by Lian Tanner
‘Then you must tell them.’
‘Ha, they wouldn’t listen to me. Specially not when there’s blood to pay back. Any minute now they’ll declare Truce, so they can hunt for you. Which means—’
She glanced around the abandoned workshop with its single entrance. ‘Which means we can’t stay here.’ She grabbed her outdoor clothes. ‘If they trap us, you’re a goner and so am I. Come on.’
They hurried back down the walkway side by side. ‘Nowhere’s gunna be really safe,’ whispered Petrel, ‘not with the whole crew in a fury. I reckon we’ll have to move from hidey-hole to hidey-hole, and try to keep one step ahead of ’em.’
Fin nodded, his face pale. ‘Do you know where to find these – these hidey-holes?’
‘Course. There’s no one else knows the ship like I do.’
It was not an idle boast. Petrel had learned many things in her short life. She knew how to survive loneliness, and how to make more-or-less warm clothes out of rags and feathers. She knew instinctively when night was about to end, and when the sun would rise above the horizon. She knew the Oyster from stem to stern, and could tell exactly where she was on the ship, even in pitchy darkness.
It was this last knowledge that helped her now.
The passage she led Fin to – listening every step of the way – had lost all its lights generations ago, and was as black as midwinter.
Petrel grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him along, whispering, ‘Watch your head. There’s a couple of pipes sticking out. Here’s the first . . . and the next. Now keep right to the side cos there’s a hole in the deck . . . there, we’re past it.’
Near the end of the passage was an old rope locker. It was long and narrow, and half-filled with bits of broken machinery, and there was another locker above it, and two more on the other side of the bulkhead.
What no one except Petrel had realised was that rust and time had turned four separate lockers into one, and that if an outcast girl and a hunted boy squirmed past the broken machinery, they would find themselves in a room of sorts, with several exits. There was even a little light, seeping through cracks from the deck above them. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but right now safety mattered a lot more than comfort.
Petrel rolled her outdoor clothes into a bundle and tucked them in a corner. Then she squatted on the rusty floor, with nuts and bolts scattered around her, and said, ‘Show me your arm.’
The boy peeled back his sleeve, and Petrel winced. The cut was deeper than she’d thought. She handed Fin a not-very-clean rag to wrap around it, and said, ‘I’d better go and find a needle to sew you up. And something to wash your arm with.’
She rummaged in the corner and brought out a battered cup with a lid. Then she crawled to the sill, whispering over her shoulder, ‘Don’t you wander off while I’m gone. Your life won’t be worth living if they catch you.’
‘I will not wander,’ said Fin. And he lay down on the floor of the locker and closed his eyes.
Where am I gunna get a needle and thread? wondered Petrel, as she crept back along the passages. It’s no use asking Missus Slink. She doesn’t approve of Fin.
Neither, clearly, did anyone else on the ship. The toothies had come, and folk should have been happy. But instead, they ground their teeth, swearing that they would find the stranger, and when they did they would kill him.
Petrel skittered through the upper reaches of Grease Alley with her heart in her mouth. But today, not even Skua bothered with her. Everyone had more important things to think about than the Nothing girl.
At least they haven’t started a proper search yet, she thought, as she climbed the Commons to Dufftown. Which is just as well, seeing as Fin’s down there on his own and won’t know where to run if they come for him.
The Dufftown border guards were as absorbed as their Grease Alley counterparts, and Petrel scuttled past them unnoticed. As she approached the galley, the smell of fried fish hit her, rich and compelling.
She peered around the hatch. The galley was always the hottest part of the ship, apart from the engine rooms. But now it burned with anger as well as fish oil. Dozens of Cooks hurried back and forth with trolleys and baskets, talking furiously to each other. Dozens more gutted, filleted and fried, their faces grim, their knives flashing.
Head Cook Krill stood, sharp-eyed, on a little platform in the middle of it all. ‘Burner four for Braid,’ he shouted. ‘Come on, snap to it. Murder or not, folk must be fed!’
Several Cooks rushed to burner four, flipped the cooked fish into baskets, piled the baskets onto a trolley and rolled them to the mechanical hoists, muttering all the way.
‘Did Grease’s fish come down?’ shouted Krill. ‘Or did Albie decide he prefers ’em raw?’
‘I don’t think Albie’s too bothered about fish right now,’ replied a woman.
‘Course he is,’ cried the Head Cook. ‘He can’t hunt for the murderer on an empty stomach. Are they down?’
The woman nodded.
‘Good,’ said Krill. He spun around. ‘Burner two, you’re done.’
Petrel licked her lips and wished for the thousandth time that she belonged to one of the tribes. Not because she needed them or liked them; she didn’t need anyone, and she certainly didn’t like anyone except Mister Smoke and Missus Slink. But the fact was, while the cooked toothies would go up the hoist to Braid and down to Grease Alley, there would be none for Petrel, not unless she begged for them. Or stole them.
Squid was attending to a burner, sleeves rolled up and hair dragged back from her face. She was one of the few people who didn’t look angry. As Petrel watched, she flipped a dozen fillets over and wiped her arm across her forehead. Then she raised her hand. ‘Burner three for Braid,’ she shouted.
‘Burner five, you’re ready,’ cried Krill, spinning around on his toes. ‘Six, get a move on with those baskets.’ His voice rose to a bellow. ‘And belay that muttering. Right now our job is to feed the ship. When we’ve done that, you can mutter all you like!’
A dozen barrels rolled past Petrel, filled to the brim with raw fish. Petrel crept after them, her pulse pounding; she crept right into the heart of Dufftown, hoping the noise and the bustle and the fuss over Orca’s murder would keep folk from noticing her.
Squid was already cooking the next lot of fillets. When she saw Petrel, tucked in small and silent behind her, she smiled and said, ‘Hello, Miss Nothing. We don’t usually see you here in the middle of the day. I spose you’re hungry?’
Petrel didn’t move. But her mouth watered.
‘Hang on a bit then,’ said Squid, and she turned back to the burner and flipped the toothies over.
Krill’s bellow had stopped the muttering for now, but the anger still sizzled from one side of the galley to the other. Petrel licked her lips, wondering how quickly she could get out of here. Wondering what Squid would want in exchange for a piece of fish. Some mockery, maybe, to take folk’s minds off the murder? Whatever it was, Petrel wasn’t about to turn down a feed.
Behind her a hard voice said, ‘What’s that bratling doing here? She’s not Duff. You, Nothing Girl. Get out.’
Petrel sighed. She should have known it was too good to be true. But before she could scurry away, Squid grabbed her arm and frowned at the man who had spoken. ‘Leave her alone. She’s doing no harm.’
‘She doesn’t belong here,’ said the man, his arms full of baskets. ‘Who knows what she’s up to? And besides, she’s in my way.’
‘Then walk around her,’ snapped Squid, ‘and don’t make such a fuss—’ ‘Burner three,’ bellowed Krill.
‘Oops!’ said Squid, turning back to the fish. She raised her hand. ‘This lot for Grease Alley.’
But when the trolley came, she kept back two large fillets, saying, ‘These are burned. Better not send them to Albie, not with a Truce in the offing.’
The basket carriers hurried off to the hoists. Squid grabbed a bit of seaweed paper, wrapped it around the two remaining fillets (which were not
burned at all, as far as Petrel could see), and gave them to Petrel. ‘Here,’ she whispered.
Petrel was stunned. Two whole fillets! Two enormous fillets! It was almost enough to make her forget why she had come.
But not quite. She tapped Squid’s arm, and made sewing motions.
‘A needle?’ said Squid, raising her eyebrows. ‘Is that what you want? What for?’
Petrel didn’t answer.
‘You got secrets, Miss Nothing? Course you have. Spose you want thread too?’ Squid dug in her pocket and handed over a sliver of bone with a hole drilled in one end, and a length of thread spun from seaweed. Then she gave Petrel a gentle shove and whispered, ‘Now get out of here. And be careful. Folk are angry and frightened, which makes ’em behave worse than usual.’
Petrel was too hungry to go far. She slipped out of the galley and squatted in a quiet corner. Then she tore a piece off one of the toothy fillets and shoved it in her mouth so fast that the sweet juice ran down her chin. She groaned with pleasure and licked her fingers, and tore off another piece.
The fillets were huge, and she was full even before she had finished the first one. She sat there for a moment, thinking about Squid, who had handed over the toothies and the needle far too easily. She hadn’t tried to squeeze information out of Petrel. She hadn’t offered her the fish then snatched them away at the last minute, which was one of Skua’s favourite tricks. She hadn’t done anything.
And that was a puzzle.
Maybe she’s just worried about the murder, thought Petrel. Or maybe she’s trying to soften me up for something. Ha! I’ll take all the toothies she wants to give me, but I won’t trust her, not me.
With that settled, she considered the remains of the fish. She should hide what was left for tomorrow. Somewhere on the afterdeck, in the cold, so it wouldn’t spoil. Behind the aft crane, maybe.
Then she remembered Fin.
Petrel wasn’t used to thinking of other folk, and at first she hugged the second fillet to her chest and told herself that the boy could find his own food.
Except, of course, he couldn’t. Everyone was hunting for him, and besides he was as useless as a baby. ‘Stupid sky folk,’ she muttered, enjoying a rare sense of superiority.
She scrambled to her feet. Maybe she’d hide half the fish, and give Fin the other half.
With the fishing shift over for the day, the afterdeck was almost deserted. Petrel hid half a fillet behind the crane, then ran back down through the ship, down and down and down. By the time she reached Grease Alley, her heart was thumping wildly. She’d been gone longer than she had intended. Truce had not yet been officially declared, but the search was already underway.
It gave Petrel the shivers to see folk poking into every corner and ransacking lockers and sea chests. She ran faster, sliding around corners in her ragged shoes, ducking past angry Engineers with her face as blank as she could make it.
But still she was too late. When she came to the lockers at last, and crawled inside, they were empty. The only sign of Fin was the rag she had given him, lying limp and useless on the floor.
THAT IS NOT MY NAME
The boy waited until he was sure Petrel had gone. Then he crept out of the locker.
He knew the risk he was taking. But he would not let danger deter him, or exhaustion, or the knowledge that nearly everyone on the Oyster thought he was a murderer and was hunting for him. According to Brother Thrawn’s ancient diagram, the demon was hidden in the very bottom of the ship, which meant that the boy was in the right place and must not waste the opportunity.
He crept through the narrow noisy spaces, trying to make sense of what he saw. Trying to connect it to the markings on Brother Thrawn’s diagram.
Everything was strange and dilapidated. The walls were clammy, the air was foul, and there were machines of one sort or another everywhere the boy looked.
Some of them clanked and growled. Others were silent, and he suspected that they were dead, but still they made him uneasy. What if they weren’t dead? What if they were about to spring to life and steal his soul? He had heard of such things – the Initiates whispered about them late at night, whispered about the treacherous nature of machines, and how they could catch the unwary and change them forever.
‘I will not be caught,’ whispered the boy fiercely. ‘I will not be changed.’
And he crept onward.
He was not sure when the black rats began following him. At first he thought his senses were playing tricks on him, causing the shadows to scuttle and squeak like vermin. He reminded himself of Brother Thrawn’s words – imagination is for weaklings and fools – and kept going.
But then the imp appeared.
The boy caught only a single glimpse of its grey body, with a flash of green around its neck, but that was enough. His skin crawled, and his every instinct warned him that, although the creature looked like a large rat, it was something far more sinister.
Brother Thrawn’s voice echoed in his ear. According to the diary we found, the demon is asleep. But its imps are awake, and they are as vile as their master.
This imp seemed to have some control over the rats. The real rats. The black rats. In its presence, they grew bolder, and before long they left the shadows and began to dash at the boy with high-pitched cries.
The boy loathed rats. There were none in the main part of the Citadel, but the punishment hole, which was underground and lightless, swarmed with them. They made him feel sick. They made him wish he had stayed in the lockers where Petrel had left him . . .
‘No!’ he whispered, despising himself for his weakness. ‘I wish no such thing.’ And he gritted his teeth and shuffled forward.
The wall was damp and horrible under his fingers, but he thought he knew where he was now. He could picture Brother Thrawn’s diagram, which showed a hatch somewhere near here, in the floor.
And there it was. The boy felt a fleeting sense of achievement. But as soon as he bent over and tried to lift the hatch cover, the black rats surged around him, leaping and bumping against his bare hands until he jerked away with a cry of disgust.
He made himself try again almost immediately. ‘I am no longer three years old,’ he whispered, ‘and this is not the punishment hole. I will not be stopped by a few rats.’
And with that, he grabbed the hatch cover and threw it to one side. Then he dropped through the hole, with the black rats pouring after him.
The space below the hatch was not made for standing upright. The boy had to bend his knees and duck his head, and even then it was a tight fit. He forced himself to stumble forward, with the rats pressing against him from every side.
It was like trying to wade through mud – through living mud – and it made the boy whimper in protest. But he kept going, feeling his way along the wall, judging his path by how furiously the rats tried to stop him.
The further he went, the bolder they became. The imp is driving them, thought the boy. I must be getting closer to the demon.
That thought gave him courage and he pressed on. The rats nipped at his ankles and scrambled up his legs to his knees. When that did not stop him, they changed tactics, climbing the wall and flinging themselves at him. One of them managed to cling to his shoulder, and he felt its filthy teeth brush his ear . . .
With a sob of disgust, he grabbed it with both hands and threw it as far as he could. Then he plunged furiously through its mates, lashing out with his feet and hissing, ‘Go away! Get off me!’
It made no difference. The rats grew more frenzied than ever, until he was sure that they would pull him to the floor and kill him. He groped frantically for the wall, for something to hold him upright, and found another hatch. He scrabbled at it with one hand, flailing at the rats with the other. But the hatch did not have a handle. There was no way of opening it.
Not from this side, anyway.
This is it, he thought. The demon lies behind this door.
He felt a great flurry of triumph – followed immediate
ly by a disappointment so immense that he wanted to howl. What was the use of finding the right door if he could not open it?
The rats were falling back now – perhaps the imp had realised he was helpless. The boy’s arm throbbed and he wanted to kick something.
He stood very still and listened.
The darkness seemed to magnify the relentless clatter of the engines, and the scrape of ice on the hull. But beneath those noises, the boy thought he could hear the imp’s claws on the deck. They made a different sound from the real rats. Sharper. Cleverer. More metallic.
The boy clenched his teeth. He could not yet reach the demon, but he could destroy one of its minions . . .
Without warning, he threw himself at the imp. He was so sure of the direction, and so full of fury and frustration, that he held nothing back. He grabbed at the creature, caught it in his fingers – and fell onto his sore arm.
He did howl then. His fingers spasmed. The imp was gone. And the boy was left alone in the darkness.
As he lay there, panting, the steady reverberation of the engines seemed to change, and take on a mocking tone. At first the boy did his best to ignore it. He was starting to feel sick again. Not nauseous this time, but thick-headed and dopey, as if his skull were filled with sawdust. His arm hurt, and so did his throat and chest.
The sound of the engines changed again – and now it seemed to form a word. Finnnn, rumbled the engines. Finnn, Finnn, Finnn.
‘That is not my name,’ whispered the boy. ‘I do not have a name.’
Still the engines rumbled, Finnn Finnn Finnn. And the ice, scraping against the hull, joined in. Fffin, Fffin, Ffffin.
The boy gritted his teeth. This was a test, he told himself, and nothing more. In fact, the whole ship was a test. Everything about it unsettled him – including Petrel. When he had been given this mission he had pictured himself being calm and clever, no matter what happened. But instead he felt as if he was losing control . . .
He took a deep breath and bent his mind to the Spire Contemplation. Then he stood up and fumbled along the wall, searching for the all-important hatch. He would try again. He would not be beaten.