Firespark (8 page)

The bridge seems to explode. Debris juts into the air, in exclamations of shock that scatter across Doycha. Tuck's stomach lurches. Not all of it is debris. Scattered people, broken bodies, are among the wreckage; early risers on their way to market.

A bone-chilling sound splices the air. Tuck covers his ears.

The ship seems to be reversing.

Tuck peers at the patch of city beyond the maze of Doycha's boats and bridges to where the barges should be. The murky light makes it hard to see but he spots the dark bulk of
Troon
and
Crossness
, neighboring barges. One of them is wounded and listing to one side, but it's there. Why can't he see
The Grimby Gray
? Tuck runs from one side of the bridge to the other to get a better view, but it's no good. For some reason, he can't see his own barge.

His heart slumps into his stomach. A taste of metal in the air makes him feel sick. His limbs are suddenly heavy, as if his clothes are weighted with sea. He can't move.

And then he does. He's racing off the Middle Bridge, down into Doycha, leaping across boat roofs and bridges, the pain in his ankle numbed by shock.

He runs onto a bridge alongside the white ship then stops. What can he do?

He grabs the arm of an old man beside him. “What's happening? What is it?”

The old man is shock-white, shaking with fear.

“
Arkiel
,” he mutters blankly.

“What?”

The old man points to the bold nameplate on the ship. “
Arkiel
. It's taken my wife.”

Tuck stares helplessly at the mass of people crowding the
Arkiel
's decks. Their screams mingle with those in the boats and barges the ship is ploughing into.

“
Stop
!”

Tuck yells at the ship until his throat hurts. What else can he do? There's no way anyone can board the ship; its sides are too sheer, too steep, with no grip, no footholds. His cries merge with a multitude of frantic voices, as if the gypseas of Pomperoy are trying to halt the
Arkiel
with a wall of noise.

A girl has climbed up onto the roof of the ship's control cabin. She is caught in a shot of sunlight and throws an arm across her eyes, blinded by the glare. A great shudder shakes the
Arkiel
as it demolishes a swath of Doycha and the girl is thrown to her knees.

Another impact hurls the girl right off the cabin roof. The last Tuck sees of her is the scatter of her hair, like a splash of oil, as she tumbles into the crowd on the ship's deck.

Tuck stares around him, dizzy and disoriented, as if he's taken a hard fall himself. Where's
The Grimby Gray
? He rubs his eyes, searching frantically for the familiar rusty wreck of his own barge.
This
is where it should be. Tuck doesn't understand. And then he does.

The ship is where his barge should be.

Tuck feels sick to his stomach, as if he's swallowed mouthfuls of sea. He makes himself look down, and he sees it.

Under the water,
The Grimby Gray
has sunk like a rusted tin can.

There are bodies, pale ghosts in the darkness of the ocean. Half-drowned people are being pulled onto boats. Tuck panics.
Ma? Where's Ma?
A horrible feeling, as if he's been sliced open and gutted like a fish, makes him wrap his arms around himself. He can't see her. And the sharp, empty feeling tells him he won't.

She couldn't swim. If she tried, the panic and struggle would bring on an attack of wheezing. She wouldn't stand a chance. That's if she woke up at all. More likely, the barge would have sunk before Ma, deep in beer-glazed slumber, even knew what was happening. The only chance she'd have had is if he'd been there.

But he wasn't.

Tuck looks back across the city at The Man.

He can just about make out the white-bearded face up on the bridge, beaming his relentless smile. Tuck crosses his fingers, but instead of raising them in the good-luck sign, he makes the reverse sign, the malevolent one. He jabs his crossed fingers straight at The Man's plastic face.

Why Ma? Why old Arthus and all the others? Why not me? I was the one going to steal you. I was the one that didn't believe in you. Never even laid a finger on you though, did I? You never gave me a chance
.

Grumpa was wrong about The Man. He's not just a bit of junk. His eyes can look into the dark corners of your mind. He might grant you the miracle you need or punish you without mercy if he doesn't like what he sees.

What else does he see? What else has he planned?

The
Arkiel
keeps ploughing through the city in reverse, making a catastrophically clumsy exit.

Up high on the rig, The Man watches and smiles.

Tuck wanders the city, blank and numb. He ends up back at the lagoon and slumps down on the damp wooden walkways, exhausted. He doesn't know how long he's been there, shivering, when a hand on his shoulder makes him jump.

“You're alive then.”

Pendicle sits down beside him with a sigh of relief.

“Ma's gone,” says Tuck. He has to force the words out; he still doesn't believe it. “She went down with
The Grimby Gray
.”

“Urth,” Pendicle curses softly. He bites his lip and clearly doesn't know what else to say. They sit together awhile, just staring out at the waves on the lagoon. All of a sudden Pendicle gets to his feet. He punches Tuck softly on the shoulder, in place of soft words.

“There's a family meeting,” says Pendicle, with the faint edge of self-importance in his voice that, lately, Tuck has begun to hear. “Something's happening.”

Tuck gives a small, hard laugh. “It already
happened
.”

Pendicle's eyes are on his home-boat, one of the Prenders' fleet of masted megayachts, anchored alongside
the family's market gondolas on the lagoon. A group of people, their windwraps bearing the Prender emblem, are gathered on its deck. Men and women flock to Pendicle's home-boat from grand yachts and schooners all around the lagoon. Their windwraps are emblazoned with the various emblems of Pomperoy's oil families. Tuck realizes the reason for Pendicle's self-important tone. It's not an everyday family meeting, but an extraordinary summit of the powerful families that rule Pomperoy.

Pendicle shoves something into a pocket of Tuck's windwrap. Tuck hears the rattle of pearls.

“Enough to get you bed and board somewhere, get you sorted,” says Pendicle. “I'd better go.”

Once upon a time, Pendicle would have taken him back to his boat for a hot meal and a bunk. But he's changing, Tuck senses, from his old mate Pendicle into a fully fledged Prender, becoming part of the powerful engine of the oil families, no longer the carefree wildhead he used to be. Even if Pendicle would harbor Tuck, his ma won't. She's the kind of woman you cross once if you dare; never twice. That's how the Prenders got to be who they are. She'll be heart-sorry about what's happened to his ma, she'll even put Tuck in her prayers to The Man, but she'll never have him near her precious boat again.

Tuck watches Pendicle walk around the lagoon to his yacht, tall and proud, with his beautiful windwrap flapping in the wind. It's the walk of a Prender man. Tuck looks down at his own faded blue windwrap, a worn cast-off of his da's. His hair whips across his face, as light and unkempt as Pendicle's is sleekly plaited and dark.

Their differences never mattered when Da was alive.

It's only once Pendicle has gone that Tuck remembers the tattered object he has been carrying about in a pocket
of his windwrap—something he stole from a shelf in Pendicle's yacht a while ago. He's been meaning to give it back as a peace offering. It's no use to him anyway. He took the thing all around the market with the rest of his loot, but all it earned him was shrugs. At last he came across an old scavenger in a leaky gondola that looked close to sinking under the weight of its sea spoils. The scavenger was so weathered he seemed to be made out of one of his rescued leather boots. He squinted sunken eyes at the stained and tatty object Tuck handed him and gave it back, saying his eyes were no good for books now. He didn't know anyone else who had any use for a such a thing; he was one of the last who still knew how to read words.

So Tuck's still got the book. He should run after Pendicle and give it back. But Pendicle's already gone, his dark head and windwrap merged with the other Prenders on the boat.

Pendicle's left him with a pocketful of pearls, the hard tears of the ocean, and it's Tuck's own fault.

Already the city is knitting back together. The great tear made by the
Arkiel
is disappearing fast. Tuck stands on a bridge and stares at the spot where his home used to be.

The air rings and clatters with the noise of boat chains and hammers. Wood and metal strain, mixed with human groans, as the boats and bridges are heaved into a new pattern and chained together again.

By sundown the city is mended. It's as if all the sunken boats and bridgeways were never there.

Tuck can't bear it. They should have left the hole in the city. There should be some mark, some scar of what's happened. Urth knows how many people are drowned, Ma among them, yet already Pomperoy seems to want to heal the awful scar and get on with the usual business of life. Ma will hardly have fallen to rest on the seabed, where she'll end up as fish food, like the rest of his family and all the other dead.

A sob shakes him. He swallows it down and wipes his nose with the tail of his windwrap, wipes his leaky eyes too. He tugs the windwrap tight around him, secures it
with his belt, and stands up to walk the bridgeways back to the lagoon. He doesn't even think about jumping the boat roofs as he usually does. Couldn't anyway; he can't see clear for his blurry eyes. It takes all his energy to put one foot in front of the other. When he reaches the lagoon, he's engulfed by people. They pack the walkways around the lagoon and the arms of the Middle Bridges. The crowd is so huge the whole of Pomperoy must be out.

What's happened? Is it another ship?

But there's no panic in the crowd. They are expectant, quiet, still.

Tuck elbows his way to the edge of the lagoon.
Why is everyone staring out at the water
?

When he sees, his heart skips a beat.

It's the Steer Master's ship.
The Discovery
has unchained from the cluster of tall ships at the north side of the lagoon. It sweeps across the water, aglow with lanterns, its sails billowing in the evening wind.

Until he saw the
Arkiel
, Tuck would have sworn the Steer Master's ship was the greatest vessel upon the seas. Now the three-masted ship seems a much lesser thing. For the first time Tuck sees how wrecked it is, how the bent masts creak wearily with bedraggled sails.

Still, the sight of it lifts his spirits. The citizens of Pomperoy cheer as
The Discovery
sails into the heart of the lagoon. The ship drops anchor. Expectation buzzes in the crowd.

Tuck pushes to get a clear view. When he reaches the front of the crowd he sees the figure of the Steer Master himself; it's the first time he's glimpsed him since he was small enough to sit on the shoulders of his da. Even then, the Steer Master was old and feeble, though there was an energy about him still. Now he seems lifeless, slumped in
the seat of an old-world Land vessel, an ancient car recovered from the sea. A team of attendants hauls the Steer Master's car to the front of the ship. It's a Rover, Tuck knows, because Grumpa liked to gloat that Tuck's own Landcestors once owned just such a car; one as sleek and shiny and speedy as the wind. It's hard to believe that the Steer Master's Rover was ever anything other than a rusty, ocean-battered wreck, encrusted with limpet shells.

“We are wounded.”

It's not the real voice of the Steer Master. The Pilot of Pomperoy, a tall and commanding man, nicknamed The Pomp on account of his pompous demeanor, is the Steer Master's vigorous right arm. Nowadays, his voice too. The Pomp relays the Steer Master's message through the long spiraling tusk of a narwhal horn.