The Ruby Celeste Series - Box Set, books 1 - 3: Ghost Armada, Dire Kraken, and Church of Ife

by Nicholas J. Ambrose

Francis’s mouth fell in a gape. Reuben and Glim stared too.

  “Bloody hell,” Glim said.

  Brie stopped. She breathed a great gasp of air. One hand passed the bottle back to Francis; the other smeared away the wetness on her chin.

  Francis looked at it. Maybe a quarter left. At a push. “I guess you liked that.”

  “It’s nice,” Brie said breathily.

  “That was impressive,” said Glim.

  “I reckon you could give us a run for our money,” Reuben agreed. “You never told us you were a drinker.”

  “I’m not!” Brie said.

  “That makes two of us,” said Francis.

  “Could’ve fooled us,” said Reuben. “We should have us a competition.”

  “No, we shouldn’t. Brie, ignore them. You just take it easy, or you’ll regret it in the morning.”

  “Spoil sport.”

  Francis gave Reuben a hard look.

  Over the workhands’ shoulders was a near-empty table. Ruby sat there. Trove accompanied her. As Francis watched, Trove stood, nodded at some instruction or request, and strode away.

  “I’m going to chat to Ruby,” Francis said. “Back shortly.”

  He wandered across. A kid tore past; one of the two Brie had almost tripped over. Francis paused to let him by—it would be just his luck to succeed where Brie had failed—and continued.

  Ruby looked up at his approach. A smile curved her lips. “Francis.” She pushed a spiral of hair behind an ear. “Enjoying yourself?”

  Francis took Trove’s old seat. “Could be worse.”

  “Really? I thought you had Evans and Peters for company.”

  “Better than Amelie,” Francis said. “I’ve barely seen her. It’s like a holiday.”

  Ruby snickered. “Hold on to that feeling. She’ll want to introduce us to her mother before the night is out.”

  “What? Ah, shit.” Francis’s shoulders slumped. “Her mum will be all right, won’t she? Not quite as …”

  “Hostile?”

  “Bitchy,” Francis finished.

  A smirk ghosted Ruby’s lips. “I’m sure her mother is perfectly reasonable.”

  Francis made a sceptical noise.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

  “It’s perfectly reasonable,” Ruby said.

  “That’s one of the least convincing things you’ve ever said.”

  Ruby laughed. “I’m wearing a dress, and I don’t have my sword.”

  “Like a fish out of water.”

  “Exactly.”

  Francis shook his head. “You look nice.”

  “Noted. But I’ll be returning to my regular gear just as soon as tonight is through, I think.”

  “You and me both.” Francis pulled at the cuffs of his jacket. “I still feel weird.”

  Ruby laughed again. “You and me both.” Then: “You look nice,” she echoed.

  “And I didn’t even need to stand next to Glim. I’m oddly proud.” Francis cast a backward look at the table. “Not drinking?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Neither do I, but that didn’t faze Reuben and Glim.”

  “They’re bad influences.”

  “It’s not just them,” said Francis. “I think Brie is half cut.”

  Ruby looked faintly surprised. “Is she?”

  “She almost kicked over a couple of kids on the way across to us. And she downed about a third of my cider.”

  “Brie? Our Brie?”

  “Our Brie,” said Francis. “I think it’s Sia’s doing.”

  Ruby shook her head in mock judgment. “Ours truly is a dastardly crew. I shall have to have words in the morning.”

  “Half the crew will be hungover, the way things are going.”

  “Perfect. They’ll be more inclined to listen to me.”

  The hop-dancing boys sprinted past, one after another. A man hollered at them to slow down. They did not, and the man—their father, Francis assumed—was distracted by a passing tray of champagne, and did not call again. It would be one of his last warnings of the night.

  “Funny story,” said Francis. “Remember that bloke I told you about yesterday?”

  “The man whose suitcase was stolen?”

  “That’s the one. He’s the groom!”

  “Really? You rescued Adam Crouch’s suitcase?”

  “Mikhail rescued it, not—is that his name? Adam Crouch?”

  “Adam Anthony Crouch,” Ruby corrected. “Didn’t you pay attention during the ceremony?”

  “Uh … well, I think Brie was whispering to me …” At Ruby’s raised eyebrows, Francis said, “All right, she wasn’t; I just wasn’t listening. Their vows went on for about twenty minutes!”

  Ruby looked highly amused. “Did you catch the bride’s name, or is she just ‘Amelie’s mum’ to you?”

  “I …”

  Ruby laughed. “You’re awful. And it’s Sylvie, for the record. In case you have to use it later. Like saying, ‘Nice to meet you, Sylvie.’”

  “Sylvie,” Francis repeated. “Sylvie and Adam. Got it.”

  “Good. So: you saved Adam’s suitcase? You’re sure it’s him?”

  Francis nodded. “Mikhail took a look too. It’s definitely Adam.”

  “I see. Small world, eh?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Francis!”

  Francis and Ruby swivelled. Brie barrelled over, cider bottle in hand, weaving imprecisely between tables and chairs. She almost careened headlong into a passing guest. She called a harried apology without looking back.

  “Hello, Brie,” said Ruby when she arrived.

  “Hi, Miss Celeste,” Brie said. She turned eyes to Francis. “I got you a new drink.” She extended it. It wasn’t quite full; some had evidently sloshed out on Brie’s way across.

  “A new one? What happened to the old one?”

  “I drank it,” Brie said sheepishly. “Reuben said it would be okay if I got another.”

  “Oh. Well, err, thank you.”

  Ruby and Francis exchanged a look. There was a faint smile on Ruby’s lips, but she averted her attention.

  Brie leaned back in her seat. “When do they do the slow dances?”

  “Erm … the end of the night, I guess.”

  “You’re still going to dance with me, aren’t you?”

  Francis nodded. “Will do.”

  Brie grinned. And then came across all serious. “I’ve never slow danced before.”

  “You and me both,” said Francis.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Funnily enough, I don’t get a lot of requests.”

  “But … you’re …”

  Ruby cleared her throat. Francis glanced. She was looking across the marquee, eyes searching.

  “Trove has been a while,” she said. “I’d best find him. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “All right,” said Francis. “See you soon.”

  She rose. “See you later. And you, Miss Channing.”

  “Bye, Miss Celeste.”

  She wandered off. Francis followed with his gaze, until she slipped through an opening in the marquee’s side and disappeared.

  4

  Francis eyed a tray of canapés.

  They were aesthetically pleasing, no denying that. But half of the pastry discs were topped with freshwater prawns, and the others had some combination of vegetables and soft cheese Francis couldn’t quite make out.

  He stooped to peer. Was that aubergine?

  “Go on, have a few.”

  Mikhail had joined him. He flashed Francis a wink, and collected a handful of canapés.

  “Those all for you?”

  Mikhail shrugged. “May as well. There’s another tray up that end of the table—” he nodded in its direction “—and it’s about as untouched as this one. Doesn’t look like anyone’s going to miss them.” He bit half of the mystery hors d’oeuvre. “Take a couple.”

  “Is that aubergine?” Francis asked.

&n
bsp; Mikhail shrugged.

  Francis pulled a face. “I’ll find something else.”

  He looked past Mikhail, and balked. “Oh, damn it.”

  “What?” Mikhail swivelled.

  “Amelie’s doing the rounds with the newlyweds. They just got to us.”

  Sure enough, Amelie was in the process of introducing her mother and mother’s new husband to a cluster of Harbinger crew. Sia shook Sylvie Crouch’s hand politely. To her left, Wren found a kiss planted on her cheek.

  “Better finish these,” Mikhail said.

  “Where’s Ruby?”

  Mikhail, who had stacked two prawn canapés together and was now chewing his way through, shrugged.

  Perhaps her search for Trove was still fruitless.

  Francis shoved up his sleeve. His communicator, clipped to his wrist, waited. He cycled through contacts, one eye on Amelie and Sylvie and Adam’s slow approach, and found Ruby’s name.

  She answered after the first humming pulse. “Yes?”

  “Sylvie and Adam are making their way around our group now.”

  “Aha. Thanks; I’ll be back inside in a few.”

  “We’re at the buffet table.”

  “All right. See you in a mo.”

  The connection terminated.

  Francis folded back his sleeve. He was getting tense now. The wandering party had moved on to Reuben, Glim, and Herschel. For once, they were on best behaviour: Francis watched as they shook Adam’s hand, and kissed Sylvie’s cheek, left then right, with perfect politeness.

  “Hadn’t you better go find Natasha?” Francis asked.

  “Nah,” said Mikhail. “She can cope without my hand-holding. Besides,” he added, taking a sideways look at Francis. “Looks like you need it more.”

  Ruby arrived a minute later. She was accompanied by Trove, who greeted Francis and Trove with his usual formality: “Mr Paige. Mr Khorkov.”

  “All right?” said Mikhail.

  “You found him, then,” Francis said to Ruby.

  “That I did.”

  Amelie and co had moved on again. Now it was Natasha, Vala and Stefan they spoke to. Vala was talking quite happily to Sylvie. Regaling her own wedding, no doubt. Natasha and Stefan exchanged pleasant conversation on the sidelines with Adam and Amelie.

  “Getting nervous?” Ruby asked.

  “Course he’s not,” said Mikhail, clapping Francis on the shoulder. “Francis has flown in the face of danger many times this year. Meeting Amelie’s mum is nothing at all.”

  Francis watched the newlyweds with a steely gaze. He couldn’t quite bring himself to agree with Mikhail’s assessment.

  Still, at least Ruby, Trove, and Mikhail remained by his side.

  The rounds continued another painfully slow fifteen minutes. In the interim, Mikhail decided he could manage another few canapés after all. He offered one to Francis, but Francis shook his head. Over allusions of Amelie’s caustic introduction, and the inevitable upturn of Sylvie’s nose in disgust at him, he found he’d lost his appetite. In its place, he’d acquired a furious need to piss.

  Darrel was the last—and after all too quick greetings and well-wishes, Amelie ushered her mother and new stepfather to where Francis, Mikhail, Ruby and Trove stood.

  “Here we are. Mum, this is Ruby; she’s our captain.” Amelie smiled politely as Ruby stepped forward and shook a gentle hand with Sylvie.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Ruby. “And congratulations.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” said Sylvie.

  “And mine,” said Adam, shaking next.

  “This is Trove; he’s Ruby’s assistant—”

  “Congratulations, sir and ma’am.”

  “This is Mikhail—he’s with Natasha; you remember Natasha, she was the tall one—”

  “All right,” Mikhail said cheerfully. He lent down to kiss Sylvie’s cheek.

  “And this—is Francis.”

  It was the best he could have hoped for. Cursory and offhand, left for last, and by the way she didn’t even look at him as she made the introduction, it was apparent Amelie wanted this part of proceedings over and done with as fast as possible. He was with her.

  “Pleased to meet you.” He stuck out a hand, which Sylvie took, and then awkwardly—because Mikhail had (Trove hadn’t, but Trove was solemnly proper)—planted a kiss on Sylvie’s cheek.

  “Mikhail and Francis, eh?” said Adam. He appraised them. “Looks like we meet again.”

  5

  “Let me get this straight.”

  That was Adam.

  He, Sylvie, Ruby, Francis, Mikhail, Natasha, and Trove had commandeered one of the round tables. Only one spare seat remained.

  Adam had slung off his jacket and loosened his tie. He’d also rolled a cigarette. It was almost down to a stub now, hot ash half an inch from burning his knuckles.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You went to acquire a deckhand for your ship. But when you arrived, you discovered you’d been sold a lie. There was no deckhand, at least as far as the description you were given went. But there was you.” Adam gestured for Francis with the last little bit of his cigarette.

  Francis nodded.

  Adam inhaled tobacco. He held it in his chest, assessing the dwarven remainder, trying to figure if he could manage one final drag … then stubbed it out on a plate. Breathing a plume of smoke, he leaned back.

  “Ruby busts you out, and then finds out you’ve been picked up from the surface. Down there. Ten miles of clear space, and this Stein had means and money to cross it, just so he could snatch up a guy in the middle of the night and hope he could sell him on.”

  “It sounds crazy, I know,” Francis said.

  “Why didn’t he just find someone else?” Adam asked. “Someone not likely to raise suspicion?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruby. “And after what happened to him, we’ve got no way of asking. My guess? He was pushed for time. We arranged the sale three days’ travel out. Francis was kidnapped two days prior. Stein didn’t have much notice.”

  Adam turned sideways to rustle in his jacket pocket. The tobacco came out again. With precise fingers, he set to rolling another cigarette.

  “The surface is a long way off. The cost of getting there and back … hardly seems worth it to me.”

  “The agreement I made saw a single deposit, followed by ten years of annual payments to the Eden. Compounded by interest, I think it would more than make up the cost of an air-to-surface trip. Especially if Francis was not the only one taken.”

  “You see anyone else when they snatched you?” Adam asked Francis.

  “No. But I had a bag over my head.”

  “Hear anything?”

  Francis shook his head.

  “You make any noise?”

  “I tried. The guys who grabbed me stuffed something in my mouth and taped it up.” Francis shrugged. “I guess if they picked up anyone else, the same applied.”

  The artful procedure Adam made of preparing his roll-up was almost complete. He licked the paper’s edge, and sealed it. Stuck between his lips, he flicked a lighter. Once more, the smell of smoke permeated. A dirty line began to snake.

  “Whether or not Stein took anyone else is irrelevant at this point,” said Ruby. “There might be another hundred people on whatever’s left of the Eden; or Francis was snatched alone. The end is the same. He’s up here now, and we don’t have a way to get him home.”

  Adam’s forehead creased. Beneath those lines, his eyes were on Francis. Assessing? Analysing the story for holes? It wouldn’t be the first time. Francis remembered meeting Tesla Wong in the summer, when Ruby had saved him from the slow death that came from being locked in a closet by your former comrades and deserted. Tesla had known all manner of information on ships, and Francis had shared his situation, hoping Tesla might be able to pass something on. But Tesla had responded with a disbelieving laugh.

  Hell, even Ruby had doubted Francis’s story for a while. As Rhod Stein’s hu
nting party tailed the Pantheon, she had believed him to be a spy.

  At last, Adam took a long drag, and blew it out the corner of his mouth.

  “Air to surface travel is expensive.”

  “We know,” said Ruby.

  “You could afford ten years’ worth of payments on a deckhand, but not a single jaunt up and down?”

  A smile ghosted Ruby’s lips. “We could afford ten years’ worth of payments precisely because they were spread over ten years.”

  Natasha spoke up. “We also think Stein had direct access to a ship capable of return trips. A large component of the cost, at least to us, is profit for the service operator. Someone with their own personal vessel—or a share in a business providing travel solutions—would have a huge discount.”

  “Business,” said Adam heavily. “It’s ruthless.” He took another long inhale on his cigarette. Ember glowed, turning paper and tobacco to ash. Adam flicked it off. “Your circumstances are extraordinary,” he said to Francis. “You’re blessed you ended up on a ship whose crew are invested in getting you back.”

  “I know.”

  Adam considered. Lines, lots of lines on his forehead. He’d stopped burning a hole into Francis now. Instead his gaze had gone somewhere beyond the table. The cigarette smoked between his fingers, temporarily forgotten.

  At last, he heaved a breath. Stubbing out the cigarette, he looked to Ruby. “I know a lot of people in a lot of places, but I can’t think of anyone at all who has a ship they might lend you.”

  Francis felt a small stab of disappointment. But small was all it was. After eight months of hearing the same thing—from crewmates, from Tesla, from the many people he had queried when they stopped at a port or city—he couldn’t bring himself to feel any more. Par for the course, now. Nothing new.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “I may have something, though.”

  In spite of his waning ability to feel disappointment, hope still ignited a fire in Francis. He perked up, sitting straighter than he had been a moment ago.

  “You people helped me out yesterday. I’d like to do something to make it up to you.” To Ruby: “How would you feel about taking on some work?”

  “What kind of work?”

  Adam shifted sideways in his seat again, and dug in his jacket. Different pocket, this time.