Shadow Captain Read online

  There.

  Not a word, not a sound, but the presence of another monkey mind, connected to another skull. I could not say that it was near or far, only that it had been reaching out to me, not because it desired contact—it would have been stronger and more assertive if that were the case—but because it had an interest in knowing something of my nature. Our minds touched at that faint level of interaction, and we each flinched back at the same moment. It had been sufficient, though. I had learned nothing of that other mind, gained not one scant insight into the person who might have been in that other bone room, thousands or millions of leagues away, but they had tried very hard to exclude a word from their own thought process, a word that betrayed entirely too intimate an understanding of our own nature, and yet that word still slipped through.

  Nightjammer.

  *

  At the next convenient watch I made tea, rationed out a little more hot buttered bread, and gathered the others in the galley while I laid out the entrails of our darkening situation. Stationed around the table were Prozor, Strambli, Surt, Tindouf and myself. The only one not present was Fura, who had elected to remain in her cabin until she knew the verdict, not wishing to be seen to influence proceedings.

  That was prudent of her, I had to admit. Even if she said nothing, she would have found it hard not to chip in at opportune moments with a scowl or a frown.

  “If you’re here to tell us that she’s changed her mind again …” Strambli said warningly.

  “No, she hasn’t,” I said. “She said she’d come up with a destination for us, and that’s what she’s done.”

  “I hear we was sweeped,” Surt said. “And that the sweep came from the same place as those sail-flashes of mine.”

  “I thought there was just the one,” Strambli said, frowning slightly. “There were other flashes?”

  “One flash that we can speak about with certainty,” I said. “And a sweeper alert that happened to arrive in the middle of that storm, which is when I’d be least inclined to trust any of our instruments.”

  “So you don’t think there’s a ship tailin’ us?” Surt asked, folding her arms.

  I had made no mention of the incident in the bone room, not even to Fura, and I was in no mood to add to Surt’s concerns until we had a better understanding of our predicament. “Paladin couldn’t say where that sweeper pulse might have come from with any certainty, if indeed it was real. The same general part of the sky as Surt’s sail-flash, yes, but if we started jumping at every shadow—”

  “I don’t like it,” Strambli said.

  “You don’t like many thingses,” Tindouf said, so plainly and with so little malice that not even Strambli could have taken umbrage. “I trusts the Ness sisters. If they say there isn’t a ship coming after us, I believes ’em.”

  “You’d trust anyone,” Surt said, shaking her head.

  “I woulds,” Tindouf said agreeably. “Until they crosses me, which only ever happens the once.”

  “If there is a ship with an interest in us,” I said, “it will follow us. Otherwise, it’s just a mirage, or some perfectly innocent ship that just happens to be operating out here as well. For which there’s no crime.”

  “And which do you think it is, Adrana?” Strambli said.

  “I think we should put it out of our minds until we’ve changed course.”

  Strambli bit into some bread and reached up to wipe butter from her lips. “So Fura’s decided our plan, has she, with her years of experience of this sort of thing?”

  Tindouf tapped his clay pipe against the table. He smiled gently and in his usual conciliatory tone said: “Let’s see what she has to says for herself, shalls we, before passin’ judgements?”

  Prozor took some tea.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  “Fura didn’t make her choices blindly,” I said, unwrapping a sheet of rough-edged cloth on which I’d marked the names and salient details of our possible worlds. I set it on the table, with four low-bar quoins at either corner serving as magnetic paperweights. “She thought it was best to look to the outer processionals, and I don’t think any of us would fault her on that score. Then she narrowed it down by only considering worlds that are a little off the beaten track. We wouldn’t want to get too close to a place that does a lot of commerce, because it’ll likely be swarming with other ships and crews, some of whom may recognise us for what we are.”

  “Be hard for anyone not to,” Strambli said.

  “Fura’s given that some consideration as well,” I said. “But I’ll come to that once we’ve settled on a choice. Now, I don’t want to be seen to be ruling out a place before we’ve discussed it. But Fura’s first candidate is a world called Metherick, and while it seems good enough for our purposes, it’s the only one of the three with a swallower, which means a steep gravity well.”

  “We couldn’t get too close on sails,” Prozor said. “So our only way in or out would be with the launch.”

  “If things had gone peachier with Cap’n Rack’s fuel, it wouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “But as it stands we can’t be burning it too profligately, and getting to and from a world like Metherick would put a dent in what’s left of our supply.”

  “So I s’pose the other two places are easier?” Surt asked.

  I nodded. “Kathromil and Wheel Strizzardy. I don’t suppose anyone here has direct experience of them?”

  “Met a cove who’d been to Kathromil once,” Prozor said, favouring us with no further elaboration on that score. “And I’ve been to a hundred wheelworlds, but never heard of Wheel Lizzardy …”

  “Strizzardy,” I said.

  “Or that one, either.”

  “Both are in the thirty-seventh,” I said, tapping a finger against the cloth. “Neither’s what you’d call the beating heart of civilisation, but then that’s not what we want, either. We need a place just quiet and sleepy enough not to cause us difficulties, but where we can still do business. Anyone who wants to leave us, they’ll have ample opportunity. Perhaps they’ll have a wait of a few months before there’s a chance to buy passage somewhere else, but we’ll make sure whoever steps off this ship has the funds to cover themselves.”

  “Just don’t go blabbin’ about your adventures,” Prozor said. “Or we might need to come back and recover those funds.”

  I smiled at Prozor, taking that to be an indication that, no matter what other people’s plans might be, she was sticking with the ship.

  “I doubt there’ll be any blabbing. But we will need to watch what we say. Fura likes Kathromil, but there’s a wrinkle to it that I think you all should know about.”

  “Which would be?” Surt asked.

  “They’re no friends of Bosa.” I told them about the sponsored expedition, and the fate of it. “They hate her with a passion and we’d unwise to get ourselves snared up in that grudge. They’d only have to think we were something to do with Bosa for it to go badly.”

  “And I doubts they’ds be in a hurry to hear our sides of it,” Tindouf said, before drawing a long inhalation through his pipe.

  “It’s a problem, to be sure,” I said, nodding at the big man. “I wouldn’t care to put their sense of fair justice to the test, if I could help it.”

  “Which means steering clear of Kathromil,” Strambli said. “With no guarantee the other place’ll be any better.”

  “We wouldn’t know for sure until we got there,” I said. “But they don’t have that very public history with Bosa, which is one thing. No reason to be fearful at the first sight of us.”

  Surt folded her arms skeptically. “Is this really the best she’s come up with?”

  “Sometimes you draw the short straw,” I said. “And sometimes all you’ve got is short straws. I agree that none of them look very promising, but we’re limited in the options open to us. Each of us could stick a pin into the Book of Worlds and find somewhere nicer, but we have to restrict ourselves to places where we won’t get into trouble, or stand a chance of
running into other ships. I’m afraid that rules out most of the Congregation.”

  “Looks as if Wheel Strizzardy it is,” Prozor said, “unless there’s a disadvantage to that place as well.”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said.

  The others mumbled and nodded their reluctant agreement. “If them’s the choices, Adrana,” Surt said, “then I suppose we’ll take the third one. Better on fuel.”

  Strambli rubbed at her neck. “And keepin’ our heads glued on. I prefer it. Tindouf?”

  “I’s take what’s given.” He tapped the pipe between thoughts. “But here’s the thing that’s botherin’ old Tindouf, Adrana. They might not have a direct grudge against Bosa, but that don’t mean they’s going to be friendly when they sees our sails—or rather don’ts see ’em, which is just as bad. They’ll still knows what’s we are and what’s we did.”

  “The man has a point,” Prozor said.

  “They’ll see our sails,” I said. “Some of them, at least. Bosa wasn’t stupid, she knew she might need to pass herself off as a normal ship and crew, so there’s a supply of ordinary sail in the holds, not far shy of two thousand acres. It’s in poor condition—more’n likely it was looted from the ships she plundered, after they’d been given a coil-gun broadside—but Bosa never meant to use it in place of her catchcloth.”

  “So what use is it to us?” Surt asked.

  “We can run it out on the normal rigging,” Prozor said, going with the idea. “Don’t matter how peppered or torn it is, if it passes muster from a few hundred leagues.”

  “Why would Bosa bother with all that sail, if she never went near a civilised port?” Strambli asked.

  “She did on occasion,” I said. “Besides, the sails take up some room, but not much when they’re packed and folded handsomely, and even a thousand acres of sail wouldn’t weigh as much as one drum of fuel. The rigging’s heavier by far.”

  “It’ll work,” Prozor said, frowning hard, as if she was thinking through every detail in her head. “Wouldn’t hold up to a second glance, not to someone who knows their riggin’, but the trick is not to draw a second glance in the first place.”

  “In which case,” Surt said, “and I hate to break it to you, but it ain’t just our catchcloth sails that needs attendin’. Have you seen the state of us?” She leaned forward to press her point. “We look like what we are: a pirate ship! This whole bag of bolts is several kinds of nightmare from the outside, what with all the spikes and grisly accoutrements Bosa saw fit to stick on ’er.”

  “I agree,” I said, thinking of the times we’d come back to the ship from a bauble expedition. “It is a significant problem.”

  “Crossing time to Wheel Strizzardy?” Prozor asked me, in the sensible expectation that I’d have the calculations under my belt.

  “Five weeks,” I said. “Thirty-five days, give or take one or two. We could get to Kathromil a little sooner, if we had to.”

  “We ain’t going near anywhere that feels that strongly about Bosa,” Strambli said, rubbing at her neck as if she could already feel a rope around it.

  Prozor ruminated. She knew a thing or two about putting together a knotty plan. “We can do it,” she said eventually. “Configurin’ the sails won’t be child’s play, exactly, but then we ain’t exactly children, are we? If we tricked Bosa—which we did—than we can trick some sappy coves on Wheel Strizzardy, ’specially as we mean ’em no harm by it. As for the hull, what’s been fixed on can be fixed off, if we’ve a will.”

  “In five weeks?” Surt asked doubtfully. “Less than that, even, as we’ll need to look pleasant through a sweeper or a telescope, once we’re close enough?”

  “So long as we get a start on it, we’ll be golden,” Prozor said.

  Surt picked desultorily at the bread, sniffing as if she could pick up the scent of mould even with all the butter slathered onto it. “I suppose weeks is better than months, even if we have to work our fingers to stumps. Whether or not any of us jumps ship, it won’t be a day too soon to get some new supplies aboard.”

  “Agreed,” I said, allowing myself a small private sigh of relief, feeling that I had won the crew around to the most sensible plan open to us. “We need this rendezvous regardless of anyone’s personal intentions. But we need to be clear on the risk, all the same. Maybe not as much of one as sailing to Metherick or Kathromil, but no one’s going to welcome us with open arms if they get so much as a hint of a connection to Bosa.” I took some more tea before I continued. “Time’s on our side for the present, but word will get around, and things will be pieced together. We need to press our advantage while we can, and that means making a fast crossing to Wheel Strizzardy, while doing all that we can to get this ship looking a little less shivery.” I nodded at them all in turn. “I concur with Proz. We can do it, if we don’t sit around bumping our gums.”

  “And your sister?” Strambli asked. “She’ll take kindly to this little mutiny over her preferred choice?”

  “I’ll take care of Fura,” I said.

  *

  I met her in her cabin, studying her profile for a few seconds as she worked with her journals, Paladin’s lights playing across the outline of her face. For the second time I had the forceful sense that I had wandered in on my sister when she was younger, lost in the rapture of a picture book or jigsaw, her imagination casting itself away to horizons beyond the wallpaper, parlours and stairs with which we were so familiar.

  Whatever the adventure she thought she deserved, Fura was having it now. A fine black ship to sail, a crew to do her bidding, a robot with a soldier’s mind at her side, and the entirety of the Congregation and all its worlds at her disposal. Yet I wondered if some part of her wished things had come out just a little differently. If you were fierce and determined enough, you could obtain the things you most desired. When those gifts arrived, though, it was often with complications and bedevilments you never once considered.

  “They’ve agreed,” I said.

  She turned her face to mine and the hardness came back into it like an unyielding mask pushing up from under her skin.

  “Then we’re of one mind, that Kathromil’s the best choice?”

  “Not precisely,” I said, feeling it was better to get the bad news out of the way. “They agreed Metherick’s too risky, all considered, as well as being wasteful of fuel. But I told them about that grudge against Bosa on Kathromil, and that didn’t sit well.”

  “There isn’t a world in the Congregation where she’d be welcome, Adrana.”

  “I know it’s a question of degrees. But burning effigies of Bosa was a step too far, and frankly I don’t disagree, not when there’s a world that serves us just as well and which we can reach just as easily.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You weighed in on this, did you?”

  I nodded slowly. “I offered my opinion, as I was entitled to do. The choice was freely made, though. There’s no point delegating a decision if you won’t accept the outcome.”

  “No,” she answered, almost trembling, as if she was keeping some almighty fury just under control, like a bottle of rocket propellant about to explode. “You’re right … and I do accept it. I would’ve preferred Kathromil—if we’d kept to a script, we could have dodged any suspicion of being connected to Bosa—but if Wheel Strizzardy is the crew’s choice, I abide by it.” She glanced down at her own papers, dense with her own handwriting and the spidery workings-out of celestial mechanics calculations. “Five weeks, then.”

  “Tindouf suggested we disguise the ship herself, in addition to the sails. Prozor’s in agreement.”

  “Then we’ll steer immediately for Strizzardy. Did you … gauge the weather, in terms of who means to stay, and who to remain?”

  I had noticed that when we were speaking privately my sister discarded some portion of the act she put on for the benefit of the others. She was inclined to speak more properly and not be in such a habit to sound like she’d been born in a space-chest. It was as if, deep d
own, she recognised that we were still playing a sort of dressing-up game, one that had started the night we abandoned Father at the Museum of History, and which occasionally happened to involve death and mutilation.

  “I can’t say. I think Prozor’s with us for the long haul, and I can’t see Tindouf being quick to leave. Strambli and Surt, I’ll reserve judgement over. Perhaps being given the chance to leave will be all that they ask for, and then they’ll happily remain aboard.”

  “And you, seeing as we’re on the subject?”

  “I’m not done with this little escapade of ours just yet, Fura. Like you I’d like to see a little more of things. But looking beyond the next five weeks, it depends on what our purpose is.”

  “We’ve got a ship and a crew. I’d have thought our purpose was transparent.”

  “To you, perhaps.”

  Her look was inquisitive, but not hostile. “I fail to see where the difficulty lies.”

  “Here’s where,” I said. “Other than the fact that we lack a couple of specialists, we’re equipped to go into the same game as any other privateer. Cracking baubles, finding treasure, selling it back to the worlds—earning our living that way, with all the ups and downs that come with the profession.”

  “Which is why I was so keen to get our mitts on that fuel,” Fura said.

  “I don’t doubt that you had plans for that fuel. You’ll be wanting to crack a few more baubles, I’m sure. But I think you’ve got things buzzing around in your head that go beyond common privateering.”

  “Which would be?”

  “Something grander, and likely something more dangerous. I know you, sister. Maybe not as well as I used to, but well enough, and I recognise a preoccupation when I see one. You’re thinking of what Bosa told you about the quoins, near the end.”