‘Rowan!’ He inspected her hand, then her face, then her hand. ‘Rowan!’
He put a cheek over her parted lips—
Detecting: no moisture. Detecting: no air movement. Detecting—
She wasn’t breathing. Her heart had stopped.
‘Gabel!’ he yelled, voice cracking. He stacked both his hands and positioned them palms-down between her breasts. He pushed down sharply: one, two, three…
‘Gabel!’ he screamed again.
‘What?’
The hunter appeared at the door. His hat and jacket were spotted with moisture; the rain had begun to fall.
‘Breathe into her!’ Caeles yelled.
Gabel saw Rowan sprawled across the floor of the cabin and stumbled inside, falling to his knees beside her and instinctively checking for a pulse in the veins of her wrist.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Breathe for her, into her lungs! I can’t do it!’
He continued pumping: one, two…
Gabel put his mouth around Rowan’s, and his conscience panged irrationally for being so intimate.
‘Now,’ Caeles said. He said it every few seconds. After each breath, Gabel moved his head away, looked at her face. ‘Again!’ Caeles shouted, one, two … ‘Is she breathing? Feel with your face.’
‘She isn’t.’
‘Breathe again!’
Cartilage popped inside her chest as the cyborg tried to reanimate her failing heart. Gabel breathed into her, filling his own lungs then passing it all to her. No air slipped from between their mouths.
‘Good!’ Caeles said. ‘Again!’
And again, Gabel breathed in, pushed it out. Caeles felt Rowan’s neck with his fingers, moved away to push again, and felt the beat at the last moment. He checked once more, just under the angle of the jaw, and detected a strained heartbeat emerge suddenly, thankfully.
‘Wait,’ he told Gabel. His voice was calmer.
‘What’s going on?’ The hunter’s words had anger in them – Caeles missed the red flash of his eyes, looking up too late to see – and his brow was furrowed, his hair running with sweat, hat knocked away. ‘What happened to her?’
‘Something stung her, a wasp. Over there.’
Gabel went, saw the huge crushed carcass of the insect. He reached down with his hand to touch it, felt the lash of static electricity that jumped up to him. He saw the spark in the air and smelled burning.
‘Oh god,’ he muttered.
He ran past Rowan and Caeles, past the magus and outside. The storm was like nothing he had ever seen, crashing down upon them like waves against a cliff. The usually still waters of the Lual were spinning with foam. Water crashed over his head and shoulders, and to his surprise lightning rippled under the clouds in a vast purplish-blue sheet—
rain stinging his eyes, he smashes through the doors of the inn and the weather hits him in the face. He senses the power in the air, and the look on Bethany’s face as William Teague feeds on her, gripping her arms, whilst her lank hair hangs limply down, her blood trickling over her white skin
—and he staggered backward for a second, feeling the force of the recollection in his mind. His eyes streamed with tears as well as rain.
The chief, Timothy, ran into him, soaked to the skin. ‘Storm’s hit us all of a sudden, didn’t see it coming! Better get down below, look’s rough.’ Thunder punctuated his speech.
Gabel pushed past him, running onto the deck.
‘Samuel!’ he yelled. He could barely hear himself over the thunder. ‘Samuel!’
‘What is it?’
The voice was quiet, but he heard every phoneme of it clearly.
‘Samuel, help me! Rowan’s been hurt.’
‘I don’t care!’ the young man screamed. His pale body seemed unaffected by the rain, sheet after wind-blown sheet lashing not over him but through him, crashing against the deck. ‘It’s not my problem, Joseph! None of this is!’
‘Do something! Please!’
‘What can I do? I can’t do anything! Do you know how far out you are from the shores? What use am I to you or anybody like this? I couldn’t get involved even if I wanted to – and I’ve no reason to help you, Joseph, none at all!’
‘She could die!’ Gabel bellowed.
Rain washed over him, changing direction between he and the boy. Strong winds, unhindered by mountains or valleys, simply crashed over the vast expanse of water from all sides. For the first time on the journey, Gabel heard the beat of waves against the hull. A mist of saltwater fell against his lips, a bitter contrast to the tasteless rainwater.
‘She’s not my problem!’ the boy snapped. Hair fell over the young man’s eyes, as perfectly dry as though he were standing in a desert, and he pushed it back. ‘None of this is! I may as well be inhabiting another world, another time. I can’t help you and I won’t. Just … Just stop calling me!’
‘Samuel! Help me, please!’
He faded suddenly, and he heard the voice in his head:
‘No! Not after what you’ve done!’
~
They laid her on the bed in the cabin where she’d been stung, hair smoothed and laid neatly over her shoulders, arms crossed over her stomach. They’d removed her boots, and a blanket had been put over her up to the waist.
Her face was as blank as a mourner’s. No expressions stirred her features – even one of pain might have been preferable to none – and there were no twitches in her fingers, no movement under her eyelids. Her lips were dry, and they had to sit her up to tip water down her throat. No muscles eased the passage of food; they had to be stroked into involuntary convulsions until the motor reactions carried the moistened bread to her stomach.
She was alone in the berth. No-one watched her that hour, but it was all right. She never knew.
~
‘We have to change course,’ Caeles said. His hands were flat on the bridge console. ‘She could die.’
‘We all could die,’ said the captain. ‘The rusalki could rise up, snatch us from the deck an’ carry us under for all I know. We all could die here, Mister Caeles.’
‘You just call me Caeles.’
‘Whatever. Listen, I’ll do my best,’ snapped the captain, ‘but I do the orderin’. You do as I say. We’re not goin’ through the graveyard. We’re goin’ around it, as planned. I’ll do as tight a circumference as I can, but we’re not goin’ through it. Not in my vessel.’
‘But it isn’t dangerous. There’s no such things as ghosts.’
Others on the boat might have disagreed, but no-one else was on the bridge.
‘It’s not gheists I’m worried about. It’s the sharp rocks and reefs I don’t want passin’ through my boat, not spirits. That area is dangerous. We’d risk all our lives by going through the graveyard.’
Caeles wasn’t in the mood to argue anymore. He was barely in the mood to be aggressive, though it came easily enough. His fists clenched and unclenched. His ears picked up the hammering of the rain outside, and the ceaseless patter of the drops on the water around the vessel.
‘Make as direct a route as you can. That’s all I’m asking.’
‘It’s all you’re gettin’.’
The captain stared obdurately out the bridge window, but then turned halfway, his arms keeping the wheel steady as if working by themselves.
‘Sorry I can’t do more,’ he added, in a calmer voice.
Caeles found Gabel in his cabin, still soaked from the rain. He was dripping onto the hammock where he would sleep that night, not concerned with how uncomfortable he might be or how the strings might warp.
‘You should take your jacket off,’ Caeles said. ‘We don’t want another sick person aboard.’
The hunter took off his jacket and rested it on the hook just to his right, by the hammock.
‘Why did you run onto the deck like that?’
‘I wanted to get help from the crew,’ said Gabel, not looking up.
‘The chief said you nearly
knocked him overboard.’
‘I was looking for Lanark.’
‘Why?’
‘They both needed to know.’
Caeles left it. Over the next few minutes, he watched the dampness in the hunter’s shirt spread a few centimetres more, then stop. The factotum still had on his fedora, pooled with water. It would probably warp if he didn’t empty the rim and let it dry.
After a long while, Gabel twisted and lay down in the hammock, leaving his hat and boots on. He sighed deeply, then turned over, away from Caeles.
The rain was louder outside. In a daze he entered Rowan’s quarters and shut the wet coldness and the sound of the storm behind him. She lay on the other side of the room, silent and unresponsive.
She looked almost mummified, the way she was laid. Hands over her stomach, chin up, feet together. Caeles had seen real mummies – behind glass of course – and they had been preserved in a similar fashion, arranged in the same formal manner.
The way bodies are arranged in coffins.
The hornet still lay trampled on the floor. That too looked almost mummified, shrunken now and black, as if burnt. He could smell its acrid reek even as he stood looking down. Kneeling, he picked it up by the wings, then moved it to the small desk in the corner and put it down. He sat and stared at it for a few minutes.
The creased and battered wings had since unfolded a little, retaking their shape, but he guessed that was normal. The horrible black face, big as a golf ball, was half collapsed, and now only one smooth ceramic-white eye was still intact. It had a tiny black pupil in the centre facet, which looked away from him.
Caeles reached out with an unafraid finger and touched the granite-coloured head. It was slightly furry. He fought the impulse to flatten it. He wanted to crush it between his fist and the desk, just to make sure it was dead. But it was undeniably so.
He looked over at Rowan. No change.
Back to the hornet. The body was deflated. Lava-coloured blood spilled out from one side, caked over the downy abdomen. The patterns, which had once shifted over the surface of its lower body, were now set like murals, lightning-coloured oil on a sunset red.
He reached over, wishing suddenly for the surgical equipment he once possessed many, many years ago, and broke off the sting. He let it roll in his palm for a while. It was almost as long as one of his fingers, and was a curious diaphanous hue of amber that had become completely solid, once full of searing poison. Picking it up between two fingers he examined it closely, looked at the ring of flesh near the base end where it had once been attached.
Then he put the entire insect in his left palm, shielded it from the wind outside the cabin, and dropped it into the Lual. He hoped a hundred little fish would feast on its remains, but he doubted it. Maybe two or three, if they were small and desperate.
There was a tiny stain on the wall of the cabin where he had punched it. He tried to wipe it away, but it had already been absorbed into the wood. There were little spots of lava on the floor where it had been stamped on.
‘Rowan,’ he said quietly, listening to the wind howling outside. The small half-rotten cabin seemed suddenly darker. ‘Can you hear me?’
Only the wind gave an answer. He sat in the wooden chair by the desk and watched her. After a few uninterrupted hours, he said again:
‘Can you hear me, Rowan?’
The wind had stopped, but his ears were full of the rush of his heartbeat anyway, so he hadn’t noticed the silence.
~
The captain had left the ship in the capable hands of the chief, and sat on the small bridge watching the naked bulb swing above him, shifting the shadows.
‘I’ve not heard of any beast like that before. Sorry.’
‘Gabel says he’s seen one before. It’s called a bolt-hornet.’
Caeles looked at the chief, who turned and shook his head. Caeles’ eyes dropped to the table, his hands feeling the splinters. Pulling them out would keep him busy during the night. Not that they hurt; his skin was almost entirely prosthetic, an amalgam of plastic, rubber and fine layers of organic dermis. There were nerve endings sensitive to touch and pressure, but not to pain.
The rain and wind had subsided considerably, but the storm had not entirely blown out. The main cabin creaked, contracting in the cold. The bulb moved in a tiny circle, suspended by a few inches of protected wiring.
The chief bosun’s mate was the only mate on board, but he retained the title not out of pride but simple stubbornness. Lanark was lithe, strong and able enough to do his job, and his serious face bristled with rough red hair. Faded tattoos decorated his arms.
He was a naturalist, and was friendly with a man in Goya known as Fenn. Fenn was a respected doctor and veterinarian, whose only “children” were furred and quadrupedal; he collected rare animal species from various parts of the world. He was also a mentor, and one of his pupils was Lanark, who made many notes and sketches. Lanark knew of the bolt-hornet.
‘Where does it come from?’ Caeles asked
‘Not around here.’ Lanark’s hands were busy with rope, which he was fastening to a metal cleat in the cabin’s outer wall. The winds gave him a chill that Caeles didn’t feel. ‘From the European continent, I think. I doubt you’d find any native to around here.’
‘But how dangerous are they?’
‘Can cause death in animals. Paralysis in people, I’ve heard. Rowan seems to have reacted adversely to its static poison, from what I can tell.’
‘She’s comatose.’
‘Aye.’ He pulled the rope, testing its security, then ran his hands along the length of it, lifting it over a few wooden boxes about waist high.
‘But is there an antidote?’ Caeles asked impatiently.
‘Doc Fenn has an extensive collection of anti-venoms,’ he replied, ‘must be one for the bolt-hornet. Only there’s a difference between our hornet and the common ones.’
‘What’s that?’
Lanark pulled the rope tight through another ring, which was halfway across the deck behind a heap of crates, and he fastened it with a series of complicated knots. Caeles absorbed the manoeuvre automatically, his mechanical irises focusing the images into the backs of his eyes, and then storing the video in crystal fragments in his semi-organic brain.
‘The bolt-hornet’s not got proper venom. It’s charged with a kind of chemical electricity instead. That’s why your girl’s got burns on her hand. That’s why her heart stopped. It’s like getting an electric shock. What’s keeping her comatose now is the thing’s residual toxin, preventing her from waking up. Have you heard about stasis? What they used before the war?’
‘Yes.’
Caeles had once been in stasis himself, partially frozen through cryogenics and other portions clamped into electric outlets, safeguarding his flesh for a particularly dangerous journey in an unfriendly atmosphere. The experience hadn’t been a memorable one – he’d been unconscious, technically dead the whole time.
‘Similar to that,’ Lanark said. ‘Keeps her preserved, though. She’s alive, now that you’ve restarted her heart. But she won’t ever wake up.’
The wind was a harsh one, and it pulled at their clothes and whipped the rope that now lashed the boxes to the deck.
‘Looks like more rain,’ Lanark said solemnly, and went back to work.
~
Darkness enveloped the ship as it cut its steady passage through the lake. Gabel lay in the hammock, listening to Rowan’s breathing. In the darkness he imagined her standing, looking over him, but whenever he strained to see across the room, all he saw was her still and supine form, and heard the tiny sound of her breath.
Gabel had awoken to the sound of hushed voices below him; the crew’s quarters. He couldn’t hear what was being said, only picked up an urgency amid the whispers.
There was a quiet knock on the door, and Timothy, the chief, entered.
‘Speak quietly,’ he said, approaching Gabel in the dark. He didn’t glance at Rowan. ‘There may be a p
roblem. We’re sorting it out. Stay quiet.’
‘What is it?’
‘Privateers,’ Timothy muttered, and his face contracted into a grimace. ‘Could be trouble. They mayn’t have spotted us, but they mostly have sound radar. Keep silent, don’t bang anything. Don’t speak.’
‘I understand.’
~
Gabel carefully placed Rowan over his shoulder and manoeuvred them both through the door and out into the cold night. Wind blew around them, whistled in their ears, the Lual a vast expanse of oily water. He noticed there was no wake; the Tractatus had stopped dead.
He shifted Rowan to make things easier. She wasn’t heavy. She was distressingly light, in fact, and bony beneath her clothes. He gripped her legs as he carried her, feeling her slack arms touching the backs of his knees with each footstep.
In the darkness of the bridge, he laid her down on the floor, folding her arms over her stomach to keep them out the way.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked quietly.
The captain, Lanark, Caeles and the magus stood around him.
‘Privateers,’ muttered the captain. ‘They have sound radar, so keep your voices down ‘til I say so. Don’t drop anything. In fact, don’t pick anythin’ up. Stay still as you can, ‘cause they’ll hear otherwise.’
‘How long until they pass?’ asked the magus.
‘Hours ‘til we’re out of their range.’
‘Hours?’
‘That’s what I said. We’re goin’ down to the crew’s quarters now. It’s below deck, an’ they won’t see us if they get close enough to try. We’re near enough to the graveyard now to maybe be mistaken for a derelict.’
‘We’re that close to the centre?’ asked Caeles. He settled down in the darkness, standing at ease.
‘That’s right. She’s been goin’ non-stop for three whole days now, Mister Caeles, an’ it’s usually a seven day trip around the centre. I’ve gone pretty much straight through, at your request I might add, though we’re not in the thick of it yet.’
They moved into the crew’s quarters that took up half of the space below the deck. The chief came down a few minutes after everybody else, saying that he’d been in the head. He sat down quietly with the captain and whispered a few words, out of earshot of the others.
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