A single shot, a single discharge from our stern coil-gun. I imagined the slug streaking away from us, falling through space, destined for two possible fates. It would either miss the launch, or intercept it. There was no intermediate condition. I could only hope that the discharge had been a warning ploy, a calibrating shot, or that Paladin’s aim had been in error. But I suppose a part of me knew that it would be none of these things.
I tried to close my mind to Chasco, to shield from him the knowledge of what was coming.
It’s no good, Adrana. Either I am too good at this game, or your mind is too bright.
Then you know.
Yes—and I suppose I ought to thank you for that final kindness, in not wishing me …
There was a moment, a hiatus. The stream of rational thought had ceased. Yet his mind was still connected to mine through the skull. I tensed, half knowing what was coming, but no more capable of shielding myself from it than I’d been able to shield Chasco from the fact of his own certain demise.
Then his screams came through.
There are many ways to die in space, and some of them—by dint of painlessness or swiftness of effect—are almost merciful. But death on a dying ship, struck with hard and deliberate force, need not be merciful at all. What reached my mind through that ancient conduit of alien remains and unliving technology was a howling agony, beyond anything I had ever experienced in the bone room. I tried to pull the plug out of the skull, before that scream ripped my soul to ribbons, but I was not quite fast enough. Nor was I fast enough to drag the neural crown from my scalp, and fling it against the wall.
The scream grew and grew. Then, just as I felt that my world would contain nothing but that scream, that it would build and reverberate until there was no more room for sensible thought, no more room for my own sense of being, no more room to remember who I had once been, or what had brought me to this moment, our skull split open from end to end, fracturing into two halves, the twinkly dying within it like the last ebbing flickers of civilisation. And Chasco was gone.
23
Bone Silence.
That was what it meant not to have a skull any more. The bone room had gone from being the most valued place on the ship, the third eye by which it gleaned and transmitted intelligence that could make or break crews and their fortunes, to a wasteful hollow. A scooped-out windowless socket, a place I could barely stand to be near, let alone think of visiting.
When the skull ruptured, it felt as if some part of Chasco’s dying mind had leaked through into the room itself, lingering there even now, with no living body to return to. Knowing that this was irrational did not make it any less forceful or persuasive. I could not go back there, not even to confirm that the skull really was as ruined as it appeared. Fortunately I did not need to. Fura took that task upon herself, and while I do not think she relished being in the bone room any more than I did, she was punctilious about trying all the input sockets, testing each in turn until she was certain that the skull was dead and useless.
We would have been well advised to run silently from that point on, but now we had no choice in the matter. We were blind. We still had the squawk in the launch, and could listen in on all the signals and transmissions from the Congregation’s civilian and commercial senders, but nothing of direct relevance to our own predicament would ever be sent by those means. We had no means of signalling without giving away our position, and even to use the sweeper was a risk too far. So we ran, and ran. We turned at the swallower, as we had done before, but this time without a ship or two nipping at our heels, and by the time we had executed that change of course I felt sure that we had escaped any possibility of pursuit.
And so we had. We maintained a stringent watch in the sighting room, and there was never the slightest glimmer of sail-flash. That launch was really the only thing that could have stood a chance, anyway. We were fast and dark, and although there were still quoins and treasure in our holds, we turned easily.
We had sailed between worlds and baubles many times and, except for our new hands, we were all suitably accustomed to the strain of those long weeks with little to do. At least the time between the Rumbler and Wheel Strizzardy had been filled with the work of transforming the lines of our ship, but now that we had finished that task all we had left were the normal chores and duties. Sighting room. Gun practice. Cooking and washing. Sewing and darning. Navigation cross-checks. Teaching and reading. Suiting-up and suiting-down, over and over, until we could do it in our sleep. Eating and drinking and sleeping, telling stories and playing games, and trying not to get on each other’s nerves more than was strictly necessary. And even with all that there were still too many hours left over.
Of course the first couple of weeks were a little novel, because of our newcomers. How they fitted in, whether we liked them, whether they liked us, whether they were ever going to be proper members of the crew, as opposed to temporary passengers, was a question each of us had to puzzle over for ourselves.
I kept thinking how much simpler it would have been if there were no nagging little doubts. Merrix was the least problematic, I decided, because there was no reason to think that any part of her story—as it had been relayed to us—was less than true. Her father was a different kettle. Doctor Eddralder had set up his affairs in the kindness room very thoroughly, organising medicines and wares and generally inhabiting the place as if he had a long and distinguished career ahead of him. And perhaps he did, because the one thing I did not doubt was that he was an excellent and scrupulous practitioner. He had brought Strambli back from the brink, and by the time we were two weeks out of Strizzardy she was up and about like the rest of us, albeit shakily, and starting to share in mealtimes and some very light duties. If I had slipped with a knife myself, or worse, I would have very gladly submitted to his ministrations. But there was that business with Glimmery, and I could not let it out of my mind. Would he ever have told us, I wondered? Or would he have hoped it never came to our attention?
None of us were pure in mind and deed. I knew that. We had all done things that we either regretted, or would much rather not have been obliged to do. I had put a knife to my own sister’s throat and come close to shooting her with the volition pistol. In order to escape and rescue me, Fura had inflicted a terrible toll on Father, one that had hastened him to his grave. Worse than that, if I could be bothered enumerating her failings. But none of us had taken on cruelty as our occupation, accepting it as a continuous and permanent part of our personalities. I kept telling myself that Doctor Eddralder had only dispensed one type of cruelty to offset another, and that would settle my qualms for a shift or two, but never more than that.
Then there was Lagganvor, who was another sort of conundrum entirely. If I laid out the sequence of events in my head, it all made sense. Fura had gone looking for a man who had useful intelligence. She had found that man, and now he was with us, and starting to share that intelligence, and it was going to lead us to The Miser. His story was like a very simple sort of jigsaw, with the pieces cut from thick wood, which went together almost too readily. And all would have been well, except for the pieces left over. Fura had found him readily—almost too readily. I know she had asked a few questions, perhaps with a lack of discretion, but there was a whole world for him to lose himself in, and yet he had flung himself into our hands almost as if he wished to be taken. And when we cornered him in the hotel, and looked as if we were on the point of murdering him, why had he not turned his pistol, or that eye against us, as a weapon? Surely there had been opportunities.
Why would a man who had run from Bosa Sennen want to have anything to do with her former ship? Even if he needed passage off Wheel Strizzardy, were we not the last crew in the Congregation or beyond that any sane man would choose?
There was, as well, the fact of his familiarity to me. We had never met; had never had the possibility of meeting. Lagganvor had already left the ship before I joined Bosa’s crew.
And yet, when I put these nagg
ing details to one side, I had to balance them with others—the details that did fit his story, and were hard to explain unless he was exactly what he seemed. His knowledge of the ship, from its lines and layout to the secrets of the Glass Armillary—how could anyone but Lagganvor ever know such matters?
When an answer to this riddle had presented itself to me, I had desired only to spit it out like a piece of poison.
But I could not.
Only Lagganvor could have known the things Lagganvor knows.
But that does not prove that this man is Lagganvor.
It means only that he is someone very good at extracting knowledge from another man.
Extracting knowledge, perhaps on the point of death, learning it thoroughly, and going to extreme ends to adopt the guise of that other man.
Becoming Lagganvor.
I hated myself for entertaining this notion, but once it was there I could not rid myself of it. All that remained—to make those left-over pieces fit—was to find an explanation for his presence among us. And once I had allowed the idea into my head that Lagganvor might be someone other than Lagganvor, the answer to that question flowed easily enough.
The only reason to become Lagganvor was to infiltrate our ship. To infiltrate us, report on our methods, and lead us to our capture or destruction.
To betray us, and take us.
And who would be better motivated to pursue such an end, than a man who had already suffered through the acts of Bosa Sennen?
It was a hypothesis, not a settled conclusion, and I knew that I had arrived at it via a process of questionable intuition, rather than irrefutable deduction. Intuition which, in no small part, felt like the sort of suspicious theorising that would have come naturally to a hardened survivor like Bosa Sennen. I could prove it to no one, not even to myself, and to act on such a doubtful grounds would have brought no benefit to any of us. And even as I marshalled my arguments, I could just as easily undo them by my own wits, let alone Fura’s, who would always be ready with a sharp, sabotaging retort. Perhaps it suited the real Lagganvor to rejoin his old ship, now that Bosa Sennen no longer captained it. He had other enemies, after all, and we offered a sort of sanctuary, a ready means of escape from the effective dead-end of Wheel Strizzardy. That was why he had presented himself to us, and allowed himself to be taken without resistance—mere self-interest. And the quoins, too, might have factored into his thinking. He knew where they were, and that was a potential treasure that could not have slipped his mind. In us, he saw the means of claiming some fraction of it for himself. And for that he needed the ship, since without the Glass Armillary there was no means of locating The Miser.
Yes, that fitted as well—at least as tolerably as my own narrative, and it should have defused my qualms very satisfactorily. I knew that Fura would muster these counter-arguments, and others, and that they would undo my version much as scatter-shot undid rigging, tearing through it and leaving gaping holes. Worse, Lagganvor would say all that was required to undo my dark theory, and because of the time and effort she had invested in him, Fura would be inclined to value his account over mine.
No: no good would come of mentioning it. Worse than no good. It would re-open grievances and drive a division between Fura and I that I had hoped might be on the point of healing, especially in light of our joint captaincy.
I could only act, and continue to act, as if Lagganvor was the man he claimed to be. I would force myself to think of him in those terms. But I vowed to be alert to him, to watch and wait for the mistake I believed he would make, given time. The error that would expose his true nature, and provide evidence that not even Fura could ignore.
So we sailed, and I went about my days as if no doubts had ever penetrated my thoughts, and for a while that habit became so ingrained that I nearly forgot that I had ever had cause to question his story. Once we had turned at the swallower, the only treacherous part of our crossing, and the only one that demanded quick, coordinated action, and once we had run out the ordinary sails again, giving us a little more speed with the solar weather in our favour, the remaining part of the trip was one of supreme uneventfulness, but for two things that happened when we were almost within sighting range of The Miser.
Even at that point, the rock’s existence remained hypothetical. Somewhere in the Congregation, forgotten in some dusty journal or time-worn log, there might be a record of a tiny dark body orbiting the Old Sun. No such entry lay anywhere in Revenger, though, beyond that inscription on the marble. Even if our ship had been taken—disarmed and boarded around Wheel Strizzardy, or on our passage to that world—there would have been no clue to The Miser’s existence or whereabouts, beyond that faint blemish on an otherwise innocent-seeming marble. I did not doubt that Bosa had committed the relevant information to memory, and that she would have done so many bodies back, passing it from one vile incarnation of herself to the next, like an heirloom or a curse. Yet it was plain that, of all her operational secrets, this was the one she held the nearest to her heart.
I believed it was there. I wanted it to be otherwise, because the absence of The Miser might take the sting out of my sister’s late-dawning obsession with quoins, but because I wished for that so fervently, I counted on the universe to provide the exact opposite of my desires. The Miser would prove real; I knew it with a soul-deep certainty.
When we were five weeks out from the wheel, and only two weeks from our supposed destination, Fura was minded to use the long-range sweeper at its highest power setting, snatching an echo of any little rock or obstacle that might lie ahead of us. Or, equally, the absence of an echo—how glad that would have made me. But wiser heads prevailed. The back-scatter from a powerful sweep might yet signal our location to any elements still interested in pursuit, and so Fura was persuaded to wait another week, until the rock might be detectable on a much lower sweeper setting.
That was the hardest week of our voyage—the one in which the hours stretched the longest, in which nerves were frayed to their ragged limits. I had never seen my sister so tense with expectation as in those days.
I slept badly, which did not help. I was having nightmares, and they were all to do with Chasco. I would be in the bone room again, and the skull would be present—damaged or undamaged, depending on the flexible logic of the subconscious—and I would be trying to persuade Chasco to abandon the pursuit. Sometimes I managed it, and thereby spared his existence, and accordingly suffered the deluded, temporary bliss of the dreamer, until roused and reacquainted with the harsh facts of the waking day. Half the time, though, I was chased and tormented by his agonies. I would snap out of my dream with a profound and lingering sense that he was still present, disembodied but cognisant, and I would know that further sleep was futile.
I would lie in stillness for a little while, well used to the ship’s sounds by then, and if I had screamed in my nightmare I might hear one of the others mumbling or grumbling at the disturbance to their own rest. One night, though, when the dream of Chasco had been particularly vivid, I woke to the sound of someone else’s discomfiture.
It was a sobbing, I realised, and it came from nearby.
I found my clothes and moved through the semi-gloom of the sleeping ship. Surt was on sighting watch, I believed, but the rest of us were following the same waking and sleeping shifts. But it was not Surt that I had heard. It was a man’s sobbing, and it was coming from the kindness room.
“Doctor Eddralder,” I said, in a low, soft tone, announcing my approach as I neared the door.
He was strapped into one of the chairs, bent low over his magnetic desk, his medicines and instruments—usually so carefully ordered—ranged before him in a mad and profligate disarray. We were under sail, so there was a little gravity, but I could easily believe that the contents of his cabinets and drawers had exploded out into weightlessness, such was the chaos. He had a syringe in his hand, the plunger retracted and a dark green fluid filling half the tube. The needle was already puncturing the skin on his left
arm, and I believe he could only have been an instant away from depressing the plunger.
“Adrana,” he said, with only mild surprise. “I did not mean to disturb you. I must apologise.”
His face was nearly averted from me.
“What were you about to do, Doctor?”
He did not move. The syringe was still jabbing at his flesh, and his finger was still on the plunger. “She is blameless in all this. You understand that, don’t you? None of this can be laid against Merrix.”
I laid my hand over his, gently easing the syringe away from his arm. The needle had broken the skin, leaving a blood-spot where it withdrew.
“Why would you kill yourself now?”
He dwelled on my question before answering. I could see more of his face now, its long lines streaked with tears.
“I have discharged my immediate obligations. Your colleague … Strambli … will fully recover, I think. In any case, I’ve done what I can for her. There are limits to my ability. As for Merrix, I think she will do well among you. I sense already that she is escaping Glimmery’s influence. Would that I were able to do the same.”
“You can,” I said, putting the syringe back in one of the drawers, so that it was at least out of his immediate reach. “You must. You were forced to do very bad things, Doctor Eddralder, things that can’t be forgiven or wished away. You’ll carry that with you forever. But I can’t stand here and say you shouldn’t have acted the way you did. Your only real sin was to care too much. You fell into the orbit of an evil man and he turned your kindness into a weapon. A lesser man would have sacrificed Merrix and turned his back on the patients in the infirmary. You did not.”
“You don’t understand what he made me do.”
“I don’t care to. Not now, not ever. Those deeds are between you and your nightmares. My judging you won’t undo them, or lessen the cost of them. But I will say this. You are a good man, tainted by an unspeakable act. And we have need of you. All of us, aboard this ship.”
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