Icebreaker (26 page)

“This is the captain!” she shouted to the folk watching from below, and her words fell like an axe upon them. “He's the sleeping captain, only now he's awake!”

She saw the sudden understanding in Albie's face, and in Krill's.

“And those folk”—Petrel pointed to the Devouts, with their strange round hats pulled over their ears and their layers of scarves and jackets and ugly brown robes—“they've come to
kill
him!”

Her words woke the invaders from their stillness. They had thought the demon was safely dead, but now here he was, directly above them. Alive. Awake.

Most of them turned tail and ran. With their hands shielding their heads and their axes forgotten, they raced for the ship's rail and began to slide frantically down the ropes.

Behind them, the
Oyster
's crew roared with fury. Albie raised his pipe wrench and bellowed, “After 'em, shipmates! Don't let 'em escape!”

But the boy captain, up on the bridge deck, bellowed louder. “Let them go, Albie.”

The Chief Engineer stopped in his tracks. As far as Petrel knew, he had never taken an order in his life, not from anyone. But this was the sleeping captain—though he was no longer asleep. And what was more, he knew Albie's name.

Petrel looked at the silver boy, startled.
How did he know that?

“Let them all go,” cried the boy. “Krill, let them go.”

He knows Krill too!

The captain's orders made no difference to the Devouts. In their panic, they crowded each other and pushed and shoved, so that some of them fell off the ropes onto the ice, and their companions left them there without a backward glance.

“Good riddance,” shouted Skua, who had joined his da.

But not all the Devouts had run away. Petrel saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and spun around. A small group of men had climbed onto the aft crane, and now they stood there, glaring up at the boy captain with such loathing that Petrel could almost feel it.

Even before Fin spoke, she knew that the man at the front of the group was their leader. His thin face was set in disapproving lines, as if everything about the world disappointed him. He was as cold as midwinter—but at the same time, there was a feverish air about him, that Petrel could sense even from this distance. An air of hatred, and the determination to shape the world to his will, no matter what the cost.

“Brother Thrawn.” Fin's whisper sounded as if it had been cut out of him with a knife.

“Do you fear that man?” asked the boy captain in a quiet voice.

“Yes. No. I—I don't know,” answered Fin.

“Don't look at him,” whispered Petrel. “He
wants
you to look at him, I know he does.”

It was true. The eyes of Brother Thrawn's companions were fixed on the boy captain. But Brother Thrawn was watching Fin. And Fin was watching Brother Thrawn.

By this time, Albie had spotted the men on the crane too. He began to urge the crew after them—but then he stopped and shouted, “What about
them,
Cap'n? Shall we get 'em down?”

The silver boy looked at Petrel, who shook her head. “Wait,” said the boy, holding up one hand.

Albie waited.

Brother Thrawn took five precise steps forward. “Initiate,” he said, and his voice was like a shard of ice on the morning air.

Petrel felt Fin tremble. She thought of what it must have been like for a small boy to be at the mercy of such a man, and she stepped closer to her friend, so he would know she was there.

“Initiate,” said Brother Thrawn again. “I am pleased to see you.”

He didn't sound pleased. He sounded furious, in a secretive sort of way, and Petrel wasn't at all surprised when Fin didn't answer. She wondered if he
could
answer, or if all the breath had gone out of him, the way it had gone out of her when she saw the Maw rearing up through the ice.

The sun was rising higher now, and everyone else was blinking. Brother Thrawn did not blink. “Now you must act,” he said to Fin. “This is what I trained you for. This is your moment. The fate of the world lies in your hands. Now you must act. Now—”

There was something horribly hypnotic about that flat, cold voice. Petrel found herself nodding, as if Brother Thrawn were talking to
her.
She blinked.

“Fin,” she hissed. “Don't listen.”

She didn't think Fin heard her. All his attention was fixed on the awful figure of Brother Thrawn.

“Raise your weapon, Initiate,” said the Brother.

It was only then that Petrel realized Fin was still carrying the spanner, his fingers clenching and unclenching around it.

The boy captain touched her arm. “Should we do something?”

Petrel looked at Fin. He had retreated behind the old blankness, and only his hand showed his distress. “Wait,” she whispered to the captain, though she was not at all sure it was the right thing to do. “Just wait.”

“Listen to me, Initiate,” said Brother Thrawn. “Raise your weapon.”

Slowly Fin raised the spanner. It seemed to weigh a ton, and despite the cold air, sweat sprang from his forehead, as if one part of him were fighting with another part.

“Do you see the demon beside you?” Brother Thrawn's voice was no louder, but it seemed to envelop the whole ship. “Do you see the vile creature?”

Fin nodded.

“No,” whispered Petrel, but she did not move.

“You must crush it,” cried Brother Thrawn. Some of the flatness had gone from his voice, and in its place was a thinly concealed triumph. “Crush it, and join the Inner Circle. Crush it and save the world. Crush it, boy, and win yourself a name!”

As the spanner rose, the sun seemed to pause in its journey. Down on the afterdeck every face was a mask of dismay. Petrel held her breath.

Fin's mouth opened and shut. His chest heaved. He lifted the spanner high above his head, so that the parts of it that were not rusty shone almost as bright as the boy captain.

Then he shouted at the top of his voice. “I
have
a name! It is
Fin
!” And he threw the spanner at the terrible figure of Brother Thrawn.

The spanner spun through the morning air, turning over and over, like a seal in the water. It spun like something joyous, thrown by a small bratling. It spun like life itself, homing in on the man who had denied that life.

Brother Thrawn did not duck or try to avoid his fate. Perhaps he was courageous, in his own cold way. Or perhaps he simply did not believe that one of his Initiates would turn against him.

The spanner hit him on the forehead. With a cry, he dropped to his knees. He tried to stand—once, twice—then sprawled facedown and did not move again.

 

CHAPTER 26

NORTH

The men around Brother Thrawn stood stunned, looking from Fin to their leader and back again. But then understanding gripped them and they set up a wailing so loud that it hurt Petrel's ears. They lifted Brother Thrawn's body as carefully as an egg and lowered it from the crane, shuffling past the
Oyster
's crew members as if they were not there.

“Is he dead?” whispered Petrel.

“I do not know,” said Fin. “I do not care.”

It took the Devouts several minutes to find a way of lowering Brother Thrawn to the ice. Someone—Petrel thought it was Skua again—shouted, “Just drop him. He won't feel it,” and laughed. But everyone else stood silent and threatening, until the Devouts were gone, and their mournful cries fading in the distance as they retreated to their ship.

Only then did they look up. And now their faces were as bright as the morning.

“Cap'n!” cried Krill.

“Cap'n!” shouted a dozen other voices, and then two dozen, and then a hundred. And before Petrel knew it, she and Fin and Dolph and the silver boy were wrapped in a great rolling swell of sound that rose and fell with joy.

“Cap'n, Cap'n, Cap'n!”

It seemed to go on forever. And when it began to die away at last, Skua climbed onto the aft crane, and picked up the spanner that had clobbered Brother Thrawn. “Fin!” he shouted, waving the spanner above his head.

The sound rose again, as everyone forgave Fin for being a stranger, and bellowed his name at the tops of their voices. “Fin! Fin! Fin!”

Dolph waved from the bridge deck. “Dolph! Dolph!” cried the crew.

No one shouted for Petrel. They had heard her when it counted, but now they looked past her, as if the habit of ignoring her were too great to be broken.

She wasn't surprised.

Not really.

She told herself that it didn't matter.

Not really.

She was about to turn away when a single voice said, “Petrel.”

It wasn't the cry of acclamation that the others had been. It was quieter. More thoughtful. More of a suggestion than anything else.

“Squid,” whispered Petrel.

No one else said anything, not immediately. The folk near Squid looked at her, puzzled.

“Petrel,” said Squid again, a little more definite this time.

Near the rail, Krill crossed his beefy arms, peered up at the bridge deck and boomed, “Yes, Petrel.”

“Who?” said a woman nearby.

“Where?” said a man.

And within seconds the whole deck was whispering back and forth, back and forth. “Who's Petrel? What are they talking about? Did Krill get a bang on the head, do you think? There's no one else up there except the Nothing girl.”

Petrel couldn't bear it. She felt a great heat inside her, a great noise that would not be silenced. Before she could lose her nerve, she strode back to the rail and said the words that she had said to herself earlier. Only now they rang out across the afterdeck, too loud to ignore.

“I'm
not
nothing! Never was, never will be! I'm Petrel! Quill's daughter. Seal's daughter too!”

And she stood there in the morning sunlight, not hiding, not ducking away. Just stood there, so that they
had
to see her.

For a long moment there was dead silence, broken only by the creaking of the ship and the distant cry of gulls.

Then someone said, “So
that's
her name.”

And someone else said, “I didn't know she
had
a name!”

“I always thought she was a half-wit.”

“Me too.”

“But she can't be, can she? She's the one who shouted earlier. Told us what was happening. Showed us the sleeping captain.”

“Quill's daughter, heh? Sounds just like her mam…”

The murmuring stopped abruptly. Feet shuffled. Eyes fell, as folk remembered things from twelve years ago. Things they had done. And not done.

It was then that Squid said, for the third time, “Petrel!”

A quiver swept through the gathered crowd, like wind on water. Gradually, folk began to whisper again, but this time their voices were so quiet that Petrel couldn't catch what they were saying. Not at first, anyway. But then she heard her name.

“Petrel,” said a woman.

“Petrel,” said the man next to her.

And suddenly the whole afterdeck was filled with voices, all of them shouting, “Petrel! Petrel!” and folk craning their necks to see her as she stood beside the captain, and beaming up at her and stamping their feet.

“Petrel!” they cried, “Petrel! Petrel! Petrel!” as if they were trying to make up for the last twelve years.

The girl they shouted for could hardly believe what was happening. She looked at Fin, who smiled at her.

“Wave!” mouthed Dolph.

Petrel waved, and the resulting roar of approval almost knocked her off her feet. Ice fell from the turbines, and folk dodged it, laughing. Gulls fled in all directions.

But the shouting could not go on forever. As it died away, folk rushed for the bridge and squeezed inside, as many as could fit.

When the boy captain walked in, with Fin and Petrel supporting Dolph between them, all the talking stopped and a shyness fell upon the crew. Those at the front of the crowd regarded the silver boy with awe. But when he began to question them about who had died in the fighting, and about the fire and what they had done so far to mend the damage, their shyness vanished, and before long they were asking his advice on myriad things, foremost of which was fixing the lectrics as quickly as possible so they would not all freeze to death.

The boy captain answered their questions with a knowledge of the ship and its crew that astonished everyone, including Petrel.

But then she realized.
He's got Mister Smoke's and Missus Slink's memories. That's what we did with the little boxes, we gave him their memories. It had to be done, but now he's got it all, and they've got nothing.

Sadly, she hugged the placid bodies inside her jacket. With the excitement over, she was feeling slightly sick. She wanted to be somewhere quiet, to mourn for the rats who had been her only friends for so long.

She knew they weren't really gone. All their knowledge was there inside the boy captain, along with the memory of everything they had done over the centuries.

But it wasn't the same, not for Petrel.

Around her, voices rose and fell. Krill talked loudly of getting rid of the tribes and working together for the good of the ship, and a surprising number of folk agreed with him. Dolph told everyone about Crab's treachery, and about the rats and the Maw.

At one stage, Albie bullied his way to the front of the crowd, whacked Fin on the back and said, “I'm the one who rescued you in the first place, lad, don't you forget that! It turned out to be the right decision, despite what certain folk said at the time.”

His words were no surprise to Petrel. Albie would always be where the power was. Where the decisions were being made.

But it
was
a surprise when he whacked
her
on the back and said, “This is a proud moment for our family. I always knew you had great things ahead of you.” He grabbed Skua's shoulder in a punishing grip. “I said so many times, didn't I, son?”