Veracity (37 page)

The key clattered to get into the hole, and the door opened quickly. It was Onni, and he had a plate of cooked fish in one of his hands, of which, I'm sorry to say, I couldn't help but focus on with what must have been a completely crazed expression. He had a small pail of water in his other hand as well, and walked into the room watching it, careful not to splash any on the floor. Meanwhile, Toivo stayed in the gangway, looking around uneasily. He was obviously there for 'security' purposes.

My eyes followed the plate of fish moving through the room until Onni bent over to put it on the floor beside my water bucket, which struck me as an odd thing to do. (I wondered if I was expected to eat on all fours now; and if he had been specifically instructed to give it to me in this way.) But there was something in the reverence in which he did it that stopped me from saying anything. And, as I wasn't about to crouch down and shovel the food into my mouth as they might have expected me to, I could only stand there, pretending to be patient, waiting to see what would happen next.

Onni picked up the small pail of water and took a few steps over to the large bucket that he'd brought in the day before, apparently intending to fill it to the brim, even though I hadn't really used much of it. This was already strange enough, but then he moved around the bucket until he was at an entirely unnatural angle to it, so that the pouring water was facing the gangway as it came out. He seemed to be pointlessly shaking the water as well, as if it were solid and needed help to spill out of the pail. And it wasn't until I saw the piece of cooked fish slither out of his sleeve and land on the floor, the sound of which was timed perfectly with a quick clearing of his throat, that I realized what the spectacle was all about. The fish had crumbled into a couple of pieces, but still lay behind the bucket he was filling, hidden from Toivo's view.

"Hey - uh... thanks for the water, Onni," I said, sounding suspicious. I looked up at Toivo with a stupid wooden grin on my face to see if he'd noticed, but he wasn't looking, and nor did he seem to care. He was busy watching his feet, lifting his toes off the floor, lowering them. He didn't even raise his eyes from them as he spoke.

"Come on, Onni. Let's go."

Onni had finished topping off my water, and so walked out of the room, closed the door, and locked it. But neither of them walked away, and when I heard that they were exchanging a few hushed words, I crept as fast as I could to the door to listen.

"...Yeah but it stays in the door from now on."

"What? Says who?"

There was no reply, only a quick silence followed by the sounds of Onni being pushed to the ground, his hands squeaking along the wall, trying to catch hold of something, and a dull bump signifying that he hadn't. Finally, after the sound of Onni getting to his feet again and another tense pause, their footsteps departed in opposite directions. Neither of them had removed the key.

But at that moment, I had other things to think about. The second that I'd heard their footsteps recede enough to know that nothing else was going to happen, I scurried to the food on the ground, crouched beside it, and shoved both the fish on the floor and the other on the plate, into my mouth, bones scratching along my throat as I swallowed. Once I'd finished, I scooped the plate from the ground and began to lick it, wiping it up and down across my face until it was spotless, and then moved onto the ends of my fingers. Only when there was nothing left anywhere did I begin to slow down. I drank some water and sat on the floor with my back against the bed, a hand on my stomach, which I could feel contentedly working away.

Finally, I could think.

So, it seemed obvious enough that the key was left in the door to help my assassins, taking out the factor of getting it from Onni in the middle of the night, but what I didn't understand was whether this could signify what
day
they planned on doing it. I was sure that Mikkel would see the little ring of silver sticking out of the keyhole when he walked by it in the gangway, but it seemed they were confident he wouldn't do anything about it, that he would avoid the touchy subject as much as he could. Though, it also occurred to me that
he
had made the suggestion to leave it there. Maybe it wasn't only a few members of the crew that wanted me dead, but the majority of them, and Mikkel's insistence on keeping me alive was only proving to undermine his authority more by the hour; and, for the sake of maintaining order, maybe he felt that he had no choice but to let them kill me and stage my escape. Maybe it was the only way to keep everyone happy. Yet, even if this were the case, once again, I doubted my murderers would be so obvious as to take advantage of the key being left in the door after only a few hours. It would be in their interest to wait at least a day or two, when people would begin to see it as commonplace; even if everyone knew what it was for, including Mikkel.

That afternoon stretched out into long hours of worrying; worrying about what would happen, how many people I would have to fight off, what time of night it would take place; wondering if I would have a day to prepare before the door inched open, or two; questioning if my plan would really work, if they would really feel a warped obligation to let me go if I survived the attack. I spent my hours being eaten away by guesswork.

And then, just as the light from the window started to grow weak, I heard what seemed like the entire crew, except for whoever was at the helm, gather in the galley. They ate the rest of what had been cooked at the midday meal, and began to play a game of some kind. The laughter that accompanied this game sounded strained at first, but soon gave way to something a bit more genuine, and became louder, and then louder; until eventually, the room was heaving with it. I imagine that it was a competition of some kind. At one point there was a thick pounding sound, as if someone had fallen onto the floor - which the room bellowed in a raucous response to - so it had to be something quite physical. Whatever it was, I'm sure a few of them were trying fairly hard to enjoy themselves, hoping to distract their minds from what they were constantly and secretly thinking about.

I was looking out of my window, listening to them, watching the grey of the sky darken, the swells on the sea's surface reflecting less and less, the blue of it becoming more metallic, black, when I started to become aware of something subtle and indistinct that could be heard under the din of their laughter. I looked at the door, listening intently, trying to filter out the loudest noises. And then I heard it, a creak in the floorboards, someone walking as gently as they could through the gangway.

Everything seemed to fall into place in one flaring second. I had been wrong about their plan. It wasn't in the middle of the night, when they would have to risk waking people. No. Instead, it was when everyone was still awake. Knut had simply given a few people the charge of creating the noisiest distraction they could in the galley, while, surprisingly, they had expected only one of them to march me up to the deck by knifepoint, stab me, and push me over.

I smiled. They had seriously miscalculated.

I walked to the door on the edges of my feet, listening to him get closer, trembling with aggressive energy. He stopped directly on the other side of the door, which only meant that I was right. This was it.

I watched the one shining dot on the door latch, the reflection of the tiny bit of light leaking in from the window, waiting for it to move, listening for the lock to unbolt. My mind was empty. Red.

There was a strange sound on the other side, like that of a scratching sigh, then a muffled crinkle, then an irregular hiss. He hadn't even touched the key, and the door latch hadn't budged. I noticed movement near my feet, and my eyes shot down, alive with attention, focusing on an unlikely shape slipping into view; it was lighter grey, angular, and passing along the piece of wood that you had to step over to get into the gangway. Paper.

I bent over and grabbed hold of it, holding a hand out to the door lest it be shoved open while I was in a vulnerable position, and pulled the sheet into the room. Immediately, the person on the other side stood and began walking back to the upper deck with the same gentle steps that had brought him, his sounds quickly fading into the clamour of the galley.

Interesting. I looked down at the piece of paper, squinting, the darkness of the floor bleeding into its hazy edges. The paper was fairly thick, its texture course, and I recognized it as being a ripped corner of one of the maps. Obviously, there was something written on it, but it was impossible to make anything out. (The fact that I didn't have a lantern in my room seemed to be a bit of an oversight on the sender's part.) I brought it to the window to see if the first bit of starlight would be enough to read by, varying the angle of the paper to catch the most light. I could barely see the thin grey lines at first, but after focusing on them for several minutes, I started to be able to distinguish letters, and then words. Slowly, I pieced them together. And once I did, I had to read it over and over again to make sure that I wasn't making it up.

Sighted land at sunset. Others don't know. Will get as close as I can to let you off with the raft. Wind in your favour. Will come later tonight. Eat this note. Onni.

I leaned against the wall, looking out the window, and the muscles in my body relaxed to a point that I felt I was floating off the ground. The air in the room was stagnant, stale, yet every breath I drew in seemed to fill me. Suddenly, there was a very real chance that I would walk on land again, that I would smell the stickiness of budding plants, that I would feel soil pressing beneath my feet, or the warmth of a rock in the sun.

It turned out that I'd completely underestimated Onni. Smuggling in the fish alone was enough of a risk; but the risk that he was taking in helping me get off the ship was a very serious one. And though neither of us knew what would happen if he were caught, he seemed to know enough to avoid it at all cost. Which was why he had slid a note under the door instead of crouching down and mumbling the same lines through the wood; because, considering the racket they were making, the galley door could have burst open at any moment, a few people toppling over each other and spilling into the hall; and then they would have looked down the gangway and noticed him there, his face pressed up against my door; or worse, they could have seen him quickly shutting it, their smiles melting into grave comprehension. And the fact that he knew enough to avoid even the possibility of that happening meant that he understood the dangers involved, that he must have weighed them out carefully - yet had
still
decided to help me. With that thought, and knowing that I couldn't do much for him in return besides what he'd asked of me, I shoved the note into my mouth and started chewing, its taste bitter, the fabric of the paper stubborn, until I could swallow it down in one gummy mass.

I paced around the room, thinking about drifting on the dark open ocean, and trying to come up with useful things to do. I thought of a few; like locating every spot on the floor that creaked when weighted, even prioritizing them from the loudest to the most quiet. And after doing this, I mapped a path between my bed and the door that was absolutely soundless, and another one to the window. Then - thinking that the lantern in the gangway would probably be out when he came to get me, and that fumbling on the stairs, or even running a hissing hand along the wall to help guide myself, could mean disaster for us both - I took to closing my eyes tightly for long periods of time, and then opening them, suddenly awake to a few more details that I wouldn't have seen before.

But there was something about Onni's plan - that had also been a part of Knut's plan for staging a realistic escape for me - which I couldn't help but think of as a little intimidating. And that was the life raft. Because, really, it was a contraption that none of us knew the slightest thing about. Mitra had 'trained' us on the use of the raft, but really only told us what we could have figured out from the clearly labelled procedure list on the side of it. She confessed to never having deployed a raft of this kind in her life, shrugging her shoulders to begin the explanation. "I don't really know what it looks like, but it's supposed to hold 10 people and it inflates itself in an instant. The only thing you have to do is unfasten it from the ship, and then pull this red cord and -
poof
- you have a raft." A few of us raised our eyebrows sceptically; it wasn't an explanation that evoked a lot of confidence. But, like Mitra, we all thought the chances of having to use it were so slim that it wasn't worth the energy to think about. Yet, after having shaken my head at how dubious it all sounded, I would have to go on the faith that whoever had created it, and from whatever time, knew what they were doing. Which was a bit scary, to say the least.

I continued to mull over the other details as well, and the more I thought of them, the more critical they seemed. Like the sound that the raft might make as it inflated itself, which made me think to swim with the bulky red bag in my hand and deploy it as far as I could from the ship. I even thought of how I would get into the water. If I jumped, the splash might be enough to stir someone from their sleep; so I decided I would lower the rope ladder and climb down it, easing into the water in complete silence.

I also thought once more about what the land looked like on the map. I knew that the very first thing we would come to was the same spiny peninsula that I'd chosen as an ideal means of escape only a few nights before. It was both scratching the edge, and marking the beginning of the wide gulf that we would be passing through. It happened that the deeper inside this gulf that one went, the safer the points of disembarking became. So for the ship and the crew, the peninsula was useless, not even viable, but for me it was perfect. It had access to the mainland, which would give me the opportunity to continue on if I wanted to, it was so small that the ship would pass by it in the matter of hours - the shoreline probably being lost in the haze of distance by the time the morning came - and I could be sure that they wouldn't turn around to try and find me, as it was a spit of land that they wouldn't be able to access anyway. So, I imagined, it was only a matter of making it there alive. Everything else would work out wonderfully.