Ellie could hear Finn’s furious cries as she sped across the cobbles.
‘D’you think that trick works on me, Ellie? Do you think I can’t still find you? Fine, FINE! Abandon me again – leave me all alone! You’re good at that. But you’ll need me soon, you’ll see!’
From the Diary of Claude Hestermeyer
I backed towards the wall. I kept trying to speak but no words would come.
‘Claude, it’s me,’ said Peter.
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No, it can’t be. Peter died. He died in front of me.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Peter.
‘Get out.’
‘Claude –’
‘Get out!’ I yelled. ‘Whatever you are, GET OUT!’
I reached for the first thing I could find – an inkpot. I hurled it at Peter but missed. The pot seemed to sail straight through him, spraying black ink across my books, my shelves, and the floorboards. Somehow, there wasn’t a spot of ink on his crisp, grey shirt.
I stared at him in disbelief. I steadied myself against the desk. ‘I must . . . I must get some rest. I’m seeing things.’
‘I am real, Claude,’ said Peter. ‘Very real. Come, let me prove it to you.’
He held out his hand towards me. I hesitated, then took hold of it. His grip was firm, warm.
‘But the inkpot?’ I said.
‘Is just an inkpot.’ He placed his other hand on top of mine. ‘We are bonded, you and I.’
‘But . . . you’re an illusion. You’re inside my head. You’re not real.’
‘No, I’m real and I’m inside your head,’ said Peter. ‘I put myself there.’
‘Well put yourself out again!’ I cried, wrenching my hand from his. I couldn’t bear to look at him. His eyes were cold and distant, where Peter’s had been sweet and compassionate.
‘Again, I’m afraid that’s not how this arrangement works.’
I rummaged in my desk for the bottle I kept there. My head was swimming.
‘Would you . . . like some whisky?’ I said, sitting down. ‘Or would it pass straight through you?’
‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t even be able to lift the glass,’ said Peter. ‘Not unless you asked me to.’
I buried my face in my hands. My heart hammered painfully.
‘You’re real, but you’re in my head. You’re in my office, but not really here at all. And you can move things, but only if I tell you to.’
Peter nodded. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’
I did know. I knew the signs better than anyone – before this fateful day, my research had focused on studying the history of the Enemy.
I sipped some whisky, and stared at the man who’d once been my best friend.
‘It means I’m the Vessel.’
Ellie’s Workshop
Ellie had grown up in her mother’s workshop, in the wealthier upper parts of the City. When she was eight, her mother had died, and Ellie and her brother had moved into the orphanage down on Orphanage Street. When she was ten, her brother had died, and Ellie had moved into the abandoned blacksmith’s opposite, to build a workshop of her own.
It had been Castion’s idea. The City needed someone to carry on Ellie’s mother’s work. Hannah Lancaster had been a genius, transforming the City with her inventions; by the time she died, the City relied on her machines to catch whales, gather oysters, filter seawater and more besides. Ellie didn’t know much about her mother’s inventions, not really, but she knew more than most, so Castion had convinced the City councillors to pay her a small wage to keep the machines in working order, and to create her own inventions too. Ellie’s first invention had been a small rocket, powered by gunpowder, which she had proudly demonstrated in the workshop in front of Castion and Anna, aiming it out of the open window. Her second invention had been a sprinkler system.
The workshop was at street level, with a library in the loft and a small metalworks in the basement. It was a dizzying, confusing place, looking as it did like the insides of a busy and unfocused mind. It was a tall, unevenly shaped room, lined with shelves that towered to the rafters. The floor and the walls were wood-panelled, though a visitor would be forgiven for not realizing this, since there was little wall or floor space that wasn’t covered in some way. Despite the size of the workshop, it had a musty, close feel, smelling of damp and paint and old books. It creaked and groaned beneath its own weight.
At no point did it appear to have been tidied. Discarded projects congregated in the corners, swept in that direction by their maker’s changing moods, picked up months later, then thrown back again. Slab-like workbenches rose from the clutter of scrap metal, fallen paint pots and open books. Delicate instruments for charting the weather lay strewn carelessly around. Glass jars stood in ranks upon splintery shelves, filled with dead things floating in yellow liquid: the coiled-up intestines of a giant sea bass, the barbed tail of a stingray. Reams of ink-smudged papers trailed from the wall to the floor, covered with drawings of bodies and faces and hands, of whales and icebergs and ships. Of things that wandered Ellie’s dreams, and contraptions she’d built, or half built, or would build one day.
The door to the street was a large oak-panelled shutter. Mounted above it was a stuffed sunfish, its mouth parted perpetually in a vacant ‘o’, its glass eye drooping slightly from its socket. The skeleton of a giant turtle hung from the ceiling on iron chains, suspended from the thick brass pipes of the water tank. In the back-right corner, a spiral staircase curled towards the loft: a half-floor Ellie had built as a library to accommodate the many books her mother had left her. The collection had since swollen to twice its original size, so the shelves of the library were packed to bursting.
On the ground floor, taking pride of place upon the central workbench, was a large harpoon gun. On the other benches were a brass telescope, a chemistry set, and a device that could generate electricity. Lying on the floor, meanwhile, were an open crate of fireworks, a working model of the solar system and – tonight at least – Ellie, who was curled up asleep on a pile of maps.
There was a knock at the door and she started awake, spitting out a mouthful of her own hair. She hadn’t dried it properly after being dropped into the sea, and it had become a messy tangle that scratched against her face, crunchy with sea salt.
‘Just a second!’ she cried. She had fallen asleep, fully dressed, while examining the layout of the City sewers. She hobbled clumsily towards the door, cursing herself for having fallen asleep when there was a boy who needed her help. It was already dark outside the window.
The knock came again, louder this time, as if someone were banging their whole head against the door.
‘I’m coming, Anna!’
Ellie set about undoing the many bolts on the front door, then rattled it along to one side on its metal wheels. There was a ripple of giggling and three tiny figures hurried in from the darkness. They were followed by Anna, who nodded lazily to Ellie and slouched inside.
‘Hi,’ she said.
The three younger orphans – Fry, Ibnet and Sarah – ogled the workbenches with wide eyes. Within seconds there was the crunch of something breaking underfoot.
‘Watch where you’re stepping!’ Ellie scolded.
‘Maybe if you cleaned up occasionally you wouldn’t have this problem,’ said Anna.
‘Don’t you start. I’ve seen the state of your bedroom,’ said Ellie, rushing over to Ibnet, who was brushing his hair with a stuffed hedgehog. ‘I wish you’d warn me when you’re bringing visitors.’ She pulled the hedgehog from the boy’s grip. ‘Did you find anything out by the docks?’
‘Yeah, I met this sailor called Darrius and he’s going to teach me how to kill a seagull with just a –’
‘I meant about Seth,’ Ellie said, whispering the name.
‘Oh right, him. No, nothing. Don’t touch those, Sarah.’
The orphans were standing on tiptoe to inspect the glass jars, marvelling at the dead things floating inside. Ellie glowered meaningf
ully at Anna.
‘I couldn’t disappoint them,’ said Anna, picking up an apple from one of the workbenches. ‘They said they wanted to see what “crazy old Ellie” was up to.’
‘Old? I’m the same age as you! Careful with that!’ she added – Fry had picked up a thick black clay tube from the ground, which had a whale carved on its side. She put the tube to her lips, and blew. A horrible, rasping sound trumpeted out the other end. The other two children covered their ears.
‘Look, I’m busy right now,’ said Ellie, snatching the tube from Fry’s hands. ‘I have work to do.’
‘You know you’ve got a sock in your hair, right?’ said Anna, plucking it from on top of Ellie’s head. ‘So have you figured out how to rescue Seth?’
‘Who says I’m planning to rescue him?’
‘It’s obvious,’ said Anna, biting into her apple. ‘You’ve got that wild look in your eye. You get it when you’re about to start work on a new invention.’
Ellie looked at the orphans to make sure they weren’t listening. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’ She pointed to the open maps on the floor. ‘There are sewer tunnels running right under Saint Ephram’s Square, where Hargrath said the execution’s going to be. It might be possible to get up underneath the bonfire and rescue Seth from on top of it.’
Anna stared at Ellie, then spat out an apple pip. ‘You are crazy. There’s no way that’ll work. Why do you want to save him so much anyway? He didn’t even seem that interesting.’
‘He’d just come out of a whale! How much more interesting do you want? They’re going to kill him! If one of the orphans was drowning, you’d jump in to save them, right?’
‘Yeah,’ said Anna, ‘but they’re my orphans. He’s not your responsibility; it’s not like it’s your fault he was caught.’
‘Yes it is!’ Ellie cried. Anna gave her a confused, disgruntled look. ‘I should have done more to save him.’
‘What more could you have done?’ said Anna. ‘Hargrath threw you in the sea. You’re being stupid.’
But Ellie wasn’t listening. Her thoughts were haunted by the image of Seth, trapped inside a cell, being kicked and punched by Inquisitors. Her tummy ached. ‘He’ll die without my help.’
‘I heard he’s the Vessel,’ said Fry, puffing her chest out proudly.
‘I heard they’re going to kill him!’ said Sarah.
Ibnet giggled. ‘Yeah! Kill the Vessel! Kill the Vessel!’
‘You’re the Vessel!’ Fry cried shrilly, pointing at Ibnet, and the two girls chased him round the workshop, cornering him between two bookshelves.
‘Stand back!’ Ibnet cried. ‘The Enemy’s about to burst out of me!’
He performed a gruesome pantomime, falling to his knees with a horrid gurgling sound, clutching his chest like it was about to pop open. Sarah and Fry fell about, laughing hysterically.
‘Will you shut up!’ Ellie yelled. ‘This isn’t a joke – a boy is going to die!’
‘We heard you kissed him, Ellie?’ said Fry, grabbing a book of anatomical drawings from the shelves and leafing through it. ‘I hope you didn’t get corrupted by the Enemy.’
‘It wasn’t a kiss – it was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,’ said Ellie wearily. ‘Besides, that’s not how it works – the Enemy is only ever inside one Vessel at a time. It can’t move between people as it pleases. Once it’s chosen a Vessel, it’s stuck in that person until they’re executed, or until the Enemy can take its own physical form.’
‘We know that,’ said Fry, rolling her eyes.
‘Ellie, is it true you’ve built a boat that can swim underwater, like a fish?’ said Ibnet, rattling a brass telescope against his ear.
‘It’s supposed to swim underwater,’ Ellie muttered. ‘Only it kind of, well . . . sinks.’
‘Can we have a go in it? We won’t break anything,’ he said, rattling the telescope so hard it slipped from his hand.
There was another knock at the door. Ellie groaned. She felt uncomfortable with so many people in her workshop. ‘Who else did you invite?’ she said, glaring at Anna, who had cleared a space on one of the workbenches and was now slumped across it.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ she said, her mouth full of apple.
Ellie rolled the door aside and Castion came hobbling in from the darkness, droplets of rainwater on his beard.
‘Good evening, Ellie,’ he said, bowing. ‘And Anna too, I see! And who are these mighty heroes?’ he added, smiling at the three younger orphans, who’d fallen silent, staring at Castion with wide eyes.
‘Problems with your leg?’ Ellie asked.
‘Yes,’ Castion sighed.
Lord Castion’s left leg was the pinnacle of Ellie’s mother’s engineering. Every time Ellie was called upon to fix it, she was both awestruck and distressed by its intricacy. Its insides were made up of tiny cogs and counterweights and moving rods, arranged in a mechanism so complex it made her eyes water. She tried her very best to mend it, but always with mixed results; Castion had never walked so well since Ellie’s mother died.
He pulled off his boot and rolled up his trouser leg, revealing the brass shell of the leg and foot, like part of a suit of armour. He undid the straps and yanked the leg off without ceremony, glancing about for some free workbench space to put it on. Ellie shooed Anna off the workbench she’d been lying across and took the leg carefully from Castion.
The younger orphans sidled over, gazing up at Castion in reverent silence. Ellie wondered if they had ever seen a whale lord up close. Sarah examined the wolf’s head on his shoulder, touching its nose. Castion removed a killer whale’s tooth from his coat pocket and placed it in her hand.
‘A present,’ he said, and the three orphans gawped at the tooth like it were some holy relic.
‘Sir?’ said Sarah, unable to contain herself. ‘Have you ever nearly drowned?’
Ibnet shoved her aside. ‘Did you ever ride a ship through a storm?’
Fry shoved him aside. ‘Is it true you killed a giant squid with your bare hands?’
Castion held his hand up to silence them. Then he leaned down, favouring them with a slow, brilliant smile. ‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘How do you think I lost my leg?’
They watched him in wonder, their eyes glistening. But the silence was too brief; with a violent shriek they fell on each other in a heap, wrestling for the whale’s tooth.
‘I thought you lost your leg to a shark,’ Ellie grumbled, unscrewing the mechanical leg’s outer casing. She was still angry with Castion for not helping her earlier.
He shuffled his stool closer with a squeak of wood. ‘Listen, I’m sorry I was so stern with you up in the square,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘They’re going to kill that boy,’ she said.
Castion grimaced. ‘They might find him innocent,’ he said. ‘Ellie, you didn’t know him before today, did you?’
‘No.’
‘So why do you care about him so much?’
‘I think she fancies him,’ said Anna, who was now stretched out on the floor. Ellie grabbed a blanket and threw it over Anna’s face.
‘It’s because he’s just a boy,’ she told Castion. ‘He’s innocent – it’s not fair.’
Anna was laughing underneath the blanket, making it wobble up and down.
‘Stop it. I do not fancy him!’ Ellie cried, giving Anna a light kick.
‘Children!’ said Castion, slamming his hand against a workbench.
Ellie and the other orphans fell silent. Anna pulled the blanket from her face, holding it meekly to her chest. Castion’s eyes were wide in the flickering lamplight. ‘You need to understand how serious this is. If he is the Vessel, then you must forget you ever met him, and you must not do anything to help him. People who associate with the Vessel are not looked on kindly by the Inquisition.’ He took a deep breath. ‘After the twelfth Vessel was executed, his family was hanged too, because they’d been hiding him in the cellar of their house. His whole family, Ellie. Exce
pt for his eight-year-old daughter.’
‘Because she was so young?’ said Anna.
Castion’s gaze fell to the floor. ‘No. Because she was the one who told the Inquisition where to find him.’
Ellie felt her chest tighten. Anna looked at the younger orphans. ‘That’s horrible,’ she said.
‘No, it’s necessary,’ said Castion. ‘You don’t know the power of the Enemy. You’ve never seen it.’
He turned his cane over in his hands. He was silent for a long time.
Ellie took a tiny step towards him. ‘Sir . . . have . . . have you seen it?’
But Castion just continued to stare down at his narwhal-tusk cane. Ellie noticed his fingers were trembling. Then he sat up straighter and looked to the door.
‘What’s that noise?’ he said.
Ellie heard it too. People were shouting outside. She felt a chill in her heart and rushed to slide open the door. The cheers swept in with the freezing night air.
‘It’s him!’
Girls and boys were running along Orphanage Street, crying up to the windows and balconies above. In the distance, a mighty bell began to toll.
‘It is him! It is him!’
One girl skipped across the cobbles, trailing in the wake of her bright-eyed friends. Ellie grabbed her arm as she raced past. ‘What’s happening?’ she said urgently.
‘That boy they found in the whale. He’s the Vessel! The High Inquisitor says so. Now they can kill him and we’ll be safe again for years and years.’
Ellie’s stomach twisted worse than ever and she thought she might be sick. Seth was going to die. He was going to die and it was all her fault. She had to do something – she had to save him – even if he was to be executed the very next morning.
‘When is it going to happen?’ Ellie said. ‘When will the execution take place?’
The girl grinned happily in the glow of the oil lamps.
‘Why, it’s happening now.’
Orphans of the Tide Page 4