of the ship. Figured if it didn’t like me, it probably wouldn’t like the Kill Star.’ She paused. ‘But if you had other ideas about dealin’ with it, you were welcome to share ’em.’

‘Whatever’s left in that tankard,’ Trusko said, ‘I want it destroyed. Along with anything left in those boots.’

‘Gathing’s going to need burying,’ Surt said, without much enthusiasm, still holding onto the vacuum boot. ‘Anyone ever ask him which world he came from?’

But it turned out no one knew, and no one cared. When they dumped his body into space there was a bit of ceremony, some fine words, a forced tear or two, but no one’s heart was really in it. Deep down they were thinking of the quoins he’d meant to keep for himself. There were a lot of things that a crew could forgive, from cowardice to incompetence, but being cheated out of an honest profit wasn’t one of them.

Not that Gathing had cheated anyone – to our knowledge.

But that was going to have to be my and Prozor’s little secret. And if one day I noticed that there wasn’t a
star-
shaped scar halfway down her back, where once there’d been one, I knew to keep that observation to myself.

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 could 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 . . .’