Revenger 9780575090569 (15 page)

‘We got to see the whole Congregation,’ Adrana said. ‘And a bauble. We saw a bauble open. And a pirate ship. We saw a space battle. We saw scatterfire. Don’t tell me you’d rather we stayed at home.’

‘I’d rather not die,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

But there was something in what she said. I’d seen a sight that few others would ever know, and the moment had changed me. I’d seen the fifty million worlds of the Congregation in one glance, seen the shifting, shimmering purple twilight that was all that remained of the Old Sun’s energies, after those tired old photons had fought their way to the great void of the Empty. I’d seen the glimmer of the rubble left over from the forging.

I pushed on ahead of Adrana. She was dawdling, always looking back the way we had come. My ears popped and I drew a sharp fearful breath.

‘What was that?’ Adrana asked.

‘Rackamore must have opened the locks.’

‘He gives in easily.’

‘I don’t think he has much choice. Hurry? We’re nearly at the bone room.’

‘It won’t do any good, Fura. You know that, don’t you? He’s just giving us something to do, to take our minds off what’s ahead.’ She rattled her crossbow against the wall. ‘You think these little toys are going to help us?’

‘I’d rather have these than nothing at all.’

We were squeezing through a narrowing in the corridor when an alarm sounded. Where the corridor narrowed was a bulkhead door. It was sliding shut, grinding its way from one side of the corridor to the other, and I was on one side of it and Adrana on the other. There was an instant, no more than that, when one of us might have had time to squeeze through that narrowing gap. But we were too shocked to respond.

I twisted back and my eyes met Adrana’s.

‘Stop it!’ she called out, hammering her fist at a bank of controls on her side of the bulkhead.

‘I’m trying.’ There was a similar bank on my side but the controls were not responsive. ‘No good!’ I was shouting at her through the gap, over the metallic squeal of the closing door. ‘The ship won’t allow it! Must be an emergency override!’

Adrana jammed her crossbow into the gap, by now much too tight for one of us to have squeezed through. The door continued until it met the crossbow, at which point it gave a screech and began to shudder in its runners. I smelled burning.

‘It’s holding,’ Adrana said.

But the barrel of her crossbow was already beginning to buckle under the door’s force. Wooden splinters crunched away from the stock. The door lurched tighter.

‘It’s going to close. You’ll have to find another way to the bone room. If you go all the way to the stern . . .’

‘What if the doors are shut there as well?’

‘I don’t know. Try it. I think I can get there easily enough from here.’

Adrana pushed her hand through the gap. I closed my fingers around hers.

‘I don’t want to let go.’

‘You have to.’

‘I’m sorry, Fura. I did this. I brought this on us.’

‘No, you didn’t. I signed up to it as well. It’s not your fault. Whatever happens, you remember that. This is not your fault.’

Her crossbow was useless by now. On an impulse I unshouldered mine and slipped it through the gap, just as the door lurched tighter and brushed my arm hairs. I was still holding Adrana by the other hand, but I released at the last instant, just as her crossbow gave way and the door sped down to close the gap.

There was a tiny window in the bulkhead. Adrana was on the other side of it. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Not my older sister now, but just someone alone and scared in an unfamiliar place.

I knew how she felt.

I mouthed and pointed for her to go back. I knew there was another way to the bone room, and perhaps by the time she got to another bulkhead, the manual controls would be operable again.

Perhaps.

Through that little window I saw Adrana spin round. There was movement at the far end of the corridor – a dark confusion of arms and legs and faces, coming nearer.

Part of me knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I hammered my fists on the glass and when that achieved nothing I tried to budge the door with my muscles. But it might as well have been welded in place for all the difference it made. Watching was all I could do.

Adrana raised my crossbow. She got off one bolt, silent through the glass, and then the mass of figures surged forward. They had suits on, but they were better than ours, tighter around their forms, and quicker for moving through a ship. They were shiny black, throwing back reflections and glints so that it was hard to tell which arm or leg belonged to which body, and where the suits ended and the weapons started. There was no time for Adrana to ratchet back the crossbow and slide in another bolt. The mass was on her like a sudden rising tide. She pushed a hand against the glass, palm flattened, and I pressed mine against it from the other side, and then something pulled her hand from the glass, leaving only a moist imprint, and I turned and fled.

I reached the bone room, sealed the door behind me, turned the locking wheel until it was as tight as I could make it. My breath was like a saw cutting wood.

A voice buzzed from the wall.

‘Listen, all of you. This is Bosa speaking. It’s all over. Bosa’s got your ship, Bosa’s got your loot, Bosa’s about to have the pick of your crew.’ The voice was the one I had already heard: distorted, gashed over with static and feedback, looped over itself in strange echoes and stutters, just barely recognisable as the product of a female larynx. ‘But Bosa doesn’t need this ship, not when she already has something faster and better and stronger. She doesn’t even need most of the crew, so some of you can walk – if you do right by Bosa. And that means helping her with a new Bone Reader.’

Another voice cut across the first, but it was only Bosa Sennen’s voice that was clear.

‘Something to contribute, Captain Rackamore? Speak up now. Yes, you had a Reader in Mister Cazarary, I know. But Mister Caz is dead now, as you rightly stated. There’s just a tiny, tiny complication.’

Rackamore said something else. There was a pleading, futile tone to his voice, as if he knew that there could be no bargaining with Bosa Sennen, no reasonable outcome to her demands.

‘Yes, Captain, but here’s the thing. It’s known to Bosa that you’ve been on the
look-
out for a new Reader recently. Been very active in that line of recruitment, haven’t you? Rushing around like there was no tomorrow. And the word is your efforts have been rewarded. Not just one new Reader, but two! Yes, two minds come through very clearly, so Bosa’s assured.’

Rackamore said something else. Now the pleading had given way to a kind of abject despair.

‘What’s that, Pol? You say they wouldn’t work for Bosa?’ She gave a horrid, cackling laugh. ‘You don’t know much about Bosa, in that case. No; they’ll suffice, if they have the skill. The only question to be settled is which of you are the Readers. You’ll help with that, won’t you, Pol?’

Rackamore screamed.

I’ve heard some sorry sounds in my life, but that was the worst thing I ever caught coming out of another person.

‘Oh, Pol – where’s your cooperative spirit? You know that Bosa doesn’t like to ask twice. What of the tall girl? Green enough, by the squint of her, and although she hides it well, it’s plain that she doesn’t yet have her space legs. What’s your name, my pretty?’

I heard my sister answer. Her voice was strong, clear and defiant, and it made me proud and frightened all in the same moment.

‘Ness.’

‘Ness what?’

She hissed out the whole of it like a curse. ‘Adrana Ness.’

‘And can you read a bone or two, Adrana Ness? Oh, don’t look so timid. You’re frightened of me, frightened of what will become of you – and who’d blame you? You’re being addressed by Bosa Sennen, after all, and that’s enough to put a twist in anyone’s guts. But don’t believe all you hear. I’ll ask you again. Are you a Bone Reader? No? But you
seem
the sort. Doesn’t she, Pol?’

Rackamore didn’t give her the answer she wanted. She made him scream again.

‘You,’ she said, her focus shifting. ‘
Sad-
faced little man. What do you have to say about the girl? Is she the one?’

I heard Triglav answer this time.

‘No? What would she be then? Master of sail? Those hands of hers haven’t done an honest day’s work in their lives. Squint your lamps at them!’

I remembered Adrana’s hand in mine, and the imprint she’d left on the glass.

‘Admit it,
sad-
faced man.’

Triglav said something.

I heard a sound like a whipcrack, then a man’s scream. But the scream didn’t last long. It guttered out, became a kind of gurgling, and then the gurgling turned to silence.

I knew she’d killed Triglav.

‘Now that was rude of him, wasn’t it, Pol? Bosa asked a fair question and Bosa expected a fair answer. What about you,
sharp-
faced lady? Are you going to be so reticent?’

I heard a shriek, a woman’s shriek, and of those who remained I knew it belonged to Prozor rather than Jusquerel. Then Prozor let out a curse. There was no whipcrack this time, but a thud and a groan and then another thud, and then a kind of wet crunching sound, as if a skull had just been smashed in.

Then a terrible silence.

‘Stop,’ Adrana said, her voice breaking as she spoke up. ‘Stop. It’s me. I’m the one you’re after. I’m the Bone Reader.’

Again I got that shiver of admiration and terror, all mixed together. The fact that she didn’t sound brave and sure of herself only made me think more of her. She was scared and still she’d spoken.

‘Good,’ Bosa Sennen said. ‘But think of the trouble you’d have saved, if we’d got here sooner. Come here, girl. I was right, wasn’t I? You have the look for it. Can’t mistake a Sympathetic, and the more time you spend with the bones, the more it shows. Now – who’s the other one?’

‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Adrana said.

‘But Bosa had it on good authority that there were two minds sending through the
Monetta
’s bones.’

‘It was him . . . Cazaray. Plugging in at the same time, teaching me how it works.’

‘Teaching you how it works. So what you’re telling Bosa is, no one else came aboard with you at Mazarile? You were the only recruit?’

‘Yes,’ Adrana said. ‘Yes. Just me.’

‘But when we found you, they said there was someone on the other side of that glass. Another girl, somewhere else on this ship.’

‘There’s no one else,’ Jusquerel said, in her slow, calm way. ‘There never was. Your idiots saw her reflection in the glass, that’s all.’

I heard the whipcrack sound again. I waited for the screams, but Jusquerel didn’t give her that satisfaction.

‘You killed her for nothing,’ Adrana said.

‘Bosa was just making a point, that’s all. There’s a bone room on this ship and we’ll find it sooner or later. And if there’s another on board who so much as smells of Mazarile, we’ll have them as well.’ There was a slurping sound, like something being pulled from a pudding, then a kind of mechanical ratcheting, like a clock being wound up. ‘That’s Bosa’s promise, you see. And Pol knows that Bosa keeps her promises. Don’t I, Captain?’

Rackamore mumbled something. I had taken him to be dead by then, but it was clear that she had kept him alive, even as she butchered the rest of them.

‘Oh, Pol. What’s wrong? Don’t you want to look Bosa in the eye? Does it trouble you too much?’ And she let out a sick cackle. ‘Here. Let me help you. Fix your lamps on me, and tell me you like what you see.’

Rackamore let out a shriek, then. There was pain in it, certainly, and I didn’t doubt that she’d hurt him badly. But something more than pain. Something I didn’t care to dwell on too much, because it sounded too much like grief or despair.

Someone tried the door.

The wheel began to turn, the lock being worked from the outside. I moved to the wheel and braced my hands against it, planting my feet against the wall. I had no plan, beyond resisting the turning of that wheel for as long as I was able. For a second or two, it almost felt like I had a chance. The wheel held, and I began to force it back in the other direction, tightening the lock. I only managed a quarter turn before it jerked in my hand and began to turn hard the other way, far too strongly for me to resist.

Garval pushed her head through the widening gap.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

‘How . . .’

‘Just come.’ Garval reached in and pulled me out of the bone room. Then she closed the door and spun the wheel again, tightening it until the tendons popped out on her forearms. ‘Make them think there’s someone in there – give them a reason to waste their time.’

‘How did you get out?’

‘Your sister,’ Garval said
matter-of-
factly. ‘She came and she undid my straps. She said if something bad was going to happen, she didn’t want me tied up in there.’

It must have been when Rackamore sent Adrana back to make one last check on the bones, while I was being shown the Gunner’s Girdle.

‘I’m glad she did. But I’m afraid it hasn’t helped us much. Did you hear Bosa Sennen just now?’

‘I heard.’

‘She’s killed most of them. Cazaray and Mattice outside, in the launch. Hirtshal and Trysil on the hull, Prozor, Triglav and Jusquerel just now. I don’t know about Rack. But she’s got Adrana, and she knows I’m somewhere else on the ship.’ I drew a heavy breath, and my eyes stung as if I were about to start crying. I thought about the ones who were already dead, and how close I’d come to accepting my own fate, and now this woman I hardly knew was here to help me. ‘Oh, Garval. I’m so glad to see you. But we’re still in trouble – I am, anyway. She’s going to keep looking until she finds me.’

‘She won’t,’ Garval said. ‘Bosa Sennen knows there’s another Reader. But she doesn’t know it’s you.’

I wiped a tear from my eye, wondering what I was expected to make of that pretty distinction.

‘The automatic door closed between us,’ I said. ‘Sealed me down here, Adrana on the other side. Bosa’s people got her. But I’d already given her my crossbow, not that it would have made much difference.’