Tantamount

by Thomas J. Radford

  “Did you look?”

  “I said I would, didn't I? They'll end up here, lass, ain't nowhere else for them to go.”

  Violet said nothing to that, focused instead on chewing the bread. It was tough and gritty but palatable. She'd had worse.

  “There was a Guildswoman on our ship.” She anticipated the question Grouse opened his mouth to ask. “She was talking to the Alliance about Draugr. About being overrun with them.”

  “Overrun?” Grouse repeated.

  “Wallace has an Alliance tattoo.”

  “Eh?” Grouse frowned. “So?”

  “Did he used to be in the Alliance?”

  “Why? He say he was?”

  Violet scowled, not sure if Grouse was making fun of her.

  “So he's got some Alliance ink, so what?” Grouse shrugged. “Sometimes scratchers like to practice their work on Draugr before the real thing.”

  “Who was he before?” Violet asked.

  “Draugr don't talk much about before. Don't talk much about anything usually. What else did you hear?”

  Violet sighed. “Not much,” she admitted. “They talked about the situation escalating, about how there were hundreds of people here on Rim.” She hesitated, remembering. “No, Scarlett said there were . . .

  “We need to find the captain,” she said urgently, feeling a tightness in her chest suddenly. “We need to find him now.”

  “What? Why . . .” Grouse turned his head as they both heard yelling outside. Beneath that Violet heard the pounding of feet hitting the wooden ground. Men and women in Alliance colours crashed into the shack.

  “Two more in here!” one of them yelled back through the doorway as wands were brandished at the two of them.

  “Are they Draugr?” another asked, staring at Grouse suspiciously.

  “I ain't no bloody Draugr!” Grouse yelled back, taking a step forward. It was enough. One of the Alliance soldiers lashed out at him with a wide sweep of his arms. Sparks flew from his wand and brightly coloured light struck Grouse at close range, throwing him back against the far wall. He landed softly amidst the tarps and sails Wallace had piled but his neck was twisted at a horribly impossible angle. Violet gave a small cry at the sight.

  “What about her? She's no Draugr either.”

  “No loose ends,” someone replied. “Finish it.”

  Violet turned. Braced herself. She didn't see a way out. The Alliance soldier who'd fired raised his wand again.

  He went down, taking the other two with him as Wallace and a mob of others crashed into them. Shouts filled the air and through the open doorway Violet glimpsed a crowd of people rushing past. She ran outside, jumping over the pile of bodies in front of the door. One of the Alliance soldiers made to rise but someone beat them down again.

  Outside there was smoke. A fire burned and ash rose on the air. The noise was deafening as a mob surged around her. She saw flashes of Alliance colour but mostly it was the people from Rim. They were attacking the Alliance, viciously, with whatever came to hand. And Violet found herself swept along in that rush.

  It should have taken them almost two days to make the trip from Rim to the inner system, to Thatch and then Grange. And with only four people crewing the ship it should have taken them even longer—the ship was barely manageable, not meant to be handled by so small a complement. Nel was amazed Quill had managed to launch it with only Sharpe to help him. The Kelpie's thaumatic abilities were even more skewed towards large scale than she'd thought. The polar opposite to the way Gabbi's talents worked actually. Quill could launch the Tantamount but couldn't lift something as small as a spoon. Perhaps that had something to do with why the two clashed so often.

  Nel had learned it wasn't going to take them two days to reach Grange. Sharpe knew a shortcut, the kind of route Nel had taken before but had never been entirely comfortable with. Quill, on the other hand, relished what was coming.

  “Why doesn't everyone use this corridor?” Nel turned away from looking over the shortcut.

  Sharpe shrugged in response. “The locals all know about it. Young sailors cut their teeth on this stretch.”

  “And how many broken ships are littering this stretch?” Nel asked.

  “A few,” Sharpe admitted.

  “And you're sure you can do it?” Nel directed the question to Quill.

  “Of course,” Quill hissed. “Certain.”

  “And you ain't gonna break the ship in two?” Jack eyed Quill suspiciously.

  “No, Jack,” Quill dismissed his concerns. “I will not break the ship in two.”

  “You better not,” Jack growled. He prodded Nel with an elbow, lowering his voice. “Gabbi told me I was to flatten Quill if ever he did anything to mess up her kitchen.”

  He hefted a battered frying pan suggestively. The cast iron rim was dented in several places and wouldn't lie flat on a stove. One too many of Gabbi's temper tantrums.

  “Hold that thought,” Nel advised him, to Quill's annoyance.

  She took another good look at the corridor they were about to embark down. A corridor was a stretch of space littered with ether. The concentration of so much dispersed ether usually came with additional debris, like asteroid fields or planar rings. What it created was a field or expanse of space littered with pocket envelopes, each with their own gravity well. In this particular case the field was longer than usual, a corridor stretching almost from Rim to Grange.

  The plan was for Quill to guide the Tantamount through that corridor, whipping from one envelope to another, picking up speed much like a ship cresting a wave might. Only the Tantamount wouldn't slow down after any of those whips. There was a real danger, as Jack had mentioned, of Quill breaking the ship in two. Even if he managed to avoid crashing the ship into another stellar object they could get caught up in the field of another envelope, or the sheer acceleration itself could damage the still smouldering ship.

  Both Quill and Sharpe had been dismissive of this. Their cavalier attitude had motivated Nel to ransack Horatio's cabin until she found an old duelling wand. There were others locked in the armoury but this one was a match for the crystals in her own cabin. It wasn't the same as having her own weapon back but it was close enough to feel comfortable.

  “This had better be worth it,” she found herself muttering to Quill from atop the bridge. “And it had better work.”

  “It will work,” Quill insisted stubbornly. “Have some faith in me, Skipper. I've no liking for fool's errands.”

  Nel snorted. “This doesn't count as a fool's errand?”

  “This is our trade,” Quill replied. “Plying rough waters, maybe, but hardly uncharted or impossible. Have faith.”

  “You keep saying that. You haven't done a lot to make me have faith in you lately, Quill.”

  Quill faced her, a hard to read expression on his hard to read visage. “You speak of lately. I speak of all the years we have known each other, sailed under the same master, on the same ship. Does that, does all of that, weigh less than . . . lately?”

  Nel stared at him, unable to answer.

  “Thyme,” he said. One word. Brutally. For a moment Nel hated him for that cheap, underhanded blow.

  “I know. I . . . I haven't forgotten,” she said at last. “I've never heard you talk like this, Quill.”

  Quill looked away, breath hissing through his lips. “Yet you talk as many of my people do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You talk like Heathen,” Quill said.

  Nel grimaced. “She was my captain, once. That doesn't make us the same.”

  “You echo her beliefs nonetheless. Your memory is short and your faith is weak.”

  “Quill . . .”

  “Do you know why Heathen and the others abandoned the old ways, Vaughn?” Quill said. It was hard to miss the appellation he used. Quill might not like referring to Nel as skipper but he'd never argued the point. And as far back as she could remember he'd never once used her first or given name either. Until now. It
was rare for him, she suddenly realised, to call anyone by name.

  So Nel waited, knowing Quill wouldn't be satisfied until he'd vented whatever was bothering him to her.

  “Gods are like parents,” Quill muttered, speaking almost to himself. “Someone to look up to, to aspire to be like, someone to look out and protect you when you're young and know nothing better. But sooner or later the guiding hand has to step back. Those like Heathen, those before her, they were indignant at the lack. They sought attention elsewhere, forgetting all the times before. Like you, they remembered only the . . . lately.”

  Quill said this last bitterly.

  He went on. “A parent who smothers their child raises a weak and pathetic thing, unable to think for itself or even to stand unaided. That or a bitter and resentful spawn who defies them merely for the sake of it. So it is with parents, so it is with gods.”

  “That's a harsh way of looking at it,” Nel said.

  Quill snorted. “Once over brandy you told me of a resentful girl child who flouted her parent's laws under their own roof. Just because she could. And then ran away to sail distant skies, against her parents’ wishes. Remind me again who that child was?”

  Nel flushed. Damned brandy, she thought. One day I'll learn.

  Quill didn't pursue the matter though. He was too fixated on reliving his own past. “My people resented the cutting of the apron strings. They found . . . others to cling to. New gods, to replace what they perceived as abandonment. Ones more suited to their own upstart, resentful temperaments.”

  “And what did you perceive it as?” Nel asked. “If not abandonment?”

  Quill was a long time answering. “Faith.”

  “Isn't that just another word for ignorance?” Nel muttered.

  “It is close, sometimes similar. It depends on the person.”

  Nel touched a hand to the wooden rail of the Tantamount. Something solid, dependable. Reliable. Something she did have faith in. “The way I remember hearing it, your old deities didn't do so well against their upstart competition.”

  “There was no competition,” Quill said.

  Nel frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Ask me,” Quill said, staring out into the void. “Ask me how they died. Ask me how you kill a god.”

  Nel looked out into the darkness, trying to see what Quill saw. The Kelpie was making her head hurt with his home-brewed philosophy. She wasn't sure she wanted to ask the question. All she saw was the corridor. The one Quill said he could navigate.

  “Faith.”

  Nel jumped at the interruption, swore under her breath. Sharpe grinned at her as he came up the stairs. “Forgot I was here, didn't you? That'll teach you to ignore me.”

  Nel didn't answer him. Then aloud, “Damned Kelpie.”

  Quill smiled.

  “Take us in,” Nel said tightly. “Though so help me, if you break my ship, I'll string you up by your tail and fly you as my new personal flag.”

  “Aye, Skipper.” Quill turned to do what he did best.

  The ship started to move, slowly at first, a massive weight being levered onto a downhill slope. And just as inexorably it picked up speed. Nel clutched at the bridge's railing 'til her hands went numb, watching as the first envelope loomed.

  It was small, this first one. A small tidal pool in an otherwise featureless ocean void. But it was just the first shoal of many. Concentric rings shimmered I in the space around it, oily and only visible if looked at just so. Of course Quill knew where it was, he could see them, sense the thaumatic push and pull of ether. That was why he was the navigator. He took them straight in, smooth as butter and then caught the outermost ring, the ship leaning to the side as Quill rode the curve of the envelope, arcing the ship straight into the corridor.

  Nel swallowed as she felt the ship's speed increase. There was little to measure it against—the painted backdrop of stars didn't give perspective, but already she could see the second envelope, frighteningly close. Were they that close or was the ship going that fast? Quill caught the spin again, and the Tantamount whined a little in protest, blackened timbers creaking under the strain. They went through a third, then a fourth, before Quill straightened the ship's line. His lips were pulled back in a grimace, the effort starting to show.

  “Now what?” Nel asked.

  “We hold this course,” Sharpe said. “A few bells, half a day at most. Until we get to the end of the corridor.”

  “No more pockets?” she asked.

  “Some.” Sharpe didn't look worried. “We should avoid most of them though—the pockets are mostly clustered around either end. The ones in between Quill should be able to use to keep our course steady. The far end is where it gets difficult.”

  Nel knew what awaited them at the far end. The reverse of what they'd just been through—a half dozen or so envelopes of densely packed ether, only this time Quill would use them to slow the ship down. Their present speed was too fast to let them mesh with a planet's envelope and too fast for Quill to slow them down on his own. He needed an external force to work with and that was where the danger lay. With the ship battered as it was, the stress from the rapid deceleration could rip it apart at the seams.

  “So there's nothing to do 'til then?” she raised her voice.

  “Little,” Quill called back with a shrug.

  “Good,” Nel said. “Then I want a word with my navigator. In private.”

  Sharpe's reaction was little more than a raised eyebrow and a shrug. He left the two of them alone, clapping Quill on the shoulder as he passed.

  “Start talking,” Nel said once Sharpe was out of earshot.

  Quill regarded her with his cold, lizard eyes. He didn't speak.

  “You left us at Rim. Took the ship,” Nel stated.

  Quill nodded.

  Nel went on. “If I had another navigator, I'd have you hung from the mainsail and used your tail as the noose.”

  “You do not have another navigator,” Quill pointed out. He spread his arms wide. “And you will not likely find another one out here.”

  Nel tracked Sharpe's movements further down the ship. The man wandered aimlessly. Clearly he had nothing to do to pass the time. “Sharpe turned you.”

  “Turning would imply he steered me from another course,” Quill muttered.

  “Didn't he?”

  Quill shrugged.

  “You left us. You left me.” Nel discovered it hurt to say that aloud.

  Quill hesitated. Much to her surprise he appeared troubled. “It was,” he said slowly, “for your own good.”

  “How?”

  “It was safer,” Quill said.

  “Safer? How is being left at Rim with backwater natives and warzone refugees safer? And that's not even mentioning the ploughing golem and its Guild handler!”

  “Ah,” Quill mused. “The Guildswoman is not pleased then? No doubt concerned about the state of her cargo?”

  “Dammit, Quill, what do you know?” Nel demanded. “What were we carrying? Who in the hells is Sharpe? Is he part of the Guild too?”

  “I don't know,” Quill said. “At least not about Sharpe.”

  Nel shook her head in frustration. “Then how did he get you to work with him?”

  “He offered up something I wanted.”

  “What?” Nel demanded. “What did he offer you?”

  “A chance, the sort of opportunity I often dreamed of but never truly expected.”

  Nel stared, then cursed. The gods-cursed Kelpie wasn't going to tell her anything. He was too wrapped up in his own private revelations, whatever they were. She was going to have to wait until they got to Grange to find out what secrets Quill and Sharpe were keeping from her. She already knew she wasn't going to like them. And she hated waiting.

  So did Jack. She found him in the galley and, of all things, tidying up. He had maybe half the kitchen in order; most of the pots and pans were swaying on their hooks, stores and ingredients packed away. The room didn't seem to have take
n any damage from the fire. There were scorch marks on the ceiling and benches, but they'd been there before Sharpe turned the hold into an oven.

  “Jack,” she called, “what are you doing?”

  “Gabbi don't like it when her kitchen's out of order,” Jack grunted. “Stuff is in the wrong place. I'm putting it right.”

  Nel was bemused. “But why?”

  “’Cause it ain't right,” Jack said. “I'm making it right.”

  “But Gabbi's not even here,” Nel reminded him. “She's back on Rim with the captain and the rest of the crew. There's nobody here but us.”

  “Still ain't right,” Jack insisted stubbornly. “But it'll be right when Gabbi sees it.”

  Nel found herself smiling. Jack had more than a soft spot for Gabbi—like a child looked at its mother, always trying to please her. Maybe it was because Gabbi was the ship's cook—they did say the way to any man's heart was through his stomach. Or maybe it was just Gabbi herself. No, had to be the food.

  “Just remember to use fresh stores,” Nel said.

  “Yeah, I know, that's what Gabbi always tells me. I ain't stupid. Hey, where have you been all this time?”

  “Me? I've been on the bridge with—”

  “Not you, Skipper,” Jack interrupted, though he pointed towards her. “Him. Where's he been?”

  Nel turned, came face to face with black eyes and furred face. She swore, flinching. Bandit squawked, retreating up into the racks, setting the pots and pans chiming.

  “Where've you been?” Jack repeated like he expected an answer. “Slacking off, hey?”

  “Of all the ploughing hells,” Nel muttered. “You knew he was on board?”

  “Had to be, didn't he?” Jack said. “Wasn't back on the docks at Rim, were he?”

  “What's going on in here?” Sharpe called, sticking his head through the galley doorway, arms braced against the frame.

  “What was all that noise?” he said, looking at the clanging pans Bandit had taken refuge in. The loompa saw him too, still entrenched in its perch. And launched itself at Sharpe, landing on his face, striking with sharp claws and something else. Sharpe recoiled, falling back out onto the deck with a cry.