Icebreaker

by Lian Tanner

  She heard a gasp. “You!” And there was the boy, right in front of her, his face pale and set.

  Petrel slid the key into the lock and turned it. The door swung open.

  “Come on!” she hissed, beckoning to the boy.

  His eyes narrowed, but he stayed where he was.

  “Do you want to escape or not?” whispered Petrel. “’Cos this is your only chance!”

  To her relief, that got him moving. He crept through the door and she thrust a jacket and trousers at him.

  “What are these for?” he said.

  Petrel didn’t reply. She was already wriggling into the second jacket, and pulling the trousers up.

  Fin copied her as quickly as he could, which was not quick at all. He had no idea how to fasten the jacket, and Petrel had to do it for him. She pulled the hood over his head so his face was hidden, then she stood back and inspected him.

  “What are we—”

  “Shhhhh!” said Petrel.

  She had known from the beginning that she would not be able to take the boy back the way she had come. The distraction would not fool Albie for long, and the first thing he would do, when he recognized the trick for what it was, was head for the brig.

  Which meant Petrel and the boy must go in the opposite direction, through one of the old cargo bays. It had probably held stores once, but now, like most spaces on the Oyster, it held shipfolk. They slept in family groups, with their neighbors above, below and on every side, and their fishing knives and outdoor clothes strung up beside them. There were no walls except those made of sealskin, and no floors except whalebone and netting, so that everybody knew everybody else’s business, and what affected one person affected them all.

  The idea that Petrel might be able to drag the stranger unnoticed through such a crowded space was so ridiculous that she wondered if she had gone winter-mad.

  But there was no other way out, not if they didn’t want to run straight into Albie and his fighters.

  Petrel put her finger to her lips again, “Shhhh!” and crept towards the hatch that led to the cargo bay.

  This was the moment when timing really counted. She thought she had got it right, but as the two of them waited beside the hatch she listened for the sound of Albie’s running footsteps and chewed her knuckles until they hurt.

  “What are we waiting—”

  “Shhhhhh!”

  And then it came, just as she had hoped—the blessed sound of the fishing siren. It whooped through the ship like a summons, three times. Petrel braced herself. But to her amazement, the siren whooped again. Just a single loud note, but everyone on board knew what it meant.

  The toothies, thought Petrel. The toothies have come!

  Her timing couldn’t have been better. She grabbed Fin’s hand and pulled him through the hatch. All around them, folk were rolling out of their hammocks. It wasn’t just the fishing shift, not today. Even the bratlings of six or seven winters were pulling on their outdoor clothes and climbing the nets to the next deck. Within half a minute, Fin and Petrel were indistinguishable from the folk around them.

  Except for Fin’s climbing.

  He couldn’t have made himself more conspicuous if he had tried. With Petrel prodding and pushing him, he managed to reach the top of the net. But then the two of them had to hop across a dozen whale ribs, shimmy up one rope and down another, and crawl under a hammock full of babies.

  It wasn’t that Fin was particularly clumsy. He just wasn’t used to a pathway that consisted of nets and ropes and whalebones. Folk were beginning to stare.

  There was nowhere to hide and no time to get to the other side of the cargo bay. So Petrel did the only thing possible. She slid the nearest fishing knife from its sheath and, concealing her actions with her body, sliced through the rope that held the babies’ hammock.

  There was a net directly below, and the babies tumbled into it, unhurt. But the shock set them to screaming at the tops of their voices, and in the chaos that followed, Petrel dragged Fin up another level.

  Below them the babies wailed inconsolably, and nets and whalebones shook as their parents rushed to comfort them. Petrel kept her head down, and motioned for Fin to do the same. And it was as well she did, because before she could even begin to think of what to do next, a man shouted, “This rope’s been cut!”

  Between one breath and the next, the atmosphere in the cargo bay changed. “My jacket’s missing,” cried a boy. “And my trousers.”

  “And mine!”

  Petrel groaned. She should have stolen the clothes from a different part of Grease Alley. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  But it was too late now. Men and women were unsheathing their fishing knives and peering at their neighbors, trying to see beneath the concealing hoods. Bratlings bounced across the nets from one jacketed figure to another, shouting, “Who’s that? Grease or intruder? Show your face!”

  Fin grabbed Petrel’s hand. “How do we get out of this?” he hissed.

  Petrel looked around frantically. If she was caught, and Albie discovered that she had freed the boy, she would be dead within the hour.

  That thought was enough to break the self-imposed lock on her throat. She took a deep breath, and pointing in the direction of the brig, she shouted, “Braid! Look! It’s stinking Braid!”

  It worked. Half the folk in the cargo bay surged towards the brig, shouting with fury and almost trampling each other in their desire to get at the invaders. The other half swore and made threatening gestures, but then they sheathed their knives, finished lacing their jackets and began to climb towards the Commons ladderway. The toothies had come, and everyone was hungry.

  Petrel and Fin climbed too. With their faces turned from their companions, they scrambled up the nets, then onto the Commons and up again, saying nothing to each other. Ugly words spun around them, as folk vowed revenge on the intruders. There was even talk of a reprisal attack on the foredeck, despite it being neutral territory, but that was quickly squashed.

  Petrel stayed as close to Fin as she could, kicking him whenever he hesitated. But the Commons ladderway was easier than the nets, and besides there was such a press of folk on every side that the boy’s lack of shipboard experience hardly showed.

  That is, until they stepped through the hatch and out onto the foredeck.

  Everyone stopped then and checked their jackets, putting on gloves and pulling ice masks over their faces. Fin and Petrel copied them. But when someone handed Fin a fishing line, the boy stared at it as if he had never seen such a thing in his life.

  Most folk got on with their own business, baiting their hooks and throwing their lines into the water. But one or two of them looked back as if they were wondering what was wrong …

  Petrel pinched Fin’s arm, hard. “Fish,” she hissed. “Fish or die.”

  CHAPTER 8

  THE FISHING SHIFT

  The fishing line was wound around a slab of bone, with a vicious hook and a lump of metal at the end. The boy had no idea what to do with it. What’s more, he did not want to waste his time fishing; now that he was out of the brig, he wanted to be in the belly of the ship, hunting the demon.

  Still, he knew Petrel was right. If he was to avoid recapture, he must play out this charade for a while at least.

  Soon, he promised himself. And he stumbled to the rail.

  There were birds everywhere, huge black-and-white creatures that swooped and dived at the deck. The sky, so big that it made the boy dizzy, loomed above him. All about the ship were icebergs, as unforgiving as death itself.

  Petrel threaded a lump of gristle onto the boy’s hook and pushed him closer to the rail.

  “Quick!” she whispered. She threw the end of her own line outwards. The boy braced himself and did the same.

  Far below him, the sea rolled past, as gray as a corpse. The deck heaved. Up and down. Up and down. The boy hoped that nothing would take his hook, but it was no more than a few seconds before he felt a jerk on the line, and something tr
ied to drag it out of his hands.

  The fish was heavier than he had expected and it took a good deal of his strength to pull it all the way up the side of the ship to the rail. There it stuck and would have stayed, but for a man who cried, “Hold it!” before grabbing the fish with a hooked stick and hauling it on board.

  It fell flapping to the deck, blunt nosed and ugly, and the boy had to force himself to stand still while a woman sliced its head off with a sharp blow and tossed it into an icy bin. Blood and snow and fish heads spattered the deck around the boy’s feet. A bird swooped past him, its wings almost brushing his hair.

  Petrel held out another lump of gristle.

  With clenched teeth, the boy threaded the bait onto his hook. Then, determined not to arouse suspicion, determined not to be recaptured before he had destroyed the demon, he tossed his line over the side again.

  The next hour quickly descended into a nightmare of ice, hooks, aching muscles and sore hands. But only for the boy. The savages who lined the ship’s rails on either side of him, shoulder to shoulder in some places, didn’t seem to notice the discomfort. They laughed as they threw their hooks into the water, and whooped through their ice masks as they hauled up their catch. The smaller children chased each other around the deck with fish heads, screaming, “Toothy! Toothy!” Fish rose up the side of the ship in the hundreds, struggling and flapping. It was like a festival—

  Except for the tensions. The boy saw the almost-brawls out of the corner of his eye, and heard the threats and accusations that punched through the laughter.

  “Look at ’em,” Petrel whispered, as she rebaited her hook. “Grease thinks Braid stole you, with a bit of help from Dufftown. Braid’s denying it for all they’re worth, and so’s Duff. They reckon Albie must’ve got careless, and they’re blaming him for everything. If we weren’t on the open deck, there’d be blood spilt by now.”

  She hissed with enjoyment. “Look at old Crab! I reckon he’s just heard the news. Doesn’t he look as if he’s about to burst his boiler?”

  The boy nodded, though he had no idea who Crab was, or what a boiler looked like when it was about to burst. He did not care either. The only thing that mattered was to get back inside the ship. To find the demon. To destroy it.

  “When can we stop?” he whispered.

  “Not for ages yet.” And Petrel tossed her line back into the water.

  From that moment on, only fierce determination kept the boy going. He worked in a trance, pulling the fish up, throwing his line down. Pulling the fish up, throwing his line down. Pulling the fish—

  It was midmorning when the weather changed. It seemed to happen between one heartbeat and the next; the horizon disappeared and the wind rose. Birds tore across the sky. The ship began to plunge up and down like a child’s toy.

  The boy grabbed hold of the rail, then let go when he realized that everyone else had merely braced themselves and kept working. A fish flapped against his foot. His stomach lurched. Something at the back of his throat tasted foul.

  He swallowed and looked down at the deck, but that made it worse. There were fish heads everywhere, sliding back and forth with the motion of the ship, their eyes staring at him. There was blood too, more than he had realized. It washed around his feet, red and viscous, and he could not escape it.

  His stomach heaved, and he grabbed for the rail again. A bird flashed past, like a premonition of disaster. A sheet of spray sliced up towards him.

  “What’s the matter?” hissed Petrel.

  “Going—to be—sick!”

  “No! Not in a little sea like this! You’ll give us away! Both of us!”

  The boy could see the panic in Petrel’s eyes, and knew that it was reflected in his own. He must not be sick! He must not give himself away!

  But all the willpower and training in the world could not stop what was coming. He felt as if he were about to vomit up every meal he had ever eaten.

  There was a flash of movement, and something thumped against his arm.

  At first, the boy did not realize what had happened. All he knew was that Petrel was dragging him away from the rail.

  “What’s the problem, shipmate?” asked one of the fish hookers.

  Without a word, Petrel pushed the boy’s sleeve up. The man nodded and said, “Take him to sick bay.”

  The boy stared at his arm. It was starting to hurt now, and he could see blood. His blood. It was such a shock that he stopped feeling sick. “You cut me,” he said to Petrel, as she dragged him towards the hatch.

  “Shhhh!” Petrel pulled the hatch open and bundled him inside.

  “But—”

  “Be quiet,” she snapped, “or I’ll cut you again!”

  The boy was exhausted and badly shaken, and oh, how he longed to snap back at her! But he pressed his fingers to the wound and said nothing.

  I should be GLAD she cut me, he told himself. I am inside again. I can search for the demon!

  And so, as he and Petrel climbed down through the ship, he tried to work out where he was, tried to remember the ancient tattered diagram that he had learned by heart. It was not easy. The stairs were so steep that he felt as if he risked his life with every rung. There were people everywhere, and hardly a moment passed when Petrel was not dragging him one way or another to avoid them, or whispering, “Can’t you go faster than that?” or shoving him across a whalebone floor and into a labyrinth of pipes.

  The boy felt as if the ship were playing with him, as if the girl were playing with him. By the time he stumbled off the final ladder, he had lost all sense of direction, and knew only that he was far below the waterline and that the walls around him were thick with rust and grease. The engines rumbled on such a deep note that he could feel it in his bones.

  Petrel pushed him through one last hatch into a dimly lit room. She tore off her outdoor clothes, then she turned on the boy without warning.

  “You nearly got us killed!” she hissed. “Staggering around the foredeck like a sick penguin.” She shook her head in disgust. “Don’t know why I bothered getting you out of the brig in the first place.”

  The morning, with all its torments, spun around the boy, and for a moment he felt his own temper rising …

  No, stop it! Torments do not matter. The girl does not matter. Nothing matters except the demon!

  With an enormous effort, he managed to smile apologetically. “I am sorry—” he began.

  But even as he spoke, the pipes around him started to clang, so loud and insistent that the boy was deafened. He jammed his hands over his ears, but still he felt as if he were in the middle of a storm, and the ship tumbling down around him.

  “What is happening?” he cried.

  “It’s a message,” shouted Petrel over the noise. “For the whole ship.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Murder … disaster … mutiny…” The dreadful sound stopped, and Petrel stared at the boy, her mouth agape.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Petrel swallowed. “First Officer Orca’s been murdered! Someone just found her in her cabin with her throat cut. And whoever’s sending the message swears—they swear that it was you who did it!”

  CHAPTER 9

  MURDER!

  Dolph, only child of First Officer Orca, stood at the door of her mam’s cabin and could not speak.

  This isn’t happening, she thought. It’s not possible. Other folk die, but not Orca. Not Mam.

  At her shoulder, Second Officer Crab murmured, “A dreadful shock! Dreadful! For all of us.”

  Dolph didn’t want to talk to Crab, didn’t even want to look at him. She kept thinking that her mam would stride into the cabin and take command of the situation. Fix things. Make them better.

  Except nothing could make this better.

  A shiver ran through Dolph. Her heart was boiling over with fury, grief and love, and she didn’t know which one to grab hold of. Which one to give voice to.

  Crab cleared his throat. “Her last thoug
ht was for the ship, did you see?”

  He pointed, and Dolph’s unwilling gaze followed his gesture to where Orca’s hand rested on the deck. Her fingers were coated with her own blood, and bloody marks on the floor showed where she had scrawled something before dying.

  “Obviously she didn’t want the Oyster torn apart by suspicion,” murmured Crab. “She didn’t want us looking in the wrong direction for her killer.”

  Dolph tried to focus. She shook her head and wiped her eyes. She made herself look at the last message from her mam, a single word written in blood.

  STRANGER

  Second Officer Crab was nodding to himself. “She was a great First Officer,” he said softly. “Quite possibly the greatest the Oyster has ever known. As such, we will honor her in death as we honored her in life. We will hold her funeral first thing tomorrow morning. And then—” His voice rose. “And then we will find the stranger and throw him overboard!”

  “Yes,” said Dolph, finding her voice at last.

  And with that, all her grief and uncertainty seemed to vanish, and the only emotion left inside her was hatred.

  * * *

  It took Petrel a moment to catch her breath. But when she did, she was furious. “How could you be so stupid?” she demanded. “Did you think they wouldn’t come after you? Did you think you could walk right into the middle of Braid and murder the First Officer, and no one would—”

  “Stop!” cried Fin. “I do not know what you are talking about!”

  “You do!”

  “No! I did not murder anyone! When could I have done it? I was locked up until you freed me!”

  Petrel didn’t believe a word he said. As she glowered at him, the pipe messages started up again, carrying shock and anger from every part of the ship. Not a single person in Grease Alley or Dufftown had liked Orca when she was alive, but that no longer mattered. With one fell act all the blame and hostility of the foredeck had vanished. This wasn’t a case of tribe against tribe. This was the crew against murderous strangers. The ship against the rest of the world.

  “Well, everyone thinks it was you,” snapped Petrel, listening to the messages. “And they don’t like it one bit! It’d be bad enough if Albie had crept in and done the deed. That’d set Braid against Grease worse than ever, but at least it’d be something folk could understand.” She glared at the boy. “Not like this. You’re a stranger, and you’ve no business murdering anyone!”