by Carrie Patel
The cadet, Valenti, cleared his throat into Malone’s ear. “Sir, I was coming to cherch–”
“Not you,” Geist said. “Her.”
Malone was hauled away from the wall and spun to face Geist. He was dressed in loose crimson pajamas that shone and rippled like flowing water. They hung on his thin frame in a way that made him look both smaller and more authoritative than usual. His eyes were bright and alert, his mouth the same thin line she’d pictured. The only real sign he’d been sleeping was the crunched and crinkled mass of hair on one side of his head.
“I found Sharad dead in his cabin,” she said. “His throat was cut. By his own straight razor, it seems. He’s probably been dead for a couple of hours.”
Geist’s eyebrow quirked. “You found the razor?”
“No. It’s missing from his kit.”
He nodded over her shoulder. “Cherch her cabine.” Cadet Valenti released Malone and hurried toward her quarters. “Wass were you doing in Sharad’s cabine?” Geist asked.
“Investigating,” she said. No point in hiding it.
Geist smirked, holding his chin with one hand. “Why?”
“It was supposed to be empty,” Malone said.
“Here!” Valenti called down the hall. “Unter ze mattress!”
Malone spun. She would have thought it a tasteless joke, but Valenti was emerging from her cabin, holding a crusty razor aloft like a prize.
His face was flushed with victory, his eyes wide with conviction. She was guilty, and he was the avenging angel who had caught her.
Malone turned slowly, hoping she would not see the same look on Geist.
His expression was steady, and his eyes were on her. “I am hoping you will explain,” he said.
“If I’d killed Sharad, I’d know better than to hide the evidence in my own room,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have returned to the scene after the job was done.”
Geist inclined his head to one side. “Unless perhaps you planned on having this conversation now.”
Malone wasn’t sure if he was trying to goad her or if he was really that stupid. “You’ve got forty-two people under your command. How well do you know them?”
“Better than I know you.”
“What do you think I’d want?”
Geist’s face was motionless except for his lips. “I am hoping you tell me.”
“I chose to stay to help you find Roman Arnault. If I didn’t want that, I would have stayed on the farm.” Once again, she wished she had.
“Then give me a better history. Why is the razor in your cabine?”
Malone opened her mouth to reply that she was the obvious scapegoat, and if he was going to torture her with questions this idiotic, he might as well toss her overboard now.
But another voice called from the hall behind her.
“Someone is sending you a message, you fools.”
Malone turned. Lady Lachesse was sauntering toward them, her hair pulled into a madwoman’s bun and her face a painted mask of irritation. Did the woman sleep in her cosmetics, or had she made herself up during their argument in the hall? Malone wasn’t sure which possibility was more ridiculous.
Geist’s mouth puckered into a prim little rosebud. “Is there something you will be telling us?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Lachesse said. “Whoever killed your young man left the weapon under Malone’s mattress as a warning.”
“Und this warning?” Geist asked.
Lachesse’s eyes fluttered open in exasperation. “That they will kill Malone next, of course.”
Geist was quiet, his eyes flitting from Malone to Lachesse to the watch officer next to him.
At last, he sighed. “We speak privately.” He nodded to the watch officer. “Cherch the cabines und count off. If others are missing, I must know.”
The woman made for the end of the corridor. Valenti fell into her orbit, casting a final rueful glare at Malone.
Only when that was settled did Geist pinch the bridge of his nose with something like real exhaustion. “Chernev,” he said, his eyes closed, “I want caffee in the study.”
The cook bowed and headed toward the galley.
Geist moved toward the stairs. “You will follow me.”
Lachesse looked at Malone with heavy-lidded eyes. Without a word, she headed after Geist.
They both followed him up the spiral stairs to the command deck. The other crew on duty watched them over control panels and under furrowed brows. Curious, but not certain what was afoot.
He led them into the room in which he’d debriefed Malone on her first day.
Geist sat and gestured for them to do likewise. His back was to the windows, and the scant moonlight filtering into the room made it hard to see his face. The black cames crossing the windows resembled the bars of a prison cell.
A long silence stretched between them. Malone resisted the urge to speak up – when Geist was ready he would accuse or question them. Lachesse adjusted her gold bracelets with a loud jangling but held her tongue.
The door creaked open behind them. Phelan entered and set a tray on the table with a nervous rattle. Caffee and three small cups. She glanced at them with wide, anxious eyes, and quickly left. As soon as the door shut behind her, Geist poured himself a cup, drained it, and poured himself another.
“I would offer to you, but I am knowing you detest it. Still, you must spreck if you decide otherwise.” He knocked back another glass of caffee. “Though you should do it rasch or I will be drinking yours en plus.”
Lachesse frowned. “If that’s all this is, then I’d just as soon return to bed.”
“Setz,” Geist said. “The others must esteem we are having a long chat.” With that, he set his glass down and laced his hands in front of him. Another silence stretched out, but Geist appeared in no mood to break this one.
“You don’t think we killed him,” Malone said.
He scratched his chin. “No.”
Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “How did you know?”
He scoffed and shifted in his seat. “You are not an idiot. Und you have no reason.” A tiny frown rippled across his drawn lips, gone as soon as it appeared.
“Who does?” Malone asked.
“It is not your concern.”
Lachesse only raised an eyebrow. A shake of the head would have been too gauche for her.
“That’s not how I work,” Malone said. She crossed her arms.
“I am begging your pardon?” Geist asked.
“You brought me along to help you find Roman Arnault. I don’t do half-jobs, Geist. I’m in or I’m out.”
He raised his eyebrows and glanced toward the louvered window. “I am thinking this would be a stark mal time to be ‘out.’”
“For both of us.” She took a step toward him. “You have a traitor in your midst. I can help you find him.”
The smile he gave her would have been polite on anyone else. “Speaking as a former detectif or as a former traitor?”
“Speaking as the one person on this ship with a bigger stake in finding Arnault than you.”
He angled his head toward Lachesse. “I am seeing why you chose to hang her.”
“I underestimated her,” the whitenail said. “I would not advise you to do the same.”
Despite herself, Malone felt pride welling up in her chest.
Geist rolled his eyes. It was the closest thing to agreement she was likely to get.
“Why would one of your crew kill another and frame me?” Malone asked.
“Politique is contentious. But you understand something of this, yes?” He drew his thumb along the side of his neck, mirroring her scar.
She waited.
He rubbed his goatee. “Some of my compatriots consider you… sauvage.”
Lachesse harrumphed.
Geist spread his hands. “We have been out of contact for hundreds of years. And where there is a lack of information, the imagination invents many details, does it not?”<
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Malone had seen plenty of evidence of that in how most of Geist’s crew dodged and avoided her.
“Your own cities are isolated, no? And does not the fear of the unfamiliar color your impression?”
“Not in shades of boogeymen and nonsense. Besides, those are politicians’ tall tales.” Malone put an extra emphasis on that, just so Geist would have no doubt that he was included in that statement.
Lady Lachesse made an admirable show of studying her long, shimmering nails.
Geist’s face lit up. “So you do comprend.” He nodded as if that explained everything.
Malone looked to Lady Lachesse, who gave her a small shrug.
“Are you saying that your politicians want people to believe we’re all savages?”
Geist’s eyes were round with apology. “Only some.”
“What do you want? Our land? Our goods? Our people?”
The Continental shook his head. “It is about power. There is great power in fear, no? Politics is theatre. Your Lady Lachesse knows this.”
The whitenail breathed a long-suffering sigh. “I so dearly hope you have a point.”
But Malone was thinking about Sundar and about how he would have relished this moment. His memory had snuck back up on her, and now it stung afresh like alcohol poured over a wound. To her surprise, the pain of his absence had not lessened. She only felt it less frequently.
Geist smiled blandly at Lady Lachesse. “My point is that your world is a pawn in ours. And there are very ambitious people on the Continent who tell very unpleasant stories to hold power.”
“We’ll tell others,” Malone said, her voice suddenly thick in her throat. “Lachesse and I are proof.”
Geist’s smile puckered into a wince. “A woman who was hanged and another with claws like a wild cat? You will forgive my indelicacy, but I fear you will not prove what you intend. Besides, people are stubborn creatures, no? Once they reach a conclusion, it becomes very hard to shake them from it. True investigators are rare.”
The discussion of politics, angles, and narratives was making Malone’s head spin. Or maybe it was just the smell of Lachesse’s perfume.
Regardless, she needed facts.
“Getting us to the Continent ahead of Roman is your job,” Malone said. “Mine is to find your murderer before something else happens. I need to know more about Sharad – who he was closest to on the Glasauge, who he might have quarreled with. Where the rest of the crew was in the hours before we found the body. What the schedule is, and any inconsistencies that might have arisen. How someone else could have gotten a key to this office.”
Geist frowned. “I am thinking you should guard your back and keep your head down.”
Malone looked at Lachesse, whose expression was carefully neutral. She’d never been much good at keeping her head down.
Chapter 16
Crossing Day
Jane’s burn had faded to a pale rose by the time of Crossing Day, three days after her initial meeting with Roman on the galley. They’d seen each other every day since, strolling across the decks to watch the locals and the distant behemoths that leapt and splashed. Their shift schedules made it difficult to find more than a few hours together, and the crowding on Salvage made it impossible to find any privacy, a fact that gnawed at her a little more with each meeting.
The mood began to change on Salvage, too – people grew eager and anxious with anticipatory energy.
Jane kept an eye on the pigeons of the Nossa Senhora. She didn’t see any new red-tagged birds, and it would have been impossible to keep up with all of the regular traffic.
But she began seeing other people come to talk to Leyal. She couldn’t figure what about – the conversations happened in low, tense voices behind closed doors.
Things were tense all around Salvage. People pulled longer shifts to get the boats ready for a day and night of revelry. The extended hours made them grumpy and unpredictable. But the worst was when the Staten Island Ferry, a moderately sized ship with several waterstills and a hundred beds, had to be scuttled. It sprang a leak and began sinking, and every Salvager in sight worked quickly to sever its moorings lest it pull other craft down with it.
Thanks to their swift cooperation, one of the Ferry’s waterstills and all of its inhabitants were evacuated. All except its capitan, who was condemned to go down with the ship he’d failed to maintain. To keep free of corruption.
The episode rattled Jane’s neighbors, and it showed her just how seriously Salvagers took their mundane maintenance routines. Many of the people she talked to said the capitan had earned his death, and that his segundos were lucky the old laws weren’t in force. A few confided that every ship went down eventually. All of them whispered it was an ill omen for Crossing Day, which marked Salvage’s arrival at the midpoint of the ocean, ten days after their departure from the shores of Jane’s homeland.
Which would mean they were halfway to the Continent and whatever it held for her, Roman, and the vault he meant to destroy. The thought unnerved and excited her all at once.
She awoke on Crossing Day to festival songs and the thick, rich smell of frying sweets. The festivities had already begun by the time she left her cabin and went to the salt boat to wash up; singers hooted and slurred, their voices already heavy with alcohol, and between the decks were hung colorful streamers and flags that had obviously seen too many years of rough use. The decks were busier and more crowded than she’d seen them yet, though the revelers didn’t seem to mind.
Jane snagged a ginger cake and ate half on her way to meet Roman. She wrapped the rest for later.
He was waiting on the long deck of the Horizon, right where he’d promised. The railings and deckhouses were strung up like an enormous – and enormously colorful – spider’s web.
His smile was that of a man with too many secrets.
And despite herself, Jane was happy to see it.
Two squarish packs rested at his feet. Roman adjusted one around her shoulders before slipping the other over his. “Our ticket to the party,” he said, fastening the straps. He held out his arm. “The evening’s festivities await.”
She took it and smiled back. “They’ll hardly begin before we arrive.”
“Then we must be punctual. These Salvagers are a strict bunch.”
Jane laughed but felt her nervousness creep into her voice. She didn’t want to think of what that would mean if they were caught.
And yet she had the delicious feeling of being in on a secret together. Anticipation warmed her blood, and the festive mood buoyed her spirits.
Roman was giddy, too, walking with a spring in his step. He seized a cup of grog, the thin alcohol the Salvagers made. Jane had made a game of spotting the stills on the ships she visited.
So far, she’d yet to find a ship without at least one.
“To christen the occasion,” Roman said, holding the cup to her.
She took it, but something about the laundry chemical smell of the stuff or the excitement brewing in her blood turned her stomach. She forced it down anyway.
“So, which way is the Kennedy?” Jane asked.
“Just across that box ship – the COSCO.”
There were at least four or five of the craft the locals called box ships – long ships that sat low in the water, their decks stacked with rows of rectangular boxes. She had always wondered what was inside them.
The nighttime chill was just creeping into the air when they climbed the gangway onto the ship with the letters “COSCO” painted onto its side.
The first time Jane had seen one of the box ships, she’d been at least a mile out, on the boat that had picked her and Roman up. From far away, the boxes looked like toy blocks, neatly stacked and still showing blushes of old color – blues, greens, reds, yellows.
Up close, there was nothing toylike about them. Stacked seven and eight high, they rose around her and Roman like canyon walls, climbing high enough that Jane had to crane her head back to see the tops. The soun
d of the festivities on the other ships faded away, warped and muffled by the ravine of metal.
Instead of shouts, songs, and cheers, Jane heard groaning metal, pattering footsteps, and high, whispering voices.
Roman pressed on like always, his head down and his gait accentuated by a slight limp. Jane couldn’t help but look at the rows of boxes they passed between and at the trellises of rope ladders and metal rungs connecting them.
A boy and a girl ran across the aisle a dozen yards ahead, bare feet slapping the deck.
By the standards of Salvage, each box was large enough to house a family. In fact, some appeared to house several – bed nooks were slotted three high, like shelves against the walls, though Jane couldn’t imagine climbing in or out of them without knocking her head. Clotheslines strung with tattered towels and trinkets marked off the space, suggesting privacy rather than creating it.
Jane was suddenly grateful to have her own berth, tiny though it was.
“There must be hundreds of homes like this,” Jane said.
“Almost a thousand if you count the ones on the other box ships,” Roman said.
A trio of children sat on the edge of one box, their swinging legs dangling over the top of the one below. They peered at Jane from behind a torn curtain.
“Are they safe?” Jane asked, marveling again at the height of the stacked boxes.
“As much as anything on Salvage.” Roman said it with his usual dispassion, but Jane noted again how he kept his head down and straight ahead, as if to avoid looking at the crates. “Despite Salvagers’ best efforts, everything here is falling apart.” Jane thought of the Staten Island Ferry. “These ships, at least, are big enough to keep steady in rough water.” His shrug was a little too stiff.
A pair of hammocks were strung inside the ground-level box on Jane’s left, and the children in them passed a beaded string back and forth.
Jane looked around with dawning realization at the youngsters dozing in bunks in the next box, at the size of the clothes hung across the aisles, at the small, bare feet dangling from the top of the stacks.