“Children use those,” Heathen commented, her voice calm but cold. “Young children who can’t yet control their powers. Some who don’t even know they have them.”
“I am,” Violet snarled, “not a child.”
“Yet you hide in the body of one.”
“Not for long.”
“If I had known what Raines had planned I would have left you there. Drifting until you fell into the sun.”
Violet chuckled, still clutching the sphere between her fingers. “He didn’t plan this.”
“Yet it happened.”
Violet smiled at her.
“That boy is dead because of you.”
“He shouldn’t have listened to small voices,” Violet said. “And who are you to talk, Heathen? How many are dead because of you?”
“Thousands,” Heathen frowned. “Tens of thousands.”
“Do you remember what you said to me? Before the battle at Rim?”
“There are worse things than dying,” Heathen nodded. “I am looking at one.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it?” Violet challenged her. She held up the sphere, crackling and encircled with blue and white lightning bolts. “You could rip this ship apart from the inside, couldn’t you? Or do what you did at Rim. Oh wait, you can’t.”
She laughed. “Raines built this ship to conduct thaumatics, but you knew that, didn’t you? If you tried, even if you tried, it would dissipate throughout the hull. It’s like a giant children’s ball really, isn’t it? And this place, it’s special, isn’t it? Nothing quite works the way it should here. I thought it was just me but it’s not.”
“Very little is what it should be,” Heathen stared down at her with narrowed eyes. “It must hurt you, all that pain, the memories. The girl fighting to reject you. And all that power you can’t bleed off aboard this ship. What do you do with all that hurt? Doesn’t it make you feel . . . helpless?”
Violet held up the children’s ball mockingly. “There are what, half a dozen in the whole of the High Lanes anywhere near as strong as you, aren’t there?” Violet reminded her. “And you still can’t do anything. How does that make you feel, Captain? Helpless?”
“The same, I imagine.”
Violet grimaced. “What made you so eager to break from the fold?”
Heathen didn’t answer.
“This?” Violet pointed at herself. “This makes you squeamish? After everything else. Everything you’ve done.”
“Imagine your own answers.”
“But you wanted them from me.”
“I wanted to see for myself.”
“And?”
“I think your control is more fragile than you would have Raines believe.”
Violet frowned at her. “For now. And not for much longer.”
“Best hurry, Raines is not known for his long-standing patience. It will take weeks to repair the damage done to the Fata Morgana. Damage you were responsible for.”
“Not me,” Violet said quickly. “Her.”
“Ah. So there is a difference?”
“No.”
Heathen looked down at her. “What Vaughn would say to you.”
“A shame I’ll never get to see the look on her face,” Violet said smugly.
“Look now,” Heathen told her, raising her eyes to somewhere behind the girl. Violet spun, catching Kaspar standing not too far away. He stared at her, then walked away without saying anything.
“And what does that prove?” Violet turned back to Heathen.
“That you should be more careful,” Heathen said. “It’s dangerous to stay in one place for too long. You know what’s coming. And neither one of us can stop it.”
“That’s not true,” Violet smiled. “There’s one thing you could do. What you always do.”
Heathen glanced aside involuntarily. On most ships she would have seen the black, the world below. The world now part of the High. But there was only the metal shell of the Fata Morgana.
Chapter 23
“WHAT IS A cold sun?” Sharpe asked. “Does it burn cooler than other stars? Is it made of ice instead of fire? Should we have brought warmer clothes?”
“Are you cold?” Nel gave him a sidelong glance.
“Only when I’m away from you, Skipper,” he managed with a straight face. Nel rolled her eyes at him. She didn’t have the energy to give more of a response right now.
“Gonna be like the ice run?” Jack asked, having made an unusual visit to the bridge as they approached the realms of thin mist.
Probably wants to know if he needs to start getting cosy to the stove again, Nel thought. Spent half that run sleeping next to it and the other half hugging the rum jar.
“It will be,” Quill told him, “nothing like the ice run. Something, and I believe this to be a first, we can both take solace in.”
“Good.” Jack looked unhappy and then, unusually thoughtful.
Point Quill, managed to ruin Jack’s happy moment after all.
“So what makes it a cold sun?” Sharpe asked. His arms were folded, rubbing his hands up and down. Talking himself into thinking it was cold.
Except he shouldn’t feel it anyway.
“Cold is just what they call it,” Nel told him. “More about the mist than the sun, doesn’t gather like it should. Currents run strange. No mist or not enough mist, ships can’t fly.”
“There are places that run both thick and thin. As you said, currents and tributaries run between them, across all the Lanes. For the most part they are to be avoided,” Quill added.
“Like the Edge,” Nel said quietly. “And the Morgana. The Fata Morgana.”
Damn, but I don’t like where they took their name from. Not that I like anything about this.
“But they are colder,” Sharpe said, still stuck on the concept. “Shouldn’t we be feeling that?”
“You feel heat in the black from the hot ones?” Nel asked him pointedly.
“No,” Sharpe admitted.
“I crack your head harder than I thought back in Vice?” Nel asked him. “Or you just trying to play the part of jabbering cabin girl till I get mine back?”
“Six of one and a half-dozen of the other,” Sharpe grinned. “Just think, when it’s done there can be two of us. Can get matching tattoos and do our hair the same, won’t be able to tell us apart.”
“No,” Jack said immediately.
“I agree,” Quill said almost as quickly. “And I do not like agreeing with Jack. Nor does Jack like it when I agree with him.”
“Stop making us agree, Sharpe,” Jack warned him. “Kelpie’s right, don’t like him. Never did.”
Sharpe gave Nel a helpless look. She had no sympathy. Even though he had done the impossible. She couldn’t recall Quill and Jack ever agreeing on anything.
Hells, don’t like it any more than they do.
“What is your plan?” Quill asked her, directing the conversation to something more meaningful. “Shall we engage them head on? It has worked so wonderfully for us in the past.”
“Helpful thoughts, Quill,” Nel reminded him.
“In truth, I am not so attached to this vessel,” the Kelpie admitted. “I would weep no tears should you order ramming speed.”
“Be crying on the inside, I know, Quill,” Nel winked at him. “You’re close, but oh so far.”
“Enlighten me,” he said huffily. “You have a plan. There is always a plan. Often it is a maddening, illogical fallacy of a plan. Sometimes it is swill, the kind found at the bottom of a bottle, but there is always a plan.”
“You want to hear this plan, Loveland?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop talking rot about my plans.”
“Is that an order?” Quill asked. “A captain’s order, perhaps?”
“No captains,” Nel scowled.
“Then I will continue to voice my concerns about your inane concepts of what a plan should be,” Quill said.
Damnit. More points for Quill.
&n
bsp; Instead of using Quill’s maps, as the area was sparsely charted in any case, Nel stood on the brightwork, toes hanging over the edge of the black. She pointed at the curve of the mist, the faint outlines of banks where it had floated away enough to form up in density. It was not unlike how clouds formed.
“There,” Nel pointed, careful not to throw herself off balance. She looked over her shoulder at her crew. Just the three of them. Two really . . . and Sharpe. In the background she could see Stoker’s people, not quite able to bring herself to think of them as crew yet.
“The mist is denser there where it coils. We take the long route, circumspect, take our time and make sure they don’t spot us. Stay to where the mist is thick.”
“There are rays in the mist,” Quill pointed out. “An unusual number.”
He was right, Nel hadn’t seen them clearly but had sighted the giant shadows kiting through the miasma. She could hear their songs and crooning too.
“Not here for the rays, here for Violet and the Morgana. Once we’re above them, we dive.”
“Dive,” Quill repeated. “We are back to the ramming?”
“Not exactly. Just need to get us closer, give us the right angle. Jack, want you on the crane. Sharpe, you and me, we’re in the tender.”
The three were silent while they took this in.
“Am I correct,” Quill was the first to respond, “believing that you intend to board the Morgana . . . from a bubble?”
“You are correct, Mister Quill.”
“This is the ship that shot us down last time we encountered it. Left us floating in a cracked glass ball. And you intend to . . .”
“Irony, Loveland, explain it to you someday.”
“This new-found fondness you have for throwing people overboard is irony.”
“I’m staying on the ship?” Jack asked.
“Need you on it, so yeah,” Nel told him.
“What happens after? You coming back?”
“Plan to, need you waiting and hiding. Cut the angle right, Quill. Enough so that Jack can throw us where we need to be but keep your time in the big drop to as short as you can. You can do that, right?”
“Of course I can . . . yes, I can do that. We will need to hoist all sails before we . . . and then . . . yes, I can do it. But there is a problem. You see it, even Jack sees it.”
“Be getting out the same way we go in,” Nel told him. “Need you to watch for us and come gets us after.”
Quill craned his neck, squinting at the grey outline of the Fata Morgana. “And should they see us?”
“Won’t be looking for us, not at first. Whole point in this place is that you’re not meant to be able to sneak up on them. Not expecting many on watch.”
“That is an Alliance ship,” Quill reminded her. “There will be lookouts.”
“Quill’s right,” Sharpe said. “And that ship . . . Nel, it’s big. Twisted. It could take days to find Violet in there even if it wasn’t full of people who are going to shoot us on sight.”
“This is the plan,” Nel said. “Unless someone has a better idea?”
No one did.
“So long as I’m staying on the ship, don’t care what you do,” Jack said.
“That hurts my feelings, Jack,” Sharpe told him.
Quill grumbled something, but he didn’t repeat it so anyone could understand him.
“DO YOU REMEMBER the Fata Morgana?”
Violet frowned. “The ship? This ship?”
“No, apologies,” Raines shook his head in a negative. “I should have been more clear. The Morgana itself, that which lies at the centre.”
Violet frowned. The words were familiar. The idea conjured up images, sensations. But . . . no.
“I don’t.”
“A pity. Still, that first trip was many years ago. Perhaps that memory is buried deeper yet.”
They were alone in the workshop again, if one didn’t count the Mandragora, silently going about their inscrutable duties. The only noise came from her relentless tapping. Violet stared at her fingers on the trestle table between them. Fingers drumming that same pattern, again and again. Tap, tap, tap. Mindless repetition. Whenever her attention wandered she would find herself doing it.
Or am I? Which one of us? It’s become hard to tell.
“I have . . . gaps,” she said, to break the silence. “Holes, blanks where I know things should be. Things I believe I should know, but it’s like someone told me about them. Second-hand memories.”
“You have experiences like this? Perhaps with the golem?” Raines looked at her from raised brows. Concern or curiosity, she couldn’t tell.
“No, not like this. That was different.”
“Even your time in the black? Until we found you again?”
“Like a dream. A nightmare. Until I woke up.”
She looked down, at her hand, the whole body, so unfamiliar. So wrong. But better than what had come before. The black, the falling . . .
“I worry I’m still not awake,” she said honestly, grimacing at the tremor in her voice. How quiet she was. “Still half asleep, not sure if I might drift away, or wake up somewhere . . . somewhere . . .”
The ship shuddered around them, a sudden jolt accompanied by a drop in her stomach. A sharp course correction to avoid something in the black. Glasses rattled on the shelves and the furniture shifted. She grabbed for the arms of her chair, fighting down the blind panic the sudden turbulence threw up.
It was over in a moment. The Mandragora tending the room unfrozen, resuming their duties.
“You are still with us?” Raines watched her carefully.
She nodded, not trusting words. Slowly, she relaxed her hands.
“I see there is still some ways to go, some remnants. Perhaps it will always be so. But I imagine you will become more fluent in this body. Such a remarkable transition. Unique, so far as I am aware.”
She grimaced. “Distractions, instinct. Sleep and dreams. They all . . . all triggers.”
“I see.” Raines considered. “Do you recall the announcement after my return from the Edge? The discussions that followed? Such controversy.”
“I remember the surprise.”
“Yes?”
“People believed you. That was a surprise.”
“I came bearing evidence. Why should they not? Evidence and explanations.”
“People never believe the prophets. Not when they speak of doom.”
“This world is doomed,” Raines motioned towards the window. The triple layers of glass, glazed and bolted between them and the outside. The world they floated above and its cold sun.
“It was doomed before we arrived. You just hastened the end. Besides, what was the alternative? To let it spread?” she asked.
“That is the answer they have come to in the High. How to avoid their fate. To flee and spread to other worlds. They think they can save everyone.”
“They think no such thing. All the ships in the Lanes, it will never be enough. It was never going to be enough.”
“It will be. For some. Those who know how to survive.”
“They don’t know. Those people on the world below. You brought her here. To do it again.”
“The fog would have been here soon anyway. They would never have survived it.” Raines smiled. “We know how to survive, don’t we, my dear?”
Violet didn’t answer, tapping her fingers. Her gaze was fixed on the outside, through the porthole. The black outside, faint and wispy around the cold sun. But that would change soon.
“Violet?” Raines called out to her.
The girl shrugged. “No.”
“ALL OF YOU feeling that?” Stoker asked, shuffling in place to turn around. “Or is it just me feeling my skin peel off?”
“That is disgusting,” Quill said.
“No, I feel it too,” Nel said. The hairs on the back of her hand were standing up, alive and writhing. Tingling all over, like she was standing too close to Quill. But the Kelpie was distant enoug
h and wasn’t using his powers, too focused on making sure they cleared the thin edge of the miasma. And the higher they rose, the deeper into the mist bank, the stronger the feeling became.
Quill had been right and nervous about the rays, they’d been buffeted once or twice when one had strayed too close. Dark shapes in the mist, a breeze where there shouldn’t have been one, and the song of the black.
This was something else.
She recognised it now.
“Quill!” she yelled in alarm. “Envelope! We’re meshing!”
She couldn’t see anything, just dense, roiling mist. It parted like water when it struck their own envelope, but was so thick there was nothing visible a dozen feet out. They’d chosen this direction for that reason, it was already haunting them. Nel looked for the telltale, the shimmer where another envelope might be or where it might be joining them.
Timbers were shaking, the whole mainmast creaked. The wind was turning, no longer under Quill’s control. The ship was in danger. Whatever was out there was bigger than them.
Much bigger.
There were voices in the mist, she realised. Shouting. Orders. Hails.
“Hold!” She raised both hands to her mouth to yell. “All hands stop. Stop!”
Dead or alive, sailors still turned the world blue. The deck and rigging came alive with words as sails were reefed. Quill brought the wind to a head, leaving them in irons, before throwing the brakes on. The ship tilted forward at the sudden change in direction, the half sails flapping before they caught. The crew held fast, all of them waiting.
“Quill,” Nel called out, loud enough to be heard. “Give us a breeze. Starboard side.”
The Kelpie did his trick, a gust of thaumatically created wind tearing down the flank of the ship, blowing a passage in the mist.
The Mangonel Falling was alongside them. The name emblazoned and garish as ever, man-high letters taller than Nel when up close. And they were up close. Half a hundred cannon stared down at them. A broadside that wouldn’t just cripple their ship, splintering masts and tearing holes in sail. At this range it would kill them all, riddle them with splinters and debris. A sailor who took a direct shot would be the lucky one.
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