Drowned Wednesday (6 page)

‘It’s only red tar or something from the buoy,’ said Arthur. ‘It’ll wash off.’

‘From the buoy,’ whispered Sunscorch. ‘This here buoy?’

‘Yes.’

‘There wasn’t any smoke, was there?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about birds? That smoke didn’t turn into cormorants, did it? Smoky black cormorants that screamed out something that might have been ‘Death’ or ‘Dismemberment’ or anything like that?’

‘There were birds,’ admitted Arthur. ‘They screamed out ‘Thief’ and flew away. I thought they must have brought you here.’

Sunscorch took off his hat and wiped his bald head with a surprisingly neatly folded white handkerchief that he took out of a pocket.

‘Not us,’ he whispered. ‘Lookout saw the open buoy and the Captain thought it worth a glance. That there treasure marker must be one of Feverfew’s. The birds will have flown to find him, and his ship.’

‘
Shiver
,’ intoned the crew. ‘The ship of bone.’

As they spoke, the Denizen with the lantern shuttered it right down to the merest glimmer, and everybody else looked out at the sea all around.

Sunscorch ran his tongue over his remaining teeth and kept wiping his head. His crew watched him intently, till he put away his handkerchief and clapped his hat back on.

‘Listen up,’ he whispered. ‘Seeing as we’re probably dead or headed for the slave-chain anyway, we might as well see what’s below. Lizard? Where’s Lizard?’

‘Here,’ came a whisper from the water. ‘There’s a chest all right, a big one, sitting pretty as you please atop a spire of rock, ten fathom down.’

‘The chain?’

‘Screwed to the rock, not to the chest.’

‘Let’s be having that chest, then,’ whispered Sunscorch. ‘Bones, you and Bottle back oars. Everyone else, hands on the line. You, too, Arth.’

Arthur joined the others to grab hold of the rope. At Sunscorch’s hoarsely whispered commands, they all hauled together.

‘Heave away! Hold on! Heave cheerily! Hold on! Heave away! Hold! One more!’

At the last command, a dripping chest as long as Arthur was tall and as high as his waist scraped over the gunwale and was manhandled into the boat. As soon as it was settled, there was a mad dash to the oars. With Sunscorch whispering more commands and the rowers very gently dipping their oars, the boat moved ahead and then turned towards the lights of the
Moth
.

‘Hope we get back to the ship in time so as we can all die together,’ whispered the Denizen on the oar next to Arthur. ‘It’d be better that way.’

‘What makes you so sure we’re going to die?’ asked Arthur. ‘Don’t be so pessimistic.’

‘Feverfew never leaves any survivors,’ whispered another Denizen. ‘He slaves ’em or kills ’em. Either way they’re gone for good. He’s got strange powers. A Sorcerer of Nothing.’

‘He’ll torture
you
first, though,’ added one of the women, with a grin that showed her teeth were filed to points. ‘You touched the buoy. You’ve got the Red Hand that shows you tried to steal from Feverfew.’

‘Quiet!’ instructed Sunscorch. ‘Row quiet, and listen!’

Arthur cupped a hand to his ear and leaned over the side. But all he could hear was the harsh breathing of the Denizens and the soft, regular swoosh and tinkle of the oars dipping in and out of the water.

‘What are we listening for?’ Arthur asked after a while.

‘Anything we don’t want to hear,’ said Sunscorch, as he looked back over the stern. Without turning around, he added, ‘Shutter that lantern, Yeo.’

‘It is shuttered,’ replied Yeo. ‘One of the moons is rising. Feverfew will see us miles away.’

‘No point being quiet, then,’ said Sunscorch.

Arthur looked where the mate pointed. Sure enough, a slim blue-tinged moon was rising up on the horizon. It wasn’t very big and it didn’t look all that far away — a few tens of miles, not hundreds of thousands — but it was bright.

The blue moon rose quickly and rather jerkily, as if it was on a clockwork track that needed oiling. By its light Arthur could easily see the
Moth
, wallowing nearby. But he could also see something else, far away on the horizon. Something that glinted in the moonlight. A reflection from a telescope lens, atop a thin dark smudge that must be a mast.

Sunscorch saw it too.

‘Row, you dogs!’ roared the Second Mate. ‘Row for your miserable lives!’

Five

THEIR ARRIVAL ABOARD the
Moth
resembled a panicked evacuation more than an orderly boarding. The boat was abandoned as most of the Denizens clawed their way up the side ladder or the untidy mess of netting that hung along the
Moth
’s yellow-painted hull, all of them shouting unhelpful things like ‘Feverfew!’ and
‘Shiver!’
and ‘We’re doomed!’

Sunscorch managed to drag several Denizens back and get them to take the line from the chest. But even he wasn’t able to get the crew to do anything about retrieving the boat. As it began to drift away, he jumped to the ship’s side himself, reaching back to help Arthur get hold of the netting.

‘Never lost salvage nor a passenger,’ he muttered. ‘No thanks to the scum of the sea I have to sail with. Mister Concort! Mister Concort! There’s a boat adrift!

‘Concort’s the First Mate,’ he confided to Arthur as they climbed the side. ‘Amiable, but hen-witted. Like most of this lot he was with the
Moth
when it was a counting house. Chief Clerk. You’d think after several thousand years at sea he’d have learned . . . but I’m misspeaking meself. Up you go!’

Arthur was pushed up and over the rail. He fell onto the deck, unable to get his bad leg in place in time. Before he could get up himself, Sunscorch gripped him under each elbow and yanked him upright, shouting at the same time.

‘Ichabod! Ichabod! Take our passenger to the Captain! And get him a blanket!’

A thin, non-tattooed Denizen neatly dressed in a blue waistcoat and an almost white shirt stepped out of the throng of panicking sailors and bowed slightly to Arthur. He was thinner than most of the other Denizens, and moved very precisely, as if he was following some mysterious dance pattern in his head.

‘Please step this way,’ he said, doing an about-turn that was almost a pirouette and would have looked more in keeping on a stage than on the shifting deck of a ship.

Arthur obediently followed the Denizen, who was presumably Ichabod. Behind him, Sunscorch was yelling and slapping the backs of heads.

‘Port watch aloft! Prepare to make sail! Starboard watch to the guns and boarding stations!’

‘Very noisy, these sailors,’ said Ichabod. ‘Mind your head.’

The Denizen ducked as he stepped through a narrow doorway. Though Arthur was considerably shorter, he had to bend his head down too. They were in a short, dark, narrow corridor with a very low ceiling.

‘Aren’t you a sailor?’ asked Arthur.

‘I’m the Captain’s Steward,’ replied Ichabod severely. ‘I was his gentleman’s gentleman when we were ashore.’

‘His what?’

‘What is sometimes called a valet,’ replied Ichabod as he opened the door at the other end, only a few yards away. The Denizen stepped through, with Arthur at his heels.

The room beyond the door was not what Arthur expected. It was far too big to be inside the ship, for a start: a huge, whitewashed space at least eighty feet long and sixty feet wide, with a decorated plaster ceiling twenty feet above, complete with a fifty-candle chandelier of cut crystal in the middle.

There was a mahogany desk right in the middle of the room with a green-shaded gas lantern on it, and a long row of glass-topped display cases all along one wall, each illuminated by its own gently hissing gaslight. In the far corner, there was a curtained four-poster bed with a blanket box at its foot, a standing screen painted with a nautical scene, and a large oak-panelled wardrobe with mirrored doors.

It was also absolutely quiet and completely stable. All the noise of the crew and the sea had vanished as soon as the door was shut behind Arthur, as had the constant roll and sway of the deck.

‘How —’

Ichabod knew what Arthur was asking before the boy even got the question out.

‘This is one of the original rooms. When the Deluge came and we had to turn the counting house into a ship, this room refused to transform to something more useful, like a gun deck. Eventually Doctor Scamandros managed to connect it to the aft passageway, but it isn’t really in the ship.’

‘Where is it, then?’

‘We’re not entirely sure. Probably not where it used to be, since the old counting house site is well submerged. The Captain thinks that this room must have been personally supervised by the Architect, and retained some of Her virtue. It lies within the House, that’s for sure, not out in the Realms.’

‘You’re not worried that it might get cut off from the ship?’ asked Arthur as they walked over to the bed. The curtains were drawn and Arthur could hear snoring behind them. Not horrendous ‘I can’t bear to hear it’ snoring, but occasional drawn-out snorts and wheezes.

‘Not at all,’ said Ichabod. ‘The ship is still mostly the counting house, albeit long-transformed and changed. This room is of the counting house, so it will always be connected somehow. If the passageway falls off, some other way will open.’

‘Through the wardrobe maybe,’ said Arthur.

Ichabod looked at him sternly, his eyebrows contracting to almost meet above his nose.

‘I doubt that, young mortal. That is where I keep the Captain’s clothes. It is not a thoroughfare of any kind.’

‘Sorry,’ said Arthur. ‘I was only . . .’

His voice trailed off as Ichabod’s eyebrows did not return to a more friendly position. There was a frosty silence for a few seconds, then the Denizen twitched his nose as if something had irritated his nostrils, and bent down to open the blanket box.

‘Here is a blanket,’ he said unnecessarily, handing it to Arthur. ‘I suggest you wrap yourself in it. It may stop that shivering. Unless of course it is merely an affectation.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Arthur. He hadn’t realised he was shivering, but now that Ichabod mentioned it, he realised he was very cold, and little tremors were running up and down his arms and legs. The heavy blanket was very welcome. ‘I am cold. I might even have a cold.’

‘Really?’ asked Ichabod, suddenly interested. ‘We must tell Doctor Scamandros. But first I suppose I should wake the Captain.’

‘I’m already awake,’ said a voice behind the curtain. A quiet, calm voice. ‘We have a visitor, I see. Anything else to report, Ichabod?’

‘Mister Sunscorch is of the opinion that we are being pursued by the awful pirate Feverfew, on account of stealing one of his treasure chests.’

‘Ah,’ said the voice. ‘Is Mister Sunscorch doing . . . um . . . things with the sails and so on? So we can, ah, flee?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ichabod. ‘May I present the potential passenger Mister Sunscorch took aboard from Feverfew’s buoy? He is a boy and, I believe I am correct in assuming, a true mortal. Not one of the Piper’s children.’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur.

‘First things first, Ichabod,’ came the reply. ‘Second-best boots, third-best coat, and my, ah, sword. The proper one with the, err, sharpened blade.’

‘The sharpened blade? Is that wise, sir?’

‘Yes, yes. If, ah, Feverfew catches us . . . now, mortal boy, what is your name?’

‘My name is — look ou —!’ said Arthur as Ichabod walked straight into the wardrobe mirror. But the Denizen didn’t hit it. He went right through, like a diver into a pool of still water, the silvered glass rippling as he passed.

‘Lookow?’ asked the Captain.

‘Sorry, I got distracted,’ said Arthur. ‘My name is Arth.’

‘Lookow sounds better than Arth,’ said the Captain. ‘Pity. Names can be a terrible burden. Take mine, for example. It’s Catapillow. Captain Catapillow, at your service.’

‘Caterpillar?’ asked Arthur, not sure he’d heard it right through the bed’s curtains.

‘No! Cat-ah-pillow. See what I mean? Suitable name for the manager of a counting house, but hardly the stuff of nautical legend.’

‘Why don’t you change it?’

‘Officers not allowed to,’ came the muffled reply. ‘Name was issued by the Architect. Inscribed in the Register of Precedence. That’s why I’m Captain. Most senior aboard, 38,598th in precedence within the House. Prefer not to be, but no choice in the matter. Mister Sunscorch is, um, the only professional sailor aboard. Boots?’

‘Here they are, sir,’ said Ichabod, inserting boots, coat, and sword between the curtains. Arthur hadn’t seen him come back through the mirrored door of the wardrobe, but there he was.

There was a muffled curse from the bed and the curtains billowed out. Then the boots thrust out under them, half on Captain Catapillow’s feet. Ichabod helped him ease them on all the way, and Catapillow slid out of the bed and stood up and bowed to Arthur.

He was tall, but not as tall as Dame Primus or Monday’s Noon. He was also not particularly handsome, though not exactly ugly either. He didn’t have any tattoos, or at least none visible. He just looked very plain and ordinary, with a rather vacant face under a short white wig with a kind of ponytail at the back tied with a blue ribbon. His blue coat was quite faded, and he only had one gold epaulette, on his left shoulder.

‘Now, young Arth,’ Catapillow said as he tried to buckle on his sword-belt and failed. He stood still while Ichabod fixed it up. ‘You want to be a passenger aboard a ship that will shortly be sunk and everyone on it put to, um, the sword or made slaves by the pirate Feverfew?’

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean I want to be a passenger, but surely we can escape? I saw that ship, the pirate one, but it was a long way away. We must have a good lead.’

‘A stern chase is a long chase,’ muttered Catapillow. ‘But they’ll, you know, probably catch us in the end. I suppose we should go and, er, have a look. Mister Sunscorch might have some — what-do-you-call-’em — ideas. Or Doctor Scamandros. Just when I was going to examine some new additions to my collection. I suppose it will be Feverfew’s collection soon, and he won’t appreciate it.’

Arthur started to ask about the Captain’s collection. He could tell from Catapillow’s fond gaze that it was housed in the display cabinets along the wall. But before he could get the words out, Ichabod trod on his foot and coughed meaningfully.